A. The Concept of Progress 1. The Earliest Conception of Progress. _F. S. Marvin_ 965 2. Progress and Organization. _Herbert Spencer_ 966 3. The Stages of Progress. _Auguste Comte_ 968 4. Progress and the Historical Process. _Leonard T. Hobhouse_ 969
B. Progress and Science 1. Progress and Happiness. _Lester F. Ward_ 973 2. Progress and Prevision. _John Dewey_ 975 3. Progress and the Limits of Scientific Prevision. _Arthur J. Balfour_ 977 4. Eugenics as a Science of Progress. _Francis Galton_ 979
C. Progress and Human Nature 1. The Nature of Man. _George Santayana_ 983 2. Progress and the Mores. _W. G. Sumner_ 983 3. War and Progress. _James Bryce_ 984 4. Progress and the Cosmic Urge a) The _Élan Vitale. Henri Bergson_ 989 b) The _Dunkler Drang. Arthur Schopenhauer_ 994
III. Investigations and Problems 1. Progress and Social Research 1000 2. Indices of Progress 1002
_Selected Bibliography_ 1004 _Topics for Written Themes_ 1010 _Questions for Discussion_ 1010
[1] See _Source Book for Social Origins_. Ethnological materials, psychological standpoint, classified and annotated bibliographies for the interpretation of savage society (Chicago, 1909).
Sociology first gained recognition as an independent science with the publication, between 1830 and 1842, of Auguste Comte's _Cours de philosophie positive_. Comte did not, to be sure, create sociology. He did give it a name, a program, and a place among the sciences.
Comte's program for the new science proposed an extension to politics and to history of the positive methods of the natural sciences. Its practical aim was to establish government on the secure foundation of an exact science and give to the predictions of history something of the precision of mathematical formulae.
We have to contemplate social phenomena as susceptible of prevision, like all other classes, within the limits of exactness compatible with their higher complexity. Comprehending the three characteristics of political science which we have been examining, prevision of social phenomena supposes, first, that we have abandoned the region of metaphysical idealities, to assume the ground of observed realities by a systematic subordination of imagination to observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased to be absolute, and have become relative to the variable state of civilization, so that theories, following the natural course of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them; and, thirdly, that permanent political action is limited by determinate laws, since, if social events were always exposed to disturbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine, no scientific prevision of them would be possible. Thus, we may concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social philosophy on this one great attribute of scientific prevision.[3]