civil. The truth, however, which he thus elaborates, whatever may

be its speculative importance, fails to have any bearing on any practical problem, because it is not a truth about which there has ever been any practical disagreement. Aristocrat, democrat, and socialist all agree that there must be orderly government of some sort, and official governors to administer to it. The point at issue between them is not whether some must govern and others submit to be governed, but how the individuals who perform the work of government shall be chosen, and what, apart from their official superiority and authority, shall be their position with regard to the rest of the community. Why should they enjoy any special social advantage? Or if they are to enjoy it, why should they be usually {44} drawn from a small privileged class, and not from the masses of the community, sinking to the general level again when their tenure of office terminates? Such are the questions proposed by one party; whilst the other party replies by contending that the limited class in question can alone supply governors of the required talents and character. Of this clash of opinions and interests, which is as old as civilisation itself, though in each age it assumes some different form, Mr. Spencer’s social science necessarily takes no cognisance, because the parts of each social aggregate have for him no separate existence.

The same criticism applies to his treatment of economic production. He explains, as we have seen, the origin of the division of labour, showing how “_unlikeness between the products of different districts_” inevitably led to “_the localisation of industries_,” turning one set of savages—to use his own example—into potters, another into makers of baskets. But here again we have a truth which, whatever its speculative interest, has no bearing on any practical problem; for no one denies that division of labour is necessary, nor do any of the difficulties of to-day turn upon its remote origin. Socialists and individualists are alike ready to admit that different men must follow different industries. The point at issue is why, within the limits of the same industry, different men pursue it on different levels, some being masters and capitalists, some being labourers and subordinates. Here, just as in the sphere of political and military government, {45} we have one class defending its existing position and privileges, and another class attacking or questioning them; and it is out of circumstances such as these, thus briefly indicated, that the practical social problems of the present day arise.

Now the question at the bottom of these can be reduced to very simple terms. If all members of the community were content with existing social arrangements, it is needless to say there would be no social problems at all. Such problems are due entirely to the existence of persons who are not contented, and who desire that certain of these arrangements should be changed. It will be seen, accordingly, that the great and fundamental question which, as a practical guide, the sociologist is asked to answer, is whether or how far the changes desired by the discontented are practicable; and the first step towards ascertaining how far the arrangements in question can be turned into something which they are not, is to ascertain precisely how they have come to be what they are.

But this way of putting the case is still not sufficiently definite. Mr. Spencer himself has put it in somewhat similar language; and yet in doing so he has missed the heart of the problem. Mr. Spencer’s speculative gaze, travelling over the past and present, sees one generation melting like a cloud into another, and takes no note of the individuals that compose each. The practical sociologist must adopt a very different method of observation. He must remember that practical problems arise {46} and become practical, not in virtue of their relation to mankind generally, but in virtue of their relation to each particular generation that is confronted by them; and a particular generation in any given community, and the different classes into which the community is divided, are made up respectively of particular men and women. In asking, therefore, how the social arrangements we have been considering have come to be what they are, we must not ask in vague and general terms why a portion of the social aggregate occupies a position which contents it, and another portion a position which exasperates it; but we must consider the individuals of which each portion, at any given time, is composed, and begin the inquiry at the point at which they begin it themselves. “Why am I—Tom or Dick or Harry—included in that portion of the aggregate which occupies an inferior position? And why are these men—William or James or George—more fortunate than I, and included in the portion of the aggregate which occupies a superior position?” To this question there are but three possible answers. The inferior position of Tom or Dick or Harry is due to his differing from William or James or George in external circumstances, which theoretically, at all events, might all be equalised—such, for example, as his education; or it is due to his differing from them in certain congenital faculties, with respect to which men can never be made equal—as, for example, in his brain power or his physical energy; or it is due to his differing {47} from them in external circumstances which have arisen naturally from differences in the congenital faculties of others, and which, if they could be equalised at all, could never be equalised with anything like completeness—such, for example, as the possession by William and James and George of leisured and intellectual homes secured for them by gifted fathers, and the want of such homes and fathers on the part of Tom and Dick and Harry.

