WHAT IS SOCIAL EVOLUTION? 37 



philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number of 

 facts known and laws understood : whereas the actual progress consists in 

 those internal modifications of which this increased knowledge is the ex- 

 pression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the produce of a greater 

 quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying men's wants ; 

 in the increasing security of person and property; in widening freedom 

 of action : whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those 

 changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these con- 

 sequences. The current conception is a teleological one. The phenomena 

 are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those 

 changes are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly tend to 

 heighten human happiness. And they are thought to constitute progress 

 simply because they tend to heighten human happiness. But rightly to 

 understand progress, we must inquire what is the nature of these changes, 

 considered apart from our interests.* 



"With the view of excluding these anthropocentric interpretations 

 and also because it served better to cover those inorganic changes 

 which the word " progress " suggests but vaguely, I employed the 

 word " evolution." But my hope that, by the use of this word, irrele- 

 vant facts and considerations would be set aside, proves ill-grounded. 

 Mr. Mallock now includes under it those things which I endeavored 

 to exclude. He is dominated by the current idea of progress as a 

 process of improvement, in the human sense; and is thus led to join 

 with those social changes which constitute advance in social organi- 

 zation, those social changes which are ancillary to it — not constitut- 

 ing parts of the advance itself, but yielding fit materials and con- 

 ditions. It is true that he recognizes social science as aiming " to 

 deduce our civilization of to-day from the condition of the primi- 

 tive savage." It is true that he says social science " primarily sets 

 itself to explain, not how a given set of social conditions affects those 

 who live among them, but how social conditions at one epoch are 

 different from those of another, how each set of conditions is the 

 resultant of those preceding it." f But in his conception as thus 

 indicated he masses together not the phenomena of developing social 

 structures and functions only, but all those which accompany them; 

 as is shown by the complaint he approvingly cites that the sociological 

 theory set forth by me does not yield manifest solutions of current 

 social problems: ^ clearly implying the belief that an account of 

 social evolution containing no lessons which he who runs may read 

 is erroneous. 



"While Mr. Mallock's statements and arguments thus recognize 

 Social Evolution in a general way, and its continuity with evolution 

 of simpler kinds, they do not recognize that definition of evolution 



* Westminster Review, April, 185*7. 



f Aristocracy and Evolution, pp. 5, 7. % Ibid., pp. 10, 11. 



