PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 845* 



hibiting the tribal hero's deeds, it long remained subservient to 

 religion, either for the coloring of statues (as it does still in 

 Roman Catholic images of saints, etc.), or for the decoration of 

 temples, or for the portraiture of deceased persons on sarcophagi 

 and stelse; and when it gained independence it was long em- 

 ployed almost wholly for the rendering of sacred scenes: its 

 eventual secularization being accompanied by its subdivision into 

 a variety of kinds and of the executant artists into correlative 

 groups. 



Thus the process of professional evolution betrays throughout 

 the same traits. In stages like that described by Hue as still 

 existing among the Tibetans, where " the Lama is not merely a 

 priest; he is the painter, poet, sculptor, architect, physician," 

 there are joined in the same individual, or group of individuals, 

 the potentialities out of which gradually arise the specialized 

 groups we know as professions. While out of the one primitive 

 class there come by progressive divergences many classes, each of 

 these classes itself undergoes a kindred change : there are formed 

 in it subdivisions and even sub-subdivisions, which become gradu- 

 ally more marked ; so that, throughout, the advance is from an 

 indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity. 



In presence of the fact that the immense majority of mankind 

 adhere pertinaciously to the creeds, political and religious, in 

 which they were brought up; and in presence of the further 

 fact that on behalf of their creeds, however acquired, there are 

 soon enlisted prejudices which practically shut out adverse evi- 

 dence ; it is not to be expected that the foregoing illustrations, 

 even joined with kindred illustrations previously given, will 

 make them see that society is a growth and not a manufacture, 

 and has its laws of evolution. 



From prime ministers down to plow-boys there is either 

 ignorance or disregard of the truth that nations acquire their 

 vital structures by natural processes and not by artificial de- 

 vices. If the belief is not that social arrangements have been 

 divinely ordered thus or thus, then it is that they have been 

 made thus or thus by kings, or if not by kings then by parlia- 

 ments. That they have come about by small accumulated 

 changes not contemplated by rulers, is one of those open secrets 

 which only of late have been recognized by a few and are still 

 unperceived by the many educated as well as uneducated. 

 Though the turning of the land into a food-producing surface, 

 cleared, fenced, drained, and covered with farming appliances, 

 has been achieved by men working for individual profit not by 

 legislative direction though villages, towns, cities, have insen- 

 sibly grown up under the desires of men to satisfy their wants 



