SOCIOLOGICAL COMPARED WITH PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY.
1. There is no doubt that Sociology and Social Philosophy have
started, historically speaking, from different points of view. The
object of the present chapter is to ascertain the nature and estimate
the importance and probable permanence of the difference between
them. I propose first to explain the difference in general; then to
review the sources of social experience, which in other words are
facets or aspects of social life, by which social theory has been
influenced, and with which it has to deal; and, finally, to form some
idea of the distinctive services which may be rendered by sociology
and social philosophy respectively in view of the range of experience
which it is the function of social theory to organize.
Beginning with Vico’s [1] _New Science_, there has been more than one
attempt in modern Europe to inaugurate the Science of Society as a
new departure. But the distinctive and modern spirit of what is known
as Sociology, and under that {18} name has had a continuous growth
of half a century at least, first found unmistakable expression in
Auguste Comte. The conception which he impressed upon the science to
which he first gave the name of sociology or social physics, was a
characteristically modern conception. Its essence was the inclusion
of human society among the objects of natural science; its watchwords
were law and cause in the sense in which alone Positivism allowed
causes to be thought of--and scientific prediction. [2] It is true
that the large conception of unity which Comte embodied in his
philosophy had very much in common with the principles insisted on
by the Greek social philosophers. The close interdependence of all
social phenomena among each other, the unity of man with nature, and
the consequent correlation of moral and political theory with the
organised hierarchy of mathematical and physical sciences, are ideas
which Comte might have borrowed directly from Plato and Aristotle.
Nevertheless the modern starting-point is wholly different from that
of antiquity. The modern enquirer--the sociologist as such--was
to ask himself, according to Comte, in the language of physical
science, what are the laws and causes operative among aggregations
of human beings, and what are their predictable effects? The ancient
philosopher--the ethical and metaphysical theorist--had before
him primarily the problem, “what is the completest and most real
life of the human soul?” The work of the latter has been revived
by modern idealist philosophy dating from Rousseau and Hegel, and
finding a second {19} home in Great Britain, as that of the former
has developed itself within the peculiar limits and traditions of
sociological research, flourishing more especially upon French and
American soil. The continuance of these two streams of thought in
independent courses, though not without signs of convergence, is a
remarkable phenomenon of nineteenth century culture; and it will be
one of the problems which the present chapter, and in a larger sense
the whole of the present work, must deal with, to consider how far it
is necessary or desirable that they should blend.
[1] J. D. Rogers in Palgrave’s _Dict. of Pol. Econ._, art. “Social
Science.”
[2] See Gidding’s _Sociology_, p. 6.
2. Every science, no doubt, is to some extent, the playground
of analogies; but the complexity and the unmateriality of human
relations has forced this character upon social theory in an
extraordinary degree. It is impossible to account for the tendencies
of sociological as well as of philosophical thought without making
some attempt to pursue the line of investigation suggested by Mr.
Bagehot in his _Physics and Politics_. Predominant modes and types of
experience necessarily colour the whole activity of the mind, and, as
indicated above, this influence more especially affects a province of
research which is not _prima facie_ accessible to direct experiment
or sensuous observation. I must, therefore, endeavour to review, in
a brief outline, the principal branches of experience which have
furnished ideas for application to social theory, and to indicate
the leanings in speculation upon society, which have been due to
preoccupation with one or another special analogy.
i. The Newtonian theory of gravitation is the entrance gate to the
modern world of science. {20} “When the Newton of this subject
shall be seated in his place” [1] is the aspiration of the modern
investigator in every matter capable of being known. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the inclusion of human society within
the range of matters capable of being definitely understood, should
have been symbolized by demanding for social science a completeness
of explanation and a power of prediction analogous to those displayed
by astronomy or by mathematical physics. Representative of this
conception is the title, Social Physics--for Comte the alternative
and equivalent to the name Sociology. It is easy to see both the
merits and the dangers of such an ideal, which, as the embodiment
of perfection in a natural science, is presupposed by the attitude
of sociology down to the present day. Is a science necessarily a
natural science, and is a natural science necessarily an exact
science?--these are the fundamental questions involved in the
adoption of a mathematical ideal for the study of society. No fault
can be found with it on the ground of its implying the highest degree
of harmony and precision; the only question is whether an adequate
type of comparison is afforded for, let us say, the growth of an
institution, by the law of a curve. The general conception, indeed,
of a continuity between human relations and the laws of the cosmic
order is thoroughly in the spirit of Plato, and betokens a scientific
enthusiasm worthy to be the parent of great things. And especially
in the sphere of economic science, where certain relatively simple
hypotheses have proved on the whole to be effective instruments {21}
of explanation, an analysis of intricate phenomena has been effected,
which in some degree justifies the aspiration after the ideal of an
exact science.
[1] De Morgan, _Budget of Paradoxes_, p. 355.
