when study of these general truths, as illustrated throughout the living world, has woven them into the conceptions of things, is there gained an adequately-strong conviction that enormous mischief must result from ignoring them.[1]
Biological truths and their corollaries, presented under these special forms as bases for sociological conclusions, are introductory to a more general biological truth including them—a general biological truth which underlies all rational legislation. I refer to the truth that every species of organism, including the human, is always adapting itself, both directly and indirectly, to its conditions of existence.
The actions which have produced every variety of man—the actions which have established in the Negro and the Hindoo constitutions that thrive in climates fatal to Europeans, and in the Fuegian a constitution enabling him to bear without clothing an inclemency almost too great for other races well clothed—the actions which have developed in the Tartar races nomadic habits that are almost insurmountable, while they have given to North-American Indians desires and aptitudes which, fitting them for a hunting-life, make a civilized life intolerable—the actions doing this, are also ever at work moulding citizens into correspondence with their circumstances. While the bodily natures of citizens are being fitted to the physical influences and industrial activities of their locality, their mental natures are being fitted to the structure of the society they live in. Though, as we have seen, there is always an approximate fitness of the social unit to its social aggregate, yet the fitness can never be more than approximate, and readjustment is always going on. Could a society remain unchanged, something like a permanent equilibrium between the nature of the individual and the nature of the society would presently be reached. But the type of each society is continually being modified by two causes—by growth, and by the actions, warlike or other, of adjacent societies. Increase in the bulk of a society inevitably leads to change of structure; as also does any alteration in the ratio of the predatory to the industrial activities. Hence continual social metamorphosis, involving continual alteration of the conditions under which the citizen lives, produces in him an adaptation of character which, tending toward completeness, is ever made incomplete by further social metamorphosis.
While, however, each society, and each successive phase of each society, presents conditions more or less special, to which the natures of citizens adapt themselves, there are certain general conditions
- ↑ Probably most readers will conclude that in this, and in the preceding Section, I am simply carrying out the views of Mr. Darwin in their applications to the human race. Under the circumstances, perhaps, I shall be excused for pointing out that the same beliefs, otherwise expressed, are contained in Chapters XXV. and XXVIII. of "Social Statics," published in December, 1850.
