718 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



PEEDATOEY AND IXDUSTEIAL SOCIETIES. 1 

 Bt heebekt spencek. 



A GLANCE at the respective antecedents of individual organisms 

 and social organisms shows why the last admit of no such defi- 

 nite classification as the first. Through a thousand generations a spe- 

 cies of plant or animal leads substantially the saine kind of life ; and 

 its successive members inherit the acquired adaptations. When 

 chauged conditions cause divergences of forms once alike, the accumu- 

 lating differences arising in descendants only superficially disguise the 

 original identity do not prevent the grouping of the several species 

 into a genus; nor do wider divergences that began earlier prevent 

 the grouping of genera into orders and orders into classes. It is oth- 

 erwise with societies. Hordes of primitive men, dividing and subdi- 

 viding, do, indeed, show us successions of small social aggregates 

 leading like lives, inheriting such low structures as had resulted, and 

 repeating those structures. But higher social aggregates propagate 

 their respective types in much less decided ways. Though colonies 

 tend to grow like their parents, yet the parent societies are so com- 

 paratively plastic, and the influences of new habitats on the derived 

 societies are so great, that divergences of structure are inevitable. 

 In the absence of definite organizations, established during the simi- 

 lar lives of many societies descending one from another, there cannot 

 be the precise distinctions implied by complete classification. 



Two cardinal kinds of differences there are, however, of which we 

 may avail ourselves for grouping societies in a natural manner. Pri- 

 marily we may arrange them, according to their degrees of composi- 

 tion, as simple, compound, doubly-compound, trebly-compound ; and, 

 secondarily, though in a less specific way, we may divide them into 

 the predominantly predatory and the predominantly industrial those 

 in which the organization for offense and defense is most largely de- 

 veloped and those in which the sustaining organization is most largely 

 developed. 



We have seen that social evolution begins with small, simple ag- 

 gregates; that it progresses by the clustering of these into larger 

 aggregates; and that, after consolidating, such clusters are united 

 with others like themselves into still larger aggregates. Our classi- 

 fication, then, must begin with societies of the first or simplest order. 



We cannot in all cases say with precision what constitutes a simple 

 society; for, in common with products of evolution generally, socie- 

 ties present transitional stages which negative sharp divisions. As 

 the multiplying members of a group spread and diverge gradually, it 



1 Ahr'nljred from advance-sheets of the "Principles of Sociology," Part II., " The In- 

 duction of Sociology," Chapter X., "Social Types and Constitutions." 



