DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY. 



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Mr. Herbert Spencer has been for several years engaged, with the aid of 

 three educated gentlemen in his employ, in collecting and organizing the facts 

 concerning all orders of human societies, which must constitute the data of a true 

 Social Science. He tabulates these facts so as conveniently to admit of ex- 

 tensive comparison, and gives the authorities separately. He divides the races 

 of mankind into three great groups : the savage races, the existing civilizations, 

 and the extinct civilizations, and to each he devotes a series of works. The 

 first installment, 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 



in seven continuous tables, folio, with seventy pages of verifying text, is now 

 ready. This work will be a perfect Cyclopaedia of the facts of Social Science, 

 independent of all theories, and will be invaluable to all interested in social 

 problems. Price, five dollars. This great work is spoken of as follows : 



From the British Quarterly Review. 

 *'No words are needed to indicate the immense labor here bestowed, or the great 

 sociological benefit which such a mass of tabulated matter done under such competent 

 direction will confer. The work will constitute an epoch in the science of comparative 

 sociology." 



From the Saturday Beview, 



*' The plan of the ' Descriptive Sociology ' is new, and the task is one eminently fitted 

 to be dealt with by Mr. Herbert Spencer's faculty of scientific organizing. His object is 

 to examine the natural laws which govern the development of societies, as he has ex- 

 amined in former parts of his system those which govern the development of individual 

 life. Now, it is obvious that the development of societies can be studied only in their 

 history, and that general conclusions which shall hold good beyond the limits of particu- 

 lar societies cannot be safjly drawn except from a very wide range of facts. Mr. Spen- 

 cer has therefore conceived the plan of making a preliminary collection, or perhaps we 

 should rather say abstract, of materials which when complete will be a classified epi- 

 tome of universal history." 



From the London Fxaminer. 



"Of the treatment, in the main, we cannot speak too highly; and we must accept 

 it as a wonderfully successful first attempt to furnish the student of social science with 

 data standing toward his conclusions in a relation like that in which accounts of the 

 structures and functions of different types of animals stand to the conclusions of the 

 biologist." 



