PRIVATE LIBRARY WILSON R. GAY" § A'Y? COST$ ;'v // / ani generous enough to loan you tJiis j>$ book, please be thought/id enougli to re- j/i ///;-;/ it, without delaying, until incited W to do so. Never take it, or keep it ivith- W out my consent, as such too often engen- ^ ders bad feelings. 77/is is sitnply I SEATTLE, IV ASH.
L .• THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY BY HERBERT SPENCER AUTHOR OF A SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY, DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY, ETC.
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1873, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
PKEFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
IT is desirable that the present volume, the origin of which is explained in the author's preface, should be accom panied by a brief statement in relation to Mr. Spencer's other works upon sociological science. The " Principles of Sociology " was projected by Mr. Spencer as a part of his philosophical system, the publication of which was com menced in 1860. Five volumes of that system have ap peared, viz.: " First Principles," in one volume; the " Principles of Biology," in two volumes; and the " Prin ciples of Psychology," in two volumes. " First Principles " develops the general method of the philosophy to be carried out in the subsequent works. In the two succeeding parts that method is applied to the interpretation of the phenom ena of Life and Mind, the whole course of exposition being preparatory to the " Principles of Sociology," in three vol umes, which are next in order. Upon this work Mr. Spen cer has now entered, and it will be published in quarterly parts, by subscription, in the same form that was adopted with the previous divisions of the work.
Several years since Mr. Spencer foresaw a difficulty that would arise in working out the principles of social science from a lack of the data or facts necessary as a basis of rea soning upon the subject; and he saw that, before the philos ophy could be elaborated, these facts must be systematically and exhaustively collected. How early and how clearly Mr. Spencer perceived the nature, diversity, and extent of the IV TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
facts upon which a true social science must rest is well, shown in the following passage from a review article pub lished in 1859,1 before he had commenced his great under taking: " That which constitutes history, properly so called, is in great part omitted from works on this subject. Only of late years have historians commenced giving us, in any considerable quantity, the truly valuable information. As in past ages the king was every thing and the people nothing, so, in past histories, the doings of the king fill the entire pict ure, to which the national life forms but an obscure background. While only now, when the welfare of nations rather than of rulers is becoming the dominant idea, are historians beginning to occupy them selves with the phenomena of social progress. The thing it really con cerns us to know is, the natural history of society. We want all facts which help us to understand how a nation has grown and organized itself. Among these, let us of course have an account of its govern ment; with as little as may be of gossip about the men who officered it, and as much as possible about the structure, principles, methods, prejudices, corruptions, etc., which it exhibited; and let this account include not only the nature and actions of the central government, but also those of local governments, down to their minutest ramifications. Let us of course also have a parallel description of the ecclesiastical government — its organization, its conduct, its power, its relations to the state; and, accompanying this, the ceremonial, creed, and religious ideas — not only those nominally believed, but those really believed and acted upon. Let us at the same time be informed of the control exercised by class over class, as displayed in social observances — in titles, saluta tions, and forms of address. Let us know, too, what were all the other customs which regulated the popular life out-of-doors and in-doors> including those concerning the relations of the sexes, and the relations of parents to children. The superstitions, also, from the more impor tant myths down to the charms in common use, should be indicated. Next should come a delineation of the industrial system: showing to what extent the division of labor was carried; how trades were regu lated, whether by caste, guilds, or otherwise; what was the connection between employers and employed; what were the agencies for dis tributing commodities; what were the means of communication; what was the circulating medium. Accompanying all which should be given an account of the industrial arts technically considered: stating the 1 " What Knowledge is of most Worth? " — ( Westminster Iteview).
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. v processes in use, and the quality of the products. Further, the intel lectual condition of the nation in its various grades should be de picted; not only with respect to the kind and amount of education, but with respect to the progress made in science, and the prevailing manner of thinking. The degree of aesthetic culture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture, painting, dress, music, poetry, and fiction, should be described. Nor should there be omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the people — their food, their homes, and their amuse ments. And, lastly, to connect the whole, should be exhibited the morals, theoretical and practical, of all classes, as indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs, deeds. These facts, given with as much brevity as consists with clearness and accuracy, should be so grouped and ar ranged that they may be comprehended in their ensemble, and con templated as mutually-dependent parts of one great whole. The aim should be so to present them that men may readily trace the consensus subsisting among them, with the view of learning what social phenom ena coexist with what others. And then the corresponding delinea tions of succeeding ages should be so managed as to show how each be lief, institution, custom, and arrangement, was modified, and how the consensus of preceding structures and functions was developed into the consensus of succeeding ones. Such alone is the kind of informa tion, respecting past times, which can be of service to the citizen for the regulation of his conduct. The only history that is of practical value is, what may be called Descriptive Sociology. And the highest office which the historian can discharge is that of so narrating the lives of nations as to furnish materials for a Comparative Sociology, and for the subsequent determination of the ultimate laws to which social phenomena conform."
