lution, in so far as this may be expounded in a simple and concise
form. The comparative method must be employed in order to discover the
fundamental attributes of savage, barbarous, and civilized communities
which seem to differ so considerably in their complexity of social
structure, and in order also to show that such basic elements are like
those of communities formed by lower animals, and are equally the products
of natural evolution. This whole subject seems to be exceedingly complex,
because in our daily contact with others of our kind and in our occasional
views of foreign races like our own, the smaller details occupy our
attention, diverting it from the great basic principles according to which
every society is organized and operates. But when once the major elements
have been discovered in civilized and more primitive nations, the
secondary and less essential phenomena fall into their proper relations,
and a statement of the whole process of development becomes relatively
simple. So much space has been devoted to lower types of communal
organisms in order to learn what the fundamentals are, and not merely to
provide analogies that may be useful hereafter. It now remains to arrange
the evidences of social progress during the history of mankind itself, and
to bring such human facts into relation with what has been discovered in
lower nature. It is helpful to begin this part of the subject by asking
ourselves what is already part of common knowledge about human history. Do
we know of any civilized nation that is absolutely stable and unvarying in
social structure, or one that has remained unchanged throughout historic
time? The answer must be negative, for in no case does the past disclose
an example of permanence in social or in any other respect; monarchies and
republics are plastic like the human frame itself. The American
Commonwealth is a relatively young social organism, and it is an easy task
to trace its growth from beginnings in the diffuse and uncorrelated
colonies of pre-Revolutionary years. Those colonies that were formed by
English settlers were transplanted outgrowths from a civilized social
parent which in its turn had clearly evolved from the state of King John's
time and the still cruder form it had under King Alfred.

Should we follow back the recorded history of any people now civilized, we
would always find evidence of ceaseless change; and the writings of
ancient historians like Herodotus and