258 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



units originally like in kind, the progress of organization im 

 plies, not only that the units composing each differentiated 

 part severally maintain their positions, but also that their 

 progeny succeed to those positions. Bile-cells which, while 

 performing their functions, grow and give origin to new bile- 

 cells, are, when they decay and disappear, replaced by these : 

 the cells descending from them do not migrate to the kid 

 neys, or the muscles, or the nervous centres, to join in the 

 performance of their duties. And, evidently, unless the 

 specialized units each organ is made of, produced units simi 

 larly specialized, which remained in the same place, there 

 could be none of those settled relations among parts which 

 characterize the organism, and fit it for its particular mode of 

 life. 



In a society also, establishment of structure is favoured by 

 the transmission of positions and functions through successive 

 generations. The maintenance of those class-divisions which 

 arise as political organization advances, implies the inherit 

 ance of a rank and a place in each class. The like happens 

 with those sub-divisions of classes which, in some societies, 

 constitute castes, and in other societies are exemplified by in 

 corporated trades. Where custom or law compels the sons of 

 each worker to follow their father s occupation, there result 

 among the industrial structures obstacles to change analogous 

 to those which result in the regulative structures from im 

 passable divisions of ranks. India shows this in an extreme 

 degree ; and in a less degree it was shown by the craft-guilds 

 of early days in England, which facilitated adoption of a craft 

 by the children of those engaged in it, and hindered adoption 

 of it by others. Thus we may call inheritance of position and 

 function, the principle of fixity in social organization. 



There is another way in which succession by inheritance, 

 whether to class-position or to occupation, conduces to 

 stability. It secures supremacy of the elder ; and supremacy 

 of the elder tends towards maintenance of the established 

 order. A system under which a chief -ruler, sub-ruler, head of 



