Herbert Spencer

This was an ingenious eirenicon, but it does not seem to satisfy all the philosophers, those namely who feel that intuitions—both intellectual and moral—have a validity, universality, and compelling necessity which cannot be accounted for if they are simply the outcome of race-experience. The only alternative seems to be to say that their validity depends on the nature of mind itself, or, what comes to the same thing, because they are in harmony with the spiritual principle in nature.

Nor are the biologists quite satisfied with Spencer's reconciliation, between empiricism and apriorism, for, in the form he gave it, there is the tacit assumption that results of experience are as such transmissible. But this is biologically a hazardous assumption. The only alternative would be to suppose that the advance to rational intuitions came about by the selection of variations towards that type of mental constitution which rational and moral intuitions express—a probably very slow process which would be sheltered by the individual moulding himself to the social heritage in which many results of experience are registered and entailed independently of any germ-plasm. It is possible that there has been an underestimate of the extent to which what are regarded as intuitions are sustained by tradition in the widest sense, and an underestimate of the extent to which they are individually acquired by each successive generation.

When we speak of either instincts or intuitions arising by the selection of variations, we need not think of such wonderful results as originating in fortuitous mental sports; we are quite entitled to think of definiteness in mental (at the same time neural) variation as in bodily variation; we are quite entitled to think of mental (at the same time neural) 'mutations' as well as bodily 'mutations'; we do not require to burden natural selection with more than the pruning off of irrationalities, instabilities, disharmonies, and imbecilities. Thus even biologically we may admit that the validity of intuitions depends on the nature of mind itself, socially confirmed from age to age.

Test of Truth.—Spencer took great stock in "intuitions," especially in his First Principles, and yet he believed in their empirical origin; and this leads us to ask what his test of truth was. It may be summed up in the phrase "the inconceivability of the opposite." After a curiously self-contradictory attempt to show by reasoning that "a certainty greater than that which any reasoning can yield has to be recognised at the outset of all reasoning," he states the "universal postulate": "The inconceivableness of its negation is that which shows a cognition to possess the highest rank—is the criterion by which its insurpassable validity is known."

He admitted, however, that there were limitations to the utility of this test of truth. "That some propositions have been wrongly accepted as true, because their negations were supposed inconceivable when they were not, does not disprove the validity of the test, for these reasons: (1) That they were complex propositions, not to be established by a test applicable only to propositions no further decomposable; (2) that this test, in common with any test, is liable to yield untrue results, either from incapacity or from carelessness in those who use it." In regard to which Prof. Sidgwick says:[17] "These two qualifications surely reduce very much the practical value of the criterion. For how are we to proceed if philosophers disagree about the application of the criteria? How are we to test 'undecomposability'? For notions which on first reflection appear to us simple are so often found on further reflective analysis to be composite. Which conclusion, then, are we to trust, the earlier or the later? This seems to me a serious dilemma for Mr Spencer; whichever way he answers he is in a difficulty."

It would seem then that Spencer did not get much further than others who have tried to answer the question: What is the test of truth? Nor for our part can we supply the deficiency. It is probably more profitable, as Sidgwick says, "to turn from infallible criteria to methods of verification, from the search after an absolute test of truth to the humbler task of devising modes of excluding error." "These verifications are based on experience of the ways in which the human mind has actually been convinced of error, and been led to discard it; i.e., three modes of conflict, conflict between a judgment first formed, and the view of this judgment taken by the same mind on subsequent reconsideration; conflict between two different judgments, or the implications of two partially different judgments formed by the same mind under different conditions; and finally, conflict between the judgments of different minds." In other words, what is true for us is that which survives these conflicts, but the conflict is unceasing.

CHAPTER XV

SOCIOLOGICAL

What Sociology is—Criticism of Sociology—Sociology and History—Spencer's Sociological Data—Central Ideas of Spencer's Sociology—The Idea of the Social Organism—Parallelisms between a Society and an Individual Organism

While Spencer had little agreement with Comte, he was at one with him in regarding Sociology as a possible science and as the crowning science.

