Herbert Spencer: The most basic universal social phenomena affecting society’s evolution, and the external environment constraints opportunities.
The Principles of Sociology, Volume 1, Part 1 [The Data of Sociology], Chapters 2-4..
The Source for today’s exhibit is:
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 (1874–75; enlarged 1876, 1885), Part 1, The Data of Sociology, London [multiple publishers]
CHAPTER II
THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL PHENOMENA
§ 6. The behaviour of a single inanimate object depends on the co-operation between its own forces and the forces to which it is exposed …
… It is equally so when the discrete aggregate consists of organic bodies, such as the members of a species. For a species increases or decreases in numbers, widens or contracts its habitat, migrates or remains stationary, continues an old mode of life or falls into a new one, under the combined influences of its intrinsic nature and the environing actions, inorganic and organic. It is thus, too, with aggregates of men. Be it rudimentary or be it advanced, every society displays phenomena that are ascribable to the characters of its units and to the conditions under which they exist. …
… Beginning with the extrinsic factors, we see that from the outset several kinds of them are variously operative. We have climate; hot, cold, or temperate, moist or dry, constant or variable. We have surface; much or little of which is available, and the available part of which is fertile in greater or less degree; and we have configuration of surface, as uniform or multiform. Next we have the vegetal productions; here abundant in quantities and kinds, and there deficient in one or both. And besides the Flora of the region we have its Fauna, which is influential in many ways; not only by the numbers of its species and individuals, but by the proportion between those that are useful and those that are injurious. On these sets of conditions, inorganic and organic, characterizing the environment, primarily depends the possibility of social evolution.
When we turn to the intrinsic factors we have to note first, that, considered as a social unit, the individual man has physical traits, such as degrees of strength, activity, endurance, which affect the growth and structure of the society. He is in every case distinguished by emotional traits which aid, or hinder, or modify, the activities of the society, and its developments. Always, too, his degree of intelligence and the tendencies of thought peculiar to him, become co-operating causes of social quiescence or social change.
Such being the original sets of factors, we have now to note the secondary or derived sets of factors, which social evolution itself brings into play.
§ 8. First may be set down the progressive modifications of the environment, inorganic and organic, which societies effect. Among these are the alterations of climate caused by clearing and by drainage. Such alterations may be favourable to social growth, as where a rainy region is made less rainy by cutting down forests, or a swampy surface rendered more salubrious and fertile by carrying off water; or they may be unfavourable, as where, by destroying the forests, a region already dry is made arid …
… Next come the changes wrought in the kinds and quantities of plant-life over the surface occupied. These changes are three-fold. There is the increasing culture of plants conducive to social growth, replacing plants not conducive to it; there is the gradual production of better varieties of these useful plants, causing, in time, great divergences from their originals; and there is, eventually, the introduction of new useful plants. Simultaneously go on the kindred changes which social progress works in the Fauna of the region. We have the diminution or destruction of some or many injurious species. We have the fostering of useful species, which has the double effect of increasing their numbers and making their qualities more advantageous to society. Further, we have the naturalization of desirable species brought from abroad. It needs but to think of the immense contrast between a wolf-haunted forest or a boggy moor peopled with wild birds, and the fields covered with crops and flocks which eventually occupy the same area, to be reminded that the environment, inorganic and organic, of a society, undergoes a continuous transformation during the progress of the society; and that this transformation becomes an all-important secondary factor in social evolution.
§ 9. Another secondary factor is the increasing size of the social aggregate, accompanied, generally, by increasing density. Apart from social changes otherwise produced, there are social changes produced by simple growth. Mass is both a condition to, and a result of, organization. It is clear that heterogeneity of structure is made possible only by multiplicity of units. Division of labour cannot be carried far where there are but few to divide the labour among them. Complex co-operations, governmental and industrial, are impossible without a population large enough to supply many kinds and gradations of agents. And sundry developed forms of activity, both predatory and peaceful, are made practicable only by the power which large masses of men furnish. Hence, then, a derivative factor which, like the rest, is at once a consequence and a cause of social progress, is social growth. Other factors co-operate to produce this; and this joins other factors in working further changes.
