Comte. But it would appear that all methods and systems alike, which have endeavoured to find in the nature of things any universal rational sanction for individual conduct in a progressive society, must be ultimately fruitless. They are all alike, inherently unscientific in that they attempt to do what the fundamental conditions of existence render impossible. The positive system, no less than the others, and only all the more surely because it is positive, must apparently also be a failure.

The transforming fact which the scientific development of the nineteenth century has confronted us with is, that, as the interests of the social organism and of the individual are, and must remain, antagonistic, and the former must always be predominant, there can never be found any sanction in individual reason for conduct in societies where the conditions of progress prevail. One of the first results of the application of the methods and conclusions of the biological science of our time to social. phenomena must apparently be to bring to a close that long-drawn-out stage of thought in which for 2300 years the human mind has engaged in a task, the accomplishment of which fundamental organic conditions of life render inherently impossible.1

1 Mr. Herbert Spencer's conception of a state of society in which the interests of the individual and those of society are reconciled (Data of Ethics), is discussed in chapter x. It must ever remain an incalculable loss to English science and English philosophy, that the author of the Synthetic Philosophy did not undertake his great task later in the nineteenth century. As time goes on, it will become clearer what the nature of that loss has been. It will be perceived that the conception of his work was practically complete before his intellect had any opportunity of realising the full transforming effect in the higher regions of thought, and, more particularly, in the department of sociology, of that development of biological science which began with Darwin, which is still in full progress, and to which Professor Weismann has recently made the most notable contributions.

CHAPTER IV

THE CENTRAL FEATURE OF HUMAN HISTORY

THE outlines of the great fundamental problem which underlies our social development are now clearly visible. We have a rational creature whose reason is itself one of the leading factors in the progress he is making; but who is nevertheless subject, in common with all other forms of life, to certain organic laws of existence which render his progress impossible in any other way than by submitting to conditions that can never have any ultimate sanction in his reason. He is undergoing a social development in which his individual interests are not only subservient to the interests of the general progress of the race, but in which they are being increasingly subordinated to the welfare of a social organism possessing widely different interests, and an indefinitely longer life.

It is evident that we have here all the elements of a problem of capital importance-a problem quite special and entirely different from any that the history of life has ever before presented. On the one side we have the self-assertive reason of the individual necessarily tending to be ever more and more developed by the evolutionary forces at work. On the other, we have the immensely wider interests of the social organism,

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and behind it those of the race in general, demanding, nevertheless, the most absolute subordination of this ever-increasing rational self-assertiveness in the individual. We find, in fact, if progress is to continue, that the individual must be compelled to submit to conditions of existence of the most onerous kind which, to all appearance, his reason actually gives him the power to suspend-and all to further a development in which he has not, and in which he never can have, qua individual, the slightest practical interest. We have, it would appear, henceforth to witness the extraordinary spectacle of man, moved by a profound social instinct, continually endeavouring in the interests of his social progress to check and control the tendency of his own reason to suspend and reverse the conditions which are producing this progress.

In the conflict which results, we have the seat of a vast series of phenomena constituting the absolutely characteristic feature of our social evolution. It is impossible to fully understand the spectacle presented by human history in the past on the one hand, or the main features of the social phenomena, now presenting themselves throughout our Western civilisation on the other, without getting to the heart of this conflict. It is the pivot upon which the whole drama of human history and human development turns.

If we could conceive a visitor from another planet coming amongst us, and being set down in the midst of our Western civilisation at the present day, there is one feature of our life which, we might imagine, could not fail to excite his interest and curiosity. If we could suppose him taken round London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, or any other great centre of population, by some man of light and leading amongst us, we might easily

imagine the anxiety of his conductor to worthily explain to him the nature and the meaning of those aspects of our society which there presented themselves. After all the outward features, the streets, the crowds, the buildings, and the means of traffic and communication had received attention, we might expect our man of science to explain to his visitor something of the nature of the wonderful social organisation of which the outward features presented themselves. Our trades and manufactures, our commerce, our methods of government, the forces at work amongst us, and the problems, social and political, which occupy our minds, would doubtless all receive notice. Something, too, of our history would be related, and our relations, past and present, to other nations, and even to other sections of the human race, would probably be explained.

But when our visitor had lived amongst us for a little time, he would probably find that there was one most obvious feature of our life about which he had been told nothing, yet respecting which he would, as an intelligent observer, sooner or later ask for information.

He would have noticed at every turn in our cities great buildingschurches, temples, and cathedrals-and he would have seen also that wherever men lived together in small groups they erected these buildings. He would have noticed the crowds which periodically frequented them; and if he had listened to the doctrines taught therein he could not fail to be deeply interested. As his knowledge of us grew he would learn that these institutions were not peculiar to any particular place, or even to the people amongst whom he found himself; that they were also a distinguishing feature of other cities and other countries; that they existed throughout the greater part of the civilised world, and that similar institutions had

been a characteristic feature of human life as far back as history extends.

If, at this stage, he had ventured to ask his guide for some explanation of these phenomena, he would not improbably begin to feel somewhat puzzled. For if his guide had spoken as the spokesmen of science sometimes do speak nowadays, the information given. would probably not have been altogether satisfying. The visitor would possibly have learned from him that the religious beliefs, which maintained these institutions, were by some held to represent the survival of an instinct peculiar to the childhood of the race; that they were by others supposed to have had their origin in ancestorworship and a belief in ghosts. He might even have expressed his own opinion that they belonged to a past age, and that they were generally discredited by the intellectual class. Pressed for any further information he might have added that science did not really pay much attention to the phenomena; that she, in general, regarded them with some degree of contempt and even of bitterness, for, that, during many centuries these religions had maintained a vast conspiracy against her, had persecuted her champions, and had used stupendous and extraordinary efforts to stifle and strangle her. The guide, if he were a man of discrimination, might even have added that the feud was still continued under all the outward appearances of truce and friendliness; that it was, in reality, only by her victories in applying her discoveries. to the practical benefit of the race that science had finally been able to secure her position against her adversary; and that in its heart one of the parties still continued to regard the other as a mortal enemy which only the altered circumstances prevented it from openly assailing.