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In this paper I try to understand the main problems of theories of society and art in works written by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). He was really a man of Victorian England. The Victorian Age was the 'age of coal and iron' or 'the Railway Age' and it was characterized by constant and rapid change in economic circumstance, social custom, and intellectual atmosphere, so the nineteenth century was an age of transition. We may find in his writings his attitude to his age and changing way of life in England. He once explained the aim of Sociogy (the Social Science) as follows : 'Sociology has to recognize truths of social development, structure, and function, that are some of them universal, some of them general, some of them special'. He thought that all social phenomena are phenomena of life. Also he regarded society as a growth and not a manufacture. He used next terms frequently and these may be called 'key terms' analyzing his theories of society and art. Some examples are as follows : Social organism, evolution, growth, development, structure, function, co-operation, consensus, class, the sustaining system, the distributing system, the regulating system, social metamorphoses, homogeneity, heterogeneity, differentiation, integration etc. For him the the law of progress or evolution is not only clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social organism, but also it is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all products of human thought and action such as language, art, and science. Then he surveyed and traced such law or principle as differentiation and integration in various artistic phenomena, for example in artist, style and structure of works, interrelation between arts. He thought that 'in ancient Egypt, the priest was the primitive sculptor ; and the association of painting with sculpture was so close as to imply that he was also the primitive painter-either immediately or by proxy'. Or in another page we can find next passage. 'Along with differentiation of the lay painter from the clerical painter there began a differentiation of lay painters from one another.' In some articles he argued function of art and role of artist. Also he discussed distributing system of literary works, in another word ' book-distribution.' Here and above I can find main problems and methods of sociology of art, then Herbert Spencer may be called one of founders of so-called sociology of art, sociological or anthropological study of art.

1. はじめに 2. スペンサーの英国 3. 社会の理論と芸術の理論 4. むすび