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In this third edition of the Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, several improvements of importance have been made. The text has been revised; references to the works quoted and cited have been supplied; the appendices have been enlarged; and the work has now an index.

Each chapter has been carefully gone through for the purpose of removing defects of expression and with a view to condensation. By erasing superfluous words and phrases, I have reduced the text to the extent of forty pages, not-withstanding the incorporation here and there of a further illustration. This abridgment, however, has not diminished the bulk of the volume; since the additions above named occupy much more space than has been gained.

In the preface to the first edition, I explained how it happened that the reader was provided with no adequate means of verifying any of the multitudinous statements quoted; and with the explanation I joined the expression of a hope that I might eventually remove the defect. By great labour the defect has now been removed – almost though not absolutely. Some years ago I engaged a gentleman who had been with me as secretary, Mr. P. E. Smith, since deceased, to furnish references; and with the aid of the Descriptive Sociology where this availed, and where it did not by going to the works of the authors quoted, he succeeded in finding the great majority of the passages. Still, however, there remained numerous gaps. Two years since I arranged with a skilled bibliographer, Mr. Tedder, the librarian of the Athenaeum Club, to go through afresh all the quotations, and to supply the missing references while cheeking the references Mr. Smith had given. By an unwearied labour which surprised me, Mr. Tedder discovered the greater part of the passages to which references had not been supplied. The number of those which continued undiscovered was reduced by a third search, aided by clues contained in the original MS., and by information I was able to give. There now remain less than 2 per cent of unreferenced statements.

The supplying of references was not, however, the sole purpose to be achieved. Removal of inaccuracies was a further purpose. The Descriptive Sociology, from which numerous quotations were made, had passed through stages each of which gave occasion for errors. In the extracts as copied by the compilers, mistakes, literal and verbal, were certain to be not uncommon. Proper names of persons, peoples, and places, not written with due care, were likely to be in many cases mis-spelled by the printers. Thus, believing that there were many defects which, though not diminishing the values of the extracts as pieces of evidence, rendered them inexact, I desired that while the references to them were furnished, comparisons of them with the originals should be made. This task has been executed by Mr. Tedder with scrupulous care; so that his corrections have extended even to additions and omissions of commas. Concerning the results of his examination, he has written me the following letter: –

July, 1885.

DEAR MR. SPENCER,

In the second edition (1877) of the Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, placed in my hands, there were 2192 references to the 379 works quoted. In the new edition there are about 2500 references to 455 works. All of these references, with the exception of about 45, have been compared with the originals.

In the course of verification I have corrected numerous trifling errors. They were chiefly literal, and included paraphrases made by the compilers of the Descriptive Sociology which had been wrongly inserted within quotation marks. There was a small proportion of verbal errors, among which were instances of facts quoted with respect to particular tribes which the original authority had asserted generally of the whole cluster of tribes – facts, therefore, more widely true than you had alleged.

The only instances I can recall of changes affecting the value of the statements as evidence were (1) in a passage from the Iliad, originally taken from an inferior translation; (2) the deletion of the reference (on p. 298 of second edition) as to an avoidance by the Hindus of uttering the sacred name Om.

Among the 455 works quoted there are only six which are of questionable authority; but the citations from these are but few in number, and I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of the information for which they are specially responsible.

I am,

Faithfully yours,

HENRY R. TEDDER.

The statement above named as one withdrawn, was commented on by Prof. Max Müller in his Hibbert Lectures; in which he also alleged that I had erred in asserting that the Egyptians abstained from using the sacred name Osiris. This second alleged error I have dealt with in a note on page 274, where I think it is made manifest that Prof. Max Müller would have done well to examine the evidence more carefully before committing himself.

The mention of Prof. Max Müller reminds me of another matter concerning which a few words are called for. In an article on this volume in its first edition, published in the Pall Mall Gazette for February 21st, 1877, it was said that the doctrine propounded in Part I, in opposition to that of the comparative mythologists, «will shortly be taken up, as we understand, by persons specially competent in that department.» When there were at length, in 1878, announced Prof. Max Müller's Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, etc., etc., I concluded that my curiosity to see a reply would at last be gratified. But on turning over the published report of his lectures, I discovered no attempt to deal with the hypothesis that religion is evolved from the ghost-theory: the sole reference to it being, as Mr. Andrew Lang remarks, some thirteen lines describing «psycholatry» as exhibited in Africa. The work proved to be a superfluous polemic against the hypothesis that fetishism is the primitive form of religion – superfluous, I say, because this hypothesis had been, I think, effectually disposed of by me in the first edition of this volume. Why Prof. Max Müller should have expended so much labour in disproving a doctrine already disproved, is not clear. Still less clear is it why, having before him the volume, and adversely criticizing certain statements in it referred to above, he entirely ignored the chapter in which was already done that which his lectures proposed to do.

What was the indirect purpose of his lectures I do not understand. He could not himself have supposed that a refutation of the fetish-theory was a refutation of the theory now standing opposed to his own; though it is not improbable that many of his hearers and readers, supposed that it was.

Concerning the new matter, little needs to be said. To Appendix A, entitled «Further Illustrations of Primitive Thought», the additions are such as practically to constitute it a second demonstration of the thesis demonstrated in Part I. To Appendix B, on «The Mythological Theory», a section has been prefixed. And Appendix C, on «The Linguistic Method of the Mythologists», is new.

Bayswater, July, 1885.