ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book i 



which win 



history of 



humanity, 



or secure for 



advantages, 



also true with regard to evolutionary social science 

 as a whole. Social science as a whole, just like 

 this special branch of it, is being brought into vital 

 contact with the lives and hopes of man, and is 

 exciting a popular interest strictly analogous to that 

 which had been excited by physical and biological 

 science previously. 



It* is doing this in two ways, which, though 

 closely connected, are distinct. In the first place, 

 j t j s directing" our attention to the human race as 

 a whole, and is showing us how society and the 

 individual have developed in an orderly manner, 

 growing upwards from the lowest and the most 

 miserable beginnings to the heights of civilisation, 

 intellectual, moral, and material, and how they con- 

 tain in themselves the potency of yet further develop- 

 ment. It thus offers to the mind a vast variety of 

 suggestion with regard to the significance of man's 

 presence upon the earth, and is held by many to be 

 supplying us with the materials of a religion calcu- 

 lated to replace that which physical science has 

 discredited. The second way in which it excites 

 popular interest is the way which has been just 

 illustrated by a reference to political economy. For 

 besides offering to our philosophic and religious 

 faculties the vision of man's corporate movement from 

 a condition of helpless bestiality towards some " far- 

 off divine event," which glitters on us in the remote 

 future, social science is suggesting to us changes 

 which are of a very much nearer kind, and which 

 appeal not to our speculative desire to discover some 