The first question, accordingly, which we have to ask is as follows. Taking Tom or Dick or Harry as a type of those classes who happen to occupy an inferior position in the aggregate, and comparing him with others who happen to occupy superior positions, we have to ask how far he is condemned to the inferior position which he resents by such external circumstances as conceivably could be equalised by legislation, and how far by some congenital inferiority of his own, or circumstances naturally arising out of the congenital inferiority of others. Or we may put the question conversely, and ask how William and George and James have come to occupy the positions which Tom, Dick, and Harry envy. Do they owe their positions solely to unjust and arbitrary legislation, which a genuinely democratic parliament could and would undo? Or to exceptional abilities of their own, of which no parliament could deprive them? Or to advantages secured for them by the exceptional abilities of their fathers, which no parliament could interfere with, or, at all events, could abolish, without {48} entering on a conflict with the instincts of human nature, and interfering with the springs of all human action?

Now that external circumstances of a kind, easily alterable by legislation, have been, and often are, responsible for many social inequalities, is a fact which we may here assume without particularly discussing it. The inquiry, therefore, narrows itself still further, and resolves itself into this: Do the congenital superiorities or inferiorities of the persons, or of parents of the persons, who at any given time are occupying in the social aggregate superior and inferior positions, play any part in the production of these social inequalities at all?

This question must plainly be the practical sociologist’s starting-point; for if social inequalities are due wholly to alterable and artificial circumstances, social conditions are capable, theoretically, at all events, of being equalised; but if, on the other hand, inferior and superior positions are partly, at all events, the result of the congenital inequalities of individuals, over which no legislation can exercise the least control, then a natural limit is set to the possibilities of the levelling process; and it is the business of the sociologist, if he aspires to be a practical guide, to begin with ascertaining what these limits are. Are, then, the congenital inequalities of men a factor in the production of social inequalities, or are they not?

Now to many people it will seem that even to ask this question is superfluous. They will regard {49} it as a matter patent to common sense that men’s congenital inequalities are to a large extent the cause, in every society, of such social inequalities as exist in it; and they will possibly say that it is a mere waste of time to discuss a truth which is so self-evident. It happens, however, that the more obvious it seems to be to common sense, the more necessary it is for us to begin our present inquiry with insisting on it; and the reason is that, in spite of its being so obvious, the whole school of contemporary sociologists, with Mr. Spencer as their head, base their whole method of sociological study on a denial of it. By their method of dealing with social aggregates only, they deny not only the influence, but even the existence of congenital inequalities, and endeavour to explain them away as an illusion of the unscientific mind. They admit, indeed, as our quotation from Mr. Spencer showed, that the primitive man was congenitally different from man in later ages. They admit that the individuals reared in a dry climate, who formed the conquering aggregates, were congenitally different from the individuals reared in a moist climate, who formed the enslaved aggregates; but they absolutely refuse to take any account whatever of the congenital inequalities by which individuals within the same aggregate are differentiated.

In order to show the reader that such is literally the case, we need not rely merely on such inferences as have just been drawn from the manner in which Mr. Spencer applies his method, and from the {50} general character of his conclusions. We have the direct evidence of his own categorical statements. Let us turn again to the criticism with which, as we have already seen, he prefaces his whole series of sociological writings, and which may be taken as his fundamental profession of faith—his criticism, namely, of what he calls “_the great-man theory_,” his rejection of it as being a theory which would render all social science impossible, and his enunciation of the theory which he contends must take its place. It may seem to some readers that his rejection of the great man as a _vera causa_ which will explain social phenomena amounts to no more than a rejection of that exaggerated view of history which expresses itself in the works of writers such as Froude and Carlyle, and which vaguely attributes all the progressive changes of humanity to the personality of rulers, of political and military autocrats—such as Henry VIII., Cromwell, and Frederick the Great of Prussia. And indeed, to judge by Mr. Spencer’s language, it is this exaggerated view which has been most frequently present in his mind, as we may see by referring to the passage already quoted, which concludes his demonstration that the “_great-man theory_” is false. With the sole exception, he says, of the military struggles of primitive tribes, “_new activities, new institutions, new ideas, 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 {51} blind over the biographies of all the great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Napoleon the Treacherous._”

