Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/260

248 chapters to this present volume, and that, in his opinion, 'it may be some time—possibly months—before he is able to resume work at his ordinary, slow rate.' Still, this regret should not unduly depress us, seeing that we have now in our hands a bulky volume of over 700 pages, in which the author lays down the principal foundation-lines of his scientific structure. Most of Mr. Spencer's admirers, perhaps, have looked forward to the doctrine of social evolution as the most valuable and interesting result of the author's labors. It is quite natural, indeed, that many, to whom the unfamiliar conceptions of biology and the abstruse subtilties of psychology are somewhat repellent, should look forward to the promised exposition of sociology, with its more familiar ideas of industry, religion, government, etc. To this it may be added that, just now, there is a large concentration of scientific interest on all historical problems, and many who were indifferent to the first principles of matter and motion will look with eagerness into the present volume for its theory of social progress. It may at once be said that all who have anticipated this work will find in it ample intellectual material of the most interesting sort. The author here takes us far enough to enable us to see how his previous volumes have been leading up to a clear and scientific conception of society and its laws—far enough, too, for us to discern the revolution which the theory of evolution is to effect in many current notions respecting social phenomena. . ..

"Mr. Spencer's theory of primitive ideas seems to us so much the most important element in the volume that we have dwelt on it at length, to the neglect of the other parts. Of what remains, only a very few words can be said. After completing his account of the data of psychology, the author passes to his Second Part, which has for its theme 'The Inductions of Sociology.' Under this head Mr. Spencer discusses the nature of society as an organism, the ideas of social growth, social structures and functions, and the division of the social organism into three systems of organs, namely, the sustaining, tlie distributing, and the regulating, answering to those of digestion, circulation, and nervous coördination, in the individual organism. The analogy between a society and a bodily organism is worked out with remarkable ingenuity, according to the sketch given by the author in the popular introduction to sociology already alluded to. Mr. Spencer succeeds, we think, in establishing the closeness of this similarity, and, what is more, in showing how it arises from the fundamental similarity of the processes of evolution underlying individual and social growth. Thus, for example, the curious analogy in the distributing systems of the two kinds of organism between the up and down lines of railway and the veins and arteries, is seen, on reflection, to be something more than an accidental coincidence. At the same time, Mr. Spencer appears to us to have become more clearly aware of the limits of this analogy, and of the circumstances which mark off social aggregates from single, living organisms.

"After thus determining the data and leading principles of sociology, Mr. Spencer proceeds, in his Third Part, to deal with social phenomena themselves—that is to say, the movements or processes which make up social development. He begins with the domestic relations, the account of which brings the volume to a close. We have no space left to follow the author in his interesting review of the gradual development of monogamy out of the primitive relations of the sexes. His views on the nature of marriage without the tribe and marriage within the tribe (exogamy and endogamy), of polyandry, and polygamy, and of their relations of coexistence and sequence, rest in part on the researches and conclusions of writers like Mr. McLennan, while in some important particulars they deviate from this writer's theories. It strikes us that Mr. Spencer here exhibits an increased power of seizing the many influences which contribute to a complex result. The highly-interesting character of this part, as of the whole volume, makes us look forward to the continuation of this work on 'Sociology,' which, we strongly suspect, to judge by the little progress already made, is going to be much more voluminous than the works on 'Biology' and 'Psychology.' May the author's health speedily allow him to carry forward his great enterprise!"