Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898 — John Shaqi
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
runs may read is erroneous.
While Mr. Mallock's statements and arguments thus recognize Social
Evolution in a general way, and its continuity with evolution of simpler
kinds, they do not recognize that definition of evolution under its
various forms, social included, which it has been all along my purpose
to illustrate in detail. He refers to evolution as exhibited in the
change from a savage to a civilized state; but he does not ask in what
the change essentially consists, and, not asking this, does not see what
alone is to be included in an account of it. Let us contemplate for a
moment the two extremes of the process.
Here is a wandering cluster of men, or rather of families, concerning
which, considered as an aggregate, little more can be said than can be
said of a transitory crowd: the group considered as a whole is to be
described not so much by characters as by the absence of characters. It
is so loose as hardly to constitute an aggregate, and it is practically
structureless. Turn now to a civilized society. No longer a small
wandering group but a vast stationary nation, it presents us with a
multitude of parts which, though separate in various degrees, are tied
together by their mutual dependence. The cluster of families forming
a primitive tribe separates with impunity: now increase of size, now
dissension, now need for finding food, causes it from time to time
to divide; and the resulting smaller clusters carry on what social
life they have just as readily as before. But it is otherwise with a
developed society. Not only by its stationariness is this prevented from
dividing bodily, but its parts, though distinct, have become so closely
connected that they can not live without mutual aid. It is impossible
for the agricultural community to carry on its business if it has not
the clothing which the manufacturing community furnishes. Without fires
neither urban nor rural populations can do their work, any more than can
the multitudinous manufacturers who need engines and furnaces; so that
these are all dependent on coal-miners. The tasks of the mason and the
builder must be left undone unless the quarryman and the carpenter have
been active. Throughout all towns and villages retail traders obtain
from the Manchester district the calicoes they want, from Leeds their
woolens, from Sheffield their cutlery. And so throughout, in general
and in detail. That is to say, the whole nation is made coherent by the
dependence of its parts on one another--a dependence so great that an
extensive strike of coal-miners checks the production of iron, throws
many thousands of ship-builders out of work, adds to the outlay for
coal in all households, and diminishes railway dividends. Here then is
one primary contrast--the primitive tribe is incoherent, the civilized
nation is coherent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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