But Mr. Spencer, in rejecting the great “_ruler and legislator_” as a factor in social evolution unworthy of the attention of the sociologist, is really rejecting a great deal else besides. He is really rejecting every inequality in capacity by which a certain number of men are differentiated from, and raised above others. In order to show that such is the case, we will avail ourselves of his own words. We will, then, start with one casual remark out of many, in which Mr. Spencer, forgetting his own theories, slips into a method of observation truer than the one he advocates. “_Men_,” he writes in his _Study of Sociology_, “_who have aptitudes for accumulating observations are rarely men given to generalising; whilst men given to generalising are commonly men who, mostly using the observation of others, observe for themselves less from love of particular facts than from the desire to put such facts to use._” Nothing can be clearer than the distinction here drawn. It is one of great importance in the elucidation of many social problems; and it deals not with the likeness, but with a congenital difference, which exists between men belonging to the same social aggregate. But now let us compare this with another passage, in which Mr. Spencer, returning again to his theory, explains how members of the same aggregate are to be treated by any sociologist who would claim to be a man of science. {52} “_Amongst societies of all orders and sizes,” he writes, “sociology has to ascertain what traits there are in common, determined by the common traits of human beings; what less general traits, distinguishing certain groups of societies, result from traits distinguishing certain races of men; and what peculiarities in each society are traceable to the peculiarities of its members._” This is clumsily expressed; but its meaning, which is quite obvious, may be seen by taking, as a typical society, that of England. The sociologist, in explaining English society, will have to consider, according to Mr. Spencer, first, what traits Englishmen have in virtue of being human creatures; secondly, he will have to consider what traits they have in virtue of being Europeans, not Orientals; and, thirdly, he will have to consider what traits they have in virtue of being Englishmen, not Frenchmen or Germans.

The reader will at once perceive the contrast between the spirit of these two passages. In the former Mr. Spencer notes, with great penetration and accuracy, a most important point of difference between two sets of men belonging to the same society. In the latter he deals with societies as single bodies, the members of which possess no personal traits whatever, except such as they all possess alike; and all the traits in which they differ from one another, such as the one just alluded to, of necessity disappear from the field of vision altogether. Should any doubt as to the matter still remain in the reader’s mind, it will be dispelled by {53} the quotation of one further passage. “_A true social aggregate_,” he says [“_as distinct from a mere large family_], _is a union of like individuals, independent of one another in parentage, and approximately equal in capacities_.”

Here is the case stated with the most absolute clearness. All congenital inequalities, as was said just now, between the various individuals who make up the aggregate are ignored; and it is upon this hypothesis of approximately equal units, acted on by different external circumstances, that he attempts to build up his whole system of sociology. He is, indeed, little as he himself may suspect it, reproducing in another form the error of Karl Marx and the earlier of the so-called “scientific socialists,” who maintained that all wealth was the product of common or average labour, measured by time, and that hour for hour any one labourer necessarily produced as much wealth as another. The socialists of to-day are already beginning to see that this monstrous, though ingeniously advocated, doctrine is untenable as the foundation of economics; and yet, strange to say, a doctrine strictly equivalent to it forms the accepted foundation of contemporary social science. That science starts with the hypothesis of approximately equal units, and ignores the congenital differences between the individuals who compose the aggregate. We shall find it to be ultimately from differences of this kind that all the practical problems which beset civilisation spring, and that the inability of the modern {54} sociologists, complained of by Mr. Kidd and Professor Marshall, to throw on these problems any definite light is simply the natural and inevitable result of excluding the differences in question altogether from their scientific purview.

We will, in the next chapter, consider the whole range of arguments used by Mr. Spencer and others in justification of this error.

{55}