COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



person th^functions of king, priest, judge, and 

 parliament ; yet he was scarcely less a digger 

 and hewer than his subject children, wives, and 

 brethren. Commercially, it is needless to say, 

 all primitive communities are homogenous. In 

 any barbarous tribe the number of different em- 

 ployments is very limited, and such as there 

 are may be undertaken indiscriminately by 

 every one. Every man is his own butcher and 

 baker, his own tailor and carpenter, his own 

 smith, and his own weapon maker. Now the 

 progress of such a society toward a civilized 

 condition begins with the differentiation and in- 

 tegration of productive occupations. That each 

 specialization of labour entails increased effi- 

 ciency of production, which reacting brings out 

 still greater specialization, is known to every 

 tyro in political economy. Nor is it less obvious 

 that, with the advance of civilization, labour 

 has been steadily increasing in coherent hetero- 

 geneity, not only with regard to its division 

 among different sets of mutually dependent 

 labourers, but also with regard to its processes, 

 and even its instruments. The distinguishing 

 characteristic of modern machinery, as compared 

 with the rude tools of the Middle Ages or the 

 clumsy apparatus of the ancients, is its definite 

 heterogeneity. The contrast between the steam- 

 engine of to-day and the pulleys, screws, and 

 levers of a thousand years ago assures us that the 



308 



