Possibly it will be objected that the illustrations here given, are drawn from the functional changes of the nervous system, not from its structural changes; and that what is proved among the first, does not necessarily hold among the last. This must be admitted. Those, however, who recognize the truth that the structural changes are the slowly accumulated results of the functional changes, will readily draw the corollary, that a part-cause of the evolution of the nervous system, as of other evolution, is this multiplication of effects which becomes ever greater as the development becomes higher.
§ 121. If the advance of Man towards greater heterogeneity in both body and mind, is in part 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 organization. When, as must occasionally happen, some individual of a tribe displays unusual aptitude 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 weapons. His companions (warriors and hunters all of them) severally wish to have 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 both an unusual faculty, and an unusual liking, for making weapons (the capacity and the desire for any occupation being commonly associated), is predisposed to fulfil these commissions on the offer of adequate rewards: especially as his love of distinction is also gratified. This first specialization 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: this social movement tends ever to become more decided in the direction in which it was first set up; and the incipient heterogeneity is, on the average of cases, likely to become permanent for that generation, if no longer. Such a process, besides differentiating the social mass into two parts, the one monopolizing, or almost monopolizing, the performance of a certain function, and the other having lost the habit, and in some measure the power, of performing that function, has a tendency to initiate other differentiations. The advance 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. Now 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 aptitude. 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 specializations 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 school-boys, cannot well produce a lasting distribution of functions in an unsettled tribe; but where there grows up a fixed and multiplying community, such differentiations become permanent, and increase with each generation. An addition to the number of citizens, involving a greater demand for every commodity, intensifies the functional activity of each specialized person or class; and this renders the specialization more definite where it already exists, and establishes it where it is but nascent. By increasing the pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments these results; since every individual is forced more and more to confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain most. And this industrial progress, by aiding future production, opens the way for further growth of population, which reacts as before. Presently, under the same stimuli, new occupations arise. Competing workers, severally aiming to produce improved articles, occasionally discover better processes or better materials. In weapons and cutting-tools, the substitution of bronze for stone entails on 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 articles 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; and so affects the manufacture of them. Further, it affects the processes which such improved 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.
It is out of the question here to follow through its successive complications, this increasing social heterogeneity that results from the production of many effects by one cause. But leaving the intermediate phases of social development, let us take an illustration from its passing phase. To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold applications to mining, navigation, and manufactures, 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 passing Standing-Orders Committee, the first, second, and third readings: each of which brief heads indicates a multiplicity of transactions, and the further 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, em-bankings, 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 wagons: 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; institute a variety of special manufactures weekly advertised in the Railway Times; and call into being some new classes of workers—drivers, stokers, cleaners, plate-layers, &c. &c. Then come the changes, more numerous and involved still, which railways in action produce on the community at large. The organization 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. The rapidity and small cost of carriage, tend to specialize 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. Economical distribution equalizes 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. Classes who before could not afford it, take annual trips to the sea; visit their distant relations; make tours; and so we are benefited in body, feelings, and intellect. 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 advertisements in railway carriages: both of them aiding ulterior progress. And 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 specialized; prices in all places have been altered; each trader has, more or less, modified his way of doing business; and every person has been affected in his actions, thoughts, emotions.
The only further fact demanding notice, is, that we here see more clearly than ever, that in proportion as the area over which any influence extends, 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 few changes, among ourselves the changes have been so many and varied that the history of them occupies a volume. Upon the small, homogeneous 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 multitudinous.
Space permitting, the synthesis might here be pursued in relation to all the subtler products of social life. It might be shown 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 still-multiplying forms of periodical publications that have descended from the first newspaper, and which have severally acted and reacted on other forms of literature and on each other; or in the bias given by each book of power to various subsequent books. The influence which a new school of Painting (as that of the pre-Raphaelites) exercises on other schools; the hints which all kinds of pictorial art are deriving from Photography; the complex results of new critical doctrines; might severally be dwelt on as displaying the like multiplication of effects. But it would needlessly tax the reader’s patience to detail, in their many ramifications, these various changes: here become so involved and subtle as to be followed with some difficulty.
§ 122. After the argument which closed the last chapter, a parallel one seems here scarcely required. For symmetry’s sake, however, it will be proper briefly to point out how the multiplication of effects, like the instability of the homogeneous, is a corollary from the persistence of force.
Things which we call different are things which react in different ways; and we can know them as different only by the differences in their reactions. When we distinguish bodies as hard and soft, rough and smooth, we simply mean that certain like muscular forces expended on them are followed by unlike sets of sensations—unlike re-active forces. Objects that are classed as red, blue, yellow, &c., are objects that decompose light in strongly-contrasted ways; that is, we know contrasts of colour as contrasts in the changes produced in a uniform incident force. Manifestly, any two things which do not work unequal effects on consciousness, either by unequally opposing our own energies, or by impressing our senses with unequally modified forms of certain external energies, cannot be distinguished by us. Hence the proposition that the different parts of any whole must react differently on a uniform incident force, and must so reduce it to a group of multiform forces, is in essence a truism. A further step will reduce this truism to its lowest terms.
When, from unlikeness between the effects they produce on consciousness, we predicate unlikeness between two objects, what is our warrant? and what do we mean by the unlikeness, objectively considered? Our warrant is the persistence of force. Some kind or amount of change has been wrought in us by the one, which has not been wrought by the other. This change we ascribe to some force exercised by the one which the other has not exercised. And we have no alternative but to do this, or to assert that the change had no antecedent; which is to deny the persistence of force. Whence it is further manifest that what we regard as the objective unlikeness is the presence in the one of some force, or set of forces, not present in the other—something in the kinds or amounts or directions of the constituent forces of the one, which those of the other do not parallel. But now if things or parts of things which we call different, are those of which the constituent forces differ in one or more respects; what must happen to any like forces, or any uniform force, falling on them? Such like forces, or parts of a uniform force, must be differently modified. The force which is present in the one and not in the other, must be an element in the conflict—must produce its equivalent reaction; and must so affect the total reaction. To say otherwise is to say that this differential force will produce no effect; which is to say that force is not persistent.