CHAPTER II

THE ATTEMPT TO MERGE THE GREAT MAN IN THE AGGREGATE

Let us take any book we please, by any modern writer, who is attempting to deal with any social subject scientifically, and whenever he is calling attention to the great intellectual triumphs which have caused the progress of civilisation, or to any developments of human nature which have marked it, we shall find that these triumphs or developments are always attributed indiscriminately to the largest mass of people with whom they have any connection—sometimes to “the nation,” sometimes to “the age,” sometimes to “the race,” and more frequently still to “man.”

Reference has been made already to Mr. Kidd’s work on _Social Evolution_, which, on its publication, attained an extraordinary popularity, and which, whatever its value otherwise, is interesting as a type of contemporary sociological reasoning. It is peculiarly interesting as illustrating the point which we are now discussing. Most of Mr. Kidd’s reasoning, especially in the crucial parts of it, is not {18} only conducted, but is actually represented by a terminology which refers everything to “the race,” “the age,” or “man.” And it would be hard to find better examples in the works of any other writer of the condition of thought underlying the use of these phrases, and of the extraordinary consequences to which it leads.

Three examples will be enough. The two first shall be from two other writers, whom Mr. Kidd quotes with admiration; the third shall be from himself. We will begin with the following passage, taken from a contemporary economist, which Mr. Kidd singles out for emphatic approval as “_a very effective statement_” of one of the truths of social science.

“_Man_,” so the passage runs, “_is the only animal whose wants can never be satisfied. The wants of every other living thing are uniform and fixed. The ox of to-day aspires no more than did the ox when man first yoked him. . . . But not so with man [himself]. No sooner are his animal wants satisfied, than new wants arise. . . . [He] has but set his feet on the first step of an infinite progression. . . . It is not merely his hunger, but taste, that seeks gratification in food. . . . Lucullus will sup with Lucullus; twelve boars roast on spits that Antony’s mouthful of meat may be done to a turn; every kingdom is ransacked to add to Cleopatra’s charms; and marble colonnades, and hanging gardens, and pyramids that rival the hills, arise._”

This passage is taken from Mr. Henry George. {19} Our second example shall be a passage which Mr. Kidd has borrowed from a far more educated thinker—M. Emile de Lavelaye. Mr. Kidd quotes M. de Lavelaye as saying that the eighteenth century brought the following message to “_man_.” “_Thou shalt cease to be the slave of the nobles and despots who oppress thee. Thou shalt be free and sovereign._” But the realisation of the promise thus given has, in the present century, he goes on to say, confronted us with this strange problem, “_How is it that the Sovereign often starves? How is it that those who are held to be the source of power often cannot, even by hard work, provide themselves with the necessaries of life?_”

Now all these passages, if we consider them carefully, will be seen to consist of statements, every one of which is false to fact. To say that man’s wants are less stationary than those of the ox is not even rhetorically true, unless we mean by “_man_” certain special races of men; whilst the statements that follow are not true, rhetorically or otherwise, of any race at all, but only of scattered individuals. A really fine and discriminating taste in food is, as every epicure knows, rare even amongst the luxurious classes. Antony and Lucullus are types of what is not the rule, but the exception. So too are the individuals who either desire hanging gardens, or could design them; and more exceptional still are the individuals whose personal pride and power either desire or can secure the erection of pyramids for their tombs. {20}

In M. de Lavelaye’s utterances there is an analogous misstatement and misconception of every fact with which he deals. The promises of political democracy, as he describes them, were never addressed to “_man_,” nor ever professed to be. The whole point of them was that they were addressed to certain classes of men only; and that, as addressed to other classes, they were not promises, but threats. But a still graver confusion arises when the “_Sovereign_” is spoken of as starving. If by the “_Sovereign_” M. de Lavelaye really means “_Man_” as a whole, it is perfectly obvious that the “_Sovereign_” never starves. The statement is equally untrue if the Sovereign is taken to mean not man as a whole, but the immense majority of men; and to ask why the Sovereign often does something which it never does, is not to formulate an actual problem loosely, but to convert an actual problem into one that is quite imaginary. The actual problem is not why the whole or the immense majority of mankind often starves, but why there are nearly always small sections of men who do so, the majority all the while obtaining its normal nutriment; and the absurd result of confusing these two very different things is seen in the second form which M. de Lavelaye gives his question. “_How is it_,” he asks, “_that those who are held to be the source of power often cannot, even by hard work, provide themselves with the necessaries of life?_” The answer is that the particular groups of workers who, at any given time, happen to be unemployed, {21} were never held to be _the_ source of power by anybody. M. de Lavelaye might as well take one half of the passengers on a Dover packet, and treating them as identical with the British nation at large, ask how it is that those who are held to rule the waves can hardly set foot on a deck without clamouring for the steward’s basin.

