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CHAPTER XXIII.

DISSOLUTION.

8 177. WHEN, in Chapter XII., we glanced at the cycle of changes through which every existence passes, in its progress from the imperceptible to the perceptible and again from the perceptible to the imperceptible—when these opposite re-distributions of matter and motion were severally distinguished as Evolution and Dissolution; the natures of the two, and the conditions under which they respectively occur, were specified in general terms. Since then, we have contemplated the phenomena of Evolution in detail; and have followed them out to those states of equilibrium in which they all end. To complete the argument we must now contemplate, somewhat more in detail than before, the complementary phenomena of Dissolution. Not, indeed, that we need dwell long on Dissolution, which has none of those various and interesting aspects which Evolution presents; but something more must be said than has yet been said.

It was shown that neither of these two antagonistic processes ever goes on absolutely unqualified by the other; and that a change towards either is a differential result of the conflict between them. An evolving aggregate, while on the average losing motion and integrating, is always, in one way or other, receiving some motion and to that extent disintegrating; and after the integrative changes have ceased to predominate, the reception of motion, though

perpetually checked by its dissipation, constantly tends to produce a reverse transformation, and eventually does produce it. When Evolution has run its course-when the aggregate has at length parted with its excess of motion, and habitually receives as much from its environment as it habitually loses-when it has reached that equilibrium in which its changes end; it thereafter remains subject to all actions in its environment which may increase the quantity of motion it contains, and which in the lapse of time are sure, either slowly or suddenly, to give its parts such excess of motion as will cause disintegration. According as its equilibrium is a very unstable or a very stable one, its dissolution may come quickly or may be indefinitely delayedmay occur in a few days or may be postponed for millions of years. But exposed as it is to the contingencies not simply of its immediate neighbourhood but of a Universe everywhere in motion, the period must at last come when, either alone or in company with surrounding aggregates, it has its parts dispersed.

The process of dissolution so caused, we have here to look at as it takes place in aggregates of different orders. The course of change being the reverse of that hitherto traced, we may properly take the illustrations of it in the reverse. order beginning with the most complex and ending with the most simple.

§ 178. Regarding the evolution of a society as at once an increase in the number of individuals integrated into a corporate body, an increase in the masses and varieties of the parts into which this corporate body divides as well as of the actions called their functions, and an increase in the degree of combination among these masses and their functions; we shall see that social dissolution conforms to the general law in being, materially considered, a disintegration, and, dynamically considered, a decrease in the movements of wholes and an increase in the movements of parts; while

it further conforms to the general law in being caused by an excess of motion in some way or other received from

without.

It is obvious that the social dissolution which follows the aggression of another nation, and which, as history shows us, is apt to occur when social evolution has ended and decay has begun, is, under its broadest aspect, the incidence of a new external motion; and when, as sometimes happens, the conquered society is dispersed, its dissolution is literally a cessation of those corporate movements which the society, both in its army and in its industrial bodies, presented, and a lapse into individual or uncombined movementsthe motion of units replaces the motion of masses.

It cannot be questioned, either, that when plague or famine at home, or a revolution abroad, gives to any society an unusual shock that causes disorder, or incipient dissolution, there results a decrease of integrated movements and an increase of disintegrated movements. As the disorder progresses, the political actions previously combined under one government become uncombined: there arise the antagonistic actions of riot or revolt. Simultaneously, the industrial and commercial processes that were co-ordinated throughout the whole body politic, are broken up; and only the local, or small, trading transactions continue. And each further disorganizing change diminishes the joint operations by which men satisfy their wants, and leaves them to satisfy their wants, so far as they can, by separate operations. Of the way in which such disintegrations are liable to be set up in a society that has evolved to the limit of its type, and reached a state of moving equilibrium, a good illustration is furnished by Japan. The finished fabric into which its people had organized themselves, maintained an almost constant state so long as it was preserved from fresh external forces. But as soon as it received an impact from European civilization, partly by armed aggression, partly by commercial impulse, partly by the influence

of ideas, this fabric began to fall to pieces. There is now in progress a political dissolution. Probably a political reorganization will follow; but, be this as it may, the change thus far produced by an outer action is a change towards dissolution-a change from integrated motions to disintegrated motions..

Even where a society that has developed into the highest form permitted by the characters of its units, begins thereafter to dwindle and decay, the progressive dissolution is still essentially of the same nature. Decline of numbers is, in such case, brought about partly by emigration; for a society having the fixed structure in which evolution ends, is necessarily one that will not yield and modify under pressure of population: so long as its structure will yield and modify, it is still evolving. Hence the surplus population continually produced, not held together by an organization that adapts itself to an augmenting number, is continually dispersed: the influences brought to bear on the citizens by other societies, cause their detachment, and there is an increase in the uncombined motions of units instead of an increase of combined motions. Gradually as rigidity becomes greater, and the society becomes still less capable of being re-moulded into the form required for successful competition with growing and more plastic societies, the number of citizens who can live within its unyielding framework becomes positively smaller. Hence it dwindles both through continued emigration and through the diminished multiplication that follows innutrition. And this further dwindling or dissolution, caused by the number of those who die becoming greater than the number of those who survive long enough to rear offspring, is similarly a decrease in the total quantity of combined motion and an increase in the quantity of uncombined motion-as we shall presently see when we come to deal with individual dissolution.

Considering, then, that social aggregates differ so much from aggregates of other kinds, formed as they are of units

held together loosely and indirectly, in such variable ways by such complex forces, the process of dissolution among them conforms to the general law quite as clearly as could be expected.

§ 179. When from these super-organic aggregates we descend to organic aggregates, the truth that Dissolution is a disintegration of matter, caused by the reception of additional motion from without, becomes easily demonstrable. We will look first at the transformation and afterwards at its cause.

Death, or that final equilibration which precedes dissolution, is the bringing to a close of all those conspicuous integrated motions that arose during evolution. The impulsions of the body from place to place first cease; presently the limbs cannot be stirred; later still the respiratory actions stop; finally the heart becomes stationary, and, with it, the circulating fluids. That is, the transformation of molecular motion into the motion of masses, comes to an end; and each of these motions of masses, as it ends, disappears into molecular motions. What next takes place? We cannot say that there is any further transformation of sensible movements into insensible movements; for sensible movements no longer exist. Nevertheless, the process of decay involves an increase of insensible movements; since these are far greater in the gases generated by decomposition, than they are in the fluid-solid matters out of which the gases arise. Each of the complex chemical units composing an organic body, possesses a rhythmic motion in which its many component units jointly partake. When decomposi- . tion breaks up these complex molecules, and their constituents assume gaseous forms, there is, besides that increase of motion implied by the diffusion, a resolution of such motions as the aggregate molecules possessed, into motions. of their constituent molecules. So that in organic dissolution we have, first, an end put to that transformation of the

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