Such were the character and scope of the facts which re quired to be collected concerning all forms and grades of human societies before any thing like a valid social science could be constructed. A descriptive Sociology, furnishing comprehensive data, must precede the establishment of prin ciples, and so Mr. Spencer began the collection of his mate rials five years ago. He first devised a system of tables suited to present all orders of social facts displayed by any community — facts of structure, function, and development, in such a manner that they can be compared with each other at a glance — each table being a kind of chart of the social vi THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
condition of the community to which it is devoted. His ob ject was at first solely to facilitate his own work, but it soon appeared that the results would be of great general impor tance, and Mr. Spencer decided to execute the undertaking with a view to publication. The communities of mankind were divided into three great groups: 1. Uncivilized Socie ties; 2. Civilized Societies, Extinct or Decayed; 3. Civilized Societies, Eecent or still Flourishing. Having arranged his plan, Mr. Spencer engaged three educated gentlemen to de vote themselves to the systematic collection of the various orders of facts pertaining to these three groups of societies. In each case, the tables are filled in with the facts under their appropriate heads, while extracts are separately given from the authorities consulted. The description of the Un civilized Societies, by Prof. David Duncan, embracing sev enty tables, is substantially completed. Of the second divi sion, in charge of Dr. Richard Scheppig, the first installment, including the four ancient American civilizations, is nearly finished. The third division, dealing with civilized socie ties, under charge of Mr. James Collier, of St. Andrew's and Edinburgh Universities, is well advanced, and the first part, treating of the English civilization, or the Sociological His tory of England, is now published. It covers seven con secutive tables, and the verifying extracts occupy seventy pages folio.
This series of works, which will be published as they are completed, will form a regular Cyclopaedia of Descriptive Sociology, and, as the facts are given independently of the ory, they will have value for all students of social phenom ena. Of the execution and influence of this work, the Brit ish Quarterly Review well observes: " No words are needed to indicate the immense labor here bestowed, or the great sociological benefit which such a mass of tabulated matter done under such competent direction will confer. The work will constitute an epoch in the science of comparative sociology."
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. vii It will be understood that these works do not form a part of Mr. Spencer's Philosophical System, but a separate preparation for the third division of it. Mr. Spencer will use his extensive materials in establishing the inductions of the science which will be presented in the successive parts of the " Principles of Sociology."
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
THIS little work has been written at the instigation of my American friend, Professor Youmans. When, some two years ago, he was in England making arrangements for that International Scientific Series which he origi nated and succeeded in organizing, he urged me to contribute to it a volume on the Study of Sociology. Feeling that the general undertaking in which I am engaged, is extensive enough to demand all my energies, I continued for a long time to resist; and I finally yielded only to the modified proposal that I should furnish the ideas and materials, and leave the embodiment of them to some fit collaborates. As might have been expected, it was difficult to find one in all respects suitable; and, eventually, I undertook the task myself.
After thus committing myself, it occurred to me as de sirable that, instead of writing the volume simply for the International Scientific Series, I should prepare it for pre vious issue in a serial form, both here and in the United States. In pursuance of this idea, arrangements were made with the Contemporary Review to publish the suc cessive chapters; and in America they have been simul taneously published in the Popular Science Monthly. Beginning in May, 1872, this publication by instalments x THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
has, with two brief intervals, since continued, and will be completed on the 1st October next: the issue of this volume being delayed until after that date.
Since commencing the work, I have not regretted that I was led to undertake it. Various considerations which seemed needful by way of introduction to the Principles of Sociology, presently to be written, and which yet could not be conveniently included in it, have found, in this preliminary volume, a fit place. Much illustrative mate rial also, partly accumulated during past years and lying unused, I have thus gained an occasion for turning to account. Further, the opportunity has been afforded me of commenting on special topics which the Principles of Sociology could not properly recognize; and of comment ing on them in a style inadmissible in a purely-philo sophical treatise — a style adapted, however, as I hope, to create such interest in the subject as may excite to serious pursuit of it.
In preparing the successive chapters for final publica tion, I have, besides carefully revising them, here and there enforced the argument by a further illustration. Not much, however, has been done in this way: the only additions of moment being contained in the Appen dix. One of these, pursuing in another direction the argument concerning academic discipline, will be found among the notes to Chapter IX.; and another, illus trative of the irrelation between intellectual culture and moral feeling, will be found in the notes to Chap ter XV.
