uties and the distribution of awards, the conduct
of war, etc., to be made the special functions of an organized
government. In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer has
defined evolution, the development of society is, in relation to its
component individuals, the passing from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage
of social development, the more society resembles one of those lowest of
animal organisms which are without organs or limbs, and from which a
part may be cut and yet live. The higher the stage of social
development, the more society resembles those higher organisms in which
functions and powers are specialized, and each member is vitally
dependent on the others.

Now, this process of integration, of the specialization of functions
and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by virtue of what is probably
one of the deepest laws of human nature, accompanied by a constant
liability to inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the necessary
result of social growth, but that it is the constant tendency of social
growth if unaccompanied by changes in social adjustments, which, in the
new conditions that growth produces, will secure equality. I mean, so to
speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political institutions,
which each society weaves for itself, is constantly tending to become
too tight as the society develops. I mean, so to speak, that man, as he
advances, threads a labyrinth, in which, if he keeps straight ahead, he
will infallibly lose his way, and through which reason and justice can
alone keep him continuously in an ascending path.

For, while the integration which accompanies growth tends in itself to
set free mental power to work improvement, there is, both with increase
of numbers and with increase in complexity of the social organization, a
counter tendency set up to the production of a state of inequality,
which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, brings improvement to a
halt.

To trace to its highest expression the law which thus operates to evolve
with progress the force which stops progress, would be, it seems to me,
to go far to the solution of a problem deeper than that of the genesis
of the material universe--the problem of the genesis of evil. Let me
content myself with pointing out the manner in which, as society
develops, there arise tendencies which check development.

There are two qualities of