Spencer sums up his vision of the evolution of society as a thing governed in differentiated i.e. "compounded" forms, except for "the horde" which he thinks is the original undifferentiated unit..
Volume 1, The Inductions of Sociology, Chapter X
Social Types and Constitutions
§ 256.
A glance at the respective antecedents of individual organisms and social organisms, shows why the last admit of no such definite classification as the first. Through a thousand generations a species of plant or animal leads substantially the same kind of life; and its successive members inherit the acquired adaptations. When changed conditions cause divergences of forms once alike, the accumulating differences arising in descendants only superficially disguise the original identity — do not prevent the grouping of the several species into a genus; nor do wider divergences that began earlier, prevent the grouping of genera into orders and orders into classes. It is otherwise with societies.
Hordes of primitive men, dividing and subdividing, do, indeed, show us successions of small social aggregates leading like lives, inheriting such low structures as had resulted, and repeating those structures.
But higher social aggregates propagate their respective types in much less decided ways. Though colonies tend to grow like their parent-societies, yet the parent-societies are so comparatively plastic, and the influences of new habitats on the derived societies are so great, that divergences of structure are inevitable. In the absence of definite organizations established during the similar lives of many societies descending one from another, there cannot be the precise distinctions implied by complete classification.
Two cardinal kinds of differences there are, however, of which we may avail ourselves for grouping societies in a natural manner. Primarily we may arrange them according to their degrees of composition, as simple, compound, doubly-compound, trebly-compound…
§ 257.
We have seen that social evolution begins with small simple aggregates; that it progresses by the clustering of these into larger aggregates; and that after being consolidated, such clusters are united with others like themselves into still larger aggregates.
Our classification, then, must begin with societies of the first or simplest order. We cannot in all cases say with precision what constitutes a simple society; for, in common with products of evolution generally, societies present transitional stages which negative sharp divisions.
As the multiplying members of a group spread and diverge gradually, it is not always easy to decide when the groups into which they fall become distinct. Here, inhabiting a barren region, the descendants of common ancestors have to divide while yet the constituent families are near akin; and there, in a more fertile region, the group may hold together until clusters of families remotely akin are formed: clusters which, diffusing slowly, are held by a common bond that slowly weakens. By and by comes the complication arising from the presence of slaves not of the same ancestry, or of an ancestry but distantly allied; and these, though they may not be political units, must be recognized as units sociologically considered. Then there is the kindred complication arising where an invading tribe becomes a dominant class.
[And now the first punchline quote…]
Our only course is to regard as simple society, one which forms a single working whole unsubjected to any other, and of which the parts co-operate, with or without a regulating centre, for certain public ends.
On contemplating these uncivilized societies which, though alike as being uncompounded [i.e. undifferentiated], differ in their sizes and structures, certain generally-associated traits may be noted. Of the groups without political organization, or with but vague traces of it, the lowest are those small wandering ones which live on the wild food sparsely distributed in forests, over barren tracts, or along sea-shores.
Where small simple societies remain without chiefs though settled, it is where circumstances allow them to be habitually peaceful.
… we find reason for inferring that the changes from the hunting life to the pastoral, and from the pastoral to the agricultural, favour increase of population, the development of political organization, of industrial organization, and of the arts; though these causes do not of themselves produce these results.
Volume 2, Political Institutions, Chapter XIX
POLITICAL RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT
§ 576.
In the foregoing chapters little has been said concerning the doctrine of Evolution at large, as re-illustrated by political evolution; though doubtless the observant reader has occasionally noted how the transformations described conform to the general law of transformation. Here, in summing up, it will be convenient briefly to indicate their conformity. Already, when treating of Social Growth, Social Structures, and Social Functions, the outlines of this correspondence were exhibited; but the materials for exemplifying it in a more special way, which have been brought together in this Part, may fitly be utilized to emphasize afresh a truth not yet commonly admitted.
That under its primary aspect political development is a process of integration, is clear. By it individuals originally separate are united into a whole; and the union of them into a whole is variously shown.
[And now the second punchline quote…]
In the earliest stages the groups of men are small, they are loose, they are not unified by subordination to a centre. But with political progress comes the compounding, re-compounding, and re-re-compounding of groups until great nations are produced.
Moreover, with that settled life and agricultural development accompanying political progress, there is not only a formation of societies covering wider areas, but an increasing density of their populations. Further, the loose aggregation of savages passes into the coherent connexion of citizens; at one stage coercively bound to one another and to their localities by family-ties and class-ties, and at a later stage voluntarily bound together by their mutually-dependent occupations. Once more, there is that merging of individual wills in a governmental will, which reduces a society, as it reduces an army, to a consolidated body. An increase of heterogeneity at the same time goes on in many ways.
