THE RISE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 5 



and science once again is endeavouring to enlarge Book i 

 its borders. Having offered us an explanation of 

 the origin of the animal man, it proposes to deal 

 with the existing conditions of society very much as 

 it dealt with the structure of the human body, to 

 exhibit them as the necessary result of certain far- 

 reaching laws and causes, and to deduce our 

 civilisation of to-day from the condition of the 

 primitive savage by the same methods and by the 

 aid of the same theories as those which it employed 

 in deducing the primitive savage from the brutes, 

 and the brutes in their turn from primitive germ 

 or protoplasm. In other words, the great triumph 

 of science during what we may call its physical its character- 

 period has been the establishment of that theory fa to deai'with 

 of development which is commonly spoken of asSiSetJ? 01 

 Evolution, and the application of this to the problems 

 of physics and biology. The object of science in 

 entering on what we may call its social period is the 

 application of this same theory to the problems of 

 civilisation and society. 



It is true that, if we use the word science in a 

 certain sense, the attempt to treat social problems social science 



. r ,.. . , r T> i 1 itself is not 



scientifically is not in itselt new. rolitical economy, wholly new. 

 to say nothing of utilitarian ethics, is a social science, 

 or it is nothing ; and political economy had already 

 made considerable advances when modern physical 

 science had hardly found its footing. But before 

 long physical science passed it, with a step that was 

 not only more rapid, but also immeasurably firmer, 

 and was presently giving such an example of what 