What Sociology is.—By sociology is meant the study of the structure and activity, development and evolution of social groups, which have sufficient integration or unity to justify their being regarded as "organisms," with a life—and a mind—of their own. That many active-minded people persist in looking askance at sociology—as "a mass of facts about society," and "no science," is not unnatural, since the science is still very young and its definition is still elastic. At certain points it necessarily comes in contact with biology, e.g. in the study of heredity and eugenics; with psychology, e.g. in the study of tradition and religion; with anthropology and history; with economics and politics. But it has a distinctive place to fill as the study of human integrates, of groups capable of acting, consciously or unconsciously, as unities, as more than the sum of their parts. When it has grown up and done more work, it will be justified, like Wisdom in general, of its children, and any discussion of its claims to be a "science" will be an anachronism. Meanwhile, though the youngest of the sciences is still struggling for existence, we need not fear for its safety—it is a Hercules in the cradle.

Criticism of Sociology.—The distrust which many thoughtful minds have of "Sociology" is well expressed by Prof. Henry Sidgwick in one of his essays:—

"It is not necessary to show that if we could ascertain from the past history of human society the fundamental laws of social evolution as a whole, so that we could accurately forecast the main features of the future state with which our present social world is pregnant—it is not needful, I say, to show that the science which gave this foresight would be of the highest value to a statesman, and would absorb or dominate our present political economy. What has to be proved is that this supremely important knowledge is within our grasp; that the sociology which professes this prevision is really an established science."[18]

[18] "The Scope and Method of Economic Science," Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses, 1904, p. 193.

He goes on to say that there are two simple tests of the establishment of a science, recognised by Comte in his discussion of this very subject, which can be quickly and decisively applied to the claims of existing sociology. These tests may be characterised as (1) Consensus or Continuity, and (2) Prevision. The former Sedgwick explains in Comte's own words: "When we find that recent works, instead of being the result and development of what has gone before, have a character as personal as that of their authors, and bring the most fundamental ideas into question—then," says Comte, "we may be sure we are not dealing with any doctrine deserving the name of positive science." [The validity of Comte's criterion seems very doubtful, but let that pass.]

"Now," Sidgwick continues, "if we compare the most elaborate and ambitious treatises on sociology, of which there happens to be one in each of the three leading scientific languages—Comte's Politique Positive, Spencer's Sociology, and Schäffle's Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers—we see at once that they exhibit the most complete and conspicuous absence of agreement or continuity in their treatment of the fundamental questions of social evolution." Sidgwick illustrates this, in the first place, by taking the exceedingly difficult question of the future of religion, and shows easily enough how the three doctors differ. Perhaps it would have been fairer to have selected a less difficult problem.

It seems profitable to follow Sidgwick's contrast since it brings out some of Spencer's characteristic doctrines.

"If we inquire after the characteristics of the religion of which their science leads them to foresee the coming prevalence, they give with nearly equal confidence answers as divergent as can be conceived. Schäffle cannot comprehend that the place of the great Christian Churches can be taken by anything but a purified form of Christianity; Spencer contemplates complacently the reduction of religious thought and sentiment to a perfectly indefinite consciousness of an Unknowable and the emotion that accompanies this peculiar intellectual exercise; while Comte has no doubt that the whole history of religion—which, as he says, 'should resume the entire history of human development,' has been leading up to the worship of the Great Being, Humanity, personified domestically for each normal male individual by his nearest female relatives. It would seem that the science which allows these discrepancies in its chief expositors must be still in its infancy." "I do not doubt that our sociologists are sincere in setting before us their conception of the coming social state as the last term of a series of which the law has been discovered by patient historical study; but when we look closely into their work it becomes only too evident that each philosopher has constructed on the basis of personal feeling and experience his ideal future in which our present social deficiencies are to be remedied; and that the process by which history is arranged in steps pointing towards his Utopia bears not the faintest resemblance to a scientific demonstration."

The remark on the influence of "personal feeling and experience" recalls the interesting sentence in the preface to Spencer's Autobiography, "One significant truth has been made clear—that in the genesis of a system of thought the emotional nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual nature." One cannot but ask if Sidgwick supposed that his own contributions were uninfluenced by his "personal feeling and experience." Is it not almost a truism that until science reaches the stage of measurement or other modes of direct perceptual verification, it must be tinctured with personal feeling?

