THE ATTEMPT TO MERGE THE GREAT MAN IN THE AGGREGATE
Let us take any book we please, by any modern writer, who is
attempting to deal with any social subject scientifically, and
whenever he is calling attention to the great intellectual
triumphs which have caused the progress of civilisation, or to
any developments of human nature which have marked it, we shall
find that these triumphs or developments are always attributed
indiscriminately to the largest mass of people with whom they have
any connection—sometimes to “the nation,” sometimes to “the age,”
sometimes to “the race,” and more frequently still to “man.”
Reference has been made already to Mr. Kidd’s work on _Social
Evolution_, which, on its publication, attained an extraordinary
popularity, and which, whatever its value otherwise, is interesting
as a type of contemporary sociological reasoning. It is peculiarly
interesting as illustrating the point which we are now discussing.
Most of Mr. Kidd’s reasoning, especially in the crucial parts of
it, is not {18} only conducted, but is actually represented by a
terminology which refers everything to “the race,” “the age,” or
“man.” And it would be hard to find better examples in the works of
any other writer of the condition of thought underlying the use of
these phrases, and of the extraordinary consequences to which it
leads.
Three examples will be enough. The two first shall be from two other
writers, whom Mr. Kidd quotes with admiration; the third shall be
from himself. We will begin with the following passage, taken from
a contemporary economist, which Mr. Kidd singles out for emphatic
approval as “_a very effective statement_” of one of the truths of
social science.
“_Man_,” so the passage runs, “_is the only animal whose wants can
never be satisfied. The wants of every other living thing are uniform
and fixed. The ox of to-day aspires no more than did the ox when man
first yoked him. . . . But not so with man [himself]. No sooner are
his animal wants satisfied, than new wants arise. . . . [He] has but
set his feet on the first step of an infinite progression. . . .
It is not merely his hunger, but taste, that seeks gratification
in food. . . . Lucullus will sup with Lucullus; twelve boars roast
on spits that Antony’s mouthful of meat may be done to a turn;
every kingdom is ransacked to add to Cleopatra’s charms; and marble
colonnades, and hanging gardens, and pyramids that rival the hills,
arise._”
This passage is taken from Mr. Henry George. {19} Our second example
shall be a passage which Mr. Kidd has borrowed from a far more
educated thinker—M. Emile de Lavelaye. Mr. Kidd quotes M. de Lavelaye
as saying that the eighteenth century brought the following message
to “_man_.” “_Thou shalt cease to be the slave of the nobles and
despots who oppress thee. Thou shalt be free and sovereign._” But the
realisation of the promise thus given has, in the present century, he
goes on to say, confronted us with this strange problem, “_How is it
that the Sovereign often starves? How is it that those who are held
to be the source of power often cannot, even by hard work, provide
themselves with the necessaries of life?_”
Now all these passages, if we consider them carefully, will be seen
to consist of statements, every one of which is false to fact. To say
that man’s wants are less stationary than those of the ox is not even
rhetorically true, unless we mean by “_man_” certain special races
of men; whilst the statements that follow are not true, rhetorically
or otherwise, of any race at all, but only of scattered individuals.
A really fine and discriminating taste in food is, as every epicure
knows, rare even amongst the luxurious classes. Antony and Lucullus
are types of what is not the rule, but the exception. So too are the
individuals who either desire hanging gardens, or could design them;
and more exceptional still are the individuals whose personal pride
and power either desire or can secure the erection of pyramids for
their tombs. {20}
In M. de Lavelaye’s utterances there is an analogous misstatement
and misconception of every fact with which he deals. The promises
of political democracy, as he describes them, were never addressed
to “_man_,” nor ever professed to be. The whole point of them was
that they were addressed to certain classes of men only; and that,
as addressed to other classes, they were not promises, but threats.
