EVOLUTIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 1 77 



The evolutionism which has revolutionized the 

 thought of our century is the evolutionism of 

 Charles Darwin, and confessedly arose out of an 

 interpretation of the gradations and affinities of 

 animal species in the light of the Malthusian law of 

 population. That is to say, it arose out of a hint 

 which the single science of zoology received from 

 the science of sociology.^ After revolutionizing 

 zoology, it found its scope so much enlarged by 

 that process, that it could be applied with success 

 to many other sciences, such as botany, biology 

 and anthropology, with especial appropriateness to 

 sociology (from which it had received its original 

 impulse), and even to psychology and ethics.^ And 

 every new application had the effect of bringing 

 out more definitely the principles by which it pro- 

 ceeded. 



Thus it appeared as the common result of all 

 evolutionist histories, what had not before seemed 

 a necessary characteristic of historical explanations, 

 that they traced the genesis of the higher and more 

 differentiated subsequent forms out of earlier forms 

 which were lower and simpler and more homo- 

 geneous. And hence arose the first specific ad- 

 dition Evolutionism made to the Historical Method 

 proper, which may be described as the assertion 

 that historical research leads us from the more com- 

 plex to the simpler, and '' explains " complexity by 

 deriving it from simplicity. And perhaps it is the 

 aesthetic obviousness of this process, rather than 

 any magic virtue in mere history, which has ren- 

 dered evolutionist explanations so plausible and so 



^ Cf. Darwin's Life, I., p. 83, and compare Mr. Spencer's 

 Study of Sociology, p. 438. 

 ^ For a similar example, cf Study of Sociology, p. 335, ff- (13th ed.). 



R.ofS. j^ 



