COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



traditions received from ancestral Eskimos. 

 These make up the sum of the conditions 

 affecting the social existence of the Eskimos. 

 The environment of the United States, on the 

 other hand, while it comprises the physical con- 

 ditions of the North American continent, com- 

 prises also all contemporary nations with whom 

 we have intercourse, and all the organized tra- 

 dition — political and ethical, scientific and re- 

 ligious — which we possess in common with all 

 the other communities whose civilization ori- 

 ginated in the Roman Empire. The significance 

 of this increase of size and diversity in the en- 

 vironment will be explained presently. 



Bearing in mind this definition of a social 

 environment, — which I believe carries with it 

 its own justification, — let us briefly notice the 

 error committed by those writers who would 

 fain interpret all the most important social phe- 

 nomena as due, solely or chiefly, to physical 

 causes. This is an error frequently committed 

 by physiologists who try their hand at the inves- 

 tigation of social affairs, and who attempt to 

 treat sociology as if it were a mere branch of 

 biology. But this is not the case. As we have 

 seen psychology to be an offshoot from biology, 

 specialized by the introduction of inquiries con- 

 cerning the relations of the percipient mind to 

 its environment ; we must similarly regard so- 

 ciology as an offshoot from psychology, special- 

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