Part 12

Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorders entailed by disobedience to nature's dictates, they regard simply as grievances; not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by time, yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognised; but none appear to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily transgression. The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are _physical sins._ When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then, will the physical training of the young receive the attention which it deserves.

Principles of Biology

In 1860 Spencer commenced a connected series of philosophical works, designed to unfold in their natural order the principles of biology, psychology, sociology and morality. "Principles of Biology" was published in 1864, and aims to set forth, the general truths of biology as illustrative of, and as interpreted by the laws of evolution. It was revised in 1899.

_Proximate Definition of Life_

To those who accept the general doctrine of evolution, it needs scarcely to be pointed out that classifications are subjective conceptions which have no absolute demarcations in nature corresponding to them. Consequently in attempting to define anything complex we can scarcely ever avoid including more than was intended, or leaving out something that should be taken in. Thus it happens that on seeking a definition of life there is great difficulty in finding one that is neither more nor less than sufficient. As the best mode of determining the general characteristics of vitality, let us compare its two most unlike kinds and see in what they agree.

Choosing _assimilation_, then, for our example of bodily life, and _reasoning_ for our example of the life known as intelligence, it is first to be observed that they are both processes of change. Without change food cannot be taken into the blood nor transformed into tissue: neither can conclusions be obtained from premises. This conspicuous manifestation of change forms the substratum of our idea of life in general. Comparison shows this change to differ from non-vital changes in being made up of _successive_ changes. The food must undergo mastication, digestion, etc., while an argument necessitates a long chain of states of consciousness, each implying a change of the preceding state. Vital change is further made up of many _simultaneous_ changes. Assimilation and argument both include many actions going on together. Vital changes, both visceral and cerebral, also differ from other changes in their _heterogeneity_; neither the simultaneous nor the serial acts of digestion or of ratiocination are at all alike. They are again distinguished by the combination subsisting among their constituent changes. The acts that make up digestion are mutually dependent; as are those which compose a train of reasoning. Once more, they differ in being characterised by definiteness. Assimilation, respiration, and circulation, are definitely interdependent. These characterisations not only mark off the vital from the non-vital, but also creatures of high vitality from those of low vitality. Hence our formula reads thus:--_Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive._ Not _a_ definite combination, allowing that there may be others, but _the_ definite combination. This, however, omits its most distinctive peculiarity.

_Correspondence Between Life and Its Circumstances_

We habitually distinguish between a live object and a dead one by observing whether a change in the surrounding conditions is or is not followed by some perceptible and appropriate change in the object. Adding this all-important characteristic, our conception of life becomes--the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, _in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences_. Some illustrations may serve to show the significance of this addition.

Every act of locomotion implies the expenditure of certain internal mechanical forces, adapted in amounts and directions to balance or outbalance certain external ones. The recognition of an object is impossible without a harmony between the changes constituting perception and particular properties coexisting in the environment. Escape from enemies supposes motions within the organism related in kind and rapidity to motions without it. Destruction of prey requires a

## particular combination of subjective actions, fitted in degree and

succession to overcome a group of objective ones.

The difference of this correspondence in inanimate and animate bodies may be expressed by symbols. Let A be a change in the environment; and B some resulting change in an inorganic mass. Then A having produced B, the action ceases. But take a sufficiently organised living body, and let the change A impress on it some change C; then, while the environment A is occasioning _a_, in the living body, C will be occasioning _c_: of which _a_ and _c_ will show a certain concord in time, place, or intensity. And while it is in the continuous production of such concords or correspondences that life consists, it is _by_ the continuous production of them that life is maintained.

As, in all cases, we may consider the external phenomena as simply in relation, and the internal phenomena also as simply in relation, the broadest and most complete definition of life will be:--_the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations_. It will be best, however, commonly to employ its more concrete equivalent--to consider the internal relations as "definite combinations of simultaneous and successive changes"; the external relations as "coexistences and sequences," and the connection between them as a "correspondence."

_The Degree of Life Varies as the Degree of Correspondence_

It is now to be remarked that the life is high in proportion as this correspondence between internal and external relations is well-fulfilled.

