236 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



of this spiritual power, there has been a development of the 

 economic activity of society truly prodigious in extent and rapidity. 

 Formerly, as we have said, the Church exercised a salutary influ- 

 ence on the society which it dominated, by restraining the passion 

 for lucre, by bridling the greed of gain, by conferring— through 

 its doctrines of the Fatherhood of G-od and immortality — equal 

 value to the hfe of the peer and of the labourer. On the other 

 hand, the political power likewise employed every means to 

 prevent the growth of a financial and commercial plutocracy, 

 independent of the political power, and in reality superior to it. 

 Especially in the case of France do we notice the efforts of the 

 monarchy to maintain its rights, and to preserve these rights 

 against any encroachment on the part of financiers and mer- 

 chants. And, in the third place, the extreme protectionism of 

 the guilds and corporations was in itself a great barrier to com- 

 mercial expansion ; furthermore, the policy pursued by the 

 trading corporations in fixing the amount of salary to be paid 

 to the workers, in deciding the price of the products to be sold, 

 in regulating even the cost of production, tended to limit the 

 demand. Nor can we overlook the obstacle to economic ex- 

 pansion presented by the lack of adequate means of communica- 

 tion. 



To-day everything is changed. The Church, as we have said, 

 has lost the influence she formerly possessed. The political 

 power has become the handmaid of the economic power ; and 

 the latter has never ceased to increase its influence during the 

 last hundred years. The French Revolution broke the power 



patriotism founded tlie Empire. And patriotism it is which constitutes 

 the link which binds the Empire together, which has made the Empire 

 great, and which maintains its integrity. In no country except Great 

 Britain is patriotism so liighly developed as in Germany ; and patriotism 

 is capable of producing the same effects, as regards social integration and 

 cohesion, as religion. (3) Material prosperity must not be taken as proving 

 the moral stability of a society. It may but conceal the germs of social 

 disintegration and decay, as it did in the case of Rome under Augustus. 



