Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of ContentsLord, John
Philosophy
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents
Lord, John
History
Next in logical order and in order of publication come the two volumes
collectively entitled "The Principles of Psychology." In these volumes
an attempt is made to trace objectively the evolution of mind from
reflex action through instinct to reason, memory, feeling, and will,
from the interaction of the nervous system with its environment.
Subjectively, mental states are analyzed, and it is contended that all
of them--including those primary scientific ideas, the perceptions of
matter, motion, space, and time, assumed in the "First Principles"--can
be analyzed into a primitive element of consciousness, something which
can be defined only as analogous to a nervous shock. These perceptions
have now become innate in the individual. They may be called--as Kant
called space and time--forms of intuition; but they have been acquired
empirically by the race, through the persistence of the corresponding
phenomena in the environment, and from the accumulated experiences of
each individual being transmitted in the form of modified structure to
his descendants. This principle of heredity is one of the laws by which
individuals are connected with one another into an organic whole; and we
thus pass to what Spencer calls superorganic evolution, implying the
co-ordinated actions of many individuals, and giving rise to the science
of sociology.
It is this science which Mr. Spencer undertakes to expound in the three
volumes entitled the "Principles of Sociology." The first of these
volumes presents a statement of the several sets of factors entering
into social phenomena. These factors are, first, human ideas and
feelings considered in their necessary order of evolution; secondly,
surrounding natural conditions; and, thirdly, those ever-complicating
conditions to which society itself gives origin. Under the caption "The
Inductions of Sociology," are set forth the general facts, structural
and functional, gathered from a survey of societies and their changes;
in other words, the empirical generalizations that are arrived at by
comparing different societies, or successive stages of the same
societies. The author then examines the evolution of governments,
general and local, as this is determined by natural causes; their
several types and metamorphosis; their increasing complexity and
specialization, and the progressive limitation of their functions. From
political the author turns to ecclesiastical organization. He traces the
differentiation of religious government from secular; its successive
complications and the multiplication of sects; the growth and continued
modification of religious ideas, as caused by advancing knowledge and
changing moral character; and the gradual reconciliation of these ideas
with the truths of abstract science. A good deal of space is devoted to
what the author calls ceremonial organization, by which he means that
third kind of government which, having a common root with the others,
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