Each step upward must consist in adding to the previously adjusted relations which the organism exhibits some further relation, parallel to a further relation in the environment. And the greater correspondence thus established must, other things being equal, show itself both in greater complexity of life and greater length of life--a truth which will be duly realised on remembering the enormous mortality which prevails among lowly-organized creatures, and the gradual increase of longevity and diminution of fertility which is met with in ascending to creatures of higher and higher development. Those relations in the environment to which relations in the organism must correspond increase in number and intensity as the life assumes a higher form. Perfect correspondence would be perfect life.

_Growth, or Increase of Bulk_

Perhaps the widest and most familiar induction of biology is that organisms grow. Under appropriate conditions increase of size takes place in inorganic aggregates as well as in organic aggregates. Crystals grow. Growth is indeed a concomitant of evolution. The several conditions by which the phenomena of organic growth are governed, conspiring and conflicting in endless ways and degrees, qualify more or less differently each others' effects. Hence the following generalisations must be taken as true on the average, or other things equal:--

First, that growth being an integration with the organism of such environing matters as are of like nature with the matters composing the organism, its growth is dependent on the available supply of such matters. Second, that the available supply of assimilable matters being the same, and other conditions not dissimilar, the degree of growth varies according to the surplus of nutrition over expenditure. Third, that in the same organism the surplus of nutrition over expenditure is a variable quantity; and that growth is unlimited or has a definite limit according as the surplus does or does not progressively decrease,--a proposition exemplified by the increasing growth of organisms that do not expend force, and by the definitely limited growth of organisms that expend much force. Fourth, that among organisms that are large expenders of force, the size ultimately attained is, other things equal, determined by the initial size. Fifth, that where the likeness of other circumstances permits a comparison, the possible degree of growth depends upon the degree of organisation: an inference testified to by the larger forms among the various divisions and subdivisions of organisms.

_Why Do Organisms Cease to Grow_

Why should not all organisms, when supplied with sufficient material, continue to grow as long as they live? We have found that organisms are mostly built up of compounds which are stores of force. These substances being at once the materials for organic growth and the sources of organic force, it follows, from the persistence of force, that growth is substantially equivalent to the absorbed nutriment minus the nutriment used up in action. This, however, does not account for the fact that in every domestic animal the increments of growth bear continually decreasing ratios to the mass, and finally come to an end. Nevertheless, it is demonstrable that the excess of absorbed over expended nutriment must decrease as the size increases. Since in similar bodies the areas vary as the squares of the dimensions and the masses vary as the cubes, it follows that, however great the excess of assimilation over waste may be during the early life of an active organism, there must be reached, if the organism lives long enough, a point at which the surplus assimilation is brought to nothing--a point at which expenditure balances nutrition, a state of moving equilibrium. Obviously, this antagonism between assimilation and expenditure must be a leading cause of the contrast in size between allied organisms that are in many respects similarly conditioned.

_Development, or Increase of Structure_

In each of the organic sub-kingdoms the change from an incoherent, indefinite homogeneity to a coherent definite heterogeneity is illustrated in a quadruple way. The originally-like units or cells become unlike, in various ways, and in ways more numerously marked as the development goes on. The several tissues which these several classes or cells form by aggregation, grow little by little distinct from each other; and little by little become structurally complex. In the shoot as in the limb, the external form, originally very simple and having much in common with countless simple forms, organic and inorganic, gradually acquires an increasing complexity, and an increasing unlikeness to other forms, and meanwhile, the remaining parts of the organism, having been developed severally, assuming structures diverging from each other and from that of this particular shoot or limb, there has arisen a greater heterogeneity in the organism as a whole.

The most remarkable induction of von Baer comes next in order. It is that in its earliest stage every organism has the greatest number of characters in common with all other organisms in their earliest stages; that at each subsequent stage traits are acquired which successively distinguish the developing embryo from groups of embryos that it previously resembled--thus step by step diminishing the group of embryos which it still resembles; and that thus the class of similar forms is finally narrowed to the species of which it is a member. For example, the human germ, primarily similar to all others, first differentiates from vegetal germs, then from invertebrate germs, and subsequently assumes the mammalian, placental unguiculate, and lastly the human characters.

The development of an individual organism is at the same time a differentiation of its parts from each other and a differentiation of the consolidated whole from the environment; and in the last as in the first respect there is a general analogy between the progression of an individual organism and the progression of the lowest orders of organisms to the highest orders.

