DISSOLUTION. 



533 



it further conforms to the general law in being caused by 

 an excess of motion in some way or other received from 

 without. 



It is obvious that the social dissolution which follows the 

 aggression of another nation, and which, as history shows 

 us, is apt to occur when social evolution has ended and 

 decay has begun, is, under its broadest aspect, the incidence 

 of a new external motion; and when, as sometimes happens, 

 the conquered society is dispersed, its dissolution is literally 

 a cessation of those corporate movements which the society, 

 both in its army and in its industrial bodies, presented, 

 and a lapse into individual or uncombined movements — 

 the motion of units replaces the motion of masses. 



It cannot be questioned, either, that when plague or 

 famine at home, or a revolution abroad, gives to any society 

 an unusual shock that causes disorder, or incipient dissolu- 

 tion, there results a decrease of integrated movements and 

 an increase of disintegrated movements. As the disorder 

 progresses, the political actions previously combined under 

 one government become uncombined: there arise the an- 

 tagonistic actions of riot or revolt. Simultaneously, the in- 

 dustrial and commercial processes that were co-ordinated 

 throughout the whole body politic, are broken up; and only 

 the local, or small, trading transactions continue. And each 

 further disorganizing change diminishes the joint opera- 

 tions by which men satisfy their wants, and leaves them to 

 satisfy their wants, so far as they can, by separate opera- 

 tions. Of the way in which such disintegrations 

 are liable to be set up in a society that has evolved to the 

 limit of its type, and reached a state of moving equilibrium, 

 a good illustration is furnished by Japan. The finished 

 fabric into which its people had organized themselves, main- 

 tained an almost constant state so long as it was preserved 

 from fresh external forces. But as soon as it received an 

 impact from European civilization, partly by armed aggres- 

 sion, partly by commercial impulse, partly by the influence 



