79^ Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



vidualistic preferment before national advance, and so nations 

 that have confided in their selfish kings, statesmen, and gen- 

 erals have been betrayed, duped, conquered, at times destroyed. 

 Mankind is surely learning to appraise tbese actions at their 

 true scientific value. 



So, as already sketched under the chapter on religion (pp. 

 708, 728), mankind has advanced to high and still higher 

 heights of social and sociological development, till, under the 

 pure, lofty, and ever unattained perfections included in the 

 pure and simple doctrines of Christianity, the nations that 

 have made its truths their pole-stars by which to steer are 

 now the dominant ones of the world. The most altruistic, 

 vigorous, and sublime proenvironment has produced the most 

 perfect, most extensive, and most powerful social unions. 



Mankind however, now as ever in his past history, is search- 

 ing out for the highest attainable social organization. He has 

 learned by long and bitter experience that "competition is 

 commercial war, cooperation is commercial peace." He has 

 learned that as are the units — the individuals — so is the social 

 organism. He has learned, and is learning to the point of 

 graduation, that, as disintegrating influences in the individual 

 can best be overcome by action of the inhibitory or repressing 

 nerve centers, so disintegrating influences in the body politic 

 have to be subdued and weeded out by like repression on the 

 part of the united mass of that body. He has also learned 

 that by use of the motor nerve-centers for highest accom- 

 plislunents, alike in the life of the individual and of the state, 

 the highest benefit will accrue to both. Therefore Aspiration 

 and Repression are the two watch-words for human scientific 

 advance. 



So, many of the imaginary obstacles that privileged and 

 enfranchised ones have attempted to place in the pathway 

 of socialistic evolution are purely imaginary and reactionary, 

 which will disappear as that pathway is advanced along. With 

 a perfected system of Initiative and Referendum, the wisdom 

 of each man and woman in each community, state, and nation 

 will be learned on each new problem, that even a few may 



