CHAPTER XVII 

 SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL* 



THAT the phenomena manifested by 

 human beings, as grouped in societies, 

 conform to fixed and ascertainable laws 

 is a proposition which has thus far been taken 

 for granted, inasmuch as it is logically insepa- 

 rable from the other sets of propositions which 

 go to make up our Cosmic Philosophy. Not 

 only, moreover, have we thus tacitly assumed 

 that social phenomena conform to law and may 

 be made the subject of science, but in the fourth 

 chapter of this Synthesis it was expressly stated 

 that the fundamental law to which they con- 

 form is the Law of Evolution, which has now 

 been proved to hold sway among inorganic and 

 organic phenomena, as well as among those 

 superorganic phenomena which we distinguish 

 as psychical. Under ordinary circumstances we 

 might fairly go on and justify our tacit assump- 

 tion and our explicit assertion by showing, both 

 deductively and inductively, that the evolution 

 of society follows in general the same method 

 as the evolution of organic life. In the follow- 

 ^ [See Introduction, § 22.] 



VOL. Ill 241 



