John Elliott Cairnes

“ Spencer insists very strongly on the analogy of evolution, as exhibited in the animal kingdom, whether in the individual animal or in the species, and evolution in human society—in other words, between the development, individual and specific, of the animal organism, and the development of what he calls "the social organism," meaning, thereby, organized social life. He finds in this analogy not merely a metaphor and an illustration, but a type, and even a clew. Thus he observes a law of development governing the growth of an individual organism from birth to maturity ”

“ If I were asked to name the principal element of weakness in the family as things now stand, I should have no hesitation in pointing to the want of sufficient subjects of common interest between man and woman. ”

“ If women only come to take an interest in politics—it matters not whether they have the suffrage or not—all the danger that can arise from the suffrage to married life will be already incurred. It is not the giving of a vote every four or five years that constitutes the danger, if danger there be; but the habitual mental attitude of husband and wife toward each other. Those, therefore, who share Mr. Smith's apprehensions on the present subject, ought clearly to take their stand against the suffrage movement very much higher up. ”

“ Spencer of the process by which society undergoes development is the growth of language:
"Not only has it been natural from the beginning, but it has been spontaneous. No language is a cunningly-devised scheme of a ruler or body of legislators. There is no council of savages to invent the parts of speech, and decide on what principles they should be used. ”

“ Spencer's theory of social evolution can only be regarded, as matters now stand, as an unverified hypothesis, with this presumption against it, that it is at variance with such knowledge as we possess of the past history of mankind; and the doubt as to its soundness, which this circumstance cannot but suggest, will, I think, find confirmation, when we look closely into that analogy between the social and the animal organisms on which the whole speculation is built up. ”

“ Smith, or to any one, in the firmness of my conviction that the family is at the bottom of our existing civilization, and I should, for my part, regard as dearly purchased any gain in material or political well-being which should introduce a jar or weakness into this pivot of our social system. But I believe that to open political life to women, far from being fraught with the disastrous consequences Mr. Smith anticipates, would, taking things in their entire scope, be productive of quite opposite effects. ”

“ Some of the worst and crudest wars that have ever been waged have been religious wars; and so notoriously is religion an engenderer of strife, that it is now scarcely good manners to moot a religious question in private society, where politics are quite freely and amicably discussed. If persons of genuine but different religious opinions can contrive to get on together in married life, they would certainly not be likely to be severed by political differences, however strongly their opinions might be held. ”

“ Spencer, "which reminds us that, while in individual bodies the welfare of all other parts is rightly subservient to the nervous system, whose pleasurable or painful activities make up the good or evil of life, in bodies politic the same thing does not hold, or holds but to a very slight extent. It is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the life of the whole; because the whole has a corporate consciousness capable of happiness or misery. ”

“ It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved, since the moment when external completeness was first given to them by their embodiment in some permanent record. ”

“ Even now this is the case to some extent, and it will no doubt become more and more so as the political education of women advances. Mr. Smith's question, therefore, "Would the harmony of most households bear the strain?" may be answered by saying that in very few households would there be any strain to bear; while in most—at least in those in which politics were intelligently cultivated—home-life, no longer the vapid thing it is so often now, would acquire a new element of interest, and the family would be held together by powerful sympathies that now lie undeveloped. ”

“ In that primitive stage (as Mr. Darwin has taught us) , while man remains still a savage, and even perhaps for some time after he has emerged from the savage condition, the influences which mould his social development are substantially the same with those which govern the development of a species. It is not strange, therefore, that evolution in the human and in the animal kingdom should, during this period, follow a very similar course. ”

“ Smith seems to think that, if women are only excluded from the suffrage, the harmony of married life can never be endangered by politics; but this is to attribute to the mere right of voting a degree of efficacy which I, for one, am not disposed to allow to it. ”

“ The unfolding of an organism after its special type has its approximately-uniform course, taking its tolerably-definite time, and no treatment that may be devised will fundamentally change or greatly accelerate these; the best that can be done is to maintain the required favorable conditions. But it is quite easy to adopt a treatment which shall dwarf, or deform, or otherwise injure; the processes of growth and development may be, and very often are, hindered and deranged, though they cannot be artificially bettered. Similarly with the social organism. ”

“ Probably the more enthusiastic, hopeful of great ameliorations in the state of mankind, to be brought about rapidly by propagating this belief or initiating that reform, will feel that a doctrine negativing their sanguine expectations takes away much of the stimulus to exertion. If large advances in human welfare can come only in the slow process of things, which will inevitably bring them, why should we trouble ourselves?" A very natural question. And what is Mr. Spencer's answer? Simply that on visionary hopes rational criticisms cannot but have a depressing influence. ”

“ But a time arrives in the progress of social development when societies of men become conscious of a corporate existence, and when the improvement of the conditions of this existence becomes for them an object of conscious and deliberate effort. ”

“ But it is not so with a society; since its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness, and since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the state, but why, on the other hand, the state is to be maintained solely for the benefit of citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life. ”

