Herbert Spencer, The Regulating System of Society: 19th century anthropological evidence (more pristine?), role of war, centralisation, cerebrum, medieval & modern parallels.
Principles of Sociology, Volume 1, Part 2 [Inductions of Sociology], Chapter 9 [1st half]
The Source for today’s exhibit is:
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 (1874–75; enlarged 1876, 1885), Part 2, The Inductions of Sociology, London [multiple publishers]
CHAPTER IX
THE REGULATING SYSTEM
… [The] general fact to be here set forth is that … systems of societies are developed into [1] fitness for dealing with the substances … used for sustentation … [and 2] fitness for dealing with surrounding organisms, individual or social — other animals to be caught or escaped from, hostile societies to be conquered or resisted. In both cases [1, 2] that organization which fits the aggregate for acting as a whole in conflict with other aggregates, indirectly results from the carrying on of conflicts with other aggregates.
§ 250. To be slow of speed is to be caught by an enemy; to be wanting in swiftness is to fail in catching prey: death being in either case the result. Sharp sight saves the herbivorous from a distant carnivore; and is an essential aid to the eagle's successful swoop on a creature far below. Obviously it is the same with quickness of hearing and delicacy of scent; the same with all improvements of limbs that increase the power, the agility, the accuracy of movements; the same with all appliances for attack and defence —claws, teeth, horns, etc.
And equally true must it be that each advance in that nervous system which, using the information coming through the senses, excites and guides these external organs, becomes established by giving an advantage to its possessor in presence of prey, enemies, and competitors. On glancing up from low types of animals having but rudimentary eyes and small powers of motion, to high types of animals having wide vision, considerable intelligence, and great activity, it becomes undeniable that where loss of life is entailed on the first by these defects, life is preserved in the last by these superiorities. The implication, then, is that successive improvements of the organs of sense and motion, and of the internal coordinating apparatus which uses them, have indirectly resulted from the antagonisms and competitions of organisms with one another.
A parallel truth is disclosed on watching how there evolves the regulating system of a political aggregate, and how there are developed those appliances for offence and defence put in action by it. Everywhere the wars between societies originate governmental structures, and are causes of all such improvements in those structures as increase the efficiency of corporate action against environing societies. Observe, first, the conditions under which there is an absence of this agency furthering combination; and then observe the conditions under which this agency begins to show itself.
Where food is scarce, diffusion great, and co-operation consequently hindered, there is no established chieftainship. The Fuegians, the Cayaguas or Wood-Indians of South America, the Jungle-Veddahs of Ceylon, the Bushmen of South Africa, are instances. They do not form unions for defence, and have no recognized authorities: personal predominance of a temporary kind, such as tends to arise in every group, being the only approach to it. So of the Esquimaux, necessarily much scattered, Hearne says — “they live in a state of perfect freedom; no one apparently claiming the superiority over, or acknowledging the least subordination to, another”: joined with which fact stands the fact that they do not know what war means.
In like manner where barrenness of territory negatives anything more than occasional assemblings, as with the Chippewayans, there is nothing like chieftainship beyond the effect due to character; and this is very small. Elsewhere adequate concentration is negatived by the natures of the people. They are too little social or too little subordinate. It is thus with the Abors, a Hill-tribe of India, who, “as they themselves say, are like tigers, two cannot dwell in one den”, and who have their houses “scattered singly or in groups of two and three”. It is thus, too, as before pointed out, with the Mantras of the Malay peninsula, who separate if they dispute.
Here both the diffusion and the disposition causing the diffusion, check the evolution of a political head. But it is not only in cases like these that governmental co-ordination is absent. It is absent also among tribes which are settled and considerably more advanced, provided they are not given to war. Among such Papuans as the Arafuras and the Dalrymple Islanders, there are but nominal chiefs: the people living “in such peace and brotherly love with one another” that they need no control but the decisions of their elders.
The Todas, too, wholly without military organization, and described as peaceable, mild, friendly, have no political headships. So again is it with the placable Bodo and Dhimáls; described as being honest, truthful, entirely free from revenge, cruelty, and violence, and as having headmen whose authorities are scarcely more than nominal. To which, as similarly significant, I may add that the Lepchas, referred to by J. Hooker as “amiable and obliging”, are said by Campbell to be "wonderfully honest," "singularly forgiving of injuries," "making mutual amends and concessions;" while at the same time "they are averse to soldiering, and cannot be induced to enlist in our army," and are so little subordinate that they fly to the jungle and live on roots rather than submit to injustice.
