842* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This generalization, which we saw variously illustrated by 

 political institutions and ecclesiastical institutions, we now see 

 again illustrated by professional institutions. As the foregoing 

 chapters have shown, all the professions originate by differen- 

 tiation from the agency which, beginning as political, becomes, 

 with the apotheosis of the dead ruler, politico-ecclesiastical, and 

 thereafter develops the professions chiefly from its ecclesiastical 

 element. Egypt, which, by its records and remains, exhibits so 

 well the early phases of social progress, shows us how at first 

 various governmental functions, including the professional, were 

 mingled in the king and in the cluster of those who surrounded 

 the king. Says Tiele : 



"A conflict between the authority of priest and king was hardly possible 

 in earlier times, for then the kings themselves, their sons, and their princi- 

 pal officers of state were the chief priests, and the priestly dignities were 

 not dissevered from nor held to be inconsistent with other and civil func- 

 tions." 



And again 



" The priestly offices were state functions . . . which did not differ at all 

 in kind from that of commander of the troops, governor of a district, 

 architect, and chamberlain. In fact, both kinds of office were, for the most 

 part, filled by the same persons." 



And since, as Brugsch tells us, " Pharaoh's architects (the Mur- 

 ket) . . . were often of the number of the king's sons and grand- 

 sons," we see that in the governing group the political, ecclesias- 

 tical, and professional functions were united. 



No group of institutions illustrates with greater clearness 

 the process of social evolution ; and none shows more undeniably 

 how social evolution conforms to the law of evolution at large. 

 The germs out of which the professional agencies arise, forming 

 at first a part of the regulative agency, differentiate from it at 

 the same time that they differentiate from one another; and, 

 while severally being rendered more multiform by the rise of 

 subdivisions, severally become more coherent within themselves 

 and more definitely marked off. The process parallels com- 

 pletely that by which the parts of an individual organism pass 

 from their initial state of simplicity to their ultimate state of 

 complexity. 



Originally one who was believed by himself and others to 

 have power over demons the mystery-man or medicine-man 

 using coercive methods to expel disease-producing spirits, stood 

 in the place of doctor ; and when his appliances, at first supposed 

 to act supernaturally, came to be understood as acting naturally 

 his office eventually lost its priestly character altogether: the 

 resulting physician class, originally uniform, eventually dividing 



