The principles of sociology (Volume v. 1 pt. 2) online

nmm COLLEGE LIBRARY



THE PRINCIPLES OF
SOCIOLOGY



BY

HERBERT SPENCER



VOL. I 2



NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1898



Authorized Edition.




CONTENTS.



PART II. THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.

CHAP. PAGE

I. WHAT IS A SOCIETY ? 447

II. A SOCIETY IS AN ORGANISM .... 449

III. SOCIAL GROWTH ... . 463

IV. SOCIAL STRUCTURES ... . . 471
V. SOCIAL FUNCTIONS ...... 485

VI. SYSTEMS OF ORGANS ... . 491

VII. THE SUSTAINING SYSTEM . . . . .498

VIII. THE DISTRIBUTING SYSTEM. .... 505

IX. THE REGULATING SYSTEM . . . . .519

X. SOCIAL TYPES AND CONSTITUTIONS . . . 549

XL SOCIAL METAMORPHOSES . . . . .570

XII. QUALIFICATIONS AND SUMMARY . . . .588

PART III. DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS.

I. THE MAINTENANCE OF SPECIES .... 603
II. THE DIVERSE INTERESTS OF THE SPECIES, OF THE

PARENTS, AND OF THE OFFSPRING . . .606

III. PRIMITIVE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES . . . 613

IV. EXOGAMY AND ENDOGAMY . . . . .623

V. PROMISCUITY 643

iii



iv CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

VI. POLYANDRY 654:

VII. POLYGYNY 66'i

VIII. MONOGAMY 679

IX. THE FAMILY ....... 686

X. THE STATUS OF WOMEN ..... 725

XI. THE STATUS OF CHILDREN ..... 74:5

XII. DOMESTIC RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT . . 757

APPENDICES

A. FURTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF PRIMITIVE TIIOUGH1 . 777

13. THE MYTHOLOGICAL THEORY .... 830

C. THE LINGUISTIC METHOD OF THE MYTHOLOGISTS . 84:2



PART II.
THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY,



CHAPTER I.

WHAT IS A SOCIETY ?

212. This question has to be asked and answered at the
outset. Until we have decided whether or not to regard a
society as an entity; and until we have decided whether, if
regarded as an entity, a society is to be classed as absolutely
unlike all other entities or as like some others; our concep-
tion of the subject-matter before us remains vague.

It may be said that a society is but a collective name for
a number of individuals. Carrying the controversy between
nominalism and realism into another sphere, a nominalist
might affirm that just as there exist only the members of a
species, while the species considered apart from them has
no existence ; so the units of a society alone exist, while the
existence of the society is but verbal. Instancing a lecturer's
audience as an aggregate which by disappearing at the close
of the lecture, proves itself to be not a thing but only a cer-
tain arrangement of persons, he might argue that the like
holds of the citizens forming a nation.

But without disputing the other steps of his argument,
the last step may be denied. The arrangement, temporary
in the one case, is permanent in the other ; and it is the per-
manence of the relations among component parts which
constitutes the individuality of a whole as distinguished from
the individualities of its parts. A mass broken into frag-
ments ceases to be a thing; while, conversely, the stones,

447



448 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.

bricks, and wood, previously separate, become the thing
called a house if connected in fixed ways.

Thus we consistently regard a society as an entity, because,
though formed of discrete units, a certain concreteness in
the aggregate of them is implied by the general persistence
of the arangements among them throughout the area occu-
pied. And it is this trait which yields our idea of a society.
For, withholding the name from an ever-changing cluster
such as primitive men form, we apply it only where some
constancy in the distribution of parts has resulted from
settled life.

213. But now, regarding a society as a thing, what kind
of thing must we call it ? It seems totally unlike every object
with which our senses acquaint us. Any likeness it may
possibly have to other objects, cannot be manifest to percep-
tion, but can be discerned only by reason. If the constant
relations among its parts make it an entity; the question
arises whether these constant relations among its parts are
akin to the constant relations among the parts of other en-
tities. Between a society and anything else, the only con-
ceivable resemblance must be one due to parallelism of
principle in the arrangement of components.