And now let us turn to Mr. Kidd himself. The object of his book is to vindicate supernatural religion by exhibiting it as advantageous to its possessors in the social struggle for existence. He endeavours to make good his position by two distinct lines of argument. The first of these is that the social struggle for existence, though it produces progressive communities, and communities fitted to endure, is injurious to the majority of those who at any given time are engaged in it, and benefits only a minority, described by him as “_the power-holding classes_.” This minority, according to his account, could always, if it pleased, as it has pleased in all former ages, defend its position and keep the majority in subjection; but it is now beginning, under the pressure of a religious impulse, to surrender to its inferiors voluntarily advantages which they could never have extorted from it; and in this great fact our hope for the future lies.

Such is one of the two main portions of Mr. Kidd’s message to the world; and here follows the other, which will be found to be fundamentally inconsistent with it. “_Man_,” if he had chosen to do so, Mr. Kidd maintains—and this assertion {22} is repeated by him with the utmost precision and emphasis—could at any period in his history have “_suspended the struggle for existence_” and “_organised society on a socialistic basis_”; and seeing that the struggle for existence, although essential to progress in the long-run, is injurious to the majority of each generation that takes part in it, man, if his chief guide had been reason or self-interest, would have been suspending this struggle constantly for the sake of his own present advantage, and leaving the future to take care of itself. Now, seeing that he does not, as a fact, pursue this obviously reasonable course, it follows that some power opposed to reason must have withheld him; and this power, argues Mr. Kidd, can be nothing else than religion. Here, he says, are the two functions of religion in evolution. It induces man to submit to the hardships of the evolutionary struggle, at the same time it redeems him from them by softening the hearts of the minority.

Now with Mr. Kidd’s views about religion we have nothing to do here. We are concerned only with the extraordinary self-contradiction involved in these his principal lines of argument, and also with the cause which has led to it, and made it possible. At one moment he says that the majority in all progressive communities have been forced to submit to conditions of life that are prejudicial to them, by a powerful minority to whom these conditions are beneficial, and who, if they chose to do so, would still be able to maintain them. At {23} another moment he says that this surprisingly patient majority could have easily “_suspended these conditions_” at any period of its history, and only failed to do so because religion prompted it to forbear. How a contradiction of this kind could have found its way into the reasoning of a really painstaking thinker, and been actually allowed to form the backbone of it, may at first sight seem inexplicable; but it is simply a typical result of the practice we are now considering—that practice, common to all our modern sociologists, of grouping the men they deal with into the largest aggregate possible, and treating mixed classes of men as one single class—“_man_.”

It is easy to see precisely how Mr. Kidd’s mind has worked. In the first part of his argument he divides progressive communities into two sections, which he calls respectively “_the power-holding classes_” or the “_successfuls_,” and the “_excluded classes_” or the “_unsuccessfuls_” and he declares that the latter would naturally desire to suspend the conditions of progress, whilst the former would naturally desire, and are also able to maintain them. But when he pushes his argument farther, and advances to the proposition that if reason had been “_man’s_” sole guide, the conditions of progress would have been suspended over and over again, he is enabled to take this extraordinary step only because his thought and his terminology undergo an unconscious metamorphosis. He forgets his original analysis altogether. He merges the two classes, so sharply contrasted by him, into one. He argues and {24} thinks about them both, under the single category of “_man_”; he builds up his conclusions by joining together the very things which, in arranging his premises, he had so carefully put asunder; and the result of his speculation reduced to its simplest terms is this—that “_man_” could have done, at any period of his history, and if reason had been his sole guide, actually would have done, something that was against the interests of the stronger part of him, and beyond the power of the weaker.