LONDON, July, 1873.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE I.— OUR NEED OF IT 1 II. — Is THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 22 <1II. — NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE 43 IV.— DIFFICULTIES OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE...65 VIII. — THE EDUCATIONAL BIAS 161 IX.— THE BIAS OF PATRIOTISM J85 XL— THE POLITICAL BIAS 239 XII.— THE THEOLOGICAL BIAS 260 XIV.— PREPARATION IN BIOLOGY 298 XV. — PREPARATION IN PSYCHOLOGY 324 POSTSCRIPT 369 NOTES.. 387 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
OUR NEED OF IT.
OVER liis pipe in the village ale-house, the labourer says very positively what Parliament should do about the "foot and mouth disease." At the farmer's market-table, his master makes the glasses jingle as, with his fist, he emphasizes the as sertion that he did not get half enough compensation for his slaughtered beasts during the cattle-plague. These are not hesitating opinions. On a matter affecting the agricultural interest, statements are still as dogmatic as they were during the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, when, in every rural circle, you heard that the nation would be ruined if the lightly-taxed for eigner was allowed to compete in our markets with the heav ily-taxed Englishman: a proposition held to be so self-evident that dissent from it implied either stupidity or knavery.
Now, as then, may be daily heard among other classes, opinions just as decided and just as unwarranted. By men called educated, the old plea for extravagant expenditure, that u it is good for trade," is still continually urged with full be lief in its sufficiency. Scarcely any decrease is observable in the fallacy that whatever gives employment is beneficial: no regard being had to the value for ulterior purposes of that which the labour produces: no question being asked what would have resulted had the capital which paid for the labour taken some other channel and paid for some other labour. Neither criticism nor explanation appreciably modifies these beliefs. When there is again an opening for them they are expressed with undiminished confidence. Along with delu sions of this kind go whole families of others. People who 2 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
think that the relations between expenditure and production are so simple, naturally assume simplicity in other relations among social phenomena. Is there distress somewhere? They suppose nothing more is required than to subscribe money for relieving it. On the one hand, they never trace the reactive effects which charitable donations work on bank accounts, on the surplus-capital bankers have to lend, on the productive activity which the capital now abstracted would have set up, on the number of labourers who would have re ceived wages and who now go without wrages — they do not perceive that certain necessaries of life have been withheld from one man who would have exchanged useful work for them, and given to another who perhaps persistently evades working. Nor, on the other hand, do they look beyond the immediate mitigation of misery. They deliberately shut their eyes to the fact that as fast as they increase the provision for those who live without labour, so fast do they increase the number of those who live without labour; and that with an ever-increasing distribution of alms, there comes an ever-in creasing outcry for more alms. Similarly throughout all their political thinking. Proximate causes and proximate results are alone contemplated. There is scarcely any consciousness that the original causes are often numerous and widely differ ent from the apparent cause; and that beyond each immedi ate result there will be multitudinous remote results, most of them quite incalculable.
Minds in which the conceptions of social actions are thus rudimentary, are also minds ready to harbour wild hopes of benefits to be achieved by administrative agencies. In each such mind there seems to be the unexpressed postulate that every evil in a society admits of cure; and that the cure lies within the reach of law. " Why is not there a better inspec tion of the mercantile marine? " asked a correspondent of the Times the other day: apparently forgetting that within the preceding twelve months the power he invoked had lost two of its own vessels, and barely saved a third. " Ugly buildings are eyesores, and should not be allowed," urges one who is anxious for esthetic culture. Meanwhile, from the agent which is to foster good taste, there have come monuments and public buildings of which the less said the better; and its OUR NEED OP IT. 3 chosen design for the Law-Courts meets with almost universal condemnation. " Why did those in authority allow such de fective sanitary arrangements? " was everywhere asked, after the fevers at Lord Londesborough's; and this question you heard repeated, regardless of the fact that sanitary arrange ments having such results in this and other cases, were them selves the outcome of appointed sanitary administrations — regardless of the fact that the authorized system had itself been the means of introducing foul gases into houses.1 "The State should purchase the railways," is confidently asserted by those who, every morning, read of chaos at the Admiralty, or cross-purposes in the dockyards, or wretched army-organiza tion, or diplomatic bungling that endangers peace, or frustration of justice by technicalities and costs and delays, — all without having their confidence in officialism shaken. " Building Acts should insure better ventilation in small houses," says one who either never knew or has forgotten that, after Messrs. Reid and Barry had spent £200,000 in failing to ventilate the Houses of Parliament, the First Commissioner of Works proposed that, " the House should get some competent engineer, above sus picion of partiality, to let them see what ought to be done." 2 And similarly there are continually cropping out in the press, and at meetings, and in conversations, such notions as that the State might provide " cheap capital " by some financial sleight of hand; that " there ought to be bread-overseers appointed by Government: " 3 that " it is the duty of Government to provide a suitable national asylum for the reception of all illegitimate children." 4 And here it is doubtless thought by some, as it is in France by M. de Lagevenais, that Government, by supply ing good music, should exclude the bad, such as that of Offen bach.6 We smile on reading of that French princess, cele brated for her innocent wonder that people should starve when there was so simple a remedy. But why should we smile? A great part of the current political thought evinces notions of practicability not much more rational.