ii. But it has been recognised from the earliest days of political
speculation that, within the general ideal of a perfect natural
science, the more special analogy of the living organism had a
peculiar bearing upon social phenomena. Beginning in the ancient
world with the comparison between individuals as “members” of a
social whole, and the parts or organs of a living body, or even the
constituent elements of a mind, this analogy has been extended and
reinforced in modern times by what amounts to the new creation of
the biological and anthropological sciences. The sense of continuity
thus intensified and implying all that is understood by the modern
term evolution, has brought an immense material of suggestions to
sociological research, but has imposed upon it at the same time a
characteristic bias from which it is just, perhaps, beginning to
shake itself free. This characteristic may be roughly stated as the
explanation of the higher, by which I mean the more distinctly human
phenomena, by the lower, or those more readily observed, or inferred,
among savage nations, or in the animal world. Any one familiar with
logic will be aware that there is a subtle and natural prejudice
which tends to strengthen such a bias by claiming a higher degree of
reality for that which, as coming earlier in temporal succession,
I presents itself in the light of what is called a I “cause.” So
strong has been this bias among sociologists, that the student,
primarily interested in the features and achievements of civilised
society, is {22} tempted to say in his haste that the sociologist [1]
as such seldom deals seriously with true social phenomena at all;
but devotes his main attention to primitive man and to the lower
animals, occasionally illustrating his studies in these regions by
allusions, showing no great insight or mastery, to the facts of
civilized society. Such a complaint becomes less and less justified
as the years go by, and sociology recovers its balance as against the
overwhelming influence of the sciences of lower life. How far the
approach from this “lower” or more purely natural side will remain in
the end characteristic of sociological science, is an integral part
of the main problem concerning its nature and destiny with which we
have to deal in the present work. But it remains true to say and very
important to observe, that no such serious successes have as yet been
won in the name and by the special methods of sociology as have been
achieved by many investigators approaching their problems directly
and with an immediate interest; whether in the sphere of political
economy proper, or in dealing with various questions of social
and ethical importance, such as pauperism, charity, sanitation,
education, the condition of the people, the comparative study of
politics, or the analysis of material and geographical conditions in
their reaction upon social and artistic development.
[1] By a “sociologist as such” I mean a writer who is professedly
dealing with sociology as such. Any independent researches, such as
Mr. and Mrs. Webb’s _Industrial Democracy_, may of course be ranked
under the heading “Sociology.” But works of this kind do not, as
a rule, attach themselves to the peculiar method and language of
sociological writers.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the {23} epoch and
influence of which we speak has bequeathed a legacy of imperishable
value to the theory of society. In a word, it has made us sensitive
to the continuity of things, and therefore also to their unity. It
has shown us the crowning achievements of the human race, their
States, their Religion, their Fine Art, and their Science, as the
high-water mark of tendencies that have their beginnings far back
in the primitive organic world, and in their original sources have
also a connection with each other--as in the practical aspects
of religion,--which too easily escapes notice in their highest
individual development. The “return to nature” and the “noble savage”
have been invested with a significance which can never be forgotten,
and which criticism can never set aside. This is the sum and
substance of the general contribution which the latter half of the
eighteenth century and the greater part of the nineteenth have made
to sociology through the science of life and of man.
More particularly, it is necessary to notice the double operation of
biological influence on sociology, according to the unit from which
the analogy is drawn.
a. The idea which still bulks most largely in the popular mind, as
contributed by biology to social theory, is unquestionably that of
the struggle for life or the survival of the fittest. It should be
noticed that the social application of this analogy rests entirely
on the comparison of a human society, not to the individual animal
organism, and still less to the individual mind; but to a whole
animal species or even to the aggregate of all animal species, so
far as they or their members are in competition with one another.
One whole side of the sociological {24} doctrine, which Mr. Spencer
has advocated with unwearied persistence, is founded upon this
application of the biological analogy, and the paradox which he
has made his principle professes to be borrowed directly from the
dealings of nature with the individuals of the animal species. This
paradox, that benefits should be assigned inversely as services
in infancy but directly as services among adults, is his ultimate
sociological basis; the modification of which, to suit human society,
by the introduction of benevolence or altruism, so to speak, on the
top of it, only serves to display its inadequacy. But we may take it
that the analogy of the struggle for life has made it clear that, in
any given position, life can be maintained only in virtue of definite
qualities adapted to that position. And formal as this principle is
when taken by itself, its application in human society can never be
unnecessary.
b. A more recent school has insisted on the complementary analogy,
which might be taken as resting upon the comparison of a society
with an individual organism. Here, it must be remembered, lay the
resemblance which, in this region of ideas, first caught the eye
of social philosophers in antiquity. But it is alleged that the
aspect of co-operation can be traced as between individual members
of the animal world no less than between the parts of a single
organism, and it is affirmed that the view which sees nothing but
internecine competition in the animal kingdom has been too rough and
too superficial in its reading of the facts. And therefore it is
suggested that the phenomena of social fellowship, no less than those
of individual competition, have their source {25} and root in the
world of lower nature; and perhaps sociology is now not far from the
recognition that competition and co-operation are simply the negative
and positive aspect of the same general fact--the fact of the
division of labour, of essentiality of function, and of uniqueness
of true individual service. If it is suggested by the one organic
analogy that life depends upon qualities adequate to the position
which is to be filled, it is made obvious by the other that the
qualities which satisfy the claims of a certain position are those,
in general and in principle, by which a function is discharged in the
service of the whole.
In Mr. Spencer’s doctrine the two sides above indicated have been
brought into very marked relation by a suggestive criticism, [1]
which he has taken special pains to answer. If human society
corresponds to an individual organism--as is, in many ways, Mr.
Spencer’s well-known doctrine--how is it that the absolute central
control in which the perfection of an organism consists is, for Mr.
Spencer, a note of imperfection when it appears in a human society?
And the answer is in effect that human society corresponds in many
of its features rather to a local variety of a species than to an
individual organism. It is essentially discrete, not individual, and
at this point, therefore, the analogy of the individual organism
gives way to that of the group or species.
[1] _Sociology_, i. 586.
But Mr. Spencer does not really mean that a human society has
no more intrinsic bond between its members than the local group
of an animal species. To indicate its true nature he {26} gives
us a good word--but a word only--the word “super-organic.” [1]
It is a significant term, and brings us perhaps to the limit of
what biological sociology is able to suggest with regard to the
unity of a human commonwealth, and points us to something beyond.
