RELATION OF SOCIOLOGY TO BIOLOGY. 335 



Observe again : in all forms of development the culmination and 

 decline are in strength rather than in quality. This is only another 

 mode of expressing subordination to a higher force. The perceptive 

 and imaginative faculties, indeed, decline in strength and vigor as age 

 advances ; but they steadily progress in refinement, if intellectual cult- 

 ure continues. If, for example, relish for art is more intense in youth, 

 it is also more gross. If it declines with age, it becomes also more 

 refined, more discriminating, higher — i. e., it becomes subordinated to 

 higher faculties. The same is true of development of the organic king- 

 dom ; for, when a dominant class declines, it declines in strength^ not 

 in organization. So, also, is it in society. The principle of chivalry, 

 for example, culminated in the middle ages. It has since declined in 

 strength, but gained in refinement ; lost in quantity, but gained in 

 quality. It has become less fantastic, less extravagant, less affected ; 

 more rational and genuine. In other words, it has become subordi- 

 nated to still higher principles. 



Observe again and finally : this idea of progress of society by cycli- 

 cal movement is comparatively modern, and even yet imperfectly appre- 

 hended. "Whence did it come ? We see no evidence of it among the 

 ancient Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans, nor among modern Chinese or 

 Japanese. None of these could conceive any civilization higher than 

 their own. None of these dreamed of an onward progress of the whole 

 race, of which their own civilization was only one temporary phase. The 

 Jews had it not. They could not conceive of their religion and polity 

 passing away. Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that they rejected 

 Christ, who preached the unheard-of doctrine of the introduction of a 

 new era? The idea was, in fact, first announced by Christ himself, 

 when he taught that the Jewish polity and ritual must pass away, and 

 yet the law he fulfilled ,' that the form is temporary, but the spirit 

 eternal ; that the form dies, but the spirit must take on higher and 

 higher forms. Until that time it is doubtful if the idea of any scheme 

 of religion or politics being a temporary phase of civilization, and 

 therefore passing away by the very law of human progress — the idea 

 that the forms of the social body like the forms of the animal body are 

 necessarily temporary — ever entered the human mind. How imper- 

 fectly it is yet apprehended, even by the most advanced peoples, is 

 plainly shown by the history of both church and state. Immutable 

 forms have ever been asserted and maintained by force until \'iolently 

 broken and thrown ofi^ by revolution. This great law is now gener- 

 alized and made a universal law of all evolution only by biological re- 

 search. 



(c?.) Survival of the Fittest. — The survival of the fittest, in the 

 fierce struggle for life, is the best known and most universally recog- 

 nized factor of the evolution of the organic kingdom. The manner in 

 which this factor operates especially in successive differentiation, and 

 the increasing specialization of each differentiated form, in causing the 



