ns
for each other; and they have further pointed out the changes through
which the solitary producer of any one commodity is transformed into a
combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts
in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher
phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the
industrial organisation of society.

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