COEEELATION OF VITAL AND SOCIAL FOECES. XXXV11 



vest, is felt throughout the entire social organism. "Where this 

 effect is marked, and not counteracted by free communication with 

 more fertile regions, the means of the community become restricted, 

 business declines, manufactures are reduced, trade slackens, travel 

 falls off, luxuries are diminished, education is neglected, marriages 

 are fewer, and a thousand kindred results indicate decline of enter- 

 prise and depression of the social energies. 



In a dynamical point of view there is a strict analogy between 

 the individual and the social economies the same law of force 

 governs the development of both. In the case of the individual, 

 the amount of energy which he possesses at any time is limited, 

 and when consumed for one purpose it cannot of course be had for 

 another. An undue demand in one direction involves a corre- 

 sponding deficiency elsewhere. For example, excessive action of 

 the digestive system exhausts the muscular and cerebral systems, 

 while excessive action of the muscular system is at the expense of 

 the cerebral and digestive organs ; and again, excessive action of 

 the brain depresses the digestive and muscular energies. If tho 

 fund of power in the growing constitutions of children is overdrawn 

 in any special channel, as is often the case by excessive stimulation 

 of the brain, the undue abstraction of energy from other portions 

 of the system is sure to entail some fornuof physiological disaster. 

 So with the social organism ; its forces being limited, there is but a 

 definite amount of power to be consumed in the various social 

 activities. Its appropriation in one way makes impossible its em- 

 ployment in another, and it can only gain power to perform one 

 function by the loss of it in other directions. This fact, that social 

 force cannot be created by enactment, and that when dealing with 

 the producing, distributing, and commercial activities of the com- 

 munity, legislation can do little more than interfere with their 

 natural courses, deserves to be more thoroughly appreciated by the 

 public. 



But the law in question has yet higher bearings. More and 

 more we are perceiving that the condition of humanity and tho 



