CHAPTER XVII 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 
THE purpose of our investigation as set forth in the Introduction 
was to make a historica] approach to a constructive social phi- 
losophy having as its central theme adaptation in its four-fold 
aspect of passive material and spiritual and active material and 
spiritual, — this approach beginning with Auguste Comte and 
Herbert Spencer, though in a few cases including previous writers 
whose contributions seemed essential to an appreciation of those 
coming later. The method chosen was to review briefly the social 
theories of writers in this field who have been most influential in 
the development of the doctrine of adaptation, and in an order so 
far as possible, both historical and logical. 
Comte’s Positivism was reviewed as a fitting prolegomenon to 
social philosophy and it was shown how he had contributed to the 
problem and formulated this principle of adaptation in its various 
aspects though with different terminology. His chief contribu- 
tion, we saw, was his insistence on the possibility of a scientific 
study of society, and the necessity of such a study as the basis of 
social reconstruction. Comte, however, did not believe in cosmic 
evolution, so his system was a “ subjective synthesis ” without a 
necessary objective correlate. 
Herbert Spencer is to be credited with the first comprehensive 
attempt to formulate the principle of cosmic evolution and this he 
did in terms of increasing differentiation and integration. In his 
Social Statics, he formulated the principle of adaptation and 
applied it as a test to various institutions. In his Progress, Its 
Law and Cause, he worked out the organic analogy as applied to 
society. In his Sociology, he showed how the general law he had 
formulated for cosmic evolution applied to the development of 
society as a whole but especially to various social institutions, 
giving much consideration to primitive conditions. We noted 
that while the theory of passive adaptation, both physical and 
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