Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects Part 10

It follows as a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the Earth must at first have been incandescent; and whether the Nebular Hypothesis be true or not, this original incandescence of the Earth is now inductively established--or, if not established, at least rendered so highly probable that it is a generally admitted geological doctrine. Let us look first at the astronomical attributes of this once molten globe.

From its rotation there result the oblateness of its form, the alternations of day and night, and (under the influence of the moon) the tides, aqueous and atmospheric. From the inclination of its axis, there result the precession of the equinoxes and the many differences of the seasons, both simultaneous and successive, that pervade its surface.

Thus the multiplication of effects is obvious. Several of the differentiations due to the gradual cooling of the Earth have been already noticed--as the formation of a crust, the solidification of sublimed elements, the precipitation of water, etc.,--and we here again refer to them merely to point out that they are simultaneous effects of the one cause, diminishing heat.

Let us now, however, observe the multiplied changes afterwards arising from the continuance of this one cause. The cooling of the Earth involves its contraction. Hence the solid crust first formed is presently too large for the shrinking nucleus; and as it cannot support itself, inevitably follows the nucleus. But a spheroidal envelope cannot sink down into contact with a smaller internal spheroid, without disruption; it must run into wrinkles as the rind of an apple does when the bulk of its interior decreases from evaporation. As the cooling progresses and the envelope thickens, the ridges consequent on these contractions must become greater, rising ultimately into hills and mountains; and the later systems of mountains thus produced must not only be higher, as we find them to be, but they must be longer, as we also find them to be. Thus, leaving out of view other modifying forces, we see what immense heterogeneity of surface has arisen from the one cause, loss of heat--a heterogeneity which the telescope shows us to be paralleled on the face of the moon, where aqueous and atmospheric agencies have been absent.

But we have yet to notice another kind of heterogeneity of surface similarly and simultaneously caused. While the Earth's crust was still thin, the ridges produced by its contraction must not only have been small, but the s.p.a.ces between these ridges must have rested with great evenness upon the subjacent liquid spheroid; and the water in those arctic and antarctic regions in which it first condensed, must have been evenly distributed. But as fast as the crust grew thicker and gained corresponding strength, the lines of fracture from time to time caused in it, must have occurred at greater distances apart; the intermediate surfaces must have followed the contracting nucleus with less uniformity; and there must have resulted larger areas of land and water.

If any one, after wrapping up an orange in wet tissue paper, and observing not only how small are the wrinkles, but how evenly the intervening s.p.a.ces lie upon the surface of the orange, will then wrap it up in thick cartridge-paper, and note both the greater height of the ridges and the much larger s.p.a.ces throughout which the paper does not touch the orange, he will realise the fact, that as the Earth's solid envelope grew thicker, the areas of elevation and depression must have become greater. In place of islands more or less h.o.m.ogeneously scattered over an all-embracing sea, there must have gradually arisen heterogeneous arrangements of continent and ocean, such as we now know.

Once more, this double change in the extent and in the elevation of the lands, involved yet another species of heterogeneity, that of coast-line. A tolerably even surface raised out of the ocean, must have a simple, regular sea-margin; but a surface varied by table-lands and intersected by mountain-chains must, when raised out of the ocean, have an outline extremely irregular both in its leading features and in its details. Thus endless is the acc.u.mulation of geological and geographical results slowly brought about by this one cause--the contraction of the Earth.

When we pa.s.s from the agency which geologists term igneous, to aqueous and atmospheric agencies, we see the like ever growing complications of effects. The denuding actions of air and water have, from the beginning, been modifying every exposed surface; everywhere causing many different changes. Oxidation, heat, wind, frost, rain, glaciers, rivers, tides, waves, have been unceasingly producing disintegration; varying in kind and amount according to local circ.u.mstances. Acting upon a tract of granite, they here work scarcely an appreciable effect; there cause exfoliations of the surface, and a resulting heap of _debris_ and boulders; and elsewhere, after decomposing the feldspar into a white clay, carry away this and the accompanying quartz and mica, and deposit them in separate beds, fluviatile and marine. When the exposed land consists of several unlike formations, sedimentary and igneous, the denudation produces changes proportionably more heterogeneous. The formations being disintegrable in different degrees, there follows an increased irregularity of surface. The areas drained by different rivers being differently const.i.tuted, these rivers carry down to the sea different combinations of ingredients; and so sundry new strata of distinct composition are formed.