§ 10. Among derived factors we may next note the reciprocal influence of the society and its units — the influence of the whole on the parts, and of the parts on the whole. As soon as a combination of men acquires permanence, there begin actions and reactions between the community and each member of it, such that either affects the other in nature. The control exercised by the aggregate over its units, tends ever to mould their activities and sentiments and ideas into congruity with social requirements; and these activities, sentiments, and ideas, in so far as they are changed by changing circumstances, tend to re-mould the society into congruity with themselves. In addition, therefore, to the original nature of the individuals and the original nature of the society they form, we have to take into account the induced natures of the two. Eventually, mutual modification becomes a potent cause of transformation in both.
§ 11. Yet a further derivative factor of extreme importance remains. I mean the influence of the super-organic environment — the action and reaction between a society and neighbouring societies.
While there exist only small, wandering, unorganized hordes, the conflicts of these with one another work no permanent changes of arrangement in them. But when there have arisen the definite chieftainships which frequent conflicts tend to initiate, and especially when the conflicts have ended in subjugations, there arise the rudiments of political organization; and, as at first, so afterwards, the wars of societies with one another have all-important effects in developing social structures, or rather, certain of them.
For I may here, in passing, indicate the truth to be hereafter exhibited in full, that while the industrial organization of a society is mainly determined by its inorganic and organic environments, its governmental organization is mainly determined by its super-organic environment — by the actions of those adjacent societies with which it carries on the struggle for existence.
§ 12. There remains in the group of derived factors one more, the potency of which can scarcely be over-estimated. I mean that accumulation of super-organic products which we commonly distinguish as artificial, but which, philosophically considered, are no less natural than all other products of evolution. There are several orders of these. First come the material appliances, which, beginning with roughly-chipped flints, end in the complex automatic tools of an engine-factory driven by steam; which from boomerangs rise to eighty-ton guns; which from huts of branches and grass grow to cities with their palaces and cathedrals.
Then we have language, able at first only to eke out gestures in communicating simple ideas, but eventually becoming capable of expressing involved conceptions with precision. While from that stage in which it conveys thoughts only by sounds to one or a few persons, we pass through picture-writing up to steam-printing: multiplying indefinitely the numbers communicated with, and making accessible in voluminous literatures the ideas and feelings of countless men in various places and times.
Concomitantly there goes on the development of knowledge, ending in science. Numeration on the fingers grows into far-reaching mathematics; observation of the moon's changes leads in time to a theory of the solar system; and there successively arise sciences of which not even the germs could at first be detected.
Meanwhile the once few and simple customs, becoming more numerous, definite, and fixed, end in systems of laws. Rude superstitions initiate elaborate mythologies, theologies, cosmogonies.
Opinion getting embodied in creeds, gets embodied, too, in accepted codes of ceremony and conduct, and in established social sentiments.
And then there slowly evolve also the products we call æsthetic; which of themselves form a highly-complex group. From necklaces of fishbones we advance to dresses elaborate, gorgeous, and infinitely varied; out of discordant war-chants come symphonies and operas; cairns develop into magnificent temples; in place of caves with rude markings there arise at length galleries of paintings; and the recital of a chief's deeds with mimetic accompaniment gives origin to epics, dramas, lyrics, and the vast mass of poetry, fiction, biography, and history.
These various orders of super-organic products, each developing within itself new genera and species while growing into a larger whole, and each acting on the other orders while reacted on by them, constitute an immensely-voluminous, immensely-complicated, and immensely-powerful set of influences. During social evolution they are ever modifying individuals and modifying society, while being modified by both. They gradually form what we may consider either as a non-vital part of the society itself, or else as a secondary environment, which eventually becomes more important, than the primary environments — so much more important that there arises the possibility of carrying on a high kind of social life under inorganic and organic conditions which originally would have prevented it.
§ 13. Such are the factors in outline. Even when presented under this most general form, the combination of them is seen to be of an involved kind. Recognizing the primary truth that social phenomena depend in part on the natures of the individuals and in part on the forces the individuals are subject to, we see that these two fundamentally-distinct sets of factors, with which social changes commence, give origin to other sets as social changes advance.
The pre-established environing influences, inorganic and organic, which are at first almost unalterable, become more and more altered by the actions of the evolving society.
Simple growth of population brings into play fresh causes of transformation that are increasingly important. The influences which the society exerts on the natures of its units, and those which the units exert on the nature of the society, incessantly co-operate in creating new elements.
As societies progress in size and structure, they work on one another, now by their war-struggles and now by their industrial intercourse, profound metamorphoses. And the ever-accumulating, ever-complicating super-organic products, material and mental, constitute a further set of factors which become more and more influential causes of change. So that, involved as the factors are at the beginning, each step in advance increases the involution, by adding factors which themselves grow more complex while they grow more powerful.
