stations; on the contrary, these only multiply in the way best suited to facilitate the traffic for short distances, between neighboring groups, as well as for the great distances between the limits of the globe. The very fact of the existence of frontiers, not only geographical, but social, is a factor in the development of civilization; the more they multiply, the more they indicate that social organization is in progress. As might be expected, the differentiation is accompanied by a corresponding co-ordination. It is with frontiers as with races and types: the more numerous they are, the more the differences disappear, and the better the fusion realized through the disappearance of extreme forms. In a word, the multiplication of limits adequate to the progress of the organization is in the same class as that of races, a perfecting of the adaptation of the species. It is an element of order, of peace, of progress; the result of it is the establishment of a new average, and at the same time the strongest possible individualization of special groups and of their units—an individualization impossible in homogeneous, small, or widely scattered societies. This is especially true when there is added a certain equality of the forces between a society and the neighboring societies. This equality, or rather equivalence, is favorable to an exterior equilibrium, to peaceful relations with the outside world, to the formation of agreements, of treaties, and of federations; in a word favorable to the lessening of the historic and gross rôle of frontiers as obstacles. This equality may end in the complete intermingling of two groups; that is, in complete fusion which would give to them common defensive limits, more extensive, and would coincide with a progress in interior organization.

On the contrary, in warlike societies the contest for the territorial and numerical extension of the group seems to be caused by the existence of conditions disadvantageous to the development of their normal life. This contest corresponds to an inequality of strength between the groups, and also to an internal instability caused by the lack of proportion of the food supply and other resources to the population.

Economic difficulties appear in general to be the principal

factors in every conflict. War is a coarse and uncertain way of violently re-establishing the economic equilibrium. It is evident that every variation in the frontiers of a society affects, and is affected by, its own internal organization as well as by that of neighboring societies. In primitive and uncivilized society the technique of taking a territory and its inhabitants by force would seem to be an easier and more expeditious way than that of assimilation. War supplies a lack of resources at once by the conquest of territory, by the subjugation of the inhabitants, as well as by the taking of booty. Modern wars as well as those of ancient times have very often been caused by internal difficulties. The great service rendered by socialism and by sociology has been to set forth, as the thing first to be desired, the solution of internal social questions, and to show that upon this depends the solution of international problems, and, as a result, the settlement of boundary disputes.

War is one kind of solution. Proudhon realized that; but he was only emphasizing this point in his reaction against the fraternal idealism of his time. War is perhaps a provisional and crude solution in case of attack, but it is a solution, not only barbarous, but childish.

The present study is exclusively devoted to the philosophy of exterior limits of society, but it has been necessary to show that these exterior limits always affect, and are affected by, the internal organization and molecular composition of the social group.

While between peaceful societies the frontiers tend to disappear, to be transformed into means of communication and internal exchanges, both material and ideal, yet between military societies they tend toward greater prominence and to take on the most repulsive and insuperable forms, either natural or artificial, or even purely conventional. But all this is in vain. Any boundary however strong and high, is not an absolute obstacle. As a fixed line it symbolizes equilibrium. Such a line will remain permanently fixed only so long as the equilibrium does not change; but the equilibrium is always changing. From the social point of view, inequality between social groups is as much the aim of war as the establishment of an international equilibrium.

Supremacy and equilibrium are the two poles of the politics of every military society. Generally, the re-establishment of the compromised equilibrium is only the pretext, of which the gaining of supremacy is the end. This is well known for in these societies the internal instability can find a remedy only in the exploitation of neighboring societies, just as the interior inequality cannot be maintained except by the exploitation of the inferior classes of slaves, serfs, or hirelings. The most radical conquest is that where the conquered group is purely and simply transformed into a caste exclusively devoted to productive and peaceful occupation, under the direction, and to the profit, of the conquering caste. In military societies the strata or classes, are also marked as are the frontiers, conforming to the law we have noted, and according to which the external structure is always correlative to the internal organization and composition.

G. DE GREEF.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.

[To be continued.]

MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY.

VI. THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE.- Continued.

PASSING now from statico-dynamic processes and transmutations as factors of social change to stimuli, we have first to remark that the quest for these is made difficult by the fact that a brusque revolution in the conditions of life or thought produces not sudden but gradual changes in society. Removal to a new environment, the change from peace to war or vice versa, contact with an alien culture, the conjugation of two peoples through conquest, the introduction of a new agent of production — each of these may suddenly shift the plane of existence for a people, and necessitate extensive social readjustments. Yet, owing to mental inertia and the selfish resistance of interested classes, such readjustments are apt to be spread over a considerable period. The shock received within a twelvemonth may echo and reverberate for a whole generation. It is because a given stimulus does not cause a prompt and equally vigorous pulsation in social life, but brings in a long train of adaptations some of them at several removes from the original center of disturbance, that it is so difficult to connect social transformations with their primary causes. Moreover, a succession of dissimilar and unrelated stimuli from different quarters may yield a continuity of social change which will foster the false impression that the transformations of society occur in a fixed order, each state drawing after it the succeeding state, according to some formula of necessary "development."

With this caution we may now take up, one after another, the chief extra-social factors of social change, and present the characteristic workings of each.

I. The growth of population.- This phenomenon presents two cases. In the one case the rate of increase is the same for all parts of the population; in the other, the various classes and sections multiply at diverse rates. The former case will be considered first.

A uniform increase of numbers throughout society, while it does not directly disturb the relations of the parts, changes the relation of population to land, and thus intensifies the exertions needed to procure subsistence. This incites to new ways of exploiting the environment, which in turn bring individuals into new relations, and so cause a revolution of social structure. The advance from the hunting to the pastoral stage does not seem to have followed promptly the domestication of animals, but to have often awaited the pressure of population. Man seems first to have tamed animals for amusement. In Africa we find the Ovambo

very rich in cattle and fond of animal diet, yet their beasts would seem to be kept for show rather than for food." Says Bücher: "Generally speaking, the possession of cattle is for the negro peoples merely ‘a representation of wealth and the object of an almost extravagant veneration'-merely a matter of fancy." An Indian village in the interior of Brazil "resembles a great menagerie. . . . ; but none of the many animals are raised because of the meat or for other economic purpose." "On the whole, then, no importance can be attached to cattle-raising in the production of the food supplies of primitive peoples." The motor, then, that urges a primitive people on into the pastoral state is either the growing scarcity of game (a “cumulative effect"), or the increase of numbers.

The same driving force caused man to pass from herdmanship to tillage. Of the Navajos we read: "Indian corn. . . . was known to them apparently from the earliest times, but while they remained a mere hunting tribe, they detested the labor of planting. But as their numbers increased, the game, more regularly hunted, became scarce, and to maintain themselves in food, necessity forced them to a more general cultivation of corn, and the regular practice of planting became established among them." Says Baden-Powell: "Necessity has forced Rajputs and others to take to agriculture." Wallace writes: "The prospect of starvation is, in fact, the cause of the transition [to agriculture] probably in all cases, and certainly in the case of the Bashkirs." Middendorf says: "Only the poorest Kirghises, driven by want, engage in tillage." An ancient chronicle, alluding to the passage