Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11) - Herbert Spencer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📗
- Author: Herbert Spencer
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Differentiation Into Religious And Secular--Church And State; While At
The Same Time There Begins To Be Differentiated From Both, That Less
Definite Species Of Government Which Rules Our Daily Intercourse--A
Species Of Government Which, As We May See In Heralds' Colleges, In
Books Of The Peerage, In Masters Of Ceremonies, Is Not Without A Certain
Embodiment Of Its Own. Each Of These Is Itself Subject To Successive
Differentiations. In The Course Of Ages, There Arises, As Among
Ourselves, A Highly Complex Political Organisation Of Monarch,
Ministers, Lords And Commons, With Their Subordinate Administrative
Departments, Courts Of Justice, Revenue Offices, Etc., Supplemented In
The Provinces By Municipal Governments, County Governments, Parish Or
Union Governments--All Of Them More Or Less Elaborated. By Its Side
There Grows Up A Highly Complex Religious Organisation, With Its Various
Grades Of Officials, From Archbishops Down To Sextons, Its Colleges,
Convocations, Ecclesiastical Courts, Etc.; To All Which Must Be Added
The Ever Multiplying Independent Sects, Each With Its General And Local
Authorities. And At The Same Time There Is Developed A Highly Complex
Aggregation Of Customs, Manners, And Temporary Fashions, Enforced By
Society At Large, And Serving To Control Those Minor Transactions
Between Man And Man Which Are Not Regulated By Civil And Religious Law.
Moreover It Is To Be Observed That This Ever Increasing Heterogeneity In
The Governmental Appliances Of Each Nation, Has Been Accompanied By An
Increasing Heterogeneity In The Governmental Appliances Of Different
Nations; All Of Which Are More Or Less Unlike In Their Political Systems
And Legislation, In Their Creeds And Religious Institutions, In Their
Customs And Ceremonial Usages.
Simultaneously There Has Been Going On A Second Differentiation Of A
More Familiar Kind; That, Namely, By Which The Mass Of The Community Has
Been Segregated Into Distinct Classes And Orders Of Workers. While The
Governing Part Has Undergone The Complex Development Above Detailed, The
Governed Part Has Undergone An Equally Complex Development, Which Has
Resulted In That Minute Division Of Labour Characterising Advanced
Nations. It Is Needless To Trace Out This Progress From Its First
Stages, Up Through The Caste Divisions Of The East And The Incorporated
Guilds Of Europe, To The Elaborate Producing And Distributing
Organisation Existing Among Ourselves. Political Economists Have Long
Since Described The Evolution Which, Beginning With A Tribe Whose
Members Severally Perform The Same Actions Each For Himself, Ends With A
Civilised Community Whose Members Severally Perform Different Actions
For Each Other; And They Have Further Pointed Out The Changes Through
Which The Solitary Producer Of Any One Commodity Is Transformed Into A
Combination Of Producers Who, United Under A Master, Take Separate Parts
In The Manufacture Of Such Commodity. But There Are Yet Other And Higher
Phases Of This Advance From The Homogeneous To The Heterogeneous In The
Industrial Organisation Of Society.
Long After Considerable Progress Has Been Made In The Division Of Labour
Among Different Classes Of Workers, There Is Still Little Or No Division
Of Labour Among The Widely Separated Parts Of The Community; The Nation
Continues Comparatively Homogeneous In The Respect That In Each District
The Same Occupations Are Pursued. But When Roads And Other Means Of
Transit Become Numerous And Good, The Different Districts Begin To
Assume Different Functions, And To Become Mutually Dependent. The Calico
Manufacture Locates Itself In This County, The Woollen-Cloth Manufacture
In That; Silks Are Produced Here, Lace There; Stockings In One Place,
Shoes In Another; Pottery, Hardware, Cutlery, Come To Have Their Special
Part 2 Chapter 1 (Progress Its Law And Cause) Pg 68Towns; And Ultimately Every Locality Becomes More Or Less Distinguished
From The Rest By The Leading Occupation Carried On In It. Nay, More,
This Subdivision Of Functions Shows Itself Not Only 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 Specialising, In A Greater Or Less Degree,
The Industry Of Each People. So That Beginning With A Barbarous Tribe,
Almost If Not Quite Homogeneous In The Functions Of Its Members, The
Progress Has Been, And Still Is, Towards An Economic Aggregation Of The
Whole Human Race; Growing Ever More Heterogeneous In Respect Of The
Separate Functions Assumed By Separate Nations, The Separate Functions
Assumed By The Local Sections Of Each Nation, The Separate Functions
Assumed By The Many Kinds Of Makers And Traders In Each Town, And The
Separate Functions Assumed By The Workers United In Producing Each
Commodity.