But now having glanced at the factors of all orders, original and derived, we must neglect for the present those which are derived, and attend exclusively, or almost exclusively, to those which are original. The Data of Sociology, here to be dealt with, we must, as far as possible, restrict to those primary data common to social phenomena in general, and most readily distinguished in the simplest societies. …
CHAPTER III
ORIGINAL EXTERNAL FACTORS
§ 14. … Now that geologists and archaeologists are uniting to prove that human existence goes back to a time so remote that "pre-historic" scarcely expresses it, we are shown that the effects of external conditions on social evolution cannot be fully traced. Remembering that the 20,000 years, or so, during which man has lived in the Nile-valley, is made to seem a relatively-small period by the evidence that he coexisted with the extinct mammals of the drift — remembering that England had human inhabitants at an epoch which good judges think was glacial — remembering that in America, along with the bones of a Mastodon imbedded in the alluvium of the Bourbense, were found arrow-heads and other traces …
… One important truth only, implied by the evidence thus glanced at, must be noted. Geological changes and meteorological changes, as well as the consequent changes of Floras and Faunas, must have been causing, over all parts of the Earth, perpetual emigrations and immigrations. From each locality made less habitable by increasing inclemency, a wave of diffusion must have spread; into each locality made more favourable to human existence by amelioration of climate, or increase of indigenous food, or both, a wave of concentration must have been set up; and by great geological changes, here sinking areas of land and there raising areas, other redistributions of mankind must have been produced. Accumulating facts show that these enforced ebbings and flowings have, in some localities, and probably in most, taken place time after time. And such waves of emigration and immigration must have been ever bringing the dispersed groups of the race into contact with conditions more or less new.
… social life, pre-supposing as it does not only human life but that life vegetal and animal on which human life depends, is restricted by certain extremes of cold and heat. …
… I do not ignore the fact that in recent times societies have evolved most, both in size and complexity, in temperate regions. I simply join with this the fact that the first considerable societies arose, and the primary stages of social development were reached, in hot climates. The truth would seem to be that the earlier phases of progress had to be passed through where the resistances offered by inorganic conditions were least; that when the arts of life had been advanced, it became possible for societies to develop in regions where the resistances were greater; and that further developments in the arts of life, with the further discipline in co-operation accompanying them, enabled subsequent societies to take root and grow in regions which, by climatic and other conditions, offered relatively-great resistances. …
… The evidence justifies this inference. The earliest-recorded civilization grew up in a hot and dry region — Egypt; and in hot and dry regions also arose the BabyIonian, Assyrian, and Phoenician civilizations. …
§ 17. On passing from climate to surface, we have to note, first, the effects of its configuration, as favouring or hindering social integration. That the habits of hunters or nomads may be changed into those required for settled life, the surface occupied must be one within which coercion is easy, and beyond which the difficulties of existence are great. The unconquerableness of mountain tribes, difficult to get at, has been in many times and in many places exemplified. Instance the Illyrians, who remained independent of the adjacent Greeks, gave trouble to the Macedonians, and mostly recovered their independence after the death of Alexander; instance the Montenegrins; instance the Swiss; instance the people of the Caucasus. The inhabitants of desert-tracts, as well as those of mountain-tracts, are difficult to consolidate: facility of escape, joined with ability to live in sterile regions, greatly hinder social subordination. …
… Conversely, social integration is easy within a territory which, while able to support a large population, affords facilities for coercing the units of that population: especially if it is bounded by regions offering little sustenance, or peopled by enemies, or both. Egypt fulfilled these conditions in a high degree. Governmental force was unimpeded by physical obstacles within the occupied area; and escape from it into the adjacent desert involved either starvation or robbery and enslavement by wandering hordes.
Then in small areas surrounded by the sea, such as the Sandwich Islands, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, where a barrier to flight is formed by a desert of water instead of a desert of sand, the requirements are equally well fulfilled. Thus we may figuratively say that social integration is a process of welding, which can be effected only when there are both pressure and difficulty in evading that pressure.
And here, indeed, we are reminded how, in extreme cases, the nature of the surface permanently determines the type of social life it bears. From the earliest recorded times, arid tracts in the East have been peopled by Semitic tribes having an adapted social type. The description given by Herodotus of the Scythian's mode of life and social organization, is substantially the same as that given of the Kalmucks by Pallas.
