58 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



To answer these questions properly drives us to a deeper analysis; 

 it raises the profounder question, Is civilization external or internal? 

 Is it in the man, or in his surroundings? In the general way, most 

 of us will admit that it is in the man — in man and in society. 



Settling down then upon the clear truth that civilization is essen- 

 tially internal, that it is of the mental man, though working out- 

 wardly into necessary forms and movements, another question starts 

 up to confront us. This question is as to the proper method and 

 direction of our search. Shall we call to our aid our own conscious 

 experience, and look to find what there is in man that impels him 

 to outward action; or shall we neglect the mental forces and direct 

 our study to external facts to ascertain their character, classes, and 

 connections ? 



If we decide to confine our quest to the material and visible facts 

 of social life, shall it be to the present or the past; shall we grope 

 among the fossil remains of a paleozoic sociology, or shall we seek 

 to analzye the phenomena of a living sociology? 



No science can dispense with the study of the past, and all true 

 students must acknowledge the usefulness as well as the curious in- 

 terest which attaches to the discoveries of the archaeologist and pale- 

 ontologist, but Herbert Spencer says "it is hopeless to trace back 

 the external factors of social phenomena to anything like their first 

 forms." 



We may without debate accept the doctrine of an evolution in 

 civilization. All history implies development, or evolution, if the 

 term is preferred. It exhibits the emergence of the new out of the 

 old, the complex from the simple, the tribe from the family, the 

 nation from the tribe, the civilized from the savage. But the evo- 

 lution of society is not, as some represent it, a mere physical or 

 biotic evolution. It is anthropic, and more, it is spiritual and 

 volitional. Human passions, intellections, and volitions must be 

 admitted as evolving forces. 



The under estimate of the value of consciousness as a source of 

 definite knowledge, and the over estimate of the value of the archaic 

 and savage social forms are both serious mistakes of social science. 



History rises out of the physical and the mechanical, and becomes 

 human only by the introduction of the human intelligence among 

 its causes and forces ; and to refuse the aid of consciousness in the 

 study and interpretation of history is to place it among the physical 