There are two great classes of aggregates with which the
social aggregate may be compared the inorganic and the
organic. Are the attributes of a society in any way like
those of a not-living body? or are they in any way like those
of a living body? or are they entirely unlike those of both?

The first of these questions needs only to be asked to be
answered in the negative. A whole of which the parts are
alive, cannot, in its general characters, be like lifeless wholes.
The second question, not to be thus promptly answered,
is to be answered in the affirmative. The reasons for asserting
that the permanent relations among the parts of a society,
are analogous to the permanent relations among the parts
of a living body, we have now to consider.



CHAPTEE II.

A SOCIETY IS AN ORGANISM.

214. When we say that growth is common to social
aggregates and organic aggregates, we do not thus entirely
exclude community with inorganic aggregates. Some of
these, as crystals, grow in a visible manner; and all of them,
on the hypothesis of evolution, have arisen by integration at
some time or other. Nevertheless, compared with things we
call inanimate, living bodies and societies so conspicuously
exhibit augmentation of mass, that we may fairly regard this
as characterizing them both. Many organisms grow through-
out their lives; and the rest grow throughout considerable
parts of their lives. Social growth usually continues either
up to times when the societies divide, or up to times when
they are overwhelmed.

Here, then, is the first trait by which societies ally them-
selves with the organic world and substantially distinguish
themselves from the inorganic world.

215. It is also a character of social bodies, as of living
bodies, that while they increase in size they increase in
structure. Like a low animal, the embryo of a high one has
few distinguishable parts; but while it is acquiring greater
mass, its parts multiply and differentiate. It is thus with a
society. At first the unlikenesses among its groups of units
are inconspicuous in number and degree ; but as population

449



450 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.

augments, divisions and sub-divisions become more numerous
and more decided. Further, in the social organism as in the
individual organism, differentiations cease only with that
completion of the type which marks maturity and precedes
decay.

Though in inorganic aggregates also, as in the entire Solar
System and in each of its members, structural differentiations
accompany the integrations; yet these are so relatively slow,
and so relatively simple, that they may be disregarded. The
multiplication of contrasted parts in bodies politic and in
living bodies, is so great that it substantially constitutes
another common character which marks them off from in-
organic bodies.

216. This community will be more fully appreciated on
observing that progressive differentiation of structures is
accompanied by progressive differentiation of functions.

The divisions, primary, secondary, and tertiary, which
arise in a developing animal, do not assume their major and
minor unlikenesses to no purpose. Along with diversities
in their shapes and compositions go diversities in the actions
they perform: they grow into unlike organs having unlike
duties. Assuming the entire function of absorbing nutri-
ment at the same time that it takes on its structural char-
acters, the alimentary system becomes gradually marked off
into contrasted portions; each of which has a special func-
tion forming part of the general function. A limb, instru-
mental to locomotion or prehension, acquires divisions and
sub-divisions which perform their leading and their sub-
sidiary shares in this office. So is it with the parts
into which a society divides. A dominant class arising does
not simply become unlike the rest, but assumes control over
the rest ; and when this class separates into the more and the
less dominant, these, again, begin to discharge distinct parts
of the entire control. With the classes whose actions are
controlled it is the same. The various groups into which they



A SOCIETY IS AN ORGANISM. 451

fall have various occupations: each of such groups also,
within itself, acquiring minor contrasts of parts along with
minor contrasts of duties.

And here we see more clearly how the two classes of
things we are comparing, distinguish themselves from things
of other classes; for such differences of structure as slowly
arise in inorganic aggregates, are not accompanied by what
we can fairly call differences of function.

271. Why in a body politic and in a living body, these
unlike actions of unlike parts are properly regarded by us
as functions, while we cannot so regard the unlike actions
of unlike parts in an inorganic body, we shall perceive on
turning to the next and most distinctive common trait.