And here indeed we may see very simply ill.u.s.trated, the truth, which we shall presently have to trace out in more involved cases, that in proportion to the heterogeneity of the object or objects on which any force expends itself, is the heterogeneity of the results. A continent of complex structure, exposing many strata irregularly distributed, raised to various levels, tilted up at all angles, must, under the same denuding agencies, give origin to immensely multiplied results; each district must be differently modified; each river must carry down a different kind of detritus; each deposit must be differently distributed by the entangled currents, tidal and other, which wash the contorted sh.o.r.es; and this multiplication of results must manifestly be greatest where the complexity of the surface is greatest.

It is out of the question here to trace in detail the genesis of those endless complications described by Geology and Physical Geography: else we might show how the general truth, that every active force produces more than one change, is exemplified in the highly involved flow of the tides, in the ocean currents, in the winds, in the distribution of rain, in the distribution of heat, and so forth. But not to dwell upon these, let us, for the fuller elucidation of this truth in relation to the inorganic world, consider what would be the consequences of some extensive cosmical revolution--say the subsidence of Central America.

The immediate results of the disturbance would themselves be sufficiently complex. Besides the numberless dislocations of strata, the ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions, and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to supply the vacant s.p.a.ce, the subsequent recoil of enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce myriads of changes along their sh.o.r.es, the corresponding atmospheric waves complicated by the currents surrounding each volcanic vent, and the electrical discharges with which such disturbances are accompanied. But these temporary effects would be insignificant compared with the permanent ones. The complex currents of the Atlantic and Pacific would be altered in direction and amount. The distribution of heat achieved by these ocean currents would be different from what it is. The arrangement of the isothermal lines, not even on the neighbouring continents, but even throughout Europe, would be changed. The tides would flow differently from what they do now. There would be more or less modification of the winds in their periods, strengths, directions, qualities. Rain would fall scarcely anywhere at the same times and in the same quant.i.ties as at present. In short, the meteorological conditions thousands of miles off, on all sides, would be more or less revolutionised.

Thus, without taking into account the infinitude of modifications which these changes of climate would produce upon the flora and fauna, both of land and sea, the reader will see the immense heterogeneity of the results wrought out by one force, when that force expends itself upon a previously complicated area; and he will readily draw the corollary that from the beginning the complication has advanced at an increasing rate.

Before going on to show how organic progress also depends upon the universal law that every force produces more than one change, we have to notice the manifestation of this law in yet another species of inorganic progress--namely, chemical. The same general causes that have wrought out the heterogeneity of the Earth, physically considered, have simultaneously wrought out its chemical heterogeneity. Without dwelling upon the general fact that the forces which have been increasing the variety and complexity of geological formations, have, at the same time, been bringing into contact elements not previously exposed to each other under conditions favourable to union, and so have been adding to the number of chemical compounds, let us pa.s.s to the more important complications that have resulted from the cooling of the Earth.

There is every reason to believe that at an extreme heat the elements cannot combine. Even under such heat as can be artificially produced, some very strong affinities yield, as for instance, that of oxygen for hydrogen; and the great majority of chemical compounds are decomposed at much lower temperatures. But without insisting upon the highly probable inference, that when the Earth was in its first state of incandescence there were no chemical combinations at all, it will suffice our purpose to point to the unquestionable fact that the compounds that can exist at the highest temperatures, and which must, therefore, have been the first that were formed as the Earth cooled, are those of the simplest const.i.tutions. The protoxides--including under that head the alkalies, earths, etc.--are, as a cla.s.s, the most stable compounds we know: most of them resisting decomposition by any heat we can generate. These, consisting severally of one atom of each component element, are combinations of the simplest order--are but one degree less h.o.m.ogeneous than the elements themselves. More heterogeneous than these, less stable, and therefore later in the Earth's history, are the deutoxides, tritoxides, peroxides, etc.; in which two, three, four, or more atoms of oxygen are united with one atom of metal or other element. Higher than these in heterogeneity are the hydrates; in which an oxide of hydrogen, united with an oxide of some other element, forms a substance whose atoms severally contain at least four ultimate atoms of three different kinds. Yet more heterogeneous and less stable still are the salts; which present us with compound atoms each made up of five, six, seven, eight, ten, twelve, or more atoms, of three, if not more, kinds. Then there are the hydrated salts, of a yet greater heterogeneity, which undergo partial decomposition at much lower temperatures. After them come the further-complicated supersalts and double salts, having a stability again decreased; and so throughout. Without entering into qualifications for which we lack s.p.a.ce, we believe no chemist will deny it to be a general law of these inorganic combinations that, _other things equal_, the stability decreases as the complexity increases.

