Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/640

622 ; there is not the same exercise of the teeth whereby they are strengthened and uniformly worn, as we see in ancient skulls. It seems not improbable that their premature decay in civilized nations is due to the want of their normal exercise by the substitution of the knife and fork and stew-pan. According to the evolution theory, our organs have grown into what they are, or ought to be, by long use, and the remission of this tends to irregular development, or atrophy. Every artificial appliance renders nugatory some pre-existing mode of action, either voluntary or involuntary; and as the parts of the whole organism have become correlated, each part being modified by the functions and actions of the others, every part suffers more or less when the mode of action of any one part is changed. So with the social structure, the same correlation of its constituent parts is a necessary consequence of its growth, and the change of one part affects the well-being of other parts. All change, to be healthy, must be extremely slow, the defect struggling with the remedy through countless but infinitesimally minute gradations.

Lastly, do the forms of government give us any firm ground to rest upon as to there being less undue antagonism in one than in another form? Whether it is better to run a risk of, say, one chance in a thousand or more of being decapitated unjustly by a despot, or to have what one may eat or drink, or whom one may marry, decided by a majority of parish voters, is a question on which opinions may differ, but there is abundant antagonism in either case. Communism, the dream of enthusiasts, offers little prospect of ease. It involves an unstable equilibrium, i. e., it consists of a chain of connection where a defect in one link can destroy the working of the whole system, and why the executive in that system should be more perfect than in others I never have been able to see. Antagonism, on the other hand, tends to stability. Each man working for his own interests helps to supply the wants of others, thus ministering to public convenience and order, and if one or more fail the general weal is not imperiled.

You may ask. Why this universal antagonism? My answer is, I don't know; science deals only with the how, not with the why. Why does matter gravitate to other matter with a force inversely as the square of the distance? Why does oxygen unite with hydrogen? All that I can say is, that antagonism is to my mind universal, and will, I believe, some day be considered as much a law as the law of gravitation. If matter is, as we believe, everywhere, even in the interplanetary spaces, and if it attracts and moves other matter, which it apparently must do, there must be friction or antagonism of some kind. So with organized beings, Nature only recognizes the right, or rather the power, of the