SOCIOLOGY. 1 9 



anything which ciuTout Radicalism conceives; Conservative to a 

 degree beyond anything conceived by presont Conservatism."' 



And he goes on t:) point ont at length — which I must not stay to 

 trouble you with— that when there has been grasped the truth that 

 Societies are products of evolution, then there will be realised a 

 proper conception of such Societies, and that as Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 says, " thus the theory of progress, disclosed by the study of 

 Sociology as science, is one which moderates the hopes and the fears 

 of extreme parties." 



Mr. Herbert Spencer has over and over again insisted on the 

 necessity of scientific culture in general as a preparation for the study 

 of Sociology, and above all culture of the Science of Life. He says : 

 " This IS more particularly requisite because the conceptions of 

 continuity, complexity, and contingency of causation, as well as the 

 conception of fructifying causation, are conceptions common to it 

 and to the Science of Society. It affords a sj)ecially fit discipline, for 

 the reason that it alone among the sciences produces familiarity with 

 these cardinal ideas — it alone presents the data for them in forms 

 easily grasped, and so prepares the mind to recognise the data for 

 them in the Social Science where they are less easily grasped though 



no less constantly presented The Science of Life yields 



to the Science of Society certain great generalisjatious, without which 

 there can be no Science of Society at all."t 



It seems to me most appropriate that in Birmingham — whose motto 

 is " Forward'' and whose progress has ever been in harmony with it — 

 once the home of Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, one of the early 

 pioneers of Evolution, and that in connection with a Natural History 

 Society like ours, the oldest scientific society in the town, which has 

 made Biology one of its principal studies, and which offers certain 

 special facilities as regards its Library and appliances, there should be 

 established a Section for the study of Sociology. 



(1.) As regards the town, I submit from numerous circumstances 

 which I will proceed to set out: its special suitability as a centre for 

 the study of a somewhat advanced type of Society. From its peculiar 

 topographical position in almost the central part of England, situated 

 on the New Red Sandstone, at an average altitude of 4;50f t. above the 

 mean sea-level (a) of undulating surface, covering a large area, and not 



(a.» According to Dr. Hill, F.I.C., the Medical Officer of Health for Birmingham, 

 iu his Report of the Health of the Borough for 1831: — "The elevation of the 

 borough, that is its height above the mean level of the sea, varies betwoou 31() 

 and GOO feet, the lowest poiut being at Saltley, and the highest at Edgbaston. 

 This lofty position is iu many respects a considerable advantage, especially 

 when associate 1, as it is in the case of Birmingham, with a porous soil consisting 

 of the upper division of the Buuter or Mottled Beds of the Trias or Upper New 

 Eed Sandstone." 



* " The Study of Sociology," ninth edition, p. 394, 1880. 

 t " The Study of Sociology," ninth edition, p. 322, 1880. 



