506 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



The essential requisite of a social force is that it ensures the 

 greatest possible integration and cohesion of society, and in 

 order to do this, such a social force must bear the test of the 

 criterion previously enunciated. The object of such a social 

 force must be the increase of social power by the economy of 

 social expenditure, by the cultivation of biological and tradi- 

 tional superiority. This social force, if it is to fulfil its primary 

 function — namely, that of ensuring the maximum of social 

 integration and cohesion — must envelop the individual in every 

 moment of his existence ; it must give to the individual a supra- 

 individual ideal which shall be always present to him, which 

 shall shape all his actions, which shall confer a supreme value 

 on his existence — a value which is restricted neither in time nor 

 space. Such an ideal must not only be supra-individual ; it 

 must be suprasocial, transcending society, whose sanction for 

 individual action is insufficient. And, finally, and because of 

 these preceding conditions, such an ideal must be supra-rational. 

 For rationaUsm afiords no sanction for individual sufEering, or 

 for all that conflict which is the essential condition of progress. 



The only ideal which satisfies these conditions is the reUgious 

 ideal. And it is to be remarked that the very civilisation of 

 Japan, whose recent evolution has so greatly surprised some of 

 us, which is held up to our especial admiration as beiag an 

 Atheistic civilisation, is cemented, held together, and fortified 

 precisely by a rehgion which has its roots deep down ia the soul 

 of the nation. It is not a religion with which we are familiar ; 

 it may very hkely be an Atheistic rehgion ; but Atheism itself 

 can only hope to become a social force in so far as it forsakes 

 those strictly rational principles on which it is based. We see 

 the truth of this proposition illustrated by the case of Japan. 

 In an admirable article which appeared in the Times of October 4, 



Christian metaphysics or Christian ethics. A little scientific training 

 would soon suffice to show the uselessness of missions, the theory of which 

 is wholly incompatible with the law of adaptatiom 



