HUMAN society everywhere presents itself to the disinterested
observer in many, but particularly in two, divergent aspects. Society
is obviously a collection of individuals living together, like plants
and animals within the limits of a common habitat, and it is, of
course, something more. It is, though perhaps not always, a collec-
tion of individuals capable of some sort of concerted and consistent
action.

Viewed abstractly, as it appears, perhaps, to the geographer or
to the demographer, who scrutinizes it with reference to numbers,
density, and distribution of the individual units of which it is made
up, any society may seem no more than an agglomeration of discrete
individuals, no one of which is visibly related to, or dependent upon,
any other.

Closer observation of this seemingly unco-ordinated aggregate
is likely to disclose a more or less typical order and pattern in the
territorial distribution of its component units. Furthermore, as num-
bers increase this pattern is likely to exhibit a typical succession of

-240-