Egypt, which, by its records and remains, exhibits so well the early
phases of social progress, shows us how at first various governmental
functions, including the professional, were mingled in the king and in
the cluster of those who surrounded the king.
[Footnote 44: From Volume III of "The Principles of Sociology."
Copyright, 1896, by D. Appleton & Co.]
No group of institutions illustrates with greater clearness the
process of social evolution; and none shows more undeniably how social
evolution conforms to the law of evolution at large. The germs out of
which the professional agencies arise, forming at first a part of the
regulative agency, differentiate from it at the same time that they
differentiate from one another; and while severally being rendered
more multiform by the rise of subdivisions, severally become more
coherent within themselves and more definitely marked off. The process
parallels completely that by which the parts of an individual organism
pass from their initial state of simplicity to their ultimate state of
complexity.
Originally one who was believed by himself and others to have power
over demons--the mystery-man or medicine-man--using coercive methods
to expel disease-producing spirits, stood in the place of doctor; and
when his appliances, at first supposed to act supernaturally, came to
be understood as acting naturally, his office eventually lost its
priestly character altogether: the resulting physician class,
originally uniform, eventually dividing into distinguishable
subclasses while acquiring a definite embodiment.
Less early, because implying more developed groups, arose those who as
exhibitors of joy, now in the presence of the living ruler and now in
the supposed presence of the deceased ruler, were at first
simultaneously singers and dancers, and, becoming specialized from the
people at large, presently became distinct from one another; whence,
in course of time, two groups of professionals, whose official
laudations, political or religious, extended in their range and
multiplied in their kinds. And then by like steps were separated from
one another vocal and instrumental musicians, and eventually
composers; within which classes also there arose subdivisions.
Ovations, now to the living king and now to the dead king, while
taking saltatory and musical forms, took also verbal forms, originally
spontaneous and irregular, but presently studied and measured;
whence, first, the unrhythmical speech of the orator, which under
higher emotional excitement grew into the rhythmical speech of the
priest poet, chanting verses--verses that finally became established
hymns of praise. Meanwhile from accompanying rude imitations of the
hero's acts, performed now by one and now by several, grew dramatic
representations, which, little by little elaborated, fell under the
regulation of a chief actor, who prefigured the playwright. And out of
these germs, all pertaining to worship, came eventually the various
professions of poets, actors, dramatists, and the subdivisions of
these.
The great deeds of the hero god, recited, chanted, or sung, and
mimetically rendered, naturally came to be supplemented by details, so
growing into accounts of his life; and thus the priest poet gave
origin to the biographer, whose narratives, being extended to less
sacred personages, became secularized. Stories of the apotheosized
chief or king, joined with stories of his companions and amplified by
narratives of accompanying transactions, formed the first histories.
And from these accounts of the doings of particular men and groups of
men, partly true but passing by exaggeration into the mythical, came
the wholly mythical, or fiction; which then and always preserved the
biographico-historical character. Add to which that out of the
criticisms and reflections scattered through this personal literature
an impersonal literature slowly emerged; the whole group of these
products having as their deepest root the eulogies of the priest
poet.
Prompted as were the medicine-men of savages and the priests of early
civilized peoples to increase their influence, they were ever
stimulated to acquire knowledge of natural actions and the properties
of things; and, being in alleged communication with supernatural
beings, they were supposed to acquire such knowledge from them. Hence,
by implication, the priest became the primitive man of science; and
led by his special experiences to speculate about the causes of
things, thus entered the sphere of philosophy: both his science and
his philosophy being pursued in the service of his religion.
Not only his higher culture, but his alleged intercourse with the
gods, whose mouthpiece he was, made him the authority in cases of
dispute; and being also, as historian, the authority concerning past
transactions and traditional usages, or laws, he acquired in both
capacities the character of judge. Moreover, when the growth of legal
administration brought the advocate, he, tho usually of lay origin,
was sometimes clerical.
Distinguished in early stages as the learned man of the tribe or
society, and especially distinguished as the possessor of that
knowledge which was thought of most value--knowledge of unseen
things--the priest of necessity became the first teacher. Transmitting
traditional statements concerning ghosts and gods, at first to
neophytes of his class only, but afterward to the cultured classes, he
presently, beyond instruction in supernatural things, gave instruction
in natural things; and, having been the first secular teacher, has
retained a large share in secular teaching even down to our own days.
