HERBERT SPENCER 35 



increasing complexity in religious institutions and functions but 

 with a simplification of doctrine until it consists merely in belief 

 in and adoration of the infinite but unknowable source of all. 1 

 The test of political progress is for a time increasing differentiation 

 and integration but ultimately decentralization in the interest of 

 individual liberty and well-being, until it is merely negative- 

 regulative. 2 



Spencer's specific contribution to the doctrine of adaptation 

 as a theory of social progress began as early as 1843 when he 

 wrote The Proper Sphere of Government and reached its highest 

 development in Social Statics written in 1861. His own sum- 

 mary of the principles as there elaborated is given in his Auto- 

 biography : — 



Everything was referred to the unvarying course of causation, no less 

 uniform in the spheres of life and mind than in the sphere of inanimate exist- 

 ence. Continuous adaptation was insisted on as holding of all organisms, 

 and of mental faculties as well as bodily. For this adaptation, the first cause 

 assigned was the increase or decrease of structure consequent on increase or 

 decrease of function; and the second cause assigned was the kilhng off, or 

 dying out, of individuals least adapted to the requirements of their lives. 

 The ideally moral state was identified with complete adjustment of constitu- 

 tion to conditions; and the fundamental requirement, alike ethical and polit- 

 ical, was represented as being the rigorous maintenance of the conditions to 

 harmonious social co-operation; with the certainty that human nature will 

 gradually be moulded to fit them. 



The dependence of institutions upon individual character was dwelt on; 

 the reciprocal influences of the two emphasized; and the adjustment of 

 moral ideas to the social state illustrated. A physiological view of social 

 actions was taken; on sundry occasions the expression "social organism" 

 was used; the aggregation of citizens forming a nation was compared 

 with the aggregation of cells forming a living body; the progress from a 

 whole made up of like parts which have but little mutual dependence to 

 a whole made up of unlike parts which are mutually dependent in a high 

 degree, was shown to be a progress common to individual organisms and 

 social organisms. So that the conception of progress subsequently to be 

 presented in a more generalized form, was evidently foreshadowed. 3 



We thus have two principles of evolution or tests of progress: 

 that of continuous adjustment and' that of increasing differen- 

 tiation and integration, the former taking into consideration the 



1 Sociology, iii, ch. XVI. 2 Ibid., i, pp. 494 fl., 598 ff.; ii, pp. 643 ff. 



3 Autobiography, ii, p. 8. Cf. Hudson, Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, pp. 43, 44. 