The reader will not find much difficulty in understanding that if sociologists persist in reasoning thus, they are hardly likely to arrive at any conclusion sufficiently definite to guide us in the practical difficulties of life. It may be urged, however, that such language as we have been considering, though used by scientific writers, is intended itself to be rhetorical rather than scientific, or that it betrays the inaccuracy of this or that individual thinker, instead of arising from a fundamental error in method. If any one thinks this, he shall soon be disabused of his opinion. The reader shall now be presented with a brief summary of the method deliberately followed, and of some of the conclusions arrived at by that distinguished thinker who has done more than any one else to impart to sociology the character which it at present possesses; and the error which lies at the bottom of the reasoning we have been just considering shall there be exhibited, systematically exemplified, and explicitly and elaborately defended. It is perhaps {25} hardly necessary to say that the thinker thus referred to is Mr. Herbert Spencer.

We will then follow Mr. Spencer’s reasoning from the beginning, as set forth in his works; and before consulting his monumental _Principles of Sociology_ we will turn to his _Study of Sociology_, a smaller and preparatory treatise, in which the methods adopted by him in his main inquiry are explained. He opens this treatise with declaring that until recent years any scientific treatment of social phenomena was impossible; and it was impossible, he says, for two definite reasons. These were the prevalence of two utterly false theories, both of which precluded the idea that anything like law or order of a calculable kind were prevalent in the social sphere. One of these theories was “_the theocratic theory_,” the other what he calls “_the great-man theory_.”

The theocratic theory is that which explains all social change by reference to the direct and arbitrary interference of a Deity; and if this be adopted, Mr. Spencer has no difficulty in showing that anything like a social science must be necessarily looked on as impossible: for the only thread by which social phenomena are connected will in that case be hidden in the will of an inscrutable Being, which may indeed be made known to us by revelation, but which is not susceptible of being either observed or calculated. This theory, however, in its cruder form, at all events, is, says Mr. Spencer, being fast discarded by everybody—even by the theologically {26} orthodox; and the really important foe which social science has to fight against is the great-man theory, not the theocratic. Accordingly, it is by a criticism of the great-man theory that he introduces us to the theory of society, which is in his estimation true, and which alone presents social phenomena to us as amenable to scientific treatment.

The great-man theory is summed up by him in the following quotation from Carlyle: “_As I take it, universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here._” “_This_,” observes Mr. Spencer, “_not perhaps distinctly formulated, but everywhere implied, is the belief in which nearly all are brought up_”; and it is, he declares, as incompatible as the theocratic theory itself with any belief in the possibility of a social science, or any comprehension of what such a science is; for either the great man is regarded as the miraculous instrument of the Deity, a kind of “_deputy-God_,” in which case we have “_theocracy once removed_”; or else his greatness, though regarded as a natural phenomenon, is regarded as one whose occurrence is so far fortuitous, that a great man of any given kind of greatness might appear in one age or nation just as well as in another; and in this case, if social changes depend on the great man’s actions, these changes will be as fortuitous as the great man’s own appearance, and will as little admit of any scientific calculation.

If, however, the great man is regarded as a {27} natural phenomenon at all, if he is not to be looked upon as a species of incalculable angel, this idea of his fortuitous appearance is, says Mr. Spencer, plainly quite untenable. The great man, unless he differs miraculously from other men, is produced as they are, in accordance with natural laws, and, like them, owes his greatness to his near and remote progenitors, just as a negro owes to his, his facial angle, his blackness, and his woolly hair. “_Who would expect_,” Mr. Spencer asks, “_that a Newton might be born of a Hottentot family, or that a Milton might spring up among the Andamanese_?” The theory, then, which explains social changes by referring them to the great men whose names are connected with their initiation, will, unless it is regarded as a theory of perpetual miracle, be recognised as inadequate, even by those who have hitherto held it, when once they have realised the absurd supposition which it implies. The great man, whatever his seeming influence, is merely the agent of other influences which are behind him. He merely transmits a shock, like a man pushed by a crowd. Even supposing what Mr. Spencer entirely denies to be the case, that he could really “_remake his society_,” his society none the less must have previously made him, and supplied him with those conditions which rendered his career possible; and therefore, of any changes which he may popularly be said to have caused, he is merely “_the proximate initiator_,” not the true cause at all; and “_if_,” says Mr. Spencer, “_there is to be anything {28} like a real explanation of such changes, it must be sought (not in the great man himself), but in the aggregate of social conditions, out of which he and they have arisen_.” Except, perhaps, in the military struggles of primitive savage tribes, “_new institutions, new activities, new ideas, all_,” he says, “_unobtrusively make their appearance, without the aid of any king or legislator; and if you wish to understand the phenomena of social evolution, you will not do it, should you read yourself blind over the biographies of all the great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy, and Napoleon the Treacherous_.” And he points his moral by observing, with a certain philosophic tartness, that there is no surer index of a man’s “_mental sanity_” than the degree of contempt which, as a scientific thinker, he feels for the class of facts which the biography of individuals offers him.

