196 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



succeeded in discovering its complete signification 

 would possess the key to one of the greatest 

 mysteries of creation." 



Nature reveals herself as a harmony from the 

 mechanics of atoms to the mechanics of worlds ; 

 but human society, the super-organic organism, as 

 to-day constituted, is an exception to this universal 

 harmony. 



Organisation is a special rhythm of universal 

 mechanics. From the amoeba to man there is a 

 force that is ever adapting and rendering itself 

 more complex ; it is a variable quantity that every 

 day becomes more constant, ever progressing by 

 virtue of its dependence upon and relation to the 

 cosmic environment. 



Vegetable and animal organisation has its unity, 

 its " do/' whence is derived in ever-increasing com- 

 plexity all this great harmonic organisation, that 

 passes from organisms the most elementary to 

 man ; just as in mathematics all the endless com- 

 binations of quantity are also a function of one 

 unity. 



Let it be noted that, though we speak of adapta- 

 tion, selection, and heredity, strictly these three 

 things constitute one single one, that obeys another 

 still greater, on fixed principles, to which they are 

 absolutely subject, namely, universal mechanics. 



