Society is not a homogeneous aggregate, but on the contrary an
organism, like every animal organism, composed of tissues of
varying structure and sensibility. Every society, in fact, with
its progressive and increasingly distinctive needs and
occupations, is a product of the union of social classes which
differ greatly in their organic and psychical characteristics.
The physical constitution, the habits, sentiments, ideas, and
tendencies of one social stratum are far from being the same as
those of other strata. Here again we have, as Spencer would say,
the law of evolution through a departure from the homogeneous to
the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex, or, in the
words of Ardigo, a natural formation by successive distinctions.
Amongst savage tribes this distinction of the social strata does
not exist, or it is far less marked than in barbarian societies,
and still less than in civilised societies.
Every schoolmaster with a bent for psychological observation
separates his pupils into three classes. There is the class of
industrious pupils of good disposition, who work of their own
accord, without calling for strict discipline; that of the
ignorant and idle (degenerate and of weak nervous force) from whom
neither mildness nor severity can obtain anything worth having;
and that of the pupils who are neither wholly industrious nor
wholly idle, and for whom a discipline based on psychological laws
may be genuinely useful.
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