And then when we pa.s.s to the compounds of organic chemistry, we find this general law still further exemplified: we find much greater complexity and much less stability. An atom of alb.u.men, for instance, consists of 482 ultimate atoms of five different kinds. Fibrine, still more intricate in const.i.tution, contains in each atom, 298 atoms of carbon, 40 of nitrogen, 2 of sulphur, 228 of hydrogen, and 92 of oxygen--in all, 660 atoms; or, more strictly speaking--equivalents. And these two substances are so unstable as to decompose at quite ordinary temperatures; as that to which the outside of a joint of roast meat is exposed. Thus it is manifest that the present chemical heterogeneity of the Earth's surface has arisen by degrees, as the decrease of heat has permitted; and that it has shown itself in three forms--first, in the multiplication of chemical compounds; second, in the greater number of different elements contained in the more modern of these compounds: and third, in the higher and more varied multiples in which these more numerous elements combine.

To say that this advance in chemical heterogeneity is due to the one cause, diminution of the Earth's temperature, would be to say too much; for it is clear that aqueous and atmospheric agencies have been concerned; and, further, that the affinities of the elements themselves are implied. The cause has all along been a composite one: the cooling of the Earth having been simply the most general of the concurrent causes, or a.s.semblage of conditions. And here, indeed, it may be remarked that in the several cla.s.ses of facts already dealt with (excepting, perhaps, the first), and still more in those with which we shall presently deal, the causes are more or less compound; as indeed are nearly all causes with which we are acquainted. Scarcely any change can with logical accuracy be wholly ascribed to one agency, to the neglect of the permanent or temporary conditions under which only this agency produces the change. But as it does not materially affect our argument, we prefer, for simplicity's sake, to use throughout the popular mode of expression.

Perhaps it will be further objected, that to a.s.sign loss of heat as the cause of any changes, is to attribute these changes not to a force, but to the absence of a force. And this is true. Strictly speaking, the changes should be attributed to those forces which come into action when the antagonist force is withdrawn. But though there is an inaccuracy in saying that the freezing of water is due to the loss of its heat, no practical error arises from it; nor will a parallel laxity of expression vitiate our statements respecting the multiplication of effects. Indeed, the objection serves but to draw attention to the fact, that not only does the exertion of a force produce more than one change, but the withdrawal of a force produces more than one change. And this suggests that perhaps the most correct statement of our general principle would be its most abstract statement--every change is followed by more than one other change.

Returning to the thread of our exposition, we have next to trace out, in organic progress, this same all-pervading principle. And here, where the evolution of the h.o.m.ogeneous into the heterogeneous was first observed, the production of many changes by one cause is least easy to demonstrate. The development of a seed into a plant, or an ovum into an animal, is so gradual, while the forces which determine it are so involved, and at the same time so un.o.btrusive, that it is difficult to detect the multiplication of effects which is elsewhere so obvious.

Nevertheless, guided by indirect evidence, we may pretty safely reach the conclusion that here too the law holds.

Observe, first, how numerous are the effects which any marked change works upon an adult organism--a human being, for instance. An alarming sound or sigh, besides the impressions on the organs of sense and the nerves, may produce a start, a scream, a distortion of the face, a trembling consequent upon a general muscular relaxation, a burst of perspiration, an excited action of the heart, a rush of blood to the brain, followed possibly by arrest of the heart's action and by syncope: and if the system be feeble, an indisposition with its long train of complicated symptoms may set in. Similarly in cases of disease. A minute portion of the small-pox virus introduced into the system, will, in a severe case, cause, during the first stage, rigors, heat of skin, accelerated pulse, furred tongue, loss of appet.i.te, thirst, epigastric uneasiness, vomiting, headache, pains in the back and limbs, muscular weakness, convulsions, delirium, etc.; in the second stage, cutaneous eruption, itching, tingling, sore throat, swelled fauces, salivation, cough, hoa.r.s.eness, dyspnoea, etc.; and in the third stage, oedematous inflammations, pneumonia, pleurisy, diarrhoea, inflammation of the brain, ophthalmia, erysipelas, etc.; each of which enumerated symptoms is itself more or less complex. Medicines, special foods, better air, might in like manner be instanced as producing multiplied results.

Now it needs only to consider that the many changes thus wrought by one force upon an adult organism, will be in part paralleled in an embryo organism, to understand how here also, the evolution of the h.o.m.ogeneous into the heterogeneous may be due to the production of many effects by one cause. The external heat and other agencies which determine the first complications of the germ, may, by acting upon these, superinduce further complications; upon these still higher and more numerous ones; and so on continually: each organ as it is developed serving, by its actions and reactions upon the rest, to initiate new complexities. The first pulsations of the foetal heart must simultaneously aid the unfolding of every part. The growth of each tissue, by taking from the blood special proportions of elements, must modify the const.i.tution of the blood; and so must modify the nutrition of all the other tissues.

