PREFACE 



The doctrine of biological evolution did not originate with 

 Darwin or with any other modern scientist. It is as old as human 

 speculation. Darwin's supreme contribution was his positive 

 proof that the method of evolution was the method of natural 

 selection, of trial and rejection, of extermination and survival. 

 Since his day biological evolution has meant a definite process 

 capable of being studied in detail, tested and verified. Before 

 his time it was only a generalization, a guess as to how things 

 might very well have been, without any definite proof that they 

 were actually so. 



The concept of social evolution has gone through, or is going 

 through, a similar course of development. This concept also is 

 as old as human speculation. It has generally been, however, 

 only a vague speculation, a guess as to how things socially might 

 conceivably have come about, a vague idea of an unfolding 

 process. A little more definiteness has come into the theory by 

 the attempt to trace the successive stages of evolution. A 

 treatise on this subject, however, is rather a book of social genesis 

 than a book on social evolution. Until some one is able to 

 point out the factors and forces which bring about social evolu- 

 tion, to show the method and the process, it will not have become 

 a scientific concept. 



In fact, Comte's three stages of mental development are beauti- 

 fully illustrated in the development of the concept of social evolu- 

 tion. The theological stage is represented by the doctrine of a 

 divine providence moulding himian history and leading mankind 

 along by a preordained path. The metaphysical stage is repre- 

 sented by most current theories of social evolution which only 

 point out that society, like a biological organism, grows, and that 

 its growth presumably is the result of some impersonal force or 

 principle, rather than the personal interference of a supernatural 

 being. 



