The Law of Evolution (continued) §128. But does this generalization express the whole truth? Doesit include everything essentially characterizing Evolution and exclude everythingelse? Does it comprehend all the phenomena of secondary redistribution whichCompound Evolution presents, without comprehending any other phenomena? Acritical examination of the facts will show that it does neither.
Changes from the less heterogeneous to the more heterogeneous, which arenot included in what we here call Evolution, occur in every local disease.
In a morbid growth we see a new differentiation. Whether this morbid growthbe, or be not, more heterogeneous than the tissues in which it is seated,is not the question. The question is whether the organism as a whole is,or is not, rendered more heterogeneous by the addition of a part unlike everypre-existing part, in form, or composition, or both. To this question therecan be none but an affirmative answer. Again, the earlier stages of decompositionin a dead body involve increase of heterogeneity. Supposing the chemicalchanges to commence in some parts sooner than in others, as they commonlydo, and to affect different tissues in different ways, as they must, it seemsclear that the entire body, made up of undecomposed parts and parts decomposedin various modes and degrees, has become more heterogeneous than it was.
Though grater homogeneity will be the eventual result, the immediate resultis certainly not Evolution. Other instances are furnished by social disordersand disasters. A rebellion which, while leaving some provinces undisturbed,develops itself here in secret societies, there in public demonstrations,and elsewhere in actual conflicts, necessarily renders the society, as awhole, more heterogeneous. Or when a dearth causes commercial derangementwith its entailed bankruptcies, closed factories, discharged operatives,food-riots, incendiarisms; it is manifest that as a large part of the communityretains its ordinary organization displaying the usual phenomena, these newphenomena must be regarded as adding to the complexity previously existing.
But such changes, so far from constituting further Evolution, are steps towardsDissolution.
So that the definition arrived at in the last chapter is an imperfectone. The changes above instanced as coming within the formula as it now stands,are so obviously unlike the rest, that the inclusion of them implies somedistinction hitherto overlooked. Such further distinction we have now tosupply. §129. At the same time that Evolution is a change from the homogeneousto the heterogeneous, it is a change from the indefinite to the definite.
Along with an advance from simplicity to complexity, there is an advancefrom con fusion to order -- from undetermined arrangement to determined arrangement.
Development, no matter of what kind, exhibits not only a multiplication ofunlike parts, but an increase in the clearness with which these parts aremarked off from one another. And this is the distinction sought. For proof,it needs only to reconsider the instances given above. The changes constitutinglocal disease, have no such definiteness, either in place, extent, or outline,as the changes constituting development. Though certain morbid growths aremore common in some parts of the body than in others (as warts on the hands,cancer in the breasts, tubercle in the lungs), yet they are not confinedto these parts; nor, where found, are they anything like so precise in theirrelative positions as are the normal parts around. Their sizes are very variable: they bear no such constant proportions to the body as organs do. Their forms,too, are far less specific than organic forms. And they are extremely confusedin their internal structures. That is, they are in all respects comparativelyindefinite. The like peculiarity may be traced in decomposition. That totalindefiniteness to which a dead body is finally reduced, is a state towardswhich the putrefactive changes tend from their commencement. The advancingdestruction of the organic compounds blurs the tissue-structures -- diminishestheir distinctness. From the portions that have undergone most decay, thereis a gradual transition to the less decayed portions, not a sharp demarcation.
And step by step the lines of organization, once so precise, disappear. Similarlywith social changes of an abnormal kind. The disaffection initiating a politicaloutbreak, implies a loosening of those ties by which citizens are bound upinto distinct classes and sub-classes. Agitation, growing into revolutionarymeetings, fuses ranks that are usually separated. Acts of insubordinationbreak through the ordained limits to individual conduct, and tend to obliteratethe lines between those in authority and those beneath them. At the sametime arrest of trade causes artizans and others to lose their occupations;and, ceasing to be functionally distinguished, they merge into an indefinitemass. When at last there comes positive insurrection, all magisterial andofficial powers, all class distinctions, all industrial differences, cease: organized society lapses into an unorganized aggregate of social units. Similarly,in so far as famines and pestilences cause changes from order towards disorder,they cause changes from definite arrangements to indefinite arrangements.
