Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/418

 404 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

edly rests upon the same foundations as social morality, with perhaps an even larger rational and deliberative element. Finally, religion is a distinctive feature of all human groups whatsoever, but it is probably a product of the interaction of man's self- consciousness and reason with his instinctive life.

To sum up : We may conclude, then, that the social develop- ment which we find in humanity is in principle the same as the social development which we find in the animals below man ; that the origin of human society is in the instincts established by natural selection long before the human stage was reached, though the development of human society has been largely modified by intellectual elements. Though these intellectual ele- ments are important, human society is not in any sense an intellectual construction due to the perception of the utilities of association. It is not a contract, as was once thought, which can be made over to suit the pleasure of the parties thereto; neither is it a machine of the gods which man cannot modify. Human society is modifiable in the same sense and in the same degree in which human nature is modifiable. While social organization, customs, and institutions rest fundamentally upon instincts which have grown out of the necessities of the life-process, these instincts and the habits which grow out of them are modifiable by intellectual elements, especially in the young. Education is the only sure means, and I believe, the only safe means, of social reorganization.