way the patriarchal organization of society can easily grow
into hereditary monarchy, in which the king is as a god on earth, and
the masses of the people mere slaves of his caprice. It is natural that
the father should be the directing head of the family, and that at his
death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experienced member of the
little community, should succeed to the headship. But to continue this
arrangement as the family expands, is to lodge power in a particular
line, and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to increase, as
the common stock becomes larger and larger, and the power of the
community grows. The head of the family passes into the hereditary king,
who comes to look upon himself and to be looked upon by others as a
being of superior rights. With the growth of the collective power as
compared with the power of the individual, his power to reward and to
punish increases, and so increase the inducements to flatter and to fear
him; until finally, if the process be not disturbed, a nation grovels at
the foot of a throne, and a hundred thousand men toil for fifty years to
prepare a tomb for one of their own mortal kind.

So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one of their number,
whom they follow as their bravest and most wary. But when large bodies
come to act together, personal selection becomes more difficult, a
blinder obedience becomes necessary and can be enforced, and from the
very necessities of warfare when conducted on a large scale absolute
power arises.

And so of the specialization of function. There is a manifest gain in
productive power when social growth has gone so far that instead of
every producer being summoned from his work for fighting purposes, a
regular military force can be specialized; but this inevitably tends to
the concentration of power in the hands of the military class or their
chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the administration of
justice, the construction and care of public works, and, notably, the
observances of religion, all tend in similar manner to pass into the
hands of special classes, whose disposition it is to magnify their
function and extend their power.

But the great cause of inequality is in the natural monopoly which is
given by the possession of land. The first perceptions of men seem
always to be that land is common property; but the rude devices by which
this is at first recognized--such as annual partitions or cult