228 COMIIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ii. 



in a remote future it comes to an end in proximate equili- 

 brium. The increasing interdependence of human interests 

 must eventually go far to realize the dream of the philosophic 

 poet, of a Parliament of Man, a Federation of the World, 



"When the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law," 



and when the desires of each individual shall be in proximate 

 equilibrium with the means of satisfying them and with the 

 simultaneous desires of all surrounding individuals. Such a 

 state implies at once the highest p .s.sible individuation and 

 the highest possible integration among the units of the com- 

 munity; and it la the ideal goal of intellectual and moral 

 progress. 



Thus the fundamental law of progress, as formulated at the 

 close of the last chapter, contains all the provisions requisite 

 in such a formula. It describes, in a single grand generaliza- 

 tion, all the phenomena of social evolution, both in so far as 

 they result from the general laws of life, and in so far as they 

 result from the operation of circumstances peculiar to the 

 aggregation of intelligent organisms in a community. And 

 it includes and justifies all the minor generalizations which 

 may be reached by a direct induction from historical pheno- 

 mena solely. 



This law of progress we find to be exceedingly abstract : it 

 expresses a general truth quite completely disengaged from the 

 incidents of particular cases. Such, as we were led to anti- 

 cipate, must be the character of a law which generalizes a 

 vast number of complex phenomena. A formula which is 

 to include in one expression phenomena so different as the 

 rise of Christianity and the invention of the steam-engine 

 must needs be eminently abstract. To attempt to make it 

 concrete, so as to appeal directly to the historical imagina- 

 tion, would be to deprive it of its universality, to increase it3 

 power of expressing some one set of phenomena by render- 

 ing it powerless to express some other equally important set 



