486 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGy 



left to himself and obeying his reason alone, should prefer to 

 keep his natural instincts in check rather than to gratify them. 

 The idea of the natural goodness of man, as we have said, is 

 founded neither in biology nor in history ; and the fundamental 

 tendency of life, that of expansion — and expansion, under exist- 

 ing conditions, imphes conflict — is such as to develop egoistic 

 and individuaUstic instincts at the expense of the social instincts, 

 unless this fundamental tendency be coimteracted at the same 

 time by other tendencies working in an opposite direction. Is 

 science the source which nourishes these counteracting ten- 

 dencies ? During the comparatively short phase of human 

 evolution which history records, we have often seen the under- 

 lying instincts of the human animal break forth with ferocious 

 violence, when the integrating principle which assures the 

 cohesion of society has been dissolved ; the break-up of the 

 Eoman Empire, the French Revolution, the Commune of 

 1871, show us what results from the anarchy following on a 

 temporary dissolution of aU the supra-social principles which 

 guarantee social stability. Society is held together only in so 

 far as certain supra-social principles which guarantee its stability 

 are recognised. When these supra-social principles, from one 

 cause or another, fall into discredit, when the natural ethics of 

 man, derived from the promptings of his own instincts, are 

 allowed free play without any restraint, we fall into that social 

 anarchy which must eventually bring about the downfall 

 of a nation surroimded by other societies whose cohesion is 

 intact. 



If appeal be made to society as the source from which this 

 principle of social cohesion which we call morality is derived, 

 appeal is being made once more to rationalism for the explanation 

 of a principle which is essentially supra -rational. For there is 

 nothing to prevent a given society having conditions which are 

 not conducive to the cohesion of that society. In our Western 

 civiUsation to-day it is not the principle of social morality which 



