274 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



and then assimilation comes by imitation. It is of greatest 

 importance, for example, that the ruler of such a conglomerate 

 state as Austria-Hungary should have such personal magnetism 

 as to win the affection and loyalty of the people whether Magyar, 

 Italian, German, Jew or Slav. With personal prestige he can 

 win not only by encouraging the spread of culture among the 

 aliens, but even more by personal example exercised first on his 

 friends but ultimately on all throughout the realm. 1 



Justice in all dealings with subject groups is also a supreme 

 requisite in assimilation, and the granting of large civil and 

 political rights. 2 



V Passing to an analysis of the successive phases in the develop- 

 ment of social consciousness our author shows that just as in- 

 dividual consciousness arises out of struggle and the rupture of 

 mental equilibrium, this rupture resulting either in pleasure or 

 pain, 3 so social consciousness arises only in the presence of the 

 unusual and " startling." Psychic pleasures, he holds, are far 

 higher and more enduring than physiological, hence culture in its 

 varied forms is most important for a group, and culture tends 

 to be made incarnate in human institutions. 



The human body is a totality of organs of service to the psychic life of the 

 brain. Society is a totality of institutions of service for intellectual produc- 

 tion. This production is the end of the life of societies and naturally takes 

 first place in national consciousness. In civilized societies the savants, 

 philosophers, religious innovators, authors and artists are in the first rank. 

 Their glory far transcends that of the rich and the men of state.* 



Novicow shows that social consciousness up to the present has 

 been developed largely by wars and conquests but that it is 

 possible to have as a social goal the expansion of nationalism by 

 intellectual conquest, by the attractive power of a culture that 



1 " Pour etre aim, il faut tre aimable. Aussi, sur ce terrain, le dominateur 

 ne peut agir que par ses qualites personnelles. S'il est intelligent, noble de char- 

 actere, loyal, fier, avec cela affable, sfiduisant, bref s'il a ce prestige magique que 

 donne la superiority morale, il exerce un grand attrait sur son entourage . . . mais 

 les sentiments se manifestent aussi dans les societes par le ceremonial et les moeurs. 

 Ici a dominateur peut agir de nouveau par des mesures legislatives, mais naturelle- 

 ment son action la plus puissante s'exerce par Pexemple." Les Luttes, p. 149; 

 cf. pp. 288 f. 



1 Ibid., pp. 290 f. 3 Ibid., pp. 159 f. 4 Ibid., p. 166. 



