INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY. X.
PART III. GENERAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIETIES.
CHAPTER .VII. THE SOCIAL FRONTIERS. (CONTINUED.)
SECTION III. BELIEFS, PRACTICES, AND INSTITUTIONS RELATING TO THE SOCIAL LIMITS AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.
IT may be remarked that, in general, living beings of inferior types occupy much more space, relative to the quantity and quality of living matter which they contain, than those of higher types. Large space, relative to the total number of composing units, is necessary to them. These primitive groups, both animal and human, are not small; they are limited particularly as to the number of units composing them, while, on the contrary, they are territorially extended; in a word, they lack density.
We have seen what are the laws of geographic distribution of flora and fauna, laws referring to species and varieties. Schmol- ler, the learned economist, in a curious passage of his Social Politics has observed the phenomena, not only in their general aspect, but also in the existence of groups among animals :
The bears and other carnivorous animals have some districts reserved for their feeding ground and punish the intruders upon it. If animals themselves put order above animal force, you are certainly in error when you consider the violation of that order, the violence in itself, as the reason for the primi- tive epochs of humanity.
I doubt that the bears, of which the eminent economist speaks, have such a conception of order. We have seen that the king- fauna, are naturally limited without the intervention of a con- scious will and an intelligence capable of raising itself through generalization and abstraction to a conception of the order of these limitations. Here, as always, the act precedes the idea, and in opposing any incursion upon the territory, necessary for the sustenance of his group, and of himself, the bear is uncon- sciously made the executor of the law which obliges it to defend its hunting grounds. The habitat of a species, limited in a gen-
64