The heart's action, implying as it does a certain waste, necessitates an addition to the blood of effete matters, which must influence the rest of the system, and perhaps, as some think, cause the formation of excretory organs. The nervous connections established among the viscera must further multiply their mutual influences: and so continually.

Still stronger becomes the probability of this view when we call to mind the fact, that the same germ may be evolved into different forms according to circ.u.mstances. Thus, during its earlier stages, every embryo is s.e.xless--becomes either male or female as the balance of forces acting upon it determines. Again, it is a well-established fact that the larva of a working-bee will develop into a queen-bee, if, before it is too late, its food be changed to that on which the larvae of queen-bees are fed. Even more remarkable is the case of certain entozoa.

The ovum of a tape-worm, getting into its natural habitat, the intestine, unfolds into the well-known form of its parent; but if carried, as it frequently is, into other parts of the system, it becomes a sac-like creature, called by naturalists the _Echinococcus_--a creature so extremely different from the tape-worm in aspect and structure, that only after careful investigations has it been proved to have the same origin. All which instances imply that each advance in embryonic complication results from the action of incident forces upon the complication previously existing.

Indeed, we may find _a priori_ reason to think that the evolution proceeds after this manner. For since it is now known that no germ, animal or vegetable, contains the slightest rudiment, trace, or indication of the future organism--now that the microscope has shown us that the first process set up in every fertilised germ, is a process of repeated spontaneous fissions ending in the production of a ma.s.s of cells, not one of which exhibits any special character: there seems no alternative but to suppose that the partial organisation at any moment subsisting in a growing embryo, is transformed by the agencies acting upon it into the succeeding phase of organisation, and this into the next, until, through ever-increasing complexities, the ultimate form is reached. Thus, though the subtilty of the forces and the slowness of the results, prevent us from _directly_ showing that the stages of increasing heterogeneity through which every embryo pa.s.ses, severally arise from the production of many changes by one force, yet, _indirectly_, we have strong evidence that they do so.

We have marked how mult.i.tudinous are the effects which one cause may generate in an adult organism; that a like multiplication of effects must happen in the unfolding organism, we have observed in sundry ill.u.s.trative cases; further, it has been pointed out that the ability which like germs have to originate unlike forms, implies that the successive transformations result from the new changes superinduced on previous changes; and we have seen that structureless as every germ originally is, the development of an organism out of it is otherwise incomprehensible. Not indeed that we can thus really explain the production of any plant or animal. We are still in the dark respecting those mysterious properties in virtue of which the germ, when subject to fit influences, undergoes the special changes that begin the series of transformations. All we aim to show, is, that given a germ possessing these mysterious properties, the evolution of an organism from it, probably depends upon that multiplication of effects which we have seen to be the cause of progress in general, so far as we have yet traced it.

When, leaving the development of single plants and animals, we pa.s.s to that of the Earth's flora and fauna, the course of our argument again becomes clear and simple. Though, as was admitted in the first part of this article, the fragmentary facts Palaeontology has acc.u.mulated, do not clearly warrant us in saying that, in the lapse of geologic time, there have been evolved more heterogeneous organisms, and more heterogeneous a.s.semblages of organisms, yet we shall now see that there _must_ ever have been a tendency towards these results. We shall find that the production of many effects by one cause, which, as already shown, has been all along increasing the physical heterogeneity of the Earth, has further involved an increasing heterogeneity in its flora and fauna, individually and collectively. An ill.u.s.tration will make this clear.

Suppose that by a series of upheavals, occurring, as they are now known to do, at long intervals, the East Indian Archipelago were to be, step by step, raised into a continent, and a chain of mountains formed along the axis of elevation. By the first of these upheavals, the plants and animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied.

These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce additional modifications: varying in different species, and also in different members of the same species, according to their distance from the axis of elevation. Plants, growing only on the sea-sh.o.r.e in special localities, might become extinct. Others, living only in swamps of a certain humidity, would, if they survived at all, probably undergo visible changes of appearance. While still greater alterations would occur in the plants gradually spreading over the lands newly raised above the sea. The animals and insects living on these modified plants, would themselves be in some degree modified by change of food, as well as by change of climate; and the modification would be more marked where, from the dwindling or disappearance of one kind of plant, an allied kind was eaten. In the lapse of the many generations arising before the next upheaval, the sensible or insensible alterations thus produced in each species would become organised--there would be a more or less complete adaptation to the new conditions. The next upheaval would superinduce further organic changes, implying wider divergences from the primary forms; and so repeatedly.

