58 



the regime in which he was living, he added 

 that society is the cause of all evils, and that 

 individuals are born good and equal. At the 

 end of the igih century, on the contrary, all 

 the positive sciences are agreed in recognising 

 that aggregation is a natural and inseparable 

 fact of life, with vegetable as with animal 

 species from the lowest " animal colonies " of 

 zoophytes to the societies of mammals 

 (herbivora) and to human society.* 



All that the individual possesses of what is 

 best, he owes to the social life, although every 

 phase of the evolution be marked at its close 

 by pathological conditions of social decay, 

 essentially transitory moreover, which inevi- 

 tably precede a new cycle of social renovation. 



The individual, as such, if such could be, 

 would satisfy only one of the two fundamental 

 needs of existence nourishment that is to 

 say, the egoistic preservation of his own 

 organism, by means of this periodical and 

 fundamental function which Aristotle desig- 

 nates by the name of ctesi the conquest of food. 



* I cannot concern myself here with the recent eclectic 

 attempt of M. Fouille which others have followed. M. 

 Fouill6e wishes to oppose, or at least to add, to the 

 naturalist conception of society that of consent or con- 

 tract. Evidently, since no theory is absolutely false, there 

 is even in the theory of contract a particle of truth, and 

 the freedom to emigrate may be an example of it as long 

 as it is compatible with the economic interests of the 

 class in power. But evidently this consenting which does 

 not exist at the birth of each individual in such or such 

 a society and this being born forms the most decisive 

 and tyrannical deed in life is likewise very trifling in the 

 development of his aptitudes and tendencies, dominated 

 as these are by the iron law of the economic and political 

 organisation of which he is an atom. 



