Part 20 (1/2)

The doctrine of the progressive division of labour, to which we are here introduced, is familiar to all readers. And further, the a.n.a.logy between the economical division of labour and the ”physiological division of labour,” is so striking, as long since to have drawn the attention of scientific naturalists: so striking, indeed, that the expression ”physiological division of labour,” has been suggested by it. It is not needful, therefore, that we should treat this part of our subject in great detail. We shall content ourselves with noting a few general and significant facts, not manifest on a first inspection.

Throughout the whole animal kingdom, from the _C[oe]lenterata_ upwards, the first stage of evolution is the same. Equally in the germ of a polype and in the human ovum, the aggregated ma.s.s of cells out of which the creature is to arise, gives origin to a peripheral layer of cells, slightly differing from the rest which they include; and this layer subsequently divides into two--the inner, lying in contact with the included yelk, being called the mucous layer, and the outer, exposed to surrounding agencies, being called the serous layer: or, in the terms used by Prof. Huxley, in describing the development of the _Hydrozoa_--the endoderm and ectoderm.

This primary division marks out a fundamental contrast of parts in the future organism. From the mucous layer, or endoderm, is developed the apparatus of nutrition; while from the serous layer, or ectoderm, is developed the apparatus of external action. Out of the one arise the organs by which food is prepared and absorbed, oxygen imbibed, and blood purified; while out of the other arise the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems, by whose combined actions the movements of the body as a whole are effected.

Though this is not a rigorously-correct distinction, seeing that some organs involve both of these primitive membranes, yet high authorities agree in stating it as a broad general distinction.

Well, in the evolution of a society, we see a primary differentiation of a.n.a.logous kind; which similarly underlies the whole future structure. As already pointed out, the only manifest contrast of parts in primitive societies, is that between the governing and the governed. In the least organized tribes, the council of chiefs may be a body of men distinguished simply by greater courage or experience. In more organized tribes, the chief-cla.s.s is definitely separated from the lower cla.s.s, and often regarded as different in nature--sometimes as G.o.d-descended. And later, we find these two becoming respectively freemen and slaves, or n.o.bles and serfs. A glance at their respective functions, makes it obvious that the great divisions thus early formed, stand to each other in a relation similar to that in which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to each other. For, from its first appearance, the cla.s.s of chiefs is that by which the external acts of the society are controlled: alike in war, in negotiation, and in migration. Afterwards, while the upper cla.s.s grows distinct from the lower, and at the same time becomes more and more exclusively regulative and defensive in its functions, alike in the persons of kings and subordinate rulers, priests, and military leaders; the inferior cla.s.s becomes more and more exclusively occupied in providing the necessaries of life for the community at large. From the soil, with which it comes in most direct contact, the ma.s.s of the people takes up and prepares for use, the food and such rude articles of manufacture as are known; while the overlying ma.s.s of superior men, maintained by the working population, deals with circ.u.mstances external to the community--circ.u.mstances with which, by position, it is more immediately concerned. Ceasing by-and-by to have any knowledge of, or power over, the concerns of the society as a whole, the serf-cla.s.s becomes devoted to the processes of alimentation; while the n.o.ble cla.s.s, ceasing to take any part in the processes of alimentation, becomes devoted to the co-ordinated movements of the entire body politic.

Equally remarkable is a further a.n.a.logy of like kind. After the mucous and serous layers of the embryo have separated, there presently arises between the two, a third, known to physiologists as the vascular layer--a layer out of which are developed the chief blood-vessels. The mucous layer absorbs nutriment from the ma.s.s of yelk it encloses; this nutriment has to be transferred to the overlying serous layer, out of which the nervo-muscular system is being developed; and between the two arises a vascular system by which the transfer is effected--a system of vessels which continues ever after to be the transferrer of nutriment from the places where it is absorbed and prepared, to the places where it is needed for growth and repair. Well, may we not trace a parallel step in social progress?

Between the governing and the governed, there at first exists no intermediate cla.s.s; and even in some societies that have reached considerable sizes, there are scarcely any but the n.o.bles and their kindred on the one hand, and the serfs on the other: the social structure being such, that the transfer of commodities takes place directly from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher type, there grows up between these two primitive cla.s.ses, another--the trading or middle cla.s.s. Equally, at first as now, we may see that, speaking generally, this middle cla.s.s is the a.n.a.logue of the middle layer in the embryo. For all traders are essentially distributors. Whether they be wholesale dealers, who collect into large ma.s.ses the commodities of various producers; or whether they be retailers, who divide out to those who want them, the ma.s.ses of commodities thus collected together; all mercantile men are agents of transfer from the places where things are produced to the places where they are consumed.

