higher order, has also resulted in the more and more complete subordination of the requirements of the aggregate to the requirements of the individual. And be it further noticed, that the relative strength of the altruistic feelings which maintain the stability of the highest social aggregation, maintains also to the fullest extent the independence of its individual members; while the relative strength of the egoistic feelings which in early times prevented the existence of any higher organization than the family or tribe, was also incompatible with individual freedom of action. Now this is precisely the reverse of the state of things which we find in organic evolution. In organic development, the individual life of the parts is more and more submerged in the corporate life of the whole. In social development, corporate life is more and more subordinated to individual life. The highest organic life is that in which the units have the least possible freedom. The highest social life is that in which the units have the greatest possible freedom. This feature of social evolution is most conveniently described by Schelling's term individuation, which is employed in a kindred sense both in Mr. Spencer's and in other modern works on biology.

Thus we have at last reached the conclusion in quest of which we set out. Supplementing our previous results, according to which organic and social evolution were seen to agree, by our present result, according to which they are seen to differ, we obtain a formula for social evolution which may be regarded as fundamentally accurate. We obtain the Law of Progress, which may be provisionally stated as follows:

"The Evolution of Society is a continuous establishment of psychical relations within the Community, in conformity to physical and psychical relations arising in the Environment; during which, both the Community and the Environment pass from a state of relatively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a state of relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during

which, the constituent Units of the Community become ever more distinctly individuated."

In the next chapter I shall proceed to show how this exceedingly general and technical formula includes and justifies whatever is defensible in sundry less abstract generalizations, expressed in more popular language, by Comte and Buckle. We shall be called upon to pass in review certain phases of social evolution, and to criticize, with the aid of the theorems now at our disposal, the claims of Comte to be regarded as the founder of sociology.

CHAPTER XIX.

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS.

THE discussion contained in the foregoing chapter has shown to what a notable extent the phenomena of social evolution may be expressed, with the strictest accuracy, by formulas originally invented to describe the evolution of life in general. Let us briefly review the results which we have already obtained.

First, we saw that social as well as organic evolution consists in the continuous adaptation of the community, or organism, to the environment. Or, expressing the same thing in other words, social progress is a continuous establishment of inner relations in conformity to outer relations.

Secondly, we saw that in the course of this adaptation the community, like the organism, continually increases in definite heterogeneity, through successive differentiations and integrations.

Thirdly, we saw that in the comman ́by, as is the prequelaen, the increase in internal heterogeneity is defen hat, my head continuous increase of heterogeneity in the way syangad

Fourthly, we saw that the ingon, di satanggsNG environment is determined by the myszkan. YA

communities into more and

aggregates. And the iw cut tote yʻ imposed zu spicin

VOL IL

These four generalizations, expressing the points in which social and organic development coincide, were summed up in the two first clauses of our law of progress. They are immediate corollaries of the law of universal evolution and of the definition of life as adjustment. They are not to be understood as mere expressions of striking analogies. They are to be understood as implying that the evolution of life and the evolution of society are, to a certain extent and in the most abstract sense, identical processes. Such a conclusion, indeed, became inevitable the moment we were brought to admit that the phenomena of society constitute but a specialized division of the phenomena of psychical life.

Nevertheless it would be a grave error to infer, from this necessary coincidence in development, that a community is nothing more than a kind of organism, as Plato imagined in his "Republic," and Hobbes in his "Leviathan." When we go so far as to compare the metropolis of a community to the heart of an organism, its roads to blood-vessels, its circulating commodities to circulating nutritive materials, its money to blood-corpuscles, its channels for transmitting intelligence to nerve-axes, and the individuals of which it is composed to physiologic units; we are instituting a series of analogies, which are no doubt of considerable value in the study both of history and of political economy. In his essay on the "Social Organism," Mr. Spencer has traced a great number of such analogies, which are no less instructive than curious, but they are after all analogies and not homologies. So when M. Littré points out that the study of political economy stands in the same relation to the science of sociology as the study of the nutritive functions to the science of biology, he reveals an analogy of great philosophical value. But we nevertheless feel that there is a wide distinction between an organism and a community, which it would be absurd to ignore; and Hobbes's conception of society as a vast Leviathan strikes us as grotesque.

This insuperable distinction is the fact that in a community the psychical life is all in the parts, while in an organism the psychical life is all in the whole. The living units of society "do not and cannot lose individual consciousness," while. "the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness." "The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts; instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life." The historical induction at the close of the preceding chapter showed us that such as been the case. While during the advance toward gester heterogeneity and coherence, the original lines of demaration between communities have been ever becoming face as the communities have become integrated into higher and nigger aggregates, we saw that as a part of the very same process the individualities of the members of society have been r increasing in definiteness and ever acquiring a wider verne for activity. And we saw that this process not on.7 aas gone on, but must continue to go on; since by the law of use and disuse, the sympathetic or social feelings must continue to grow at the expense of the wifish or anti-social feelings; and since this slow emotional modification, which makes possible the higher integration of society, ensures also the higher individuation of its members. "Progress, there fore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civiliza tion being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race contínues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness." As surely as the astronomer can predict the future state off the heavens, the sociologist can foresee that the process of adaptation aust go on until