SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 327 



why of that process at least in its higher phases. As to the first: 

 social evolution is the process of the formation and progressive 

 adaptation of social unities to their ever changing physical and 

 spiritual environment. As to the second, the "how," this 

 process may be described in terms of the " dialectic of growth " 

 or a " give-and-take " between the psychical unities and their 

 physical and spiritual environment. The evolution of every social 

 group is like an ascending spiral in the form of an ellipse with 

 two foci, the socius and the various associational groups that are 

 gradually formed by the process of differentiation and integration. 

 In this process the conflict of interests and mal-adaptations on 

 lower planes of life result in co-operation, in higher adaptations, 

 and in the organization of interests both individual and social. 

 But the process thus described in thought terms does not ade- 

 quately represent the real life of values given in experience which 

 is too rich and too large to be subjected to such an analysis. Life 

 must be experienced and appreciated, not merely analyzed and 

 described. 



Viewed historically, this process of experience and appreciation 

 shows development in three directions: (1) the self-conscious 

 personality has attained greater power over self, nature, and 

 fellow-man, and in its search for the true, the beautiful and the 

 good, has come to believe in a Final Cause which it tends to per- 

 sonify in exaggerated terms of its own powers and values, and to 

 worship as God; (2) the self-conscious personality has enlarged 

 in interest, in sympathy, in purpose, in self-feeling, till it in- 

 cludes in certain experiences all humanity. Now this self- 

 conscious personality in these experiences of power, of intuition, 

 of evaluation, of up-reach and out-reach, is the highest form of 

 reality that can be grasped by consciousness, but there is reason 

 for belief that the God of idealization, and the socius of religious 

 feeling, is a still higher form of reality and personality, though 

 impossible of expression in terms of discursive thought; (3) 

 experience and appreciation, though in the last analysis personal, 

 have a social basis and a social outlook. Out of this fact have 

 developed social organizations with common interests and a 

 common goal. Such interest groups, as we have seen, may 



