Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/757

Rh society otherwise circumstanced; and these pervert, more or less, the effects of circumstances then existing.

Again, there are the peculiarities of the habitat in respect of contour, soil, climate, flora, fauna, severally affecting in one mode or other the activities, whether predatory or industrial; and severally hindering or aiding, in some special way, the development of either type.

Yet further, there are the complications caused by the particular organizations and practices of surrounding societies. For, supposing the amount of offensive or defensive action to be the same, the nature of it depends in each case on the nature of* the antagonist action; and hence its reactive effects on structure vary with the character of the antagonist. Add to this that direct imitation of adjacent societies is a factor of some moment.

There remains to be named an element of complication more potent perhaps than any of these—one which of itself often goes far to determine the type as predatory, and which in every case profoundly modifies the social arrangements. I refer to the mixture of races, caused by conquest or otherwise. We may properly treat of it separately under the head of social constitution—not, of course, constitution politically understood, but constitution understood as referring to the relative homogeneity or heterogeneity of the units constituting the social aggregate.

Inevitably as the nature of the aggregate, partially determined by environing conditions, is in other respects determined by the natures of its units, where its units are of diverse natures, the degrees of contrast between the two or more kinds of them, and the degrees of union between them, must greatly affect the results. Are they of unallied races, or of races near akin? and do they remain separate, or do they mix?

If units of two kinds are joined in the same society, their respective tendencies to evolve structures more or less unlike in character must modify the product. And the special modification will in every case further or hinder the evolution of one or the other social type. Clearly, where it has happened that a conquering race, continuing to govern a subject race, has developed the predatory regulating system throughout the whole social structure, and for ages habituated its units to compulsory coöperation—where it has also happened that the correlative ecclesiastical system, with its appropriate cult, has given to absolute subordination the religious sanction—and especially where, as in China, each individual is moulded by the governing power and stamped with the appropriate ideas of duty which it is heresy to question, it becomes impossible for any considerable change to be wrought in the social structure by other influences. It is the law of all organization that as it becomes complete it becomes rigid. Only where incompleteness implies a remaining plasticity is it possible for