nsidered, and of which
we have investigated the development. [Sidenote: Comparative sociology.]
In the most philosophical aspect the subject includes comparative as
well as human sociology. For, though there may not be society where
actions are simply reflex, there is a possibility of it where they are
instinctive, as well as where they are intellectual. Its essential
condition being intercommunication, there are necessarily modifications
depending respectively on touch or upon the higher and more delicate
senses. That is none the less society which, among insects, depends upon
antennal contacts. Human society, founded on speech, sight, hearing, has
its indistinct beginnings, its rudiments, very low down in the animal
scale, as in the bell-like note which some of the nudibranchiate
gasteropods emit, or the solitary midnight tapping with which the
death-watch salutes his mate. Society resting on instinct is
characterised by immobility; it is necessarily unprogressive. Society
resting on intellect is always advancing.

But, for the present, declining this general examination of sociology,
and limiting our attention strictly to that of humanity, we can not fail
to be struck with the fact that in us the direction of evolution is
altogether toward the intellectual, a conclusion equally impressed upon
us whether our mode of examination be anatomical or historical.
[Sidenote: The aim of Nature is not at moral, but intellectual
development.] Anatomically we find no provision in the nervous system
for the improvement of the moral, save indirectly through the
intellectual, the whole aim of development being for the sake of
intelligence. Historically, in the same manner, we find that the
intellectual has always led the way in social advancement, the moral
having been subordinate thereto. The former hay been the mainspring of
the movement, the latter passively affected. It is a mistake to make the
progress of society depend on that which is itself controlled by a
higher power. In the earlier and inferior stages of individual life we
may govern through the moral alone. In that way we may guide children,
but it is to the understanding of the adult that we must appeal.
[Sidenote: Systems of policy must be in accordance therewith.] A system
working only through the moral must sooner or later come into an
antagonism with the intellectual, and, if it do not contain within
itself a means of adaptation to the changing circumstances, it mus