Contemporary Evolution. 



CHAPTER I. 

 INTROD UCTOR Y. 



F^HE inexperienced traveller who, having been wearied 

 by the repeated slow ascents and drag-wheeled 

 descents of a tedious coach road, afterwards surveys from 

 a neighbouring mountain the route he has pursued, may 

 not improbably feel surprise at the inconspicuousness of 

 undulations which, while being traversed, seemed so con- 

 siderable. 



The survey of the path of human social evolution from 

 a stand-point as yet inaccessible to us, would no doubt 

 in most cases similarly affect that estimate of the im- 

 portance of his own epoch which each observer, reflecting 

 on contemporary social phenomena, is apt to form. 



Nevertheless, as in spite of the relative evenness of 

 the world's surface as a whole, there are here and there 

 exceptional conditions sheer precipices of both ascent 

 and descent ; so history exhibits parallel phenomena which 

 exceptionally demarcate comparatively uneventful areas. 



Amidst the grassy plains of North-western America, 



B 



