The Principles of Sociology
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~350,000 words · 1,676 passages
Cite this work
- APAHerbert Spencer. (n.d.). The Principles of Sociology. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-principles-of-sociology
- MLAHerbert Spencer. The Principles of Sociology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-principles-of-sociology.
- ChicagoHerbert Spencer. The Principles of Sociology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-principles-of-sociology.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Spencer's sociology: society seen as an organism that grows, differentiates and specialises, and the distinction between 'militant' societies, organised for compulsion, and 'industrial' ones, organised for contract.
Context and history
Published in volumes between 1876 and 1896, as part of his Synthetic Philosophy. The organic analogy and the claim that societies evolve from one type to the other were abandoned by later sociology, and it was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined 'survival of the fittest'. It is read today as a document: it shows how an age thought that took for granted that history has a direction.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
All these varions orders of super-organic products, each evolving within itself new genera and species while daily growing into aki^r whole, and each acting upon the other orders while reacted upon by them, form together an immensely-voluminouB, immensely-complicated, and immensely-powerful set of influences. During social evolution these influences are ever modifying individuals and modifying society, while being modified by both. They gradually form what we may consider either as a non-vital part of the society itself, or else as an additional environment, which eventually becomes even more important than the original environments — so much more important that there arises the possibility of carrying on a high type of social life under inorganic and organic conditions which originaQj would have prevented it. § 13. Such are the factors in outline. Even when presented under this most general form, the combination of them is seen to be of a complicated kind. Becogniidng the primary truth that social phenomena depend in part on the natures of the individuals and in part on the forces the individuals are subject to, we see that these two fundamentally-distinct sets of &ctors, with which social changes commence, become progressively involved with other sets as social changes advance. The pre-established environing influences, inorganic and organic. 16 THE DATA OY SOCIOLOOT. 16 THE DATA OY SOCIOLOOT. wliich are at first ahnost unalterable^ become more and more altered by tbe actions of the eyolving society. Simple growth of population as it goes on, brings into plaj fresh causes of transformation that are increasingly important. The influences which the society exerts on the natures of its units, and those which the units exert on the nature of the society, incessantly co-operate in creating new elements. As societies progress in size and structure, they work in one another, now by their war-struggles and now by their industrial intercourse, profound metamorphoses.…