Next in logical order and in order of publication come the two volumes collectively entitled "The Principles of Psychology." In these volumes an attempt is made to trace objectively the evolution of mind from reflex action through instinct to reason, memory, feeling, and will, from the interaction of the nervous system with its environment. Subjectively, mental states are analyzed, and it is contended that all of them--including those primary scientific ideas, the perceptions of matter, motion, space, and time, assumed in the "First Principles"--can be analyzed into a primitive element of consciousness, something which can be defined only as analogous to a nervous shock. These perceptions have now become innate in the individual. They may be called--as Kant called space and time--forms of intuition; but they have been acquired empirically by the race, through the persistence of the corresponding phenomena in the environment, and from the accumulated experiences of each individual being transmitted in the form of modified structure to his descendants. This principle of heredity is one of the laws by which individuals are connected with one another into an organic whole; and we thus pass to what Spencer calls super-organic evolution, implying the co-ordinated actions of many individuals, and giving rise to the science of sociology.

It is this science which Mr. Spencer undertakes to expound in the three volumes entitled the "Principles of Sociology." The first of these volumes presents a statement of the several sets of factors entering into social phenomena. These factors are, first, human ideas and feelings considered in their necessary order of evolution; secondly, surrounding natural conditions; and, thirdly, those ever-complicating conditions to which society itself gives origin. Under the caption "The Inductions of Sociology," are set forth the general facts, structural and functional, gathered from a survey of societies and their changes; in other words, the empirical generalizations that are arrived at by comparing different societies, or successive stages of the same societies. The author then examines the evolution of governments, general and local, as this is determined by natural causes; their several types and metamorphosis; their increasing complexity and specialization, and the progressive limitation of their functions. From political the author turns to ecclesiastical organization. He traces the differentiation of religious government from secular; its successive complications and the multiplication of sects; the growth and continued modification of religious ideas, as caused by advancing knowledge and changing moral character; and the gradual reconciliation of these ideas with the truths of abstract science. A good deal of space is devoted to what the author calls ceremonial organization, by which he means that third kind of government which, having a common root with the others, and slowly becoming separate from and supplementary to them, serves to regulate the minor actions of life. Finally, Mr. Spencer discusses industrial organization; that is to say, the development of productive and distributive agencies, considered in its necessary causes, comprehending not only the progressive division of labor and the increasing complexity of each industrial agency, but also the successive forms of industrial government as passing through like phases with political government.

Many pages would be requisite adequately to describe the result of the inquiries prosecuted by Mr. Spencer during some twenty years, and embodied in the three volumes entitled "Principles of Sociology." The ultimate conclusions reached, however, may be summed up in a few paragraphs. It is the author's final conviction that, if the process of evolution, which, unceasing throughout past time, has brought life to its present height, continues throughout the future, as we cannot but anticipate, then, amid all the rhythmical changes in each society, amid all the lives and deaths of nations, amid all the supplantings of race by race, there will go on that adaptation of human nature to the social state which began when savages first gathered together into hordes for mutual defence,--an adaptation finally complete. Mr. Spencer foresees that many will think this a wild imagination. Though everywhere around them are creatures with structures and instincts which have been gradually so moulded as to subserve their own welfares and the welfares of their species, yet the immense majority ignore the implication that human beings, too, have been undergoing in the past, and will undergo in the future, progressive adjustments to the lives imposed on them by circumstances. There are a few, nevertheless, who think it rational to conclude that what has happened with all lower forms must happen with the highest forms,--a few who infer that among types of men those most fitted for making a well-working society will hereafter, as heretofore, from time to time, emerge and spread at the expense of types less fitted, until a fully fitted type has arisen.

It is, at the same time, conceded that the view thus suggested cannot be accepted without qualification. If we carry our thoughts as far forward as palaeolithic implements carry them back, we are introduced, not to an absolute optimism, but to a relative optimism. The cosmic process brings about retrogression, as well as progression, where the conditions favor it. Only amid an infinity of modifications, adjusted to an infinity of changes of circumstances, do there now and then occur some which constitute an advance: other changes, meanwhile, caused in other organisms, usually not constituting forward steps in organization, and often constituting steps backward. Evolution does not imply a latent tendency to improve everywhere in operation. There is no uniform ascent from lower to higher, but only an occasional production of a form, which, in virtue of greater fitness for more complex conditions, becomes capable of a longer life of a more varied kind. And, while such higher type begins to dominate over lower types, and to spread at their expense, the lower types survive in habitats or modes of life that are not usurped, or are thrust into inferior habitats or modes of life in which they retrogress.

