THIS paper is an advance report of the results of several years' work in an imperfectly cultivated field. As its title suggests, it relates to social development broadly. It is now a commonplace that civilization is the result of a growth-process. But the doctrine of evolution as applied to human society has thus far given us a gross map of a territory, a set of highly abstract formulas, a standpoint from which to approach the subject, rather than an intimate and practical working idea of the facts. Dazzled by the late achievements of evolutionary science, we are prone to think the whole story has been told. The great fact of social development from the levels of animality having been flung out into relief, we have tended to accept it without pausing to inquire just how, as a practical matter of fact, such a vast upward movement could have taken place. This paper, without pretension to severe scholarship, attempts to indicate briefly one of the main channels through which natural forces have differentiated the phenomena of human association out of anterior orders of reality, and made a science of sociology possible.i. The beginnings of social growth, as recovered by modern research, can be indicated in a general way within the limits of a single paragraph somewhat as follows:Man once lived an animal life, without knowledge of the industrial arts, scattered about in small groups, depending for food upon a precarious natural supply, and fighting with the lower animals and his own kind for the means of existence. Nothing like society, as we now understand the term, was to be found on the earth. But, making progress from this condition, man learned to fashion rough tools of wood and stone, then implements of polished stone, and at length utensils of copper and bronze. Meanwhile he became expert in hunting and fishing, acquired the use of fire, and domesticated some of the lower animals. During the prehistoric period he also learned to save seeds for planting, and thus made the beginnings of agriculture.
