subordination is as inevitable, generally speaking, as it is indispensable. And this completes the elementary delineation of Social Statics. My sketch has perhaps been so abstract and condensed that the conceptions of this chapter may appear obscure at present; but light will fall upon them as we proceed. We may already see, however, the practical advantage which arises from the scientific evolution of human relations. The individual life, ruled by personal instincts; the domestic, by sympathetic instincts; and the social, by the special development of intellectual influences, prepare for the states of human existence which are to follow and that which ensues is, first, personal morality, which subjects the preservation of the individual to a wise discipline; next, domestic morality, which subordinates selfishness to sympathy; and lastly, social morality, which directs all individual tendencies by enlightened reason, always having the general economy in view, so as to bring into concurrence all the faculties of human nature, according to their appropriate laws. 124 CHAPTER VI. SOCIAL DYNAMICS; OR, THEORY OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS Scientific view of Human progression. OF HUMAN SOCIETY. If we regard the course of human development from the highest scientific point of view, we shall perceive that it consists in educing, more and more, the characteristic faculties of humanity, in comparison with those of animality; and especially with those which Man has in common with the whole organic kingdom. It is in this philosophical sense that the most eminent civilization must be pronounced to be fully accordant with nature, since it is, in fact, only a more marked manifestation of the chief properties of our species; properties which, latent at first, can come into play only in that advanced state of social life for which they are exclusively destined. The whole system of biological philosophy indicates the natural progression. We have seen how, in the brute kingdom, the superiority of each race is determined by the degree of preponderance of the animal life over the organic. In like manner, we see that our social evolution is only the final term of a progression which has continued from the simplest vegetables and most insignificant animals, up through the higher reptiles, to the birds and the mammifers, and still on to the carnivorous animals and monkeys, the organic characteristics retiring, and the animal prevailing more and more, till the intellectual and moral tend towards the ascendency which can never be fully obtained, even in the highest state of human perfection that we can conceive of. This comparative estimate affords us the scientific view of human progression, connected, as we see it is, with the whole course of animal advancement, of which it is itself the highest degree. The analysis of our social progress proves indeed that, while the radical dispositions of our nature are necessarily invariable, the highest of them are in a continuous state of relative development, by which they rise to be preponderant powers of human existence, though the inversion of the primitive economy can never be absolutely complete. We have seen that this is the essential character of the social organism in a statical view but it becomes much more marked when we study its variations in their gradual succession. DIRECTION OF PROGRESS. 125 Course of Man's Civilization develops, to an enormous degree, the action of Man upon his environment: and thus, it may seem, at first, to concentrate our attention upon the cares of social developmaterial existence, the support and improvement of ment. which appear to be the chief object of most social occupations. A closer examination will show, however, that this development gives. the advantage to the highest human faculties, both by the security which sets free our attention from physical wants, and by the direct and steady excitement which it administers to the intellectual functions, and even the social feelings. In Man's social infancy, the instincts of subsistence are so preponderant, that the sexual instinct itself, notwithstanding its primitive strength, is at first controlled by them: the domestic affections are then much less pronounced; and the social affections are restricted to an almost imperceptible fraction of humanity, beyond which everything is foreign, and even hostile and the malignant passions are certainly, next to the animal appetites, the mainspring of human existence. It is unquestionable that civilization leads us on to a further and further development of our noblest dispositions and our most generous feelings, which are the only possible basis of human association, and which receive, by means of that association, a more and more special culture. As for the intellectual faculties,—we see, by the habitual improvidence which characterizes savage life, how little influence reason has over men in that stage of existence. Those faculties are then undeveloped, or show some activity only in the lowest order, which relate to the exercise of the senses: the faculties of abstraction and combination are almost wholly inert, except under some transient stimulus: the rude curiosity which the spectacle of nature involuntary inspires is quite satisfied with the weakest attempts at theological explanation; and amusements, chiefly distinguished by violent muscular activity, rising at best to a manifestation of merely physical address, are as little favourable to the development of intelligence as of social qualities. The influence of civilization in perpetually improving the intellectual faculties is even more unquestionable than its effect on moral relations. The development of the individual exhibits to us in little, both as to time and degree, the chief phases of social development. In both cases, the end is to subordinate the satisfaction of the personal instincts to the habitual exercise of the social faculties, subjecting, at the same time, all our passions to rules imposed by an everstrengthening intelligence, with the view of identifying the individual more and more with the species. In the anatomical view, we should say that the process is to give an influence by exercise to the organs of the cerebral systems, increasing in proportion to their distance from the vertebral column, and their