CHAPTER XVII 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 



THE purpose of our investigation as set forth in the Introduction 

 was to make a historical approach to a constructive social phi- 

 losophy having as its central theme adaptation in its four-fold 

 aspect of passive material and spiritual and active material and 

 spiritual, this approach beginning with Auguste Comte and 

 Herbert Spencer, though in a few cases including previous writers 

 whose contributions seemed essential to an appreciation of those 

 coming later. The method chosen was to review briefly the social 

 theories of writers in this field who have been most influential in 

 the development of the doctrine of adaptation, and in an order so 

 far as possible, both historical and logical. 



Comte's Positivism was reviewed as a fitting prolegomenon to 

 social philosophy and it was shown how he had contributed to the 

 problem and formulated this principle of adaptation in its various 

 aspects though with different terminology. His chief contribu- 

 tion, we saw, was his insistence on the possibility of a scientific 

 study of society, and the necessity of such a study as the basis of 

 social reconstruction. Comte, however, did not believe in cosmic 

 evolution, so his system was a " subjective synthesis " without a 

 necessary objective correlate. 



Herbert Spencer is to be credited with the first comprehensive 

 attempt to formulate the principle of cosmic evolution and this he 

 did in terms of increasing differentiation and integration. In his 

 Social Statics, he formulated the principle of adaptation and 

 applied it as a test to various institutions. In his Progress, Its 

 Law and Cause, he worked out the organic analogy as applied to 

 society. In his Sociology, he showed how the general law he had 

 formulated for cosmic evolution applied to the development of 

 society as a whole but especially to various social institutions, 

 giving much consideration to primitive conditions. We noted 

 that while the theory of passive adaptation, both physical and 



