is not always easy to decide when the groups into which they fall become distinct. Here the descendants of common ancestors, inhabiting a barren region, have to divide while yet the constituent families are near akin; and there, in a more fertile region, the group may hold together until clusters of families remotely akin are formed—clusters which, diffusing slowly, are held by a common bond that slowly weakens. By-and-by comes the complication arising from the presence of slaves not of the same ancestry, or of an ancestry but distantly allied; and these, though they may not be political units, must be recognized as units sociologically considered. Then there is the kindred complication arising where an invading tribe becomes a dominant class. Our only course is to regard as a simple society one which forms a single working whole, unsubjected to any other, and of which the parts coöperate, with or without a regulating centre, for certain public ends. Here is a table, presenting, with as much definiteness as may be, the chief divisions and subdivisions of such simple societies.[1]...
We pass now to the classification based on unlikenesses between the kinds of social activity which predominate, and on the resulting unlikenesses of organization. The two social types thus essentially contrasted are the predatory and the industrial.
It is doubtless true that no definite separation of these can be made. Excluding a few simple groups, such as the Esquimaux, inhabiting places where they are safe from invasion, all societies, simple and compound, are occasionally or habitually in antagonism with other societies; and, as we have seen, tend to evolve structures for carrying on offensive and defensive actions. At the same time sustentation is necessary, and there is always an organization, slight or decided, for achieving it. But while the two systems in social organisms, as in individual organisms, coexist in all but the rudimentary forms, they vary immensely in the ratios they bear to one another. In some cases the structures carrying on external actions are largely developed; the sustaining system exists solely for their benefit, and the activities are militant. In other cases there is predominance of the structures carrying on sustentation; offensive and defensive structures are maintained only to protect them; and the activities are industrial. At the one extreme we have those warlike tribes which, subsisting mainly by the chase, make the appliances for dealing with enemies serve also for procuring food, and have sustaining systems represented only by their women, who are their slave-classes; while at the other extreme we have the type, as yet only partially evolved, in which the agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial
- ↑ Three elaborate tables are here given in the text of Spencer's work, classifying the social aggregates of mankind into "Simple Societies," "Compound Societies," and "Doubly-Compound Societies." We are compelled to omit them and the accompanying text for want of space.
