EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



unfolded, will go farther toward explaining the 

 differences between Greek and Roman political 

 history, on the one hand, and English political 

 history, on the other, than would the exhaustive 

 biography of all the Greek and Roman and 

 English statesmen that have ever lived, from 

 Lykurgos and Servius Tullius to Gladstone. 

 The study of sociology, in short, is primarily 

 concerned with institutions rather than with in- 

 dividuals. The sociologist does not need to 

 undervalue in any way the efficiency of individ- 

 ual initiative in determining the concrete course 

 of history ; but the kind of propositions which 

 he seeks to establish are general propositions, 

 relating to the way in which masses of men act 

 under given conditions. 



Here, in conclusion, we may call attention to 

 a broad distinction between the study of socio- 

 logy and the study of history, which, when duly 

 considered, will throw much light upon the 

 points in Mr. Spencer's doctrine by which Dr. 

 James seems to have been puzzled. The dis- 

 tinction to which I allude is one which may be 

 most fitly illustrated by a reference to the study 

 of geology. The philosophical geologist as- 

 sumes as data the various physical and chemical 

 properties of the substances of which the earth's 

 surface is composed, and by reasoning from 

 these data, with the aid of all the concrete facts 

 which observation can gather, he constructs his 

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