AIM OP SOCIAL POLITY 427 



Obviously a society which is able to embody its customs and 

 traditions in institutions is already considerably developed. 

 Such embodiment does not exist in societies in the lowest stage of 

 evolution, or does so only in the smallest and most insignificant 

 degree. Let us turn to the higher societies, to those which 

 occupy the first rank in the civilised world to-day, and ask our- 

 selves, What is their social polity ? What is the immediate and 

 ultimate aim of their social evolution considered in its traditional 

 aspects ? What do we find ? 



A detailed examination of the social evolution of even one of 

 the great European Powers to-day would lead us too far in our 

 present task. We will content ourselves, therefore, with asking, 

 not what that social evolution is, but what it ought to be, 

 according to the laws which, we think, can be deduced from our 

 study of social pathology in the second part of this work. And, 

 in the first place, let us remark that it is an error to consider the 

 immediate and the ultimate aims of social evolution as distinct ; 

 although, indeed, the Realpolitik in favour to-day would seem 

 to ignore the ultimate aim, which is the organic progress of 

 society, in its anxiety to reaUse temporary success through the 

 injudicious cultivation of over-rapid traditional progress, which 

 should constitute only the immediate aim of social evolution. 



Coming, then, to the question of the direction of social polity, 

 we should reply that, in the domain of traditional values, the 

 aim should be the growing integration of society and the economy 

 of social force. The study which we have made of suicide as a 

 sociological factor has shown us the harmful results of insufficient 

 social integration, and the growth of mental disease can be 

 attributed in the ultimate instance to the same cause. We are 

 living in an age in which the rights of the individual are held to 

 be supreme, in which the duties of the present generation towards 

 the coming generations are ignored, and in which the individual 

 as such, and by the sole fact of his individuality, is raised to the 

 height of a metaphysical entity. This excessive individualism, 