But a still graver confusion arises when the “_Sovereign_” is spoken
of as starving. If by the “_Sovereign_” M. de Lavelaye really means
“_Man_” as a whole, it is perfectly obvious that the “_Sovereign_”
never starves. The statement is equally untrue if the Sovereign is
taken to mean not man as a whole, but the immense majority of men;
and to ask why the Sovereign often does something which it never
does, is not to formulate an actual problem loosely, but to convert
an actual problem into one that is quite imaginary. The actual
problem is not why the whole or the immense majority of mankind often
starves, but why there are nearly always small sections of men who
do so, the majority all the while obtaining its normal nutriment;
and the absurd result of confusing these two very different things
is seen in the second form which M. de Lavelaye gives his question.
“_How is it_,” he asks, “_that those who are held to be the source of
power often cannot, even by hard work, provide themselves with the
necessaries of life?_” The answer is that the particular groups of
workers who, at any given time, happen to be unemployed, {21} were
never held to be _the_ source of power by anybody. M. de Lavelaye
might as well take one half of the passengers on a Dover packet, and
treating them as identical with the British nation at large, ask how
it is that those who are held to rule the waves can hardly set foot
on a deck without clamouring for the steward’s basin.
And now let us turn to Mr. Kidd himself. The object of his book is to
vindicate supernatural religion by exhibiting it as advantageous to
its possessors in the social struggle for existence. He endeavours
to make good his position by two distinct lines of argument. The
first of these is that the social struggle for existence, though
it produces progressive communities, and communities fitted to
endure, is injurious to the majority of those who at any given time
are engaged in it, and benefits only a minority, described by him
as “_the power-holding classes_.” This minority, according to his
account, could always, if it pleased, as it has pleased in all former
ages, defend its position and keep the majority in subjection; but
it is now beginning, under the pressure of a religious impulse, to
surrender to its inferiors voluntarily advantages which they could
never have extorted from it; and in this great fact our hope for the
future lies.
Such is one of the two main portions of Mr. Kidd’s message to
the world; and here follows the other, which will be found to be
fundamentally inconsistent with it. “_Man_,” if he had chosen to do
so, Mr. Kidd maintains—and this assertion {22} is repeated by him
with the utmost precision and emphasis—could at any period in his
history have “_suspended the struggle for existence_” and “_organised
society on a socialistic basis_”; and seeing that the struggle
for existence, although essential to progress in the long-run, is
injurious to the majority of each generation that takes part in it,
man, if his chief guide had been reason or self-interest, would have
been suspending this struggle constantly for the sake of his own
present advantage, and leaving the future to take care of itself.
Now, seeing that he does not, as a fact, pursue this obviously
reasonable course, it follows that some power opposed to reason must
have withheld him; and this power, argues Mr. Kidd, can be nothing
else than religion. Here, he says, are the two functions of religion
in evolution. It induces man to submit to the hardships of the
evolutionary struggle, at the same time it redeems him from them by
softening the hearts of the minority.
Now with Mr. Kidd’s views about religion we have nothing to do here.
We are concerned only with the extraordinary self-contradiction
involved in these his principal lines of argument, and also with
the cause which has led to it, and made it possible. At one moment
he says that the majority in all progressive communities have been
forced to submit to conditions of life that are prejudicial to them,
by a powerful minority to whom these conditions are beneficial, and
who, if they chose to do so, would still be able to maintain them. At
{23} another moment he says that this surprisingly patient majority
could have easily “_suspended these conditions_” at any period of
its history, and only failed to do so because religion prompted it
to forbear. How a contradiction of this kind could have found its
way into the reasoning of a really painstaking thinker, and been
actually allowed to form the backbone of it, may at first sight seem
inexplicable; but it is simply a typical result of the practice
we are now considering—that practice, common to all our modern
sociologists, of grouping the men they deal with into the largest
aggregate possible, and treating mixed classes of men as one single
class—“_man_.”
