Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/157



Rh enough and cool enough to render the first one possible. I call these the great cosmical crises of the earth's history—the origin of life, of feeling or consciousness, and of intellect or reason. These have occurred in this order at different geologic epochs, and certainly with an enormous interval between the second and third. The forms through which the first and second have manifested themselves—the plants and animals—are innumerable. That through which the last has chiefly manifested itself is man, a single species of the animal kingdom. And it is altogether probable that any planet, in its progress from a semi-nebulous state to an encrusted globe, would evolve the structures necessary to the exhibition of these three forms of cosmic energy, although, as already remarked, the organs and organisms manifesting them might have no external resemblance to those with which we are acquainted.

We thus arrive, after threading the vast mazes of cosmic evolution, at man, the only being known to us who is endowed with all three of the powers described, the only self-conscious, rational and intelligent product of nature. We find him to be also a social being. The question therefore naturally arises. Is sociability a third and still higher form of storing and expending cosmic energy? There are objections to this view, the principal one being that certain forms of sociability appear among creatures to which intelligence cannot be imputed, not merely among many of the higher mammals and other vertebrates, but notably among insects. Here instinct seems to have brought about the same general economic system that has resulted in part at least from rational calculation in man. But this question belongs more properly to a future paper and is only raised here as a natural sequel to the broader problems that we have been discussing. It is only by means of such a complete orientation of the mind that the true relations subsisting between sociology and kindred sciences can be clearly and correctly perceived, and these wider aspects of the subject belong preeminently to social philosophy.