Now observe how the headless state is changed and political co-ordination initiated. Edwards says the Caribs in time of peace admitted no supremacy; but, he adds, “in war, experience had taught them that subordination was as requisite as courage”. So, too, describing the confederations of tribes among the Caribs, Humboldt compares them with “those warlike hordes who see no advantage in the ties of society but for common defence”.
Of the Creeks, whose subordination to authority is but slight, Schoolcraft says “it would be difficult, if not impossible, to impress on the community at large the necessity of any social compact, that should be binding upon it longer than common danger threatened them”.
Again, Bonwick says — “Chieftains undoubtedly did exist among the Tasmanians, though they were neither hereditary nor elective. They were, nevertheless, recognized, especially in time of war, as leaders of the tribes. . . . After the cessation of hostilities they retired ... to the quietude of every-day forest life”.
In other cases we find a permanent change produced. Kotzebue says the Kamschadales “acknowledged no chief”; while another statement is that the principal authority was that of “the old men, or those who were remarkable for their bravery”. And then it is remarked that these statements refer to the time before the Russian conquest — before there had been combined opposition to an enemy.
This development of simple headship in a tribe by conflict with other tribes, we find advancing into compound headship along with larger antagonisms of race with race. Of the Patagonians Falkner tells us that though the tribes “are at continual variance among themselves, yet they often join together against the Spaniards”.
It was the same with the North American Indians. The confederacy of the six nations, which cohered under a settled system of co-operation, resulted from a war with the English. Stages in the genesis of a compound controlling agency by conflict with other societies are shown us by the Polynesians. In Samoa eight or ten village-communities, which are in other respects independent,
“unite by common consent, and form a district, or state, for mutual protection. . . . When war is threatened by another district, no single village can act alone; . . . Some of these districts or states have their king; others cannot agree on the choice of one; . . . there is no such thing as a king, or even a district, whose power extends all over the group”.
Yet in case of war, they sometimes combine in twos or threes.
Early histories of the civilized similarly show us how union of smaller social aggregates for offensive or defensive purposes, necessitating co-ordination of their actions, tends to initiate a central coordinating agency.
Instance the Hebrew monarchy: the previously-separate tribes of Israelites became a nation subordinate to Saul and David, during wars with the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites and Philistines. Instance the case of the Greeks: the growth of the Athenian hegemony into mastership, and the organization, political and naval, which accompanied it, was a concomitant of the continued activity of the confederacy against external enemies. Instance in later times the development of governments among Teutonic peoples. At the beginning of the Christian era there were only chieftainships of separate tribes; and, during wars, temporary greater chieftainships of allied forces.
Between the first and the fifth centuries the federations made to resist or invade the Roman empire did not evolve permanent heads; but in the fifth century the prolonged military activities of these federations ended in transforming these military leaders into kings over consolidated states.
As this differentiation by which there arises first a temporary and then a permanent military head, who passes insensibly into a political head, is initiated by conflict with adjacent societies, it naturally happens that his political power increases as military activity continues.
Everywhere, providing extreme diffusion does not prevent, we find this connexion between predatory activity and submission to despotic rule. Asia shows it in the Kirghiz tribes, who are slave-hunters and robbers, and of whose manaps, once elective but now hereditary, the Michells say:
“The word Manap literally means a tyrant, in the ancient Greek sense. It was at first the proper name of an elder distinguished for his cruelty and unrelenting spirit; from him the appellation became general to all Kirghiz rulers.”
Africa shows it in the cannibal Niam-niams, whose king is unlimited lord of persons and things; or again in the sanguinary Dahomans with their Amazon army, and in the warlike Ashantees, all trained to arms: both of them under governments so absolute that the highest officials are slaves to the king. Polynesia shows it in the ferocious Fijians, whose tribes are ever fighting with one another, and among whom loyalty to absolute rulers is the extremest imaginable — even so extreme that people of a slave district “said it was their duty to become food and sacrifices for the chiefs”.
This relation between the degree of power in the political head and the degree of militancy, has, indeed, been made familiar to us in the histories of ancient and modern civilized races. The connexion is implied in the Assyrian inscriptions as well as in the frescoes and papyri of Egypt. The case of Pausanias and other such cases, were regarded by the Spartans themselves as showing the tendency of generals to become despots — as showing, that is, the tendency of active operations against adjacent societies to generate centralized political power.
