THE LAW OF EVOLUTION CONCLUDED. 405 



nothing"like so heterogeneous in their kinds as those of the 

 civilized man, whose complex environment presents a multi- 

 plicity of new phenomena. His mental acts, too, are much 

 less involved — he has no words for abstract ideas, and is 

 found to be incapable of integrating the elements of such 

 ideas. And in all but simple matters there is none of that 

 precision in his thinking which, among civilized men, leads 

 to the exact conclusions of science. ^Tor do the emotions 

 fail to exhibit a parallel contrast. 



§ 144. How in societies the movements or functions pro- 

 duced by the confluence of individual actions, increase in 

 their amounts, their multiformities, their precision, and 

 their combination, scarcely needs insisting upon after what 

 has been pointed out in foregoing chapters. For the sake 

 of symmetry of statement, however, a typical example or 

 two may be set down. 



Take the actions devoted to defence or aggression. At 

 first the military function, undifferentiated from the rest 

 (all men in primitive societies being warriors) is relatively 

 homogeneous, is ill-combined, and is indefinite: savages 

 making a joint attack severally fight independently, in 

 similar ways, and without order. But as societies evolve 

 and the military function becomes separate, we see that 

 while its scale increases, it progresses in multiformity, in 

 definiteness, and in combination. The movements of the 

 thousands of soldiers that replace the tens of warriors, are 

 divided and re-divided in their kinds — here are bodies that 

 manoeuvre and fire artillery; there are battalions that fight 

 on foot ; and elsewhere are troops that charge on horseback. 

 Within each of these differentiated functions there come 

 others: there are distinct duties discharged by privates, ser- 

 geants, captains, colonels, generals, as also by those who 

 constitute the commissariat and those who attend to the 

 wounded. The actions that have thus become comparative- 

 ly heterogeneous in general and in detail, have simultane- 