It is remarkable that when the facts of true human society are
more thoroughly realised than by Mr. Spencer, but the clue of the
individual organism and the co-operative side of animal life is not
followed up, there is a tendency to sever the links which unite man
to “lower” nature, and to represent the ethical and cosmic processes
as absolutely opposed. We see this point of view decidedly adopted
by Mr. Huxley, [2] and its adoption perhaps indicates the inception
of an epoch in which sociology will cut itself free from a good deal
of pseudo-scientific lumber. Nevertheless, a patient and careful
study will continue to recognise the elements both of competition
and of co-operation as ineradicable and inseparable moments in
human society as in the animal world; the essential meaning of
competition in its higher forms being the rejection and suppression
of members who are unable to meet the ever advancing demand for
co-operative character and capacity; and the study of parasitism
[3] and of regressive selection will continue to {27} be a warning
against the attempt to emancipate mankind from the sterner general
conditions of the cosmic order. It will be recognised that there
is an adaptation to conditions which consists in degradation; but
the failure will be understood by comparison with the only true
“survival of the fittest,” [4] being that which reveals the full
unity and significance of organism and environment. It is important
to observe that, at least in the two eminent biologists just alluded
to, the doctrine of the individual self--of the relation between
self-assertion and self-restraint--is altogether of an uncivilised
and anti-social type. Biological categories do not, in their case
at least, appear to have afforded any suggestion for the treatment
of the social self as more and greater, in a positive sense, than
the self which is less bound up with social obligations. As for the
denying spirits in Plato’s _Republic_, so for both Mr. Spencer and
Mr. Huxley, “nature” is essentially self-assertion, and “society”
self-restraint. [5] Here again we touch the same limitation which
met us in Mr. Spencer’s term “super-organic,” and we feel that a
different point of view must be brought to bear.
[1] _Sociology_, vol. I., ch. i.
[2] _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 82.
[3] Geddes, in _Encyclo. Brit_., vol. xviii. 253a: “Further details
of the process of retrograde metamorphosis and of the enormously
important phenomena of degeneration cannot here be attempted; it must
suffice if the general dependence of such changes upon simplification
of environment--freedom from danger, abundant alimentation and
complete repose, etc. (in short, the conditions commonly considered
those of complete material well-being)--has been rendered clearer.”
[4] Cf. _Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, vol.
I., pp. 28, 29.
[5] Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 31; Spencer, _Man v. State_,
p. 98.
iii. Political Economy existed before modern Sociology was born, and
is still the only part of it which is obviously and indisputably
successful as a science of explanation. The triumphant development
of this theory reacted even upon Hegel’s political philosophy, by
suggesting to him the distinction between “Bourgeois Society” and
“The {28} State.” _A fortiori_, it could not but have a serious
influence on the growing science of sociology itself, the ideal of
which might not unfairly be regarded as the extension to society as
a whole of that type of investigation which had proved so successful
in economic matter. From this influence has arisen the tendency
in sociological research which has been called by the name of the
economic or materialist view of history and consequently of society.
Primarily connected with the name of Marx, it may also be illustrated
by many contentions of Buckle and Le Play, and has become, indeed,
the formula of a school. In sum, the point of view amounts to this:
that the fundamental structure of civilisation, the type of the
family, for example, and the order relations and development of
classes in society, have been and must be determined by the primary
necessities of human existence, and the conditions of climate and
nutrition under which these necessities are met. Economic facts
alone, it is suggested, are real and causal; everything else is an
appearance and an effect.
Before saying a word as to the true importance of this point of
view, we may profitably correct the commonplace idea of its nature.
Materialism, in a strict philosophical sense, means the conviction
that nothing is real but that which is solid, or, perhaps, which
gravitates. By a not very convincing analogy from this idea, all
those passions and necessities which we speak of in a quite loose and
popular way as connected with the body, may be and often are regarded
as “material” in opposition to energies which it seems pleasanter
{29} to ascribe to incorporeal mind. But it should be noted that
this secondary usage, especially in a time when no one denies the
physical correlation of all psychical activity, has no important
ethical implication. Like the “flesh” or the “body” of St. Paul’s
religious language, the “bodily” or “material” needs and appetites
of man are an element of mind, the rank and value of which must be
determined on other grounds than the notion that they are connected
in some peculiar degree with “physical” conditions. The economic
view of history has been called and has called itself materialist
partly because of the commonplace usage, which I have just described,
by which certain passions and necessities, which it takes to be
fundamental, are apt to be called material as opposed to ethical or
ideal--a wholly unjustified opposition--and partly from the notion,
which I referred to at the beginning of this chapter, that the
success of political economy was in some way analogous to that of the
mathematical science of abstract matter.
Stripping off, then, the unjustified suggestion of philosophical
materialism, [1] what we have in the economic view of history,
amounts pretty much to what is expressed in the saying that while
statesmen are arguing, love and hunger are governing mankind. Climate
and natural resources make a {30} difference to history; occupations
determine the type of the family; an agricultural and an industrial
society will never exhibit the same relations between classes, and
very vast commercial operations cannot be carried on by the same
methods or by the same minds which sufficed for the retail trade of
a petty shop. But when it is clearly seen that economic needs and
devices are no detached, nor, so to speak, absolutely antecedent
department of human life [2]--a fact which the epithet “materialist”
has done something to obscure, for, in truth, in economics there is
no question of genuine material causation--then it becomes obvious
that we have not here any prior determining framework of social
existence, but simply certain important aspects of the operations
of the human mind, rather narrowly regarded in their isolation from
all others. If we seriously consider the import of such an economic
conception as the “standard of life,” it becomes plain that the
contrast too commonly accepted [3] between the mechanical pressure
of economic facts and the influence of ideas [4] stands in need of a
completely fresh criticism and of entire restatement. Discounting,
however, the exaggerations which have arisen from confused notions of
materialism, and from the genuine achievements of economic science,
we have remaining, in the point of view under consideration, a
thoroughly just assertion of man’s continuity with {31} the world
around him. Undoubtedly man lives the life of his planet, his
climate, and his locality, and is the utterance, so to speak, of the
conditions under which his race and his nation have evolved. The only
difficulty arises if, by some arbitrary line between man and his
environment, the conditions which are the very material of his life
come to be treated as alien influences upon it, with the result of
representing him as being the slave of his surroundings rather than
their concentrated idea and articulate expression. Do we think that
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare would have been greater or more free in
their genius if one had not been the voice of Greece, another that of
Italy, and the third that of England? The world in which man lives
_is_ himself, but is constituted, of course, by presentation to a
mind and not by strictly physical causation; and even where strictly
physical causation plays a part, as in the bodily effects of a hot
climate or of a certain kind of nutrition, still it cannot determine
a type of human life except by passing into the world which a human
being presents to himself.