But now let it be observed that the revolution thus resulting would not be a subst.i.tution of a thousand more or less modified species for the thousand original species; but in place of the thousand original species there would arise several thousand species, or varieties, or changed forms. Each species being distributed over an area of some extent, and tending continually to colonise the new area exposed, its different members would be subject to different sets of changes. Plants and animals spreading towards the equator would not be affected in the same way with others spreading from it. Those spreading towards the new sh.o.r.es would undergo changes unlike the changes undergone by those spreading into the mountains. Thus, each original race of organisms, would become the root from which diverged several races differing more or less from it and from each other; and while some of these might subsequently disappear, probably more than one would survive in the next geologic period: the very dispersion itself increasing the chances of survival. Not only would there be certain modifications thus caused by change of physical conditions and food, but also in some cases other modifications caused by change of habit. The fauna of each island, peopling, step by step, the newly-raised tracts, would eventually come in contact with the faunas of other islands; and some members of these other faunas would be unlike any creatures before seen. Herbivores meeting with new beasts of prey, would, in some cases, be led into modes of defence or escape differing from those previously used; and simultaneously the beasts of prey would modify their modes of pursuit and attack. We know that when circ.u.mstances demand it, such changes of habit _do_ take place in animals; and we know that if the new habits become the dominant ones, they must eventually in some degree alter the organisation.

Observe, now, however, a further consequence. There must arise not simply a tendency towards the differentiation of each race of organisms into several races; but also a tendency to the occasional production of a somewhat higher organism. Taken in the ma.s.s, these divergent varieties which have been caused by fresh physical conditions and habits of life, will exhibit changes quite indefinite in kind and degree; and changes that do not necessarily const.i.tute an advance. Probably in most cases the modified type will be neither more nor less heterogeneous than the original one. In some cases the habits of life adopted being simpler than before, a less heterogeneous structure will result: there will be a retrogradation. But it _must_ now and then occur, that some division of a species, falling into circ.u.mstances which give it rather more complex experiences, and demand actions somewhat more involved, will have certain of its organs further differentiated in proportionately small degrees,--will become slightly more heterogeneous.

Thus, in the natural course of things, there will from time to time arise an increased heterogeneity both of the Earth's flora and fauna, and of individual races included in them. Omitting detailed explanations, and allowing for the qualifications which cannot here be specified, we think it is clear that geological mutations have all along tended to complicate the forms of life, whether regarded separately or collectively. The same causes which have led to the evolution of the Earth's crust from the simple into the complex, have simultaneously led to a parallel evolution of the Life upon its surface. In this case, as in previous ones, we see that the transformation of the h.o.m.ogeneous into the heterogeneous is consequent upon the universal principle, that every active force produces more than one change.

The deduction here drawn from the established truths of geology and the general laws of life, gains immensely in weight on finding it to be in harmony with an induction drawn from direct experience. Just that divergence of many races from one race, which we inferred must have been continually occurring during geologic time, we know to have occurred during the pre-historic and historic periods, in man and domestic animals. And just that multiplication of effects which we concluded must have produced the first, we see has produced the last. Single causes, as famine, pressure of population, war, have periodically led to further dispersions of mankind and of dependent creatures: each such dispersion initiating new modifications, new varieties of type. Whether all the human races be or be not derived from one stock, philology makes it clear that whole groups of races now easily distinguishable from each other, were originally one race,--that the diffusion of one race into different climates and conditions of existence, has produced many modified forms of it.

Similarly with domestic animals. Though in some cases--as that of dogs--community of origin will perhaps be disputed, yet in other cases--as that of the sheep or the cattle of our own country--it will not be questioned that local differences of climate, food, and treatment, have transformed one original breed into numerous breeds now become so far distinct as to produce unstable hybrids. Moreover, through the complications of effects flowing from single causes, we here find, what we before inferred, not only an increase of general heterogeneity, but also of special heterogeneity. While of the divergent divisions and subdivisions of the human race, many have undergone changes not const.i.tuting an advance; while in some the type may have degraded; in others it has become decidedly more heterogeneous. The civilised European departs more widely from the vertebrate archetype than does the savage. Thus, both the law and the cause of progress, which, from lack of evidence, can be but hypothetically substantiated in respect of the earlier forms of life on our globe, can be actually substantiated in respect of the latest forms.

If the advance of Man towards greater heterogeneity is traceable to the production of many effects by one cause, still more clearly may the advance of Society towards greater heterogeneity be so explained.

