248 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



other more or less according to their respective degrees of 

 predominance. But they are essentially different in origin 

 and nature ; and for the present we must, so far as may be, 

 limit our attention to the last. 



442. That tho cooperation into which men have gradually 

 risen secures to them benefits which could not be secured 

 while, in their primitive state, they acted singly ; and that, 

 as an indispensable means to this cooperation, political 

 organization has been, and is, advantageous ; we shall see on 

 contrasting the states of men who are not politically organized, 

 with the states of men who are politically organized in less 

 or greater degrees. 



There are, indeed, conditions under which as good an indi 

 vidual life is possible without political organization as with 

 it. Where, as in the habitat of the Esquimaux, there are but 

 few persons and these widely scattered ; where there is no 

 war, probably because the physical impediments to it are 

 great and the motives to it feeble ; and where circumstances 

 make the occupations so uniform that there is little scope for 

 division of labour; mutual dependence can have no place, and 

 the arrangements which effect it are not needed. Recog 

 nizing this exceptional case, let us consider the cases which 

 are not exceptional. 



The Digger Indians, &quot; very few degrees removed from the 

 ourang-outang,&quot; who, scattered among the mountains of the 

 Sierra Nevada, sheltering in holes and living on roots and 

 vermin, &quot; drag out a miserable existence in a state of nature, 

 amid the most loathsome and disgusting squalor,&quot; differ from 

 the other divisions of the Shoshones by their entire lack of 

 social organization. The river- haunting and plain-haunting 

 divisions of the race, under some, though but slight, govern 

 mental control, lead more satisfactory lives. In South 

 America the Cliaco Indians, low in type as are the Diggers, 

 and like them degraded and wretched in their lives, are simi 

 larly contrasted with the superior and more comfortable 



