ABSTRACT
As he was writing The English Constitution (1867), Bagehot was also asking himself whether Darwinian thought (bared to the world with The Origin of Species in 1859) might help to clarify the deeper structures of society. Physics and Politics was based upon the idea that it could:
[A]s every great scientifi c conception tends to advance its boundaries and be of use in solving problems not thought of when it was started, so here, what was put forward for mere animal history may, with a change in form, but an identical essence, be applied to human history.1
