OF SOCIETY. 531 



be explained with due reference to the conditions each 

 society is exposed to — the conditions furnished by its 

 locaKty and by its relations to neighbouring societies." ^ 



This passage shows sufficiently how much more com- 

 prehensive and many-sided is the view which Spencer 

 takes of the social problem than that of Comte ; how 

 his principle, consisting, like Hegel's, in a continual 

 action and reaction of two elementary processes — 

 that of differentiation and that of integration — affords 

 a great variety of combinations, illustrating and ex- 

 plaining many social and historical phenomena. With 

 Hegel the two processes were the logical processes of 

 affirmation and negation and the union of both in a 

 higher affirmation. But what marks by far the greatest 

 advance of Spencer's principle upon that of Hegel as well 

 as upon that of Comte, is the introduction of specifically 

 Darwinian ideas into his scheme. These ideas centre in 

 the conception of descent or inheritance which Spencer 

 does not limit to accidental and unexplained variations 

 (as the extreme followers of Darwin do), but extends 

 also to acquired characters (as the followers of Lamarck 

 do). By accepting this he is able to do justice to the 

 marked difference which exists between living organisms 

 and lifeless structures ; a difference which Comte had 

 already emphasised, but which, with him, is characterised 

 rather by a statical arrangement than by a dynamical 

 process. 



By thus introducing into his sociology the Darwinian 

 or genealogical principle, Spencer is able to give a 

 plausible accovmt of those moral tendencies in human 



1 'The Study of Sociology' 11th ed., 1884, p. 52. 



