th the idea of a
God as its first cause, but also because he "was aware that if we admit
a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came and how it
arose." ("Life and Letters", Vol. I. page 306.) He saw, as Kant had
seen before him and expressed in his "Kritik der Urtheilskraft", that we
cannot accept either of the only two possibilities which we are able
to conceive: chance (or brute force) and design. Neither mechanism
nor teleology can give an absolute answer to ultimate questions.
The universe, and especially the organic life in it, can neither be
explained as a mere combination of absolute elements nor as the effect
of a constructing thought. Darwin concluded, as Kant, and before him
Spinoza, that the oppositions and distinctions which our experience
presents, cannot safely be regarded as valid for existence in itself.
And, with Kant and Fichte, he found his stronghold in the conviction
that man has something to do, even if he cannot solve all enigmas. "The
safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope
of man's intellect; but man can do his duty." (Ibid. page 307.)

Is this the last word of human thought? Does not the possibility,
that man can do his duty, suppose that the conditions of life allow of
continuous ethical striving, so that there is a certain harmony
between cosmic order and human ideals? Darwin himself has shown how
the consciousness of duty can arise as a natural result of evolution.
Moreover there are lines of evolution which have their end in ethical
idealism, in a kingdom of values, which must struggle for life as all
things in the world must do, but a kingdom which has its firm foundation
in reality.

XXIII. DARWINISM AND SOCIOLOGY. By C. Bougle.

Professor of Social Philosophy in the University of Toulouse and
Deputy-Professor at the Sorbonne, Paris.

How has our conception of social phenomena, and of their history,
been affected by Darwin's conception of Nature and the laws of its
transformations? To what extent and in what particular respects have
the discoveries and hypotheses of the author of "The Origin of Species"
aided the efforts of those who have sought to construct a science of
society?

To such a question it is certainly not easy to give any brief or precise
answer. We find traces of Darwinism almost everywhere. Sociological
systems differing widely from each other have laid claim to its
authority; while, on the other hand, its infl