Thus the distributing apparatus of a society, answers to the distributing apparatus of a living body; not only in its functions, but in its intermediate origin and subsequent position, and in the time of its appearance.

Without enumerating the minor differentiations which these three great cla.s.ses afterwards undergo, we will merely note that throughout, they follow the same general law with the differentiations of an individual organism. In a society, as in a rudimentary animal, we have seen that the most general and broadly contrasted divisions are the first to make their appearance; and of the subdivisions it continues true in both cases, that they arise in the order of decreasing generality.

Let us observe next, that in the one case as in the other, the specializations are at first very incomplete; and become more complete as organization progresses. We saw that in primitive tribes, as in the simplest animals, there remains much community of function between the parts that are nominally different--that, for instance, the cla.s.s of chiefs long remain industrially the same as the inferior cla.s.s; just as in a _Hydra_, the property of contractility is possessed by the units of the endoderm as well as by those of the ectoderm. We noted also how, as the society advanced, the two great primitive cla.s.ses partook less and less of each other's functions. And we have here to remark, that all subsequent specializations are at first vague, and gradually become distinct. ”In the infancy of society,” says M. Guizot, ”everything is confused and uncertain; there is as yet no fixed and precise line of demarcation between the different powers in a state.” ”Originally kings lived like other landowners, on the incomes derived from their own private estates.” n.o.bles were petty kings; and kings only the most powerful n.o.bles. Bishops were feudal lords and military leaders. The right of coining money was possessed by powerful subjects, and by the Church, as well as by the king. Every leading man exercised alike the functions of landowner, farmer, soldier, statesman, judge. Retainers were now soldiers, and now labourers, as the day required. But by degrees the Church has lost all civil jurisdiction; the State has exercised less and less control over religious teaching; the military cla.s.s has grown a distinct one; handicrafts have concentrated in towns; and the spinning-wheels of scattered farmhouses have disappeared before the machinery of manufacturing districts. Not only is all progress from the h.o.m.ogeneous to the heterogeneous; but at the same time it is from the indefinite to the definite.

Another fact which should not be pa.s.sed over, is that in the evolution of a large society out of an aggregation of small ones, there is a gradual obliteration of the original lines of separation--a change to which, also, we may see a.n.a.logies in living bodies. Throughout the sub-kingdom _Annulosa_, this is clearly and variously ill.u.s.trated. Among the lower types of this sub-kingdom, the body consists of numerous segments that are alike in nearly every particular. Each has its external ring; its pair of legs, if the creature has legs; its equal portion of intestines, or else its separate stomach; its equal portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord, and, perhaps, its separate pair of ganglia. But in the highest types, as in the large _Crustacea_, many of the segments are completely fused together; and the internal organs are no longer uniformly repeated in all the segments.

Now the segments of which nations at first consist, lose their separate external and internal structures in a similar manner. In feudal times, the minor communities governed by feudal lords, were severally organized in the same rude way; and were held together only by the fealty of their respective rulers to some suzerain. But along with the growth of a central power, the demarcations of these local communities disappeared; and their separate organizations merged into the general organization. The like is seen on a larger scale in the fusion of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and, on the Continent, in the coalescence of provinces into kingdoms. Even in the disappearance of law-made divisions, the process is a.n.a.logous. Among the Anglo-Saxons, England was divided into t.i.things, hundreds, and counties: there were county courts, courts of hundred, and courts of t.i.thing. The courts of t.i.thing disappeared first; then the courts of hundred, which have, however, left traces; while the county-jurisdiction still exists.

But chiefly it is to be noted, that there eventually grows up an organization which has no reference to these original divisions, but traverses them in various directions, as is the case in creatures belonging to the sub-kingdom just named; and, further, that in both cases it is the sustaining organization which thus traverses old boundaries, while in both cases it is the governmental, or co-ordinating organization in which the original boundaries continue traceable. Thus, in the highest _Annulosa_, the exo-skeleton and the muscular system, never lose all traces of their primitive segmentation; but throughout a great part of the body, the contained viscera do not in the least conform to the external divisions.

