152 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



environment. The very fact, mentioned by Wallace, 

 that man must keep in harmony with the changing 

 universe, means that, as the universe changes man's 

 perception and conception change, and this means a 

 change or modification of his brain structure, which is 

 a part of his body. 



SURVIVAL OF HUMAN LAWS. We know from our own 

 observation upon which we base human law, that 

 whatever seems wisest and best in social custom, even 

 to ourselves, eventually survives; and whatever is 

 wisest and best, humanly speaking, should be the fittest. 

 But remember at the same time that our human ideas 

 of the best and the fittest are not always the same 

 as the wide reaching methods of cosmic forces. As one 

 instance of the operation of natural selection, in the 

 survival of the best in human institutions ; but beyond 

 the control of human design, except as a design, may be 

 shown in repeated experiment, to be an effort toward 

 the natural law governing society ; take the illustration 

 of the celebrated lawyer who, in commenting on the 

 evolution of the common law of England: in its 

 wonderful adaptation to the preservation of the 

 interests of man, in his governmental relations, with 

 that form of government peculiar to England, said that 

 if all the criminals who had been condemned by the 

 law, could be placed on a lone island in mid-ocean and 

 left to their own control, they would, as a matter of 

 self-preservation, be compelled to adopt the very code 

 of laws by which they had been condemned. This 

 might not occur until a large number has been anni- 

 hilated, through ignorance, by a violation of the 

 natural laws of sociology and obedience to an unfit 

 criminal code. Then, a statute law, found best fitted 

 to preserve the natural laws, would be necessarily 



