Page:The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind.djvu/32



subject in this universe. The growth in prosperity and freedom of a community or the decay of its life and liberty does not depend solely on its own needs of advancement and progress, and is not effected solely by the working of its own resources.

No man can ever exist by ignoring any one of the forces and materials that make up the world he lives in; he has to reckon the agencies that are perpetually influencing himself as well as other men. A study of the conditions of other men is thus the means to a proper understanding of his own situation in the struggle for existence. And, similarly, in the case of a community or a people, the first problem in the struggle is to discover the friends and foes—the favourable and unfavourable