COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



of existence by the intellectual capacity implied 

 in fetishism and the inability to count above 

 three or four. So, because the men who pos- 

 sess the attributes of civilization must neces- 

 sarily prevail, in the long run, over the. men 

 who lack these attributes, it follows that there 

 cannot have been, in prehistoric times, a general 

 loss of the attributes, external and internal, of 

 civilization. 



Now one of the attributes which will most 

 surely give to any group of men an advantage in 

 the competition with neighbouring groups is the 

 presence of a powerful bond of union between 

 its members. Our entire survey of social evo- 

 lution shows that one of the most distinctive 

 characteristics of civilized men is their capacity 

 for acting in concert with one another over 

 wider and wider areas. The next chapter will 

 enable us more fully to understand that the ac- 

 quirement of this capacity is simply a further 

 prolonging of the extension of correspondences 

 in time and space which has been shown to be 

 a leading characteristic of psychical progress 

 throughout the organic world. The growth 

 of this capacity, during historic times, has been 

 a complex result of the increase of progressive 

 communities, in size, in heterogeneity, and in 

 reciprocity of intercourse. For this many-sided 

 development has not only entailed a relative 

 weakening of the more anti-social impulses and 



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