CHAPTER XVtt 



SOCIOLOGY AND FRFE-WILL. 



TEAT the phenomena manifested by human beings, as grouped 

 in societies, conform to fixed and ascertainable laws, is a pro 

 position which has thus far been taken for granted, inasmuch 

 as it is logically inseparable from the other sets of proposi 

 tions which go to make up our Cosmic Philosophy. Not only, 

 moreover, have we thus tacitly assumed that social phenomena 

 conform to law and may be made the subject of science, but 

 in the fourth chapter of this Synthesis it was expressly stated 

 that the fundamental law to which they conform is the Law 

 of Evolution, which has now been proved to hold sway among 

 inorganic and organic phenomena, as well as among those 

 super-organic phenomena which we distinguish as psychical. 

 Under ordinary circumstances we might fairly go on and 

 justify our tacit assumption and our explicit assertion, by 

 showing, both deductively and inductively, that the evolution 

 cf society follows in general the same method as the evolu 

 tion of organic life. In the following chapter I shall proceed 

 to do this. I shall show, first, that social evolution consists 

 in the integration of human families or tribal communities into 

 larger and larger groups, which become ever more heterogene 

 ous and more interdependent ; and secondty, that what we call 

 civilization consists in the ever increasing definiteness and 

 complexity of the correspondence between the community 



