240 J. M. CLARKE GEOLOGY AND ORDER OF THE STATE 



sweeps away cobwebs of vagrant hypotheses which befog the pages of 

 writers on political and social economics. 



In the progressive line of development, which in the present terminates 

 in ns, the procedure of nature has been one of only limited concern for 

 the family and of tried out and abandoned experiment for social partner- 

 ships and the division of labor. To perfect the individual, inconceivable 

 safeguards have been thrown about him. The individual is creation's 

 unit, in terms of which all progress in life is to be reckoned. With un- 

 sparing hand she makes and wastes these units, both for her greater pur- 

 poses and those which we may call her lesser ones. Units of purpose are 

 wiped away to make place for units of other purpose. Yet the unit type 

 remains; remains with its full seeding of possibilities, armored for its 

 fight with double portions of food supply, of sense organs, of locomotive 

 means, with an inexpressible superfluity of reproductive supply. AVhetlier 

 a given unit survive till its work be done or perish in the doing, it is the 

 individual type that is at stake, it is against this individual type that all 

 the powers outside it are imposing their obstacles. 



This the geologist knows : There has been no cooperation in the historic 

 development of the life in which we are directly concerned. We may 

 not yet know the trend of many life lines for far in their history, but 

 wherever such lines are best known, within the limitations of large nat- 

 ural divisions, those that run through froin limit to limit and point the 

 way both backward and ahead, and those other lines collateral to ours 

 which have ended and determined fruitlessly — these all can be conceived 

 in no other way than variant expressions of the individual. And in the 

 history of human life is it aught else than the individual that has stood 

 for the progress of mankind? AVas it the barons at Eunnyinede, was it 

 some bill of rights, some declaration of independence, some joint action 

 of human agencies, that have been the crowns of our achievements? Or 

 was it the Aristotle, the Plato, the Socrates, the Christ, a solitary Shak- 

 speare, an incomparable Franklin, a rebellious Darwin, or the historic 

 twenty individuals who have stood for the progress of the race ? 



I say this only for the purpose of saying, per contra, that the history 

 of the excellent life (and by that I mean the line of life that is best per- 

 fecting its psychology), has shown the futility of attempts at progress 

 through any other agency than the independent individual. This is so 

 important a conclusion to every State taking cognizance of its dependence 

 on natural laws that it is highly essential to consider nature's own alter- 

 natives to such individualistic effort, her own experiments in trying out 

 other modes of ascending heavenward. For "individual liberty," said 



