COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



that, with the limited appliances at his com- 

 mand, he could not have been expected to dis- 

 cover it. Nevertheless his contributions to 

 sociology were exceedingly brilliant and valu- 

 able, and he did perhaps all that the greatest 

 thinker could have done forty years ago. He 

 arrived at a double generalization of the phe- 

 nomena of intellectual and material progress, as 

 wide as could then be reached by unaided his- 

 torical induction ; and he verified this double 

 generalization by an elaborate survey of ancient 

 and modern history, which, even had he written 

 nothing else, would alone suffice to make his 

 name immortal. It entitles him, I think, to be 

 ranked first among those sociologists who have 

 proceeded solely on the historical method, — 

 on a somewhat higher plane, perhaps, than Vico 

 or Montesquieu, Turgot or Condorcet. That 

 generalization, in both its branches, and in so 

 far as it is correct, we have here seen to be a 

 corollary from the fundamental law of social 

 evolution obtained in the preceding chapter. 

 We have seen that the continuous adaptation, 

 both moral and intellectual, of the community 

 to its environment, involves, as necessary con- 

 comitants, both the progressive deanthropomor- 

 phization of men's conceptions of Cause, and 

 the gradual change from military to industrial 

 habits of life. And the harmony between the 

 results thus obtained by pursuing two wholly 

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