164 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



'* But presently, within the aggregation, a consciousness of kind appears 

 in like individuals and develops into association. Association, in its turn, 

 begins to react favorably on the pleasures and on the life chances of indi- 

 viduals." 



To deal properly with the several questions thus raised I must 

 go back to the beginniDg. In my first work^ Social Statics, pub- 

 lished in 1850, will be found evidence that at the very outset I 

 regarded the Science of Society as having for its chief datum the 

 Science of Mind. This was not overtly asserted, for at that time 

 questions concerning the filiation of the sciences were not enter- 

 tained by me ; but it was taken for granted as an obvious truth. 

 All through the work there runs the implication that societies are 

 determined in their actions and structures by the mental charac- 

 ters of their units ; and in a closing chapter, entitled " General 

 Considerations," there is a delineation of the way in which, along 

 with mental evolution in men, there goes higher social evolution. 

 Here are some extracts indicating this : 



" So that only by giving us some utterly different mental constitution 

 could the process of civilization have been altered." 



" Dependent as they are upon popular character, established political 

 systems can not die out until the feeling which uj^holds them dies out." 



" So that wild races deficient in the allegiance-producing sentiment can 

 not enter into a civilized state at all ; but have to be supplanted by others 

 that can." 



''Of course the institutions of any given age exhibit the compromise 

 made by these contending moral forces at the signing of their last truce." 



"The process by which a change of political arrangements is effected, 

 when the incongruity between them and the jjopular character becomes 

 sufficient, must be itself in keeping with that character, and must be violent 

 or peaceful accordingly." 



That these conceptions remained unchanged in 1860, when the 

 prospectus of the Synthetic Philosophy was issued, might be in- 

 ferred even from the order of the subjects specified in it, which 

 ran: Principles of Biology, Principles of Psychology, Principles 

 of Sociology. But this prospectus contains much more definite 

 evidence of my persistent belief in the dependence of Sociology 

 upon Psychology. Of the divisions constituting the Principles 

 of Psychology the last stands thus : " VIII. Corollaries. Consist- 

 ing in part of a number of derivative principles which form a 

 necessary introduction to sociology." And then in pursuance of 

 the thought there expressed, the enumeration of the divisions con- 

 stituting the Principles of Sociology begins thus : " Part I. The 

 Data of Sociology. A statement of the several sets of factors en- 

 tering into social phenomena human ideas and feelings consid- 

 ered in their necessary order of evolution; surrounding natural 

 conditions; and those ever complicating conditions to which 

 society itself gives origin : " in which statement of data, be it ob- 