[1] Quite probably there may be in the Marxian view an echo of true
materialism--the idea that will and consciousness are “epiphenomena”
_i.e._ are effects which are not causes generated by molecular
movements. Such a view cannot be criticised here, only it may be
pointed out that, on such a basis, the “bodily” passions, etc.,
are in no way more “material” than, e.g., the moral “categorical
imperative,” and therefore no more causal.
[2] See note 4.
[2] Cf. _e.g._ Durkheim, _Annee Sociologique_, 1897, p. 159.
[4] _I.e._ as if economic conditions were a sort of iron girders put
up to begin with and civilisation was the embellishment of them. It
is the old story of forgetting that the skeleton is later than the
body, and is deposited and moulded by it.
The exclusive importance which has been attached to considerations
of this kind in recent social theory is partly due to an unfounded
opinion of their novelty. It is somewhat striking, though following
naturally enough from the sort of schism in the world of letters
which modern sociology and ancient social philosophy represent,
that the firm and well balanced handling of these problems which we
owe to Plato and Aristotle is for the most part ignored by modern
sociologists.
{32} The entire social conception of those writers is a continued
application of the principle, fundamental in their whole philosophy,
that “form” is the inherent organising life of “matter,” so that
the better life of a commonwealth can be nothing but the flower and
crown of the possibilities inherent in its material conditions and
industrial and economic organisation. The law which is ultimately
to reveal itself as the spring of all righteousness in the State,
has its most obvious and external symbol--so Plato tells us--in
the economic exchange of services; and every circumstance of site,
and industry, and trade, and the racial type of the citizen, helps
to constitute, both for him and for Aristotle, the living organic
possibility from which, in some appropriate individual form, the
higher life is to spring. If we ask ourselves what then is the
difference between the ancient view of economic causation, and that
of the “materialist” historical school, we shall find the answer in
the absence, from the former, of that unreal isolation upon which we
observed above. The relation of “matter” or “conditions” to “form”
or “purpose” is not, for the Greek thinker, the pressure of an
alien necessity, of a hostile environment, but the upspringing of a
life, continuous in principle through all its phases. The thought
of the legislator fixes in the shape of distinct consciousness and
will, what the assemblage of conditions embodies as a physical or
instinctive tendency, as the artist, to use an ancient simile, finds
the statue in the marble. Working with this idea, the connection is
far more thoroughly, because more sympathetically, traced than it
can be when we think that our science is but laying bare the fetters
of humanity. And following {33} in the spirit of the Greek thinkers
themselves, modern students of antiquity have devoted themselves to
eliciting the positive connection of conditions with history, up to
a point of success of which the common run of modern sociologists
appear to have no conception. When we reflect how typical and,
comparatively speaking, how readily isolated and exhausted is the
history of Ancient Greece in the greatest age, it seems extraordinary
that the considerable and minute researches which have been bestowed
upon its geographical, commercial, and economic conditions should
not be commonly drawn into account with a view to the illustration
of the relations between natural resources, commercial and economic
development, and historical greatness. [1]
[1] I have never, for example, seen the great work of Ernst
Curtius, on the geography of the Peloponnese in connection with its
historical development, referred to in any sociological treatise;
nor, again, Duncker, nor Büchsenschütz, nor Mr. Newman’s edition of
Aristotle’s _Politics_. Boeckh’s _Treatise on the Public Economy of
Athens_ receives only a word of contemptuous notice in M’Culloch’s
_Literature of Political Economy_.
However this may be, here at any rate, in the analysis of economic
and quasi-economic conditions in their bearing upon the life of
peoples, we get a real subject-matter which is perhaps, so far as
can yet be seen, the territory least disputably belonging to the
pure sociologist. It is not really a sphere of natural causation,
but it is a sphere of certain simple and general conditions in
psychical life, corresponding to external facts which admit of
more or less precise statement, and, we may hope, of reduction to
fairly trustworthy uniformities. Such for instance are M. Durkheim’s
investigations on the effect of {34} density of population upon the
division of labour, [1] or Professor Gidding’s observations upon the
causes and limiting conditions of the aggregation of populations. [2]
We now proceed to a branch of experience which seriously strains the
working conceptions of the sociologist.
[1] _De la Division du Travail Social_, Alcan, 1893.
[2] _Principles of Sociology_, bk. II., ch. i. Few things are more
interesting in this respect than Mr. Poore’s observations in _Rural
Hygiene_ on the mechanical conditions of modern city life, as regards
drainage and water supply, with their results in encouraging an
overcrowded and insanitary mode of living.
iv. A completely new vista reveals itself to the student of social
theory when he turns from biological analogies and economic
conditions to consider the wealth of experience and of ideas which
is furnished to him by Jurisprudence and the Science of Right. He
knows, indeed, by this time, that the obvious aspect of a province
of fact will not be the only one, and that a unity will certainly be
traceable between all the facets of social existence. But none the
less, he will be able to restrain the itch to explain things away,
and he will fairly and candidly give weight to the significance and
suggestiveness of the mass of history and of reflection which is now
brought before him.
