196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



though the distinction between factors, forces, means and methods is 

 not always carefully drawn. Buckle, in his " History of Civilization in 

 England" attributes social changes, hence progress, to climate, food, 

 soil and the general aspect of nature. Buckle, however, regards only 

 the external factors of progress ; and inasmuch as he holds that physical 

 agents are the primary and the chief factors in human development, he 

 anticipates the modern advocates of the materialistic conception of his- 

 tory. John Fiske says: 



The prime factors in social progress are the community and its environment. 



By environment, Fiske means to include not only the climate, soil, 

 flora and fauna, perpendicular elevation, relation to mountain ranges, 

 length of coast-line, character of scenery and geographic position with 

 reference to other countries, but also "the ideas, feelings, experiments 

 and observances of past times, so far as they are preserved by litera- 

 ture, traditions or monuments, as well as foreign contemporary manners 

 and opinions so far as they are known and recorded by the community." 

 He does not attempt to analyze his conception of " community." Pro- 

 fessor Carver in compiling his " Hand-Book for Students of Sociology " 

 arranges his material under the following heads : the physical and geo- 

 logical factors, the psychical factors, the social and economic factors 

 and the political and legal factors. In still another classification we 

 find the factors of social evolution divided as follows : physical and geo- 

 graphical, biological, hygienic and eugenic, genetic and economic, polit- 

 ical and legal, ethical and religious, esthetic, intellectual and asso- 

 ciational. 2 



The literature of the subject aside, however, we need only to glance 

 at the social process to see that the factors at work in the advancement 

 of society are external and internal. The external factors arrange 

 themselves under three heads, namely, the physical, the vital and the 

 societal. The physical factors include soil, climate, topography, etc.; 

 the vital include the regional flora and fauna ; and the societal, the sur- 

 rounding social groups that in one way or another exercise an influence 

 on a given society. The internal factors consist in two things, and two 

 things only: they are men and the things that men have made, or, 

 somewhat less exactly, ideas and the embodied results of ideas in lan- 

 guage, literature, the sciences, the arts, law, property, the state, reli- 

 gion, etc. Chief among the internal factors the one indeed from which 

 all others are derived, is the intellect acting as a guide to the will. Pro- 

 fessor Ward is practically correct when he declares that it is through 

 the cooperation of the will and the intellect that civilization has been 

 brought about. At all events, these are the great and comprehensive 

 internal factors of civilization and progress. 



In presenting these classifications of the factors of social progress, 



I am not concerned merely with their completeness or accuracy. I wish 



rather to bring out two significant facts : First, that the factors of prog- 



2Bogardus, a syllabus entitled "An Introduction to the Social Sciences." 



