THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS. 435 



social inequalities. Barbarous and civilized communities 

 are alike characterized by separation into classes, as well 

 as by separation of each class into more important and less 

 important units; and this structure is manifestly the grad- 

 ually-consolidated result of a process like that daily exem- 

 plified in trading and other combinations. So long as 

 men are constituted to act on one another, either by physi- 

 cal force or by force of character, the struggles for suprem- 

 acy must finally be decided in favour of some one; and the 

 difference once commenced must tend to become ever more 

 marked. Its unstable equilibrium being destroyed, the 

 uniform must gravitate with increasing rapidity into the 

 multiform. And so supremacy and subordination must es- 

 tablish themselves, as we see they do, throughout the whole 

 structure of a society, from the great class-divisions pervad- 

 ing its entire body, down to village cliques, and even down 

 to every posse of school-boys. Probably it will 



be objected that such changes result, not from the homoge- 

 neity of the original aggregations, but from their non-homo- 

 geneity — from certain slight differences existing among 

 their units at the outset. This is doubtless the proximate 

 cause. In strictness, such changes must be regarded as 

 transformations of the relatively homogeneous into the rela- 

 tively heterogeneous. But it is abundantly clear that an 

 aggregation of men, absolutely alike in their endowments, 

 would eventually undergo a similar transformation. For in 

 the absence of perfect uniformity in the lives severally led 

 by them — in their occupations, physical conditions, domestic 

 relations, and trains of thought and feeling — there must 

 arise differences among them ; and these must finally initiate 

 social differentiations. Even inequalities of health caused 

 by accidents, must, by entailing inequalities of physical and 

 mental power, disturb the exact balance of mutual influ- 

 ences among the units; and the balance once disturbed, 

 must inevitably be lost. Whence, indeed, besides seeing 

 that a body of men absolutely homogeneous in their gov- 



