198 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [PT. n. 



the Eskimos. The environment of the United States, on the 

 other hand, while it comprises the physical conditions of the 

 North American continent, comprises also all contemporary 

 nations with whom we have intercourse, and all the organized 

 tradition political and ethical, scientific and religious 

 which we possess in common with all the other commu 

 nities whose civilization originated in the Roman Ernpira 

 The significance of this increase of size and diversity in the 

 environment will be explained presently. 



Bearing in mind this definition of a social environment 

 which I believe carries with it its own justification let us 

 briefly notice the error committed by those writers who would 

 fain interpret all the most important social phenomena as due, 

 solely or chiefly, to physical causes. This is an error fre 

 quently committed by physiologists who try their hand at 

 the investigation of social affairs, and who attempt to treat 

 sociology as if it were a mere branch of biology. But this 

 is not the case. As we have seen psychology to be an off 

 shoot from biology, specialized by the introduction of in 

 quiries concerning the relations of the percipient mind to its 

 environment; we must similarly regard sociology as an off 

 shoot from psychology, specialized by the introduction of 

 inquiries concerning the relations of many percipient and 

 emotionally-incited minds to each other and to their common 

 environment. As in biogeny all attempts to discover the law 

 of organic development failed utterly so long as the relations 

 of the organism to physical environing agencies were alone 

 studied, and succeeded only when Mr. Darwin took into 

 account the relations of organisms to each other ; so still 

 more inevitably in sociogeny must all our efforts fail so long 

 as we consider merely the physiologic relations of a commu 

 nity to the country in which it dwells, and refuse to recognize 

 the extent to which communities influence each other by 

 means that are purely intellectual or moral. Doubtless the 

 character of the physical environment is of importance, more 