Evolution establishes in them both, not differences simply,
but definitely-connected differences differences such that
each makes the others possible. The parts of an inorganic
aggregate are so related that one may change greatly without
appreciably affecting the rest. It is otherwise with the parts
of an organic aggregate or of a social aggregate. In either of
these, the changes in the parts are mutually determined, and
the changed actions of the parts are mutually dependent.
In both, too, this mutuality increases as the evolution
advances. The lowest type of animal is all stomach, all
respiratory surface, all limb. Development of a type having
appendages by which to move about or lay hold of food, can
take place only if these appendages, losing power to absorb
nutriment directly from surrounding bodies, are supplied
with nutriment by parts which retain the power of absorp-
tion. A respiratory surface to which the circulating fluids
are brought to be aerated, can be formed only on condition
that the concomitant loss of ability to supply itself with
materials for repair and growth, is made good by the develop-
ment of a structure bringing these materials. Simi-
larly in a society. What we call with perfect propriety
its organization, necessarily implies traits of the same kind.



452 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.

While rudimentary, a society is all warrior, all hunter, all
hut-builder, all tool-maker: every part fulfils for itself all
needs. Progress to a stage characterized by a permanent
army, can go on only as there arise arrangements for supply-
ing that army with food, clothes, and munitions of war by
the rest. If here the population occupies itself solely with
agriculture and there with mining if these manufacture
goods while those distribute them, it must be on condition
that in exchange for a special kind of service rendered by
each part to other parts, these other parts severally give due
proportions of their services.

This division of labour, first dwelt on by political econo-
mists as a social phenomenon, and thereupon recognized by
biologists as a phenomenon of living bodies, which they
called the " physiological division of labour," is that which
in the society, as in the animal, makes it a living whole.
Scarcely can I emphasize enough the truth that in respect
of this fundamental trait, a social organism and an indivi-
dual organism are entirely alike. When we see that in
a mammal, arresting the lungs quickly brings the heart to
a stand; that if the stomach fails absolutely in its office
all other parts by-and-by cease to act; that paralysis of its
limbs entails on the body at large death from want of food,
or inability to escape ; that loss of even such small organs as
the eyes, deprives the rest of a service essential to their
preservation ; we cannot but admit that mutual dependence
of parts is an essential characteristic. And when, in a society,
we see that the workers in iron stop if the miners do not
supply materials; that makers of clothes cannot carry on
their business in the absence of those who spin and weave
textile fabrics; that the manufacturing community will
cease to act unless the food-producing and food-distributing
agencies are acting; that the controlling powers, govern-
ments, bureaux, judicial officers, police, must fail to keep
order when the necessaries of life are not supplied to them by
the parts kept in order; we are obliged to say that this



A SOCIETY IS AN ORGANISM. 453

mutual dependence of parts is similarly rigorous. Unlike
as the two kinds of aggregates otherwise are, they are unlike
in respect of this fundamental character, and the characters
implied by it.

218. How the combined actions of mutually-dependent
parts constitute life of the whole, and how there hence re-
sults a parallelism between social life and animal life, we
see still more clearly on learning that the life of every visible
organism is constituted by the lives of units too minute to
be seen by the unaided eye.

An undeniable illustration is furnished by the strange
order Myxomycetes. The spores or germs produced by one
of these forms, become ciliated monads, which, after a time of
active locomotion, change into shapes like those of amoebae,
move about, take in nutriment, grow, multiply by fission.
Then these amosba-form individuals swarm together, begin
to coalesce into groups, and these groups to coalesce with
one another: making a mass sometimes barely visible, some-
times as big as the hand. Tliisplasmodium, irregular, mostly
reticulated, and in substance gelatinous, itself exhibits
movements of its parts like those of a gigantic rhizopod,
creeping slowly over surfaces of decaying matters, and even
up the stems of plants. Here, then, union of many minute
living individuals to form a relatively vast aggregate in
which their individualities are apparently lost, but the life
of which results from combination of their lives, is demon-
strable.

