SOCIETAL EVOLUTION 131 



involved is indicated by the adjective "social" not plain 

 "heredity," but "social heredity." The upshot of the matter 

 is that even the casual observer has noted the likeness between 

 things social and things organic and biological. 



It seems to me that we had better take this hint from 

 analogy and work on it. Evolution is proved and accredited 

 in the organic field; at Darwin's centenary scientists of all de- 

 scriptions united, in a volume called Darwin and Modern 

 Science, in bearing witness to the fruitful suggestion received 

 by them from the Darwinian theory. We had better see 

 whether that theory can not help us in discovering some order 

 and sense in social phenomena. I think it has helped some of 

 us in just that way. Our courses in the science of society, 

 representing the best we have to give to our students, have for 

 many years begun with the effort to make sure that they all 

 secure a layman's knowledge of organic evolution. 



My predecessors in this course of lectures have shown that 

 the evolutionary process does not stop short of man as an 

 animal. Huxley, 2 in comparing him with the anthropoids, 

 summarizes as follows: "Thus, identical in the physical pro- 

 cesses by which he originates identical in the early stages of 

 his formation identical in the mode of his nutrition before 

 anol after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below 

 him in the scale, man, if his adult and perfect structure be 

 compared with theirs, exhibits ... a marvelous likeness of 

 organization. He resembles them as they resemble one 

 another he differs from them as they differ from one 

 another." But if man is thus similar to the animals, it would 

 appear that he must come under the same need of physical 

 adjustment to life-conditions. If so, he should show differ- 

 ences comparable to those exhibited by animals as the result 

 of adjustment to widely diverse life-conditions. Being the 

 most widely ranging of all animals, he might be expected to 



2 Huxley, T. H. r "Man's place in nature," 1901, p. 83. 



