COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



be reserved until the law of social changes has 

 been deduced from the more constant pheno- 

 mena, and is ready for inductive verification. A 

 law wide enough to form a basis for sociology 

 must needs be eminently abstract, and can be 

 found only by contemplating the most general 

 and prominent characteristics of social changes. 

 The prime requisite of the formula of which we 

 are in quest is that it should accurately desig- 

 nate such changes under their leading aspect. 



Now by far the most obvious and constant 

 characteristic common to a vast number of social 

 changes is that they are changes from a worse 

 to a better state of things, — that they consti- 

 tute phases of Progress. It is not asserted that 

 human history has in all times and places been 

 the history of progress ; it is not denied that at 

 various times and in many places it has been the 

 history of retrogression ; but attention is called 

 to the fact — made trite by long familiarity, yet 

 none the less habitually misconceived — that 

 progress has been on the whole the most con- 

 stant and prominent feature of the history of a 

 considerable and important portion of mankind. 



Around this cardinal fact have clustered, as I 

 just hinted, many serious misconceptions. The 

 illustrious thinkers of the last century, who 

 endeavoured to study human history from a 

 scientific point of view, were unconsciously led 

 into an error from which contemporary writers 

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