In other cases, instead of units which, originally discrete,
lose their individualities by aggregation, we have units
which, arising by multiplication from the same germ, do
not part company, but nevertheless display their separate
lives very clearly. A growing sponge has its horny fibres
clothed with a gelatinous substance; and the microscope
shows this to consist of moving monads. We cannot deny
life to the sponge as a whole, for it shows us some corporate
80



454 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.

actions. The outer amoeba-form units partially lose their
individualities by fusion into a protective layer or skin;
the supporting framework of fibres is produced by the joint
agency of the monads; and from their joint agency also
result those currents of water which are drawn in through
the smaller orifices and expelled through the larger. But
while there is thus shown a feeble aggregate life, the lives
of the myriads of component units are very little sub-
ordinated: these units form, as it were, a nation having
scarcely any sub-division of functions. Or, in the words of
Professor Huxley, " the sponge represents a kind of sub-
aqueous city, where the people are arranged about the
streets and roads, in such a manner, that each can easily
appropriate his food from the water as it passes along."
Again, in the hydroid polype Myriothela, " pseudopodial
processes are being constantly projected from the walls of
the alimentary canal into its cavity ; " and these Dr. Allman
regards as processes from the cells forming the walls, which
lay hold of alimentary matter just as those of an amoeba do.
The like may be seen in certain planarian worms.

Even in the highest animals there remains traceable this
relation between the aggregate life and the lives of com-
ponents. Blood is a liquid in which, along with nutritive
matters, circulate innumerable living units the blood cor-
puscles. These have severally their life-histories. During
its first stage each of them, then known as a white cor-
puscle, makes independent movements like those of an
amoeba ; it " may be fed with coloured food, which will
fhen be seen to have accumulated in the interior; " " and in
some cases the colourless blood-corpuscles have actually
been seen to devour their more diminutive companions, the
red ones." Nor is this individual life of the units prov-
able only where flotation in a liquid allows its signs to be
readily seen. Sundry mucous surfaces, as those of the air
passages, are covered with what is called ciliated epithelium
a layer of minute elongated cells packed side by side, and



A SOCIETY IS AN ORGANISM. . 455

each bearing on its exposed end several cilia continually in
motion. The wavings of these cilia are essentially like
those of the monads which live in the passages running
through a sponge; and just as the joint action of these
ciliated sponge-monads propels the current of water, so does
the joint action of the ciliated epithelium-cells move forward
the mucous secretion covering them. If there needs further
proof that these epithelium-cells have independent lives, we
have it in the fact that when detached and placed in a fit
menstruum, they " move about with considerable rapidity
for some time, by the continued vibrations of the cilia with
which they are furnished."

On thus seeing that an ordinary living organism may be
regarded as a nation of units which live individually, and
have many of them considerable degrees of independence,
we shall have the less difficulty in regarding a nation of
human beings as an organism.

219. The relation between the lives of the units and the
life of the aggregate, has a further character common to
the two cases. By a catastrophe the life of the aggregate
may be destroyed without immediately destroying the lives
of all its units; while, on the other hand, if no catastrophe
abridges it, the life of the aggregate is far longer than the
lives of its units.

In a cold-blooded animal, ciliated cells perform their
motions with perfect regularity long after the creature they
are part of has become motionless. Muscular fibres retain
their power of contracting under stimulation. The cells of
secreting organs go on pouring out their product if blood
is artificially supplied to them. And the components of an
entire organ, as the heart, continue their co-operation for
many hours after its detachment. Similarly, arrest

of those commercial activities, governmental co-ordinations,
etc., which constitute the corporate life of a nation, may be
caused, say by an inroad of barbarians, without immediately



456 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.

stopping the actions of all the units. Certain classes of
these, especially the widely-diffused ones engaged in food-
production, may long survive and carry on their individual
occupations.

