The organization of every business is modified. Ease of communication makesit better to do directly what was before done by proxy; agencies are establishedwhere previously they would not have paid; goods are obtained from remotewholesale houses instead of near retail ones; and commodities are used whichdistance once rendered inaccessible. Rapidity and economy of carriage tendto specialize more than ever the industries of different districts -- toconfine each manufacture to the parts in which, from local advantages, itcan be best carried on. Cheap distribution equalizes prices, and also, onthe average, lowers prices: thus bringing divers articles within the reachof those before unable to buy them. At the same time the practice of travellingis immensely extended. People who before could not afford it, take annualtrips to the sea, visit their distant relations, make tours, and so are benefitedin body, feelings, and intellect. The prompter transmission of letters andof news produces further changes -- makes the pulse of the nation faster.
Yet more, there arises a wide dissemination of cheap literature through railwaybook-stalls, and of advertisements in railway carriages: both of them aidingulterior progress. So that beyond imagination are the changes, thus brieflyindicated, consequent on the invention of the locomotive engine.
It should be added that we here see more clearly than, ever, how in proportionas the area over which any influence extends becomes heterogeneous, the resultsare in a yet higher degree multiplied in number and kind. While among theuncivilized men to whom it was first known, caoutchouc caused but few changes,among ourselves the changes have been so many and varied that the historyof them occupies a volume. Upon the small, homogeneous community inhabitingone 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 allthe subtler products of social life. It might be shown how, in Science, anadvance of one division presently advances other divisions -- how Astronomyhas been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while other opticaldiscoveries have initiated Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growthof Physiology -- how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge ofElectricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology -- how Electricity has reacted onChemistry and Magnetism, developed our views of Light and Heat, and disclosedsundry laws of nervous action. But it would needlessly tax the reader's patienceto detail, in their many ramifications, these various changes; so involvedand subtle as to be followed with difficulty. §162. After the argument which closed the last chapter, a parallelone here seems scarcely required. For symmetry's sake, however, it will beproper briefly to point out how the multiplication of effects, like the instabilityof the homogeneous, is a corollary from the persistence of force.
Things which we call different are things which react in different ways;and we can know them as different only by the differences in their reactions.
When we distinguish bodies as hard or soft, rough or smooth, we mean thatcertain like muscular forces expended on them are followed by unlike reactiveforces, causing unlike sets of sensations. Objects classed as red, blue,yellow etc., are objects which decompose light in contrasted ways; that is,we know contrasts of colour as contrasts in the changes produced in a uniformincident force. The proposition that the different parts of any whole mustreact differently on a uniform incident force, and must thus reduce it toa group of multiform forces, is in essence a truism. Suppose we reduce thistruism to its lowest terms.
When, from unlikeness between the effects they produce on consciousness,we predicate unlikeness between two objects, what is our warrant? and whatdo we mean by the unlikeness, objectively considered? Our warrant is thepersistence of force. Some kind or amount of change has been wrought in usby the one which has not been wrought by the other. This change we ascribeto some force exercised by the one which the other has not exercised. Andwe have no alternative but to do this, or to assert that the change had noantecedent, which is to deny the persistence of force. Whence it is furthermanifest that what we regard as the objective unlikeness is the presencein the one of some force, or set of forces, not present in the other -- somethingin the kinds or amounts or directions of the constituent forces of the one,which those of the other do not parallel. But now if things or parts of thingswhich we call different, are those of which the constituent forces differin one or more respects, what must happen to any like forces, or any uniformforce, falling on them? Such like forces, or parts of a uniform force, mustbe differently modified. The force which is present in the one and not inthe other, must be an element in the conflict -- must produce its equivalentreaction; and must so affect the total reaction. To say otherwise is to saythat this differential force will produce no effect, which is to say thatforce is not persistent.
I need not develop this corollary further. It manifestly follows thata uniform force falling on a uniform aggregate, must undergo dispersion;that falling on an aggregate made up of unlike parts, it must undergo dispersionfrom each part, as well as qualitative differentiations; that in proportionas the parts are unlike, these qualitative differentiations must be marked;that in proportion to the number of the parts, they must be numerous; thatthe secondary forces so produced must undergo further transformations whileworking equivalent transformations in the parts that change them; and similarlywith the forces they generate. Thus the conclusions that a part-cause ofEvolution is the multiplication of effects, and that this increases in geometricalprogression as the heterogeneity becomes greater, are not only to be establishedinductively, but are deducible from the deepest of all truths.