“ The favorable conditions which it is important to maintain with reference to the individual organism are conditions external to the organism; whereas that condition of social development, the efficacy of which forms the question in dispute, consists in efforts after social improvement made by the units composing the organism. The analogy, therefore, of individual development completely fails us here, unless, indeed, Mr. Spencer supposes the objectors he is addressing to be standing outside the social organism, and proposing to experiment upon it as upon a foreign body. ”

“ Every one of these, intelligently cultivated, leads inevitably, where faculty is not wanting, to an interest in contemporary politics; and if women are to be shut out from this field of ideas, lest perchance they should adopt opinions which should not be those of their future husbands, their education ought at once to be truncated by this large segment. Mr. Smith, indeed, suggests that women who are capable of discussing political questions "will find a sphere in the press." ”

“ Smith is greatly scandalized at the prospect of a man .and his wife taking opposite sides in politics. I cannot see that it would be at all more scandalous than that a man and his wife should take opposite sides in religion—going, for example, every Sunday to different places of worship, where each hears the creed of the other denounced as soul-destroying and damnable. ”

“ A number only too large of men and women will probably continue for long enough to take but small interest in public affairs, and these will marry, as they do now, with little reference to each other's political opinions; but the danger of discord from politics under such circumstances would be infinitesimal. The only cases in which this danger would become serious would be when both husband and wife were strong politicians. ”

“ The species, in undergoing the process of improvement, is wholly unconscious of the influences that are determining its career. It is not so with human evolution. Civilized mankind are aware of the changes taking place in their social conditions, and do consciously and deliberately take measures for its improvement.—Fortnightly Review. ”

“ The range of human history now covers upward of 3,000 years, and presents, in a very incomplete and imperfect manner, no doubt, the phenomena of moral, intellectual, religious, and other evolution in numerous societies of men. Surely, before propounding his speculation as a law of human society, from which he is at once justified in deducing consequences of the largest kind bearing upon human conduct, Mr. Spencer was bound to consider what amount of countenance or support it received from the evidence derivable from such fields of research ”

“ Spencer apparently does not rely much on the practical efficacy of his answer, for he at once proceeds to supplement it as follows:
"Though the process of social evolution is, in its general character, so far predetermined that its successive stages cannot be antedated, and that hence no teaching or policy can advance it beyond a certain normal rate, which is limited by the rate of organic modification in human beings, yet it is quite possible to perturb, to retard, or to disorder the process. The analogy of individual development again serves us. ”

“ Spencer's teaching on this subject is to show that the process is similar in the case of human society; that its growth and development are in no degree, or at all events in quite an insignificant degree, the consequence of efforts put forth by those who compose it to improve their social condition, but mainly, if not exclusively, the result of actions undertaken with quite other ends in view. ”

“ It is owing to this that matrimonial engagements are entered into so rarely on the basis of any broad intellectual sympathy, such as might furnish some security for lasting affection, and so often at the bidding of impulses and fancies that do not outlive the honey-moon; and it is owing to the same cause that so very large a proportion of the lives of most husbands and wives are spent practically apart, with little or no knowledge on the part of either of the objects or aims that engross the greater portion of the other's thoughts and energies. ”

“ Going on without any authority or appointed regulation, this natural process went on without any man observing that it was going on. Solely under pressure of the need for communicating their ideas and feelings, solely in pursuit of their personal interests, men little by little developed speech in absolute unconsciousness that they were doing any thing more than pursuing their personal interests. ”

“ Now, it seems to me that this may serve to illustrate for us what will be the practical working of politics in respect to married life when women begin to receive a political education, or at least to learn as much about politics, and take as much or as little interest in them, as men do. ”

“ The explanation, I have no doubt, is of this kind: where difference of religion consists with matrimonial happiness, it will generally be found that one or both of the partners do not take a very deep interest in the creeds they profess; while, on the other hand, where people do feel strongly on religion, they generally take care, in forming matrimonial alliances, to consort with those who, on fundamental points, are of the same opinion with themselves. ”

“ The numerous and complex arrangements which, under the stimulus of individual self-interest, have arisen in this and other civilized countries for the distribution of wealth, and the growth from small beginnings of our vast system of credit and banking, serve as an illustration of the same principle. "When it is questioned," he remarks, "whether the spontaneous cooperation of men in pursuit of personal benefits will adequately work out the general good, we may get guidance for judgment by comparing the results;" ”

“ I mean the sense in which it expresses the fact that each stage in human progress is the outcome and result of the stage which has immediately preceded it, and that the whole series of stages, beginning with savage life and ending with the most advanced existing civilization, represents a connected chain, of which the links are bound together as sequences, in precisely the same way as in the instances of causation presented by other departments of Nature. ”

“ Doubtless, from all that has been said, it follows that, supposing surrounding conditions continue the same, the evolution of a society cannot be in any essential way diverted from its general course; though it also follows (and here the corollary is at fault) that the thoughts and actions of individuals, being natural factors that arise in the course of the evolution itself, and aid in further advancing it, cannot be dispensed with, but must be severally valued as increments of the aggregate force producing change. ”