On the other hand, the minute living elements composing
a developed animal, severally evolve, play their parts, decay,
and are replaced, while the animal as a whole continues.
In the deep layer of the skin, cells are formed by fission
which, as they enlarge, are thrust outwards, and, becom-
ing flattened to form the epidermis, eventually exfoliate,
while the younger ones beneath take their places. Liver-
cells, growing by imbibition of matters from which they
separate the bile, presently die, and their vacant seats are
occupied by another generation. Even bone, though so
dense and seemingly inert, is permeated by blood-vessels
carrying materials to replace old components by new ones.
And the replacement, rapid in some tissues and in others
slow, goes on at such rate that during the continued exist-
ence of the entire body, each portion of it has been many
times over produced and destroyed. Thus it is

also with a society and its units. Integrity of the whole
as of each large division is perennially maintained, notwith-
standing the deaths of component citizens. The fabric of
living persons which, in a manufacturing town, produces
some commodity for national use, remains after a century
as large a fabric, though all the masters and workers who
a century ago composed it have long since disappeared.
Even with minor parts of this industrial structure the like
holds. A firm that dates from past generations, still carrying
on business in the name of its founder, has had all its mem-
bers and employes changed one by one, perhaps several times
over; while the firm has continued to occupy the same
place and to maintain like relations with buyers and sellers.
Throughout we find this. Governing bodies, general and
local, ecclesiastical corporations, armies, institutions of all
orders down to guilds, clubs, philanthropic associations, etc.,



A SOCIETY IS AN ORGANISM. 457

show us a continuity of life exceeding that of the persons
constituting them. Xay, more. As part of the same law, we
see that the existence of the society at large exceeds in dura-
tion that of some of these compound parts. Private unions,
local public bodies, secondary national institutions, towns
carrying on special industries, may decay, while the nation,
maintaining its integrity, evolves in mass and structure.

In both cases, too, the mutually-dependent functions of
the various divisions, being severally made up of the actions
of many units, it results that these units dying one by one,
are replaced without the function in which they share being
sensibly affected. In a muscle, each sarcous element wear-
ing out in its turn, is removed and a substitution made while
the rest carry on their combined contractions as usual ; and
the retirement of a public official or death of a shopman,
perturbs inappreciably the business of the department, or
activity of the industry, in which he had a share.

Hence arises in the social organism, as in the individual
organism, a life of the whole quite unlike the lives of the
units; though it is a life produced by them.

220. From these likenesses between the social organism
and the individual organism, we must now turn to an ex-
treme unlikeness. The parts of an animal form a concrete
whole; but the parts of a society form a whole which is dis-
crete. While the living units composing the one are bound
together in close contact, the living units composing the
other are free, are not in contact, and are more or less widely
dispersed. How, then, can there be any parallelism?

Though this difference is fundamental and apparently
puts comparison out of the question, yet examination proves
it to be less than it seems. Presently I shall have to point
out that complete admission of it consists with maintenance
of the alleged analogy ; but we will first observe how one who
thought it needful, might argue that even in this respect
there is a smaller contrast than a cursory glance shows.



458 THE INDUCTIONS OP SOCIOLOGY.

He might urge that the physically-coherent body of an
animal is not composed all through of living units; but that
it consists in large measure of differentiated parts which the
vitally active parts have formed, and which thereafter be-
come semi-vital and in some cases un-vital. Taking as an
example the protoplasmic layer underlying the skin, he
might say that while this consists of truly living units, the
cells produced in it, changing into epithelium scales, become
inert protective structures; and pointing to the insensitive
nails, hair, horns, etc., arising from this layer, he might
show that such parts, though components of the organism,
are hardly living components. Carrying out the argument,
he would contend that elsewhere in the body there exist
such protoplasmic layers, from which grow the tissues com-
posing the various organs layers which alone remain fully
alive, while the structures evolved from them lose their
vitality in proportion as they are specialized: instancing
cartilage, tendon, and connective tissue, as showing this in
conspicuous ways. From all which he would draw the
inference that though the body forms a coherent whole, its
essential units, taken by themselves, form a whole which is
coherent only throughout the protoplasmic layers.

And then would follow the facts showing that the social
organism, rightly conceived, is much less discontinuous than
it seems. He would contend that as, in the individual
organism, we include with the fully living parts, the less
living and not living parts which co-operate in the total
activities; so, in the social organism, we must include not
only those most highly vitalized units, the human beings,
who chiefly determine its phenomena, but also the various
kinds of domestic animals, lower in the scale of life, which,
imder the control of man, co-operate with him, and even