ABSTRACT
A SOCIETY, no less than an individual human being, an animal organism, or an inorganic product, exhibits in the course of time certain changes. We have but · to glance at the history of any particular society to find that nothing has remained fixed and static, and that the only permanence belongs to change itself. Time devours its children and plays havoc with ancient and venerable usages and institutions, which disintegrate or change their forms. Taking a long stretch of time, we find different economic systems, new political institutions, a different class composition, changes in language, religion, science and art, a different numerical distribution of the inhabitants, and possibly a change in the quality of the people. Some of these changes we can measure as the growth of population or the increase in the number of institutions. Others we can infer by comparing the external features of an institution at an early and at a late stage of its development. We may compare one element of change with another-the culture of a society with man's biological equipment, see whether they change together: and at what speeds. 1 Other elements, such as fashion, art or inventions, may possess distinctive cycles of change whose duration we may determine. Changes may proceed slowly or rapidly, with the" inevitability of gradualness " and evolution or with the inevitability of catastrophe and revolution. In their aggregate we call all these changes social change.
