PREFACE 
THE doctrine of biological evolution did not originate with 
Darwin or with any other modern scientist. It is as old as human 
speculation. Darwin’s supreme contribution was his positive 
proof that the method of evolution was the method of natural 
selection, of trial and rejection, of extermination and survival. 
Since his day biological evolution has meant a definite process 
capable of being studied in detail, tested and verified. Before 
his time it was only a generalization, a guess as to how things 
might very well have been, without any definite proof that they 
were actually so. 
The concept of social evolution has gone through, or is going 
through, a similar course of development. This concept also is 
as old as human speculation. It has generally been, however, 
only a vague speculation, a guess as to how things socially might 
conceivably have come about, a vague idea of an unfolding 
process. A little more definiteness has come into the theory by 
the attempt to trace the successive stages of evolution. A 
treatise on this subject, however, is rather a book of social genesis 
than a book on social evolution. Until some one is able to 
point out the factors and forces which bring about social evolu- 
tion, to show the method and the process, it will not have become 
a scientific concept. 
In fact, Comte’s three stages of mental development are beauti- 
fully illustrated in the development of the concept of social evolu- 
tion. The theological stage is represented by the doctrine of a 
divine providence moulding human history and leading mankind 
along by a preordained path. The metaphysical stage is repre- 
sented by most current theories of social evolution which only 
point out that society, like a biological organism, grows, and that 
its growth presumably is the result of some impersonal force or 
principle, rather than the personal interference of a supernatural 
being. 