It is easy to see precisely how Mr. Kidd’s mind has worked. In
the first part of his argument he divides progressive communities
into two sections, which he calls respectively “_the power-holding
classes_” or the “_successfuls_,” and the “_excluded classes_” or the
“_unsuccessfuls_” and he declares that the latter would naturally
desire to suspend the conditions of progress, whilst the former would
naturally desire, and are also able to maintain them. But when he
pushes his argument farther, and advances to the proposition that
if reason had been “_man’s_” sole guide, the conditions of progress
would have been suspended over and over again, he is enabled to take
this extraordinary step only because his thought and his terminology
undergo an unconscious metamorphosis. He forgets his original
analysis altogether. He merges the two classes, so sharply contrasted
by him, into one. He argues and {24} thinks about them both, under
the single category of “_man_”; he builds up his conclusions by
joining together the very things which, in arranging his premises,
he had so carefully put asunder; and the result of his speculation
reduced to its simplest terms is this—that “_man_” could have done,
at any period of his history, and if reason had been his sole guide,
actually would have done, something that was against the interests of
the stronger part of him, and beyond the power of the weaker.
The reader will not find much difficulty in understanding that if
sociologists persist in reasoning thus, they are hardly likely to
arrive at any conclusion sufficiently definite to guide us in the
practical difficulties of life. It may be urged, however, that such
language as we have been considering, though used by scientific
writers, is intended itself to be rhetorical rather than scientific,
or that it betrays the inaccuracy of this or that individual
thinker, instead of arising from a fundamental error in method. If
any one thinks this, he shall soon be disabused of his opinion. The
reader shall now be presented with a brief summary of the method
deliberately followed, and of some of the conclusions arrived at by
that distinguished thinker who has done more than any one else to
impart to sociology the character which it at present possesses; and
the error which lies at the bottom of the reasoning we have been just
considering shall there be exhibited, systematically exemplified,
and explicitly and elaborately defended. It is perhaps {25} hardly
necessary to say that the thinker thus referred to is Mr. Herbert
Spencer.
We will then follow Mr. Spencer’s reasoning from the beginning,
as set forth in his works; and before consulting his monumental
_Principles of Sociology_ we will turn to his _Study of Sociology_,
a smaller and preparatory treatise, in which the methods adopted by
him in his main inquiry are explained. He opens this treatise with
declaring that until recent years any scientific treatment of social
phenomena was impossible; and it was impossible, he says, for two
definite reasons. These were the prevalence of two utterly false
theories, both of which precluded the idea that anything like law or
order of a calculable kind were prevalent in the social sphere. One
of these theories was “_the theocratic theory_,” the other what he
calls “_the great-man theory_.”
The theocratic theory is that which explains all social change by
reference to the direct and arbitrary interference of a Deity;
and if this be adopted, Mr. Spencer has no difficulty in showing
that anything like a social science must be necessarily looked on
as impossible: for the only thread by which social phenomena are
connected will in that case be hidden in the will of an inscrutable
Being, which may indeed be made known to us by revelation, but which
is not susceptible of being either observed or calculated. This
theory, however, in its cruder form, at all events, is, says Mr.
Spencer, being fast discarded by everybody—even by the theologically
{26} orthodox; and the really important foe which social science
has to fight against is the great-man theory, not the theocratic.
Accordingly, it is by a criticism of the great-man theory that he
introduces us to the theory of society, which is in his estimation
true, and which alone presents social phenomena to us as amenable to
scientific treatment.
The great-man theory is summed up by him in the following quotation
from Carlyle: “_As I take it, universal history, the history of what
man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the
great men who have worked here._” “_This_,” observes Mr. Spencer,
“_not perhaps distinctly formulated, but everywhere implied, is the
belief in which nearly all are brought up_”; and it is, he declares,
as incompatible as the theocratic theory itself with any belief in
the possibility of a social science, or any comprehension of what
such a science is; for either the great man is regarded as the
miraculous instrument of the Deity, a kind of “_deputy-God_,” in
which case we have “_theocracy once removed_”; or else his greatness,
though regarded as a natural phenomenon, is regarded as one whose
occurrence is so far fortuitous, that a great man of any given kind
of greatness might appear in one age or nation just as well as in
another; and in this case, if social changes depend on the great
man’s actions, these changes will be as fortuitous as the great
man’s own appearance, and will as little admit of any scientific
calculation.
