56 PEOGKESS : ITS LAW AND CAUSE. 



cupies a volume.* Upon the small, homogeneous commu 

 nity 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. The 

 comparatively simple organization under which our ances- 

 tors lived five centuries ago, could have undergone but few 

 modifications from an event like the recent one at Canton ; 

 but now the legislative decision respecting it sets up many 

 hundreds of complex modifications, each of which will be 

 the parent of numerous future ones. 



Space permitting, we could willingly have pursued the 

 argument in relation to all the subtler results of civilization. 

 As before, we showed that the law of Progress to which 

 the organic and inorganic worlds conform, is also conformed 

 to by Language, Sculpture, Music, &c. ; so might we here 

 show that the cause which we have hitherto found to de- 

 termine Progress holds in these cases also. TVe might 

 demonstrate in detail how, in Science, an advance of one 

 division presently advances other divisions — how Astron- 

 omy has been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Op- 

 tics, while other optical discoveries have initiated Micro- 

 scopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiol- 

 ogy — how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowl- 

 edge of Electricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology — how 

 Electricity has reacted on Chemistry and Magnetism, de- 

 veloped our views of Light and Heat, and disclosed sundry 

 laws of nervous action. 



In Literature the same truth might be exhibited in the 

 manifold effects of the primitive mystery-play, not only as 

 originating the modern drama, but as afiecting through it 

 other kinds of poetry and fiction ; or in the still multiplv- 

 ing forms of periodical literature that have descended from 

 the first newspaper, and which have severally acted and 



* " Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or India-Rub 

 ber Manufacture in England." By Thomas Hancock. 



