90 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



duction of natural laws, to which it adjusts itself, 

 its susceptibility of improvement being intimately 

 in accordance with this relation. Hence the con- 

 clusion that Nature is the inheritance of mankind ; 

 that man, bound to Nature by indissoluble ties, is 

 completely within her power ; that humanity as a 

 super-organic organism has but one road to follow 

 the law of evolution, a road hitherto neglected. 

 The progress of humanity is due to their greater 

 adaptation to the external, and is in exact ratio to 

 the number and quality of the brains apt for this 

 work ; one may form an idea of the degree of 

 psychic adaptation still to be acquired by humanity 

 by considering the very small proportion of men 

 engaged in this work of correspondence. 



The relation between two states of consciousness 

 corresponds to the same relation as exists in the two 

 external phenomena that have originated it. Thus 

 one understands that, as soon as man applied 

 himself to the observation of the facts of Nature, 

 the progress of so-called positive science really 

 began. To observe a fact and its relation towards 

 another fact ; to investigate this relation with the 

 same persistence with which this connection is 

 carried out ; to see the whole scale of relations of 

 external phenomena, from the absolutely necessary 

 to the merely accidental, in order to assign it its 



