THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGISTS 175 
Nowhere does the intellectual motive enter more easily into the domain of 
social interest than in the satisfaction of religious need. On the other hand, 
nowhere do inborn interests and the motives peculiar to them reveal them- 
selves more clearly than when man endeavors to apply his religious ideas to 
social life. . . . Religious faith when grounded in a correct interpretation 
of the relation of the individual to the absolute is one of the most potent 
forces in life, but such faith is possessed by only a few, and only by the re- 
peated awakening of religious sentiments is the moral emotion able to attain 
lordship in the interest of society.1 
Individuals differ not only physiologically, but in innate mental 
capacity and in will power. Races, too, differ in the average of 
these qualities.2. Men are classified as to will power into active 
or aggressive and passive or defensive, the latter, numerically in 
the majority, always subordinated to the comparatively small 
number of the former. This process of subordination of the 
many weak to the one strong will is the source of social organiza- 
tion. The one strong personality formulates the line of interest- 
satisfaction or social purpose accepted by groups and the more or 
less conscious acceptance of this purpose on the part of the group 
is what constitutes social will. 
Contrary to Gumplowicz, our author assumes a monogenetic 
origin of the human race outof the primates in the Tertiary period, 
although he admits that the process of evolution is shrouded in 
mystery. The earliest stage was characterized by sociality and 
co-operation in a struggle against physical conditions and wild 
animals.® Increase of population and pressure on means of sub- 
sistence led to conflict of interests, separation and migration, and 
the various groups under the long continued influence of different 
environmental conditions developed by the law of adaptation 
the ethnic peculiarities which differentiated the races in earliest 
historic times. The second stage, or that of primitive culture was 
characterized, industrially, by fishing and agriculture in some 
environmental conditions, in others by hunting, herding, or both, 
leading to the development of nomadic life. Socially this stage 
was characterized by the rise of institutions.’?’ In the third or 
barbaric stage we find increase of numbers leading to conflict of 
1 Erkenninis, p. 258. 4 Soziologie, p. 27. 7 Ibid., p. 14. 
2 Soziologie, pp. 35 f. 5 Ibid., p. 13. 
3 Erkenninis, p. 285. 8 Ibid., pp. 13, 30 £., 37 £., 65, 74. 
