Evolution; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy and religion
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 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.
* * * * *
§ 49. 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
civilized 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 functions 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
derivatives and forming compound terms expressing still smaller
distinctions, there is finally developed a tribe of words so
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