Nor is the law less clearly to be traced in those functional changes daily going on. The flow of capital into businesses yielding the largest returns; the buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest; the introduction of more economical modes of manufacture; the development of better agencies for distribution; and all those variations in the currents of trade that are noted in our newspapers and telegrams from hour to hour; exhibit movement taking place in directions where it is met by the smallest total of opposing forces. For if we analyze each of these changes—if instead of interest on capital we read surplus of products which remains after maintenance of labourers; if we so interpret large interest or large surplus to imply labour expended with the greatest results; and if labour expended with the greatest results means muscular action so directed as to evade obstacles as far as possible; we see that all these commercial phenomena are complicated motions set up along lines of least resistance.
Objections of two opposite kinds will perhaps be made to these sociological applications of the law. By some it may be said that the term force as here used, is used metaphorically—that to speak of men as _impelled_ in certain directions by certain desires, is a figure of speech and not the statement of a physical fact. The reply is, that the foregoing illustrations are to be interpreted literally, and that the processes described _are_ physical ones. The pressure of hunger is an actual force—a sensation implying some state of nervous tension; and the muscular action which the sensation prompts is really a discharge of it in the shape of bodily motion—a discharge which, on analyzing the mental acts involved, will be found to follow lines of least resistance. Hence the motions of a society whose members are impelled by this or any other desire, are actually, and not metaphorically, to be understood in the manner shown. An opposite objection may possibly be, that the several illustrations given are elaborated truisms; and that the law of direction of motion being once recognized, the fact that social movements, in common with all others, must conform to it, follows inevitably. To this it may be rejoined, that a mere abstract assertion that social movements must do this, would carry no conviction to the majority; and that it is needful to show _how_ they do it. For social evolution to be interpreted after the method proposed, it is requisite that such generalisations as those of political economy shall be reduced to equivalent propositions expressed in terms of force and motion.