Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/312

298 bodies; since the cohesion of these implies greater fitness for concerted action, and more developed organization for achieving it. And, similarly, these composite clusters must be to some extent consolidated before the composition can be carried a stage further. Passing over the multitudinous illustrations occurring among the uncivilized, it will suffice if I refer to those given before, and reënforce them by some which historic peoples have supplied. There is the fact that in primitive Egypt the numerous small societies (which eventually became the "nomes") first united into the two aggregates. Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, which were afterward joined into one; and the fact that, in ancient Greece, villages became united to adjacent towns before the towns became united into states, while this change preceded the change which united the states with one another; and the fact that, in the old English period, small principalities were massed into the divisions constituting the Heptarchy before these passed into something like a united whole. It is a principle in physics that, since the force with which a body resists strains increases only as the squares of its dimensions, while the strains which its own weight subject it to increase as the cubes of its dimensions, its power of maintaining its integrity becomes relatively less as its mass becomes greater. Something analogous may be said of societies. Small aggregates only can hold together while the cohesion is feeble, and successively larger aggregates become possible only as the greater strains implied are met by that greater cohesion which results from an adapted human nature, and a resulting development of social organization.

As social integration advances, the increasing aggregates exercise increasing restraints over their units—a truth which is the obverse of the one just set forth, that the maintenance of its integrity by a larger aggregate implies greater cohesion. The coercive forces by which aggregates keep their units together are at first very slight, and, becoming extreme at a certain stage of social evolution, afterward relax—or, rather, change their forms.

At the outset the individual savage gravitates to one group or other, prompted by sundry motives, but mainly by the desire for protection. Concerning the Patagonians, we read that no one can live apart: "If any of them attempted to do it, they would undoubtedly be killed, or carried away as slaves, as soon as they were discovered." In North America, among the Chinooks, "on the coast a custom prevails which authorizes the seizure and enslavement, unless ransomed by his friends, of every Indian met with at a distance from his tribe, although they may not be at war with each other." At first, however, though it is necessary to join some group, it is not necessary to continue in the same group. In early stages migrations from group to group are common. When much oppressed by their chief, Calmucks