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.? 
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 killing 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. 
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 ff., 598 ff.; ii, pp. 643 ff. 
3 Autobiography, ii, p. 8. Cf. Hudson, Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, pp. 43, 44- 
