THE LAW OF EVOLUTION CONTINUED. 357 



people. So that beginning with a barbarous tribe, 



almost if not quite homogeneous in the functions of its mem- 

 bers, 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. 



§ 123. '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 estab- 

 lished 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 num- 

 ber and case — in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of ad- 

 jectives, 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 homo- 

 geneous to the heterogeneous. And it may be remarked, in 

 passing, that it is more especially in virtue of having car- 

 ried this subdivision of functions to a greater extent and 

 completeness, that the English language is superior to all 