That connexions among social phenomena should be so little understood, need not surprise us if we note the ideas which prevail respecting the connexions among much simpler phenomena. Minds left ignorant of physical causation, are 4 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
unlikely to appreciate clearly, if at all, that causation so much more subtle and complex, which runs through the actions of incorporated men. In almost every house, servants and those who employ them, alike believe that a poker leaned up in front of the bars, or across them, makes the fire burn; and you will be told, very positively, that experience proves the eificacy of the device — the experience being that the poker has been repeatedly so placed and the fire has repeatedly burned; and no comparisons having been made with cases in which the poker was absent, and all other conditions as before. In the same circles the old prejudice against sitting down thirteen to dinner still survives: there actually exists among ladies who have been at finishing schools of the highest character, and among some gentlemen who pass as intelligent, the con viction that adding or subtracting one from a number of people who eat together, will affect the fates of some among them. And this state of mind is again displayed at the card- table, by the opinion that So-and-so is always lucky or un lucky — that influences are at work which, 011 the average, determine more good cards to one person than to another. Clearly, those in whom the consciousness of causation in these simple cases is so vague, may be expected to have the wildest notions of social causation. Whoever even entertains the supposition that a poker put across the fire can make it burn, proves himself to have neither a qualitative nor a quantitative idea of physical causation; and if, during his life, his experi ences of material objects and actions have failed to give him an idea so accessible and so simple, it is not likely that they have given him ideas of the qualitative and quantitative rela tions of cause and effect holding throughout society. Hence, there is nothing to exclude irrational interpretations and dis- proportioned hopes. Where other superstitions flourish, polit ical superstitions will take root. A consciousness in which there lives the idea that spilling salt will be followed by some evil, obviously allied as it is to the consciousness of the savage, filled with beliefs in omens and charms, gives a home to other beliefs like those of the savage. It may not have faith in the potency of medicine-bags and idols, and may even wonder how any being can reverence a thing shaped with his own hands; and yet it readily entertains subtler forms of the same OUR NEED OF IT. 5 feelings. For, in those whose modes of thought we have been contemplating, there is a tacit supposition that a government moulded by themselves, has some efficiency beyond that natu rally possessed by a certain group of citizens subsidized by the rest of the citizens. True, if you ask them, they may not de liberately assert that a legislative and administrative appa ratus can exert power, either mental or material, beyond the power proceeding from the nation itself. They are compelled to admit, when cross-examined, that the energies moving a governmental machine are energies which would cease were citizens to cease working and furnishing the supplies. But, nevertheless, their projects imply an unexpressed belief in some store of force that is not measured by taxes. When there arises the question — Why does not Government do this for us? there is not the accompanying thought — Why does not Government put its hands in our pockets, and, with the proceeds, pay officials to do this, instead of leaving us to do it ourselves; but the accompanying thought is — Why does not Government, out of its inexhaustible resources, yield us this benefit?
Such modes of political thinking, then, naturally go along with such conceptions of physical phenomena as are current. Just as the perpetual-motion schemer hopes, by a cunning arrangement of parts, to get from one end of his machine more energy than he puts in at the other; so the ordinary po litical schemer is convinced that out of a legislative apparatus, properly devised and worked with due dexterity, may be had beneficial State-action without any detrimental reaction. He expects to get out of a stupid people the effects of intelligence, and to evolve from inferior citizens superior conduct.
But while the prevalence of crude political opinions among those whose conceptions about simple matters are so crude, might be anticipated, it is surprising that the class disciplined by scientific culture should bring to the interpretation of social phenomena, methods but little in advance of those used by others. Now that the transformation and equivalence of forces is seen by men of science to hold not only throughout all inorganic actions, but throughout all organic actions; now that even mental changes are recognized as the correlatives of 6 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
cerebral changes, which also conform to this principle; and now, that there must he admitted the corollary, that all ac tions going 011 in a society are measured by certain antecedent energies, which disappear in effecting them, while they them selves become actual or potential energies from which subse quent questions arise; it is strange that there should not have arisen the consciousness that these highest phenomena are to be studied as lower phenomena have been studied — not, of course, after the same physical methods, but in conformity with the same principles. And yet scientific men rarely dis play such a consciousness.