WHAT IS SOCIAL £ VOLUTION? 39 



hut, makes his own weapons ; every wife digs roots, catches fish, and 

 carries the household goods when a change of locality is needed: 

 what division of labor exists is only between the sexes. We all 

 know that it is quite otherwise with a civilized nation. The changes 

 which have produced the coherence have done this by producing the 

 division of labor: the two going on pari passu. The great parts 

 and the small parts, and the parts within parts, into which a modern 

 society is divisible, are clusters of men made unlike in so far as they 

 discharge the unlike functions required for maintaining the national 

 life. Rural laborers and farmers, manufacturers and their work- 

 people, wholesale merchants and retailers, etc., etc., constitute dif- 

 ferentiated groups, which make a society as a whole extremely vari- 

 ous in composition. Not only in its industrial divisions is it various, 

 but also in its governmental divisions, from the components of the 

 legislature down through the numerous kinds and grades of officials, 

 down through the many classes of masters and subordinates, down 

 through the relations of shopkeeper and journeyman, mistress and 

 maid. That is to say, the change which has been taking place is, 

 under one aspect, a change from homogeneity of the parts to hete- 

 rogeneity of the parts. 



A concomitant change has been from a state of vague structure, 

 so far as there is any, to a state of distinct structure. Even the 

 primary differentiation in the lowest human groups is confused and 

 unsettled. The aboriginal chief, merely a superior warrior, is a chief 

 only while war lasts — loses all distinction and power when war 

 ceases; and even when he becomes a settled chief, he is still so little 

 marked off from the rest that he carries on his hut-building, tool- 

 making, fishing, etc., just as the rest do. In such organization as 

 exists nothing is distinguished, everything is confused. Quite other- 

 wise is it in the developed nation. The various occupations, at 

 the same time that they have become multitudinous, have become 

 clearly specialized and sharply limited. Read the London Directory, 

 and while shown how numerous they are, you are shown by the 

 names how distinct they are. This increasing distinctness has been 

 shown from the early stages when all freemen were warriors, through 

 the days when retainers now fought and now tilled their fields, down 

 to the times of standing armies; or again from the recent days when 

 in each rural household, besides the bread-winning occupation, there 

 were carried on spinning, brewing, washing, to the present day when 

 these several supplementary occupations have been deputed to sepa- 

 rate classes exclusively devoted to them. It has been shown from 

 the ages when guilds quarreled about the things included in their 

 respective few businesses, down to our age when the many busi- 

 nesses of artisans are fenced round and disputed over if transgressed, 



