COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



society hold together is that hero worship which 

 enjoins impHcit obedience to the head of the 

 tribe or state. But as we have already seen, 

 the steady growth of altruism at the expense 

 of egoism, which renders possible a more com- 

 plete social aggregation, renders possible also a 

 more complete development of individual lib- 

 erty. So that what in one age is a needful con- 

 trol exercised by the community over its mem- 

 bers becomes in the next age an undue control. 

 All this is expressed in the law of progress, as 

 here formulated ; but it is not expressed, with 

 any approach to accuracy, in the crude state- 

 ment that the protective spirit is an obstacle to 

 civilization. 



Indeed the longer we study this general for- 

 mula, the more we shall be convinced that it 

 includes and justifies all sound inductions which 

 can be derived from a survey of historical phe- 

 nomena. As we apply it to the facts of history 

 one after another, we shall see more clearly that 

 its very abstractness is its excellence, and that 

 the initial difficulty in thoroughly realizing its 

 import arises from its very fulness of meaning. 

 And we shall become ever more deeply im- 

 pressed with the belief that no amount of mere 

 historic induction can give us a universally ap- 

 plicable law of social progress, unless our results 

 be deductively interpreted as corollaries from 

 the general laws of life. 



340 



