202 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. n. 



tion of tlie organism with its environment. In tlie mainten- 

 ance of such an equilibrium life has been shown to consist. 

 Accordingly, as we have seen, if the environment is suddenly 

 and violently altered, the organism perishes ; but when it is 

 altered slowly, the organism slowly adapts itself to it. If 

 the adaptation is not completed within a single generation, 

 nevertheless a suf&cient number of generations will com- 

 plete it, just as the children and grandchildren of an emi- 

 grant become more and more thoroughly acclimated to their 

 new home. 



It is now to be shown that civilization is a slow process 

 of breeding, of adaptation, of acclimatization — mental and 

 moral, as well as physical, — of equilibration between the 

 Community and the Environment. From age to age the 

 environment is slowly but incessantly changing, and to its 

 gradual changes the human race, embodied in communities, 

 is continually adapting itself. As just observed, I am not 

 referring to the physical environment alone ; for in dealing 

 with society we have to take into the account those psycho- 

 logical factors which have been shown to be by far the most 

 considerable of all. Leaving out of the account all minor 

 considerations of climate, food, or other physical circum- 

 stances, and looking at the psychological factors alone, we 

 must admit that the environment is slowly but constantly 

 changing. Every city that is built, every generalization 

 that is reached, every invention that is made, every new 

 principle of action that is suggested, alters in some degree 

 the social environment, — alters the sum-total of external 

 relations to which the community must adjust itself by 

 instituting new internal relations. The entire organized 

 experience of each generation, so far as it is perpetuated by 

 literature or oral tradition, adds an item to the environment 

 of the next succeeding generation ; so that the sum-total of 

 the circumstances to which each generation is required to 

 conform itself, is somewhat different from the sum-total of 



