The life and letters of Herbert Spencer / by David Duncan.

  • David Duncan
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The life and letters of Herbert Spencer / by David Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    624/692 (page 574)
    features when developmentally considered. Out of the primitive homogeneous stage there arise by degrees the three distinguish- able processes, Production, Distribution, and Exchange ; and it is pointed out that in each of these divisions there arises a secondary division into the essential and the auxiliary—the actual processes and the aiding processes. The increasing interdependence of all these processes is shown to constitute an industrial integration. On passing from the division of labour to the regulation of labour, we come upon the truth, inferable a priori and established a posteriori, that the regulation of labour has a common origin with political regulation, and gradually differentiates from it. The first stage succeeding that in which each male member of a tribe, while warrior and hunter, makes for himself all such things as women cannot make, is the stage in which conquered men are made slaves ; and the directive power exercised over the slave is, like the political directive power, purely coercive. Social life and domestic life alike exhibit the relation of ruler and subject; since this form of regulation for slaves is also the form of regulation for children. As the paternal passes into the patri- archal, the control of industry continues to be similar in nature to governmental control. The like holds in large measure when communes arise ; and though under gild-regulation there is in- dependent industrial action, it is subject to the coercive, quasi- political action of the gild. Only by degrees does the industrial regulation, based on contract, separate itself from the original form of industrial regulation, based on status : the law of evolu- tion is again illustrated. Passing over corollaries, it will suffice to name the generalization finally reached, that the essential differences in industrial regulation, as in political regulation, are implied by the question—To what extent does a man own him- self, and to what extent is he owned by others? In actively militant states, like Sparta, he is the slave of the society, com- pelled to devote his activities and his life to its preservation : each is owned by the rest. But as fast as industrialism qualifies militancy, he acquires increasing possession of himself ; until, in a society like our own, he is coerced scarcely more than is implied by paying taxes and, possibly, in case of war, going as a conscript. Still, however, he remains in considerable measure subject to the coercion of his industrial combinations—gilds or trade-unions. He is but partially master of himself, since he can use his abilities for self-maintenance only under such condi- tions as they prescribe. Complete possession of himself can be had by each citizen only in a perfectly peaceful state, and in the absence of all restraints on his power to make contracts. In the Principles of Ethics, the title of the second chapter “ The Evolution of Conduct,” implies a point of view differing widely from the ordinary point of view. The idea that Ethics