Sidgwick goes on to point out that similar discrepancies are evident "when we turn from religion to industry, and examine the forecasts of industrial development offered to the statesman in the name of scientific sociology as a substitute for the discarded calculations of the mere economist. With equal confidence, history is represented as leading up, now to the naïve and unqualified individualism of Spencer, now to the carefully guarded and elaborated socialism of Schäffle, now to Comte's dream of securing seven-roomed houses for all working men—with other comforts to correspond—solely by the impressive moral precepts of his philosophic priests. Guidance, truly, is here enough and to spare: but how is the bewildered statesman to select his guidance when his sociological doctors exhibit this portentous disagreement?" "Nor is it only that they adopt diametrically opposed conclusions: we find that each adopts his conclusion with the most serene and complete indifference to the line of historical reasoning on which his brother sociologist relies."

Now this is wholesome criticism, but its force is due to the fact that sociology is still very young. It would be equally easy to discredit evolution-lore by showing the discrepancies between the ætiology of Darwin and Wallace, or Spencer and Weismann. But it must not be imagined that Sidgwick was opposed to Sociology or doubted its validity; he was simply advocating caution. "There is no reason to despair of the progress of general sociology; but I do not think that its development can be really promoted by shutting our eyes to its present very rudimentary condition." He evidently looked forward with hope to a time "when the general science of society has solved the problems which it has as yet only managed to define more or less clearly—when for positive knowledge it can offer us something better than a mixture of vague and variously applied physiological analogies, imperfectly verified historical generalisations, and unwarranted political predictions—when it has succeeded in establishing on the basis of a really scientific induction its forecasts of social evolution." The recently established "Sociological Society"[19] has in its first volume of publications suggested many ways in which those interested can assist in the development of this new science, and already as one of its indirect fruits we can point to the establishment of well defined courses of Sociology in the University of London.

Sociology and History.—Something must be said in regard to Spencer's somewhat peculiar attitude to history. "I take," he said, "but little interest in what are called histories, but am interested only in Sociology, which stands related to these so-called histories much as a vast building stands related to the heaps of stones and brick around it." He went the length of saying: "Had Greece and Rome never existed, human life, and the right conduct of it, would have been in their essentials exactly what they now are: survival or death, health or disease, prosperity or adversity, happiness or misery, would have been just in the same ways determined by the adjustment or non-adjustment of actions to requirements." When we reflect on the complex ways in which the influence of Greece and Rome has saturated into our life, and has become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, in literature and art, in philosophy and science, so that the ideas and feelings among and in which we live and move are hardly intelligible apart from it, we can hardly believe our ears when we listen to Spencer's sentence. It seems to throw a weird light on his Sociology.

For lack of personal interest and in his preoccupation with general movements, Spencer failed to do justice to what is ordinarily called history. While we can sympathise with his recoil from historical studies which lose the wood in the trees, which are like palæontologies that never disclose the ascent of life, the same limitation befalls every kind of specialist study, and is almost a necessary evil, due as Spencer would phrase it to "the imbecilities of our understanding."

Spencer's point of view was this:—

"To have before us, in manageable form, evidence proving the correlations which everywhere exist between great militant activity and the degradation of women, between a despotic form of government and elaborate ceremonial in social intercourse, between relatively peaceful social activities and the relaxation of coercive institutions, promises furtherance of human welfare in a much greater degree than does learning whether the story of Alfred and the cakes is a fact or a myth, whether Queen Elizabeth intrigued with Essex or not, where Prince Charles hid himself, and what were the details of this battle or that siege—pieces of historical gossip which cannot in the least affect men's conceptions of the ways in which social phenomena hang together, or aid them in shaping their public conduct."

Here, of course, Spencer was making game of what he termed "so-called histories," for, to do them justice, they are not wholly composed of gossip, else they would be more read, but he was scoring a definite point that history is incomplete without sociological generalisation. He did not seem to see that we need the most scrupulous historical scholarship if we are to make sure of our generalisations. Nor did he understand how essential it is to some minds to have in their vision of the past just those personal details and picturesque touches, which he despised as gossip.

