300 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Step by step the contrast strengthens. Beyond such us 

 have voluntarily made themselves slaves to a head man, 

 others have become enslaved by capture in the wars mean 

 while going on, others by staking themselves in gaming, 

 others by purchase, others by crime, others by debt. And of 

 necessity the possession of many slaves, habitually accom 

 panying wealth and power, tends further to increase that 

 wealth and power, and to mark off still more the higher rank 

 from the lower. 



And then, finally, the inferior freeman finds himself so 

 much at the mercy of the superior freeman, or noble, and his 

 armed followers of alien origin, that it becomes needful for 

 safety s sake to be also a follower ; and, at first voluntary, the 

 relation of dependence grows more and more compulsory. 

 &quot; The freeman might choose his Lord, he might determine 

 to whom, in technical phrase, he should commend himself; 

 but a Lord he must have, a Lord to act at once as his pro 

 tector ai7&amp;lt;d as his surety.&quot; 



460. Certain concomitant influences generate differences 

 of nature, physical and mental, between those members of a 

 community who have attained superior positions, and those who 

 have remained inferior. Unlikenesses of status once initiated, 

 lead to unlikenesses of life, which, by the constitutional 

 changes they work, presently make the unlikenesses of status 

 more difficult to alter. 



First there conies difference of diet and its effects. In the 

 habit, common among primitive tribes, of letting the women 

 subsist on the leavings of the men, and in the accompanying 

 habit of denying to the younger men certain choice viands 

 which the older men eat, we see exemplified the inevitable 

 proclivity of the strong to feed themselves at the expense of 

 the weak ; and when there arise class-divisions, there habit 

 ually results better nutrition of the superior than of the 

 inferior. Forster remarks that in the Society Islands the 

 lower classes often suffer from a scarcity of food which never 



