REALITY OP IDEAS 369 



viduals comprising them, are to be regarded as the product of 

 the circumstances in which they exist — the survivals of the 

 fittest in the rivalry which is constantly in progress. . . . We 

 watch universal paralysis and slow decay following universal 

 dominion ; and even before the downfall of the Western Empire 

 in 476, we see the greater part of Europe being once more slowly 

 submerged under successive waves of more vigorous humanity. 

 From the invasion of the Roman Empire by the Visigoths in 

 376, onwards for nearly seven centuries, the tide of conquest 

 which flowed from the East and North surges backwards and 

 forwards over Europe, making its influence felt to almost the 

 extreme Western and Southern limits, and leaving at last, when 

 it subsides, a new deposit of humanity overlying the peoples 

 the invaders foimd in possession, who had in prehistoric times 

 similarly superimposed themselves on still earlier peoples."^ 



It is through conflict, as we have said, that the fundamental 

 law of Ufe — that of expansion — ^is able to realise itself. And 

 expansion is not to be understood as a mere expression of material 

 desires. We have said, and we repeat, that just as individual 

 and social activity advance in parallel evolution, so is social 

 evolution the highest form of the individual desire for expansion. 

 For the true exponent of evolutionary science ideas are not 

 iaert forms of the mind, but conscious forms of action. The 

 individual begins to think only after he has felt and laboured. 

 That thought is not passive, that it is the expression of our 

 desires and of our aims, is shown by the fact that thought has 

 always a tendency, when it has attained sufficient strength, to 

 incarnate itself in institutions which are the active expressions 

 of a nation's Wille zur MacM, of its will of expansion. As 

 M. FouUlee has said : " Dans la sociologie les idees-forces sont 

 I'expression des pensees elaborees par I'humanite entiere. . . . 

 Elles sont done, en quelque sorte, des formes de la conscience 

 sociale, presentes a la conscience individuelle comme le type de 



1 B. Kidd, Social Evolviion, pp. 44, 45. 



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