WHAT IS SOCIAL EVOLUTION? 43 



king's private action, but under its general aspect it is seen to be 

 determined by the conditions of bis existence. And it is so with 

 governmental institutions at large. Without tracing these further 

 it will suffice to quote the saying of Macintosh — " Constitutions are 

 not made but grow." 



Of course inequalities of nature and consequent inequalities of 

 relative position are factors in social changes. Of course, as implied 

 above, any assertion of the approximate equality of human beings, 

 save in the sense that they are beings having sets of faculties common 

 to them all, is absurd; and it is equally absurd to suppose that the 

 unlikenesses which exist are without effects on social life. I have 

 pointed out that in the earliest stages of social evolution, when war 

 is the business of life, the supremacy of a leader or chief, or primitive 

 king, is a fact of cardinal importance; and also that the initiator of 

 ecclesiastical control is necessarily distinguished from others " by 

 knowledge and intellectual capacity." The beginnings of industrial 

 evolution are also ascribed by me to differences of individual capa- 

 city; as instance the following quotations from that part of the 

 Principles of Sociology which deals with Industrial Institutions. 



The natural selection of occupations has for its primary cause certain 

 original differences between individuals, partly physical, partly psychical. 

 Let us for brevity's sake call this the physio-psychological cause (§ 730). 



That among the fully civilized there are in like manner specializations 

 of function caused by natural aptitudes, needs no showing : professions 

 and crafts are often thus determined . . . occupations of relatively skilled 

 kinds having fallen into the hands of the most intelligent (§ 731). 



Speaking generally, the man who, among primitive peoples, becomes 

 ruler, is at once a man of power and a man of sagacity: his sagacity being 

 in large measure the cause of his supremacy. We may therefore infer that 

 as his political rule, though cbiefly guided by his own interests, is in part 

 guided by the interests of his people, so his industrial rule, though having 

 for its first end to enrich himself, has for its second end the prosperity of 

 industry at large. It is a fair inference that on the average his greater 

 knowledge expresses itself in orders which seem, and sometimes are, bene- 

 ficial (§ 770). 



In its beginnings slavery commonly implies some kind of inferiority 

 (§ 795). 



Considered as a form of industrial regulation, slavery has been natural 

 to early stages of conflicts and consolidations (§ 800). 



The rise of slavery exhibits in its primary form the differentiation of the 

 regulative part of a society from the operative part (§ 798). 



The recognition of these effects of individual differences, especially 

 in early stages, may rightly go along with the assertion that all the 

 large traits of social structure are otherwise determined — that all 

 those great components of a society which carry on the various in- 