Even were regions fitted for nomads to have their inhabitants exterminated, they would be re-peopled by refugees from neighbouring settled societies; who would similarly be compelled to wander, and would similarly acquire fit forms of union. There is, indeed, a modern instance in point: not exactly of a re-genesis of an adapted social type, but of a genesis de novo. Since the colonization of South America, some of the pampas have become the homes of robber-tribes like Bedouins.
Another trait of the inhabited area to be noted as influential, is its degree of heterogeneity. Other things equal, localities that are uniform in structure are unfavourable to social progress. Leaving out for the present its effects on the Flora and Fauna, sameness of surface implies absence of varied inorganic materials, absence of varied experiences, absence of varied habits, and, therefore, puts obstacles to industrial development and the arts of life.
Neither Central Asia, nor Central Africa, nor the central region of either American continent, has been the seat of an indigenous civilization of any height. Regions like the Russian steppes, however possible it may be to carry into them civilization elsewhere developed, are regions within which civilization is not likely to be initiated; because the differentiating agencies are insufficient. When quite otherwise caused, uniformity of habitat has still the like effect. …
… Contrariwise, the influences of geological and geographical heterogeneity in furthering social development, are conspicuous. Though, considered absolutely, the Nile-valley is not physically multiform, yet it is multiform in comparison with surrounding tracts; and it presents that which seems the most constant antecedent to civilization — the juxtaposition of land and water. Though the Babylonians and Assyrians had habitats that were not specially varied, yet they were more varied than the riverless regions lying East and West. The strip of territory in which the Phoenician society arose, had a relatively-extensive coast; many rivers furnishing at their mouths sites for the chief cities; plains and valleys running inland, with hills between them and mountains beyond them.
Still more does heterogeneity distinguish the area in which the Greek society evolved: it is varied in its multitudinous and complex distributions of land and sea, in its contour of surface, in its soil.
[Quote] “No part of Europe — perhaps it would not be too much to say no part of the world — presents so great a variety of natural features within the same area as Greece." The Greeks themselves, indeed, observed the effects of local circumstances in so far as unlikeness between coast and interior goes. As says Mr. Grote: — "The ancient philosophers and legislators were deeply impressed with the contrast between an inland and a maritime city: in the former simplicity and uniformity of life, tenacity of ancient habits and dislike of what is new and foreign, great force of exclusive sympathy and narrow range both of objects and ideas: in the latter, variety and novelty of sensations, expansive imagination, toleration and occasional preference for extraneous customs, greater activity of the individual and corresponding mutability of the state.” [end quote]
Though the differences here described are mainly due to absence and presence of foreign intercourse; yet, since this itself is dependent on the local relations of land and sea, these relations must be recognized as primary causes of the differences. Just observing that in Italy likewise, civilization found a seat of considerable complexity, geological and geographical, we may pass to the New World, where we see the same thing. Central America, which was the source of its indigenous civilizations, is characterized by comparative multiformity. So, too, with Mexico and with Peru. The Mexican tableland, surrounded by mountains, contained many lakes: that of Tezcuco, with its islands and shores, being the seat of Government; and through Peru, varied in surface, the Ynca-power spread from the mountainous islands of the large, irregular, elevated lake, Titicaca.
How soil affects progress remains to be observed. The belief that easy obtainment of food is unfavourable to social evolution, while not without an element of truth, is by no means true as currently accepted.
The semi-civilized peoples of the Pacific — the Sandwich Islanders, Tahitians, Tongans, Samoans, Fijians — show us considerable advances made in places where great productiveness renders life unlaborious. In Sumatra, where rice yields 80 to 140 fold, and in Madagascar, where it yields 50 to 100 fold, social development has not been insignificant. Kaffirs, inhabiting a tract having rich and extensive pasturage, contrast favourably, both individually and socially, with neighbouring races occupying regions that are relatively unproductive; and those parts of Central Africa in which the indigenes have made most social progress, as Ashantee and Dahomey, have luxuriant vegetations. Indeed, if we call to mind the Nile-valley, and the exceptionally-fertilizing process it is subject to, we see that the most ancient social development known to us, began in a region which, fulfilling other requirements, was also characterized by great natural productiveness.