_a_. For here, as the plainest and most unmistakable data of
experience, we are confronted with _ideal facts_. The vast mass
of documents which form the basis of the Science of Right--a more
complete and comprehensive set of records, perhaps, than any other
branch of social science can boast--bears witness in every case to
one social phenomenon at least, to a formal act of mind and will,
aimed at maintaining some relative right or {35} hindering some
relative wrong, and stamped with what in some sense and in some
degree amounts to a social recognition. Theorists have said too
hastily, though with a sound meaning, that right is independent
of fact. It would be as true to say that reason is independent of
civilisation, or the soul independent of culture. Right is not
exhausted in the facts of past history; but it is at every moment
embodied in facts; and to comprehend that the social phenomena
which are among the most solid and unyielding of our experiences,
are nevertheless ideal in their nature, and consist of conscious
recognitions, by intelligent beings, of the relations in which
they stand, is to make a great step towards grasping the essential
task of science in dealing with society. From the beginning of
social theory the facts of law have been set in opposition to the
idea of a natural growth. It has been observed that, as a definite
institution maintained by formal acts of will, society is artificial,
conventional, contractual. We all know to-day that there is much
more than this to be said about the nature and principles of social
growth. Nevertheless, it remains true that the social whole has an
artificial aspect, an aspect of will and of design, of the agreement
and mutual recognition of free conscious beings. And in so far as the
history of law has resulted in the conception of natural right, this
in no way derogates from the artificial or ideal character of society
as above understood. For “natural” right belongs to a “nature” which
includes and does not exclude that action of intelligence in virtue
of which society may be termed artificial; and is {36} merely the
revelation of the principle towards which the social will is working,
and which in some degree it has always embodied.
Therefore the facts of Jurisprudence and the Science of Right, or
of “Natural Right,” as the issue and outcome of Jurisprudence,
necessarily counterbalance the extreme ideas of continuous growth and
natural causation which social science derives from other analogies.
We are reminded that, after all, we are dealing with a self-conscious
purposive organism, which is aware of a better and a worse, and
has members bound together by conscious intelligence, though, it
may be, not by conscious intelligence alone. At one time the ideas
of Jurisprudence, such as Sovereignty or Contract, were considered
sufficient by themselves to equip a social theory. And if they are
now seen to need completion from both sides,--from the side of lower
nature, and from the side of the national spirit and culture,--this
should not make us neglectful of the important truths which the facts
of law and recognised obligation, more than any others, establish on
solid ground.
_b_. It is of course the case that Law has been treated from the
standpoint of economic history in the same way as the other phenomena
of civilised life. It may be taken simply as the form into which
substantive relations crystallise, under the influence of economic
conditions or of other elementary social forces. And obviously such
a view has its truth. The social will, like the will of any one of
us from day to day, is formed not _in vacuo_, but as the focus of
all the influences which penetrate our being. It is a fair object of
{37} research to ascertain the economic or other social meaning of
the statutes which we find on the statute book; and it is because
they have so much meaning that they are excellent object-lessons in
the play of the social consciousness and sense of right. But this
focussing of social influences makes the laws not less acts of social
will, but more. To suppose the contrary would be like supposing
that nothing is a true act of will which embodies an individual’s
distinctive purposes in life.
I will explain by an illustration the relative value of sociological
analysis in dealing with the facts of positive law. I am indebted
for it to M. Durkheim, whose writings appear to me among the most
original and suggestive works of modern sociology. I regret that my
immediate purpose does not justify me in stating and appreciating the
whole very interesting theory of repressive and contractual law from
which the point in question is selected.
An act is a crime, [1] we are told, for the pure sociologist, when
it offends the strong and definite collective sentiments of society.
This is the strictly causal view of the matter. The act is a crime
because it offends; it does not offend because it is a crime. And the
corollaries are valuable. It is idle to distinguish, on such a basis,
between the reformatory, the retributive, and the deterrent views of
the reaction which is punishment. [2] An offensive act is in itself
at once an exhibition of character, an injury, and a menace. If a man
{38} assaults me in the street, and I knock him down; how futile to
ask if my action is meant to cure him of his insolence, to punish him
for having hit me, or to prevent him from hitting me again! The real
fact is that I am offended, and I react by way of injury and negation
against that which offends me. Now, this view, I think, illuminates
the subject. By going back to the simple operative cause, as it may
be supposed to exist especially in the mind of a tribe in an early
stage of development (M. Durkheim is chiefly referring to religious
offences), we have got a plain type of mental reaction, easy to
imagine and to understand. In this type we see at once the unity of
aspects which the forms of law, and legal or philosophical theory,
tend later to dissociate in a fictitious degree. And moreover we are
reminded that a law must have something behind it; some positive
sentiment or conviction, without which it would be unaccountable and
unmeaning.
[1] Durkheim, _Op. cit_., livre I., ch. ii.
[2] See ch. viii. below.
But when all this is said, it must not be supposed that penal law
has been reduced to the level of a strong and definite collective
sentiment, or a crime to the level of an annoyance. The simplest
penal law of a self-existent social group is different from the
anger of a crowd or mob. There is in it some sense of permanence,
and permanence means responsibility and generality--a distinction of
right and wrong. The fact of formally constituting a crime, _i.e._
of announcing a law, implies that mere distaste is no ground of
punishment. The law means that there is something worth maintaining,
and that this is recognised, and that to violate this recognition is
not merely to be unpopular, but to {39} sin against the common good,
and to break an obligation. With less than this there is no true
crime.
Thus, if I am right, the relation of pure “sociological” causation
to juristic facts is the well-known relation of the more abstract
to the more concrete sciences, usually illustrated in logic by
the relation of the physical and the musical account of musical
sound. For the pure physicist, a harmony and a discord are only two
different combinations of shakings. For the musician they are not
only opposite effects, but are causes of divergent consequences. So
with the relation between a strong collective sentiment and a true
law. A strong sentiment, as such, is a mere fact, a mere force; and
as such the sociologist regards it. A law involves the pretension
to will what is just, and is therefore a sentiment and something
more, viz., the point of view of social good. It aims at a right and
implies a wrong, and demands to be apprehended and judged on this
ground. A mere force cannot by its reaction constitute a crime; for
that a law is necessary. The ideal aspect of law as recognition of
right is no less actual, no less solid and verifiable, than the facts
of sentiment or necessity which may have suggested and sustained it.
