EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



will is a development from the lower animals or 

 whether it be a special faculty added to man by a 

 supernatural being. No scientific law can be imagined 

 to control a system of bodies where the separate parts 

 may will to act or to refrain from acting. 



According to the scientific doctrine of society, the 

 race of man is an organism subject to general laws 

 which conform to the mechanical, or material, laws 

 of nature. These laws, which, if known, would per- 

 mit us to unravel the past and predict the future 

 course of history, can be found only by studying so- 

 ciety as a whole. The individual sinks to insignifi- 

 cance; he may seem to act as he desires or wills, and 

 he may seem to affect results; his actions, in reality, 

 are included in the general scheme of affairs. What 

 each does, and what all do, is predetermined by what 

 was done in the past generations or by the unvarying 

 law of society. Fiske gives us this social law: "The 

 fact remains that civilization runs in a definite path, 

 that the sum total of ideas and feelings dominant in 

 the next generation will be the offspring of the sum 

 total of ideas and feelings dominant in this."'^ For 

 example, the course of the French Revolution is inde- 

 pendent of the fact that the Corsicans failed in their 

 attempt to assassinate Napoleon in 1792. Or rather, 

 the failure was neither chance nor due to the ingenu- 

 ity of Napoleon. The Corsicans failed in their attempt 

 because the actions of previous people were such that 



23 Cosmic Philosophy, vol. Ill, p. 348. 



C 333 3 



