SOME FORCES OF THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 505 



muscles move like the snap of a steel trap, no one would ever be 

 burned in those cases where freedom of bodily motion was pos- 

 sible. Thus the slowness of these processes resulting in injury to 

 the body is, from the physicist's standpoint, a defect, but it exists 

 because the nature of the matter out of which the man is built 

 puts an undesirable limit to the intensity of action. 



If we leave now the consideration of the static properties of 

 matter, and view it in its dynamic aspect, we encounter a gener- 

 alization of the widest significance. The most notable thing 

 about the universe is that it is the scene of incessant change. 

 Absolute stability is unknown; no single thing living or non- 

 living is exactly the same for two consecutive hours. Even those 

 phenomena which stand as types of the permanent, the revolution 

 of the earth and the position of the stars, are now known to be 

 undergoing changes which, though exceedingly slow, are never- 

 theless constant and ever progressing toward some future condi- 

 tion whose character we know not, but which we are certain will 

 be as fleeting and transitory as the present. 



If " all our yesterdays have lit the way to dusty death," then 

 is it not also equally true that all our to-morrows will usher in 

 new and unknown forms of resurrection ? for, I take it, the mate- 

 rial universe of stars and planets, the great globe of the earth, the 

 movements of matter and the sequences of life, all tell one impres- 

 sive story, which is, that to undergo change, endless change, is the 

 sentence pronounced on everything built of matter and having its 

 share of the universal motion around us. 



But while there seems no escape from the above conclusion, 

 there is another generalization equally great, which is its supple- 

 ment ; this is, that the changes are not chaotic : everywhere there 

 are method, rule, law ; and these laws, as we interpret them, are the 

 unchangeable elements of the universe. The method by which a 

 given result is produced is not exhausted by that result. The 

 rule that all living things must die will still remain unimpaired 

 when the last man shall have sunk into his grave. The law that 

 all things shall change is itself enforced and executed by that 

 change, so that it remains permanent while the forms and agglom- 

 eratiqjis of matter are fleeting. 



Now, the purpose of this paper, to which the above is a perora- 

 tion rather than an argument, is to show that social changes, like 

 other mutations, are governed by law. The discovery of these 

 laws will constitute the science of sociology, just as in nonliving 

 things the same kind of study is called physics or chemistry. The 

 application of these laws will give us an art of sociology, very 

 much as pure science finally culminates in engineering or medi- 

 cine. 



Religion excepted, the study of sociology as a pure science 



