5Q THE BIOCOSMOS GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



their earliest institution to Him as their God, 

 who also indwells their earliest temple, the 

 abode of the religious institution. From this 

 germinal source evolves the whole institu- 

 tional world; even the Family, the sexual 

 relation of man and woman, rises out of ani- 

 mal ity into the institution, at least in the 

 beginning, through the religious sanction, 

 which stamps it with its own seal of perma- 

 nence, unity, and universality. 



But what of the future, watchman? Hard 

 to foretell in any detail ; still a little with 

 becoming modesty may be glimpsed. It is 

 highly probable that man's development is to 

 move just on this line of institutional asso- 

 ciation, with which he dimly started far back 

 yonder in the twilight of his first conscious- 

 ness, perchance on the Nile banks. All indi- 

 viduals, while retaining and unfolding their 

 individuality to the fullest, are to be social- 

 ized in a common solidarity of institutions 

 which are to make possible and to secure the 

 free growth of the individual to his supreme 

 spiritual stature. A world-union only can 

 bring forth the world-man and the world- 

 people in their full freedom. Already the 

 statement has been taken up by the popular 

 mind that man is a social product, the child 

 of association the completer the association 

 the greater the child. In the political iusti- 



