SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN LIFE. 491 



any sound be made near the mouth-piece, it is heard in the ear itself, 

 but, if the two pieces are employed together, the sound is heard at the 

 spot where it is produced. The fact is very interesting in a physio- 

 logical point of view, and further corroborates the theory as to the 

 value of a double set of senses, or, in a word, of the body being made 

 up of two halves, for just as the two hands feeling different parts of 

 an object gain an idea of extension, and the two eyes by obtaining 

 different views of any substance get a knowledge of its solidity, so in 

 the same way the two ears listening to the same sound more thoroughly 

 appreciate its objectivity. 



If you look at this series of drawings you may perceive but little 

 resemblance between the first figure and the last, but take them one 

 by one and you will see that the figures are really progressive. My 

 story of development is not imaginary, but historical. Lancet. 



SOCIAL FOECES IN AMERICAN LIFE* 



By HEKBERT SPENCER. 



A FEW words may fitly be added respecting the causes of this 

 over-activity in American life causes which may be identified 

 as having in recent times partially operated among ourselves, and as 

 having wrought kindred, though less marked, effects. It is the more 

 worth while to trace the genesis of this undue absorption of the ener- 

 gies in work, since it well serves to illustrate the general truth which 

 should be ever present to all legislators and politicians, that the indi- 

 rect and unforeseen results of any cause affecting a society are fre- 

 quently, if not habitually, greater and more important than the direct 

 and foreseen results. 



This high pressure under which Americans exist, and which is most 

 intense in places like Chicago, where the prosperity and rate of growth 

 are greatest, is seen by many intelligent Americans themselves to be 

 an indirect result of their free institutions and the absence of those 

 class-distinctions and restraints existing in older communities. A so- 

 ciety in which the man who dies a millionaire is so often one who 

 commenced life in poverty, and in which (to paraphrase a French say- 

 ing concerning the soldier) every news-boy carries a president's seal in 

 his bag, is, by consequence, a society in which all are subject to a stress 

 of competition for wealth and honor, greater than can exist in a society 

 whose members are nearly all prevented from rising out of the ranks 

 in which they were born, and have but remote possibilities of acquir- 

 ing fortunes. In those European societies which have in great meas- 



* Remarks appended to Spencer's address at the New York banquet, reprinted in the 

 " Contemporary Review." 