How the imperativeness fostered by continuous command of armies thus passes into political imperativeness, has been again and again shown us in later histories.
Here, then, the induction we have to carry with us is that as in the individual organism that nervo-muscular apparatus which carries on conflict with environing organisms, begins with, and is developed by, that conflict; so the governmental-military organization of a society, is initiated by, and evolves along with, the warfare between societies. Or, to speak more strictly, there is thus evolved that part of its governmental organization which conduces to efficient cooperation against other societies. …
… So is it in the progress from compound social aggregates that are loosely coherent to those that are consolidated. Manifestly during those early stages in which the chief of a conquering tribe succeeds only in making the chiefs of adjacent tribes tributary while he lives, the political centralization is but slight; and hence, as in cases before referred to in Africa and elsewhere, the powers of the local centres re-assert themselves when they can throw off their temporary subordination.
Many races which have got beyond the stage of separate simple tribes, show us, along with various degrees of cohesion, various stages in the subjection of local governing centres to a general governing centre.
When first visited, the Sandwich Islanders had a king with turbulent chiefs, formerly independent; and in Tahiti there was similarly a monarch with secondary rulers but little subordinate. So was it with the New Zealanders; and so was it with the Malagasy until a century since. The nature of the political organization during such stages, is shown us by the relative degrees of power which the general and special centres exercise over the people of each division. Thus of the Tahitians we read that the power of the chief was supreme in his own district, and greater than that of the king over the whole. Lichtenstein tells us of the Koossas that “they are all vassals of the king, chiefs, as well as those under them; but the subjects are generally so blindly attached to their chiefs, that they will follow them against the king”.
“Scarcely would the slave of an Ashantee chief”, says Cruickshank, “obey the mandate of his king, without the special concurrence of his immediate master”. And concerning the three grades of chiefs among the Araucanians, Thompson says of those who rule the smallest divisions that “their authority is less precarious” than that of the higher officers.
These few instances, which might readily be multiplied, remind us of the relations between major and minor political centres in feudal times; when there were long periods during which the subjection of barons to kings was being established — during which failures of cohesion and re-assertions of local authority occurred — during which there was loyalty to the district ruler greater than that to the general ruler.
And now let us note deliberately, what was before implied, that this subordination of local governing centres to a general governing centre, accompanies co-operation of the components of the compound aggregate in its conflicts with other like aggregates. …
… It is thus also with the political centralizations which become permanent. So long as the subordination is established by internal conflict of the divisions with one another, and hence involves antagonism among them, it remains unstable; but it tends towards stability in proportion as the regulating agents, major and minor, are habituated to combined action against external enemies. The recent changes in Germany have re-illustrated under our eyes this political centralization by combination in war, which was so abundantly illustrated in the Middle Ages by the rise of monarchical governments over numerous fiefs.
How this compound regulating agency for internal control, results from combined external actions of the compound aggregate in war, we may understand on remembering that at first the army and the nation are substantially the same. As in each primitive tribe the men are all warriors, so, during early stages of civilization the military body is co-extensive with the adult male population excluding only the slaves — co-extensive with all that part of the society which has political life.
In fact the army is the nation mobilized, and the nation the quiescent army. Hence men who are local rulers while at home, and leaders of their respective bands of dependents when fighting a common foe under direction of a general leader, become minor heads disciplined in subordination to the major head; and as they carry more or less of this subordination home with them, the military organization developed during war survives as the political organization during peace.
Chiefly, however, we have here to note that in the compound regulating system evolved during the formation of a compound social aggregate, what were originally independent local centres of regulation become dependent local centres, serving as deputies under command of the general centre …
§ 252. This formation of a compound regulating system characterized by a dominant centre and subordinate centres, is accompanied, in both individual organisms and social organisms, by increasing size and complexity of the dominant centre. …
… In a society it … the political agency which gains predominance, is gradually augmented and complicated by additional parts for additional functions.
The chief of chiefs begins to require helpers in carrying on control. He gathers round him some who get information, some with whom he consults, some who execute his commands. No longer a governing unit, he becomes the nucleus in a cluster of governing units. Various stages in this compounding, proceeding generally from the temporary to the permanent, may be observed.
In the Sandwich Islands the king and governor have each a number of chiefs who attend on them and execute their orders. The Tahitian king had a prime minister, as well as a few chiefs to give advice; and in Samoa, too, each village chief has a sort of prime minister. Africa shows us stages in this progress from simple personal government to government through agents.