The antithesis between the sociologist and the conventional historian is comparable to that between the biologist and the descriptive naturalist. The painstaking scrupulous describer, with an almost personal affection for his subjects, the gatherer of exact data to whom nothing is common or unclean, nothing trivial or without significance, often shrinks from the sweeping statements and far-reaching formulæ of the generaliser; his detailed knowledge makes him a purist in science, enables him to recall difficult exceptions, makes him distrustful of the summing-up phrases which cover a multitude of individualised occurrences. But just as the specialist is indispensable, so there can be no science without interpretation.

We presume, however, that the historians agree with Spencer that their chief aim is to give an account, as rational as is possible for them, of the movement of human history, as Gibbon, for instance, did in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," but that they have a scientific instinct of recoil from generalising formulæ, and probably doubt the validity of some of Spencer's. We presume that they admit that all events are not equally important, and that they are laws of perspective applicable to historical pictures, but that they doubt Spencer's competence—especially after that sentence of his regarding Greece and Rome—to act as judge of what is important or in proportion. Just as the descriptive naturalist justly resents any dictation from the biologist as to what is or is not worth observing, so the descriptive historian resents the sociologist's interference. And it is to be feared that men, both in history and in life, were too much mere "phenomena" to the Synthetic Philosopher, and that his Sociology was more biological than human.

Spencer's Sociological Data.—Spencer may be accused of a lack of personal interest in the details of human history, of a lack of appreciation of what modern societies owe to the past, and of taking too mechanical a view of social evolution, but to accuse him of a priori methods is gratuitously unjust. Darwin in his theorising was no less scrupulously careful than he was in his monographing of barnacles, and, however we may disagree with any of Spencer's sociological generalisations, we must remember the carefulness with which he prepared himself for his task. From 1867 to 1874, with the help of Mr David Duncan, Mr James Collier, and Dr Scheppig, he worked at the compilation of sociological data, showing "in fitly classified groups and tables, facts of all kinds, presented by numerous races, which illustrate social evolution under its various aspects." This detailed work was begun solely to facilitate his own generalisations; it was published "apart from hypotheses, so as to aid all students of Social Science in testing such conclusions as they have drawn and in drawing others."

Most admirable was the ideal which Spencer had before him in collecting his data of Sociology.

"Indications of the climate, contour, soil, and minerals, of the region inhabited by each society delineated, seemed to me needful. Some accounts of the Flora and Fauna, in so far as they affected human life, had to be given. And the characters of the surrounding tribes or nations were factors which could not be overlooked. The characters of the people, individually considered, had also to be described—their physical, moral, and intellectual traits. Then, besides the political, ecclesiastical, industrial and other institutions of the society—besides the knowledge, beliefs, and sentiments, the language, habits, customs, and tastes of its members—there had to be noticed their clothing, food, and arts of life."

Central Ideas of Spencer's Sociology.—The central ideas of Spencer's sociological work are thus summed up by Prof. F. H. Giddings:—

"Spencer's propositions could be arranged in the following order: (1) Society is an organism; (2) in the struggle of social organisms for existence and their consequent differentiation, fear of both the living and the dead arises, and for countless ages is a controlling emotion; (3) dominated by fear, men for ages are habitually engaged in military activities; (4) the transition from militarism to industrialism, made possible by the consolidation of small social groups into large ones, which war accomplishes, to its own ultimate decline, transforms human nature and social institutions; and this fact affords the true interpretation of all social progress."

Spencer sought to disclose the evolution of human ideas and customs, ceremonials and institutions. He emphasised the true idea that any society worthy of the name is an integrate like an individual organism, with the capacity of co-ordinated action or unified behaviour distinct from the life of the component units, and he used other biological concepts to render social evolution more intelligible.

He relied greatly on the influence of Fear in the early stages of social evolution: fear of living competitors gave rise to political control—to ceremonies and institutions; fear of the dead gave origin to religion whose primitive expressions are seen in ancestor-worship or worship of the dead. The conception of another life originated mainly in "such phenomena as shadows, reflections, and echoes," and gave origin to conceptions of gods.

Pressure of population and competitive struggle between societies have been potent factors in evolution, promoting differentiation and integration, and continually tending to disappear as their ends are achieved. Morality is developed as an adaptive expedient under the complex struggle for existence, and industrial organisation replaces military organisation as the social integrates grow and multiply and coalesce. As solidarity deepens with increased peaceful synergy, the severe centralised control, necessary when militarism is dominant, should be replaced by greater freedom of individual life, and by a restriction of governmental function to securing justice, to maintaining equitable relations, preventing one individual infringing on his neighbour's liberty. The formula of absolute justice is that "every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." In militant times the individuals exist for the state; in industrial times the state is to be maintained solely for the benefit of the citizens, and a better than industrial freedom is to be looked for when it is more fully realised that life is not for work but work is for life. Spencer believed so much in the beneficence of peace and individual liberty, that he said "there needs but a continuance of absolute peace externally, and a vigorous insistence on non-aggression internally, to ensure the moulding of men into a form characterised by all the virtues"—a fine illustration of evolutionary optimism. To him the goal of human progress was a completed individualism, but "the ultimate individual will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit, and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature by all others doing the like."

The Idea of the Social Organism.—Spencer has been largely responsible for popularising the conception expressed in the phrase "The Social Organism"—that a society or societary form is in many ways comparable to an individual organism, e.g. in growing, in differentiating, in showing increased mutual dependence of its parts, and so on. It is true that the comparison of society to an organism is at least as old as the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, but Spencer was one of the first to fill in the analogy with biological details. The idea was briefly expressed in Social Statics, and was elaborated in an essay which appeared in the "Westminster Review" in January 1860. There he likened government to the central nervous system, agriculture and industry to the alimentary tract, transport and exchange to the vascular system of an animal, and pointed out that like an individual organism a society grows, becomes more complex, shows increasing inter-relations, division of labour, and mutual dependence among its parts, and has a life immense in length when compared with the lives of the component units. At the same time, it should be carefully noted that it was Spencer who introduced the term super-organic as descriptive of social phenomena, indicating thereby that the biological categories may require considerable modification before they can be safely used in Sociology.

Parallelisms between a Society and an Individual Organism.—Spencer indicated four chief parallelisms between a society and an individual organism:—

(1) Starting as small aggregates both grow in size.

(2) As they grow their initial relative simplicity is replaced by increasing complexity of structure.

(3) With increasing differentiation there comes about an increasing mutual dependence of the component parts, until the life and normal functioning of each becomes dependent on the life of the whole.

(4) The life of the whole becomes independent of and far more prolonged than the life of the component units.

It is obvious that this pleasing analogy may be pursued far. Thus a society may be compared to an organism as regards the genetic kinship of the component units (the cells being compared to individuals); in the fact that continued existence depends on continued functioning; in the power of retaining integrity or viable equilibrium in spite of ceaseless changes both internal and external; in the internal struggle of parts which co-exists with some measure of mutual subordination; in owing its peculiar virtue to the subtle inter-relations between its unified elements; in its power of coalescing with another form or of giving birth to another form; in its power of varying as a whole; in its habit of competing with other forms, as the result of which adaptation or elimination may ensue; and so on. In fact the analogy is far-reaching and persuasive and it is helped over some of its difficulties by the consideration that just as there are many grades of social-group, from the nomad herd to the French Republic, so there are many grades of organism from sponge to eagle.

Schäffle, in his famous work on the Structure and Life of the Social Body (1875), carried the metaphor of the social organism to an extreme which has induced many to recoil from it altogether. The family is the cell, and the body consists of simple connective tissue (expressed in unity of speech, etc.), and of various differentiated tissues, such as sensory and motor apparatus. The comparison is as interesting as a game, but when we find writers speaking of the social ectoderm and endoderm, and so forth, we cannot but feel that the metaphor is being stretched to the breaking-point.