Consider the growth of an industrial organisation. When, as must occasionally happen, some individual of a tribe displays unusual apt.i.tude for making an article of general use--a weapon, for instance--which was before made by each man for himself, there arises a tendency towards the differentiation of that individual into a maker of such weapon. His companions--warriors and hunters all of them,--severally feel the importance of having the best weapons that can be made; and are therefore certain to offer strong inducements to this skilled individual to make weapons for them. He, on the other hand, having not only an unusual faculty, but an unusual liking, for making such weapons (the talent and the desire for any occupation being commonly a.s.sociated), is predisposed to fulfil these commissions on the offer of an adequate reward: especially as his love of distinction is also gratified. This first specialisation of function, once commenced, tends ever to become more decided. On the side of the weapon-maker continued practice gives increased skill--increased superiority to his products: on the side of his clients, cessation of practice entails decreased skill. Thus the influences that determine this division of labour grow stronger in both ways; and the incipient heterogeneity is, on the average of cases, likely to become permanent for that generation, if no longer.

Observe now, however, that this process not only differentiates the social ma.s.s into two parts, the one monopolising, or almost monopolising, the performance of a certain function, and the other having lost the habit, and in some measure the power, of performing that function; but it tends to imitate other differentiations. The advance we have described implies the introduction of barter,--the maker of weapons has, on each occasion, to be paid in such other articles as he agrees to take in exchange. But he will not habitually take in exchange one kind of article, but many kinds. He does not want mats only, or skins, or fishing gear, but he wants all these; and on each occasion will bargain for the particular things he most needs. What follows? If among the members of the tribe there exist any slight differences of skill in the manufacture of these various things, as there are almost sure to do, the weapon-maker will take from each one the thing which that one excels in making: he will exchange for mats with him whose mats are superior, and will bargain for the fishing gear of whoever has the best. But he who has bartered away his mats or his fishing gear, must make other mats or fishing gear for himself; and in so doing must, in some degree, further develop his apt.i.tude. Thus it results that the small specialities of faculty possessed by various members of the tribe, will tend to grow more decided. If such transactions are from time to time repeated, these specialisations may become appreciable. And whether or not there ensue distinct differentiations of other individuals into makers of particular articles, it is clear that incipient differentiations take place throughout the tribe: the one original cause produces not only the first dual effect, but a number of secondary dual effects, like in kind, but minor in degree. This process, of which traces may be seen among groups of schoolboys, cannot well produce any lasting effects in an unsettled tribe; but where there grows up a fixed and multiplying community, these differentiations become permanent, and increase with each generation. A larger population, involving a greater demand for every commodity, intensifies the functional activity of each specialised person or cla.s.s; and this renders the specialisation more definite where it already exists, and establishes it where it is nascent. By increasing the pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments these results; seeing that each person is forced more and more to confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain most. This industrial progress, by aiding future production, opens the way for a further growth of population, which reacts as before: in all which the multiplication of effects is manifest. Presently, under these same stimuli, new occupations arise. Competing workers, ever aiming to produce improved articles, occasionally discover better processes or raw materials. In weapons and cutting tools, the subst.i.tution of bronze for stone entails upon him who first makes it a great increase of demand--so great an increase that he presently finds all his time occupied in making the bronze for the articles he sells, and is obliged to depute the fashioning of these to others: and, eventually, the making of bronze, thus gradually differentiated from a pre-existing occupation, becomes an occupation by itself.

But now mark the ramified changes which follow this change. Bronze soon replaces stone, not only in the articles it was first used for, but in many others--in arms, tools, and utensils of various kinds; and so affects the manufacture of these things. Further, it affects the processes which these utensils subserve, and the resulting products--modifies buildings, carvings, dress, personal decorations. Yet again, it sets going sundry manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit for the requisite tools. And all these changes react on the people--increase their manipulative skill, their intelligence, their comfort,--refine their habits and tastes. Thus the evolution of a h.o.m.ogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on the general principle, that many effects are produced by one cause.

Our limits will not allow us to follow out this process in its higher complications: else might we show how the localisation of special industries in special parts of a kingdom, as well as the minute subdivision of labour in the making of each commodity, are similarly determined. Or, turning to a somewhat different order of ill.u.s.trations, we might dwell on the mult.i.tudinous changes--material, intellectual, moral--caused by printing; or the further extensive series of changes wrought by gunpowder. But leaving the intermediate phases of social development, let us take a few ill.u.s.trations from its most recent and its pa.s.sing phases. To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold applications to mining, navigation, and manufactures of all kinds, would carry us into unmanageable detail. Let us confine ourselves to the latest embodiment of steam-power--the locomotive engine.

This, as the proximate cause of our railway system, has changed the face of the country, the course of trade, and the habits of the people.

