212 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pr. n. 



of social, psychical, and vital changes, but also of inorganic 

 changes. Underlying all the sciences of genesis, and fusing 

 them into one grand science of cosmogony, it utters no truth 

 concerning organic or social development which is not equally 

 true of all development. Thus while it is indeed, in the 

 deepest sense, the ultimate law to which organic and super- 

 organic changes conform, it is silent respecting the differential 

 characteristics by which these changes are distinguished from 

 inorganic changes. Already in treating of the evolution of 

 life we saw that the ultimate and general formula needed to 

 be supplemented by a derivative and special formula, which 

 should describe organic development in terms inapplicable to 

 inorganic phenomena. And this formula we found in the 

 definition of life as the continuous adjustment of inner to 

 outer relations, upon which also was afterwards based our 

 entire theory of the evolution of intelligence. 



Now the historic surve} 7 into which we were led a moment 

 ago, while inquiring into the progress of moral feelings, 

 showed us that, in this respect also, the evolution of society 

 agrees with the evolution of life in general. The progress of 

 a community, as of an organism, is a process of adaptation, 

 a continuous establishment of inner relations in con 

 formity to outer relations. If we contemplate material civi 

 lization under its widest aspect, we discover its legitimate 

 aim to be the attainment and maintenance of an equilibrium 

 between the wants of men and the outward means of satis 

 fying them. And while approaching this goal, society is 

 ever acquiring in its economic structure both greater hetero 

 geneity and greater specialization. It is not only that agri 

 culture, manufactures, commerce, legislation, the acts of the 

 ruler, the judge, and the physician, have since ancient times 

 grown immeasurably multiform, both in their processes and 

 in their appliances ; but it is also that this specialization has 

 resulted in the greatly increased ability of society to adapt 

 itself to the emergencies by which it is ever beset. The 