Everywhere the horde, when its members cooperate for defence or offence, begins to differentiate into a predominant man, a superior few, and an inferior many.
With that massing of groups which war effects, there grow out of these, head chief, subordinate chiefs, and warriors; and at higher stages of integration, kings, nobles, and people: each of the two great social strata presently becoming differentiated within itself.
When small societies have been united, the respective triune governing agencies of them grow unlike: the local political assemblies falling into subordination to a central political assembly. Though, for a time, the central one continues to be constituted after the same manner as the local ones, it gradually diverges in character by loss of its popular element. While these local and central bodies are becoming contrasted in their powers and structures, they are severally becoming differentiated in another way. Originally each is at once military, political, and judicial; but by and by the assembly for judicial business, no longer armed, ceases to be like the politico-military assembly; and the politico-military assembly eventually gives origin to a consultative body, the members of which, when meeting for political deliberation, come unarmed. Within each of these divisions, again, kindred changes subsequently occur. While themselves assuming more specialized forms, local judicial agencies fall under the control of a central judicial agency; and the central judicial agency, which has separated from the original consultative body, subdivides into parts or courts which take unlike kinds of business. The central political body, too, where its powers do not disappear by absorption in those of the supreme head, tends to complicate; as in our own case [i.e. nineteenth century England] by the differentiation of a privy council from the original consultative body, and again by the differentiation of a cabinet from the privy council: accompanied, in the other direction, by division of the consultative body into elective and non-elective parts.
[Observe here an advance notice of the evolution of separations of power …]
While these metamorphoses are going on, the separation of the three organizations, legislative, judicial, and executive, progresses.
Moreover, with progress in these major political changes goes that progress in minor political changes which, out of family-governments and clan-governments, evolves such governments as those of the tything, the gild, and the municipality. Thus in all directions from primitive simplicity there is produced ultimate complexity, through modifications upon modifications.
With this advance from small incoherent social aggregates to great coherent ones, which, while becoming integrated pass from uniformity to multiformity, there goes an advance from indefiniteness of political organization to definiteness of political organization.
[And now the final punchline quote…]
Save inherited ideas and usages, nothing is fixed in the primitive horde.
But the differentiations above described, severally beginning vaguely, grow in their turns gradually more marked. Class-divisions, absent at first and afterwards undecided, eventually acquire great distinctness: slaves, serfs, freemen, nobles, king, become separated, often by impassable barriers, and their positions shown by mutilations, badges, dresses, &c.
Powers and obligations which were once diffused are parted off and rigorously maintained. The various parts of the political machinery come to be severally more and more restricted in their ranges of duties; and usage, age by age accumulating precedents, brings every kind of official action within prescribed bounds. This increase of definiteness is everywhere well shown by the development of laws. Beginning as inherited sacred injunctions briefly expressed, these have to be applied after some prescribed method, and their meanings in relation to particular cases made clear. Rules of procedure become step by step detailed and formal, while interpretations change the general command into specialized commands to meet incidental circumstances; and gradually there grows up a legal system everywhere precise and fixed. How pronounced is this tendency is interestingly shown in our system of Equity, which, arising to qualify the unduly defined and rigid applications of Law, itself slowly multiplied its technicalities until it grew equally defined and rigid.
To meet an obvious criticism it must be added that these changes from societies which are small loose, uniform, and vague in structure, to societies which are large, compact, multiform, and distinct in structure, present varieties of characters under varieties of conditions, and alter as the conditions alter.
Different parts of a society display the transformation, according as the society's activities are of one or other kind. Chronic war generates a compulsory cohesion, and produces an ever-greater heterogeneity and definiteness in that controlling organization by which unity of action is secured; while that part of the organization which carries on production and distribution, exhibits these traits of evolution evolution in a relatively small degree. Conversely, when joint action of the society against other societies decreases, the traits of the structure developed for carrying it on begin to fade; while the traits of the structure for carrying on production and distribution become more decided: the increasing cohesion, heterogeneity, and definiteness, begin now to be shown throughout the industrial organization. Hence the phenomena become complicated by a simultaneous evolution of one part of the social organization and dissolution of another part — a mingling of changes well illustrated in our own society.
§ 577. With this general conception before us, which, without more detailed recapitulation of the conclusions reached, will sufficiently recall them, we may turn from retrospect to prospect; and ask through what phases political evolution is likely hereafter to pass.
[You have now reached the end of this Social Science Files exhibit.]
The Source of today’s exhibit has been:
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Volumes 1-3 (1874–75; 1876, 1885, 1895), London [multiple publishers]
Social Science Files 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.
Warrior of the Golden Horde, by Alla Horska (Ukraine) Date: 1963
‘The Heller Files’, quality tools and creative impressions for Social Science.