And here, with respect to fertility, we may recognize a truth allied to that which we recognized in respect to climate; namely, that the earlier stages of social evolution are possible only where the resistances to be overcome are small. As those arts of life by which loss of heat is prevented, must be considerably advanced before relatively-inclement regions can be well peopled; so, the agricultural arts must be considerably advanced before the less fertile tracts can support populations large enough for civilization.
And since arts of every kind develop only as societies progress in size and structure, it follows that there must be societies having habitats where abundant food can be procured by inferior arts, before there can arise the arts required for dealing with less productive habitats.
While yet low and feeble, societies can survive only where the circumstances are least trying. The ability to survive where circumstances are more trying can be possessed only by the higher and stronger societies descending from these; and inheriting their acquired organization, appliances, and knowledge.
It should be added that variety of soil is a factor of importance; since this helps to cause that multiplicity of vegetal products which largely aids social progress. In sandy Damara-land, where four kinds of mimosas exclude nearly every other kind of tree or bush, it is clear that, apart from further obstacles to progress, paucity of materials must be a great one. But here we verge upon another order of factors.
§ 18. The character of its Flora affects in a variety of ways the fitness of a habitat for supporting a society. At the chief of these we must glance.
Some of the Esquimaux have no wood at all; while others have only that which comes to them as ocean-drift. By using snow or ice to build their houses, and by the shifts they are put to in making cups of seal-skin, fishing-lines and nets of whalebone, and even bows of bone or horn, these people show us how greatly advance in the arts of life is hindered by lack of fit vegetal products. With this Arctic race, too, as also with the nearly Antarctic Fuegians, we see that the absence or extreme scarcity of useful plants is an insurmountable impediment to social progress.
Evidence better than that furnished by these regions (where extreme cold is a coexisting hindrance) comes from Australia; where, in a climate that is on the whole favourable, the paucity of plants available for the purposes of life has been a part-cause of continued arrest at the lowest stage of barbarism [oops!]. Large tracts of it, supporting but one inhabitant to sixty square miles, admit of no approach to that populousness which is a needful antecedent to civilization. …
[Note to readers: Here Michael pauses Spencer, and speaks to reader: Bear in mind that English Victorians saw nothing morally wrong or unscientific in the ‘barbarian’ descriptor. Charles Darwin used the word frequently. The first instance in his Descent of Man is to be found on page 34 — (quote Darwin) “The difference would, no doubt, still remain immense, even if one of the higher apes had been improved or civilised as much as a dog has been in comparison with its parent-form, the wolf or jackal. The Fuegians rank amongst the lowest barbarians; but I was continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on board H.M.S. Beagle, who had lived some years in England and could talk a little English, resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental faculties. If no organic being excepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed… (end quote Darwin). In fact the best classical-liberal positivist reformist political and educational proposals in late 19th century Argentina turned on the central motivating philosophy of a clash between ‘barbarism and civilisation’. Michael ‘se cierra la boca’ and now returns to Spencer.]
… Conversely, after observing how growth of population, making social advance possible, is furthered by abundance of vegetal products, we may observe how variety of vegetal products conduces to the same effect. Not only in the cases of the slightly-developed societies occupying regions covered by a heterogeneous Flora, do we see that dependence on many kinds of roots, fruits, cereals, etc., is a safeguard against the famines caused by failure of any single crop; but we see that the materials furnished by a heterogeneous Flora, make possible a multiplication of appliances, a consequent advance of the arts, and an accompanying development of skill and intelligence. The Tahitians have on their islands, fit woods for the frameworks and roofs of houses, with palm-leaves for thatch; there are plants yielding fibres out of which to twist cords, fishing-lines, matting, etc.; the tapa-bark, duly prepared, furnishes a cloth for their various articles of dress; they have cocoa-nuts for cups, etc., materials for baskets, sieves, and various domestic implements; they have plants giving them scents for their unguents, flowers for their wreaths and necklaces; they have dyes for stamping patterns on their dresses — all besides the various foods, bread-fruit, taro, yams, sweet-potatoes, arrow-root, fern-root, cocoa-nuts, plantains, bananas, jambo, ti-root, sugar-cane, etc.: enabling them to produce numerous made dishes.
