immense size and strength of the modern major unit of the species. It would appear that in order that a given unit should develop the highest degree of homogeneity within itself it must be subject to direct pressure from without. A great abundance of food supply and consequent relaxed external pressure may in the bee lead to indiscriminate swarming, while in man the size and security of the modern State lead to a relaxation of the closer grades of national unity—in the absence of deliberate encouragement of it or of the stimulus of war. The need of the individual for homogeneity is none the less present, and the result is segregation into classes which form, as it were, minor herds in which homogeneity is maintained by the external pressure of competition, of political or religious differences and so forth. Naturally enough such segregations have come to correspond in a rough way with the various types of imperfect specialization which exist. This tendency is clearly of unfavourable effect on national unity, since it tends to obscure the national value of specialization and to give it a merely local and class significance. Segregation in itself is always dangerous in that it provides the individual with a substitute for the true major unit—the nation—and in times when there is an urgent need for national homogeneity may prove to be a hostile force.
It has been characteristic of the governing classes to acquiesce in the fullest developments of segregation and even to defend them by force and to fail to realize in times of emergency that national {138} homogeneity must always be a partial and weakly passion as long as segregation actively persists.
Class segregation has thus come to be regarded as a necessary and inevitable part of the structure of society. Telling as it does much more in the favour of certain classes than others, it has come to be defended by a whole series of legal and moral principles invented for the purpose, and by arguments that to objective examination are no more than rationalized prejudice. The maintenance of the social system—that is, of the segregation of power and