Such, then, being Mr. Spencer’s theory of the way in which social phenomena must be regarded, if we mean to make them the subject of anything like scientific study, let us turn to his _magnum opus_, _The Principles of Sociology_, and see how, and with what results, he puts his theory of study into practice. This immense work, full of encyclopædic detail as it is, contains certain general and comparatively simple conclusions, which can with sufficient clearness be expressed in a short summary, and which are typical of the character and the contents of Mr. Spencer’s sociology as a whole. These general conclusions constitute in {29} outline the entire history of human progress from the dawn of man’s existence to the industrial civilisation of to-day.

The determining factors in all social phenomena are, says Mr. Spencer, primarily of two kinds—the “_external_” and the “_internal_.” The former consist of some of the various physical circumstances in which each community or collection of men is placed; the latter consist of the characters and constitutions of the men themselves. In the history of each community the chief of the external factors are these: the climate of the region which the community occupies; the cultivability of this region; its geological and geographical character; the way in which the fauna and flora natural to it are distributed; and the character of the other communities by which the community in question is surrounded. One of the first generalisations, says Mr. Spencer, to which social science leads is this—that progress can begin only in climates and regions where the production of the necessaries of life is sufficiently easy to leave men leisure and energy available for other work; and all progress did as a fact begin in those parts of the earth where the maintenance of life was easy.

He goes on to show, however, that the initiation of progress does not require only that the men concerned in it should inhabit a region in which the production of necessaries is easy and leaves them abundant leisure. It is equally essential that the men themselves should possess an energetic {30} temperament, which will not suffer them to devote their leisure to idleness, but will make it the starting-point for some further activity. Now this energetic temperament is the special gift of climate. So, to a great extent, is the ease with which necessaries are obtained from the soil; but whilst the fertility of the soil is dependent on the climate being hot, the requisite energetic temperament is dependent on the climate being dry. “_The evidence_,” says Mr. Spencer, “_justifies this inference. . . . On glancing over a general rain-map of the world, there will be seen an almost continuous area, marked ‘rainless district,’ extending across North Africa, Arabia, Persia, and all through Thibet and Mongolia; and from within, or from the borders of this district, have come all the conquering races of the Old World._”

But the full operation of climate on human progress is not intelligible till a further climatic fact is considered. Though in hot and dry climates the production of necessaries is easy, in climates that are hot and moist their production is still easier. It is these last that are really the gardens of the world, and that offered to primeval man the easiest and most attractive homes. The original inhabitants, however, of these favoured localities not only profited by their conditions, but also ultimately suffered from them. Whilst the fertility of their habitat pampered them, its moisture destroyed their energy; and in process of time they were subjugated by other races, who, cradled in drier climates, {31} retained their energy unimpaired. In this natural descent of the stronger races on “_the richer and more varied habitats_” of the weaker, and the consequent super-position of one race over another, we see the origin of slavery, and of all the ancient civilisations that reposed upon it.

We have here the three essential elements to the union of which primarily all human progress has been due: firstly, a race remarkable for its active energy; secondly, the appropriation by this race of some richer habitat than its own; and thirdly, the possession by it of an inferior race, as subjects, who are ready to work for its benefit, and are capable, when coerced and directed by it, of producing wealth indefinitely greater and more varied than they would or could have produced had they been left to their own devices.

And here we are brought to the threshold of a new order of facts. Industrial production, which is the basis of all civilisation, is not, says Mr. Spencer, started on its progressive career by the sudden orders of any one remarkable man, but by the spontaneous action of certain natural causes. It must first be observed that its general character and its progress are always found to depend on the same thing. They depend on the division of labour. This, as Mr. Spencer says, developed in varying degrees, is the salient characteristic of every civilisation in the world. To what, then, is the division of labour, in the first instance, itself due? This is the opening question asked by Adam {32} Smith in his _Wealth of Nations_; and he seems to regard it as one which is more or less mysterious and recondite. The answer which he himself suggests is, that there exists in man “_a natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange_.” The answer given by Mr. Herbert Spencer is a curious illustration of how far, since the days of Adam Smith, social science has progressed.

