PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 3 



term employed in this form would render it at once plain that our culture 

 is, for all intents, the cumulative product of the efforts of all mankind 

 past and present, and no doubt enthusiasts will be found who will go 

 further and speak of a pan-humanist movement and of themselves as pan- 

 humanists. 



Lastly. For the reasons stated in the immediately preceding paragraph, 

 the term sociology appears to be misleading. It is generally taken to 

 mean that human beings live in groups; but since many animal species 

 live also in groups, the term does not hint at any distinctively human 

 characteristic. What is more, since man depends primarily on culture 

 and Culture is a pan-human product, he is not a social, but a pan-species 

 being a being whose mode of life is intimately related to, although not 

 identical with, that of his kind as a whole. Consequently, the term 

 sociology expresses a fact which holds of many animal species, but not 

 of man. We need, therefore, a term which shall have reference to man's 

 essential dependence on culture, and which shall, if possible, embody the 

 conception that culture is primarily a cumulative species-product. We 

 might accordingly speak of specio-psychics, to indicate that culture is the 

 product of the spiritual endeavours of the whole of humanity. Under- 

 standing, then, Specio-Psychics to be the equivalent of "science of pan- 

 species culture", we may regard it as concerned with one of the leading 

 aspects of nature, and constituting with Physics (the science of the in- 

 animate) and Biology (the science of the animate) the three most distinc- 

 tive departments of existence, to be ultimately subsumed under Cosmology 

 (the science of the whole). 



Strictly interpreting our definition, there is practically nothing 

 which we can profitably leave to the individual as such. A 

 tendency towards co-operation extending to all ages and all 

 lands is, accordingly, the very life-breath of human society, 

 and so far as this factor is absent there is minimal advance, 

 stagnation, or retrogression, disguised maybe by ignorance, pre- 

 judice, and the weaving of mazes of error. However, since 

 truth is so difficult of attainment, aimless co-operation argues 

 profuse waste of energy, and co-operation should therefore be 

 informed by science which should consequently penetrate every 

 nook and cranny of human life. Even our views on health 

 and on happiness, the moral and the matrimonial relations, the 

 nurture and the education of the young, the methods of work- 

 manship and trading, our social affairs and politics, our arts 

 and our relations to near neighbours and distant peoples as 

 well as to domestic and wild animals, our thought and our 

 inner life all should be clarified and guided by considerations 

 drawn from a highly developed methodology, if they are not 

 to remain in perpetuity emblematical of confusion and of 

 twilight. 



We ought hence to assume that the scientific mode of think- 

 ing is a slowly developing product of pan-human civilisation, 

 and that with the passing of the ages, and as the result of 

 mountains of experience, man gradually discovers how to 



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