body of this work.

Sociological phenomena cannot be fully expressed by any combination of
exclusively physical, biological, and psychic terms, for the
significant element of man and of society consists of something more
than these--namely, personality. It is this that differentiates human
from animal evolution. The unit of human sociology is a
self-conscious, self-determinative being. The causative factor in the
social evolution of man is his personality. The goal of that evolution
is developed personality. Personality is thus at once the cause and
the end of social progress. The conditions which affect or determine
progress are those which affect or determine personality.

The biological evolution of man from the animal has been, it is true,
frankly assumed in this work. No attempt is made to justify this
assumption. Let not the reader infer, however, that the writer
similarly assumes the adequacy of the so-called naturalistic or
evolutionary origin of ethics, of religion, or even of social
progress. It may be doubted whether Darwin, Wallace, Le Conte, or any
exponent of biological evolution has yet given a complete statement of
the factors of the physiological evolution of man. It is certain,
however, that ethical, religious, and social writers who have striven
to account for the higher evolution of man, by appealing to factors
exclusively parallel to those which have produced the physiological
evolution of man, have conspicuously failed. However much we may find
to praise in the social interpretations of such eminent writers as
Comte, Spencer, Ward, Fiske, Giddings, Kidd, Southerland, or even
Drummond, there still remains the necessity of a fuller consideration
of the moral and religious evolution of man. The higher evolution of
man cannot be adequately expressed or even understood in any terms