Mr. Spencer shows us that the origin of the division of labour was no special propensity mysteriously innate in man. Its origin was the natural diversity of the various districts inhabited by the groups of men who originally took part in it. Thus “_some of the Fiji Islands_,” he writes, “_are famous for wooden implements, others for mats and baskets, others for pots and pigments—unlikenesses between the natural products of the islands being the causes. . . . So also . . . the shoes of the ancient Peruvians were made in the provinces where aloes are most abundant, for they were made of the leaves of an aloe called ‘maguey.’ The arms were supplied by the provinces where the materials for making them were most abundant_.” Division of labour, in short, was primarily a localisation of industries, caused by the fact that a number of man’s different needs were each supplied most easily by industry in some different locality.

By means of this explanation of the origin of the division of labour, Mr. Spencer proceeds to explain, in a way which would have astonished Adam Smith still more, other social phenomena of a kind which {33} seem wholly different. He proceeds to show us that though increased production of commodities was the chief direct result of the localisation of industries, certain by-products resulted from it also, whose effects were not less important. These by-products were roads. In the localisation of industries, he says, we have the true origin of road-making. The fact of industries being widely separated in place, required a constant interchange of the various sorts of goods; and the carriage of these goods to and fro between the same points first produced tracks, such as those made by animals, then paths, and at last regular roads. But to facilitate the movement and interchange of goods is not the only, or the highest, though it may be the first, function of roads. Roads facilitate two things of a yet more interesting character—the movement of ideas and the centralisation of authority. They form, in fact, the great physical basis of civilised human government, and of the development of the human intellect.

These examples of Mr. Spencer’s conclusions will be sufficient to show how he studies the phenomena of social progress in so far as they are the result of what he calls “_the external factors_”—climate, locality, and the character of the other races with which each race that is studied happens to have been brought in contact. Let us now turn to what he calls the “_internal factors_,” and consider the phenomena of progress which he explains by reference to these. He helps us here by providing us with a summary of his own, in which he calls the attention {34} of his readers to the most important of his own conclusions arrived at in preceding chapters as to this section of his subject. Having reminded us of how he started with the “_external factors_,” and how he had shown the ways—namely those we have just glanced at—in which they co-operated to produce civilisation, “_our attention_,” he proceeds, “_was then directed to the internal factors_”; and what he had to tell us, he says, about the internal factors was as follows: “_An account was first given of ‘Primitive Man—physical,’ showing that by stature, structure, strength . . . he was ill fitted for overcoming the difficulties in the way of advance. Then examination of ‘The Primitive Man—emotional’ led us to see that his imprudence and his explosiveness, restrained but little by sociality and the altruistic sentiments, rendered him unfit for co-operation. And then, in the chapter on ‘Primitive Man—intellectual,’ we saw that while adapted by its active and acute perceptions to the needs of a wild life, his type of mind was deficient in the faculties required for progress in knowledge._” Then, having referred to the long explanation given by him of the rise of man’s religious belief, Mr. Spencer goes on to say that these primitive human characteristics constitute the internal factors, with which sociology starts, and that the business of this science is to explain the evolution of all those subsequent “_phenomena resulting from their combined actions_.” Of these phenomena the chief, he says, are the following—monogamy as evolved from polygamy, polyandry, {35} and promiscuity; the higher family affections as developed by the monogamous family; and governmental and social organisation as developed in two ways—by the conduct essential to war and the conduct essential to industry. His conclusions, so far as possible, shall be given in his own words.

To begin with marriage: in the earlier stages of society nothing resembling it existed. The nearest approach to a family was the mother and such children as could be kept alive without the help of the father; and as the children grew up, this rudimentary group dissolved. But “_from families thus small and incoherent_” there naturally and inevitably arose, in accordance with the tendency to variation by which the human units are characterised, and which is the basis of all evolutionary selection, “_families of divergent types_”—families founded on unions of which some were more lasting than others, of which some were unions between one mother and many fathers, some between one father and many mothers, and some between one father and one mother. This last-named type of union, and the family life resulting from it, had many practical advantages, such as the production of closer bonds between the several members of the family, and consequently the practice between them of more efficient co-operation. Accordingly, no sooner did monogamous groups appear than they exhibited a tendency to survive in the social struggle for existence; and monogamy affords, with the affections that have grown up under its shelter, the type {36} of marriage and family that prevails amongst the most advanced races of to-day.

