COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



of Roman civilization. Thus the progress of 

 society is a mighty process of equilibration or 

 adjustment, in the course of which men's rules 

 of action and emotional incentives to action be- 

 come ever more and more perfectly fitted to the 

 requirements arising from the circumstance of 

 their aggregation into communities. 



Here we have arrived at a rudimentary concep- 

 tion of the law of social progress, so far as it can 

 be obtained from a comprehensive historical in- 

 duction, aided and verified by deduction from 

 a few fundamental truths of biology. The fore- 

 going discussion has brought out one point of 

 fundamental importance, in which the develop- 

 ment of social life agrees with the development 

 of organic life : both are continuous processes 

 of adjustment or equilibration. But in all this 

 there is nothing more than might have been an- 

 ticipated. Since the phenomena of society are 

 really but the phenomena of life, specialized by 

 the addition of new groups of circumstances, 

 we must expect to find that the law of social 

 evolution will be identical with the law of or- 

 ganic evolution, save only that it will require 

 an all-important additional clause to express the 

 results of the action of the superadded circum- 

 stances. Let us then seek to ascertain definitely, 

 — first, in what respects the two kinds of evo- 

 lution agree, and secondly , in what respects they 

 differ. 



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