EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY^ 



Either prospectively or immediately, the central figure 

 ill each one of the topics of the essays of this course u])on 

 Evolution is Man ; and in its full scope, in the topic of bhis 

 evening, the central figure is Associated Man, in process pf 

 evolution as such, in the ])resence and under the influence 

 of earlier and rudimentary forms or types of societary asso- 

 ciation found in vegetal and animal life generally. 



The largeness, complexity, and, in its early stages and 

 history, the obscurity of the subject, therefore become evi- 

 dent at a glance. The experience of the Master himself 

 illustrates the difficulties to be met with in its treatment. 

 Whether or not it be true, as we suspect, that Mr. Spencer 

 found in it the initial impulses that led to the working out 

 of his system of philosophy, it is evident that all his pre- 

 viously written books lead naturally and inevitably up to 

 those he has Avritten on the subject of >Sociology. And yet 

 on reaching that branch of his system, in due course, he 

 found himself practically forced to prepare a special and 

 preliminary work on the " study " of it, devoted substan- 

 tially to an extended examination and explanation of the 

 almost insurmountable obstacles and hindrances to be met 

 with in presenting and in understanding it. 



Comprehensively, at the outset, he describes the entire 

 objective and subjective worlds as fairly barricaded with 

 them; and subsequently, descending to particulars, he pre- 

 sents and describes, through some hundreds of pages, like 

 so many specimen grains of sand taken from an ocean beach, 

 samples of " bias," with which the human mind is infested, 

 svich as the educational, the ])atriotic, the class, the politi- 

 cal, and finally, worst of all, th(> theological bias, all of which 

 interfere with the proper study and comprehension of the 

 subject. He then occupies nearly one hundred additional 

 pages in setting forth the "discipline," the <' prejiaration in 

 biology " and " ])sychology " re(]uiTed for the proper study, 



* Copyright, 1880, by Tlic New Mciil rulilishing Co. 