Mr. Spencer's examination of "The Principles of Sociology" has led him to the belief that what holds with organic types must hold also with types of society. Social evolution throughout the future, like social evolution throughout the past, must, while producing, step after step, higher societies, leave outstanding many lower. Varieties of men adapted here to inclement regions, there to regions that are barren, and elsewhere to regions unfitted, by ruggedness of surface or insalubrity, for supporting large populations, will, in all probability, continue to form small communities of simple structures. Moreover, during future competitions among the higher races, there will probably be left, in the less desirable regions, minor nations formed of men inferior to the highest; at the same time that the highest overspread all the great areas which are desirable in climate and fertility. But while the entire assemblage of societies thus fulfils the law of evolution by increase of heterogeneity,--while within each of them contrasts of structure, caused by differences of environments and entailed occupations, cause unlikenesses implying further heterogeneity, we may infer that the primary process of evolution--integration--which, up to the present time, has been displayed in the formation of larger and larger nations, will eventually reach a still higher stage, and bring yet greater benefits. As when small tribes were welded into great tribes, the head chief stopped inter-tribal warfare; as, when small feudal governments became subject to a king, feudal wars were prevented by him,--so, in time to come, a federation of the highest nations, exercising supreme authority (already foreshadowed by occasional agreements among "the Powers"), may, by forbidding wars between any of its constituent nations, put an end to the re-barbarization which is continually undoing civilization.

When, eventually, this peace-maintaining federation has been formed, Mr. Spencer looks for effectual progress towards that equilibrium between constitution and conditions,--between inner faculties and outer requirements,--implied by the final stage of human evolution. Adaptation to the social state, now perpetually hindered by anti-social conflict, may then go on unhindered; and all the great societies, in other respects differing, may become similar in those cardinal traits which result from complete self-ownership of the unit, and from exercise over him of nothing more than passive influence by the aggregate. On the one hand, by continual repression of aggressive instincts and by continual exercise of feelings which prompt ministration to public welfare, and, on the other hand, by the lapse of restraints gradually becoming less necessary, there will be produced, in Mr. Spencer's forecast, a kind of man so constituted that, while fulfilling his own desires, he will fulfil also the social needs. Already, small groups of men, shielded by circumstances from external antagonisms, have been moulded into forms of moral nature so superior to our own that the account of their goodness almost savors of romance; and it is reasonable to infer that what has even now happened on a small scale may, under kindred conditions, ultimately happen on a large scale. Prolonged studies, showing among other things the need for certain qualifications above indicated, but also revealing facts like that just named, have not caused our author to recede from the belief expressed nearly fifty years ago that "the ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature by all others doing the like."

Before taking leave of the "Principles of Sociology," we should caution the reader against a misconception that might seem, at first sight, to find some warrant in the following remark of a sympathetic reviewer: "Like Aristotle, he [Mr. Spencer] has had to delegate large portions of his work to be done for him by others." As our author has himself pointed out in "Facts and Comments," the reviewer's reference will be rightly interpreted by those who know that the work delegated by Aristotle to others was simply the collection of materials for his Natural History, not the classification of those materials, much less the drawing of inductions from them. As not one reader in ten knows this, however, wrong impressions are likely to be made by the reviewer's remark. Mr. Spencer's name being especially associated with the "Synthetic Philosophy," the sentence quoted will suggest to many the thought that large portions of that work were written by deputy. This, of course, the reviewer did not mean to say. The work to which he referred is entitled "Descriptive Sociology, or groups of sociological facts, classified and arranged by Herbert Spencer, compiled and abstracted by David Duncan, Richard Scheppig and James Collier," eight parts of which have thus far appeared. Knowing that he should be unable to read all the works of travel and history containing the facts he should need when dealing with the science of society, Mr. Spencer engaged these gentlemen--first one, then two, then three--to read up for him and arrange the extracts they made in a manner prescribed. With much material he had himself accumulated in the course of many years, our author incorporated a much larger amount of material derived from the compilations just mentioned when writing the "Principles of Sociology."

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