You will note the words "actual, effective power." Nothing is more familiar in human life than for forms to survive after the spirit which created them is dead; and nothing is more familiar than the use of these forms as masks to deceive the populace. There have been many times in history when people have gone on voting, long after their votes ceased to count for anything; there have been many times when people have gone through the motions of freedom long after they have been slaves. Mexico under Diaz had one of the most perfect of constitutions, and was in reality one of the most perfect of despotisms; and we Americans are sadly familiar with political democracies which do not work. Shall we, therefore, join the pessimists and say that history is a blind struggle for useless power, and that the notion of progress is a delusion? I do not think so; on the contrary, I think it is easily to be demonstrated that there has been a steady increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by the race, and in the spread of this knowledge among the whole population. I think that through most of the period of written history we can trace a real development in human society. I think we can analyze the laws of this development, and explain its methods; and I think this knowledge is precious to us, because it enables us to accelerate the process and to make the end more certain. This task, the analysis of social evolution, is the task we have next to undertake. CHAPTER LII THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed.) We have now to consider, briefly, the history of man as a social being, the groups he has formed, and the changes in his group systems. Everything in life grows, and human societies are no exception to the rule. They have undergone a long process of evolution, which we can trace in detail, and which we find conforms exactly to the law laid down by Herbert Spencer; a process whereby a number of single and similar things become different parts of one complex thing. In the case of human societies the units are men and women, and social evolution is a process whereby a small and simple group, in which the individuals are practically alike, grows into a large and complex group, in which the individuals are widely different, and their relations one to another are complicated and subtle.