Social evolution

“ Evolution, as revealed in the physiological world, is in its essence the reasonable sequence of the unintended. Social evolution is even more strikingly so. But social progress is a double progress. It is the joint result of evolution, or unmtended changes, and changes introduced designed and carried out by men of various degrees of greatness. ”

“ One phase of social evolution by following upon another phase eliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological products of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the parts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more the physical and moral diapason of humanity. ”

“ In short, the process of industrial civilization, of social evolution, had made its first faint beginning. The human race was caught in a network of forces from which it was never to extricate itself. ”

“ Human selection of the socially unfit will be dominated more and more, as social evolution unfolds its fruits, by those minds that are advancing to the highest goals of evolution, viz.: large minds of high character—widely informed minds, of strong will and broad sympathies. ”

“ But the problems which are of most interest and importance in sociology are those of social evolution. Under this head we have the problem of the origin of society in general and also of various forms of association. More important still are the problems of social progress and social retrogression; that is, the causes of the advancement of society to higher and more complex types of social organization and the causes of social decline. The former problem, social progress, is in a peculiar sense the central problem of sociology. ”

“ It is not that he emphasizes the mere fact of the evolution of society and of all human relations. That, he, and we, may well take for granted. It has surely been amply demonstrated and illustrated by writers as widely separated in their interpretation of social evolution as Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx. But with the further thought in mind that, alike in the lowliest physical organism or in the most complex social organism, life itself is change, we view every problem of life from another angle. To see life steadily and see it whole is one stage. ”

“ Sociology, being especially concerned with social evolution, has a new and distinct factor at work which we may call association, coöperation, or combination, and this it is which gives sociology its distinct place in the list of general sciences.
Factors In Organic Evolution.—As has already been said, the factors which are at work in organic evolution generally are also at work in social evolution. We need, therefore, to note these factors carefully and to see how they are at work in human society as well as in the animal world below man. ”

“ This confusion between the contemporaneous stage of development and the historic rôle of certain qualities, is intensified by our custom of referring to social evolution as if it were a force and not a process. ”

“ Now, there is also a social evolution. The organic evolution, which found its term in man, is continued by man in social evolution. It is natural, therefore, to look for the corresponding phenomenon in the higher sphere of social evolution. ”

“ Is there any one element which communicates the decisive impulse to all the rest,—any predominating agency in the course of social evolution? The answer is that all the other parts of social existence are associated with, and drawn along by, the contemporary condition of intellectual development. ”

“ To summarize, then, social evolution is a continuous process accomplished through differentiation and division of labor among the components of biological associations. Although the total form remains the same everywhere, progress has been made in content through the further subordination of selfish to altruistic conduct; only by this means does an individual gain liberty to pursue the social task for which he is best fitted by nature. ”

“ Social Evolution and Social Progress.—The great triumph of the physical period of science has been the establishment of the theory of evolution. The object of science in its social period is the application of the same theory to the problems of civilization and society. ”

“ Those who hold this view may perhaps go so far as to consider the possibility that, before drifting asunder, the human race had already discovered, for instance, the art of fire-making and of working in stone, had adopted the sign of the cross as a year-register, and evolved an archaic form of social organization. To many this view may furnish a satisfactory explanation of the universal spread of identical ideas and the differentiation of their subsequently independent evolution. ”

“ With the evolution of the life of the individual, he compared the development152 of the successive stages in social life. This distinguished historian urged that history should consider not simply rulers, dynasties, and wars, but also racial factors, climatic forces, the laws of association, and the stages of associative life. He wished to make history scientific, even a social science. He formulated an evolutionary doctrine of social progress. He evolved a spiral theory of social evolution, beginning with the crudest primitive life and ending with the most civilized urban life. ”

“ From this brief and most elementary consideration of the bearings of evolutionary theory upon social problems it is evident that evolution, in the sense of what we know about the development of life and society in the past, must be the guidepost of the sociologist. Human social evolution, we repeat, rests upon and is conditioned by biological evolution at every point. There is, therefore, scarcely any sanity in sociology without the biological point of view. ”

“ Social evolution, therefore, in so far as it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of the intentions of great men; and this definition at once brings us back to the truth which was urged in the first chapter as the starting-point of our argument, and which can now be put before the reader with an added force and clearness. ”

“ Social evolution, and the conception of the social movement as such an evolution, rest upon the thought that we find ourselves in a continued condition of economic and thus social change, and that specific social interests and the necessary relations of mastery are connected with each change ”