As making a sacrifice was the original priestly act, and as the
building of an altar for the sacrifice was by implication a priestly
act, it results that the making of a shelter over the altar, which, in
its developed form became the temple, was also a priestly act. When
the priest, ceasing to be himself the executant, directed the
artificers, he continued to be the designer; and when he ceased to be
the actual designer, the master builder or architect thereafter
continued to fulfil his general directions. And then the temple and
the palace in sundry early societies, being at once the residence of
the apotheosized ruler and the living ruler (even now a palace usually
contains a small temple), and being the first kinds of developed
architecture, eventually gave origin to secular architecture.
A rudely carved or modeled image of a man placed on his grave gave
origin to the sculptured representation of a god inclosed in his
temple. A product of priestly skill at the outset, it continued in
some cases to be such among early civilized peoples; and always
thereafter, when executed by an artizan, conformed to priestly
direction. Extending presently to the representation of other than
divine and semidivine personages, it eventually thus passed into its
secularized form.
So was it with painting. At first used to complete the carved
representation of the severed or worshiped personage, and being
otherwise in some tribes used by the priest and his aids for
exhibiting the tribal hero's deeds, it long remained subservient to
religion, either for the coloring of statues (as it does still in
Roman Catholic images of saints, etc.), or for the decoration of
temples, or for the portraiture of deceased persons on sarcophagi and
stelæ; and when it gained independence it was long employed almost
wholly for the rendering of sacred scenes,--its eventual
secularization being accompanied by its subdivision into a variety of
kinds and of the executant artists into correlative groups.
Thus the process of professional evolution betrays throughout the same
traits. In stages like that described by Huc[45] as still existing
among the Tibetans, where "the Lama is not merely a priest, he is the
painter, poet, sculptor, architect, physician," there are joined in
the same individual, or group of individuals, the potentialities out
of which gradually arise the specialized groups we know as
professions. While out of the one primitive class there come by
progressive divergences many classes, each of these classes itself
undergoes a kindred change: there are formed in it subdivisions and
even sub-subdivisions, which become gradually more marked; so that,
throughout, the advance is from an indefinite homogeneity to a
definite heterogeneity.
[Footnote 45: Évariste Régis Huc, a French missionary and traveler in
China, born in 1813 and died in 1860. He published several books based
on his experiences in Asia.]
In presence of the fact that the immense majority of mankind adhere
pertinaciously to the creeds, political and religious, in which they
are brought up; and in presence of the further fact that on behalf of
their creeds, however acquired, there are soon enlisted prejudices
which practically shut out adverse evidence, it is not to be expected
that the foregoing illustrations, even joined with kindred
illustrations previously given, will make them see that society is a
growth and not a manufacture, and has its laws of evolution.
From prime ministers down to plowboys there is either ignorance or
disregard of the truth that nations acquire their vital structures by
natural processes and not by artificial devices. If the belief is not
that social arrangements have been divinely ordered thus or thus, then
it is that they have been made thus or thus by kings, or if not by
kings, then by parliaments. That they have come about by small
accumulated changes not contemplated by rulers is an open secret which
only of late has been recognized by a few, and is still unperceived by
the many,--educated as well as uneducated. Tho the turning of the land
into a food-producing surface, cleared, fenced, drained, and covered
with farming appliances, has been achieved by men working for
individual profit, not by legislative direction--tho villages, towns,
cities, have insensibly grown up under the desires of men to satisfy
their wants--tho by spontaneous cooperation of citizens have been
formed canals, railways, telegraphs, and other means of communication
and distribution, the natural forces which have done all this are
ignored as of no account in political thinking.
Our immense manufacturing system with its multitudinous inventions,
supplying both home and foreign consumers, and the immense mercantile
marine by which its products are taken all over the globe and other
products brought back, have been naturally and not artificially
originated. That transformation by which, in thousands of years, men's
occupations have been so specialized that each, aiding to satisfy some
small division of his fellow citizen's needs, has his own needs
satisfied by the work of hundreds of others, has taken place without
design and unobserved. Knowledge developing into science, which has
become so vast in mass that no one can grasp a tithe of it, and which
now guides productive activities at large, has resulted from the
workings of individuals prompted not by the ruling agency, but by
their own inclinations. So, too, has been created the still vaster
mass distinguished as literature, yielding the gratifications filling
so large a space in our lives. Nor is it otherwise with the literature
of the hour. That ubiquitous journalism which provides satisfactions
for men's more urgent mental wants has resulted from the activities of
citizens severally pursuing private benefits. And supplementing these
come the innumerable companies, associations, unions, societies,
clubs, subserving enterprise, philanthropy, culture, art, amusement;
as well as the multitudinous institutions annually receiving millions
by endowments and subscriptions: all of them arising from the unforced
cooperations of citizens.