And the utilization of all these materials implies a culture which in various ways furthers social advance. Kindred results from like causes have arisen among an adjacent people, widely unlike in character and political organization. In a habitat characterized by a like variety of vegetal products, those ferocious cannibals the Fijians, have developed their arts to a degree comparable with that of the Tahitians, and have a division of labour and a commercial organization that are even superior. Among the thousand species of indigenous plants in the Fiji Islands, there are such as furnish materials for all purposes, from the building of war-canoes carrying 300 men down to the making of dyes and perfumes. It may, indeed, be urged that the New Zealanders, exhibiting a social development akin to that reached in Tahiti and Fiji, had a habitat of which the indigenous Flora was not varied. But the reply is that both by their language and their mythology, the New Zealanders are shown to have separated from other Malayo-Polynesians after the arts of life had been considerably advanced; and that they brought these arts (as well as some cultivated plants) to a region which, though poor in edible plants, supplied in abundance plants otherwise useful.
As above hinted, mere luxuriance of vegetation is in some cases a hindrance to progress. Even that inclement region inhabited by the Fuegians, is, strange to say, made worse by the dense growth of useless underwood which clothes the rocky hills. Living though they do under conditions otherwise so different, the Andamanese, too, are restricted to the borders of the sea, by the impenetrable thickets which cover the land. Indeed various equatorial regions, made made almost useless even to the semi-civilized by jungle and tangled forest, were utterly useless to the aborigines, who had no tools for clearing the ground. The primitive man, possessing rude stone implements only, found but few parts of the Earth's surface which, neither too barren nor bearing too luxuriant a vegetation, were available: so again reminding us that rudimentary societies are at the mercy of environing conditions.
§ 19. There remains to be treated the Fauna of the region inhabited. Evidently this affects greatly both the degree of social growth and the type of that growth.
The presence or absence of wild animals fit for food, influential as it is in determining the kind of individual life, is therefore influential in determining the kind of social organization.
Where, as in North America, there existed game enough to support the aboriginal races, hunting continued the dominant activity; and a partially-nomadic habit being entailed by migrations after game, there was a persistent impediment to agriculture, to increase of population, and to industrial development.
We have but to consider the antithetical case of the various Polynesian races, and to observe how, in the absence of a considerable land-Fauna, they have been forced into agriculture with its concomitant settled life, larger population, and advanced arts, to see how great an effect the kind and amount of utilizable animal-life has on civilization.
When we glance at that pastoral type of society which, still existing, has played in past times an important part in human progress, we again see that over wide regions the indigenous Fauna has been chiefly influential in fixing the form of social union. On the one hand, in the absence of herbivores admitting of domestication — horses, camels, oxen, sheep, goats — the pastoral life followed by the three great conquering races in their original habitats, would have been impossible; and, on the other hand, this kind of life was inconsistent with that formation of larger settled unions which is needed for the higher social relations.
On recalling the cases of the Laplanders with their reindeer and dogs, the Tartars with their horses and cattle, and the South Americans with their llamas and guinea-pigs, it becomes obvious, too, that in various cases this nature of the Fauna, joined with that of the surface, still continues to be a cause of arrest at a certain stage of evolution. While the Fauna as containing an abundance or scarcity of creatures useful to man is an important factor, it is also an important factor as containing an abundance or scarcity of injurious creatures. The presence of the larger carnivores is, in some places, a serious impediment to social life; as in Sumatra, where villages are not uncommonly depopulated by tigers; as in India, where "a single tigress caused the destruction of 13 villages, and 250 square miles of country were thrown out of cultivation", and where "in 1869 one tigress killed 127 people, and stopped a public road for many weeks".
Indeed we need but recall the evils once suffered in England from wolves, and those still suffered in some parts of Europe, to see that freedom to carry on out-door occupations and intercourse, which is among the conditions to social advance, may be hindered by predatory animals.
Nor must we forget how greatly agriculture is occasionally interfered with by reptiles; as, again, in India, where over 25,000 persons die of snake-bite annually. To which evils directly inflicted by the higher animals, must be added the indirect evils which they join insects in inflicting, by destroying crops. Sometimes injuries of this last kind considerably affect the mode of individual life and consequently of social life; as in Kaffirland, where crops are subject to great depredations from mammals, birds, and insects, and where the transformation of the pastoral state into a higher state is thus discouraged; or as in the Bechuana-country, which, while "peopled with countless herds of game, is sometimes devastated by swarms of locusts".
