I. The True Place of Man.
We have too long been accustomed to study human society as if man were a being apart in the universe. In comparing human bipeds with animals it has seemed as if we were disparaging these so-called demi-gods. It is to this blind prejudice that we must attribute the tardy rise of anthropological sociology. A deeper knowledge of biological science and of inferior races has at last cured us of this childish vanity. We have decided to assign to man his true place in the organic world of our little globe. Granted that the human biped is incontestably the most intelligent of terrestial animals, yet, by his histological texture, by his organs, and by the functions of these organs, he is evidently only an animal, and easily classed in the series: he is a bimanous, mammiferous vertebrate. Not that by his most glorious representatives, by those whom we call men of genius, man does not rise prodigiously above his distant relations of the mammal class; but, on the other hand, by imperfectly developed specimens he descends far below many species of animals; for if the idiot is only an exception, the man of genius is still more so. In fact, the lowest human races, with whose anatomy, psychology, and sociology we are to-day familiar, can only inspire us with feelings of modesty. They furnish studies in ethnography which have struck a mortal blow at the dreams of "the kingdom of man."
When once it is established that man is a mammal like any other, and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater cerebral development, all study of human sociology must logically be preceded by a corresponding study of animal sociology. Moreover, as sociology finally depends on biology, it will be necessary to seek in physiological conditions themselves the origin of great sociological manifestations. The first necessity of societies is that they should endure, and they can only do so on the condition of providing satisfaction for primordial needs, which are the condition of life itself, and which imperatively dominate and regulate great social institutions. Lastly, if man is a sociable animal, he is not the only one; many other species