Similarly, with a nation, we see that while, for governmental purposes, such divisions as counties and parishes still exist, the structure developed for carrying on the nutrition of society, wholly ignores these boundaries: our great cotton-manufacture spreads out of Lancas.h.i.+re into North Derbys.h.i.+re; Leicesters.h.i.+re and Nottinghams.h.i.+re have long divided the stocking-trade between them; one great centre for the production of iron and iron-goods, includes parts of Warwicks.h.i.+re, Staffords.h.i.+re, Worcesters.h.i.+re; and those various specializations of agriculture which have made different parts of England noted for different products, show no more respect to county-boundaries than do our growing towns to the boundaries of parishes.

If, after contemplating these a.n.a.logies of structure, we inquire whether there are any such a.n.a.logies between the processes of organic change, the answer is--yes. The causes which lead to increase of bulk in any part of the body politic, are of like nature with those which lead to increase of bulk in any part of an individual body. In both cases the antecedent is greater functional activity, consequent on greater demand. Each limb, viscus, gland, or other member of an animal, is developed by exercise--by actively discharging the duties which the body at large requires of it; and similarly, any cla.s.s of labourers or artisans, any manufacturing centre, or any official agency, begins to enlarge when the community devolves on it an increase of work. In each case, too, growth has its conditions and its limits. That any organ in a living being may grow by exercise, there needs a due supply of blood: all action implies waste; blood brings the materials for repair; and before there can be growth, the quant.i.ty of blood supplied must be more than that requisite for repair.

So is it in a society. If to some district which elaborates for the community particular commodities--say the woollens of Yorks.h.i.+re--there comes an augmented demand; and if, in fulfilment of this demand, a certain expenditure and wear of the manufacturing organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the extra supply of woollens sent away, there comes back only such quant.i.ty of commodities as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of life and machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be growth, the commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient for these ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the growth be rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs we call _profit_, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a living body. Moreover, in both cases, when the functional activity is high and the nutrition defective, there results not growth but decay. If in an animal, any organ is worked so hard that the channels which bring blood cannot furnish enough for repair, the organ dwindles; and if in the body politic, some part has been stimulated into great productivity, and cannot afterwards get paid for all its produce, certain of its members become bankrupt, and it decreases in size.

One more parallelism to be here noted, is, that the different parts of the social organism, like the different parts of an individual organism, compete for nutriment; and severally obtain more or less of it according as they are discharging more or less duty. If a man's brain be overexcited, it will abstract blood from his viscera and stop digestion; or digestion actively going on, will so affect the circulation through the brain as to cause drowsiness; or great muscular exertion will determine such a quant.i.ty of blood to the limbs, as to arrest digestion or cerebral action, as the case may be. So, likewise, in a society, it frequently happens that great activity in some one direction, causes partial arrests of activity elsewhere, by abstracting capital, that is commodities: as instance the way in which the sudden development of our railway-system hampered commercial operations; or the way in which the raising of a large military force temporarily stops the growth of leading industries.

The last few paragraphs introduce the next division of our subject. Almost unawares we have come upon the a.n.a.logy which exists between the blood of a living body, and the circulating ma.s.s of commodities in the body politic.

We have now to trace out this a.n.a.logy from its simplest to its most complex manifestations.

In the lowest animals there exists no blood properly so called. Through the small aggregation of cells which make up a _Hydra_, permeate the juices absorbed from the food. There is no apparatus for elaborating a concentrated and purified nutriment, and distributing it among the component units; but these component units directly imbibe the unprepared nutriment, either from the digestive cavity or from each other. May we not say that this is what takes place in an aboriginal tribe? All its members severally obtain for themselves the necessaries of life in their crude states; and severally prepare them for their own uses as well as they can.

When there arises a decided differentiation between the governing and the governed, some amount of transfer begins between those inferior individuals, who, as workers, come directly in contact with the products of the earth, and those superior ones who exercise the higher functions--a transfer parallel to that which accompanies the differentiation of the ectoderm from the endoderm. In the one case, as in the other, however, it is a transfer of products that are little if at all prepared; and takes place directly from the unit which obtains to the unit which consumes, without entering into any general current.