Clearly, where the industrial tendencies are feeble, uncertainty in getting a return for labour must hinder the development of them, and cause reversion to older modes of life, if these can still be pursued. Many other mischiefs, caused especially by insects, seriously interfere with social progress. Even familiar experiences in Scotland, where the midges sometimes drive one indoors, show how greatly "the plague of flies" must, in tropical regions, impede outdoor labour. Where, as on the Orinoco, the morning salutation is — "How are we to-day for the mosquitos?" and where the torment is such that a priest could not believe Humboldt voluntarily submitted to it merely that he might see the country, the desire for relief must often out-balance the already-feeble motive to work. Even the effects of flies on cattle indirectly modify social life; as among the Kirghiz, who, in May, when the steppes are covered with rich pasture, are obliged by the swarms of flies to take their herds to the mountains; or as in Africa, where the tsetse negatives the pastoral occupation in some localities. And then, in other cases, great discouragement results from the termites, which, in parts of East Africa, consume dress, furniture, beds, etc. "A man may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow, from the ravages of the white ants", said a Portuguese merchant to Livingstone. Nor is this all. Humboldt remarks that where the termites destroy all documents, there can be no advanced civilization.
Thus there is a close relation between the type of social life indigenous in a locality, and the character of the indigenous Fauna. The presence or absence of useful species, and the presence or absence of injurious species, have their favouring and hindering effects. And there is not only so produced a furtherance or retardation of social progress, generally considered, but there is produced more or less speciality in the structures and activities of the community.
§ 20. To describe fully these original external factors is out of the question. An approximately-complete account of the classes characterized above, would be a work of years; and there would have to be added many environing conditions not yet indicated. Effects of differences in degree and distribution of light, as illustrated by the domesticity and culture which the Arctic night causes among the Icelanders, would have to be treated; as also the minor effects due to greater or less brilliancy of ordinary daylight in sunny and cloudy climates on the mental states, and therefore on the actions, of the inhabitants. The familiar fact that habitual fineness of weather and habitual inclemency, lead respectively to outdoor social intercourse and in-door family-life, and so influence the characters of citizens, would have to be taken into account.
So, too, would the modifications of ideas and feelings wrought by imposing meteorologic and geologic phenomena. And beyond the effects, made much of by Mr. Buckle, which these produce on men's imaginations, and consequently on their behaviour, there would have to be noted their effects of other orders: as, for instance, those which frequent earthquakes have on the type of architecture — causing a preference for houses that are low and slight; and so modifying both the domestic arrangements and the aesthetic culture.
Again, the character of the fuel which a locality yields has consequences that ramify in various directions; as we see in the contrast between our own coal-burning London, with its blackened gloomy streets, and the wood-burning cities of the continent, where general lightness and bright colours induce a different state of feeling having different results. How the mineralogy of a region acts, scarcely needs pointing out. Entire absence of metals may cause local persistence of the stone-age; presence of copper may initiate advance; presence or proximity of tin, rendering bronze possible, may cause a further step; and if there are iron-ores, a still further step may presently be taken. So, too, the supply or lack of lime for mortar, affects the sizes and types of buildings, private and public; and thus influences domestic and social habits, as well as art-progress.
Even down to such a minor peculiarity as the presence of hot springs, which in ancient Central America initiated a local manufacture of pottery, there would have to be traced the influence of each physical condition in determining the prevailing industry, and therefore, in part, the social organization. But a detailed account of the original external factors, whether of the more important kinds outlined in the preceding pages or of the less important kinds just exemplified, pertains to Special Sociology.
Any one who, carrying with him the general principles of the science, undertook to interpret the evolution of each society, would have to describe completely these many local causes in their various kinds and degrees. Such an undertaking must be left for the sociologists of the future.
§ 21. Here my purpose has been to give general ideas of the original external factors, in their different classes and orders; so as to impress on the reader the truth … that the characters of the environment co-operate with the characters of human beings in determining social phenomena.
One result of enumerating these original external factors and observing the parts they play, has been that of bringing into view the fact, that the earlier stages of social evolution are far more dependent on local conditions than the later stages.
Though societies such as we are now most familiar with, highly organized, rich in appliances, advanced in knowledge, can, by the help of various artifices, thrive in unfavorable habitats; yet feeble, unorganized societies cannot do so. They are at the mercy of their surroundings.
Moreover we thus find answers to the questions sometimes raised in opposition to the doctrine of social evolution — How does it happen that so many tribes of savages [oops again] have made no manifest progress during the long period over which human records extend? And if it is true that the human race existed during the later geologic periods, why, for 100,000 years or more, did no traceable civilization result?
