A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious definition
of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly
come face to face with another who means by it industrial
cooeperation and participation on the part of all workers.
Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his
own becomes clearer by contrast.

"Science," wrote Condillac, "is a well-made language."
No small part of the technique of science lies in its clear definition
of its terms. The chemist knows what he means by an
"acid," the biologist by a "mammal." Under these names
he classifies all objects having certain determinable properties.
Social science will never attain the precision of the physical
sciences until it also attains as clear and unambiguous a
terminology. As we shall see in the chapter on science, however,
the definitions in the physical sciences are arrived at through
precise inquiries not yet possible in the field of social phenomena.

CHAPTER XI

RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY

That the history of the race is an unbroken continuum goes
without saying. What this means in the way of transmission
of the arts, the sciences, the religion, the ideas, the customs of
one generation to the next, we shall presently see. Cultural
continuity is made possible by the more fundamental fact of
the actual biological continuity of the race. This biological
continuity extends back, as far as we can infer from the scientific
evidence, unbrokenly through the half million years
since man has left traces of his presence on earth. The continuity
of life itself goes back to that still more remote time
when man and ape were indistinguishable, indeed to that
postulated epoch when life as it existed on earth was no more
complex than it is as it now appears in the one-celled animal.
Evolution has taught us that life, however it started, has been
one long continuous process which has increased in complexity
from the unicellular animals to man.

The continuity of the human race is a contrivance of nature
rather than of man. It is, as it were, a by-product of the sex
instinct. Man is endowed natively with a powerful desire for
sex gratification, and though offspring are the chief utility of
this instinct, desire for reproduction is not normally its primary
stimulus. But while the production of offspring may
thus be said to be an incidental result of the sex instinct, human
reproduction may be subjected to rational consideration
a