ITS METHODS AND TENDENCIES. 459 
after an ignis fatuus, an inherent, inflexible law of human 
progress, and hence of human history. Draper is a de- 
velopmentist, but not a Darwinian. With him civiliza- 
tion is a definite stage in the growth of mind; a degree 
of development to which it is impelled by a vis a tergo, 
not unlike, in kind, to that which evolves from the germ, 
the bud, the leaf, the flower, and the fruit in plant-life,— 
a development which, when unchecked and free, will be 
regular and inevitable, but which is so modified by the 
accidents of race, climate, soil, geographical position, 
etc., as to render it difficult to say whether the rule or 
the exception has, in his judgment, greatest potency. If 
he were a consistent Darwinist, the accidents of develop- 
ment would be its law. 
Among the students of “Social Science,” —a new and 
important member of the sisterhood of sciences, —as in 
most of the other departments of modern investigation, 
two groups of devotees are found; one patiently and con- 
scientiously studying the problems of social organization, 
inspired with the true spirit of the Baconian Philosophy, 
ready to follow whithersoever the facts shall lead, and 
having for their object that noblest of all objects, the in- 
crease of human happiness. The other class of investi- 
gators, in whom the bump of destructiveness is largely 
developed, would be delighted to tear down the whole 
fabric of society, and abrogate all laws, both human and 
divine. Looking upon man as literally the creature of 
circumstances, as an inert atom driven about by material 
forces, conscience and responsibility are by them repu- 
diated, and laws and penalties regarded simply as relics 
of barbaric despotism. The dreary soul-killing creed of 
these fatalists is fortunately so repugnant to the reason 
and feelings of the majority of men, that there is little 