In this way the relation of sociological causation to the facts of
Jurisprudence is typical of the whole relation of Sociology conceived
as a natural science, to the larger facts with which social theory
has to deal.
v. But the ideas involved in mere legality, though they bear
emphatic testimony to the conscious and artificial aspect of the
social whole, have always {40} been regarded with some justice as
the type of what is empty and formal. To treat a law as a command
with a penalty annexed, or to enunciate the tendency of social
progress as being from status to contract, may convey important
meanings, but is obviously very far short of the whole truth. And,
indeed, generalisations of this kind, though characteristic of a
certain class of reflective Jurisprudence, do not at all represent
the highest level which has been reached within the science of
right itself. But yet, as we pass beyond these everyday working
conceptions, we are beginning to leave the central ground of
Jurisprudence, and to move towards a point of view which deals
more completely with life and culture. The need and occasion for
such a point of view may be measured by that revival of national
individuality which was referred to in the last chapter as
constituting the true ground and occasion for the rebirth of genuine
political philosophy in modern times. Montesquieu’s investigation
into the “spirit of laws,” and his treatment of a law as something
deeper than a command, following upon the similar endeavours of
Vico, was in fact a recognition of the fundamental unity of a
national civilisation, which, on its political side, even Hobbes and
Locke had already attempted to explain by help of the inadequate
instruments furnished to them by legal theory. Montesquieu’s and
Vico’s conceptions were only the forerunners of the many-sided
study of civilisation which characterised the latter part of the
eighteenth century, following up the problem which was enunciated in
Rousseau’s paradox, that “law itself must be created by the social
spirit which it aims at creating.” To recognise the social spirit
{41} of a people, as the central unity behind its law and culture
and politics, was the principle of the various researches dealing
with formative art, poetry, language, religion, and the state, which
marked the close of the eighteenth century (compare Wolf’s theory of
Homer as the utterance of a racial mind), and laid the foundation of
nineteenth century idealism.
The true Greek renaissance, initiated in the age of Winckelmann,
forcing modern minds into contact with Hellenic ideas in their
original form, and no longer through Latin intermediaries, furnished
a type and focus for these researches by bringing before the thoughts
of students the brilliant individuality of the ancient city-state,
the crude traditions of which had already exercised the most powerful
influence on Rousseau, and through him on the Revolution. At the
same time the organic sciences were full of activity. The life-work
of Goethe marks the parallelism of the two movements. It is plain
that the doctrines of Comte were no more than a very one-sided
attempt to formulate the significance of the fermentation around
him, and that deeply as he felt the unity of the social being, his
expression of it ignored half the lesson of the times. Thus the
generalities of Jurisprudence are vitalised and completed by the
work of the sciences of culture; and the conception of a national
mind and character takes its unquestioned place in modern social
theory. It may be well at this point also to call attention to the
researches which later historians have directed to what may be called
“Comparative Politics”; the relations, that is, of communities under
government with respect to the {42} mode in which they are governed.
[1] For this branch of inquiry once more, though narrow and empty by
itself, yet does aid in bringing to light the purposive and conscious
character of society, and in correcting the tendency to treat it
altogether as a “natural” phenomenon.
[1] Freeman’s _Comparative Politics_, and Seeley’s _Introduction to
Political Science_.
vi. “And so the whirligig of Time brings about his revenges.” French
Sociology to-day is a psychological science, though its founder
banished psychology from his sociological method. Nothing is more
instructive than to watch the gradual pressure of the various points
of view which are emphasised by the various departments of social
experience, as they reveal, under criticism, their tendency to
complete themselves and one another by suggesting the only category
which is adequate to them as a whole. As every serious student of
social matters knows by his own experience, it is impossible to touch
a physical fact, or a statistical datum, or a legal enactment, in
reference to its social bearing, without its at once, so to speak,
coming alive in his hands, and attaching itself to an underlying
relation of mind as the only unity which will make it intelligible,
and correlate it with other experiences, by themselves no less
fragmentary. In statistics, for example, you touch a moving creature,
as if through the holes in a wall, at this point and the other, and
write down where you have touched him. [1] But to see the creature
as he is, and combine your information of all kinds in a just and
complete idea, you {43} must get him into the open. And that,
when the question is of a life, you can only do by reconstructing
his mind, for even to see a social unit with your eyes gives you
a fragment only, and not a whole. On Fridays, we are told, the
passenger traffic returns of French railways, omnibuses, and steamers
show a decline. [2] What dumb fact is this? People do not like to
travel on Fridays, or prefer to travel upon other days. What is this
preference? The only unity that can really afford an explanation,
that can correlate this irregular fragment of fact with the whole
to which it belongs, is the living mind and will of the society in
which the phenomenon occurs. Explanation aims at referring things to
a whole; and there is no true whole but mind. Necessarily, therefore,
with widening experience and deepening criticism, mind has become the
centre of the experiences focussed by sociology.
[1] Cf. _Aspects of the Social Problem_ (Macmillan, 1895), C.S. Loch
on “Returns in Social Science,” p. 287.
[2] Tarde, _Les Lois de l’Imitation_, p. 115.
