proprietary legal ideas.

The word 'Sociology' was invented by Herbert Spencer, a popular

writer upon philosophical subjects, who flourished about the

middle of the nineteenth century, but the idea of astate,

planned as an electric-traction system is planned, without

reference to pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines, did

not take a very strong hold upon the popular imagination of the

world until the twentieth century. Then, thegrowing impatience

of the American people with the monstrous and socially paralysing

party systems that had sprung out of their absurd electoral

arrangements, led to the appearance of what came to be called the

'Modern State' movement, and a galaxy of brilliant writers, in

America, Europe, and the East, stirred up the world to the

thought of bolder rearrangements of social interaction, property,

employment, education, and government, than had ever been

contemplated before. Nodoubt these Modern State ideas were very

largely the reflection upon social and politicalthought of the

vast revolution in material things that had been in progress for

two hundred years, but for a long time they seemed to be having

no moreinfluence uponexisting institutions than the writings of

Rousseau and Voltaire seemed to have had at the time of the death

of the latter. They were fermenting in men'sminds, and it needed

only just such social and political stresses as the coming of the

atomic mechanisms brought about, to thrust them forward abruptly

into crude and startling realisation.

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