n what sense, if any, is social organization dependent
on numbers? Unfortunately, it is too large a question to thrash out
here. I may, however, refer the reader to the ingenious classification
of the peoples of the world, by reference to the degree of their social
organization and culture, which is attempted by Mr. Sutherland in his
_Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_. He there tries to show that
a certain size of population can be correlated with each grade in the
scale of human evolution--at any rate up to the point at which
full-blown civilization is reached, when cases like that of Athens
under Pericles, or Florence under the Medici, would probably cause
him some trouble. For instance, he makes out that the lowest savages,
Veddas, Pygmies, and so on, form groups of from ten to forty; whereas
those who are but one degree less backward, such as the Australian
natives, average from fifty to two hundred; whilst most of the North
American tribes, who represent the next stage of general advance, run
from a hundred up to five hundred. At this point he takes leave of
the peoples he would class as "savage," their leading characteristic
from the economic point of view being that they lead the more or less
wandering life of hunters or of mere "gatherers." He then goes on to
arrange similarly, in an ascending series of three divisions, the
peoples that he terms "barbarian." Economically they are either
sedentary, with a more or less developed agriculture, or, if nomad,
pursue the pastoral mode of life. His lowest type of group, which
includes the Iroquois, Maoris, and so forth, ranges from one thousand
to five thousand; next come loosely organized states, such as Dahomey
or Ashanti, where the numbers may reach one hundred thousand; whilst
he makes barbarism culminate in more firmly compacted communities,
such as are to be found, for example, in Abyssinia or Madagascar, the
population of which he places at about half a million.

Now I am very sceptical about Mr. Sutherland's statistics, and regard
his bold attempt to assign the world's peoples each to their own rung
on the ladder of universal culture as, in the present state of our
knowledge, no more than a clever hypothesis; which some keen
anthropologist of the future might find it well worth his while to
put thoroughly to the test. At a guess, however, I am disposed to accept
his general principle that, on the whole and in the long run, during
the earlier stages of hum