but it is quite evident which of the two methods is the successful one, and it should be the aim of the social scientist who senses the situation to align himself as much as possible with the more promising procedure.

Such considerations start up before the mind when one is led to reflect upon what evolution means to these two types of scientific workers. To natural science the discoveries of Darwin meant new bearings, a perspective, a unifying principle — and then the inevitable renewal of confidence and burst of eager effort. The idea of evolution showed no kinship with metaphysical speculation. It was no dogma. It is a concrete, proved process, demonstrated in definite terms, and actually verified day by day in the incidents of scientific progress. It is this abundant and continuous verification, not "intuition," which has lent it the force of a major premise. It is not a vague formula which aims to include everything which is at the same time irrefutable and also useless for the further prosecution of scientific labors - but it is to the intellectually curious both a cheering evidence of the success of scientific method and a tool capable of effective use in further discovery. Natural scientists mean

something definite and actual when they use the Darwinian terms variation, selection, transmission, adaptation — and they are helped to get somewhere by the clearness and significance lent to their scientific terminology as the result of Darwin's life and labors.

It would be strange if a set of conclusions like Darwin's, drawn from such a number of instances over several branches of natural science, should prove applicable only to the field of his special inquiry. The fact is that the doctrine of evolution has so held the interest, hostile or devoted, of the world, that its influence, or at least its terminology, has penetrated into regions quite remote from those in which Darwin labored. In a volume of essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the “Origin of Species,"1 notable scholars from many fields united in recognizing their indebtedness to the evolution theory. Here was acknowledged in generous terms its influence, for example, upon the science of language, upon history, and upon the study of religions.

1"Darwin and Modern Science," ed. by A. C. Seward, Cambridge, 1909.

The influence of evolutionary reasoning has reached out, then, beyond the field of its nativity; and it is undeniable that it has had its effect upon the social sciences. But no one can say that the evolutionary principle, as commonly viewed by the social scientist, be he economist, political scientist, or sociologist, affords any such orientation, perspective, unification, inspiration, and positive aid as it does in the realm of the natural sciences. It is an idea which he may accept as a sort of philosophy; it lingers in vague form about the horizon; it is invoked, from time to time, in a general and unproductive sort of way. It is a tenet rather than an instrument for the furthering of scientific knowledge, a thing to be discussed by way of formal logic and speculation rather than proved and used over and over again as a scientific verity. It is no tool of research. If social scientists use the terms variation, selection, and so on, they mean nothing definite and actual by them; their use of these terms is vaguely analogical and does not help them to get anywhere.

Perhaps it is worth while to reflect upon the reason for this condition of affairs. The trouble is that the idea of evolution has come

to the social sciences through a medium, ostensibly scientific, but really philosophical. It is not Darwinian evolution, in the majority of cases, at all. The common persuasion of the social scientists who are generally too little versed in natural science is that evoreading the

lution means Spencer. In his student of the social sciences becomes acquainted with works which were written under the spell of Spencer; authors vary in their relations with him from the glad discipleship of a Fiske on through to the incensed hostility of the orthodox, but they all unite in revering or assailing him as the exponent of evolution. In the natural sciences, on the contrary, not much is heard of Spencer, but evolution means Darwinism. This is very significant of the unlike conceptions of evolution in these two ranges of science.

I have said that social scientists know too little of natural science and its methods. This is a pity, for it is peculiarly needful in the social sciences to keep the feet firmly upon the ground -and the ground is much more likely to be there, and to be solid, where experimentation is, where verification is more positive, substantial, and unescapable, where it is a matter

of observable, objective fact rather than of the balancing of ideas. Darwin cannot be too well known to any one who aspires to the name of scientist; and the facts about his life, character, methods, and performances should be at the finger-ends, especially of the man who aspires to apply science to the study of human society. With all his brilliance Spencer is really, for such a person, an untrustworthy guide. He has been passed upon by natural scientists, beginning with the illustrious group of his contemporaries. Huxley, and even Darwin himself, were familiar with both Spencer and his work; and each, while marvelling at his powers, virtually set him aside as a scientist. Says Darwin of Spencer :

"I feel rather mean when I read him: I could bear, and rather enjoy feeling that he was twice as ingenious and clever as myself, but when I feel that he is about a dozen times my superior, even in the master art of wriggling, I feel aggrieved. If he had trained himself to observe more, even if at the expense, by the law of balancement, of some loss of thinking power, he would have been a wonderful man." "I suspect that hereafter he will be looked at as by far the greatest living philosopher in England; perhaps equal to any that have lived." And, again, "I find that my mind is so fixed by the inductive method, that I cannot appreciate deductive reasoning: