Social history

“ The tendency of historians nowadays is to neglect completely the study of the influences on State of Man's domestic, social, industrial, religious, and intellectual life, and of the diverse effects on human life and institutions of the working of the political machinery. ”

“ I also propose to analyze the facts and generalize them in such a way that the results of the study may provide an understanding of the human social past, together with some guide-lines that will prove useful in the formulation and implementation of the present-day policy and procedure of civilized peoples, nations, empires and of the western civilization. ”

“ Civilization has played an important role in the social history of mankind during the several thousand years when segments of the human family have turned their backs on barbarism, regrouped their forces, revamped their patterns of association and experimented with the more complicated, specialized and integrated life pattern of civilization. ”

“ The only history that is of practical value is what may be called Descriptive Sociology. And the highest office which the historian can discharge, is that of so narrating the lives of nations, as to furnish materials for a Comparative Sociology; and for the subsequent determination of the ultimate laws to which social phenomena conform. ”

“ In a broad view, sociology includes politics, economics and ideology. For the purposes of our social analysis, we have divided the field into four separate categories, beginning with politics, continuing through economics and drawing our study together under the general headings of sociology and ideology.
No civilization that we have studied can be regarded as an intentional or projected or planned enterprise. ”

“ A history of social thought is a history of the socializing of human attitudes and interests, presaging a human society in which personal achievement and group progress are equally and supremely sought. ”

“ So history as a formulated study is but the body of known facts about the activities and sufferings of the social groups with which our own lives are continuous, and through reference to which our own customs and institutions are illuminated. ”

“ With a view of discussing his subject thoroughly, and establishing his theory beyond controversy, as he believed, he proposed, before referring to the History of Civilization in England, to discover, so far as possible, all the laws of political and social economy, and establish the relative powers and influence of the moral faculties, the intellect, and external nature, and determine the part each takes in contributing to the progress of the world. ”

“ Or, similarly, another author might take political institutions, or perhaps economic conditions—i.e., wealth, labour, capital, commerce, or, again, the fundamental social institutions, such as the family, and the relations of the ranks and classes in a community, and build up round one or other of these manifestations and embodiments of the creative energy of mankind the general story of man’s movement from barbarism to civilisation. ”

“ We will now leave this extraordinary nation, which has furnished materials for history of the most interesting nature, as it regards the character of man; their civil, political, and religious institutions, and the moral and social ties that connect society. ”

“ The story of how we have come by our inheritance of freedom, of the age-long upward struggle of mankind, this above all should furnish the inspiration and the guidance for our service of the present. For this reason, emphasis should be laid upon the history of peoples rather than of states, upon the movement of social life rather than upon historical biography. ”

“ And first I would ask you to observe that it was in these centuries that there were laid over again the foundations of the social and political order of civilization, and that there were devised those forms of the political order upon which the structure of modern society is founded. ”

“ But there is still wanting a full, throughough, and domestic, social account of our English ancestors, that is, a history which shall trace the progress of social life in the intercourse of man with man; the advance of arts, the various changes in the habits and occupations of individuals ”

“ But history is not only philosophy, teaching by example; its true purpose is, also, to illustrate the general progress of society in knowledge and the arts, and the changes of manners and pursuits of men.
There is an imperfection, both in ancient and modern histories, and those of the best masters, in this respect. While they recite public transactions, they omit, to a great degree, what belongs to the civil, social, and domestic progress of men and nations. ”

“ While only now, when the welfare of nations rather than of rulers is becoming the dominant idea, are historians beginning to occupy themselves with the phenomena of social progress. The thing it really concerns us to know is the natural history of society. We want all facts which help us to understand how a nation has grown and organised itself. ”

“ Philosophy of history is cultivated by all nations; history, economics, and all social sciences flourish; sociology is crystallised as a resultant of all these specialised attempts and seeks to become the general science of human society and its development. ”

“ In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can read ”

“ A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige and power. ”

“ No civilization so far as I know, has followed such a sequence. Certainly in the civilizations with which we are most familiar, political and economic forces, the principles of necessity and availability have led to the formulation of an ideology that would justify and promote the interests of the social group which was controlling and directing the community or communities in which the civilization was maturing. ”

“ It is a certain way of seeking answers to various questions of origin, resting on the same general doctrine of evolution, applied to moral and social forms, as that which is being applied with so much ingenuity to the series of organic matter. The historic conception is a reference of every state of society to a particular stage in the evolution of its general conditions. Ideas of law, of virtue, of religion, of the physical universe, of history, of the social union itself, all march in a harmonious and inter-dependent order. ”

