On comparing the wheel-and-axle, or any of the mechanical appliances usedin early times with those used now, we see that in each of our machines severalof the primitive machines are united. A modern apparatus for spinning orweaving, for making stockings or lace, contains not simply a lever, an inclinedplane, a screw, a wheel-and-axle, joined together, but several of each --all made into a whole. Again, in early ages, when horsepower and man-powerwere alone employed, the motive agent was not bound up with the tool moved;but the two have now become in many cases joined together. The firebox andboiler of a locomotive are combined with the machinery which the steam works.
A much more extensive integration is seen in every factory. Here numerouscomplicated machines are all connected by driving shafts with the same steam-engine-- all united with it into one vast apparatus.
Contrast the mural decorations of the Egyptians and Assyrians with modernhistorical paintings, and there is manifest an advance in unity of composition-- in the subordination of the parts to the whole. One of these ancient frescoesis made up of figures which vary but little in conspicuousness: there areno gradations of light and shade. The same trait may be noted in the tapestriesof medieval days. Representing perhaps a hunting scene, one of these containsmen, horses, dogs, beasts, birds, trees, and flowers, miscellaneously dispersed: the living objects being variously occupied, and mostly with no apparentconsciousness of one another's proximity. But in paintings since produced,faulty as many of them are in this respect, there is always some co-ordination-- an arrangement of attitudes, expressions, lights, and colours, such asto combine the parts into a single scene; and the success with which unityof effect is educed from variety of components, is a chief test of merit.
In music, progressive integration is displayed in more numerous ways.
The simple cadence embracing but a few notes, which in the chants of savagesis monotonously repeated, becomes, among civilized races, a long series ofdifferent musical phrases combined into one whole; and so complete is theintegration that the melody cannot be broken off in the middle, nor shornof its final note, without giving us a painful sense of incompleteness. Whento the air, a bass, a tenor, and an alto are added; and when to the differentvoice-parts there is joined an accompaniment; we see integrations of anotherorder which grow gradually more elaborate. And the process is carried a stagehigher when these complex solos, concerted pieces, choruses, and orchestraleffects, are combined into the vast ensemble of an oratorio or a musicaldrama.
Once more the Arts of literary delineation, narrative and dramatic, furnishus with illustrations. The tales of primitive times, like those with whichthe storytellers of the East still amuse their listeners, are made up ofsuccessive occurrences, mostly unnatural, that have no natural connexions: they are but so many separate adventures put together without necessary sequence.
But in a good modern work of imagination, the events are the proper productsof the characters living under given conditions; and cannot at will be changedin their order or kind, without injuring or destroying the general effect.
Further, the characters themselves, which in early fictions play their respectiveparts without showing how their minds are modified by one another or by theevents, are now presented to us as held together by complex moral relations,and as acting and reacting on one another's natures. §115. Evolution, then, under its primary aspect, is a change froma less coherent form to a more coherent form, consequent on the dissipationof motion and integration of matter. This is the universal process throughwhich sensible existences, individually and as a whole, pass during the ascendinghalves of their histories. This proves to be a character displayed in thoseearliest changes which the visible Universe is supposed to have undergone,and in those latest changes which we trace in societies and the productsof social life. And, throughout, the unification proceeds in several wayssimultaneously.
Alike during the evolution of the Solar System, of a planet, of an organism,of a nation, there is progressive aggregation. This may be shown by the increasingdensity of the matter already contained in it; or by the drawing into itof matter that was before separate: or by both. But in any case it impliesa loss of relative motion. At the same time, the parts into which the masshas divided, severally consolidate in like manner. We see this in that formationof planets and satellites which has gone on along with the progressive concentrationof the nebula that originated the Solar System; we see it in that growthof separate organs which advances, pari passu, with the growth of each organism;we see it in that rise of special industrial centres and special masses ofpopulation, which is associated with the development of each society. Alwaysmore or less of local integration accompanies the general integration. Andthen, beyond the increased closeness of juxtaposition among the componentsof the whole, and among the components of each part, there is increase ofcombination, producing mutual dependence of them. Dimly foreshadowed as thismutual dependence is among inorganic existences, both celestial and terrestrial,it becomes distinct among organic and super-organic existences. From thelowest living forms upwards, the degree of development is marked by the degreein which the several parts constitute a co-operative assemblage -- are integratedinto a group of organs that live for and by one another. The like contrastbetween undeveloped and developed societies is conspicuous: there is an ever-increasingcoordination of parts. And the same thing holds true of social products,as, for instance, of Science; which has become highly integrated not onlyin the sense that each division is made up of dependent propositions, butin the sense that the several divisions cannot carry on their respectiveinvestigations without aid from one another.
