Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/776

 760 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

more fugitive, and may be even less difficult to observe than the conditions of physical life and growth and change. We are told that, by methods which we partly know and partly guess, and cannot wholly even guess, this physical world, with all its diversi- fied and rich content, has been evolved from a monotonous mist that hung along the border-line between being and non- existence. The social world has also had its evolution, dating from a time not so remote, and proceeding by methods which it is not rash to think are more accessible to investigation. And shall no worthy object of study be perceived in this evolution by which, from its poor precarious beginnings, the social world in which we live has risen? Bacon said truly that we are the true antiquity, and that which is called antiquity was the childhood of the race. It is only ignorance or predetermined blindness that can believe in a golden age that is somewhere behind us, and receding ever farther into the unreturning past, though " we may look backward for hope and cheer, since thus we see the direction of the journey of humanity." Already practical men and students of politics have begun to recognize, though inadequately, that there is a social process which it would be worth while to under- stand, which is not political nor national, but which underlies politics and affects that which is national; that a new law does not constitute a reform, but that reform is an effect of subtler agencies. The path of progress is smoothed not chiefly by the plow and roller of legislation, but, like the roads in central Africa, by the passing of many feet. This path-making sociology must understand and explain.

But however much we emphasize the idea of past social evolu- tion, it does not by any means complete the concept of the social process. The feet of the many are always passing. The development of the social world goes on with ever-increasing complexity and multiplying possibilities of further advance. Therefore the study of social evolution is not a study of the past alone. Contemporary social causation is one with the process hitherto. And the social present is continuously caused. And even the social phenomena which are most nearly fixed and changeless are manifestations of the social process.