148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



on directive and restraining functions for public ends. It is true, as 

 already hinted, and as we shall see presently, that the two kinds are 

 mingled in various ways that each ramifies through the other more 

 or less according to their respective degrees of predominance. But 

 the two are essentially different in origin and nature ; and for the 

 present we must, so far as may be, limit our attention to the last. 



That the cooperation into which men have gradually risen secures 

 to them benefits which could not be secured while, in their primitive 

 state, they acted singly, and that, as an indispensable means to this 

 cooperation, political organization has been, and is, advantageous, we 

 shall see on contrasting the states of men who are not liolitically 

 organized with the states of men who are politically organized in less 

 or greater degrees. 



There are, indeed, conditions imder which as good an individual 

 life is possible without political organization as with it. Where, as 

 in the habitat of the Esquimaux, there are but few persons, and these 

 very widely scattered ; where there is no war, probably because the 

 physical impediments to it are great and the motives to it feeble ; 

 and where circumstances make the occupations so i;niform that there 

 is little scope for the division of labor mutual dependence can 

 have no place, and the arrangements which effect it are not needed. 

 Recognizing this exceptional case, let us consider the cases which are 

 not exceptional. 



The Digger Indians, " very few degrees removed from the orang- 

 outang," who, scattered among the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, 

 sheltering in holes and living on roots and vermin, " drag out a miser- 

 able existence in a state of nature, amid the most loathsome and dis- 

 gusting squalor," differ from the other divisions of the Shoshones by 

 their entire lack of social organization. The river-haunting and plain- 

 haunting divisions of the race, under some, though but slight, govern- 

 mental control, lead more satisfactory lives. In South America the 

 Chaco Indians, low in type as are the Diggers, and like them degraded 

 and wretched in their lives, are similarly contrasted with the superior and 

 more comfortable savages aroixnd them in being dissociated. Among 

 the Bedouin tribes, the Sherarat are unlike the rest in being divided 

 and subdivided into countless bands which have no common chief ; 

 and they are described as being the most miserable of the Bedouins. 

 More decided still is the contrast noted by Baker between certain adja- 

 cent African peoples. Passing suddenly, he says, from the unclothed, 

 ungoverned tribes from the " wildest savagedom to semi-civilization " 

 we come in Unyoro to a country governed by " an unflinching des- 

 pot," inflicting " death or torture " for " the most trivial offenses " ; but 

 where they have developed administration, sub-governors, taxes, good 

 clothing, arts, agriculture, architecture. So, too, concerning New 

 Zealand when first discovered. Cook remarks that there seemed to 



