CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 105 



served, between political and industrial functions, which fall to distinct 

 classes : now a man is a merchant in the morning and a legislator at 

 night ; in mercantile business one year, and the next, perhaps, head of 

 the navy, like Mr. Goschen or Mr. W. H. Smith." Nothing contained 

 in this volume explains the seeming anomaly here exemplified ; but 

 any one who turns to a chapter in the second part of the " Principles 

 of Sociology," entitled " Social Types and Metamorphoses," will there 

 find a clew to the explanation of it, and will see that it is a phenomenon 

 consequent on the progressing dissolution of one type and evolution of 

 another. The doctrine of evolution, currently -regarded as referring 

 only to the development of species, is erroneously supposed to imply 

 some intrinsic proclivity in every species toward a higher form ; and, 

 similarly, a majority of readers make the erroneous assumption that 

 the transformation which constitutes evolution, in its wider sense, im- 

 plies an intrinsic tendency to go through those changes which the for- 

 mula of evolution expresses. But all who have fully grasped the argu- 

 ment of this work will see that the process of evolution is not neces- 

 sary, but depends on conditions ; and that the prevalence of it in the 

 universe around is consequent on the prevalence of these conditions : 

 the frequent occurrence of dissolution showing us that, where the con- 

 ditions are not maintained, the reverse process is quite as readily gone 

 through. Bearing in mind this truth, we shall be prepared to find that 

 the progress of a social organism toward more heterogeneous and more 

 definite structures of a certain type continues only as long as the actions 

 which produce these effects continue in play. We shall expect that, if 

 these actions cease, the progressing transformation will cease. We 

 shall infer that the particular structures which have been formed by 

 the activities carried on will not grow more heterogeneous and more 

 definite ; and that if other orders of activities, implying other sets of 

 forces, commence, answering structures of another kind will begin to 

 make their appearance, to grow more heterogeneous and definite, and 

 to replace the first. And it will be manifest that while the transition 

 is going on while the first structures are dissolving and the second 

 evolving there must be a mixture of structures causing apparent con- 

 fusion of traits. Just as during the metamorphoses of an animal which, 

 having during its earlier existence led one kind of life, has to develop 

 structures fitting it for another kind of life, there must occur ^ blur- 

 ring of the old organization while the new organization is becoming 

 distinct, leading to transitory anomalies of structure, so, during the 

 metamorphoses undergone by a society in which the militant activities 

 and structures are dwindling while the industrial are growing, the old 

 and new arrangements must be mingled in a perplexing way. On read- 

 ing the chapter in the "Principles of Sociology" which I have named, 

 Mr. Leslie will see that the above facts referred to by him are interpret- 

 able as consequent on the transition from that type of regulative organ- 

 ization proper to militant life to that type of regulative organization 



