第129章

Meanwhile there has been going on a differentiation of a more familiarkind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has been segregatedinto distinct classes and orders of workers. While the governing part hasundergone the complex development above indicated, the governed part hasundergone a more complex development, which has resulted in that minute divisionof labour characterizing advanced nations. It is needless to trace out thisprogress from its first stages, up through the caste-divisions of the Eastand the incorporated guilds of Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributingorganization existing among ourselves. Political economists have long sincedescribed the industrial progress which, through increasing division of labour,ends with a civilized community whose members severally perform differentactions for one another; and they have further pointed out the changes throughwhich the solitary producer of any one commodity, is transformed into a combinationof producers who, united under a master, take separate parts in the manufactureof such commodity. But there are yet other and higher phases of this advancefrom the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the industrial organizationof society. Long after considerable progress has been made in the divisionof labour among the different classes of workers, there is relatively littledivision of labour among the widely separated parts of the community: thenation continues comparatively homogeneous in the respect that in each districtthe same occupations are pursued. But when roads and other means of transitbecome numerous and good, the different districts begin to assume differentfunctions, and to become mutually dependent. The calico-manufacture locatesitself in this county, the woollen-manufacture in that; silks are producedhere, lace there; stockings in one place, shoes in another; pottery, hardware,cutlery, come to have their special towns; and ultimately every localitygrows more or less distinguished from the rest by the leading occupationcarried on in it. Nay, more, this subdivision of functions shows itself notonly among the different parts of the same nation, but among different nations.

That exchange of commodities which free-trade promises so greatly to increase,will ultimately have the effect of specializing, in a greater or less degree,the industry of each people. So that beginning with a primitive tribe, almostif not quite homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress hasbeen, and still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race;growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the separate functions assumedby separate nations, the separate functions assumed by the local sectionsof each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many kinds of producersin each place, and the separate functions assumed by the workers united ingrowing or making each commodity. And then, lastly, has to be named the vastorganization of distributers, wholesale and retail, forming so conspicuousan element in our town-populations, which is becoming ever more specializedin its structure. §123. Not only is the law thus exemplified in the evolution of thesocial organism, but it is exemplified in the evolution of all products ofhuman thought and action, whether concrete or abstract, real or ideal. Letus take Language as our first illustration.

The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire ideais vaguely conveyed through a single sound; as among the lower animals. Thathuman language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was strictlyhomogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no evidence. But thatlanguage can be traced down to a form in which nouns and verbs are its onlyelements, is an established fact. In the gradual multiplication of partsof speech out of these primary ones -- in the differentiation of verbs intoactive and Passive, of nouns into abstract and concrete - in the rise ofdistinctions of mood, tense, person, or number and case -- in the formationof auxiliary verbs, of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles-- in the divergence of those orders, genera, species, and varieties of partsof speech by which civilized races express minute modifications of meaning;we see a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. And it may beremarked that it is more especially because it has carried this subdivisionof functions further than any other language, that the English language isstructurally superior. Another process throughout which we may trace thedevelopment of language, is the differentiation of words of allied meanings.

Philology early disclosed the truth that in all languages words may be groupedinto families having each a common ancestry. An aboriginal name, appliedindiscriminately to each member of an extensive and ill-defined class ofthings or actions, presently undergoes modifications by which the chief divisionsof the class are expressed. These several names springing from the primitiveroot, themselves become the parents of other names still further modified.