If, however, the great man is regarded as a {27} natural phenomenon
at all, if he is not to be looked upon as a species of incalculable
angel, this idea of his fortuitous appearance is, says Mr.
Spencer, plainly quite untenable. The great man, unless he differs
miraculously from other men, is produced as they are, in accordance
with natural laws, and, like them, owes his greatness to his near
and remote progenitors, just as a negro owes to his, his facial
angle, his blackness, and his woolly hair. “_Who would expect_,” Mr.
Spencer asks, “_that a Newton might be born of a Hottentot family,
or that a Milton might spring up among the Andamanese_?” The theory,
then, which explains social changes by referring them to the great
men whose names are connected with their initiation, will, unless
it is regarded as a theory of perpetual miracle, be recognised as
inadequate, even by those who have hitherto held it, when once they
have realised the absurd supposition which it implies. The great
man, whatever his seeming influence, is merely the agent of other
influences which are behind him. He merely transmits a shock, like
a man pushed by a crowd. Even supposing what Mr. Spencer entirely
denies to be the case, that he could really “_remake his society_,”
his society none the less must have previously made him, and supplied
him with those conditions which rendered his career possible; and
therefore, of any changes which he may popularly be said to have
caused, he is merely “_the proximate initiator_,” not the true cause
at all; and “_if_,” says Mr. Spencer, “_there is to be anything {28}
like a real explanation of such changes, it must be sought (not in
the great man himself), but in the aggregate of social conditions,
out of which he and they have arisen_.” Except, perhaps, in the
military struggles of primitive savage tribes, “_new institutions,
new activities, new ideas, all_,” he says, “_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 blind over the biographies of all the
great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy, and Napoleon
the Treacherous_.” And he points his moral by observing, with a
certain philosophic tartness, that there is no surer index of a man’s
“_mental sanity_” than the degree of contempt which, as a scientific
thinker, he feels for the class of facts which the biography of
individuals offers him.
Such, then, being Mr. Spencer’s theory of the way in which social
phenomena must be regarded, if we mean to make them the subject of
anything like scientific study, let us turn to his _magnum opus_,
_The Principles of Sociology_, and see how, and with what results,
he puts his theory of study into practice. This immense work, full
of encyclopædic detail as it is, contains certain general and
comparatively simple conclusions, which can with sufficient clearness
be expressed in a short summary, and which are typical of the
character and the contents of Mr. Spencer’s sociology as a whole.
These general conclusions constitute in {29} outline the entire
history of human progress from the dawn of man’s existence to the
industrial civilisation of to-day.
The determining factors in all social phenomena are, says
Mr. Spencer, primarily of two kinds—the “_external_” and the
“_internal_.” The former consist of some of the various physical
circumstances in which each community or collection of men is
placed; the latter consist of the characters and constitutions of
the men themselves. In the history of each community the chief of
the external factors are these: the climate of the region which the
community occupies; the cultivability of this region; its geological
and geographical character; the way in which the fauna and flora
natural to it are distributed; and the character of the other
communities by which the community in question is surrounded. One of
the first generalisations, says Mr. Spencer, to which social science
leads is this—that progress can begin only in climates and regions
where the production of the necessaries of life is sufficiently easy
to leave men leisure and energy available for other work; and all
progress did as a fact begin in those parts of the earth where the
maintenance of life was easy.
He goes on to show, however, that the initiation of progress does not
require only that the men concerned in it should inhabit a region in
which the production of necessaries is easy and leaves them abundant
leisure. It is equally essential that the men themselves should
possess an energetic {30} temperament, which will not suffer them to
devote their leisure to idleness, but will make it the starting-point
for some further activity. Now this energetic temperament is the
special gift of climate. So, to a great extent, is the ease with
which necessaries are obtained from the soil; but whilst the
fertility of the soil is dependent on the climate being hot, the
requisite energetic temperament is dependent on the climate being
dry. “_The evidence_,” says Mr. Spencer, “_justifies this inference.
