EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



Most of us will agree that the two theories are not 

 compatible: either human destinies are governed 

 by natural law and we who worship the power 

 of which nature is the manifestation know that 

 the natural is but the supernatural as known to 

 us or they are governed by a person whose chief 

 attribute, if we care to use our reason in judging 

 of him, would appear to be an immeasurable in- 

 competence and an utter incapacity for sustained 

 volitional effort of any kind. It may be remem- 

 bered, however, that Mr. Gladstone was prepared 

 to accept both theories, the belief in Providence 

 and the belief that there may be a science of society. 

 This expression of opinion is one of the few inter- 

 esting products of the many controversies in which 

 Herbert Spencer engaged. 1 



The majority of thinking people to-day, however, 

 have long ago accepted the belief that universal 

 causation knows no exception in the case of human 

 societies and their ways. It is to Auguste Comte, 

 the maker of the word sociology, 2 that we owe 

 the first clear and complete assertion of the belief 

 that societies are subject to law. Comte, however, 

 treated of societies as fixed or stable things. In 

 so doing he was really in line with the general trend 



God, He may be able to "look before," which is all that the 

 word providence implies. 



1 See the last pages of the Study of Sociology. 



1 Comte derived this hybrid term from Latin and Greek to 

 express the double origin of modern civilization. John Stuart 

 Mill first adopted the word into English, and it was given uni- 

 versal currency by Spencer. 



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