WHAT IS SOCIAL EVOLUTION? 41 



shortest path, or the path which presents fewest impediments, is that 

 which he chooses; and the like applies to courses of conduct at large: 

 he does not use great effort to satisfy a want when small effort will 

 do. Given his surroundings and the occupation he chooses, when 

 choice is possible, is that which promises a satisfactory livelihood 

 with the least tax on such powers as he has, bodily and mental — is 

 the easiest to his particular nature, all things considered. What 

 holds of individuals holds of masses of individuals; and hence the 

 inhabitants of a tract offering facilities for a particular occupation 

 fall into that occupation. In § 732 of the Principles of Sociology I 

 have given from various countries illustrations of the ways in which 

 local conditions determine the local industries: — instance among our- 

 selves mining districts where there are coal, ironstone, lead, slate; 

 wheat-growing districts and pastoral districts ; fruit and hop districts ; 

 districts for weavers, stockingers, workers in iron; places for ship- 

 building, importing, fishing, etc.: showing that certain sections of 

 the population become turned into organizations for the production 

 of certain commodities, without reference to the directive agency of 

 any man. So in each case is it with the various classes of merchants, 

 shopkeepers, professional men, etc., who in each of these centers 

 minister to those engaged in its special industries: nobody ordering 

 them to come or to go. 



Similarly when we pass from production to distribution. As in 

 India at the present time, where a Juggernaut festival is accom- 

 panied by a vast fair; as, according to Curtius and Mommsen, in 

 Greece and Rome, the gatherings of people to make sacrifices to the 

 gods were the occasions for trading; so in Christian times, church 

 festivals and saints' days, drawing assemblages of people for worship, 

 led to active exchange of commodities — the names of the fairs prov- 

 ing their origin. This was not arranged by any one: it arose from 

 the common sense of all who wanted to sell some things and buy 

 others. There has been a like history for the rise of markets, and 

 the transition from weekly to bi-weekly, and finally to daily, markets 

 in respect of important things — corn, money, securities. No supe- 

 rior man, political or other, dictated these developments. When 

 barter gave place to exchange by means of a currency, the like hap- 

 pened. One wanting to dispose of surplus goods, meeting those who 

 had no personal need for such goods, took in exchange certain 

 things in universal demand, which he knew he would be able to pass 

 on in like manner — in early stages articles of food, of warmth, of 

 defense, of ornament; and from such articles arose in each case 

 a currency — here dried fish, there tea-bricks, and in other cases 

 skins, bundles of cotton, here standard bars of rock salt, there stand- 

 ard bars of iron, in one place definite lengths of cloth, and in an- 



TOL. LIV, 