. . . On glancing over a general rain-map of the world, there will be
seen an almost continuous area, marked ‘rainless district,’ extending
across North Africa, Arabia, Persia, and all through Thibet and
Mongolia; and from within, or from the borders of this district, have
come all the conquering races of the Old World._”
But the full operation of climate on human progress is not
intelligible till a further climatic fact is considered. Though
in hot and dry climates the production of necessaries is easy, in
climates that are hot and moist their production is still easier.
It is these last that are really the gardens of the world, and that
offered to primeval man the easiest and most attractive homes. The
original inhabitants, however, of these favoured localities not only
profited by their conditions, but also ultimately suffered from them.
Whilst the fertility of their habitat pampered them, its moisture
destroyed their energy; and in process of time they were subjugated
by other races, who, cradled in drier climates, {31} retained their
energy unimpaired. In this natural descent of the stronger races
on “_the richer and more varied habitats_” of the weaker, and the
consequent super-position of one race over another, we see the origin
of slavery, and of all the ancient civilisations that reposed upon it.
We have here the three essential elements to the union of which
primarily all human progress has been due: firstly, a race remarkable
for its active energy; secondly, the appropriation by this race
of some richer habitat than its own; and thirdly, the possession
by it of an inferior race, as subjects, who are ready to work for
its benefit, and are capable, when coerced and directed by it, of
producing wealth indefinitely greater and more varied than they would
or could have produced had they been left to their own devices.
And here we are brought to the threshold of a new order of facts.
Industrial production, which is the basis of all civilisation, is
not, says Mr. Spencer, started on its progressive career by the
sudden orders of any one remarkable man, but by the spontaneous
action of certain natural causes. It must first be observed that
its general character and its progress are always found to depend
on the same thing. They depend on the division of labour. This,
as Mr. Spencer says, developed in varying degrees, is the salient
characteristic of every civilisation in the world. To what, then,
is the division of labour, in the first instance, itself due? This
is the opening question asked by Adam {32} Smith in his _Wealth of
Nations_; and he seems to regard it as one which is more or less
mysterious and recondite. The answer which he himself suggests is,
that there exists in man “_a natural propensity to truck, barter,
and exchange_.” The answer given by Mr. Herbert Spencer is a curious
illustration of how far, since the days of Adam Smith, social science
has progressed.
Mr. Spencer shows us that the origin of the division of labour was
no special propensity mysteriously innate in man. Its origin was the
natural diversity of the various districts inhabited by the groups
of men who originally took part in it. Thus “_some of the Fiji
Islands_,” he writes, “_are famous for wooden implements, others for
mats and baskets, others for pots and pigments—unlikenesses between
the natural products of the islands being the causes. . . . So also
. . . the shoes of the ancient Peruvians were made in the provinces
where aloes are most abundant, for they were made of the leaves of
an aloe called ‘maguey.’ The arms were supplied by the provinces
where the materials for making them were most abundant_.” Division of
labour, in short, was primarily a localisation of industries, caused
by the fact that a number of man’s different needs were each supplied
most easily by industry in some different locality.
By means of this explanation of the origin of the division of
labour, Mr. Spencer proceeds to explain, in a way which would have
astonished Adam Smith still more, other social phenomena of a kind
which {33} seem wholly different. He proceeds to show us that though
increased production of commodities was the chief direct result of
the localisation of industries, certain by-products resulted from it
also, whose effects were not less important. These by-products were
roads. In the localisation of industries, he says, we have the true
origin of road-making. The fact of industries being widely separated
in place, required a constant interchange of the various sorts of
goods; and the carriage of these goods to and fro between the same
points first produced tracks, such as those made by animals, then
paths, and at last regular roads. But to facilitate the movement
and interchange of goods is not the only, or the highest, though it
may be the first, function of roads. Roads facilitate two things
of a yet more interesting character—the movement of ideas and the
centralisation of authority. They form, in fact, the great physical
basis of civilised human government, and of the development of the
human intellect.