Among the Beetjuans (a Bechuana people) the king executes “his own sentence, even when the criminal is condemned to death”; and Lichtenstein tells us of another group of Bechuanas (the Maatjaping) that, his people being disorderly, the monarch “swung his tremendous sjambok of rhinoceros leather, striking on all sides, till he fairly drove the whole multitude before him”: being thereupon imitated by his courtiers. And then of the Bachapin government, belonging to this same race, we learn that the duty of the chiefs brother “was to convey the chiefs orders wherever the case demanded, and to see them put in execution”. Among the Koossas, governed by a king and vassal chiefs, every chief has councillors, and “the great council of the king is composed of the chiefs of particular kraals”. Again, the Zulu sovereign shares his power with two soldiers of his choice, and these form the supreme judges of the country.
The appendages which add to the size and complexity of the governing centre in the larger African kingdoms are many and fully established. In Dahomey, besides two premiers and various functionaries surrounding the king, there are two judges, of whom one or other is “almost constantly with the king, informing him of every circumstance that passes”; and, according to Burton, every official is provided with a second in command, who is in reality a spy. Though the king joins in judging causes, and though when his executioners bungle he himself shows them how to cut off heads, yet he has agents around him into whose hands these functions are gradually lapsing; as, in the compound nervous structures above described, there are appended centres through which information is communicated, and appended centres through which the decisions pass into execution.
How in civilized nations analogous developments have taken place — how among ourselves William the Conqueror made his “justiciar” supreme administrator of law and finance, having under him a body of Secretaries of whom the chief was called Chancellor; how the justiciar became Prime Minister and his staff a supreme court, employed alike on financial and judicial affairs and in revision of laws; how this in course of time became specialized and complicated by appendages; needs not to be shown in detail. Always the central governing agency while being enlarged, is made increasingly heterogeneous by the multiplication of parts having specialized functions.
And then, as in nervous evolution after a certain complication of the directive and executive centres is reached, there begin to grow deliberative centres, which, at first unobtrusive, eventually predominate; so in political evolution, those assemblies which contemplate the remoter results of political actions, beginning as small additions to the central governing agency, outgrow the rest.
It is manifest that these latest and highest governing centres perform in the two cases analogous functions. As in a man the cerebrum, while absorbed in the guidance of conduct at large, mainly in reference to the future, leaves the lower, simpler, older centres to direct the ordinary movements and even the mechanical occupations; so the deliberative assembly of a nation, not attending to those routine actions in the body politic controlled by the various administrative agencies, is occupied with general requirements and the balancing of many interests which do not concern only the passing moment. It is to be observed, also, that these high centres in the two cases, are neither the immediate recipients of information nor the immediate issuers of commands; but receive from inferior agencies the facts which guide their decisions, and through other inferior agencies get those decisions carried into execution.
The cerebrum is not a centre of sensation or of motion; but has the function of using the information brought through the sensory centres, for determining the actions to be excited by the motor centres. And in like manner a developed legislative body, though not incapable of getting impressions directly from the facts, is habitually guided by impressions indirectly gained through petitions, through the press, through reports of committees and commissions, through the heads of ministerial departments; and the judgments it arrives at are executed not under its immediate direction but under the immediate direction of subordinate centres, ministerial, judicial, etc.
[2023 Dictionary: Cerebrum — responsible for the integration of complex sensory and neural functions and the initiation and coordination of voluntary activity in the body.]
One further concomitant may be added. During evolution of the supreme regulating centres, individual and social, the older parts become relatively automatic. … Thus is it with kings, ministries, and legislative bodies. As the original political head, acquiring larger functions, gathers agents around him who bring data for decisions and undertake execution of them, he falls more and more into the hands of these agents — has his judgments in great degree made for him by informers and advisers, and his deputed acts modified by executive officers: the ministry begins to rule through the original ruler.
At a later stage the evolution of legislative bodies is followed by the subordination of ministries; who, holding their places by the support of majorities, are substantially the agents executing the wills of those majorities. And while the ministry is thus becoming less deliberative and more executive, as the monarch did previously, the monarch is becoming more automatic: royal functions are performed by commission; royal speeches are but nominally such; royal assents are practically matters of form.
This general truth, which our own constitutional history so well illustrates, was illustrated in another way during the development of Athenian institutions, political, judicial, and administrative: the older classes of functionaries survived, but fell into subordinate positions, performing duties of a comparatively routine kind.
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