Consider, first, the complicated sets of changes that precede the making of every railway--the provisional arrangements, the meetings, the registration, the trial section, the parliamentary survey, the lithographed plans, the books of reference, the local deposits and notices, the application to Parliament, the pa.s.sing Standing-Orders Committee, the first, second, and third readings: each of which brief heads indicates a multiplicity of transactions, and the development of sundry occupations--as those of engineers, surveyors, lithographers, parliamentary agents, share-brokers; and the creation of sundry others--as those of traffic-takers, reference-takers. Consider, next, the yet more marked changes implied in railway construction--the cuttings, embankings, tunnellings, diversions of roads; the building of bridges, and stations; the laying down of ballast, sleepers, and rails; the making of engines, tenders, carriages, and waggons: which processes, acting upon numerous trades, increase the importation of timber, the quarrying of stone, the manufacture of iron, the mining of coal, the burning of bricks: inst.i.tute a variety of special manufactures weekly advertised in the _Railway Times_; and, finally, open the way to sundry new occupations, as those of drivers, stokers, cleaners, plate-layers, etc., etc. And then consider the changes, more numerous and involved still, which railways in action produce on the community at large. The organisation of every business is more or less modified: ease of communication makes it better to do directly what was before done by proxy; agencies are established where previously they would not have paid; goods are obtained from remote wholesale houses instead of near retail ones; and commodities are used which distance once rendered inaccessible. Again, the rapidity and small cost of carriage tend to specialise more than ever the industries of different districts--to confine each manufacture to the parts in which, from local advantages, it can be best carried on. Further, the diminished cost of carriage, facilitating distribution, equalises prices, and also, on the average, lowers prices: thus bringing divers articles within the means of those before unable to buy them, and so increasing their comforts and improving their habits. At the same time the practice of travelling is immensely extended. Cla.s.ses who never before thought of it, take annual trips to the sea; visit their distant relations; make tours; and so we are benefited in body, feelings, and intellect. Moreover, the more prompt transmission of letters and of news produces further changes--makes the pulse of the nation faster. Yet more, there arises a wide dissemination of cheap literature through railway book-stalls, and of advertis.e.m.e.nts in railway carriages: both of them aiding ulterior progress.

And all the innumerable changes here briefly indicated are consequent on the invention of the locomotive engine. The social organism has been rendered more heterogeneous in virtue of the many new occupations introduced, and the many old ones further specialised; prices in every place have been altered; each trader has, more or less, modified his way of doing business; and almost every person has been affected in his actions, thoughts, emotions.

Ill.u.s.trations to the same effect might be indefinitely acc.u.mulated. That every influence brought to bear upon society works multiplied effects; and that increase of heterogeneity is due to this multiplication of effects; may be seen in the history of every trade, every custom, every belief. But it is needless to give additional evidence of this. The only further fact demanding notice, is, that we here see still more clearly than ever, the truth before pointed out, that in proportion as the area on which any force expends itself becomes heterogeneous, the results are in a yet higher degree multiplied in number and kind. While among the primitive tribes to whom it was first known, caoutchouc caused but a few changes, among ourselves the changes have been so many and varied that the history of them occupies a volume.[4] Upon the small, h.o.m.ogeneous community inhabiting one of the Hebrides, the electric telegraph would produce, were it used, scarcely any results; but in England the results it produces are mult.i.tudinous. The comparatively simple organisation under which our ancestors lived five centuries ago, could have undergone but few modifications from an event like the recent one at Canton; but now the legislative decision respecting it sets up many hundreds of complex modifications, each of which will be the parent of numerous future ones.

s.p.a.ce permitting, we could willingly have pursued the argument in relation to all the subtler results of civilisation. As before, we showed that the law of Progress to which the organic and inorganic worlds conform, is also conformed to by Language, Sculpture, Music, etc.; so might we here show that the cause which we have hitherto found to determine Progress holds in these cases also. We might demonstrate in detail how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances other divisions--how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology--how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology--how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry and Magnetism, developed our views of Light and Heat, and disclosed sundry laws of nervous action.

In Literature the same truth might be exhibited in the manifold effects of the primitive mystery-play, not only as originating the modern drama, but as affecting through it other kinds of poetry and fiction; or in the still multiplying forms of periodical literature that have descended from the first newspaper, and which have severally acted and reacted on other forms of literature and on each other. The influence which a new school of Painting--as that of the pre-Raffaelites--exercises upon other schools; the hints which all kinds of pictorial art are deriving from Photography; the complex results of new critical doctrines, as those of Mr. Ruskin, might severally be dwelt upon as displaying the like multiplication of effects. But it would needlessly tax the reader's patience to pursue, in their many ramifications, these various changes: here become so involved and subtle as to be followed with some difficulty.