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
Civilised 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 Function 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 Derivations 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 That 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 Several 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.
On Passing From Spoken To Written Language, We Come Upon Several Classes
Of Facts, All Having Similar Implications. Written Language Is Connate
With Painting And Sculpture; And At First All Three Are Appendages Of
Architecture, And Have A Direct Connection With The Primary Form Of All
Government--The Theocratic. Merely Noting By The Way The Fact That
Sundry Wild Races, As For Example The Australians And The Tribes Of
South Africa, Are Given To Depicting Personages And Events Upon The
Walls Of Caves, Which Are Probably Regarded As Sacred Places, Let Us
Pass To The Case Of The Egyptians. Among Them, As Also Among The
Assyrians, We Find Mural Paintings Used To Decorate The Temple Of The
God And The Palace Of The King (Which Were, Indeed, Originally
Identical); And As Such They Were Governmental Appliances In The Same
Sense That State-Pageants And Religious Feasts Were. Further, They Were
Governmental Appliances In Virtue Of Representing The Worship Of The
God, The Triumphs Of The God-King, The Submission Of His Subjects, And
The Punishment Of The Rebellious. And Yet Again They Were Governmental,
As Being The Products Of An Art Reverenced By The People As A Sacred
Mystery. From The Habitual Use Of This Pictorial Representations There
Naturally Grew Up The But Slightly-Modified Practice Of
Picture-Writing--A Practice Which Was Found Still Extant Among The
Mexicans At The Time They Were Discovered. By Abbreviations Analogous To
Those Still Going On In Our Own Written And Spoken Language, The Most
Familiar Of These Pictured Figures Were Successively Simplified; And
Ultimately There Grew Up A System Of Symbols, Most Of Which Had But A
Distant Resemblance To The Things For Which They Stood. The Inference
That The Hieroglyphics Of The Egyptians Were Thus Produced, Is Confirmed
By The Fact That The Picture-Writing Of The Mexicans Was Found To Have
Given Birth To A Like Family Of Ideographic Forms; And Among Them, As
Among The Egyptians, These Had Been Partially Differentiated Into The
_Kuriological_ Or Imitative, And The _Tropical_ Or Symbolic: Which Were,
However, Used Together In The Same Record. In Egypt, Written Language
Underwent A Further Differentiation: Whence Resulted The _Hieratic_ And
The _Epistolographic_ Or _Enchorial_: Both Of Which Are Derived From The
Original Hieroglyphic. At The Same Time We Find That For The Expression
Of Proper Names Which Could Not Be Otherwise Conveyed, Phonetic Symbols
Were Employed; And Though It Is Alleged That The Egyptians Never
Actually Achieved Complete Alphabetic Writing, Yet It Can Scarcely Be
Doubted That These Phonetic Symbols Occasionally Used In Aid Of Their
Ideographic Ones, Were The Germs Out Of Which Alphabetic Writing Grew.
Once Having Become Separate From Hieroglyphics, Alphabetic Writing
Itself Underwent Numerous Differentiations--Multiplied Alphabets Were
Produced; Between Most Of Which, However, More Or Less Connection Can
Part 2 Chapter 1 (Progress Its Law And Cause) Pg 69Still Be Traced. And In Each Civilised Nation There Has Now Grown Up,
For The Representation Of One Set Of Sounds, Several Sets Of Written
Signs Used For Distinct Purposes. Finally, Through A Yet More Important
Differentiation Came Printing; Which, Uniform In Kind As It Was At
First, Has Since Become Multiform.
While Written Language Was Passing Through Its Earlier Stages Of
Development, The Mural Decoration Which Formed Its Root Was Being
Differentiated Into Painting And Sculpture. The Gods, Kings, Men, And
Animals Represented, Were Originally Marked By Indented Outlines And
Coloured. In Most Cases These Outlines Were Of Such Depth, And The
Object They Circumscribed So Far Rounded And Marked Out In Its Leading
Parts, As To Form A Species Of Work Intermediate Between Intaglio And
Bas-Relief. In Other Cases We See An Advance Upon This: The Raised
Spaces Between The Figures Being Chiselled Off, And The Figures
Themselves Appropriately Tinted, A Painted Bas-Relief Was Produced.
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