We may note some significant points in this development, although,
indeed, the whole course of modern sociology is one single
illustration of what has just been said. Discussions of the problem
in what the differentia of society consists, no longer deal with
organic or economic conceptions, but with such ideas as the
“Consciousness of kind,” [1] the “Mind of a Crowd,” [2] “Imitation”
and “Invention,” [3] similarities and differences in the social
consciousness, [4] “Social logic” and society considered as a
syllogism, [5] and the imitative and {44} inventive person. [6] The
work of M. Tarde in particular is typical of the whole movement,
and his phrases have largely been adopted whether in agreement or
in controversy. For him the one fact coextensive with the social
character is “Imitation”--the means by which ideas and practices
spread throughout groups and masses of intelligent beings. For the
characteristic of knowable phenomena, in his view, is Repetition,
and Imitation is the means and vehicle of Repetition in social
matters. Here, however, we have accounted only for generalisation,
and differentiation needs a separate origin. This will be supplied
by the idea of “Invention;” Invention and Imitation, therefore, are
the general form of all social process, the matter on the other hand
being analysable as Belief and Desire. Every institution is a belief,
[7] every activity is a want or desire. In the _Logique Sociale_
these conceptions of the general medium and process of social life
are pushed home into the actual formative operation of the social
mind and will. Society, we are told, may be compared not indeed to
an organism, but rather to a brain; it is a cooperative mind, a
syllogism, in which the principles held by one part are modified
and applied by another. M. Tarde’s extreme illustrative hypothesis
corresponds strangely with one thrown out by Mr. Sidgwick. Mr.
Sidgwick [8] has simplified an ethical question by supposing only a
single sentient conscious being in the universe; for M. {45} Tarde
there is, we might say, no single being at all; the typical social
man is a hypnotical creature, a somnambulist acting under suggestions
from others, though he does not know it, and is under the illusion
that he is himself. [9] Nothing could be of higher interest than to
see the necessities of social science thus working themselves out,
on slippery and unfamiliar ground, by the sheer force of facts and
experience. That a science of man must be a science of mind seems no
longer disputable.
[1] Giddings, p. 17.
[2] Le Bon, _Psychologie des Foules_.
[3] Tarde, _Les Lois de l’Imitation_.
[4] Durkheim, _La Division du Travail Social_.
[5] Tarde, _La Logique Sociale_.
[6] Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental
Development_.
[7] Perhaps this expression originates with Fustel de Coulanges in
_La Cité Antique_.
[8] _Methods of Ethics_, p. 374.
[9] _Les Lois de l’Imitation_, p. 83.
On the substance of this development there is one observation which
inevitably suggests itself to any critic who approaches the problem
from the philosophical side.
Necessarily, as the relation of the individual to society is the
root of every social problem, psychological sociology consists to a
great extent in exercises upon the theme of identity and difference.
These exercises have hitherto been for the most part unconscious
and involuntary. And the high degree of substantial truth which is
attained by inquirers who have not thought the logic of identity
worthy of a single glance, is the strongest possible confirmation of
the common experience that it is safer to neglect theory than to be
careless of facts. Nevertheless, it has now become apparent, that
a point has been attained at which logical criticism is absolutely
essential, or if not logical criticism, at least some reference to
the familiar and well-established results of ancient or modern social
philosophy.
For it is a universal characteristic of the {46} sociological
movement before us, that identity and difference are referred to
different spheres, and the “one” and the “other” are regarded as
reciprocally exclusive atoms. [1] The difficulties and fallacies
which thus arise are innumerable. Thus we have the contagious common
feeling of a crowd [2] taken as the true type of a collective mind,
obviously because it is not understood how an identical structure can
include the differences, the rational distinctions and relations,
which really constitute the working mind of any society. So again
we have one type of law marked off as corresponding to social
similitude, [3] while a different type corresponds to the social
division of labour; simply because the category of resemblance has
been substituted for that of identity, and is treated as exclusive of
differentiation; with the result of a really terrible distortion of
facts in the attempt to separate the whole sphere of penal enactment
from that which deals with industrial organisation. So with the
entire set of notions of “Imitation,” “Repetition” and “Invention.”
[4] The separation of Imitation and Invention is simply the popular
exclusion of Difference from Identity; while the treatment of
Repetition as the characteristic of knowable phenomena and the mode
of utterance of social Imitation means the restriction of rational
Identity to its barest form, and the exclusion from {47} social
theory of absolutely every case of true cooperative structure. For
true cooperative structure is never characterised by repetition, but
always by identity in difference; it is the relation not of a screw
to an exactly similar screw, but of the screw to the nut into which
it fastens.
[1] M. Tarde’s view just mentioned might seem to conflict with this.
But note that he regards the man influenced by others as under an
illusion in thinking that he is himself: _i.e._, with Spencer and
Huxley, he regards the “self” and the “other” as irreconcilable
factors.
[2] Le Bon, Op. cit.
[3] Durkheim, Op. cit.
[4] Tarde and Baldwin, Op. cit.
In the discussions of Egoism and Altruism the difficulty comes to a
head. Some writers think Egoism prior to Altruism; others--the more
wary and enlightened--incline to treat Altruism as a phase earlier
than Egoism; M. Durkheim, whose eye for a fact is very keen, seeing
the absurdity of both these suppositions, is determined to include
the two characters in question from the very beginning in the human
consciousness, [1] but, of course, as contents belonging to different
spheres and consisting of contrasted elements. The conception of a
whole held together by its differences, its identity consisting in
and being measured by their very profoundness and individuality, is
not at the command of any of these writers, although the greater
part of M. Durkheim’s theory seems imperatively to demand such a
conception.
[1] _Division du Travail_, 216.
vii. Before considering, in conclusion, the relation of Sociology
as influenced by the above-mentioned sources and points of view, to
social philosophy proper, it will be well to devote a few words to
emphasising the way in which these “sources” ought to be regarded.
Every “source” of sociological science is at once a category, or
point of view, and also a certain group of actual social conditions.
This relation is effectively illustrated by the study of any social
{48} unity which is such as to invite a thorough conspectus of
its life from top to bottom of the social growth and underlying
conditions. I repeat that the history and life of ancient Greece, a
singularly complete working model of society on a very small scale,
analysed with remarkable thoroughness, and individual throughout, is
the prerogative example of such a treatment; but next to this, or in
addition to it, a thoroughly careful study of local history, life,
and conditions, in a limited region, [1] with which we are familiar
from top to toe, is an essential propaedeutic to true social theory.
