matter, generating life, mind, civilization, and hence we may conclude that whatever else it is, civilization is a force; that it is the sum of all the forces employed to drive humanity onward; that it acts on man as mechanical force acts on matter, attracting, repelling, pressing forward yet holding in equilibrium, and all under fixed and determined laws.
From all which it would appear that nothing is found
in man that has not its counterpart in nature, and that
all things that are related to man are related to each
other; even immortal mind itself is not unlike that subtle
force, inherent in, and working round every atom.
In this respect physical science is the precursor of social science. Nature produces man; man in his earlier conception of nature, that is in his gods, reproduces himself; and later, his knowledge of intrinsic self depends upon his knowledge of extrinsic agencies, so that as the laws that govern external nature are better understood, the laws that govern society are more definitely determined. The conditions of human progress can be wrought into a science only by pursuing the same course that raises into a science any branch of knowledge; that is, by collecting, classifying, and comparing facts, and therefrom discovering laws. Society must be studied as chemistry is studied; it must be analyzed, and its component parts—the solubilities, interactions, and crystallizations of religions, governments and fashions, ascertained. As in the earlier contemplations of physical nature, the action of the elements was deemed fortuitous, so in a superficial survey of society, all events appear to happen by chance; but on deeper investigation, in society as in physics, events apparently fortuitous, may be reduced to immutable law. To this end the life of mankind on the globe must be regarded as the life of one man, successions of societies as successions of days in that life; for the activities of nations are but the sum of the activities of the individual members thereof.
