Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/624

606 are in no degree, or at all events in quite an insignificant degree, the consequence of efforts put forth by those who compose it to improve their social condition, but mainly, if not exclusively, the result of actions undertaken with quite other ends in view. A favorite illustration, accordingly, with Mr. Spencer of the process by which society undergoes development is the growth of language:

And this is given as a typical specimen of the "workings-out of sociological processes"—of the marvelous results "indirectly and unintentionally achieved by the coöperation of men who are severally pursuing their private ends." The numerous and complex arrangements which, under the stimulus of individual self-interest, have arisen in this and other civilized countries for the distribution of wealth, and the growth from small beginnings of our vast system of credit and banking, serve as an illustration of the same principle. "When it is questioned," he remarks, "whether the spontaneous cooperation of men in pursuit of personal benefits will adequately work out the general good, we may get guidance for judgment by comparing the results;" and he proceeds to give examples which could only lead to an affirmative conclusion.

The nature of social development is thus, according to Mr. Spencer, essentially identical with that of development in the animal kingdom; and it is a necessary corollary from this that the course of both should lie along parallel lines. Thus, when we find the individual animal growing from birth to maturity, developing its structure and functions according to a regular scheme; and, similarly, the several species of animals constantly tending, under the influence of the struggle for existence, to adapt themselves more and more perfectly to the conditions of their environment, and so to rise into a higher and higher order of being; when we find all this, and perceive that the processes by which society is developed are exactly analogous, the conclusion seems inevitable that so it must be also with social evolution—that here, too, progress and improvement arise by way of spontaneous growth in the natural order of things, and that consequently efforts to advance the common interest are superfluous—much more likely, in effect, to impede and disturb than to assist the harmonious order of human development.

Such, so far as I have been able to extract his meaning from his