Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/158

146 more or less interfused, yet they are distinct in their origins and natures. There is a spontaneous coöperation which grows up without thought during the pursuit of private ends; and there is a cooperation which, consciously devised, implies distinct recognition of public ends. The ways in which the two are respectively established and carried on present marked contrasts.

Whenever, in a primitive group, there begins that coöperation which is effected by exchange of services—whenever individuals find their wants better satisfied by giving certain products which they can make best in return for other products they are less skilled in making, or not so well circumstanced for making—there is initiated a kind of organization which then, and throughout its higher stages, results from endeavors to meet personal needs. The division of labor, to the last as at first, grows by experience of mutual facilitations in living. Each new specialization of industry arises from the effort of one who commences it to get profit, and establishes itself by conducing in some way to the profit of others. So that there is a kind of concerted action, with the elaborate social organization developed by it, which does not originate in deliberate concert. Though it is true that within the small subdivisions of this organization we find everywhere repeated the relation of employer and employed, of whom the one directs the actions of the other; yet this relation, spontaneously formed in the pursuit of private ends and continued only at will, is not made with conscious reference to achievement of public ends: ordinarily these are not thought of. And though, for the regulating of trading activities, there eventually arise agencies serving to adjust the supplies of commodities to the demands; yet such agencies do this not by direct stimulations or restraints, but simply by communicating information which serves to stimulate or restrain; and, further, these agencies themselves grow up not for the intended purpose of thus regulating, but in the pursuit of gain by individuals. So unintentionally has there arisen the elaborate division of labor by which production and distribution are now carried on, that only in modern days has there come a recognition of the fact that it has all along been arising.

On the other hand, that coöperation which unites the actions of individuals for a purpose immediately concerning the whole society, is a conscious coöperation, and is carried on by an organization of another kind, arising in a different way. When the primitive group has to defend itself against other groups, its members act together under further stimuli than those constituted by purely personal desires. Even at the outset, before any control by a chief exists, there is the control exercised by the group over its members; each of whom is obliged, by the consensus of opinion, to join in the general defense. Very soon the warrior of recognized superiority begins to exercise over each, during war, an influence additional to that exercised by the opinion of the group; and, when his authority becomes established, it