Without further evidence, we venture to think our case is made out. The imperfections of statement which brevity has necessitated, do not, we believe, militate against the propositions laid down. The qualifications here and there demanded would not, if made, affect the inferences.

Though in one instance, where sufficient evidence is not attainable, we have been unable to show that the law of Progress applies; yet there is high probability that the same generalisation holds which holds throughout the rest of creation. Though, in tracing the genesis of Progress, we have frequently spoken of complex causes as if they were simple ones; it still remains true that such causes are far less complex than their results. Detailed criticisms cannot affect our main position.

Endless facts go to show that every kind of progress is from the h.o.m.ogeneous to the heterogeneous; and that it is so because each change is followed by many changes. And it is significant that where the facts are most accessible and abundant, there are these truths most manifest.

However, to avoid committing ourselves to more than is yet proved, we must be content with saying that such are the law and the cause of all progress that is known to us. Should the Nebular Hypothesis ever be established, then it will become manifest that the Universe at large, like every organism, was once h.o.m.ogeneous; that as a whole, and in every detail, it has unceasingly advanced towards greater heterogeneity; and that its heterogeneity is still increasing. It will be seen that as in each event of to-day, so from the beginning, the decomposition of every expended force into several forces has been perpetually producing a higher complication; that the increase of heterogeneity so brought about is still going on, and must continue to go on; and that thus Progress is not an accident, not a thing within human control, but a beneficent necessity.

A few words must be added on the ontological bearings of our argument.

Probably not a few will conclude that here is an attempted solution of the great questions with which Philosophy in all ages has perplexed itself. Let none thus deceive themselves. Only such as know not the scope and the limits of Science can fall into so grave an error. The foregoing generalisations apply, not to the genesis of things in themselves, but to their genesis as manifested to the human consciousness. After all that has been said, the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The explanation of that which is explicable, does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains behind. However we may succeed in reducing the equation to its lowest terms, we are not thereby enabled to determine the unknown quant.i.ty: on the contrary, it only becomes more manifest that the unknown quant.i.ty can never be found.

Little as it seems to do so, fearless inquiry tends continually to give a firmer basis to all true Religion. The timid sectarian, alarmed at the progress of knowledge, obliged to abandon one by one the superst.i.tions of his ancestors, and daily finding his cherished beliefs more and more shaken, secretly fears that all things may some day be explained; and has a corresponding dread of Science: thus evincing the profoundest of all infidelity--the fear lest the truth be bad. On the other hand, the sincere man of science, content to follow wherever the evidence leads him, becomes by each new inquiry more profoundly convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem. Alike in the external and the internal worlds, he sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes, of which he can discover neither the beginning nor the end. If, tracing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain the hypothesis that all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds it utterly impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and equally, if he speculates on the future, he can a.s.sign no limit to the grand succession of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. On the other hand, if he looks inward, he perceives that both terminations of the thread of consciousness are beyond his grasp: he cannot remember when or how consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine the consciousness that at any moment exists; for only a state of consciousness that is already past can become the object of thought, and never one which is pa.s.sing.

When, again, he turns from the succession of phenomena, external or internal, to their essential nature, he is equally at fault. Though he may succeed in resolving all properties of objects into manifestations of force, he is not thereby enabled to realise what force is; but finds, on the contrary, that the more he thinks about it, the more he is baffled. Similarly, though a.n.a.lysis of mental actions may finally bring him down to sensations as the original materials out of which all thought is woven, he is none the forwarder; for he cannot in the least comprehend sensation--cannot even conceive how sensation is possible.

Inward and outward things he thus discovers to be alike inscrutable in their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that the Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words; the disputants being equally absurd--each believing he understands that which it is impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his investigations eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at once the greatness and the littleness of human intellect--its power in dealing with all that comes within the range of experience; its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels, with a vividness which no others can, the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact, considered in itself. He alone truly _sees_ that absolute knowledge is impossible. He alone _knows_ that under all things there lies an impenetrable mystery.

[1] _Westminster Review_, April 1857.

[2] For detailed proof of these a.s.sertions see essay on "Manners and Fashion."

[3] The idea that the Nebular Hypothesis has been disproved because what were thought to be existing nebulae have been resolved into cl.u.s.ters of stars is almost beneath notice. _A priori_ it was highly improbable, if not impossible, that nebulous ma.s.ses should still remain uncondensed, while others have been condensed millions of years ago.