on
made and remade western Europe; Adam Smith and Darwin swayed economic
and scientific England; Washington and Lincoln were makers of America.

Through such social processes as these--through unconscious
suggestion, through communication and discussion that mould public
opinion, through changes in environment and the influence of new
leaders of thought and action--the evolution of folk life has carried
whole races, sometimes to oblivion, but generally out of savagery and
barbarism into a material and cultural civilization.

15. =Results of the Process.=--The results of the process of social
change are so far-reaching as to be almost incalculable. Particularly
marked are the changes of the last hundred years. The best way to
appreciate them is by a comparison of periods. Take college life in
America as an example. Scores of colleges now large and prosperous
were not then in existence, and even in the older colleges conditions
were far inferior to what they are in the newer and smaller colleges
to-day. There were few preparatory schools, and the young man--of
course there were no college women--fitted himself as best he could by
private instruction. To reach the college it was necessary to drive by
stage or private conveyance to the college town, to find rooms in an
ill-equipped dormitory or private house, to be content with plain food
for the body and a narrow course of study for the mind. The method of
instruction was tedious and uninspiring; text-books were unattractive
and dull. There were no libraries worthy of the name, no laboratories
or observatories for research. Scientific instruction was conspicuous
by its absence; the social sciences were unknown. Gymnasiums had not
been evolved from the college wood-pile; intercollegiate sports were
unknown. Glee clubs, dramatic societies, college journalism, and the
other arts and pastimes that give color and variety to modern
university life were unknown.

In the same period modes of thinking have changed. Scientific
discoveries and the principles that have been based on them have
wrought a revolution. Evolution has become a word to conjure with.
Scholars think in terms of process. Biological investigation has opened
wide the whole realm of life and emphasized the place of development in
the physical organism. Psychological study has changed the basis of
philosophy. Sociology has come with new interpretations of human life.
Rapid changes are taking place at the present