_The Laws of Multiplication_

Every living aggregate being one of which the inner actions are adjusted to balance outer actions, it follows that the maintenance of its moving equilibrium depends on its exposure to the right amounts of these

## actions. Its moving equilibrium may be overturned if one of these

## actions is either too great or too small in amount: either by excess or

defect of some inorganic or organic agency in its environment.

Our inquiry resolves itself into this:--in races that continue to exist what laws of numerical variation result from these variable conflicting forces?

The forces preservative of a race are two--ability in each member of the race to preserve itself, and ability to produce other members. These must vary inversely--one must decrease as the other increases. We have to ask in what way this adjustment comes about as a result of evolution.

Including under individuation all those processes completing and maintaining individual life, and under genesis all those aiding the formation and perfecting of new individuals, the two are necessarily antagonistic. Every higher degree of individual evolution is followed by a lower degree of race multiplication, and _vice versa_. Progress in bulk, complexity or activity involves retrogress in fertility; and progress in fertility involves retrogress in bulk, complexity, or

## activity. The same quantity of matter may be divided into many small

wholes or few large wholes; but number negatives largeness, and largeness negatives number.

It is a general physiological truth that while the building-up of the individual is going on rapidly, the reproductive organs remain imperfectly developed and inactive; and that the commencement of reproduction at once indicates a declining rate of growth and becomes a cause of arrest in growth.

It has now to be noticed how complexity of organisation is hindered by reproductive activity and conversely. The hydra's power to produce young ones from nearly all parts of its body is due to the comparative homogeneity of its body, while it is not improbable that the smallness of human fertility, compared with the fertility of large feline animals, is due to the greater complexity of the human organisation--more especially the organisation of the nervous system.

Of the inverse variation between activity and genesis we have examples in the contrast between the fertility of birds and the fertility of mammals. Comparing the large with the large and the small with the small, we see that creatures which continually go through the muscular exertion of sustaining themselves in the air and propelling themselves rapidly through it are less prolific than creatures of equal weights which go through the smaller exertion of moving about over solid surfaces. The extreme infertility of the bat is most striking when compared with the structurally similar but very prolific mouse; a difference in the rate of multiplication which may fairly be ascribed to the difference in the rate of expenditure.

_Interpretation and Qualification_

Derived as the self-sustaining and waste-sustaining forces are from a common stock of force, it necessarily happens that, other things being equal, increase of the one involves decrease of the other. It may therefore be set down as a law that every higher degree of organic evolution has for its concomitant a lower degree of the peculiar organic dissolution which is seen in the production of new organisms.

How is the ratio between individuation and genesis established in each case? All specialties of the reproductive process are due to the natural selection of favourable variations. Given a certain surplus available for race preservation, and it is clear that by indirect equilibration only can there be established that peculiar distribution of this surplus which is seen in each case.

Here a qualification must be made. Recognising the truth that every increase of evolution which is appropriate to the circumstances of an organism brings an advantage somewhat in excess of its cost, the general law, more strictly stated, is that genesis decreases not quite so fast as individuation increases. The result of greater individuation--whether it takes the form of greater strength or higher speed, facilitates some habitual movement or utilises better the absorbed aliment--is a greater surplus of vital capital; part of which goes to the aggrandisement of the individual and part to the formation of new individuals. Hence every type that is best adapted to its conditions has a rate of multiplication that insures a tendency to predominate. Survival of the fittest, acting alone, is ever replacing inferior species by superior species. But beyond the longer survival, and therefore greater chance of leaving offspring, which superiority gives, we see here another way in which the spread of the superior is insured. Though the more evolved organism is the less fertile absolutely, it is the more fertile relatively.

_Multiplication of the Human Race_

What causes increase or decrease of genesis in other creatures causes increase or decrease of genesis in man. It is true that, even more than hitherto, our reasonings are here beset with difficulties. So numerous are the inequalities in the conditions that but few unobjectionable comparisons can be made. The human races differ not only in their sizes and foods, and in the climates they inhabit, but also their expenditures in bodily and mental action are extremely unequal.

The increase of fertility caused by nutrition that is greatly in excess of expenditure is to be detected by comparing populations of the same race or of allied races one of which obtains good and abundant sustenance much more easily than the other. On carrying out such comparisons it is seen that in the human race, as in all other races, such absolute or relative abundance of nutriment as leaves a large excess after defraying the cost of carrying on parental life, is accompanied by a high rate of genesis.

