Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/325



thesis of this paper is that sociology does not rest directly but indirectly upon biology. The science upon which it does directly rest is psychology, and this direct relation will be the subject of the fifth paper. The fourth will be devoted to its relations to that highest product of biologic law, the human species. We are at present concerned with the more general relations between sociology and biology considered as abstract sciences, i. e., between the laws of life and those of association.

Coupling the present discussion as closely as possible with the previous one we may say at the outset that nature must not be conceived as aiming to accomplish any definite object by the introduction of life. There has undoubtedly been a rhythmic but general tendency towards the improvement or perfecting of structures throughout the history ot the earth since life was introduced, but there is no promise that this is always to continue. All who have studied the subject, whether from the geological, physical, astronomical, or purely philosophical point of view, agree that the life-sustaining period of a planet is only a relatively short one between vastly longer ones to precede and follow it, in which the conditions to life are absent. In Herbert Spencer's great scheme of the redistribution of matter dissolution is as much a factor as evolution, and whether we accept the estimate of Newcomb that the life period of this earth is to continue ten million years, or that of Helmholz that it will last seventeen million years, or that of Shaler that we may hope for yet one hundred million years, we must in any case admit a