These examples of Mr. Spencer’s conclusions will be sufficient
to show how he studies the phenomena of social progress in so
far as they are the result of what he calls “_the external
factors_”—climate, locality, and the character of the other races
with which each race that is studied happens to have been brought in
contact. Let us now turn to what he calls the “_internal factors_,”
and consider the phenomena of progress which he explains by reference
to these. He helps us here by providing us with a summary of his own,
in which he calls the attention {34} of his readers to the most
important of his own conclusions arrived at in preceding chapters as
to this section of his subject. Having reminded us of how he started
with the “_external factors_,” and how he had shown the ways—namely
those we have just glanced at—in which they co-operated to produce
civilisation, “_our attention_,” he proceeds, “_was then directed to
the internal factors_”; and what he had to tell us, he says, about
the internal factors was as follows: “_An account was first given
of ‘Primitive Man—physical,’ showing that by stature, structure,
strength . . . he was ill fitted for overcoming the difficulties in
the way of advance. Then examination of ‘The Primitive Man—emotional’
led us to see that his imprudence and his explosiveness, restrained
but little by sociality and the altruistic sentiments, rendered
him unfit for co-operation. And then, in the chapter on ‘Primitive
Man—intellectual,’ we saw that while adapted by its active and
acute perceptions to the needs of a wild life, his type of mind was
deficient in the faculties required for progress in knowledge._”
Then, having referred to the long explanation given by him of the
rise of man’s religious belief, Mr. Spencer goes on to say that these
primitive human characteristics constitute the internal factors, with
which sociology starts, and that the business of this science is to
explain the evolution of all those subsequent “_phenomena resulting
from their combined actions_.” Of these phenomena the chief, he says,
are the following—monogamy as evolved from polygamy, polyandry,
{35} and promiscuity; the higher family affections as developed by
the monogamous family; and governmental and social organisation as
developed in two ways—by the conduct essential to war and the conduct
essential to industry. His conclusions, so far as possible, shall be
given in his own words.
To begin with marriage: in the earlier stages of society nothing
resembling it existed. The nearest approach to a family was the
mother and such children as could be kept alive without the help
of the father; and as the children grew up, this rudimentary group
dissolved. But “_from families thus small and incoherent_” there
naturally and inevitably arose, in accordance with the tendency to
variation by which the human units are characterised, and which is
the basis of all evolutionary selection, “_families of divergent
types_”—families founded on unions of which some were more lasting
than others, of which some were unions between one mother and many
fathers, some between one father and many mothers, and some between
one father and one mother. This last-named type of union, and the
family life resulting from it, had many practical advantages, such
as the production of closer bonds between the several members of the
family, and consequently the practice between them of more efficient
co-operation. Accordingly, no sooner did monogamous groups appear
than they exhibited a tendency to survive in the social struggle for
existence; and monogamy affords, with the affections that have grown
up under its shelter, the type {36} of marriage and family that
prevails amongst the most advanced races of to-day.
Next, as to the phenomena of governmental and social organisations:
these arise only with the formation of groups larger than the
family—of groups which we call communities, or nations, or social
aggregates; and we have to consider how these larger groups rose out
of the aggregation of the smaller. The process is explained, says Mr.
Spencer, by the same few “_internal factors_.” The nation sprang from
the family by the following inevitable stages. Let us take any family
group, sufficiently coherent to live together as a single household,
and supporting itself on the produce of the land that surrounds its
dwelling. Whilst this group is small, the acreage will be small also,
which, as ploughland, hunting-ground, or pasture, is required to
supply its wants; and each member of the group can easily reach his
work, starting from the common home, and coming back to it in the
evening. But as children grow, and children and great-grandchildren
multiply, the land required by the household correspondingly grows
in extent, and at last becomes so large that the whole of it cannot
be utilised by a body of men living on the same spot. Hence, as Mr.
