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 400 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

surface of the globe; that is to say of course its natural limits and frontiers.

This theoretical antagonism which we have observed in all of our doctrinal exposition, and which a little while ago was estab- lished in a more or less metaphysical and absolute fashion between the self and the non-self, between mesolpgy and anthro pology, between the environment, especially the climate, and the race, is scientifically reduced to the relative data whose point of departure is the nature of the germ and its development in con nection with the conditions of existence, by way of natural selec tion, heredity, adaptation, either continuous or discontinuous If continuous, it implies continuation of growth, and if not, i implies death.

The fact that every society contains in itself its organic, inor- ganic, and psychical environment does not alter this point of view, because every society, by the mere fact that it is more 01 less limited, is necessarily in correspondence with other social and physical environments. Even the universal society, humanity r in its relations with the external environment remains still sub- ject to the planet.

Unfortunately, the metaphysical spirit is itself an inherited peculiarity which, in spite of its degeneracy, is difficult to cast off. Hence it is that Weismann in his turn, after having con- tributed so much to perfect the theory of natural selection, heredity, and adaptation, seems to us to lose sight of the con- stant relativity of the phenomena which he has studied and, from the logical point of view, to revive an absolute which is irreconcilable with his own observations. The example is interesting because it helps us to grasp the fundamental distinc tion which exists between positive philosophy and metaphysical philosophy, and to drive the latter from its last intrenchment. By a purely formal and metaphysical subtlety, Weismann, who has so well demonstrated that the formation of the germ is itself the result of a selection, of an adaptation i. e. } of a relation between the being and its conditions of existence finally restores to the germ this attribute of first causality which th theologians and philosophers had successively attributed to th