6i6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



CAIRNES ON SOCIAL EVOLUTION: 



IN an elaborate article contributed 

 to the January Fortnightly Review, 

 Prof. Cairnes has attacked the social 

 philosophy of Herbert Spencer. The 

 paper is too long to be wholly trans- 

 ferred to our pages, and so we reprint 

 the first half; but that, it happens, is 

 the most important part, and a little 

 examination of its quality will show 

 that not much has been lost by omit- 

 ting the remainder. Coming from the 

 source it does, we read the article with 

 not a little surprise, for its writer 

 either has no clear understanding of 

 his subject, or he is trifling with it in a 

 very inexcusable way. The subject is 

 undoubtedly an important one, and is 

 entitled to be considered with the ut- 

 most intelligence and candor. The 

 Saturday Review tells us that "Eng- 

 lishmen hate men who offer them new 

 ideas." This may be extravagant, but 

 if it had said they hate men who offer 

 them new ideas upon social topics it 

 would probably have been nearer the 

 truth. Social science implies that there 

 are great natural agencies by which so- 

 ciety in the past has been developed, 

 and by which it is still largely regu- 

 lated ; but, of all people in the world, 

 the English should be the least sympa- 

 thetic with such a view, for nowhere 

 else has Nature been more overlaid 

 and buried out of sight by human arts, 

 arrangements, and conventions, than in 

 that country. But, whether under a 

 patriotic bias or not, Prof. Cairnes is at 

 no pains to conceal his dislike of Spen- 

 cer's social doctrines. As a politician 

 and a philanthropist enlisted in the 

 serviee of humanity, he takes ground 

 against their general influence. From 

 this point of view he opposes Mr. Spen- 

 cer to Mr. Mill as follows : 



" On the one hand there is the phi- 

 losophy of Mr. Spencer contemplating 

 the career of humanity as fixed with 

 regard to its main direction, as prede- 

 termined to move along certain defined 

 or at least definable lines of progress, 

 constantly shaping itself under the in- 

 fluence of causes which produce their 

 effects spontaneously. . . . Can we 

 have any doubt as to the tendency of 

 such teaching? As to its paralyzing 

 effect on laborers in the field of hu- 

 man improvement ? . . . Contrast with 

 this the teaching of that other philoso- 

 phy with which Mr. Spencer's has been 

 confronted in this discussion the phi- 

 losophy of Mr. Mill, every line of whose 

 writings is instinct with the belief that 

 there is nothing fixed in human for- 

 tunes that it rests with the individual 

 men and women of each generation as 

 they pass, each Avithin the range of his 

 or her influence, to make or to mar 

 them whose creed it is that social 

 progress is largely dependent on politi- 

 cal institutions, which do not ' grow ' 

 while men sleep, but ' are the work of 

 men owe their origin and their whole 

 existence to human will.' " Now, all 

 that Prof. Cairnes can make by this 

 contrast, he makes, not against any spe- 

 cial system of sociological doctrine, but 

 against the conception of natural law in 

 social affairs ; and yet he admits that 

 the very creation of the social state is 

 the work of spontaneous natural forces, 

 such as have produced the diversities 

 of life. He says: "In that primitive 

 stage (as Mr. Darwin has taught us) 

 while man remained still a savage, and 

 even perhaps for some time after he is 

 emerged from the savage condition, the 

 influences which mould his social de- 

 velopment are substantially the same 

 with those that govern the develop- 