Spencer expresses it, “_a fission of the group is necessitated_”; and
this process is repeated till there are a multitude of groups instead
of one. These groups, says Mr. Spencer, constitute the raw material
of the nation. The nation is formed “_by the recompounding of these
units once again_.” {37}
And how is this process of “_recompounding_” accomplished? Mr.
Spencer answers it is accomplished by one means only, and that is
the co-operation forced on them by war for some common interest.
Other tribes threaten to attack their territory, or they are desirous
of appropriating the territory of other tribes. Separately they
are powerless. The only course open to them is to band themselves
together and submit themselves to a common leader. In cases where
such wars are short, as observation of savage tribes shows us, the
rudimentary nation with its rudimentary discipline dissolves and
disappears as soon as the wars are over; but when the state of
warfare is prolonged by the rivalry of other societies, the military
leadership develops into a permanent centralised authority; and
from this military government, with its “_coercive institutions_,”
national existence and all forms of government spring.
And here Mr. Spencer’s argument takes a new departure and carries
us on to the point where we shall be compelled to leave it. As
governments and civilisations have advanced, he says, they have
taken two forms—that in which the original military element still
continues to preponderate, and that in which the military element
becomes gradually subordinate to the industrial. “_The former_,”
he says, “_in its developed form is organised on the principle of
compulsory organisation, whilst the latter in its developed form
is organised on the principle of voluntary co-operation_”; and the
latter {38} amongst civilised nations always tends to supersede the
former, in precise proportion as war tends to become less common.
The industrial form, it may be observed, corresponds in a general
way to the kinds of government commonly called “democratic”; but
its emergence, says Mr. Spencer, has its most important effects in
the sphere not of politics, but of economic production. Originally
the conditions of industry were regulated by the dictates of the
military and aristocratic ruler, as they are to-day in some savage
communities, and as they partially were in France till towards the
close of the last century. Under such a _régime_ the very “_right to
labour_” itself is regarded as belonging to the King; and he sells it
to his subjects on such terms as he may choose. But as the military
element in the government declines, not only does the character of
governmental legislation change, but industry frees itself from
governmental influence altogether. No king any longer arranges
markets, fixes wages or prices, and settles what kind and quantities
of commodities shall be produced. Industry becomes, as Mr. Spencer
says, “_substantially independent_.” He does not mean, however, that
it needs no regulation. It needs as much as ever a constant and nice
adjustment of the things produced to the current requirements of the
community; but this adjustment is now secured not by the interference
of a political ruler, but by a system which has spontaneously
developed itself amongst the trading and manufacturing classes. It is
a system, says Mr. Spencer, {39} which we may call “_internuncial,
through which the various structures_ (i.e. _manufacturing firms,
etc._) _receive from one another stimuli or checks, caused by rises
and falls in the consumption of their respective products. . . .
Markets in the chief towns show dealers the varying relations of
supply and demand; and the reports of these transactions, diffused
by the press, prompt each locality to increase or decrease of its
special functions. . . . That is to say, there has arisen, in
addition to the political regulating system, an industrial regulating
system, which carries on its co-ordinating function independently—a
separate plexus of connected ganglia._”
We have now looked at social evolution, as the product of both those
sets of causes—the “_external factors_” and the “_internal_”—by which
Mr. Spencer explains it, and have followed it, under both aspects,
from the earliest beginnings of progress to the dawn and development
of civilisation, such as history knows it. Our account of Mr.
Spencer’s theory of the ascent of man and society is necessarily very
incomplete; but the various conclusions mentioned in it may be said
to be exhaustively typical of the conclusions of social science as
Mr. Spencer conceives of it.
And now let us consider what the nature of those conclusions is.
