It is thus that in the social human world
every phase of civilisation carries within itself
and always develops further the germs of its
own dissolution whence is derived a new phase
of civilisation—whose geographical seat will
be more or less changed—in the eternal
rhythm of living humanity. The ancient
ecclesiastical civilisations of the East dissolve
and give birth to the Greco-Roman world to
which succeeds the feudal and aristocratic
civilisation of Central Europe; this also being
dissolved through its own excesses, like the
preceding civilisations, is replaced by the
bourgeois civilisation which has attained its
culminating point in the Anglo-Saxon world.
But this already feels the first shiverings of
the fever of dissolution, whilst a socialist
civilisation is being born and is developing
itself, a civilisation which will flourish over
a vaster domain than that of the other
civilisations which have preceded it.*





* One of the most characteristic phases of social dis-
solution is that of parasitism. cf Massart and Vander-
velde, Parasitism, Organic and Social, London, 1895.
à
It is not, therefore, correct} to claim that
natural selection determined by the struggle
for existence secures the survival of the best ;
really it secures the survival of the best adapted.
It is very different whether it is a question
of natural or of social Darwinism.
The struggle for existence necessarily deter-
mines the survival of the individuals best
adapted to the society and the time in which
they live.
In the natural, biological domain the free
play oi forces and of cosmic conditions secures
_ a progressive elevation of living forms from
the microbe up to man.
In human society, on the contrary, that is to
say in the superorganic evolution of Mr. H.
