OR GROUPS OF

SOCIOLOGICAL FACTS,

CLASSIFIED AND ARRANGED BY

HERBERT SPENCER,

COMPILED AND ABSTRACTED BY

DAVID DUNCAN, M.A., Professor of Logic, &c., in the Presidency College, Madras; RICHARD SCHEPPIG, Ph.D.; and JAMES COLLIER.

EXTRACT FROM THE PROVISIONAL PREFACE.

Something to introduce the work of which an instalment is annexed, seems needful, in anticipation of the time when completion of a volume will give occasion for a Permanent Preface.

In preparation for The Principles of Sociology, requiring as bases of induction large accumulations of data, fitly arranged for comparison, I, some twelve years ago, commenced, by proxy, the collection and organization of facts presented by societies of different types, past and present; being fortunate enough to secure the services of gentlemen competent to carry on the process in the way I wished. Though this classified compilation of materials was entered upon solely to facilitate my own work; yet, after having brought the mode of clas­si­fi­ca­tion to a satisfactory form, and after having had some of the Tables filled up, I decided to have the undertaking executed with a view to publication; the facts collected and arranged for easy reference and convenient study of their relations, being so presented, apart from hypothesis, as to aid all students of Social Science in testing such conclusions as they have drawn and in drawing others.

The Work consists of three large Divisions. Each comprises a set of Tables exhibiting the facts as abstracted and classified, and a mass of quotations and abridged abstracts otherwise classified, on which the statements contained in the Tables are based. The condensed statements, arranged after a uniform manner, give, in each Table or succession of Tables, the phenomena of all orders which each society presents—constitute an account of its morphology, its physiology, and (if a society having a known history) its development. On the other hand, the collected Extracts, serving as authorities for the statements in the Tables, are (or, rather will be, when the Work is complete) classified primarily according to the kinds of phenomena to which they refer, and secondarily according to the societies exhibiting these phenomena; so that each kind of phenomenon as it is displayed in all societies, may be separately studied with convenience.