That, in course of time, species have become more sharply marked off fromother species, genera from genera, and orders from orders, is a conclusionnot admitting of a more positive establishment than the foregoing. If, however,species and genera and orders have arisen by evolution, then, as Mr. Darwinshows, the contrasts between groups must have become greater. Disappearanceof intermediate forms, less fitted for special spheres of existence thanthe extreme forms they connected, must have made the differences betweenthe extreme forms decided; and so, from indistinct varieties, must have beenproduced distinct species: an inference which is in harmony with what weknow respecting races of men and races of domestic animals. §134. The successive phases through which societies pass, obviouslydisplay the progress from indeterminate arrangements to determinate arrangements.
A wandering tribe of savages, being fixed neither in its locality nor inits internal distribution, is far less definite in the relative positionsof its parts than a nation. In such a tribe the social relations are confusedand unsettled. Political authority is vague. Distinctions of rank are neitherclearly marked nor impassable. And save in the different occupations of menand women, there are no decided industrial divisions. Only in tribes of considerablesize, which have enslaved other tribes, is economic differentiation distinct.
But one of these primitive societies that evolves, becomes step by stepmore specific. Increasing in size, consequently ceasing to be so nomadic,and restricted in its range by neighbouring societies, it acquires, afterprolonged border warfare, a settled territorial boundary. The distinctionbetween the ruling race and the people, sometimes amounts, in the popularbelief, to a difference of nature. The warrior-class attains a perfect separationfrom classes devoted to the cultivation of the soil or to other occupationsregarded as servile. And there arises a priesthood which is defined in itsrank, its functions, its privileges. This sharpness of definition, growingboth greater and more variously exemplified as societies advance to maturity,is extremest in those which have reached their full development or are declining.
Of ancient Egypt we read that its social divisions were precise and its customsrigid. Recent investigations make it more than ever clear that among theAssyrians and surrounding peoples, not only were the laws unalterable, buteven the minor habits, down to those of domestic routine, Assessed a sacrednesswhich insured their permanence. In India at the present day, the unchangeabledistinctions of caste, not less than the constancy in modes of dress, industrialprocesses, and religious observances, show how definite are the arrangementswhere the antiquity is great. Nor does China, with its long-settled politicalorganization, its elaborate and precise conventions, fail to exemplify thesame truth.
The successive phases of our own and adjacent societies, furnish factssomewhat different in kind but similar in meaning. Originally monarchicalauthority was more baronial, and baronial authority more monarchical, thanafterwards. Between modern priests and the priests of old times, who whileofficially teachers of religion were also warriors, judges, architects, thereis a marked difference in definiteness of function. And among the peopleengaged in productive occupations, like contrasts hold: the regulative partshave become definitely distinct from the operative parts and the distributiveparts from both. The history of our constitution, reminding us how the powersof King, Lords, and Commons have been gradually settled, describes analogouschanges. Countless facts bearing the like construction meet us when we tracethe development of legislation; in the successive stages of which we findstatutes gradually rendered more specific in their applications to particularcases. Even now each new law beginning as a vague proposition, is, in thecourse of enactment, elaborated into specific clauses; and only after itsinterpretation has been established by judges' decisions in courts of justice,does it reach its final definiteness. From the annals of minor institutionslike evidence may be gathered. Religious, charitable, literary, and all othersocieties, starting with ends and methods roughly sketched out and easilymodifiable, show us how, by the accumulation of rules and precedents, thepurposes become more precisely formulated and the modes of action more restricted;until at last decay follows a fixity which admits of no adaptation to newconditions. Should it be objected that among civilized nations there areexamples of decreasing definiteness (instance the breaking down of limitsbetween ranks), the reply is, that such apparent exceptions are the accompanimentsof a social metamorphosis -- a change from the military type of social structureto the industrial type, during which old lines of structure are disappearingand new ones becoming more marked. §135. All organized results of social action -- all super-organicstructures, pass through parallel phases. Being, as they are, objective productsof subjective processes, they must display corresponding changes; and thatthey do this, the cases of Language, of Science, of Art, clearly prove.
