the kidneys, or the brain, destroys the life of the whole. Animals in general 

 have carried extreme specialization much farther than plants; but in many 

 plants the more specialized structures, such as flowers, cannot be regenerated. 



Excessive specialization has the further disadvantage that it requires more 

 complete co-ordination, as in the endocrine and nervous systems of human 

 beings, for example. In society "each minding his own business" makes no 

 sense. There is no point in turning valves, pulling switches, pushing buttons, 

 grinding tools, mixing paint or dough, firing ovens, or pumping water except as 

 each special task is related to a common plan. Water comes out of the faucet 

 not merely because you turn the spigot, but because thousands of men and women 

 whom you will never see have been for years doing their thousands of sep- 

 arate jobs, all planned to place water under pressure behind your valve. 



In the organism, chewing food concerns more than the face. Pumping 

 blood and secreting bile are not carried on "for their own sakes". Nor is it the 

 eye that "enjoys" the scenery. In such complex organisms as man extreme 

 specialization carries the risk of upsetting the balance, or unity, of the organ- 

 ism through a relatively slight injury to a very small part. This is probably 

 one reason why "functional disorders" and "queerness" are more prevalent 

 among human beings than among other forms of life. 



Balanced Functions^ A person who weighs 118 pounds is heavier after 

 each meal, and loses weight before the next one. In a complex organism like a 

 mammal there is constant alternation of piling up and using up. That is true 

 for life in general and for human populations. We accumulate great stores of 

 food and fibers and other products of plant and animal life during the summer, 

 and then use up the reserve during the winter. The balance is not a state of 

 rest, like the sides of a scale that are perfectly level. It is a moving and fluctuat- 

 ing condition in which a swinging in one direction balances that in the op- 

 posite, it is a process, it takes time. There must be Oi^^r-production to balance 

 the periods when consumption exceeds production; the problem is that of 

 maintaining the balance. 



In a primitive economy human beings depend upon their own skills to get 

 them what they need directly from nature. They are thus largely at the 

 mercy of the weather and other changing conditions which influence the 

 abundance of plant and animal life. In our economy of highly specialized 

 functions not only do we store seasonal surpluses for long periods, but we trans- 

 port food and other materials from regions in which they are plentiful to re- 

 gions in which they do not occur at all. On the other hand, our economy 

 has been characterized by ups and downs that appear unrelated to the actual 

 abundance of needed food or clothing or building material. During so-called 

 business depressions of the past people spoke of "overproduction" as if a sur- 

 plus of materials could explain widespread hunger and privation, 



iSee No. 2, p. 538. 

 532 



