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positive and definite discipline of human 

 thought confronting external reality, suc- 

 ceeding the brilliant wandering of meta- 

 physics, is only a reversion to the ideas of 

 Greek philosophers and of Lucretius, the 

 great naturalistic poet. 



The examples of this reversion to primitive 

 forms are only too evident and too numerous 

 even in the order of social institutions. 



I have already spoken of religious evolution. 

 According to Hartmann, in the primitive 

 times of humanity happiness seemed realisable 

 in the existence of the individual. It did not 

 appear to be so later except in the life beyond 

 the tomb, and now the tendency is to carry it 

 back to humanity, but in the series of future 

 generations. 



It is the same in the political domain, and 

 Spencer remarks* that the will of all the 

 sovereign element in primitive humanity-r- 

 yields little by little to the will of one, then 

 to those of a few (these are the different aris- 

 tocracies, military, hereditary, professional, 

 feudal), and it tends finally to become sovereign 

 with the progress of democracy, universal 

 suffrage, referendum, direct legislation by the 

 people, etc. 



The right to punish, a simple function of 

 defence in primitive humanity, tendsito become 

 such again. It has freed itself from every 

 teleological pretension of distributive justice 

 which the illusion of free will had superposed 

 on the natural foundation of defence. 

 Scientific researches into crime, as a natural 



* Sociology III. chapter 5. 



