Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/273

Rh regularized by apportionment of duties. This coördination of functions, and consequent mutual dependence of parts, conduce to consolidation of the group as an organic whole. Gradually it becomes impracticable for any member to carry on his life by himself, deprived not only of the family aid and protection, but of the food and clothing yielded by the domesticated animals. So that the industrial arrangements conspire with the governmental arrangements to produce a well-compacted aggregate, internally coherent and externally marked off definitely from other aggregates.

This process is furthered by disappearance of the less developed. Other things equal, those groups which are most subordinate to their leaders will succeed best in battle. Other things equal, those which, submitting to commands longer, have grown into larger groups, will thus benefit. And other things equal, advantages will be gained by those in which, under dictation of the patriarch, the industrial cooperation has been rendered efficient. So that, by survival of the fittest among pastoral groups struggling for existence with one another, those which obedience to their heads and mutual dependence of parts have made the strongest will be those to spread; and in course of time the patriarchal type will thus become well marked. Not, indeed, that entire disappearance of less-organized groups must result; since regions favorable to the process described facilitate the survival of smaller hordes, pursuing lives more predatory and less pastoral. So that there may simultaneously grow up larger clusters which develop into pastoral tribes, and smaller clusters which subsist mainly by robbing them.

Mark next how, under these circumstances, there arise certain arrangements respecting ownership. The division presupposed by individualization of property cannot be carried far without appliances which savage life does not furnish. Measures of time, measures of quantity, measures of value, are required. When from the primitive appropriation of things found, caught, or made, we pass to the acquisition of things by barter and by service, we see that approximate equality of value between the exchanged things is implied; and in the absence of recognized equivalence, which must be exceptional, there will be great resistance to barter. Among savages, therefore, property extends but little beyond the things a man can procure for himself. Kindred obstacles occur in the pastoral group. How can the value of the labor contributed by each to the common weal be measured? To-day the cowherd can feed his cattle close at hand; tomorrow he must drive them far and get back late. Here the shepherd tends his flock in rich pasture; and in a region next visited the sheep disperse in search of scanty food, and he has great trouble in getting in the strayed ones. No accounts of labor spent by either can be kept, and there are no current rates of wages to give ideas of their respective claims to shares of produce. The work of the daughter or