“ But if it is admitted that the governing factors which concern the student of social development are of the psychical order, the preliminary success of natural science in explaining organic evolution by general principles encouraged sociologists to hope that social evolution could be explained on general principles also. ”

“ These requirements themselves have so multiplied during the course of social Evolution that innumerable forms of activity have sprung up between those occupations which provide the original necessities of life. The essence of the whole process has been co-operation and the division of labour. ”

“ After that level is reached, a higher relation must be adopted, or the lifting process comes to an end; and either the race succumbs to the morbid action of its own forces or some fresher race comes in, and begins the course of social evolution anew. ”

“ We come at length to the biological interpretation of human social evolution, in so far as this may be expounded in a simple and concise form. The comparative method must be employed in order to discover the fundamental attributes of savage, barbarous, and civilized communities which seem to differ so considerably in their complexity of social structure, and in order also to show that such basic elements are like those of communities formed by lower animals, and are equally the products of natural evolution. ”

“ But the whole process of social evolution is one of very gradual assimilation, and neither in the world as a whole, in the nation or race, or in the tribe, clan, family, locality, or class, is it one of equal advance on all sides. The coöperation adopted may be, at different points, that of individuals against individuals, of tribes against tribes, of nations against nations, or of classes against classes. ”

“ He pointed out that for three centuries the best minds had been devoted to material science and had neglected societary problems.XIII-18 Material institutions should be modified and made to harmonize with the underlying laws of social evolution. A moral reorganization of society must precede and direct the material and political reorganization.XIII-19
Social improvement is a result of mental development. This development favors the preponderance of the noblest human tendencies. ”

“ The study of anthropology and sociology has, on the one hand, discovered the natural history of man and, on the other, shown his normal social relations. Both of these studies have co-operated with biology to show that man has come out of the past through a process of evolution; that all that he is individually and socially has been attained through long ages of development. Even science, philosophy, and religion, as well as all forms of society, have had a slow, painful evolution. ”

“ The goal of social evolution seems to be men of character,—men with the widest possible knowledge of the laws of nature, physical, intellectual, and moral; and with the desire and will to rightly obey these laws. Such men will be both loving and lovable characters. ”

“ Out of this primitive industrial civilization, which has grown more and more complex with the passing years, have come the arts and sciences, which give such added interest and value to modern life. This evolving industrial civilization, by furnishing a wider basis for political union through community of interest instead of mere blood-relationship, has greatly extended the field over which moral obligations are recognized as binding. [22] Social evolution is tending to eradicate more and more, through disuse, the brutish instincts of man ”

“ Through such social processes as these—through unconscious suggestion, through communication and discussion that mould public opinion, through changes in environment and the influence of new leaders of thought and action—the evolution of folk life has carried whole races, sometimes to oblivion, but generally out of savagery and barbarism into a material and cultural civilization. ”

“ Nor can we suppose the social evolution to have been only outward; we cannot suppose that our cave-dwelling, man-eating, rude ancestors, if they could have been suddenly transported, in infancy even, into the midst of modern civilization by means of a Carlylean wishing-cap, or by some method of projection in time similar to that by which men promise to "knock each other into the middle of next week," would have been able to equal modern men in mental and moral attainment. ”

“ From the beginning, pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth's surface. It forced men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily pressing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent relationships. ”

“ In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and surest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a natural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not endure [Pg 142] sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse must be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence to inaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imagining that a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biological evolution and become forthwith an adult. ”

“ Hence arose, among other erroneous preconceptions, this serious one, that the different forms of society, presented by savage and civilized races all over the globe, are but different stages in the evolution of one form: the truth being, rather, that social types, like types of individual organisms, do not form a series, but are classifiable only in divergent and redivergent groups. ”

“ EVOLUTION OF THE MORES
All modern social institutions arise from the evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions—mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble origin. ”

“ Beginning in 1842 with the vague conception of a social progress, he subjected this idea to systematic scientific analysis, gave it gradually a more definite and comprehensive form, propounded the principles of heredity and adaptation in their social applications, recognized the working of the principle of selection in the case of human beings, and affiliated the conception of social progress upon the more general principle of Evolution governing all animate Nature. ”

“ In considering the evolution of reform, or progress of civilisation, we are necessarily limited to a comparatively late period in man’s history, for many thousands of years had passed away, during which time man had gradually established himself as a social animal, before any trustworthy records appeared to throw light in future ages upon the primitive condition and habits of the human family. ”