grasp of the laws and causes which are producing these phenomena. Judged by a simple scientific principle, recently laid down by Mr. Leslie Stephen, our political economy must certainly be found wanting. "A genuine scientific theory implies a true estimate of the great forces which mould institutions, and, therefore, a true appreciation of the limits within which they might be modified by any proposed change." But it can hardly be claimed for economics in general that it has reached this stage. Our social phenomena seem to be continually moving beyond its theories into unknown territory, and we see the economists following after as best they can, and, with some loss of respect from the onlookers, slowly and painfully adjusting the old arguments and conclusions to the new phenomena.1 It is almost the same with the other sciences which deal with our social affairs. The comparative barrenness which appears to distinguish them, when we regard the 1 The development which has been taking place in the views of political economists during the century, mainly through pressure from without, is very fairly described by Professor Marshall. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the economists paid little attention to the deeper problems of human nature which will always underlie the science. "Flushed with their victories over a set of much more solid thinkers they did not trouble themselves to examine any of the doctrines of the socialists, and least of all their speculations as to human nature. But the socialists were men who had felt intensely, and who knew something about the hidden springs of human action of which the economists took no account. Buried among their wild rhapsodies there were shrewd observations and pregnant suggestions from which philosophers and economists had much to learn. And gradually their influence began to tell. Comte's debts to them were very great; and the crisis of John Stuart Mill's life, as he tells us in his autobiography, came to him from reading them." "When we come later on to compare the modern view of the vital problem of distribution with that which prevailed at the beginning of the century, we shall find that over and above all changes in detail, and all improvements in scientific accuracy of reasoning, there is a fundamental change in treatment; for while the earlier economists argued as though man's character and efficiency were to be regarded as a fixed quantity, modern economists keep carefully in mind the fact that it is a product of work done during the century in the lower branches of science, is striking, and it is doubtless largely due to the point of view from which they have been approached. In nothing does Professor Marshall show truer philosophical insight than in remarking how deeply economics now tends to be affected by the developments which the biological sciences have undergone during the century, and in noting its relationship to these sciences rather than to the mathematico-physical group upon which it leant at the beginning of the century. By those sciences which deal with human society it seems to have been for long ignored or forgotten that in that society we are merely regarding the highest phenomena in the history of life, and that consequently all departments of knowledge which deal with social phenomena have their true foundation in the biological sciences. Even in economics, despite recent advances, it does not yet seem to be recognised that a knowledge of the fundamental principles of biology, and of the laws which have controlled the development of life up to human society, is any necessary part of the outfit with which to approach the study of this science. In history the divorce is even more complete. We have the historian dealing with the record of life in its highest forms, and recognised as the interpreter of the rich and varied record of man's social phenomena in the past; yet, strange to say, feeling it scarcely necessary to take any interest in those sciences which in the truest sense lead up to his the circumstances under which he has lived. This change in the point of view of economics is partly due to the fact that the changes in human nature during the last fifty years have been so rapid as to force themselves on the attention; partly it has been due to the influence of individual writers, socialists, and others; and it has been produced by a parallel change in other sciences." Vol. i. PP. 63-4. pp. 64, 65. 1 Principles of Economics, vol. i. subject. It is hardly to be wondered at if he has so far scarcely succeeded in raising history, even in name, to the dignity of a science. Despite the advances which have recently been made in Germany and England, historical science is still a department of knowledge almost without generalisations of the nature of laws. The historian takes us through events of the past, through the rise and decline of great civilisations where we seem to recognise many of the well-known phenomena of life, through the development of social systems which are even spoken of as organic growths, through a social development which is evidently progressing in some definite direction, and sets us down at last with our faces to the future with scarcely a hint as to any law underlying it all, or indication as to where our own civilisation is tending. Those who remember the impression not so long ago created in England by the modest attempt of Professor Freeman to bring us merely to see that history was past politics, and politics but present history, will feel how far off indeed historical science still is from the goal at which it aims. Yet the social phenomena which are treated of under the heads of politics, history, ethics, economics, and religion must all be regarded as but the intimately related phenomena of the science of life under its most complex aspect. The biologist whose crowning work in the century has been the establishment of order and law in the lower branches of his subject has carried us up to human society and there left us without a guide. It is true that at an earlier stage he has been warned off the ground at the other side and treated with bitterness and intolerance. But there is no reason why the remembrance of such treatment should cause him still to so far forget himself and his duty to science, that we should find him in a state of mind capable of speaking of any class of social phenomena as grotesque fungoid growths. In the meantime, each of the departments of knowledge which has dealt with man in society has regarded him almost exclusively from its own standpoint. To the politician he has been the mere opportunist; to the historian he has been the unit which is the sport of blind forces apparently subject to no law; to the exponent of religion he has been the creature of another world; to the political economist he has been little more than the covetous machine. The time has come, it would appear, for a better understanding and for a more radical method; for the social sciences to strengthen themselves by sending their roots deep into the soil underneath from which they spring; and for the biologist to advance over the frontier and carry the methods of his science boldly into human society where he has but to deal with the phenomena of life where he encounters life at last under its highest and most complex aspect. CHAPTER II CONDITIONS OF HUMAN PROGRESS LET us, as far as possible, unbiassed by pre-conceived ideas, endeavour, before we proceed further, to obtain some clear conception of what human society really is, and of the nature of the conditions which have been attendant on the progress we have made so far. There is no phenomenon so stupendous, so bewildering, and withal so interesting to man as that of his own evolution in society. The period it has occupied in his history is short compared with the whole span of that history; yet the results obtained are striking beyond comparison. Looking back through the glasses of modern science we behold him at first outwardly a brute, feebly holding his own against many fierce competitors. He has no wants above those of the beast; he lives in holes and dens in the rocks; he is a brute, even more feeble in body than many of the animals with which he struggles for a brute's portion. Tens of thousands of years pass over him, and his progress is slow and painful to a degree. The dim light which inwardly illumines him has grown brighter; the rude weapons which aid his natural helplessness are better shaped; the cunning with which he circumvents his prey, and which helps him against his enemies, is of |