Long after considerable progress has been made in the division of labour among different classes of workers, there is still little or no division of labour among the widely separated parts of the community; the nation continues comparatively homogeneous in the respect that in each district the same occupations are pursued.  But when roads and other means of transit become numerous and good, the different districts begin to assume different functions, and to become mutually dependent.  The calico manufacture locates itself in this county, the woollen-cloth manufacture in that; silks are produced here, lace there; stockings in one place, shoes in another; pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have their special towns; and ultimately every locality becomes more or less distinguished from the rest by the leading occupation carried on in it.  Nay, more, this subdivision of functions shows itself not only among the different parts of the same nation, but among different nations.  That exchange of commodities which free-trade promises so greatly to increase, will ultimately have the effect of specialising, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each people.  So that beginning with a barbarous tribe, almost if not quite homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race; growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the separate functions assumed by separate nations, the separate functions assumed by the local sections of each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the separate functions assumed by the workers united in producing each commodity.

Not only is the law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social organism, but it is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all products of human thought and action, whether concrete or abstract, real or ideal.  Let us take Language as our first illustration.

The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire idea is vaguely conveyed through a single sound; as among the lower animals.  That human language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was strictly homogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no evidence.  But that language can be traced down to a form in which nouns and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact.  In the gradual multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones—­in the differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract and concrete—­in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of number and case—­in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles—­in the divergence of those orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which civilised races express minute modifications of meaning—­we see a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.  And it may be remarked, in passing, that it is more especially in virtue of having carried this subdivision of function to a greater extent and completeness, that the English language is superior to all others.