The selected bibliographies which are appended after each chapter constitute the best works on specific points discussed in the course of the chapter.

The author's indebtedness to Professor Franklin H. Giddings for encouragement and stimulating suggestions is greater than can be expressed in a formal preface. But the author wishes to express his appreciative thanks to Dr. Giddings for permission to use unpublished material, for reading the manuscript, and for making many criticisms and suggestions which have been of greatest service.

The author's thanks are also due Professor Leonard S. Blakey and Mr. B. J. Baldwin for reading parts of the manuscript and for suggesting the revision of certain details. Acknowledgments and thanks are due the following authors for the courteous permission accorded to copy and reproduce certain diagrams, maps and illustrations from their works: Professor F. Birkner, Der Diluviale Mensch in Europa; Professor Katharine Coman, The Industrial History of the United States; Professor Joseph Déchelette, Manuel D'Archéologie Préhistorique; Dr. Robert Forrer, Urgeschichte des Europäers; Professor James Geikie, The Great Ice Age; Professor M. M. Metcalf, Organic Evolution; Professor William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe; and Professor E. L. Thorndike, Individuality. For extending the same courtesy the author wishes to thank the editors of L'Anthropologie, The Open Court Publishing Company, and the editor Auguste Picard.

To the Century Company the author's thanks are due for courtesy in furnishing many excellent illustrations from the Century Magazine and other of their publications, and for coöperating with the author to secure the

satisfactory arrangement of certain details in this book. In reading the proof the author was aided by his wife. and Miss Charlotte B. Peck, and desires to express his appreciation for this valuable service. The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to his wife for encouragement and assistance in the preparation of the book. F. STUART CHAPIN.

Northampton, July, 1913.

INTRODUCTION

The story of Social Evolution tells how one form of life came to dominate so completely the lives and destinies of all other forms, that for ages the creature man believed himself to be a separate and distinct creation, master of his fate. It is a wonderful story, surpassing in romance and fascination any epic or drama ever written. In the dark ages before recorded history, great forces were active, silently and insensibly working, molding the destinies of the future, forms of life. In the process of this evolution an occasional gleam of consciousness began to dawn. Sensibilities became more refined; sympathy and compassion, the products of complex relations, tempered and modified the earlier, cruder, adjustments; cruelty and oppression became less and less the guiding forces which governed the relations of conscious beings; tolerance and sympathy became more and more the directing principles of life.

In order to understand the important and determining factors in this process we must examine both the physical and the spiritual basis of man's supremacy. There are certain great principles which guide the growth and development of life. We must study the relation of these principles to man. In the chapters of Part I we shall examine the explanations that have been brought forward by naturalists for the origin of man's physical being. In the chapters of the remaining parts of the book we shall examine the factors and the influences which have

caused the growth and development of man's spiritual, mental, and moral nature.

Human nature is to-day essentially the same as it was thousands of years ago. The great achievements of modern man are intellectual and dependent upon accumulated stores of information and knowledge. They are not moral attainments. The thin veneer of civilization is the charitable cloak which covers much brutality, deceit, and egotism, and no little hypocrisy, which often serves pleasantly to beguile the dead monotony of dissimulation.