BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1305 



disputed to me by this would-be separate sociology, what claim 

 has sociology to separate man for its own province, merely 

 because his social evolution has gone further, and is now more 

 complex ? 



Yet the reply is easy, and unanswered by the biologist in these 

 hundred years since the first clear outline of sociology. Its new and 

 distinctive factor, a fresh "emergence", essentially outside and 

 distinct from organic heredity is, as already emphasised, that of 

 Social Heritage, and this both material and immaterial. Take the 

 former first; as expressed in the region cultivated by man, and the 

 home, village, town and city as built ; in short, "the earth as modified 

 by human action". The biologist may here say that is only like 

 greater beaver dams, or larger anthills! Yes, so far; but if King 

 Solomon were to return, he might quite well again "go to the ant", 

 and find that unchanged. But not so with Jerusalem; in which he 

 would find nothing he could recognise, since destroyed and rebuilt 

 oftenest in history, some seventeen times or more since his day, 

 and now in way of rebuilding anew. But ants would rebuild yet 

 oftener if need be! Yes, but in the same way as before; whereas 

 each of these many cities has been something of a "New Jerusalem" 

 in its own distinctive way, and thus very different from all its pre- 

 decessors and successors. Here appears at length the essential quest 

 of sociology, which needs fuller statement. How indeed? No doubt 

 with ant-like battles to destruction, and with reconstruction by the 

 victors ; such is still the lamentable way of man : yet there is plainly 

 more in this history than that, as no biologist will deny. See the 

 Old Testament and the New — separately, and yet in many ways 

 also brought inseparably together — and vast histories besides, 

 which we are still only beginning to unravel, from Egyptian and 

 Phoenician to Babylonian and Assyrian, Hittite and more, before 

 the days of Greeks and Romans. Then again Christians and Moslems, 

 and on to their Crescentades and Crusades, and these in alternation 

 and rival influences to this day; and all with intricacies of relations 

 and antagonisms beyond all others known to history, though every 

 other human grouping has its intricacies too. How so intricate? 

 Because in this location, and in its changing populations, always 

 materially inconsiderable as the great world goes, there has been a 

 succession not only of conflicts but of civilisation movements, each 

 creating more or less of heritage of its own, and some of these again, 

 and incomparably, raised to spiritual powers. For these have 

 emotionalised peoples, through great faiths here centred. Hence to 

 this day, despite extremest vicissitudes unended, this city stands 

 out as the sacred metropolis of Israel and of Christianity alike, and 

 for Islam also as only second to Mecca, which indeed it all but 

 replaced; so a pilgrimage-centre for each and all three. Here then 

 we have got far beyond the scope of biology, and even of all the 



