THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS. 467 



them aiding ulterior progress. And the innumerable 

 changes here briefly indicated are consequent on the inven- 

 tion of the locomotive engine. The social organism has been 

 rendered more heterogeneous, in virtue of the many new 

 occupations introduced, and the many old ones further 

 specialized; prices in all places have been altered; each 

 trader has, more or less, modified his way of doing business; 

 and every person has been affected in his actions, thoughts, 

 emotions. 



The only further fact demanding notice, is, that we here 

 see more clearly than ever, that in proportion as the area 

 over which any influence extends, becomes heterogeneous, 

 the results are in a yet higher degree multiplied in number 

 and kind. While among the primitive tribes to whom it 

 was first known, caoutchouc caused but few changes, among 

 ourselves the changes have been so many and varied 

 that the history of them occupies a volume. Upon the 

 small, homogeneous community inhabiting one of the 

 Hebrides, the electric telegraph would produce, were it used, 

 scarcely any results; but in England the results it produces 

 are multitudinous. 



Space permitting, the synthesis might here be pursued 

 in relation to all the subtler products of social life. It 

 might be shown how, in Science, an advance of one division 

 presently advances other divisions — how Astronomy has 

 been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while 

 other optical discoveries have initiated Microscopic Anato- 

 my, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology — how 

 Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Elec- 

 tricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology — how Electricity has 

 reacted on Chemistry and Magnetism, developed our views 

 of Light and Heat, and disclosed sundry laws of nervous ac- 

 tion. In Literature the same truth might be exhibited in 

 the still-multiplying forms of periodical publications that 

 have descended from the first newspaper, and which have 

 severally acted and reacted on other forms of literature and 



