1. Spencer and His Time

The birth of sociology in England is linked with the name of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). In the middle of the nineteenth century, when his scientific activity was beginning, British capitalism was at the zenith of its prosperity. England, having completed the industrial revolution before all other countries, had far outstripped them in level of economic development. In the eyes of mid-century world opinion, she was the symbol of prosperity and liberalism. In spite of acute class contradic-

English for Psychologists and Sociologists

tions, the British middle classes were proud of the progress made, and looked to the future with confidence. That mood had its effect, as well, on Spencer's social philosophy.

Spencer worked from 1837 to 1841 as an engineer and technician on a railway, simultaneously studying mathematics and natural sciences. Then, for several years, he contributed to the press. In 1853, having inherited a tidy legacy from an uncle, he resigned his post and began the modest life of an independent scientist and publicist. Even after he had attained fame, he refused all official honours.

In the early 1860s Spencer made a tremendous effort to create a system of synthetic philosophy that would unite all the theoretical sciences of the time. This work included ten volumes, consisting of five separate titles: First Principles (1862), Principles of Biology (1864,1867), Principles of Psychology (1870-1872); Principles of Sociology ( 1876, 1882, 1896), which was anticipated in 1873 in an independent book The Study of Sociology, and Principles of Ethics (1892, 1893).

What were the sources of his ideas?

In his youth he was not interested in philosophy; later he did not read philosophical and psychological books, preferring to derive the necessary information from conversations with friends and popular editions. Accor­ding to his secretary, there was not a single book by Hob-bes, Locke, Hume, or Kant in his library. His knowledge of history, too, was very weak.

Spencer borrowed much more from the natural sciences, especially from those parts in which the idea of deve­lopment was being born or worked out. When Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1858, Spencer warmly welcomed it. Darwin in turn highly valued Spencer's theory of evolution, acknowledged its influence, and even placed Spencer intellectually above himself. Yet, in spite

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of this respect and influence, Spencer's evolutionism was more Lamarckian than Darwinian.

A second line of influence, perceived and acknowledged by Spencer himself, was the works of English economists of the eighteenth century, especially those of Malthus and Adam Smith.

Finally, the ideas of the English Utilitarians, in particular of Bentham, whose individualism Spencer intensified even more, had quite a clear influence on him. He had already, in his first book Social Statics (1851), formulated a «law of equal freedom», according to which «every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man». Freedom of individual actions, competition and survival of the fittest were all that were needed for the development of society.

Spencer's attitude to Comte presents special interest. His own ideas had already been formed in the main when he became acquainted with Comte's works. On the whole he highly appreciated Comte, ascribing to him «the credit of having set forth with comparative definiteness, the connexion between the Science of Life and the Science of Society».

Later, however, there began to be serious disagreements. Spencer was, first of all, much more naturalistic than Comte. Spencer rejected the idea of uniform, linear progress, in the light of which the different forms of society presented by savage and civilised races all over the globe, are but different stages in the evolution of one form. In his view the truth was that social types, like types of individual organisms, do not form a series, but are classifiable only in divergent groups.

Finally, Spencer posed the question of the relation of the individual and the social whole quite differently to Comte.

⁴⁶⁴ I English for Psychologists and Sociologists VI. Translate the text in writing:

THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY

Spencer did not provide a developed, formal definition of sociology or of its relation to other social sciences. But in The Study of Sociology he paid much attention to demonstrating the possibility of its existence as a science. This possibility depended on the existence (1) of a universal law of «natural causality» which operated in society to the same extent as in nature, and (2) of a regular connection of the elements and structure of any phenomenon. By examining in detail the objective and subjective difficulties (including class prejudices) of shaping sociology as a science, Spencer anticipated a number of the theses of the future sociology of knowledge.

The most complicated methodological task for him was to demarcate sociology from history. When studying the laws of the development of society, sociology is, in spirit, a historical science. But in Spencer's opinion, it was related to traditional, narrative, descriptive history in the same way as anthropology to biography. While biography recorded all the chance circumstances in a human life, anthropology studied the state and conditions of the development of the organism. In the same way sociology, even though it rested on historical facts, was closer methodologically to biology.

In contrast to Comte, Spencer not only set out his understanding of the subject-matter and tasks of sociology but also, in fact, realised the principles he proclaimed. His Principle? of Sociology was essentially the first attempt to construct an integral sociological system on ethnographic material. Under the heading «The Data of Sociology» he tried to reconstruct theoretically the phy­sical, emotional, intellectual, and especially the religious life of primitive man, and to bring out the origin of his main ideas and notions. Later, pⁿ «the inductions of sociol-

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ogy», which consisted in a kind of general theory of society, he analysed the concepts of society, social growth, social structure, social functions, various systems and organs of social life. In the second volume of Principles of Sociology he examined the evolution of domestic relations (primitive sexual relations, forms of the family, the position of women and children), ritual institutions (including customs), political institutions. His sociology was thus an all-embracing science that included anthropology, ethnography, and a general theory of historical development.