32 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



Spencer's theory of social progress, though nowhere elaborated, 

 is brought out in his summary of the application of the general 

 laws of evolution to the social process. 



The many facts contemplated unite in proving that social evolution forms 

 a part of evolution at large. Like evolving aggregates in general, societies 

 show integration, both by simple increase of mass and by coalescence and 

 recoalescence of masses. The change from homogeneity to heterogeneity is 

 multitudinously exemplified; up from the single tribe, alike in all its parts, 

 to the civilized nation, full of structural and functional unlikeness. With 

 progressing integration and heterogeneity goes increasing coherence. We see 

 the wandering group dispersing, dividing, held together by no bonds; the 

 tribe with parts made more coherent by subordination to a dominant man; 

 the cluster of tribes united in a political plexus under a chief with sub-chiefs; 

 and so on up to the civilized nation, consolidated enough to hold together for 

 a thousand years or more. Simultaneously comes increasing definiieness. 

 Social organization is at first vague; advance brings settled arrangements 

 which grow slowly more precise; customs pass into laws which, while gaining 

 fixity, also become more specific in their applications to varieties of actions; 

 and all institutions, at first confusedly intermingled, slowly separate, at the 

 same time that each within itself marks off more distinctly its component 

 structures. Thus in all respects is fulfilled the formula of evolution. There 

 is progress towards greater size, coherence, multiformity, and definiteness. 1 



The sociological unit, corresponding to the cell in biological 

 evolution, is primitive man with certain qualities, physical, 

 emotional and intellectual; 2 yet other unities are given promi- 

 nence as the primitive horde, 3 later the family, 4 and finally the 

 sovereign group or nation. 6 



Men thus endowed form the internal or intrinsic factors in the 

 social process but this process is determined by the extrinsic 

 factors, climate, surface, flora, fauna and their interaction 6 and 

 by the super-organic environment of each group, made up of 

 other groups. 7 



Very little attention is given by our author to an analysis of the 

 social process, 8 his chief purpose being to show that it corre- 

 sponds to evolution in general so is considered to be almost 



1 Sociology, i, pp. 596, 597. 



2 Ibid., p. 9, also p. 437. Cf. Barth's criticism, op. cit., p. 100. 



3 Sociology, pp. 464 f., 550. Cf. Laws of Univ. Prog., p. 399. 

 * Sociology, pp. 437, 711. « Ibid., i, p. 9, ch. III. 

 6 Ibid., p. 603; ii, pp. 569 f. ' Ibid., p. 12. 



8 Cf. Social Statics, pp. 77 S., Sociology, iii, p. 609. 



