Aspects of Social Evolution

Abstract

ARE they not methodologically equivalent, the three systems of classification—(a) of plants into herbs, shrubs and trees; (b) of animals into birds, beasts and fishes; and (c) of humans into the sanguine, the lymphatic, the bilious and the melancholy? Why, then, is it that science, having long ago given us a Systema Naturae and a nomenclature botanicus and zoologicus, still leaves us almost without the rudiments of a Systema Hominis and a nomenclature sociologicus? It may be asked in reply, What of the anthropologists and their half century of taxonomic labours in the name of science? But the anthropological classifications belong, in appearance at least, to natural and not human history. They do not rise through psychology into sociology. It is true the biologist rejects them, and must continue to do so, as long as the anthropologist cannot formulate his fundamental concept—that of race—in biological terms. Of late the anthropologist has shown signs of attaching himself to the psychologist; and this suggests another form of the initial question, Why have anthropologists not endeavoured to formulate even a provisional classification of psychological types? Why have they, with unconscious naivete, been content to accept implicitly the popular classification that traditionally survives from early Greek thought? To this question the positivist will be ready with his answer, but perhaps it were wiser to leave it as a shameful reminder to the laggard sociologist.

Aspects of Social Evolution.

First Series. Temperaments. By J. Lionel Tayler. Pp. xxviii + 297; illustrated. (London: Smith, Elder and Co.) Price 7s. 6d.