Divergence

“ If we pass from the marked divergence in tendencies, which is imperfectly hinted at in such sayings as these, to the divergence between them in all the fundamental conditions of intellectual and moral life, then the variation which divided the revolutionary stream into two channels, flowing broadly apart through unlike regions and climates down to the great sea, is intelligible enough. ”

“ But that it would take us too far out of our track, we should prelude this inquiry by illustrating at some length a certain general law of progress;—the law that alike in occupations, sciences, arts, the divisions that had a common root, but by continual divergence have become distinct, and are now being separately developed, are not truly independent, but severally act and react on each other to their mutual advancement. ”

“ Divergence is to be expected, not only in all things human, but in all things divine which wear things human for their habiliment; and there were particular reasons why it was to be anticipated and to be patiently borne within the Church of England. ”

“ This phenomenon we may call 'divergence.' A common cause of divergence is the tendency to assimilate a borrowed motive to some indigenous and familiar form, usually a natural object, thus setting up a new method of treatment quite foreign to the origin of the motive. ”

“ The law that the divergence in form always corresponds exactly with the divergence in the conditions of life212 has accordingly received confirmation in all cases where we have been able to pronounce judgment. ”

“ If, as will be admitted, the divergence of the names which are significant of properties marks the divergence of the things, it is surely necessary to allow that with the divergence of the names significant of essence is also marked the divergence of the essences. ”

“ The true par forms the centre of these oscillations, and though peculiar circumstances will rarely allow that par to be exactly hit, yet the tendency to approach it is constant, and the divergence from it is always evanescent. ”

“ In the higher groups unequal form-divergence may be produced by the transforming impulses affecting parts of unequal physiological and morphological value, or by their influencing parts of equal value in different degrees. ”

“ Those unequal form-divergences which occur in the higher systematic groups a re always associated with a different formation of groups—the larvæ form different systematic groups to the imagines, so that one of these stages constitutes a higher or a lower group ”

“ The other side of “the divide,” evolution had been physical,—body, and body function had been the goal. This side “the divide,” it was spiritual and social, and the goal was the evolution of the man within man. The things which mattered now were love, sacrifice, service, goodwill rather than “tooth and claw.” Before, nature’s goal had been along the line of least resistance. Now, the line of march set straight against instinct and along the line of greatest resistance. There could be advance on [30] this side “the divide,” only as the ideal became clearer and its sway more coercive. ”

“ But the change, though steadily and rapidly progressive, has nevertheless been gradual; and, like those who drift down the stream of a deep and smooth river, we are not aware of the progress we have made until we fix our eye on the now distant point from which we have been drifted. ”

“ The great law of division became clear to him—the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat and the hidden force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One division, vast in number, a part of the good and all the bad ones, have become the beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, plants, stones, cold, heat, light, darkness, fire, rain, snow, earthquake, sun, moon, stars,—have become, in fact, every living thing, object, agency, phenomenon, process, and power outside of man. ”

“ Merely to be so close soothed them, and sitting side by side the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the world were once more solid and entire, and as if, in some strange way, they had grown larger and stronger. ”

“ But without soaring to the stars, the moment that this theory of progression, which seems so natural to us amid an advancing civilization, looks around the world, it comes against an enormous fact—the fixed, petrified civilizations. ”

“ The individual that responded or reacted to lines of new force then was possibly the same individual that reacts on it now, and his conception of the unity seems never to have changed in spite of the increasing diversity of forces; but the theory of variation is an affair of other science than history, and matters nothing to dynamics. ”

“ And again, through this divided generation we may see that each of the proceeding natures, is united and at the same time multiplied, is indivisible and divided in its causes, and through diminution is separated from them. ”

“ If we now consider the defects of the Decline and Fall—which the progress of historic study, and still more the lapse of time, have gradually rendered visible, they will be found, as was to be expected, to consist in the author's limited conception of society, and of the multitudinous forces which mould and modify it. We are constantly reminded by the tone of remark that he sees chiefly the surface of events, and that the deeper causes which produce them have not been seen with the same clearness. ”

“ By evolution must be understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is almost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by revolution, the critical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution that has reached its concluding phase; by rebellion, the partially collective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some particular circumstance, at a definite place and time ”

“ Ye’re all agreed that societies change—not always and everywhere—but on the whole and in the long run. Now, with all deference, I would beg t’ observe that we have got to examine the nature of changes before we have a warrant to call them progress, which word is supposed to include a bettering, though I apprehend it to be ill-chosen for that purpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice. ”

“ But, the question may be asked, Granting all this, may not the activity at some time come to an end? May not an equilibrium be finally reached—a state in which, activity having played its part, becoming passes into being, a changeless goal of all preceding change? ”

“ But with the wild rush of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the old settled mental habits and traditions of men found themselves not simply confronted by new conditions, but by constantly renewed and changing new conditions. ”

