Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume I. Spencer Herbert

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СКАЧАТЬ we find, a posteriori, to be the leading cause of social differentiations. Nay further, as we inferred that possibly the embryonic changes which are not thus directly caused, are caused by hereditarily-transmitted adaptations; so, we may actually see that in embryonic societies, such changes as are not due to direct adaptations, are in the main traceable to adaptations originally undergone by the parent society. The colonies founded by distinct nations, while they are alike in exhibiting specializations caused in the way above described, grow unlike in so far as they take on, more or less, the organizations of the nations they sprung from. A French settlement does not develop exactly after the same manner as an English one; and both assume forms different from those which Roman settlements assumed. Now the fact that the differentiation of societies is determined partly by the direct adaptation of their units to local conditions, and partly by the transmitted influence of like adaptations undergone by ancestral societies, tends strongly to enforce the conclusion, otherwise reached, that the differentiation of individual organisms, similarly results from immediate adaptations compounded with ancestral adaptations.

      From confirmations thus furnished by sociology to physiology, let us now pass to a suggestion similarly furnished. A factory, or other producing establishment, or a town made up of such establishments, is an agency for elaborating some commodity consumed by society at large; and may be regarded as analogous to a gland or viscus in an individual organism. If we inquire what is the primitive mode in which one of these producing establishments grows up, we find it to be this. A single worker, who himself sells the produce of his labour, is the germ. His business increasing, he employs helpers – his sons or others; and having done this, he becomes a vendor not only of his own handiwork, but of that of others. A further increase of his business compels him to multiply his assistants, and his sale grows so rapid that he is obliged to confine himself to the process of selling: he ceases to be a producer, and becomes simply a channel through which the produce of others is conveyed to the public. Should his prosperity rise yet higher, he finds that he is unable to manage even the sale of his commodities, and has to employ others, probably of his own family, to aid him in selling; so that, to him as a main channel are now added subordinate channels. Moreover, when there grow up in one place, as a Manchester or a Birmingham, many establishments of like kind, this process is carried still further. There arise factors and buyers, who are the channels through which is transmitted the produce of many factories; and we believe that primarily these factors were manufacturers who undertook to dispose of the produce of smaller houses as well as their own, and ultimately became salesmen only. Under a converse aspect, all the stages of this development have been within these few years exemplified in our railway contractors. There are sundry men now living who illustrate the whole process in their own persons – men who were originally navvies, digging and wheeling; who then undertook some small sub-contract, and worked along with those they paid; who presently took larger contracts, and employed foremen; and who now contract for whole railways, and let portions to sub-contractors. That is to say, we have men who were originally workers, but have finally become the main channels out of which diverge secondary channels, which again bifurcate into the subordinate channels, through which flows the money (representing the nutriment) supplied by society to the actual makers of the railway. Now it seems worth inquiring whether this is not the original course followed in the evolution of secreting and excreting organs in an animal. We know that such is the process by which the liver is developed. Out of the group of bile-cells forming the germ of it, some centrally-placed ones, lying next to the intestine, are transformed into ducts through which the secretion of the peripheral bile-cells is poured into the intestine; and as the peripheral bile-cells multiply, there similarly arise secondary ducts emptying themselves into the main ones; tertiary ones into these; and so on. Recent inquiries show that the like is the case with the lungs, – that the bronchial tubes are thus formed. But while analogy suggests that this is the original mode in which such organs are developed, it at the same time suggests that this does not necessarily continue to be the mode. For as we find that in the social organism, manufacturing establishments are no longer commonly developed through the series of modifications above described, but now mostly arise by the direct transformation of a number of persons into master, clerks, foremen, workers, &c.; so the approximate method of forming organs, may in some cases be replaced by a direct metamorphosis of the organic units into the destined structure, without any transitional structures being passed through. That there are organs thus formed is an ascertained fact; and the additional question which analogy suggests is, whether the direct method is substituted for the indirect method.

      Such parallelisms might be multiplied. And were it possible here to show in detail the close correspondence between the two kinds of organization, our case would be seen to have abundant support. But, as it is, these few illustrations will sufficiently justify the opinion that study of organized bodies may be indirectly furthered by study of the body politic. Hints may be expected, if nothing more. And thus we venture to think that the Inductive Method, usually alone employed by most physiologists, may not only derive important assistance from the Deductive Method, but may further be supplemented by the Sociological Method.

      THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS

      [First published in The Westminster Review for July, 1858. In explanation of sundry passages, it seems needful to state that this essay was written in defence of the Nebular Hypothesis at a time when it had fallen into disrepute. Hence there are some opinions spoken of as current which are no longer current.]

      Inquiring into the pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is prima facie evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs, together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in successive generations; and as the modifications which successive generations of the holders undergo do not destroy the original type, but only disguise and refine it, so the accompanying alterations of belief, however much they purify, leave behind the essence of the original belief.

      Considered genealogically, the received theory respecting the creation of the Solar System is unmistakably of low origin. You may clearly trace it back to primitive mythologies. Its remotest ancestor is the doctrine that the celestial bodies are personages who originally lived on the Earth – a doctrine still held by some of the negroes Livingstone visited. Science having divested the sun and planets of their divine personalities, this old idea was succeeded by the idea which even Kepler entertained, that the planets are guided in their courses by presiding spirits: no longer themselves gods, they are still severally kept in their orbits by gods. And when gravitation came to dispense with these celestial steersmen, there was begotten a belief, less gross than its parent, but partaking of the same essential nature, that the planets were originally launched into their orbits by the Creator's hand. Evidently, though much refined, the anthropomorphism of the current hypothesis is inherited from the aboriginal anthropomorphism, which described gods as a stronger order of men.

      There is an antagonist hypothesis which does not propose to honour the Unknown Power manifested in the Universe, by such titles as "The Master-Builder," or "The Great Artificer;" but which regards this Unknown Power as probably working after a method quite different from that of human mechanics. And the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high as that of the other is low. It is begotten by that ever-enlarging and ever-strengthening belief in the presence of Law, which accumulated experiences have gradually produced in the human mind. From generation to generation Science has been proving uniformities of relation among phenomena which were before thought either fortuitous or supernatural in their origin – has been showing an established order and a constant causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity and arbitrariness. Each further discovery of Law has increased the presumption that Law is everywhere conformed to. And hence, among other beliefs, has arisen the belief that the Solar System originated, not by manufacture but by evolution. Besides its abstract parentage in those grand general conceptions which Science has generated, this hypothesis has a concrete parentage of the highest character. Based as it is on the law of universal gravitation, it may claim for its remote progenitor the great thinker who established that law. It was first suggested СКАЧАТЬ