854 SOCIAL STRUCTURE 



where there remains a great numerical disproportion of the native 

 race, this latter being somewhat advanced in civilization, as in 

 British India, other complications arise and new problems confront 

 the student. In Mexico, and to a greater or less extent throughout 

 Central and South America, there has been extensive blending of 

 conquering and conquered races, giving rise to still other conditions, 

 and correspondingly varying the character of the resultant social 

 structures. 



This is not the place to dilate upon the remote effects of this 

 vast process of universal social integration, but I cannot leave the 

 subject without repeating what I have said before: that if we could 

 but peer far enough into the great future, we should see this planet 

 of ours ultimately peopled with a single homogeneous and com- 

 pletely assimilated race of men the human race in the com- 

 position of which could be detected all the great commanding 

 qualities of every one of its racial components. And I will also add 

 that to the subsequent duration of this final race on the earth there 

 are no assignable limits. 



But we are considering social structure and not social integration, 

 although these are intimately bound up together. We have seen 

 how social structures are formed. The spontaneous products of a 

 great cosmical law, they could not be other than thoroughly or- 

 ganized, firm, compact, and durable mechanisms, comparable to 

 organic structures tissues, organs, organisms. This is the most 

 important lesson taught by the science of sociology. If all the 

 world could learn it, the greater part of all political and social 

 failures would be prevented. It would dispel at one blow all the 

 false notions so widely current relative to the alteration, abolition, 

 or overthrow of any human institution. As human institutions are 

 the products of evolution, they cannot be destroyed, and the only 

 way they can be modified is through this same process of evolution. 

 Universal acquaintance with the causes, the laws, and the natural 

 history of social structures, and with their consequent durability, 

 permanence, and indestructibility, would produce a complete change 

 in all the prevailing ideas of reform, and the superficial reformers, 

 however well-meaning, would forthwith abandon their chimerical 

 schemes, and set about studying the science of society with a view 

 to the adoption of legitimate means for the direction of the course 

 of social evolution toward the real and possible modification and 

 perfecting of social structures. For structures are easily modified 

 by appropriate methods. They are of themselves always under- 

 going changes. It is in this that social progress wholly consists. 

 But the integrity of the structures must not be disturbed. They 

 must remain intact and be permitted, or even caused, to change 

 in the desired direction, and to be ultimately transformed into the 



