ABSTRACT
The science which appears to have been the first to employ the Evolutionary Method is Comparative Philology, which used it already in the eighteenth century. The Biblical narrative which had facilitated the application of the Evolutionary Method in Comparative Philology hindered its application in Comparative Anatomy. The Evolutionary Method is, then, applicable only to those classes of facts which can, tentatively at least, be regarded as the products of a process of development. The whole theory of biological evolution rests on applications of the Evolutionary Method; and all the phenomena to which the conception of evolution is applicable afford opportunities for the application of that method. The term “Comparative Method” is frequently or even usually employed as synonymous with the term Evolutionary Method, explained in the foregoing section. Sometimes the comparison of social institutions at different stages of culture may lead to the discovery of an evolutionary sequence or series, and the application of the Evolutionary or Genetic Method.
