The constructive methods, once inaugurated, are made effective up to the provision of a sufficient apparatus for the expression of relations; and for a time, until this point is reached, their efficiency is greater than that of the destructive processes, which also have been all the time at work- then the relation is gradually reversed, and there is more wearing-out than replacement by synthetic means, though this latter also never entirely ceases; collocations remain such, instead of going on to combination and integration, there is still abundant new provision, but it is of another sort. The habit of construction has changed; though to a very different degree in the divided parts of the great community.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 212