CHAP, xi SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 205 



of dealing with it. The comparative study of culture has 

 as its data first the life of our own world on its manifold 

 sides, its philosophy, science, literature, religion, its laws 

 and customs, its economic structure, its political system, all 

 that we call Western civilisation. Next, still keeping to 

 the contemporary world, there are the old civilisations of 

 the East, and, representing still older levels of culture, the 

 semi-civilised, barbarous and savage communities whose 

 independent life is fading into the past. Thus in the pre- 

 sent alone there is an immense field for comparison, but 

 the comparative study of the present could throw little light 

 on development if we knew nothing of the past. To the 

 investigation of present conditions then we have to add a 

 history which for our ancestors extends over about two 

 thousand years, and traces them to a stage of barbarism 

 broadly analogous with some of the lower social types of 

 our own day ; while for our civilisation we have a much 

 longer record, extending back through Greece and Rome to 

 the beginnings of Babylonian and Egyptian civilisation in 

 the fourth millennium before Christ. Lastly, where history 

 ends or where it leaves gaps and faults in its record, we 

 help ourselves as best we can with the indirect evidence of 

 archaeology, and with its aid we trace the story of culture, 

 more dimly, indeed, yet still with sufficient light on certain 

 fundamental points, to an epoch so remote that in compari- 

 son the whole span of recorded history becomes short. 



What emerges from these data ? If history had that full 

 continuity for which some writers have contended the 

 answer ought not to be very difficult. The prehistoric 

 movement would be given us by the combined study of 

 archaeology and of contemporary savages. This would 

 lead us to the dawn of civilisation, and from that time 

 onwards the record itself should inform us. But the 

 matter is not so simple as this. In a certain broad sense 

 human evolution may be one process, as indeed all organic 

 evolution may be one process. But if so, it is a unity 

 made up of a thousand different processes processes, 

 moreover, which, particularly in their lower stages, are not 

 merely independent but largely antagonistic to one another. 

 Just as each separate organic species evolves on its own 



