46 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



such. Indeed he went so far as to hold that " les phenomenes 

 sociaux, influences par le libra arbitrare de Thomme, procedent, 

 d'annee en annee, avec plus de regularite que les phenomenes 

 purement influences par des causes materielles et fortuites." ^ 



The fallacies in Quetelet's argument are all ascribable to two 

 sources, first, his belief in the stability of types, and second, his too 

 rigid application of the organic analogy to a social group. Never- 

 theless, he shares with Comte, Spencer, and Darwin the honor 

 of being pillars in the building of the new social science. 



The statistical method, of utmost value when used with scien- 

 tific insight, has been misused more than has any other, for its 

 fallacies are less easily observed by the uninitiated. As has been 

 frequently pointed out this method gives us at best only correla- 

 tions and conditions, not causes; and too often the phenomena 

 compared are not sufficiently alike to warrant the conclusions 

 drawn from the comparison. The results obtained by this 

 method are valid only in proportion as all other things are equal 

 save in the one point of comparison, and this is difficult to obtain 

 in social phenomena. 



The advent of Darwin's Origin of Species marks a new epoch in 

 sociological methodology and since his day the pure deductive 

 reasoning of the mediaeval philosophers has constantly waned, 

 so too, of late, the endeavor to ground social philosophy on a 

 classification of social phenomena or formulate its principles by 

 analogy. Observation, comparison, compilation of statistics, 

 correct interpretation of the data, experiment, — these are 

 emphasized with increasing vigor, with a proper use, to be sure, 

 of deduction, classification, and analogy. 



Before passing to a consideration of Darwin and his successors 

 as representatives of the inductive method and as furnishing the 

 biological background for the theory of adaptation, it will be 

 necessary to consider the importance of the material environment 

 in biological evolution and the contributions of Lamarck. 



1 Du Systeme Socialy p. 97. 



