第135章

The idea having once been given, the composing of airs productive of fugalharmony would naturally grow up; as in some way it did grow up out of thisalternate choir-singing. And from the fugue to concerted music of two, three,four, and more parts, the transition was easy. Without pointing out in detailthe increasing complexity that resulted from introducing notes of variouslengths, from the multiplication of keys, from the use of accidentals, fromvarieties of time, from modulations and so forth, it needs but to contrastmusic as it is with music as it was, to see how immense is the increase ofheterogeneity. We see this also if, looking at music in its ensemble, weenumerate its many different genera and species -- if we consider the divisionsinto vocal, instrumental, and mixed; and their subdivisions into music fordifferent voices and different instruments -- if we observe the many formsof sacred music, from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet, anthem,etc., up to the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of secular music,from the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental solo up to thesymphony. Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any one sample of aboriginalmusic with a sample of modern music -- even an ordinary song for the piano;which we find to be relatively very heterogeneous, not only in respect ofvarieties in the intervals and in the lengths of the notes, the number ofdifferent notes sounding at the same instant in company with the voice, andthe variations of strength with which they are sounded and sung, but in respectof the changes of key, the changes of time, the changes of timbre of thevoice, and the many other modifications of expression. While between theold monotonous dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, the contrastin heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the oneis the ancestor of the other. §126. Many further illustrations of the general law throughout socialproducts might be detailed. Going back to the time when the deeds of thegod-king, chanted and mimetically represented in dances before his altar,were further narrated in picture-writings on the walls of temples and palaces,and so constituted a rude history, we might trace the development of Literaturethrough phases in which, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, it presents in onework, theology, cosmogony, history, biography, civil laws, ethics, poetry;through other phases in which, as in the Iliad, the religious, martial, historical,the epic, dramatic, and lyric elements are similarly commingled; down toits present heterogeneous development, in which its divisions and subdivisionsare so numerous and varied as to defy complete classification. Or we mighttrack the unfolding of Science; beginning with the era in which it was notyet differentiated from Art, and was, in union with Art, the handmaid ofReligion; passing through the era in which the sciences were so few and rudimentary,as to be simultaneously cultivated by the same philosophers; and ending withthe era in which the genera and species are so multitudinous that few canenumerate them, and no one can adequately grasp even one genus. Or we mightdo the like with Architecture, with the Drama, with Dress. But doubtlessthe reader is already weary of illustrations, and my promise has been amplyfulfilled. The advance from the simple to the complex through successivemodifications upon modifications, is seen alike in the earliest changes ofthe Heavens to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changeswe can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolutionof the Earth, of every individual organism on its surface and in the aggregateof organisms; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplatedin the civilized man, or in the assemblage of races; it is seen in the evolutionof Society, in respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economicalorganization; and it is seen in the evolution of those countless concreteand abstract products of human activity, which constitute the environmentof our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up tothe novelties of yesterday, an essential trait of Evolution has been thetransformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. §127. So that the general formula arrived at in the last chapterneeds supplementing. It is true that Evolution, under its primary aspect,is a change from a less coherent state to a more coherent state, consequenton the dissipation of motion and integration of matter; but this is far frombeing the whole truth. Along with a passage from the coherent to the incoherent,there goes on a passage from the uniform to the multiform. Such, at least,is the fact wherever Evolution is compound; which it is in the immense majorityof cases. While there is a progressing concentration of the aggregate, causedeither by the closer approach of the matter within its limits, or by thedrawing in of further matter, or by both; and while the more or less distinctparts into which the aggregate divides and subdivides are also severallyconcentrating; these parts are simultaneously becoming unlike -- unlike insize, or in form, or in texture, or in composition, or in several or allof these. The same process is exhibited by the whole and by its members.

The entire mass is integrating, and at the same time differentiating fromother masses; while each member of it is also integrating and at the sametime differentiating from other members.

Our conception, then, must unite these characters. As we now understandit, Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity toa coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integrationof matter.