Evolution

VOL. II. IV. ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION.—Tracing the differentiation of religious government from secular; its successive complications and the multiplication of sects; the growth and continued modification of religious ideas, as caused by advancing knowledge and changing moral character; and the gradual reconciliation of these ideas with the truths of abstract science. V. CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION.—The natural history of that third kind of government which, having a common root with the others, and slowly becoming separate from and supplementary to them, serves to regulate the minor actions of life. VI. INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION.—The development of productive and distributive agencies, considered, like the foregoing, in its necessary causes: comprehending not only the progressive division of labour, and the increasing complexity of each industrial agency, but also the successive forms of industrial government as passing through like phases with political government. VOL. III. VII. LINGUAL PROGRESS.—The evolution of Languages regarded as a psychological process determined by social conditions. VIII. INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS.—Treated from the same point of view: including the growth of classifications; the evolution of science out of common knowledge; the advance from qualitative to quantitative prevision, from the indefinite to the definite, and from the concrete to the abstract.

That there are laws of this transcendant generality, has now to be shown. To specify and illustrate them, will be the purpose of the succeeding chapters. And while, in contemplating them, we shall perceive how irresistible is the conclusion that the workings of the Unknowable are distinguished from those of finite agents by their absolute uniformity; we shall at the same time familiarize ourselves with those primary facts through which all other facts are to be interpreted. CHAPTER II. THE LAW OF EVOLUTION.[8] § 42. The class of phenomena to be considered under the title of Evolution, is in a great measure co-extensive with the class commonly indicated by the word Progress. But the word Progress is here inappropriate, for several reasons. To specify these reasons will perhaps be the best way of showing what is to be understood by Evolution.

Hence the need for another word. Our purpose here is to analyze the various class of changes usually considered as Progress, together with others like them which are not so considered; and to see what is their intrinsic peculiarity—what is their essential nature apart from their bearings on our welfare. And that we may avoid the confusion of thought likely to result from pre-established associations, it will be best to substitute for the term Progress, the term Evolution. Our question is then—what is Evolution?

* * * * * § 43. In respect to that evolution which individual organisms display, this question has been answered. Pursuing an idea which Harvey set afloat, Wolff, Goethe, and Von Baer, have established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure. In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step is the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or, as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins itself to exhibit some contrast of parts; and by and by these secondary differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is continuously repeated—is simultaneously going on in all parts of the growing embryo; and by endless such differentiations there is finally produced that complex combination of tissues and organs, constituting the adult animal or plant. This is the history of all organisms whatever. It is settled beyond dispute that organic evolution consists in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.

Now I propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic evolution is the law of all evolution. Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same advance from the simple to the complex, through successive differentiations, holds uniformly. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Evolution essentially consists.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that though the evidence suffices neither for proof nor disproof, yet some of its most conspicuous facts support the belief, that the more heterogeneous organisms and groups of organisms, have been evolved from the less heterogeneous ones. The average community of type between the fossils of adjacent strata, and still more the community that is found between the latest tertiary fossils and creatures now existing, is one of these facts. The discovery in some modern deposits of such forms as the Palæotherium and Anaplotherium, which, if we may rely on Prof. Owen, had a type of structure intermediate between some of the types now existing, is another of these facts. And the comparatively recent appearance of Man, is a third fact of this kind, which possesses still greater significance. Hence we may say, that though our knowledge of past life upon the Earth, is too scanty to justify us in asserting an evolution of the simple into the complex, either in individual forms or in the aggregate of forms; yet the knowledge we have, not only consists with the belief that there has been such an evolution, but rather supports it than otherwise.

Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones bear to the facial bones, illustrates the same truth. Among the vertebrata in general, evolution is marked by an increasing heterogeneity in the vertebral column, and more especially in the segments constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the relatively smaller size of those which form the jaws, &c. Now, this characteristic, which is stronger in Man than in any other creature, is stronger in the European than in the savage. Moreover, judging from the greater extent and variety of faculty he exhibits, we may infer that the civilized man has also a more complex or heterogeneous nervous system than the uncivilized man; and indeed the fact is in part visible in the increased ratio which his cerebrum bears to the subjacent ganglia. If further elucidation be needed, we may find it in every nursery. The infant European has sundry marked points of resemblance to the lower human races; as in the flatness of the alæ of the nose, the depression of its bridge, the divergence and forward opening of the nostrils, the form of the lips, the absence of a frontal sinus, the width between the eyes, the smallness of the legs.

Now, as the developmental process by which these traits are turned into those of the adult European, is a continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every physiologist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental process by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned into those of the civilized races, has also been a continuation of the change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The truth of the second position—that Mankind, as a whole, have become more heterogeneous—is so obvious as scarcely to need illustration. Every work on Ethnology, by its divisions and subdivisions of races, bears testimony to it. Even were we to admit the hypothesis that Mankind originated from several separate stocks, it would still remain true that as, from each of these stocks, there have sprung many now widely different tribes, which are proved by philological evidence to have had a common origin, the race as a whole is far less homogeneous than it once was. Add to which, that we have, in the Anglo-Americans, an example of a new variety arising within these few generations; and that, if we may trust to the descriptions of observers, we are likely soon to have another such example in Australia.

* * * * * § 49. Not only is the law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social organism, but it is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all products of human thought and action; whether concrete or abstract, real or ideal. Let us take Language as our first illustration. The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire idea is vaguely conveyed through a single sound; as among the lower animals. That human language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was strictly homogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no evidence. But that language can be traced down to a form in which nouns and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones—in the differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract and concrete—in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of number and case—in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles—in the divergence of those orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which civilized races express minute modifications of meaning—we see a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. And it may be remarked, in passing, that it is more especially in virtue of having carried this subdivision of functions to a greater extent and completeness, that the English language is superior to all others.

Another aspect under which we may trace the development of language, is the differentiation of words of allied meanings. Philology early disclosed the truth that in all languages words may be grouped into families having a common ancestry. An aboriginal name, applied indiscriminately to each of an extensive and ill-defined class of things or actions, presently undergoes modifications by which the chief divisions of the class are expressed. These several names springing from the primitive root, themselves become the parents of other names still further modified. And by the aid of those systematic modes which presently arise, of making derivatives and forming compound terms expressing still smaller distinctions, there is finally developed a tribe of words so heterogeneous in sound and meaning, that to the uninitiated it seems incredible they should have had a common origin. Meanwhile, from other roots there are being evolved other such tribes, until there results a language of some sixty thousand or more unlike words, signifying as many unlike objects, qualities, acts. Yet another way in which language in general advances from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is in the multiplication of languages. Whether, as Max Müller and Bunsen think, all languages have grown from one stock, or whether, as some philologists say, they have grown from two or more stocks, it is clear that since large families of languages, as the Indo-European, are of one parentage, they have become distinct through a process of continuous divergence. The same diffusion over the Earth’s surface which has led to the differentiation of the race, has simultaneously led to a differentiation of their speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the peculiarities of dialect found in separate districts. Thus the progress of Language conforms to the general law, alike in the evolution of languages, in the evolution of families of words, and in the evolution of parts of speech.