844 SOCIAL STRUCTURE 



is in the nature of a centrifugal force. In astronomy it is well known 

 that if the centrifugal forces were to operate alone, the systems 

 would be immediately destroyed. This would be equally true of 

 any other system and of all natural structures. Any force con- 

 sidered in and by itself is destructive, and no single force could by 

 any possibility construct a system. All systems and all structures 

 are the result of the interaction of a plurality of forces checking and 

 restraining one another. A single unopposed force can produce 

 only motion of translation. A plurality of interacting forces holds 

 the materials acted upon within a limited area, and while no matter 

 or force can be destroyed, the paths are shortened and converted 

 from straight lines into curves and circles, and the bodies impinged 

 are made to revolve rapidly in limited circuits and vortices, and to 

 arrange themselves into orderly systems with intense internal 

 activities. This is the fundamental condition of all organization, 

 and natural systems or genetic structures are organized mechanisms. 

 If we apply it to the bodies or substances which make up the phys- 

 ical world, we see that the intensive internal activities which they 

 thus acquire constitute what we call their properties, and the differ- 

 ences in the properties that different substances possess are simply 

 the different activities displayed by their molecular components 

 due to the differences in their organization. This doubtless applies 

 to chemical elements as well as to inorganic or organic compounds, 

 and many chemists regard even an atom as a system somewhat 

 analogous to a. solar system. 



In the organic world the process of organization, due to successive 

 recompounding of the highest organic compounds, undergoes a 

 higher degree of organization, and protoplasm is evolved, which 

 is capable of carrying the process on upward, and of producing the 

 progressively higher and higher forms of life. The lowest of these 

 forms consist of what are called unicellular organisms, which have 

 the power of multiplication or increase of numbers, but are incapable 

 of any higher development. They are called "protozoans," and 

 represent the initial stage in organic development. The next step 

 consists in the organic unioji of two or more, usually many, of these 

 unicellular organisms into a multicellular organism. Such organisms 

 are called "metazoans," and with this stage begins the most import- 

 ant class of organic structures, viz., tissues. All the organic forms 

 with which any but the microscopist is familiar belong to this meta- 

 zoic stage and present a great variety of tissues with which every- 

 body is more or less familiar. 



I will not go farther with these illustrations from the inorganic 

 and organic world; but it was essential, as will soon appear, to go 

 thus far. Social structures are identical, in these fundamental aspects, 

 with both inorganic and organic structures. They are the products 