To focus a number of groups of fact, and coordinate the points of
view which they substantiate, into the conception of a living being,
with its individual character and spiritual utterance, needs more
than a merely literary or statistical study. But by making this
effort we shall learn, as no economic charts or general scientific
works can teach us, what a social life is, and in what sense it
is true that all partial facts and experiences within it demand
ultimate coordination in the category of mind. It is not meant that
consciousness can make the weather hold up, but it is meant that no
fact has a true social bearing except in as far as, sooner or later,
it comes to form part of the world which a being capable of sociality
and therefore intelligent, presents to himself as his theatre of
action.
[1] Cf. Professor Geddes’ idea of a “Regional Survey,” with which
visitors to his delightful “Summer School” become acquainted.
3. Thus it may seem that by mere force of facts a necessary solution
has been arrived at, and that psychological sociology must be one and
the same science with social philosophy.
{49} But this is not quite the case. Up to the present time these two
sciences continue to approach their object-matter, as it were, from
different ends, and whether the two views will ultimately amalgamate
is perhaps mainly a problem of the personal division of labour.
But a question of principle, with reference to the true nature of
psychology, is indirectly involved. Only there seems no reason why
two kinds of psychology should not exist.
Psychology, as at present conceived by its best working
representatives, is a positive, though not a physical science.
“For (the psychologist) the crude superstitions of Australian
aborigines have as much interest and value as the developed and
accurate knowledge of a Newton or a Faraday.” [1] Its aim is “the
establishment of continuity among observed facts, by interpolating
among them intermediate links which elude observation.” [2] If
not a “physical” science, then, it is, in a common sense of the
term, a “natural” science. It has the impartiality, and uses the
watchwords--law, process, genesis--which belong to a natural science.
And like every impartial science, to which process and genesis are
watchwords, it tends to explain the higher by the lower. This springs
from no malice aforethought, but from the conditions of the case. The
lower is simpler, and usually comes first in time. It is naturally
dwelt upon, as that into which it is hoped to resolve the more
complex, and the explanation which is more adequate for the simple,
is less adequate for the complex. No difference of higher {50} and
lower is recognised by the impartial science, and its ideal, as a
science, is inevitably the expression of the complex in terms of the
simple; while, as far as genesis in time is insisted on, the bias
towards temporal causation is pretty sure to operate by attaching a
quasi-causal significance to the earlier phases.
[1] Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, Introduction.
[2] _Ib_. From a logical point of view this idea of explanation seems
seriously defective. See Bradley’s _Principles of Logic_, p. 491.
In all these characteristics psychology is at one with sociology.
And, therefore, though it is a gain that other points of view should
be resolved into the point of view of mind, yet the positive bias of
sociology is not transcended simply by this resolution.
Philosophy starts, we have said, as it were, from the other end. It
is critical throughout; it desires to establish degrees of value,
degrees of reality, degrees of completeness and coherence. Its
purpose might be termed “Ethical,” but for the extreme narrowness
of the meaning of that term. Society, for it, is an achievement or
utterance of human nature--of course not divorced from nature in
general--having a certain degree of solidity, so to speak; that is
to say, being able, up to a certain point, to endure the tests and
answer the questionings which are suggested by the scrutiny of human
life from the point of view of value and completeness. Is the social
life the best, or the only life for a human soul? In what way through
society, and in what characteristics of society, does the soul lay
hold upon its truest self, or become, in short, the most that it has
in it to be? How does the social life at its best compare with the
life of art, of knowledge, or of religion, and can the same principle
be shown to be active in all of them? And what have {51} they in
common, or peculiar to each, which has an imperative claim on the
mind of man?
Now it was hinted above that there might be two kinds of psychology,
or two tendencies within it. And if psychology were to be impelled,
as it has been more than once in the past, by the recognition that
where there is more of its object--of mind--its interest is greater
and the rank of its object-matter is higher, then there would not
be much to choose between the temper of psychology and that of
philosophy. And as sociology has found itself driven forward into
the territory of social “logic,” a name which at once suggests a
critical and philosophical science, it may well be that sociological
psychology will not remain wholly “positive” and impartial, but
will assume, as in the hands of Professor Giddings, for example, it
seems inclined to, at least a teleological attitude, testing social
phenomena by the quantity and quality of life which they display.
But, at any rate, the points of view of sociology, and of social
philosophy as above described, will continue to supplement each
other. Philosophy gives a significance to sociology; sociology
vitalises philosophy. The idea of mind is deepened and extended by
the unity and continuity which sociological analysis, throughout all
its many-sided sources, vindicates for the principle of growth and
order down to the roots and in all the fibres of the world. Every
natural resource and condition must be thought of as drawing forth
or constituting some new element in the mind which is the universal
focus; just as every shape and colour of the trees in the landscape
or every note of a melody finds its {52} definite and individual
response in the contemplative consciousness. The error lies, not in
identifying the mind and the environment, but in first uncritically
separating them, and then substituting not merely the one for the
other, but wretched fragments of the one for the whole in which alone
either can be complete.
Philosophy, on the other hand, in treating of society, has to deal
with the problems which arise out of the nature of a whole and its
parts, the relation of the individual to the universal, and the
transformation by which the particular self is lost, to be found
again in a more individual, and yet more universal form. In all
these respects its view is what might be called teleological; that
is to say, it recognises a difference of level or of degree in the
completeness and reality of life, and endeavours to point out when
and how, and how far by social aid, the human soul attains the most
and best that it has in it to become. As long as these two points
of view are clearly recognised, it is a matter of the mere personal
division of labour whether they are brought to bear by the same
thinkers and within the same treatises.
{53}