432 THE ORIGIN OF TRADITION 



result is sometimes attributable to the survival of certain elements 

 of segmentary organization to which religious feelings have 

 become attached and which have, therefore, resisted the forces 

 which make for their dissolution. This is the case, for example, 

 with regard to the maintenance of the family system in China, 

 which is the great barrier to a development of moral coalescence. 

 The most powerful motive in Chinese life is the devotion to the 

 family system, and this motive prevents the progress of division 

 of labour. Among the Hindus the caste system has the same 

 effect. But it is not merely a survival from a former segmentary 

 organization to which religious motives have become attached ; 

 it has actually undergone a development for the most part in 

 opposition to the organic organization of society. ' The divisions ', 

 says Sherring, ' among the Hindus involving complete 

 separation in respect of marriage and social intercourse, number 

 not hundreds but thousands. In other words the Hindu 

 brotherhood is split up into innumerable clans, holding not the 

 smallest connexion with one another, acknowledging no common 

 bond save that of idolatry. . . . Caste dissolves the social compact 

 found in other countries, infuses the poison of deadly strife into 

 the small village communities scattered in tens of thousands over 

 the land, induces enmity between neighbours on the most trivial 

 grounds, carries out its own childish rites and laws with Draconian 

 severity, exercises the strongest power of disintegration the human 

 race has ever been subject to, and only displays a spirit of binding 

 and uniting in relation to those selfish creatures who belong to 

 one and the same caste, and who are thereby kept apart from all 

 the rest of mankind by an unnatural divorce.' l 



Thus primarily it is the breaking-down of the segmentary type 

 of organization and the condensation of society which permits 

 the division of labour. In the end the advance to the higher 

 type of organization is attributable to the growth of population. 

 It is first necessary that a relatively high degree of skill should be 

 attained involving a certain density of population. Then there 

 arises a tendency for the segmentary organization to break down 

 and give way to the organic type. The breaking- down may be 

 more or less imperfect and there may be factors which work 

 against the full development of the organic type. 



9. The degree to which the higher type of organization favours 



1 Sherring, Hindu Castee and Tribes, vol. iii, p. 218. 



