BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 71 



this, evolutionary theorizing on sociological matters 

 fell somewhat into disrepute. The earlier jubilant 

 certainty gave place to later doubt; and the half- 

 century whose beginnings had roused Haeckel and 

 Herbert Spencer to their imaginative flights closed 

 suitably enough with that remarkable document, 

 T. H. Huxley's Romanes Lecture, in which the great- 

 est protagonist of Darwinism confesses to seeing be- 

 tween man and the rest of the cosmic process, in 

 spite of man's genesis from that same cosmic process, 

 an insuperable and essential opposition, a difference 

 of aim or direction which had turned the original 

 bridge into a barrier.^ 



As a result, not only did the particular comparison 

 between society and an organism fall into disrepute, 

 but also all attempts to draw far-reaching conclusions 

 from biology to human affairs. 



But the original contention still remains, and is 

 logically unassailable. Man is an organism de- 

 scended from lower organisms; his communities are 

 composed of units bound together for mutual good 

 in a division of labour in the same way as are the 

 cells of a metazoan : he can no more escape the effects 

 of his terrestrial environment than can other organ- 

 isms. There is therefore reason to suppose that the 

 processes of evolution in man and man's societies on 

 the one hand, and in lower organisms on the other, 



1 For a remarkable critical history of biological thought during 

 this period, see Radl, '09. 



