OF SOCIETY. 515 



Paris " after several earlier societies had already pre- 

 pared the way. 



But all these beginnings of a more comprehensive 

 science of man, mankind, and human society in their 

 natural and prehistoric as well as in their civilised and 

 historic conditions remained isolated and disconnected 

 up to the year 1860. In the previous year, when Broca 

 had founded the anthropological society in Paris, there 

 appeared the first great work of Darwin on the ' Origin 

 of Species ' followed in 1871 by the ' Descent of Man ' 

 which did so much to revolutionise biological science 

 and bring it into contact with historical research. All 

 previous researches in a very large region of natural and 

 civil history became at once antiquated. The appear- 

 ance of Buckle's ' History of Civilisation ' had already, 

 to some extent, eclipsed the work of Lazarus and 

 Steinthal ; but it was itself to be cast into the shade 

 by the flood of light which emanated from the peculiar 

 expression Darwin gave to those ideas of evolution 

 and development which had from different begin- 

 nings already permeated German, French, and British 

 thought. For it is doubtful whether even Spencer's 

 comprehensive view of evolution, published before 

 Darwin came on the scene, would have ever, without 

 the latter, succeeded in that great unification of thought 

 which from 1860 onward has brought together so many 

 different and frequently distant lines of reasoning and 

 research. 



No problem of philosophic interest has benefited more influence of 

 by the suggestions contained in Darwin's and Spencer's spIn V cTr. an 



