EDITOR'S TABLE, 



369 



useful work is done by our social re- 

 formers; but, in our opinion, they are 

 attempting to attain ends which, if at- 

 tainable at all, are not to be reached 

 until there is a far clearer understand- 

 ing of their conditions, and of the prin- 

 ciples by which the progress of society 

 is controlled. The Association seems 

 to be but little in advance of an ordi- 

 nary political convention. Its teachers 

 appear to start from the fundamental 

 postulate of politics, that human soci- 

 ety is the product of government, that 

 its regulative laws are the result of 

 majority votes, and consequently that 

 legislation is to be invoked for every 

 thing. There is little recognition of 

 a sphere of natural activities, sponta- 

 neous, and self-adjusting, with which 

 government can only meddle for dis- 

 turbance and mischief; and, of course, 

 there is no investigation of it. What 

 things it is impossible to effect by politi- 

 cal agencies, what had better be left to 

 private enterprise, what is the effect of 

 constant intermeddling, and what are 

 the values and limits of those activities 

 which belong to the natural constitu- 

 tion of society, are not among the pri- 

 mary subjects of inquiry. Yet a true 

 social science must, first of all, throw 

 light upon these questions, and, if its 

 effect is to explode many fallacies — to 

 show that the perpetual motions, the 

 philosophers' stones, and the elixirs of 

 life of social projectors, are only ground- 

 less fancies — the result must be accept- 

 ed with never a doubt that, in place of 

 the discredited crotchets, more rational 

 and valuable devices will arise. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. 



The short article on climate and 

 social development which we reprint 

 from advance-sheets of the "Princi- 

 ples of Sociology," by Herbert Spen- 

 cer, will be welcomed by many as show- 

 ing the progress of his great work, and 

 that he has at length fairly entered upon 

 that important division of it which deals 



VOL. V. — 24 



with the phenomena of society. The 

 "Principles of Sociology," as they will 

 constitute the largest division of his 

 philosophical series, will probably be 

 also its most important division. Mr. 

 Spencer took up social subjects as mat- 

 ters of study in his youth. One of his 

 first publications at the age of twenty- 

 two was, his letters on the "Proper 

 Sphere of Government," in which so- 

 ciety was considered from the scientific 

 point of view, or as having its natural 

 laws of regulation and development. 

 Eight years later he published " Social 

 Statics," in which these ideas were ex- 

 panded and extended, but the comple- 

 tion of this work only brought him 

 fairly to the threshold of the subject. 

 He saw that it must be treated in a far 

 more systematic way, and after ten 

 years of labor directed to a large num- 

 ber of social questions, and working 

 out the principle of Evolution as ap- 

 plied to them, he began his philosophi- 

 cal system in 1860. Fourteen years of 

 labor have brought him to the point 

 from which he started thirty-two years 

 ago, enriched in ideas by a long course 

 of investigation preparatory to dealing 

 with the sociological problems now be- 

 fore him. He begins the " Sociology " as 

 he began the " Biology " and the " Psy- 

 chology," with the consideration of its 

 data. Those who have examined the 

 "Descriptive Sociology" will remem- 

 ber that at the heads of the tables a 

 class of facts is presented, concerning 

 the various conditions of the country, 

 physical and climatic, with its produc- 

 tions and resources, and the characters 

 of its inhabitants, mental and emo- 

 tional, by which the state of society is 

 modified, and which of course vary 

 greatly with different communities. 

 After defining Sociology in the first 

 chapter on " Super-Organic Evolution," 

 in which the significance and value of 

 the social instincts exhibited by insects 

 and the lower animals are considered, 

 Mr. Spencer passes in Chapter II. to 

 "The Factors of Social Phenomena," 



