MENTAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 153 



adopted. That is, those who have a variation of brain 

 structure, enabling them to keep in harmony with 

 natural and social law, survive, and those who do not, 

 die. Man's artificial selection of customs, or habits, 

 must be in conformity with the natural selection of 

 cosmic law. England's common law was strong and 

 sufficing only as it coordinated with natural law, and 

 that condition was not evolved until many laws had 

 been tried and discarded. The common law of England 

 is the result of a thousand years of social evolution, and 

 yet its theory still abides, that every interest rests in 

 a king, which shows that English government is in a 

 state of further evolution. These castaways on an 

 island would, of course, not be compelled to choose a 

 king; but, for self-protection, do the reverse. Under 

 penalty of ultimate extinction, otherwise, they would 

 be forced to adopt those laws, viz., customs, that all 

 human experience has shown to be necessary for the 

 support of society. While codes could be adopted that 

 might, in very many particulars differ from the common 

 law of England, especially in regard to royalty and 

 state church, and in the penalties attached to crimes 

 and misdemeanors, yet the rights of man and the rights 

 of property, would have to be protected in practically 

 the same way that these were in the laws under which 

 these criminals were condemned. The whole social 

 evolution has been, as far as man had anything to do 

 with it, trial, failure, and continually a repetition of 

 trial in different forms and directions, never quite solv- 

 ing the final problem. Perfection has not yet been 

 reached, and perhaps never will be. 



If all conventional human laws could be erased, and 

 men left to protect society by those customs, which 

 experience would compel, it would be found that there 



