484 COSMIC FHILOSOPEY. [pt. m. 



undo every one of the things in the doing of which Are have 

 seen that social evolution consists. It is, in short, the theory 

 of Eousseau unflinchingly carried into details, though, in defer- 

 ence to the watchwords of the present age, it is couched in 

 expressions which imply a sympathy with human progress. 



For such abnormal phenomena as those of the Terror and 

 the Commune, there is no doubt a deeper cause than the 

 prevalence of anarchical social and religious theories. Such 

 phenomena are strictly analogous to those of disease, indi- 

 cating that sundry social functions are out of balance, and 

 that the social organism is violently striving to regain equi- 

 librium even at the risk of premature dissolution. Scienti- 

 fically considered, the Commune was a case of retrograde 

 metamorjjhosis, quite analogous to cancer in the individual 

 organism ; and it was due to a minor failure of adjustment 

 incident upon a rapid change in the social environment. 

 Increased wealth and a heightened standard of comfortable 

 living, entailing prolonged labour and more intense brain- 

 work, leave the least industrious and intelligent members of 

 the community in misery little removed from starvation. 

 And -while under the unchecked operation of natural selec- 

 tion these unadapted members of the community would 

 soon perish, as the lunatic and the drunkard would perish, 

 we nevertheless save them artificially, as we artificially 

 protect the drunkard and the lunatic ; and we do so rightly, 

 because the repression of our humanitarian feelings would 

 entail far greater damage to society than the survival of 

 these incapables. But in surviving they constitute a growth 

 of a lower order of vitality, like a cancer implanted in nobler 

 tissues, and their effort is to abolish a civilization of which 

 their own misery is, for the time being, the inevitable result, 

 and to reinstate that primitive order of things in which the 

 strong fist and the strong passions were not yet at the mercy 

 of the keen intelligence and the large capacity for toil 

 Here, as in the case of the abnormal individual desires 



