870 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



I'espece est present a rorganisme de I'individu. Mais ces idees 

 collectives sont assui des forces collectives, des moyens d' action 

 et de direction qui assurent I'influence de la societe entiere sur 

 chaciin de ses membres, sans empecher la reaction de cliacun sur 

 I'ensemble."^ 



For the present we may merely remark that it is in conflict, 

 and through conflict, understood in the widest sense of the term, 

 as meaning also the conflict of ideas, that the expansion which 

 is life's fimdamental law finds expression. This fact being ascer- 

 tained, it remains to ask ourselves why, in that case, this conflict 

 does not cease, why the power of vital expansion does not 

 exhaust itself, or why, being creatures of reason, we cannot set 

 a limit to this desire for expansion, and so set a limit to this per- 

 petual conflict. 



Schopenhauer has given us a solution of this riddle when he 

 says that " every desire is, in itself, bom of a want of something, 

 of a condition which does not satisfy us ; therefore such desire 

 constitutes suffering until it is satisfied. But no satisfaction is 

 lasting, and every satisfaction is but the starting-point of a new 

 desire. Everywhere we see desire arrested, as it were, and 

 struggling to obtain satisfaction ; therefore it involves every- 

 where a state of suffering. There is no end to our efforts ; 

 therefore there is no end to our suffering." 2 Insatiability is the 

 complement of expansion. No individual who, in obedience 

 to the instinct of expansion, goes forth and conquers ; no race 

 which, in obedience to this same instinct, goes forth and con- 

 quers, stops at this new conquest. Neither individual nor race 

 can stop there ; for the law of life is expansion. Once we have 

 reached a goal, however far distant, however impossible of 

 access it may once have seemed, however much we may have 

 dreamed that, once this goal attained, our life's aim would be 



^ A. rouillee, L'Evolutionnisme des Idees-Forces, p. xci. Paris 1890. 



2 Sloho^Tika^lQT,LeMorldecmrlmeVdonteetcommeReprese■rdati(m. Frenok 

 translation by Burdeau, vol. i., p. 323. Paris, 1902. 



