Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/637

Rh, one is classified as low and stationary, and another as decaying or retrograding; and that the social career of the declining and dead civilizations, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mexican, and Peruvian, are made the subjects of investigation, as well as the advancing communities of the present time. Prof. Cairnes declares that Mr. Spencer has "completely ignored" the phenomena of social retrogression, when within a year Mr. Spencer has issued the first volume ever printed on the sociological history of a group of decayed communities.

Nor is this all; there is even less excuse than now appears for the absurd misrepresentations in Prof. Cairnes's article. Mr. Spencer has commenced the "Principles of Sociology," and two numbers of that work had appeared before Prof. Cairnes published his criticism. Again we say, that he was bound to have consulted these, or have held his peace in regard to Mr. Spencer's doctrines. The following quotation from the part last issued, and which was printed two months before the Fortnightly article, will settle the question, and render any further notice of the professor's argument unnecessary: