customs, and ideas of primitive races, belonging rather to anthropology, we find in part II. that "a society is an organism," and that social growth, social structures, social functions and social organs are treated from the strictly biological point of view? Mr. Spencer denied that he based sociology upon biology and censured two American authors for intimating that he seemed to do so, but the comparison that he used is not at all apposite.[1]
The other two volumes of the "Principles of Sociology," based as they are on his great compilation, "Descriptive Sociology," are above criticism in their comprehensive sweep as a vast induction. Some of his facts will, of course, be denied, but he admitted that the reports of travelers must be taken with many grains of allowance. Yet these are almost the only sources from which an author who is not himself a traveler must rely. For those therefore who consider such a work to constitute "Sociology" the only vulnerable part is the terminology, classification, and arrangement of the subject-matter. The phrase "ecclesiastical institutions" may be justly objected to as seeming to predicate something like a church of the religious structures of primitive man. The word "ecclesiastical" might be stretched sufficiently to justify this were there no better term, but it is universally admitted that the priesthood was practically coeval with human society, and we possess an adjective corresponding to this noun which is more euphonious and more expressive than the one used. By all means, then, should the phrase sacerdotal institutions be substituted for "ecclesiastical institutions." The introduction of "political institutions" between the "ceremonial" and the sacerdotal is a forced arrangement. The ceremonial are largely sacerdotal, and their separation is difficult. The sacerdotal should probably stand first, and the "professional," beginning with the "medicine man," so similar to a priest, should follow. "Political institutions" would then be in order, to be followed by "industrial institutions." But Mr. Spencer had no conception of gentile society and the fundamental distinction between it and political society, so clearly set forth by Morgan. This classification shows how late the latter class of institutions have always been in the historical development of society. Still less was he acquainted with that other most important of all transformations which is undergone by every advanced society at the proper stage in its history, viz., union and amalgamation of groups, whether through war or peace, by which a third and higher group results from the blending of two lower groups, constituting what is appropriately called the cross-fertilization of cultures. It is only through this that all the higher political, industrial, economic, and professional institutions arise.
After thus threading the mazes of cosmic, organic, psychic and
- ↑ "Life and Letters," Vol. II., p. 357.
