A Tale of Two Worksites

weed out the sickly, the malformed, and the

least fleet or powerful. By the aid of which

purifying process . . . all vitiation of the

race through the multiplication of its inferior

samples is prevented; and the maintenance

Of a constitution completely adapted to

surrounding conditions, and therefore most

productive of happiness, is ensured.

Spencer then compounds this error by applying the same argument to human social history without ever questioning the validity of such analogical transfer. Railing against all governmental programs for social amelioration -- Spencer opposed state-supported education, postal services, regulation of housing conditions, and even public construction of sanitary systems -- Spencer castigated such efforts as born of good intentions but doomed to dire consequences by enhancing the survival of social dregs who should be allowed to perish for the good of all. (Spencer insisted, however, that he did not oppose private charity, although largely for the good effect of such giving upon the moral development of donors. Does any of this remind you of arguments now advanced as reformatory and spanking-new by our "modern" ultraconservatives? Shall we not profit by Santayana's famous dictum that those ignorant of history must be condemned to repeat it?) In his chapter on poor laws (which he, of course, opposed) in the Social Statics, Spencer wrote:

We must call those spurious philanthropists

who, to prevent present misery, would

entail greater misery on future generations.

That rigorous necessity which, when

allowed to operate, becomes so sharp a spur

to the lazy and so strong a bridle to the

random, these paupers' friends would

repeal, because of the wailings it here and

there produces. Blind to the fact that under

the natural order of things society is

constantly excreting its unhealthy, imbecile,

slow, vacillating, faithless members, these

unthinking, though well-meaning, men

advocate an interference which not only

stops the purifying process, but even

increases the vitiation -- absolutely

encouraging the multiplication of the

reckless and incompetent by offering them

an unfailing provision . . . . Thus, ill their

eagerness to prevent the salutary sufferings

that surround us, these sigh-wise and

groan-foolish people bequeath to posterity a

continually i creasing curse.

2. The stable body and the stable society. In the universal "evolution" of an systems to progress, organization becomes ever more complex by division of labor among the increasing number of differentiating parts. All parts must "know their place" and play their appointed role lest the entire system collapse. A primitive hydra can regrow any lost part, but nature gives a man only one head and one chance. Spencer recognized the basic inconsistency in validating social stability by analogy to the integrated needs of a single organic body, for he recognized the contrary rationales of the two systems: the parts of a body serve the totality, but the social totality (the state) supposedly exists only to serve the parts (individual people). But Spencer could never be fazed by logical or empirical difficulties when pursuing such a lovely generality. (Huxley was speaking of Spencer's penchant for building grandiose systems when he made his famous remark that Spencer's idea of tragedy was "a beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly little fact.") So Spencer pushed right through the numerous absurdities of such a comparison and even professed that he could find a virtue in the differences. In his famous 1860 article The Social Organism, Spencer described the comparison between a human body and a human society: "Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer light the points of analogy."