Spencer was himself quite conscious that the metaphor had its limitations, for he indicates four contrasts between a society and an individual organism.

(1) Societies have no specific external forms.

(2) The units of an organism are physically continuous, but the units of a society are dispersed persons.

(3) The elements of an organism are mostly fixed in their relative positions; while units of a society are capable of moving from place to place.

(4) In the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with feeling; in a society all the members are so endowed. The social nervous system is happily wider than the government.

There are other limitations, e.g., that the social organism does not seem to pass necessarily through a curve of life ending in senility and death; that when a particular form disappears it is usually by being incorporated into another in whose life it shares.

As it appears to us the real analogy is between a human societary form and an animal societary form, such as an ant-hill or a bee-hive or a beaver-village, and not between a society and an individual organism. Moreover, since the biologist has not yet arrived at a clear conception of the innermost secret of the individual organism, notably the secret of its unity, the comparison implied in the metaphor of the social organism is an attempt to interpret obscurum per obscurius. The analogy, such as it is, is probably destined to be of more use to the biologist than to the sociologist.

In thinking of the unity of the individual organism—which remains in great measure an enigma to Biology—we have to distinguish (a) the physical unity, which rests on the fact that all the component units are closely akin, being lineal descendants of the fertilised ovum, and on the fact that they are subtly connected with each other in mutual dependence and co-operation, whether by intercellular bridges, or by the commonalty established by the vascular and nervous systems; and (b) the correlated psychical unity, the esprit de corps, which in a manner inconceivable to us makes the whole body one. That there are organisms, like sponges, in which the psychical unity is quite unverifiable is probably only a passing difficulty, greatly lessened by our increasing knowledge of the life of the simplest unicellular organisms whose behaviour is now seen to include trial by error and other traits which we cannot interpret without using psychical terms.

The same is true in regard to the social organism; we have here to distinguish (a) the physical unity which rests on hereditary kinship and on similar environmental conditions, and (b) the psychical unity, the "social mind," developed with relation to certain ends—"a unity which is the end of its parts." It seems probable that in early days, the physical unity was more prominent than later on, when, as in the case of mixed racial groups, the psychical bond is practically supreme. But genetic and environmental bonds do not as physical facts constitute a society. Until there is enough of correlated psychical unity for the group to act, however imperfectly, as a group with a mind of its own, controlling the egoism of the individual members, there is no human society.

In short, if we continue to speak of a society as a social organism, we must safeguard the analogy by remembering that the character of society as an organism exists in the thoughts, feelings, and activities of the component members, and that the social bonds are not those of sympathy and synergy only, but that the rational life is intrinsically social.

As Green said, "Social life is to personality what language is to thought."

The chief difficulty that Spencer had with his metaphor was that in the individual organism there is a centred consciousness in the nervous system, whereas the social group as a whole has no corporate consciousness. Thus "while in individual bodies the welfare of all other parts is rightly subservient to the welfare of the nervous system, whose pleasurable or painful activities make up the good or ill of life; in bodies politic the same thing does not hold, or holds only to a very slight extent. It was well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the life of the whole, because the whole has a corporate consciousness capable of happiness or misery. But it is not so with a society, since its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness, and since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State: but why, on the other hand, the State is to be maintained solely for the benefit of citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life" ("The Social Organism," Essays, vol. i.). In other words, Spencer found the metaphor useful even when it broke down, for it enabled him to corroborate his doctrine of individualism. If he had pursued the analogy between the human social group and the animal social group, such as that of bees or beavers, the corroboration would not have been so easy, though Spencer would doubtless have arrived at the same result.

CHAPTER XVI

THE POPULATION QUESTION

We have not in this volume discussed any of Spencer's contributions to practical life, for the task of indicating his scientific position was more than enough. Furthermore, his Education is the best known of all his works, and many of its suggestions are now realised in everyday practice; his political recommendations are too debatable; and as to ethical advice he has himself said: "The doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had hoped. Most of the conclusions drawn empirically are such as right feelings, enlightened by cultivated intelligence, have already sufficed to establish." But there is one practical suggestion to which we must refer, namely Spencer's contribution to the population question.

