Development

“ 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. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists. ”

“ The Educational Bearings of the Conception of Development.—We have had so far but little to say in this chapter about education. We have been occupied with the conditions and implications of growth. If our conclusions are justified, they carry with them, however, definite educational consequences. When it is said that education is development, everything depends upon how development is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life is development, and that developing, growing, is life. ”

“ From generation to generation, from century to century, from age to age, as time has rolled on, there has been a gradual moving onward and upward, a steady improvement both in the refining and civilizing of man's own being and in bringing that being into sympathetic relations with the external world, that is, a gradual development of man's own powers, and an ever increasing control of the forces of nature. ”

“ That the life and development of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged than, the life and development of any of its component units: who are severally born, grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body politic composed of them survives generation after generation, increasing in mass, completeness of structure, and functional activity. ”

“ Development according to nature, social efficiency, and culture or personal mental enrichment. In each case we have seen that the aims when partially stated come into conflict with each other. The partial statement of natural development takes the primitive powers in an alleged spontaneous development as the end-all. ”

“ All the large and ancient civilizations, have followed the long road of their "human development" through a complex and elaborate structure of knowledge that explain and give sense to the individual life, the family, community and State. All these civilizations have invariably sought to answer three basic questions which are the foundations where all human development rises: who am I, where do I come from and where am I going? ”

“ All of these material improvements have their civilizing influence, their moral significance; as Edmond Kelly put it, "By constructing our environment with intelligence we can determine the direction of our own development." ”

“ You asked me, was I opposed to any ‘plan’ for the Development of Humanity, and I replied, and reply, in effect, that I am not, always providing that it allowed for human development along human lines. ”

“ The doctrine of development seems at first to explain all so pleasantly, that the scream of consent with which it has been accepted by men of science, and the shriller vociferation of the public's gregarious applause, scarcely permit you the power of antagonistic reflection. ”

“ So true, also, is the process of her development to what is called nature—to the laws and principles that regulate human action and life—that, as it proceeds before us, we almost lose note that there is development. ”

“ And thus we see how wonderfully man is provided with the essentials of growth. This tender germ of progress is preserved in hard shells and prickly coverings, which, when they have served their purpose, are thrown aside, as not only useless but detrimental to further development. ”

“ Seek is the law of growth in all kingdoms; and it is the law of development and of the adjustment of the feeders [xxi] through which each kingdom asserts itself to its creatures and gives them their food and consolation. ”

“ Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of things as they have come about, and of people as they are—of their occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals—may we not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly suggest, something of their actual or potential development? ”

“ So long as we are specially interested in the attainment of any end or culminating result, we call the line of development which leads up to that result progressive, and the line which leads to its subsequent destruction degeneration. ”

“ Three great stages of development belong to the world. First, there was the period of physical development, when the tallest man was crowned king, when the strongest muscles enacted the laws, when brute force was “His Royal Majesty,” and claimed and received the homage of mankind. ”

“ Development is shown to be universally characterised by progress in three forms—namely, from a simple, indefinite, incoherent state to a complex, definite, and coherent state: [Pg 9] and the wonderful scope which the universe affords, both in time and space, for historically exhibiting these traits, overwhelms the mind with a sense of the universality of evolution, in spite of the fact that all the time the very point of the question is missed in the absence of any explanation. ”

“ On the whole it appears that wherever there are found elaborate arts, abstruse knowledge, complex institutions, these are results of gradual development from an earlier, simpler, and ruder state of life. ”

“ For him, and this is the significant point for us here, any notion of a future life for humanity, in the accepted sense of immortality, is bound up with, and indeed based upon, the conception of progressive development. ”

“ Progress and development mark everything in nature—human societies, as well as everything else. Nothing in the physical world is still; life and motion are in everything; so in the mental, moral, and political. ”

“ And while so much hangs upon the development of these methods, that development is, on the other hand, a process comparatively independent, now at any rate, of most of the other great movements affected by it. ”

“ But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present. ”

“ Having argued thus far to show that the present age, material, mental and spiritual, is the legitimate result of the law of progressive development, the following propositions are deduced therefrom, forming a basis or platform from which to ask of the present—What of the future? ”

“ Progress expresses itself in a variety of ideals and aims. Progress of the part and progress of the whole. Social progress involves individual development. Progress is enhanced by the interaction of groups and races. The study of uncultured races of to-day. The study of prehistoric types. Progress is indicated by early cultures. Industrial and social life of primitive man. Cultures indicate the mental development of the race. Men of genius cause mutations which permit progress. The data of progress.
III. METHODS OF RECOUNTING HUMAN PROGRESS
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“ But, beyond this main conception, it was implied throughout that there are such things as laws of social development, natural processes of rectification in society, and an adaptation of man to the conditions of social life. The scientific point of view was thus early assumed, and society was regarded not as a manufacture but as a growth. ”

“ Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply, that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the Development Hypothesis. They 379 are merely asked to point out a conceivable mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a conceivable mode, but for the actual mode. ”

“ The forces employed in the elaboration of the human being, differ in their manifestation at various stages of its growth. There are two marked forces to be noted, often confounded together, but important to distinguish—viz., the power of growth and the power of development, the former possessed throughout life, the latter at certain epochs only. ”

“ This confusion between the contemporaneous stage of development and the historic rôle of certain qualities, is intensified by our custom of referring to social evolution as if it were a force and not a process. ”

“ It is this uncontrollable desire to work on and fashion the rough materials that lie under our hands that gives the first impulse to civilization, and impels us onward in the progress of improvement. And wherever we discern the faintest indication that such a principle is at work, there we may securely hope that development will ultimately take place. ”

“ A peculiar combination of the ideas of development and formation from without has given rise to the recapitulation theory of education, biological and cultural. The individual develops, but his proper development consists in repeating in orderly stages the past evolution of animal life and human history. ”

“ The dynamical consideration of the progressive development of civilized humanity, affords, no doubt, a still more efficacious means of effecting this interesting verification of the consensus of the social phenomena, by displaying the manner in which every change in any one part, operates immediately, or very speedily, upon all the rest. ”

“ Passing on to the other great building, where the other wise men meet, it is right to describe what may be called the intellectual development—as the foregoing was the moral development of the valley. ”

“ The root of the whole difficulty, with regard to our theories of cause and effect in social development, as with regard to our theories of cause and effect in other parts of nature, lies in our desire for unity and simplicity. Instead of attempting to unravel the intricate web of the conditions, we fix our attention on some one feature or side of the process, and regard the whole development as revolving round this pivot. ”

“ Does not that sound hopeful for our development, and by example, are there not more people in other fields who can give their time, knowledge and experience to the development of something which when it is completed as an institution will belong to you? ”

“ Humanly appreciated, not only is it difficult to justify the successive stages of development, the incessant building up of structures immediately to be taken down, but also to explain why development was necessary97 at all. ”

“ On which I am the more disposed, and even compelled, here to insist, because your modern ideas of Development imply that you must all turn out what you are to be, and find out what you are to know, for yourselves, by the inevitable operation of your anterior affinities and inner consciences:—whereas the old idea of education was that the baby material of you, however accidentally or inevitably born, was at least to be by external force, and ancestral knowledge, bred ”

“ It might find the central line of human development in the increase of man’s knowledge, and in particular of his knowledge of Nature and his power of dealing with her. Or that which we call culture, the comprehensive unfolding and polishing of human faculty and of the power of intellectual creation and appreciation, might be taken as marking the most real and solid kind of progress, so that its growth would best represent the advance of man from a savage to a highly civilised condition. ”

“ An adjunct of progress in every stage of development, as indicated with especial clearness in the earliest stages, is the annulment or curtailment of both physical and formal law, and the substitution of cumulatively growing volition: the development of the esthetic passes from the intuitive toward the ratiocinative, that of the industrial from the instinctive toward the inventive, and that of the social from the merely reflective to the vigorously constructive ”

“ Witnessing the evolutions of humanity, following the development of social facts and theories, we better discern principles, and grow wary in relation to the alchemists of thought, who imagine that society may be made to undergo a transformation between the rising and the setting of the sun. ”

“ In this sense, art is the development of nature, that is, its adaptation to the purposes of utility and beauty, the human intellect being the developing power.
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5. When society and its various classes and interests are the subject-matter of the ideas which are in operation, the development may be called political; as we see it in the growth of States or the changes of a Constitution. Barbarians descend into southern regions from cupidity, and their warrant is the sword: this is no intellectual process, nor is it the mode of development exhibited in civilized communities. ”

“ Only through a thorough understanding of the principles or forces which govern human development, and a just appreciation of the source whence these principles have sprung, may we hope to gain a clear understanding of the past history of the race, or to perceive the true course to be pursued toward further development. ”

“ All are man-made distinctions, varying with time and place, differing among races and among individuals. To the history of the human race, then, the Man Awake must go in his search for the meaning of Duty. For development proceeds ever from the simple to the complex, and the basis of sane thinking is found in the study of development. To gain an adequate comprehension of anything one must understand its development. ”

“ We have found certain traits common to the old stages and certain others characteristic of recent ones, and have thus been enabled to establish some definite tendencies of development and to find out the general direction of change ”

“ By making their variations mainly due to effort and intelligence, they made organic development run on all-fours with human progress, and with inventions which we have watched growing up from small beginnings. ”