CH. xviT.j sonioLoar and free-will. 165 



and the environment. Tliirdly, I shall carry on the inquiry 

 to a point somewhat in advance of ^Mr. Spencer's exposition, 

 as it now stands, and show how these truths must be supple- 

 mented in order to give us a law of social evolution which 

 shall cover social phenomena simply, excluding the more 

 ^•eneral phenomena of organic life. 



But while under ordinary circumstances it might be well 

 enough to proceed directly to such an invesligauon, since 

 there is no better way of proving that certain groups of 

 phenomena conform to law than by pointing out the law to 

 which they conform, nevertheless in the present case I think 

 it desirable to preface the inquiry with a brief discussion of 

 one or two logical and psychological truths — truths of method 

 and of doctrine — which lie at the basis of sociology. In our 

 survey of the simpler sciences, no such preface was called for. 

 In beginning to treat of biological truths, we did not deem it 

 necessary to prove that waste and repair proceed according to 

 immutable laws, or to forestall possible cavils by declaring 

 that, although we cannot predict our states of health from 

 week to week, nevertheless organic phenomena are not the 

 sport of chance. It is otherwise in sociology, which is a new 

 science, encumbered with many popular misconceptions, and 

 regarded with an evil eye by theologians, — persons who 

 profess great devotion to the interests of advancing knowledge 

 in general, while the particular advance in knowledge at any 

 time going on somehow never happens to be the one which 

 they think fit to regard with favour. Of each new trophy 

 which Science has from time to time laboriously won, these 

 opponents have hastened to declare, " Behold it is the last ! ** 

 Though the phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies, by 

 the surface of the earth, and by the life which covers the 

 earth, have one after another, in spite of vehement theological 

 protest, been made the subjects of science,^ it is still stoutly 



^ "Als P3'thagoras seinen beruhmten Lehrsatz entdeckte, opferte er den 

 Gottern eine Hekatombe, d. la. eia Opfer von huudert Stiereu. SeitJeui 