Next, as to the phenomena of governmental and social organisations: these arise only with the formation of groups larger than the family—of groups which we call communities, or nations, or social aggregates; and we have to consider how these larger groups rose out of the aggregation of the smaller. The process is explained, says Mr. Spencer, by the same few “_internal factors_.” The nation sprang from the family by the following inevitable stages. Let us take any family group, sufficiently coherent to live together as a single household, and supporting itself on the produce of the land that surrounds its dwelling. Whilst this group is small, the acreage will be small also, which, as ploughland, hunting-ground, or pasture, is required to supply its wants; and each member of the group can easily reach his work, starting from the common home, and coming back to it in the evening. But as children grow, and children and great-grandchildren multiply, the land required by the household correspondingly grows in extent, and at last becomes so large that the whole of it cannot be utilised by a body of men living on the same spot. Hence, as Mr. Spencer expresses it, “_a fission of the group is necessitated_”; and this process is repeated till there are a multitude of groups instead of one. These groups, says Mr. Spencer, constitute the raw material of the nation. The nation is formed “_by the recompounding of these units once again_.” {37}

And how is this process of “_recompounding_” accomplished? Mr. Spencer answers it is accomplished by one means only, and that is the co-operation forced on them by war for some common interest. Other tribes threaten to attack their territory, or they are desirous of appropriating the territory of other tribes. Separately they are powerless. The only course open to them is to band themselves together and submit themselves to a common leader. In cases where such wars are short, as observation of savage tribes shows us, the rudimentary nation with its rudimentary discipline dissolves and disappears as soon as the wars are over; but when the state of warfare is prolonged by the rivalry of other societies, the military leadership develops into a permanent centralised authority; and from this military government, with its “_coercive institutions_,” national existence and all forms of government spring.

And here Mr. Spencer’s argument takes a new departure and carries us on to the point where we shall be compelled to leave it. As governments and civilisations have advanced, he says, they have taken two forms—that in which the original military element still continues to preponderate, and that in which the military element becomes gradually subordinate to the industrial. “_The former_,” he says, “_in its developed form is organised on the principle of compulsory organisation, whilst the latter in its developed form is organised on the principle of voluntary co-operation_”; and the latter {38} amongst civilised nations always tends to supersede the former, in precise proportion as war tends to become less common. The industrial form, it may be observed, corresponds in a general way to the kinds of government commonly called “democratic”; but its emergence, says Mr. Spencer, has its most important effects in the sphere not of politics, but of economic production. Originally the conditions of industry were regulated by the dictates of the military and aristocratic ruler, as they are to-day in some savage communities, and as they partially were in France till towards the close of the last century. Under such a _régime_ the very “_right to labour_” itself is regarded as belonging to the King; and he sells it to his subjects on such terms as he may choose. But as the military element in the government declines, not only does the character of governmental legislation change, but industry frees itself from governmental influence altogether. No king any longer arranges markets, fixes wages or prices, and settles what kind and quantities of commodities shall be produced. Industry becomes, as Mr. Spencer says, “_substantially independent_.” He does not mean, however, that it needs no regulation. It needs as much as ever a constant and nice adjustment of the things produced to the current requirements of the community; but this adjustment is now secured not by the interference of a political ruler, but by a system which has spontaneously developed itself amongst the trading and manufacturing classes. It is a system, says Mr. Spencer, {39} which we may call “_internuncial, through which the various structures_ (i.e. _manufacturing firms, etc._) _receive from one another stimuli or checks, caused by rises and falls in the consumption of their respective products. . . . Markets in the chief towns show dealers the varying relations of supply and demand; and the reports of these transactions, diffused by the press, prompt each locality to increase or decrease of its special functions. . . . That is to say, there has arisen, in addition to the political regulating system, an industrial regulating system, which carries on its co-ordinating function independently—a separate plexus of connected ganglia._”

We have now looked at social evolution, as the product of both those sets of causes—the “_external factors_” and the “_internal_”—by which Mr. Spencer explains it, and have followed it, under both aspects, from the earliest beginnings of progress to the dawn and development of civilisation, such as history knows it. Our account of Mr. Spencer’s theory of the ascent of man and society is necessarily very incomplete; but the various conclusions mentioned in it may be said to be exhaustively typical of the conclusions of social science as Mr. Spencer conceives of it.