To these questions, I say, adequate replies are furnished. When, glancing over the classes and orders of original external factors above set down, we observe how rare is that combination of favourable ones joined with absence of unfavourable ones, by which alone the germs of societies can be fostered — when we remember that in proportion as the appliances are few and rude, the knowledge small, and the co-operation feeble, the establishment of any improvement in face of surrounding difficulties must take a long time — when we remember that this helplessness of primitive social groups left them exposed to each adverse change, and so caused repeated losses of such advances as were made; it becomes easy to understand why, for an enormous period, no considerable societies were evolved. But now having made this general survey of the original external factors, and drawn these general inferences, we may leave all detailed consideration of them as not further concerning us. For in dealing with the Principles of Sociology, we have to deal with facts of structure and function displayed by societies in general, dissociated, so far as may be, from special facts due to special circumstances. Henceforth we shall occupy ourselves with those characters of societies which depend mainly on the intrinsic natures of their units, rather than with the characters determined by particular extrinsic influences.
CHAPTER IV
ORIGINAL INTERNAL FACTORS
§ 22. As with the original external factors, so with the original internal factors — an adequate account of them supposes a far greater knowledge of the past than we can get. On the one hand, from men's bones, and objects betraying men's actions, found in recent strata and in cave-deposits, dating back to periods since which there have been great changes of climate and redistributions of land and sea, we must infer that the habitats of tribes have been ever undergoing modifications; though what modifications we can but vaguely guess.
On the other hand, alterations of habitats imply in the races subject to them adaptive changes of function and structure; respecting most of which we can know little more than their occurrence.
Such fragmentary evidence as we have does not warrant definite conclusions respecting the ways and degrees in which men of the remote past differed from men now existing. There are, indeed, remains which, taken alone, indicate inferiority of type in ancestral races. The Neanderthal-skull and others like it, with their enormous supra-orbital ridges so simian in character, are among these. …
… Two general conclusions only seem warranted by the facts at present known. The first is that in remote epochs there were, as there are now, varieties of men distinguished by differences of osseous structure considerable in degree, and probably by other differences; and the second is, that some traits of brutality and inferiority exhibited in certain of these ancient varieties, have either disappeared or now occur only as unusual variations.
§ 23. So that about the original internal factors, taken in that comprehensive sense which includes the traits of prehistoric man, we can ascertain little that helps us. Still we may fairly draw from the researches of geologists and archaeologists the important general inferences that throughout long-past periods, as since the commencement of history, there has been going on a continuous differentiation of races, a continuous over-running of the less powerful or less adapted by the more powerful or more adapted, a driving of inferior varieties into undesirable habitats, and, occasionally, an extermination of inferior varieties.
And now, carrying with us this dim conception of primitive man and his history, we must be content to give it what definition we may, by studying those existing races of men which, as judged by their visible characters and their implements, approach most nearly to primitive man. Instead of including in one chapter all the classes and sub-classes of traits to be set down, it will be most convenient to group them into three chapters. We will take first the physical, then the emotional, lastly the intellectual. …
[You have now reached the end of this Social Science Files exhibit.]
[Spencer’s Principles of Sociology will be continued. We will skip the notoriously contentious (yet inessential) chapters about Primitive Man, but may well dwell on chapters about ‘Primitive Ideas’ (of which there is unfortunately still no scarcity in 2023). Spencer is today considered the ‘Darwin’ but rarely the ‘darling’ of the social sciences. His intuitive common sense grasp of historical reality drew on a massive data set mixed with more speculative inferences but even now much of his careful scientific enterprise remains commensurate with findings in the modern sciences of, inter alia, politics, economics, biology, archeology, anthropology. He must be read.]
[Curated versions will be available in The Archive after an interval of 2-3 days, and are likely to be continuously reworked as they evolve to serve varied purposes.]
UNLOCKED EXHIBITS FROM ARCHIVE LISTED BELOW:
Unlocked fulsome praise for Herbert Spencer from archeologist Ian Morris and sociologist Jonathan Turner, both of whom have been Social Science Files subscribers since early 2022.
[Michael’s note: This email is the initial retrieval of text that will maximise content quantity and relevance from an original source. Subsequent subdivided, relabelled, recategorised, reorganised, and highlighted versions that maximise quality and applicability will have a separate ‘tooled’ existence behind the paywall in the Archive.]
‘The Heller Files’, quality tools for Social Science.
Social Science Files collects and displays multidisciplinary writings on a great variety of topics relating to evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.