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Updated: May 13, 2025
Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout.
Finding thus that in the evolution of the social organism, as in the evolution of individual organisms, there are integrations as well as differentiations, and moreover that these integrations are of the same three orders; we have additional reason for considering these integrations as essential parts of the developmental process, needed to be included in its formula.
Adequately to express the facts, we must say that the transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is carried on by differentiations and accompanying integrations. It may not be amiss here to ask What is the meaning of these integrations? The evidence seems to show that they are in some way dependent on community of function.
I wish also to show reason for thinking that this creature, LIFE, has only come to be what it is, by the same sort of process as that by which any human art or manufacture is developed, i.e., through constantly doing the same thing over and over again, beginning from something which is barely recognisable as faith, or as the desire to know, or do, or live at all, and as to the origin of which we are in utter darkness, and growing till it is first conscious of effort, then conscious of power, then powerful with but little consciousness, and finally, so powerful and so charged with memory as to be absolutely without all self-consciousness whatever, except as regards its latest phases in each of its many differentiations, or when placed in such new circumstances as compel it to choose between death and a reconsideration of its position.
Closely related to the general truth that the evolution of all organisms is carried on by combined differentiations and integrations, is another general truth, which physiologists appear not to have recognized.
But, without further illustration, the common origin and gradual differentiation of Dancing, Poetry, and Music will be sufficiently manifest. The advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is displayed not only in the separation of these arts from each other and from religion, but also in the multiplied differentiations which each of them afterwards undergoes.
Thus the multiplication of effects is obvious. Several of the differentiations due to the gradual cooling of the Earth have been already noticed as the formation of a crust, the solidification of sublimed elements, the precipitation of water, &c., and we here again refer to them merely to point out that they are simultaneous effects of the one cause, diminishing heat.
And yet there has always existed a variety of customs and practices which have stood for ages on their prescriptive usage with many complications and minute differentiations. These old account-books and minute-books of the churchwardens in town and country are a very large but a very perishable and rapidly perishing treasury of information on matters the very remembrance of which is passing away.
The same diffusion over the Earth's surface which has led to differentiations of race, has simultaneously led to differentiations of speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the distinct dialects found in separate districts.
For nine long days I went over the photographs of the authentic letters and the incriminating Bordereau with a powerful magnifier, and in the end I succeeded in establishing no fewer than twenty-two distinct and characteristic differentiations between them.
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