Pa.s.sing to larger organisms--individual and social--we find the first advance upon this arrangement. Where, as among the compound _Hydrozoa_, there is an aggregation of many such primitive groups as form _Hydrae_; or where, as in a _Medusa_, one of these groups has become of great size; there exist rude channels running throughout the substance of the body: not however, channels for the conveyance of prepared nutriment, but mere prolongations of the digestive cavity, through which the crude chyle-aqueous fluid reaches the remoter parts, and is moved backwards and forwards by the creature's contractions. Do we not find in some of the more advanced primitive communities, an a.n.a.logous condition? When the men, partially or fully united into one society, become numerous--when, as usually happens, they cover a surface of country not everywhere alike in its products--when, more especially, there arise considerable cla.s.ses that are not industrial; some process of exchange and distribution inevitably arises. Traversing here and there the earth's surface, covered by that vegetation on which human life depends, and in which, as we say, the units of a society are imbedded, there are formed indefinite paths, along which some of the necessaries of life occasionally pa.s.s, to be bartered for others which presently come back along the same channels. Note, however, that at first little else but crude commodities are thus transferred--fruits, fish, pigs or cattle, skins, etc.: there are few, if any, manufactured products or articles prepared for consumption. And note further, that such distribution of these unprepared necessaries of life as takes place, is but occasional--goes on with a certain slow, irregular rhythm.

Further progress in the elaboration and distribution of nutriment, or of commodities, is a necessary accompaniment of further differentiation of functions in the individual body or in the body politic. As fast as each organ of a living animal becomes confined to a special action, it must become dependent on the rest for all those materials which its position and duty do not permit it to obtain for itself; in the same way that, as fast as each particular cla.s.s of a community becomes exclusively occupied in producing its own commodity, it must become dependent on the rest for the other commodities it needs. And, simultaneously, a more perfectly-elaborated blood will result from a highly-specialized group of nutritive organs, severally adapted to prepare its different elements; in the same way that the stream of commodities circulating throughout a society, will be of superior quality in proportion to the greater division of labour among the workers. Observe, also, that in either case the circulating ma.s.s of nutritive materials, besides coming gradually to consist of better ingredients, also grows more complex. An increase in the number of the unlike organs which add to the blood their waste matters, and demand from it the different materials they severally need, implies a blood more heterogeneous in composition--an _a priori_ conclusion which, according to Dr. Williams, is inductively confirmed by examination of the blood throughout the various grades of the animal kingdom. And similarly, it is manifest that as fast as the division of labour among the cla.s.ses of a community, becomes greater, there must be an increasing heterogeneity in the currents of merchandise flowing throughout that community.

The circulating ma.s.s of nutritive materials in individual organisms and in social organisms, becoming alike better in the quality of its ingredients and more heterogeneous in composition, as the type of structure becomes higher; eventually has added to it in both cases another element, which is not itself nutritive, but facilitates the process of nutrition. We refer, in the case of the individual organism, to the blood-discs; and in the case of the social organism, to money. This a.n.a.logy has been observed by Liebig, who in his ”Familiar Letters on Chemistry,” says:

”Silver and gold have to perform in the organization of the State, the same function as the blood corpuscles in the human organization.

As these round discs, without themselves taking an immediate share in the nutritive process, are the medium, the essential condition of the change of matter, of the production of the heat, and of the force by which the temperature of the body is kept up and the motions of the blood and all the juices are determined, so has gold become the medium of all activity in the life of the State.”

And blood-corpuscles being like money in their functions, and in the fact that they are not consumed in nutrition, he further points out, that the number of them which in a considerable interval flows through the great centres, is enormous when compared with their absolute number; just as the quant.i.ty of money which annually pa.s.ses through the great mercantile centres, is enormous when compared with the total quant.i.ty of money in the kingdom. Nor is this all. Liebig has omitted the significant circ.u.mstance, that only at a certain stage of organization does this element of the circulation make its appearance. Throughout extensive divisions of the lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in societies of low civilization, there is no money.

Thus far, we have considered the a.n.a.logy between the blood in a living body and the consumable and circulating commodities in the body politic. Let us now compare the appliances by which they are respectively distributed. We shall find in the development of these appliances, parallelisms not less remarkable than those above set forth. Already we have shown that, as cla.s.ses, wholesale and retail distributors discharge in a society, the office which the vascular system discharges in an individual creature; that they come into existence later than the other two great cla.s.ses, as the vascular layer appears later than the mucous and serous layers; and that they occupy a like intermediate position. Here, however, it remains to be pointed out that a complete conception of the circulating system in a society, includes not only the active human agents who propel the currents of commodities, and regulate their distribution; but includes, also, the channels of communication. It is the formation and arrangement of these, to which we now direct attention.