It is also apparent that relative increase of expenditure, leaving a diminished surplus, reduces fertility. That infertility is generally produced in women by mental labour carried to excess is shown in the fact that most of the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure education are incompetent to bear a well-developed infant and to supply it with the natural food for the natural period. It is a matter of common remark how frequently men of unusual mental activity leave no offspring.

It is likely to be urged that since the civilised races are on the average larger than many of the uncivilised races, and since they are also somewhat more complex as well as more active, they ought, in accordance with the alleged general law, and other things being equal, to be less prolific. But other things are not equal; and it is to the inequality of the other things that this apparent anomaly is attributable.

One more objection has to be met. Cases may be named of men conspicuous for activity, bodily and mental, who were also noted, not for less generative power than usual, but for more. The cases are analogous to some before-named in which more abundant food simultaneously aggrandises the individual and adds to the production of new individuals--the differences between cases being that instead of a better external supply of material there is a better internal utilisation of materials. Some peculiarity of organic balance, some potency of the digestive juices, gives to the system a perpetual high tide of rich blood that serves at once to enhance the vital activities and to raise the power of propagation. The _proportion_ between individuation and genesis remains the same: both are increased by the increase of the common stock of materials.

_Human Population in the Future_

Any further evolution in the most highly-evolved of terrestrial beings--man--must be of the same nature as evolution in general. It must be an advance towards completion of that continuous adjustment of internal to external relations which was shown to constitute life.

Looking at the several possibilities, and asking what direction this further evolution, this more complete moving equilibrium, this better adjustment of inner to outer relations, this more perfect co-ordination of action is likely to take:--the conclusion is that it must take mainly the direction of a higher intellectual and emotional development. There is abundant scope for development in ascertaining the conditions of existence to which we must conform; and in acquiring a greater power of self-regulation.

What are those changes in the environment to which, by direct or indirect equilibration the human organism has been adjusting itself, is adjusting itself now, and will continue to adjust itself? And how do they necessitate a higher evolution of the organism? In all cases pressure of population is the original cause. Were it not for the competition this entails, so much thought and energy would not be spent on the business of life; and growth of mental power would not take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive to a higher education of children, and to a more intense and long-continued application in adults. Nothing but necessity could make men submit to this discipline; and nothing but this discipline could produce a continued progression.

Excess of fertility is then the cause of man's further evolution. And the obvious corollary is that man's further evolution itself necessitates a decline in his fertility. The further progress of civilisation will be accompanied by an enhanced cost of individuation: whether it be in greater growth of the organs which subserve self-maintenance, in their added complexity of structure, or in their higher activity, the abstraction of the required material, implies a diminished reserve of materials for race maintenance. This greater emotional and intellectual development does not necessarily mean a mentally laborious life--for, as the goal becomes organic, it will become spontaneous and pleasurable.

The necessary antagonism of individuation and genesis not only fulfils the _a priori_ law of maintenance of the race from the monad up to man, but insures final attainment of the highest form of this maintenance--a form in which the amount of life shall be the greatest possible and the births and deaths as few as possible. From the beginning pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. After having duly stocked the globe with inhabitants; raised all its habitable parts into the highest state of culture; brought all processes for the satisfaction of human wants to perfection; developed the intellect into complete competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for social life; the pressure of population as it gradually finished its work, must gradually bring itself to an end.

Changes, numerical, social, organic, must by their mutual influences work unceasingly towards a state of harmony--a state in which each of the factors is just equal to its work. And this highest conceivable result must be wrought out by the same universal process which the simplest inorganic action illustrates.

Principles of Sociology

"Principles of Sociology" was published in four parts from 1876 to 1880. It forms part of a connected series. In "First Principles" inorganic evolution--that of the stars and of the solar system--was outlined; organic evolution was dealt with in "Principles of Biology;" and in the present treatise, "Principles of Sociology," we approach super-organic evolution, and are introduced to the science of society under its Comtist title "Sociology."

Super-organic evolution may be marked off from, organic by taking it to include all those processes and products which imply the co-ordinated

## action of many individuals. Commencing with the development of the

family, sociology has next to describe and explain the rise and development of political organisation; the evolution of the ecclesiastical structures and functions; the control embodied in ceremonial observances; and the relations between the regulative and operative divisions of every society.

_I.--Domestic_