"The Abundance of Life"—the title of a very suggestive essay by Prof. Joly—is one of the great facts of Nature. The river of life is always tending to overflow its banks. Hence, in part, the "Struggle for Existence."

There are great differences in the number of offspring produced by different kinds of organisms, and great differences in the mortality-rate among the crowds of those produced. The rate of reproduction depends primarily on the constitution of the organism, but it also varies in response to external conditions, notably in relation to the food-supply. Some organisms are intrinsically more reproductive than others, thus the unicellular organisms, such as Bacteria and Infusorians, which multiply by dividing into two or many units, head the list; and, on the whole, it may be said that relatively simple creatures multiply most rapidly, especially if their mode of reproduction, e.g., the equipment of the germ-cells, is relatively simple and inexpensive, and if the period required for reaching reproductive maturity is short. But as we find very different reproductivity in animals and plants which occupy the same grade of organisation, we are led to the conclusion, which Weismann, for instance, has worked out, that the constitutional capacity of producing many or few offspring has been regulated by selection working throughout the ages, and is adapted to the particular conditions of life. As the continuance of the race is an ideal aim, which could not be present to the animal consciousness—not to speak of the slumbering analogue of this in plants—all that we can say is that in certain conditions variations towards greater fertility would be relatively more successful because there were more of them to survive, and that variations towards relative sterility would seal their own doom. The survivors survived because they were many and capable of producing many. Moreover it is possible in certain conditions that a variation towards greater fertility may have been correlated with some other variation, such as greater vigour on which the process of selection could immediately operate. In any case, however, we may work out the theory, the rate of reproductivity cannot be satisfactorily interpreted without regarding it as in great part an adaptive character.

But while the rate of reproduction depends upon the constitution of the individual organism, modifiable within variable limits by the direct influence of food, warmth, and the like, the rate of increase or decrease in an animal or plant population depends upon the wide and complex conditions of the entire animate and inanimate environment. In short, it is a function of the Struggle for Existence.

When there are no checks to prolific multiplication a single Infusorian may become, in the course of a week, the ancestor of several millions, and the same is true of a Bacterium within a day. Huxley has computed that the progeny of single mother Aphis or green-fly, if they all lived a charmed life, would in a few months literally outweigh the population of China, which probably amounts to between two and three hundred millions. If there were no checks to increase, a few pairs of cod-fish and conger-eels would soon put an end to fishing and much else, by making the North Sea solid. And apart from problematical cases, every now and then, with locusts or voles, with rabbits in Australia, or sparrows in America, we get a vivid glimpse of what a "spate" of life may mean.

In the main, however, the river of life overflows its banks only locally and temporarily. An adjustment of the abundance of life to the limitations of subsistence is speedily effected in nature, and the flood subsides. The "positive checks" of disease, starvation, lack of room, internecine competition, increase of enemies, and so on, re-establish a balance, though perhaps with a slightly changed centre of gravity. The struggle for existence punctuates the increase of population.

In the history of mankind various aspects of the population question are familiar. Whether we inquire into what is known of the history of uncivilised races, or into present-day conditions in more or less isolated communities and even in large countries, we read the story of population-crises—of increase in numbers out-running the means of livelihood. Among races in contact one often increases at a much more rapid rate than the other, and we hear of "perils" of various colours. Within a given race we find great differences in the fertility of different sections or stocks and dangerous results impending. One nation is troubled by its teeming millions, and another by its dwindling birth-rate. The whole question is one of great biological interest and human importance, and it is one to which Spencer had a very definite contribution to make.

But before we consider Spencer's theory, it may be profitable to notice what other suggestions have been made.

(a) Malthusian.—In 1798, in his Theory of Population, Malthus riveted the attention of all thoughtful men by seeking to establish the induction that population tends to outrun the means of subsistence. In its earliest form, his thesis was that population tends to increase in geometrical ratio, while the means of subsistence increase only in arithmetical ratio. So precise a statement cannot be justified, but Malthus was right in insisting on the general fact that in certain conditions and in certain stocks multiplication tends to exceed the means of subsistence. His discussion of this thesis, and the conception of "the struggle for existence" which he developed—for the phrase was his—had a profound influence on many minds, including Spencer, Darwin, and Wallace.

