After the development of those grammatical forms which make definite statementspossible, we do not at first find them used to express anything beyond statementsof a simple kind. A single subject with a single predicate, accompanied bybut few qualifying terms, are usually all. If we compare, for instance, theHebrew scriptures with writings of modern times, a marked difference of aggregationamong the groups of words, is visible. In the number of subordinate propositionswhich accompany the principal one; in the various complements to subjectsand predicates; and in the numerous qualifying clauses -- all of them unitedinto one complex whole -- many sentences in modern compositions exhibit adegree of integration not to be found in ancient ones. §113. The history of Science presents facts of the same meaning atevery step. Indeed the integration of groups of like entities and like relations,constitutes the most conspicuous part of scientific progress. A glance atthe classificatory sciences, shows that the confused incoherent aggregationswhich the vulgar make of natural objects, are gradually rendered completeand compact, and bound up into groups within groups. While, instead of consideringall marine creatures as fish, shell-fish, and jellyfish, Zoology establishesamong them subdivisions under the heads Vertebrata, Annulosa, Mollusca, Coelenterata,etc.; and while, in place of the wide and vague assemblage popularly describedas "creeping things," it makes the specific classes Annelida, Myiiapoda,Insecta, Arachnida; it simultaneously gives to these an increasing consolidation.
The several species, genera, and orders of which each consists, are arrangedaccording to their affinities and tied together under common definitions;at the same time that, by extended observation and rigorous criticism, thepreviously unknown and undetermined forms are integrated with their respectivecongeners. Nor is the process less clearly displayed in those sciences whichhave for their subject-matter, not classified objects but classified relations.
Under one of its chief aspects, scientific advance is the advance of generalization;and generalizing is uniting into groups all like co-existences and sequencesamong phenomena. The colligation of many concrete relations into a generalizationof the lowest order, exemplifies this process in its simplest form; and itis again exemplified in a more complex form by the colligation of these lowestgeneralizations into higher ones, and these into still higher ones. Yearby year connexions are established among orders of phenomena that appearunallied; and these connexions, multiplying and strengthening, graduallybring the seemingly unallied orders under a common bond. When, for example,Humboldt quotes the observation of the Swiss -- "it is going to rainbecause we hear the murmur of the torrents nearer," -- when he recognizesthe kinship between this and an observation of his own, that the cataractsof the Orinoco are heard at a greater distance by night than by day -- whenhe notes the analogy between these facts and the fact that the unusual visibilityof remote objects is also an indication of coming rain -- and when he pointsout that the common cause of these variations is the smaller hindrance offeredto the passage of both light and sound, by media which are comparativelyhomogeneous, either in temperature or hygrometric state; he helps in bringingunder one generalization certain traits of light and certain traits of sound.
Experiments having shown that light and sound conform to like laws of reflectionand refraction, the conclusion that they are both produced by undulations--though undulations of unlike kinds -- gains probability: there is an incipientintegration of two classes of facts between which no connexion was suspectedin times past. A still more decided integration has been of late taking placebetween the once independent sub-sciences of Electricity, Magnetism, andLight.
The process will manifestly be carried much further. Such propositionsas those set forth in preceding chapters, on "The Persistence of Force,""The Transformation and Equivalence of Forces," "The Directionof Motion," and "The Rhythm of Motion," unite within singlebonds phenomena belonging to all orders of existences. And if there is sucha thing as that which we here understand by Philosophy, there must eventuallybe reached a universal integration. §114. Nor do the industrial and aesthetic Arts fail to supply uswith equally conclusive evidence. The progress from small and simple tools,to complex and large machines, is a progress in integration. Among what areclassed as the mechanical powers, the advance from the lever to the wheel-and-axleis an advance from a simple agent to an agent made up of several simple ones.
