POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN GENERAL. 155 



like in kind, the progress of organization implies, not only that the 

 units composing each differentiated part severally maintain their posi- 

 tions, but also that their progeny succeed to those positions. Bile- 

 cells which, while performing their functions, grow and give origin to 

 new bile-cells, are, when they decay and disappear, replaced by these : 

 the cells descending from them do not migrate to the kidneys, or the 

 muscles, or the nervous centers, to join in the performance of their 

 duties. And, evidently, unless the specialized units each organ is 

 made of gave origin to units similarly specialized, which remained in 

 the same place, there could be none of those settled relations among 

 parts which characterize the organism and fit it for its particular mode 

 of life. 



In a society, also, fixity of structure is favored by the transmission 

 of positions and functions through successive generations. The main- 

 tenance of those class-divisions which arise as political organization 

 advances implies the inheritance of a rank and a place in each class. 

 Obviously, in proportion as the difficulty of rising from one grade into 

 another is great, the social grades become settled in their relations. 

 The like happens with those subdivisions of classes which, in some 

 societies, constitute castes, and in other societies are partially exem- 

 plified by guilds. Where custom or law" compels the sons of each 

 trader to follow his father's occupation, there result, among the struc- 

 tures carrying on production and distribution, obstacles to change 

 analogous to those which result in the regulative structures from im- 

 passable divisions of ranks. India shows this in an extreme degree ; 

 and in a less degree it was shown by the craft-guilds of early days in 

 England, Avhich facilitated adoption of a craft by the children of those 

 engaged in it, and hindered adoption of it by others. Thus we may 

 call inheritance of position and function the principle of fixity in social 

 organization. 



There is another way in which succession by inheritance, whether 

 to class-position or to occupation, conduces to stability. It secures su- 

 premacy of the elder ; and supremacy of the elder tends toward main- 

 tenance of the established order. A system under which a chief-ruler, 

 sub-ruler, head of a clan or house, official, or any person having the 

 power given by rank or property, has his place filled up at death by a 

 descendant, in conformity with some accepted rule of succession, is a 

 system under which, by implication, the young, and even the middle- 

 aged, are excluded from the conduct of affairs. So, too, where an 

 industrial system is such that the son, habitually brought up to his 

 father's business, succeeds to his position when he dies, it follows in 

 like manner that the regulative power of the elder over the processes 

 of production and distribution is scarcely at all qualified by the power 

 of the younger. Now, it is a truth daily exemplified that increasing 

 rigidity of organization, necessitated by the process of evolution, pro- 

 duces in age an increasing strength of habit and aversion to change. 



