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.