VII 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION AS A BIOLOGICAL PROCESS 



We now reach a critical juncture in our study of the 

 foundations of evolutionary doctrine, for we must pass 

 at this point to an inquiry into the nature and origin 

 of human social relations. In undertaking this task 

 we may seem to leave the field which is properly that of 

 organic evolution, and many perhaps will be unwilling 

 to view such aspects of human life as materials for purely 

 biological analysis, arrangement, and explanation. But 

 even before the reasons for doing so may be made 

 apparent, every one must admit that the subject of 

 mental evolution, which comprises so large a bulk of 

 details expressly social in their character and value, 

 virtually compels us to scrutinize the history of the 

 economic and other interrelationships maintained by 

 the human constituents of civilized, barbarous, and 

 savage communities. Language has been treated as an 

 individual mental product, and so have the arts of life 

 and of pleasure ; but all of these things find their great- 

 est utility in their social usage, in their value as bonds 

 which hold together the few or many human beings 

 composing groups of lower or higher grade. Without 

 discovering any other reasons we would be impelled to 

 take up social evolution, for this process is inextricably 

 bound up with the origin and development of all de- 

 partments of human thought and action. 



R 241 