nearness to the frontal region. Such is the ideal type which exhibits the course of human development, in the individual, and, in a higher degree, in the species. This view enables us to discriminate the natural from the artificial part of the process of development; that part being natural which raises the human to a superiority over the animal attributes; and that part being artificial by which any faculty is made to preponderate in proportion to its original weakness: and here we find the scientific explanation of that eternal struggle between our humanity and our animality which has been recognized by all who have made Man their study, from the earliest days of civilization till now, and embodied in many forms before its true character was fixed by the positive philosophy. Rate of This, then, is the direction of the human evolution. The next consideration is the rate at which it proceeds, apart from any differences which may result from climate, race, or other modifying causes. Taking into the account only universal causes, it is clear that the speed must be in proportion to the combined influence of the chief natural conditions relating to the human organism first, and next to its medium. The invariableness, the evident impossibility of suspending these fundamental conditions must ever prevent our estimating their respective importance, though we may have a general conviction that our spontaneous development must be hastened or retarded by any change in these elementary influences, organic or inorganic; supposing, for instance, our cerebral system to be slightly inferior, in the frontal region; or our planet to become larger or more habitable. Sociological analysis can, by its nature, reach only to accessory conditions, which are rendered susceptible of estimate by their variations. Among these secondary but permanent influences, which affect the rate of human development, ennui is the first Ennui. which presents itself. Man, like other animals, cannot be happy without a sufficient exercise of all his faculties, intense and persistent in proportion to the intrinsic activity of each faculty. The greater difficulty experienced by man in obtaining a development compatible with the special superiority of his nature renders him more subject than the other animals to that remarkable state of irksome languor which indicates at once the existence of the faculties and their insufficient activity, and which would become equally irreconcilable with a radical debility incapable of any urgent tendency, and with an ideal vigour, spontaneously susceptible of indefatigable exercise. A disposition at once intellectual and moral, which we daily see at work in natures endowed with any energy, must have powerfully accelerated the human expansion, in the infancy of humanity, by the uneasy excitement it occasioned either in the eager search for new sources of emotion, or in the more intense development of direct human activity. This secondary influence is not very marked till the social state is sufficiently advanced to make men feel a growing need to exercise the highest faculties, which are, as we have seen, the least energetic. The strongest faculties, which DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 127 are the lowest, are so easily exercised that in ordinary circumstances they can hardly generate the ennui which would produce a favourable cerebral reaction. Savages, like children, are not subject to much ennui while their physical activity, which alone is of any importance to them, is not interfered with. An easy and protracted sleep prevents them, as if they were mere animals, from feeling their intellectual torpor in any irksome way. This brief notice of the influence of ennui was necessary, to show what its operation really amounts to in accelerating the speed of our social evolution. But perhaps the most important of all accelerating influences is the ordinary duration of human life, which I mention in the second Duration of place. There is no denying that our social progression human life. rests upon death. I mean the successive steps suppose the steady renewal of the agents of the general movement, which is almost imperceptible in the course of any single life, and becomes marked only on the succession of a new generation. Here again the social resembles the individual organism,-being under the same necessity to throw off its constituent parts as they become, by the vital action itself, unfit for further use, and must be replaced by new elements. To illustrate this, we need not go so far as to suppose an indefinite duration of human life, which would presently put a stop to all progression whatever. It is enough to imagine it lengthened tenfold only, its respective periods preserving their present proportions. If the general constitution of the brain remained the same as now, there must be a retardation, though we know not how great, in our social development: for the perpetual conflict which goes on between the conservative instinct that belongs to age and the innovating instinct which distinguishes youth would be much more favourable than now to the former. From the extreme imperfection of the higher parts of our nature, even those who, in their prime, have contributed most to human progress cannot preserve their due social eminence very long without becoming more or less hostile to the further progress which they cannot assist. But an ephemeral life would be quite as mischievous as a too protracted one, by giving too much power to the instinct of innovation. The resistance which this instinct now meets with from the conservatism of age compels it to accommodate its efforts to the whole of what has been already done. Without this check, our feeble nature, which has a strong repugnance to irksome and continuous labour, would be for ever proposing incomplete views and crude attempts, that could never ripen into mature projects and feasible acts: and this would be the inevitable state of things, if human life were reduced to a quarter, or even to half its present length. Such would be the consequences, in either case, if we suppose the constitution of the human brain to be much what it is now and to suppose it essentially changed, would be to carry us over into the region of hypothesis. No justification is however afforded by these considerations to the |