480 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



Christianity, may be regarded as one of the most untoward 

 events in history. The force which created the basis on which 

 Western civiHsation was built up, which for ten centuries repre- 

 sented Western civiUsation against Moorish and Turkish bar- 

 barism, and which was the living symbol of its growing strength 

 and expansion for a like period, has been steadily imdermined. 

 Western civilisation, having developed other forces during its 

 evolution, would seem to have outgrown the one which consti- 

 tuted its original basis. 



But the student of social evolution can now perceive that the 

 industrial forces, which have been developed by Western civilisa- 

 tion, and which have so enormously increased the intensity of 

 social life and social metabolism, have not been able to replace 

 the older religious force as factors of social integration. On the 

 contrary : in proportion as social metabolism has increased in 

 intensity, social disintegration has increased likewise ; and this 

 phenomenon becomes more apparent when we look at the figures 

 concerning the rate of suicide. Thus, we have arrived at a state 

 of complete incoherence of the social organism — on the one hand, 

 a growing intensity of social metabolism ; on the other hand, 

 growing social disintegration. It is evident that, as this in- 

 coherence of the social organism increases, the contrast between 

 the world which we know and which we are, and the world of our 

 ideals and aspirations, must ever tend to become accentuated. 

 It is the appreciation of this disparity between the actual world 

 and our ideal which is the ultimate source of the pessimistic under- 

 current which finds expression in the communist theory of the 

 State. Western civilisation is, as it were, deprived of the basal 

 force which formerly held its heterogeneous elements together. 

 This ancient force, constituted by Christianity, has lost its hold 

 over the masses, but it has not been replaced by any other which 

 responds to the fundamental need of society for integration. In 

 a word, Christianity coincided with the tendency to widen the 

 sphere of conflict — for it was Papal Christianity which was the 



