THE CAREER OF HERBERT SPENCER 15 



customs, and ideas of primitive races, belonging rather to anthropology, 

 we find in part IT. that " a society is an organism," and that social 

 growth, social structures, social functions and social organs are 

 treated from the strictly biological point of view? Mr. Spencer denied 

 that he based sociology upon biology and censured two American 

 authors for intimating that he seemed to do so, but the comparison that 

 he used is not at all apposite. ^^ 



The other two volumes of the " Principles of Sociology," based as 

 they are on his great compilation, " Descriptive Sociology," are above 

 criticism in their comprehensive sweep as a vast induction. Some of 

 his facts will, of course, be denied, but he admitted that the reports of 

 travelers must be taken with many grains of allowance. Yet these are 

 almost the only sources from which an author who is not himself a 

 traveler must rely. For those therefore who consider such a work to 

 constitute " Sociology " the only vulnerable part is the terminology, 

 classification, and arrangement of the subject-matter. The phrase 

 " ecclesiastical institutions " may be justly objected to as seeming to 

 predicate something like a church of the religious structures of primi- 

 tive man. The word " ecclesiastical " might be stretched sufficiently to 

 justify this were there no better term, but it is universally admitted 

 that the priesthood was practically coeval with human society, and we 

 possess an adjective corresponding to this noun which is more 

 euphonious and more expressive than the one used. By all means, then, 

 should the phrase sacerdotal institutions be substituted for " ecclesias- 

 tical institutions." The introduction of " political institutions " be- 

 tween the " ceremonial " and the sacerdotal is a forced arrangement. 

 The ceremonial are largely sacerdotal, and their separation is difficult. 

 The sacerdotal should probably stand first, and the "professional," 

 beginning with the " medicine man," so similar to a priest, should 

 follow. " Political institutions " would then be in order, to be followed 

 by " industrial institutions." But Mr. Spencer had no conception of 

 gentile society and the fundamental distinction between it and political 

 society, so clearly set forth by Morgan. This classification shows how 

 late the latter class of institutions have always been in the historical 

 development of society. Still less was he acquainted with that other 

 most important of all transformations which is undergone by every 

 advanced society at the proper stage in its history, viz., union and 

 amalgamation of groups, whether through war or peace, by which a 

 third and higher group results from the blending of two lower groups, 

 constituting what is appropriately called the cross-fertilization of cul- 

 tures. It is only through this that all the higher political, industrial, 

 economic, and professional institutions arise. 



After thus threading the mazes of cosmic, organic, psychic and 



" " Life and Letters," Vol. II., p. 357. 



