INTRODUCTION 7 



his day great advance has been made and the leaders of thought 

 and life in the western world are coming to agreement as never 

 before on fundamental principles of life and progress. 



During the last quarter of the nineteenth century evolution 

 was the open sesame to the interpretation of all phases of life, but 

 this term has proven too vague. More and more that general 

 concept is being analyzed, narrowed, defined. Its place, as we 

 shall see, is being usurped by the more definite concept of adap- 

 tation, which has already obtained a foremost place in educational 

 philosophy, even in that narrower and more conservative sphere 

 of education which is concerned primarily with the religious phase 

 of life, and is invading, too, the domain of political science. A 

 second purpose of this thesis, then, will be to indicate the utility 

 of this concept of adaptation in interpreting various phases of 

 social endeavor. 



Method. — Our subject naturally calls for an analysis of systems 

 of social philosophy with the one special aim of showing the con- 

 tribution of each to this doctrine of adaptation. It will be in our 

 province, also, to investigate the writings of others outside the 

 sphere of sociology proper who have contributed to the develop- 

 ment of this doctrine. We shall not attempt, however, to trace 

 this development back in its several root forms to early ages. 

 Such a task would be too great and of too little value. Indeed 

 this field has been cultivated already to a considerable extent. 

 Professor Osborn has traced the development of the doctrine of 

 adaptation as a theory of biological evolution back to the early 

 Greek physicists, especially to Empedocles,^ and Professor 

 Flint's Philosophy of History contains abundant material for the 

 study of the use of this concept among early social philosophers. 

 Modern sociology is generally conceded to take its rise from 

 Auguste Comte, so our investigation may well begin with him, 

 although reference will be made to some who lived in an earlier 

 age. 



Several methods of procedure are open to us. The subject 

 suggests a historical method, but inasmuch as the period covered 

 is less than a century such a method presents many difficulties. 

 * From the Greeks to Darwin, 



