152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



large enough to permit extensive division of labor, it is hindered both 

 by deductions, often very gx'eat, from the products of their actions, 

 and by the restraints imposed on their actions, usually in excess of the 

 needs. And political control indirectly entails evils on those who 

 exercise it as well as on those over whom it is exercised. 



The stones composing a house can not be otherwise used until the 

 house has been pulled down. If the stones are united by mortar, there 

 must be extra trouble in destroying their present combination before 

 they can be recombined. And if the miortar has had centuries in 

 which to consolidate, the breaking up of the masses formed is a mat- 

 ter of such difficulty that building with new materials becomes more 

 economical than rebuilding with the old. 



I name these facts to illustrate the truth that any kind of arrange- 

 ment stands in the way of rearrangement ; and that this must be true 

 of organization, which is one kind of arrangement. When, during the 

 evolution of a living body, its component substance, at first relatively 

 homogeneous, has been transformed into a combination of heterogene- 

 ous parts, there rfesults an obstacle, always great and often insuperable, 

 to any considerable change of structure; the more elaborate and definite 

 the structure the greater is the resistance it opposes to alteration. And 

 this, which is conspicuously true of an individual organism, is true, if 

 less conspicuously, of a social organism. Though a society, composed 

 of discrete units, and not having had its type fixed by inheritance from 

 countless like societies, is much more plastic, yet the same principle 

 holds. As fast as its parts are differentiated as fast as there arise 

 classes, bodies of functionaries, established institutions these, becom- 

 ing coherent within themselves and with one another, resist such forces 

 as tend to modify them. The conservatism of every long-settled in- 

 stitution daily exemplifies this law. Be it in the antagonism of a 

 Church to legislation interfering with its arrangements ; be it in the 

 opposition of an army to abolition of the purchase system ; be it in 

 the disfavor with which the legal profession at large has regarded 

 law reform we see that neither in their structures nor in their modes 

 of action are parts that have once been specialized easily changed. 



As it is true of a living body that its various acts have as their 

 common end self-preservation, so is it true of its component organs 

 that they severally tend to maintain themselves in their integrity. 

 And, similarly, as it is true of a society that maintenance of its exist- 

 ence is the aim of its combined actions, so it is true of its separate 

 classes and systems of officials, or other specialized parts, that the 

 dominant aim of each is to preserve itself. Not the function to be 

 performed, but the sustentation of those who perform the function, 

 becomes the object in view : the result being that when the function 

 is needless, or even detrimental, the structure still preserves itself as 

 long as it can. In early days the history of the Knights Templars 



