POLITICAL DIFFERENTIATION. 447 



themselves to the most powerful member of the group, now as depend- 

 ents who work, and now as armed followers armed followers who 

 form a class bound to the dominant man, and unconnected with the 

 land. And since, in clusters of such groups, fugitives ordinarily flock 

 most to the strongest group, and become adherents of its head, they 

 are instrumental in furthering those subsequent integrations and dif- 

 ferentiations which conquests bring about. 



Inequalities of social position, bringing inequalities in the supplies 

 and kinds of food, clothing, and shelter, tend to establish physical 

 differences, to the further advantage of the rulers and disadvantage 

 of the ruled. And, beyond the physical differences, there are produced, 

 by the respective habits of life, mental differences, emotional and intel- 

 lectual, strengthening the general contrast of nature. 



When there come the conquests which produce compound societies^ 

 and, again, doubly compound ones, there come superpositions of ranks. 

 And the general effect is that, while the ranks of the conquering soci- 

 ety become respectively higher than those which existed before, those 

 of the conquered become respectively lower. 



The class-divisions thus formed during the earlier stages of mili- 

 tancy are traversed and obscured as fast as the many small societies 

 are consolidated into one large society. Ranks referring to local 

 organization are gradually replaced by ranks referring to general or- 

 ganization. Instead of deputy and sub-deputy governing agents who 

 are the militant owners of the subdivisions they rule, there come gov- 

 erning agents who more or less clearly form strata running throughout 

 the society as a whole a concomitant of developed political adminis- 

 tration. 



Chiefly, however, we have to note that, while the higher political 

 evolution of large social aggregates tends to break down the divisions 

 of rank which grew up in the small component social aggregate, by 

 substituting other divisions, these original divisions are still more 

 broken down by growing industrialism. Generating a wealth that is 

 not connected with rank, this initiates a competing power ; and at the 

 same time, by establishing the equal positions of citizens before the 

 law in respect of trading transactions, it weakens those divisions which 

 at the outset expressed inequalities of position before the law. 



As verifying these interpretations, I may add that they harmonize 

 with the interpretations of ceremonial institutions recently given. As 

 the primary differences of rank result fi'om victories, and as the pri- 

 mary forms of propitiation originate in the behavior of the vanquished 

 to the vanquishers, so the later differences of rank result from differ- 

 ences of power which, in the last resort, express themselves in physi- 

 cal coercion, and so the observances between ranks are recognitions 

 of such differences of power. When the conquered enemy is made a 

 slave, and mutilated by taking a trophy from his body, we see simul- 

 taneously originating the deepest political distinction and the cere- 



