Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/874

854 age in pursuing comprehensive sociological inquiries.

So large and laborious was the undertaking upon which he engaged and so difficult was it to command capable assistance in carrying out the project, so heavy the expense of the undertaking, both in securing the protracted services of capable assistants and in the publication of the works, which Mr. Spencer had to meet alone, and so intensely was Mr. Spencer himself absorbed in the execution of his elaborate system of philosophy, that the "Descriptive Sociology" proceeded slowly, and was published irregularly as the parts were successively brought to completion. They therefore appear in an order that was determined by the circumstances of their preparation. Of all the savage races upon the globe, the very lowest are the Negritto tribes and the Malayo-Polynesian races. These are dealt with in Part III of the cyclopædia. Seventeen examples are given as types of the lowest races, viz.: the Fuegians, Andamanese, Veddahs, Australians, Tasmanians, New Caledonians, New Guinea people, Fijians, Sandwich Islanders, Tahitians, Tongans, Samoans, New Zealanders, Dyaks, Javans, Sumatrans, Malagasy. Part IV is devoted to thirteen of the representative African races; Part V to fifteen of the Asiatic races; and Part VI to seventeen of the principal American races. These four parts exemplify the undeveloped, or the but rudely developed forms of social life which are to be taken as starting-points in studying the development of mankind. Part II is devoted to more advanced forms of society, the imperfect civilizations of which are decayed or extinct, and it embraces the Mexicans, the Central Americans, the Chibchas, and the Peruvians. This line of study is also still further pursued in Part VII, which delineates the social life and the form of civilization attained by the Hebrews and the Phœnicians. Part I and Part VIII, the first and last issued, are devoted to the sociological history of the English and the French as old historic and still flourishing civilizations. There is a more or less continuous social history of England and France, running through some two thousand years and culminating in their present high development, which makes them the best examples for tracing the slow-working agencies by which the highest social conditions have been attained. The sociology of the French is the most elaborately worked out of all, the part devoted to it being so large as to rank it as a double number.

It was Mr. Spencer's original intention to include some other societies in his project, but, as its execution threatened to become pecuniarily ruinous, he closed the undertaking with Part VIII. But the scholarship of the world owes him its best thanks for having carried this great, original, and invaluable work to such satisfactory completion as it has actually attained. The history of the advance of knowledge hardly furnishes a parallel to this enterprise. Mr. Spencer foresaw many years ago that the establishment upon a sound and permanent basis of the highest and most important of all the sciences, that of human society, would depend upon such a collection and systematization of its immense data as had never been attempted or even dreamed of by inquirers upon social subjects. All science rests upon the foundation of observed facts, and these facts must be as extensive as the generalizations to be built upon them. And, because such data were neither at hand nor forthcoming, nor deemed possible of procurement, it was held that sociology could never become a legitimate and well-grounded science. It might be a region of speculation, but it could have no valid inductive basis. Mr. Spencer perceived that there was no reason in the necessity of things for this hopeless conclusion, and he accordingly undertook the preliminary work of preparing a solid foundation for the new science. Nor is it too much to say that the issue of the first part of the "Descriptive Sociology" settled the question. So eminent an authority upon this class of subjects as Mr. E. B. Tylor, author of the "Early History of Mankind," remarked upon its appearance, "It is a sufficient answer to all disbelievers in the possibility of a science of history."

That this great work should not have been appreciated by the age to which it was offered is not surprising. The sciences that have been long established are still struggling for educational recognition, and no form of intellectual labor is so ill appreciated in these times and especially in this country as that which aims at the extension