“ The times are so close at hand that the relations between events and tendencies force themselves upon our attention. We have had to deal with the connections of geography, industrial growth, politics, and government. With these we must take into consideration the changing social composition, the inherited beliefs and habitual attitude of the masses of the people, the psychology of the nation and of the separate sections, as well as of the leaders. ”

“ We may have the military, the political, the social, the industrial, the economic, or the religious history of England, for instance, and although these histories will overlap and involve one another, each of them will exhibit a career which is peculiar and distinct from its fellows. ”

“ The rudiments of the social state, so far as they are known to us at all, are known through testimony of three sorts—accounts by contemporary observers of civilizations less advanced than their own, the records which particular races have preserved concerning their primitive history, and ancient law. ”

“ It seems to me, therefore, that the study, say of English history, where we have a continuous growth over many centuries, where the disturbing influences of individuals or chance are in a greater degree cancelled by the general tendencies working beneath them, we have really a far more instructive field for political observation. ”

“ But the progressive march of social man which constitutes the subject of universal history, or, as we term it, the formation and growth of humanity, are regulated by principles somewhat different from those which determine the internal life of individual man. ”

“ The history of the middle ages—a subject of which lectures are promised at some future period—is a theme replete with the interest to every one who would trace the moral and political progress of society. It was then that the elements which compose our present political system, though still in a state of fusion, were beginning to shape themselves into order. ”

“ The social masses, the very assizes of civilization, the solid group of superposed and adhering interests, the century-old profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and disappear in them every instant, athwart the storm clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. ”

“ Modern principles, that mark a new departure in human progress and in its evidence, Civilisation, took their rise during this epoch of transition, and their development underlies the history of the period, and gives the key to its meaning. ”

“ This leads to a retrospective survey of the origins of civilization,—of agriculture, the mechanical crafts, trade, letters, art, science and the social sentiments. Then the darker side of the picture is developed,—the evils, inhumanities, corruptions and vices of civilized life. ”

“ This society now publishes books and tracts upon the moral, economical, physiological, political, financial, religious, medical and social phases of the reform. We have the writings of over two hundred different persons in almost every walk and station in life. We already have a literature of no mean character. Its influence is not only felt in every State and Territory in the land, but in every country on the globe. ”

“ Our age presents us the incredible spectacle that the dependence of the higher social culture on the economic development is not only clearly recognized by social science, but is proclaimed as the ideal. ”

“ The industrial, economic, domestic, civil, military, aesthetic, moral, religious, and intellectual condition of each community, is given in a systematic way, which brings out the relations of these social factors ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is assisted by those who to-day see instinctively the first tentative effort towards the construction of a sociology—investigation into the lives and wages, social character, beliefs and prejudices of various selected classes and localities. Biography is not without its contribution, especially the biography of typical men—a labour-leader who reveals himself as a conspicuous member of a labouring class at the base, or a politician who voices the scepticisms, manners, fascinations, and prejudices of a cultured, leisured society at the summit of the social order. ”

“ We gain knowledge of the forms of socialization by bringing together inductively the manifestations of these forms which have had actual historical existence. In other words we have to collect and exhibit that element of form which these historical manifestations have in common, abstracted from the variety of material—economical, ethical, ecclesiastical, social, political, etc.—with respect to which they differ. ”

“ One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people—the working classes—the backbone of the nation, so to speak—was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. ”

“ I found myself—and without knowing where I was—in the middle of that strange period of human evolution, the Victorian Age, which in some respects, one now thinks, marked the lowest ebb of modern civilized society ”

“ The evolution of political, ecclesiastical, and industrial organizations will be traced, and a statement made of those principles underlying all xiii social progress, without which there can be no successful regulation of the affairs of society. ”

“ I allude to what may be termed Political Ethology, or the theory of the causes which determine the type of character belonging to a people or to an age. Of all the subordinate branches of the social science, this is the most completely in its infancy. The causes of national character are scarcely at all understood, and the effect of institutions or social arrangements upon the character of the people is generally that portion of their effects which is least attended to, and least comprehended. ”

“ But it was a world still mainly mediæval in political, in economic, and in social relations; a world of status and of permanent social inequalities not differing essentially from the feudalism of the past. ”

“ The political and moral Reflections, to which the important Question I examine gives room, are therefore useful in all Shapes; and the hypothetical History of Governments is, in regard to Man, an instructive Lesson in every respect. ”

“ The aristocracy is still in possession of great wealth and political power, but beneath it has grown up an independent society which is already beginning to be the most important social stratum and the chief factor in political and social development. ”

“ We have been hearing now for many years of a science of history, and many earnest and learned workers have borne a part in the uphill effort to raise history to that dignity which is its legitimate destiny. ”