We shall find that they are, one and all of them, conclusions with
regard to aggregates. All the phenomena with which they deal are
phenomena not of individuals, not of different classes, but of masses
of men, communities, races, nations, {40} the units of which are
regarded as being virtually so similar, that what is true of one is
virtually true of all. This similarity certainly is not imputed to
all mankind. Men are recognised as having been different in one epoch
from what they become in another, and one race and the inhabitants
of one climate as being different from other men differently born
and circumstanced. The primitive millions who could hardly walk
upright, and whose sexual relations resembled those of the animals,
are distinguished from their erect successors who married and lived
in families; and the strong and energetic races are distinguished
from their weaker contemporaries. But each of these aggregates is
regarded as a unit in itself. The conquering race which has grown
vigorous in dry regions, and the inferior race enslaved by it, which
has lost its strength in moist regions, are contrasted sharply
with each other; but neither is made the subject of any internal
division, nor treated as though the units composing it were not
virtually similar. Mr. Spencer of course admits (for this is one of
the fundamental parts of his philosophy) that these wholes, these
aggregates, progress through a constant differentiation of their
parts, different functions being performed by an increasing number
of groups; but the units who compose these groups, and whom he calls
the “_internal factors_,” are regarded by him as being congenitally
each a counterpart of the others; and their different functions and
their different acquired aptitudes are {41} regarded as the result
of different external circumstances which press into different moulds
one and the same material. Thus when the single group from which the
nation originally springs undergoes, as it becomes more numerous,
what Mr. Spencer calls the process of “fission,” and spreads itself
in search of food over an ever-extending area, new groups separate
not because they have different appetites, but because, having the
same appetites, they must satisfy them in different places by the
exercise of the same faculties. Division of labour, as we have seen,
he explains in the same way; and not its origin only, but its latest
and most elaborate developments. Of the manufacturing businesses of
to-day, for instance, with their promoters, managers, capitalists,
and multitudes of various workmen, not only is each business treated
by him as a single unit, but each of these units, or ganglia, is a
unit which differs from the rest for accidental reasons only, as a
gardener who happens to be digging may differ from a gardener who
happens to be raking a walk; and he describes the whole as “_a plexus
of ganglia connected by an internuncial system_.”
The use of this last phrase, and the physiological analogy suggested
by it, illustrate yet more clearly the fact here insisted on—namely,
that for Mr. Spencer the sociologist’s true unit of interest is the
social aggregate, as a whole, to the exclusion of the individual
or of the class. The latter are merely the ganglia, or veins,
or nerves, which are nothing {42} except as connected with the
organism to which they belong. Each social aggregate, in fact, is a
single animal; and whatever is achieved or suffered by any class or
individual within it, is really achieved or suffered, in the eye of
the Spencerian sociologist, not by the class or the individual, but
by that corporate animal, the community.
Now a study of these phenomena of aggregates is, as has been said
already, valuable for speculative purposes. It has led those who have
pursued it to a variety of important conclusions which have largely
revolutionised our conception of human history, and of the conditions
that engender civilisations or else preclude their possibility. It
has shown us human life as a great unfolding drama, but it has hardly
given us any help at all in dealing with the practical problems that
belong to our own day; and the reason of this, which has already
been stated generally, must be apparent the moment we consider what
these practical problems are. Their general character is sufficiently
indicated by such familiar antitheses as aristocracy and democracy,
the few and the many, rich and poor, capital and labour, or, as
Mr. Kidd puts it, collectivists and the opponents of collectivism.
In other words, the social problems of to-day—like the social
problems of most other periods—are problems which arise out of the
differences between class and class. That is to say, they depend on,
and derive their sole meaning from phenomena which are not referable
to the social aggregate as a whole, but which {43} are manifested
severally by distinct and independent parts. The social aggregate,
when regarded from this standpoint, is no longer a single animal,
whose pains or pleasures reveal themselves in a single consciousness.
It is a litter of animals, each of which has a consciousness of its
own, and, together with its consciousness, interests of its own also,
which are opposed to those of the others, instead of coinciding with
them.
And now let us consider more closely out of what this opposition
arises. Mr. Spencer, as we have seen, in our rapid survey of his
arguments, lays great stress on the fact that as men rise into
aggregates, they do so only on condition of submitting themselves
to governors, military in the first place, and at a later stage
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}