228 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



having their origin in a power which is superior to the individual, 

 far exceed the limits of individual control. The individual 

 organic constitution contains no principle capable of controlling 

 or holding in check forces which are immeasurably greater in 

 space and time than the individual constitution. Clearly, then, 

 the force which is to limit our desires must come from some 

 principle which is external to the individual. And it is natural 

 that the force which controls our desires and the aspirations 

 of our psychical life, should be derived from the source which 

 has engendered and developed all psychological phenomena — 

 that is to say, from society itself. 



It is necessary that a regulating power should control our 

 psychological life, even as the organic constitution of the 

 individual controls our physiological life. The human species 

 alone has arrived at the consciousness of the fact that it is 

 conscious ; and it is precisely this development of consciousness 

 which has disturbed the equilibrium established in the organic 

 world between endosmosis and exosmosis, or between assimila- 

 tion and expenditure. In the organic world — to which the 

 psychophysical and instinctive phenomena belong — the equih- 

 brium is maintained automatically ; for the expenditure cannot 

 exceed the assimilatory capacity without, sooner or later, causing 

 death. But, as we have said, the psychological life of the indi- 

 vidual is a social creation, and, as such, far exceeds the limits 

 of the individual, whose organic constitution is unable to control 

 it. Thus only a psychological power is capable of giving to the 

 superorganic life that equilibrium which in the organic sphere 

 is ensured by mechanical laws. The regulatory power of the 

 psychosocial life of the individual — to use a term which denotes 

 both the psychological and social character of these phenomena — 

 must be a conscious power. Consciousness, having disturbed 

 the pre-social equilibrium, is alone in a position to restore the 

 euqilibrium between the individual and his social surroundings. 

 The material pressure of physico-chemical forces is useless 