Malthus pointed out, with abundant concrete illustration, that the increase of population is met by "positive checks," such as disease, starvation, war, and infanticide, and that it may also be met by "prudential checks," such as late marriage and moral control. His practical corollary was that to avoid the "positive checks" which are almost always appalling and pity-moving, we must develop the "prudential checks," which tend to prevent further swelling of the population-tide. "To a rational being the prudential check to population ought to be considered as equally natural with the check from poverty and premature mortality" (Malthus, 1806). The obvious objections are, that extended celibacy or postponed marriage tends to increase of sexual vice; that very late marriages are biologically and psychologically inadvisable, tending for instance on an average to increased mortality in childbirth, to less fit children, and to a diminution of the happiness of married life; and that moral control is apt to be most exercised where it is least needed, namely among the more highly developed stocks, and that it is a very uncertain check since great conjugal temperance seems often to render conception the more certain.

(b) Darwinian.—The Darwinian theory, that is the theory of Natural Selection, supplied an important supplement to the Malthusian position. For it pointed to the course of nature wherein the struggle for existence has opened up the pathway of progress. Increase of population brings about or accentuates the struggle for existence wherein the relatively less fit are eliminated. Although this Natural Selection works slowly it works surely, hence the Darwinian corollary is practically nil, that is to say, a laissez-faire policy. The obvious objections are, that man as a rational and social being has a higher standard than mere survival, and that a confidence in uncontrolled natural selection is altogether optimistic. He cannot abrogate his task of endeavouring, by rational selection, to accelerate what he believes to be progressive evolution and to hinder degenerative change. Moreover, it is not in him to stand by contemplating the mills of Nature grinding slowly, ignoring the well-being of the individual in considering the merely possible advancement of the species. And as a matter of fact he is continually interfering with natural selection by introducing various modes of what he believes to be rational selection.

(c) Neo-Malthusian.—The general position of modern Malthusians may be summed up in a few propositions. Population has a constant tendency to outrun the means of subsistence; over-population is a fruitful source of pauperism, ignorance, crime and disease; the positive or life-destroying checks are cruel, and their reduction is in the line of social progress; abstention from marriage is for normal organisms unnatural and anti-social, postponement of marriage is also unnatural and tends to vice and unfitness; the check that remains to be advocated is "prudence after marriage," and by this the Neo-Malthusians most distinctly mean attention to methods which secure small families. So far as these scientific checks imply control and conjugal temperance and obviate or lessen misery, they commend themselves, but the obvious objections are, that their use is often not without its physiological risks, and that by annulling the responsibility of consequences, while allowing the gratification of sexual appetites to continue, they may have the result of increasing an already sufficiently intense sexuality, of facilitating unchastity, and of exaggerating the tendency of marriage to sink into "monogamic prostitution." On the other hand, it seems probable that the transition from impulsive animalism to deliberate regulation—somewhat mechanical though it be—would tend in some to decrease not increase sexual intemperance. While the ideal surely is that there should be a retention, throughout married life, of a large measure of that self-control which must always form the organic basis of the enthusiasm and idealism of lovers, it remains a fact that even exemplary temperance does not obviate an unduly large family, and that some form of Neo-Malthusian practice is in many cases the only practicable suggestion—pis aller though it be.

(d) Spencer's Contribution.—In his keen analysis of the conditions of multiplication,[20] Spencer showed that a species cannot be maintained unless self-preservative and reproductive powers vary inversely, and gave a physiological reason why these two powers cannot do other than vary inversely. If we group under the term individuation all those race-preservative processes by which individual life is completed and maintained, and extend the term genesis to include all those processes aiding the formation and perfecting of new individuals, the result of the whole argument may be tersely expressed in the formula—Individuation and Genesis vary inversely. And from this conception important corollaries follow; thus, other things equal, advancing evolution must be accompanied by declining fertility; again, if the difficulties of self-preservation permanently diminish, there will be a permanent increase in the rate of multiplication, and conversely.