Education as a Factor in Past Social Evolution.--Does past social history justify these large claims for education as a factor in social development? It must be replied that the history of human society undoubtedly substantiates this position, but even if it did not, we should still have good ground for claiming that education can be such an all-powerful factor in the social future. The sociological study of past civilizations, however, shows quite conclusively that all of them have depended in one way or another upon educational processes, not only for continuity, but largely, also, for their development. As we have already seen, the life history of a culture or a civilization is frequently the life history of a religion. But religious beliefs, together with the moral and social beliefs, which become attached to them, were effectively transmitted only through the instruction of the young. The religious element did scarcely more than afford a powerful sanction for the moral and social beliefs upon which the social organization of the past rested; hence, when we ascribe great importance to the religious factor in social evolution, we also ascribe, at the same time, great importance to education, because it was essentially the educational process, together with religious sanction, which made possible most of the civilizations and social progress of the past. Indeed, we have no record of any people of any very considerable culture that did not employ educational processes to the largest degree to preserve and transmit that culture from generation to generation. Culture has been passed down in human history, therefore, essentially by educational processes. These educational processes have controlled the formation of habits and character, of ways of thinking and ways of acting, in successive generations of individuals. The educational processes have had much more to do, therefore, with the civilizations and social organization of the past than industrial conditions. Industrial conditions have been rather relatively external factors in the social environment to which society has had to adapt itself more or less. In the same way, political authority has rested on, and been derived from, the social traditions rather than the reverse. It is therefore not too much for the sociologist to say, agreeing with Thomas Davidson, that education is the last and highest method of social evolution. The lowest method of evolution was by selection, and _that_, as we have already emphasized, cannot be neglected. The next method of social evolution apparently to develop was the method of adaptation by organized authority, and, as we have already seen, organized authority in society, or social regulation by means of authority, must indefinitely persist and perhaps increase, rather than diminish; but the latest and highest method of social evolution is not through biological selection nor through the exercise of despotic