“ Progressive integration with the growing definiteness necessarily resulting from it, is of co-ordinate importance with the progressive differentiation before dwelt upon—nay, from one point of view, may be held of greater importance. For organization, in which what we call Evolution is most clearly and variously displayed, consists even more in the union of many parts into one whole, than in the formation of many parts. ”

“ But the cataclysm once accomplished, a new uniformity must have supervened, and evolution proceeded from that point continuously from the simple to the more heterogeneous, in accordance with strict dynamical law. ”

“ That a constant, but almost imperceptible change is hourly taking place in the earth's surface, appears to be established; and independent of the extraordinary bouleversements, which have at intervals convulsed our globe, this gradual revolution has produced, and will produce again, a total alteration in the face of nature. ”

“ The great division of history into phases by Turgot and Comte first affirmed this law in its outlines by asserting the unity of progress, for a mere phase interrupts no growth, and nature shows innumerable such phases. ”

“ The variety of the organised world, its transformation by adaptation to new, and by reversed adaptation to old conditions, the inequality of the systematic groups, the attainment of the same ends by different means, that is, by different organisations, and a thousand and one other things assume on this hypothesis in a certain measure an intelligible form, whilst without it they remain lifeless facts. ”

“ In Diversion, as in many other Particulars, the upper Part of Life is distinguished from the Lower. Let the Great therefore answer for the Employment of their Time, to themselves, or to their spiritual Governors. ”

“ Yet these movements are in many ways in conflict with one another, and they naturally tend to bring one another to a uniformity—that is, into a state in which one movement is as little obstructive to the other as possible. ”

“ But this is to be noted, That those particular Creatures that dye in their Childhood, or Youth, were never a full and regular Society; and the dissolving of a Society, whether it be a Full, or but a Forming Society, Man names DEATH. Also, this is to be noted, That the Nourishing Motion of Food, is the Uniting Motion; and the Cleansing, or Evacuating Motions, are the Dividing Corporeal Motions. Likewise it is to be noted, That a Society requires a longer time of uniting than of dividing; by reason uniting requires assistance of Foreign Parts, whereas dividings are only a dividing of home-Parts. ”

“ It merely indicates that no one straight line of descent, or of consecutive transformation, exists; but on the contrary, that among human and anthropoid types, recent and extinct, we have to do with a complex problem of divergent, rather than of continuous, variation. ”

“ Let a change be produced, and it will show itself in one of the sides or one of the aspects of the empirical complexus, or in all of these within a longer or a shorter time; for example, the state extends its boundaries, or changes its internal limits as regards society by increasing or diminishing its powers and its attributes, or by changing the mode of action of one or the other ”

“ And whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment and the first direction of circumstances, of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. ”

“ It thus happens that there is, in the third place, a continual process of readjustment and oscillation between the tendency towards unity and that towards variety, which, through opposition and conciliation, produces continuity in nature. ”

“ For two hundred years there had been no great changes in political or legal methods and pretensions, the utmost change had been a certain shifting of boundaries and slight readjustment of procedure, while in nearly every other aspect of life there had been fundamental revolutions, gigantic releases, and an enormous enlargement of scope and outlook. ”

“ The beyond can in any case exist simultaneously—for it can be experienced to have existed simultaneously—with the experience that practically postulates it by looking in its direction, or by turning or changing in the direction of which it is the goal. Pending that actuality of union, in the virtuality of which the ‘truth,’ even now, of the postulation consists, the beyond and its knower are entities split off from each other. ”

“ A steadier equilibrium betwixt the conflicting elements of the upper and the lower world, appears to have taken place—once only disturbed, at the deluge, since man’s occupation—and for the repetition of which there exists no preparation in the established course of nature. ”

“ And just as all particular things are evolved by the force of attraction and dissolved by the force of repulsion, a state of concentration or aggregation in the individual perpetually alternating with a state of diffusion or segregation, so it is also with the material universe as a whole. ”

“ In fine, looking back across the long cycles of change through which the land has been shaped into its present form, let us realize that these geographical revolutions are not events wholly of the dim past, but that they are still in progress. ”

“ Hordes of primitive men, dividing and subdividing, do, indeed, show us successions of small social aggregates leading like lives, inheriting such low structures as had resulted, and repeating those structures. ”

“ But the point where these two opposing forces of life find their most perfect equilibrium changes continually from age to age; and any epoch approaches more or less near this point according to the degree of activity of the two forces struggling within it. ”

“ Consequently, a division arises amongst those who had assumed this load, and two groups are formed, one huge, inert and disintegrating, and the other small, compact and energetic, each taking one of two ways which diverge from each other, and which keep on diverging more and more. ”

“ By this mutual transfusion an equilibrium is preserved, like that which similar processes maintain in the natural world, and while a healthy, popular feeling circulates through the Aristocracy, a sense of their own station in the scale elevates the People. ”

“ Reaching still farther back into the past, before this state of comparative quiescence, can we not find adequate time for the gradual succession of organized beings on this earth, and for the structural differentiations which have finally resulted in the present position of things? ”