CHAPTER XXIV. 



CONCLUSION. 



853. How long this phase of social life to which we are 

 approaching will last, and in what way it will come to an 

 end, are of course questions not to be answered. Probably 

 the issue will be here of one kind and there of another. A 

 sudden bursting of bonds which have become intolerable 

 may in some cases happen: bringing on a military despot 

 ism. In other cases practical extinction may follow a grad 

 ual decay, arising from abolition of the normal relation 

 between merit and benefit, by which alone the vigour of a 

 race can be maintained. And in yet further cases may come 

 conquest by peoples who have not been emasculated by fos 

 tering their feebles peoples before whom the socialistic 

 organization will go down like a house of cards, as did that 

 of the ancient Peruvians before a handful of Spaniards. 



But if the process of evolution which, unceasing through 

 out past time, has brought life to its present height, con 

 tinues throughout the future, as we cannot but anticipate, 

 then, amid all the rhythmical changes in each society, amid 

 all the lives and deaths of nations, amid all the supplantings 

 of race by race, there will go on that adaptation of human 

 nature to the social state which began when savages first 

 gathered together into hordes for mutual defence an 

 adaptation finally complete. Many will think this a wild 

 imagination. Though everywhere around them are crea 

 tures with structures and instincts which have been grad- 



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