Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
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 schoolboys, cannot well produce
lasting effects in an unsettled tribe; but where there grows up a fixed
and multiplying community, such differentiations become permanent, and
increase with each generation. The enhanced 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; 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. Presently, under these same stimuli, new occupations arise.
Competing workers, ever aiming to produce improved articles,
occasionally discover better processes or raw materials. The
substitution of bronze for stone entails on him who first makes it a
great increase of demand; so that he or his successor eventually 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 differentiated from a
pre-existing occupation, becomes an occupation by itself. But now mark
the ramified changes which follow this change. Bronze presently
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 them. Further, it affects the processes which
these utensils subserve, and the resulting products,--modifies
buildings, carvings, personal decorations. Yet again, it sets going
manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit
for the requisite implements. 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
homogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on
the general principle, that many effects are produced by one cause.
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