The Agassiz Memorials, 2 5 1 



himself strictly to the formal laws of evolution, and 

 no man has done so much in establishing these as 

 he ; but he regarded the cause of evolution as beyond 

 the domain of science, and all attempts at a causal 

 theory as at least premature if not altogether vain. 



2. Agassiz's work and Agassiz's method has laid 

 the only foundation of a possible scientific sociology. 

 Society also is an organised body, and therefore 

 subject to the laws of organisms. Society, too, 

 passes by evolution from lower to higher, from sim- 

 pler to more complex, from general to special, by a 

 process of successive differentiation. Society pro- 

 gresses^ develops. This is the most glorious doctrine 

 of modern times. The phenomena of society, how- 

 ever, are even more complex than those of organ- 

 isms, and therefore still more in want of a method. 

 But we have already seen that phenomena which are 

 too complex to be analysed by experiment can only 

 be brought into subjection by the method of com- 

 parison. If, then, there shall ever be a scientific 

 sociology, it must be by the use of the same meth- 

 ods which are used in biology ; it must be by the 

 comparison of social institutions, governments, civili- 

 sations, etc., in all stages of development ; it must 

 be by extensive comparison of social phenomena in 

 three series^ first, as exhibited in different races and 

 nations in various stages, as now existing in different 

 places, corresponding to the natural history series ; 

 second, as exhibited in various stages of advance of 

 the same nation from barbarism to civilisation, cor- 

 responding to the embryonic series ; third, as ex- 

 hibited in the slow onward progress of the zvhole 



