FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 217 



instinctive side of the nature which frequently con- 

 trols our actions. After our habits are once formed 

 we follow them unthinkingly for the rest of our lives. 



Civilization" Founded upon Instinct 



It is evident that man has not reasoned himself 

 into civilization. He has simply drifted, sometimes 

 forward and sometimes backward. Sometimes the 

 race drifts backward in spite of the strenuous efforts 

 made by the intelligent individuals to keep it pro- 

 gressing. It is instructive to see how clearly the 

 Romans in the days of the later empire understood 

 whither they were drifting, and how well they knew 

 they were going down to destruction. But intelli- 

 gence, combined with such laws as legislation could 

 devise, could not check the tide. The French nation 

 of to-day, as it reads its own statistics and notices 

 its decreasing birth rate, clearly understands that 

 it is in a similar position, and is making strenuous 

 efforts by legislation to stem the current which is 

 leading it downward. That it will succeed is at least 

 doubtful, for such great currents of progress have 

 never yet been stopped by legislation. The other 

 European, as well as the American people of to-day, 

 are recognizing a similar problem. 



Equally true is it that man has not reasoned him- 

 self into advance. Nothing is more certain than that 

 the force that urged man toward organization has 

 not been the conception that such organization raised 

 him to a higher plane. He has been stimulated to 

 combine with his fellow man by various influences, 

 but an intelligent comprehension that combination 

 produces an advance in civilization has not been one 

 of them. It is impulse of one kind or another that 



