COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



originated when in the highest mammal vari- 

 ations in intelligence became so much more 

 important than variations in physical structure 

 that they began to be seized upon by natural 

 selection to the relative exclusion of the latter. 

 In the permanent family we have the germ of 

 society. In the response to outer relations by 

 psychical changes, which almost completely sub- 

 ordinate physical changes, we have the germ of 

 civilization. Let us now take a step in advance 

 of previous speculation,^ and see what can be 

 done by combining these two theorems, so that 

 the permanent organization of families and the 

 complex intelligence of the highest mammal will 

 appear in their causal relations to each other. 



Many mammals are gregarious, and grega- 

 riousness implies incipient power of combina- 

 tion and of mutual protection. But gregari- 

 ousness differs from sociality by the absence 

 of definitive family relationships, except during 



^ The latest writer upon these subjects is inclined to give up 

 the problem as insoluble. *' I at least find it difficult to con- 

 ceive of men at all like the present men, unless existing in 

 something like families, that is, in groups avowedly connected, 

 at least on the mother's side, and probably always with a ves- 

 tige of connection, more or less, on the father's side, and 

 unless these groups were, like many animals, gregarious, under 

 a leader more or less fixed. It is almost beyond imagination 

 how man, as we know man, could by any sort of process have 

 gained this step in civilization. ' ' Bagehot, Physics and Politics, 

 p. 136. 



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