And now let us consider what the nature of those conclusions is. We shall find that they are, one and all of them, conclusions with regard to aggregates. All the phenomena with which they deal are phenomena not of individuals, not of different classes, but of masses of men, communities, races, nations, {40} the units of which are regarded as being virtually so similar, that what is true of one is virtually true of all. This similarity certainly is not imputed to all mankind. Men are recognised as having been different in one epoch from what they become in another, and one race and the inhabitants of one climate as being different from other men differently born and circumstanced. The primitive millions who could hardly walk upright, and whose sexual relations resembled those of the animals, are distinguished from their erect successors who married and lived in families; and the strong and energetic races are distinguished from their weaker contemporaries. But each of these aggregates is regarded as a unit in itself. The conquering race which has grown vigorous in dry regions, and the inferior race enslaved by it, which has lost its strength in moist regions, are contrasted sharply with each other; but neither is made the subject of any internal division, nor treated as though the units composing it were not virtually similar. Mr. Spencer of course admits (for this is one of the fundamental parts of his philosophy) that these wholes, these aggregates, progress through a constant differentiation of their parts, different functions being performed by an increasing number of groups; but the units who compose these groups, and whom he calls the “_internal factors_,” are regarded by him as being congenitally each a counterpart of the others; and their different functions and their different acquired aptitudes are {41} regarded as the result of different external circumstances which press into different moulds one and the same material. Thus when the single group from which the nation originally springs undergoes, as it becomes more numerous, what Mr. Spencer calls the process of “fission,” and spreads itself in search of food over an ever-extending area, new groups separate not because they have different appetites, but because, having the same appetites, they must satisfy them in different places by the exercise of the same faculties. Division of labour, as we have seen, he explains in the same way; and not its origin only, but its latest and most elaborate developments. Of the manufacturing businesses of to-day, for instance, with their promoters, managers, capitalists, and multitudes of various workmen, not only is each business treated by him as a single unit, but each of these units, or ganglia, is a unit which differs from the rest for accidental reasons only, as a gardener who happens to be digging may differ from a gardener who happens to be raking a walk; and he describes the whole as “_a plexus of ganglia connected by an internuncial system_.”

The use of this last phrase, and the physiological analogy suggested by it, illustrate yet more clearly the fact here insisted on—namely, that for Mr. Spencer the sociologist’s true unit of interest is the social aggregate, as a whole, to the exclusion of the individual or of the class. The latter are merely the ganglia, or veins, or nerves, which are nothing {42} except as connected with the organism to which they belong. Each social aggregate, in fact, is a single animal; and whatever is achieved or suffered by any class or individual within it, is really achieved or suffered, in the eye of the Spencerian sociologist, not by the class or the individual, but by that corporate animal, the community.

Now a study of these phenomena of aggregates is, as has been said already, valuable for speculative purposes. It has led those who have pursued it to a variety of important conclusions which have largely revolutionised our conception of human history, and of the conditions that engender civilisations or else preclude their possibility. It has shown us human life as a great unfolding drama, but it has hardly given us any help at all in dealing with the practical problems that belong to our own day; and the reason of this, which has already been stated generally, must be apparent the moment we consider what these practical problems are. Their general character is sufficiently indicated by such familiar antitheses as aristocracy and democracy, the few and the many, rich and poor, capital and labour, or, as Mr. Kidd puts it, collectivists and the opponents of collectivism. In other words, the social problems of to-day—like the social problems of most other periods—are problems which arise out of the differences between class and class. That is to say, they depend on, and derive their sole meaning from phenomena which are not referable to the social aggregate as a whole, but which {43} are manifested severally by distinct and independent parts. The social aggregate, when regarded from this standpoint, is no longer a single animal, whose pains or pleasures reveal themselves in a single consciousness. It is a litter of animals, each of which has a consciousness of its own, and, together with its consciousness, interests of its own also, which are opposed to those of the others, instead of coinciding with them.

And now let us consider more closely out of what this opposition arises. Mr. Spencer, as we have seen, in our rapid survey of his arguments, lays great stress on the fact that as men rise into aggregates, they do so only on condition of submitting themselves to governors, military in the first place, and at a later stage