CH. XIX.] ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS. 2S5 



of sequence, and changing by the very activity of the com- 

 munity itself. The organized experience of each generation 

 becomes a part of the environment of its successor, and 

 since in each successive age " the empire of the dead over 

 tlie living increases," the environment of each generation 

 consists to a greater and greater extent of the sum-total of 

 traditions bequeathed by all past generations. Hence we 

 cannot hope scientifically to comprehend the simplest feature 

 in any given state of the community without reference to 

 ancestral states. The religious phenomena of the present 

 day, for example, cannot be understood without previous 

 knowledge of the whole history of Christianity, and indeed 

 of human speculative thought since men began to be aware 

 of the imiverse about them. Our political organization can 

 be scientifically interpreted only as the offspring of ances- 

 tral political organizations in a series reaching back to the 

 primitive tribal community."" And so with all the aspects 

 of society. Whether we are studying a creed, a code of laws, 

 a dialect, a system of philosophy, a congeries of myths, or 

 a set of manners and customs, we can arrive at the rational 

 solution of our problem only through a historical inquiry. 

 Hence the doctrine of genesis, indispensable as it is in the 

 other two organic sciences, becomes, if one may say so, even 

 more indispensable in sociology. Here the whole science 

 rests upon sociogeny, and until we have reached a scientific 

 conception of progress we cannot stir a step. 



Thus, in addition to the unparalleled complexity of its 

 phenomena, and to its general dependence both for doctrine 

 and for method upon the simpler sciences, we perceive still 

 another reason why the science of sociology has been the last 

 to be constituted. Resting as it does upon the law of pro- 

 gress, it has had to wait not only until the preceding sciences 



^ See Mr. Freeman's book, Comparative Politics, — the work of a great 

 scholar who inherits the gift of Midas, and makes gold of eveiy subject that 

 he touches. 



