268 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



views of foreign races like our own, the smaller details 

 occupy our attention, diverting it from the great basic 

 principles according to which every society is organized 

 and operates. But when once the major elements have 

 been discovered in civilized and more primitive nations, 

 the secondary and less essential phenomena fall into 

 their proper relations, and a statement of the whole 

 process of development becomes relatively simple. 

 So much space has been devoted to lower types of 

 communal organisms in order to learn what the funda- 

 mentals are, and not merely to provide analogies that 

 may be useful hereafter. It now remains to arrange 

 the evidences of social progress during the history of 

 mankind itself, and to bring such human facts into 

 relation with w^hat has been discovered in lower nature. 

 It is helpful to begin this part of the subject by asking 

 ourselves what is already part of common knowledge 

 about human history. Do we know of any civilized 

 nation that is absolutely stable and unvarying in social 

 structure, or one that has remained unchanged through- 

 out historic time ? The answer must be negative, for 

 in no case does the past disclose an example of per- 

 manence in social or in any other respect ; monarchies 

 and republics are plastic like the human frame itself. 

 The American Commonwealth is a relatively young 

 social organism, and it is an easy task to trace its growth 

 from beginnings in the diffuse and uncorrelated colonies 

 of pre-Revolutionary years. Those colonies that were 

 formed by English settlers were transplanted out- 

 growths from a civilized social parent which in its turn 

 had clearly evolved from the state of King John's time 

 and the still cruder form it had under King Alfred. 



