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78   HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

readily perceive that the ambition to excel, to improve ourselves and our fellows, would amount to little if industry did not impel us to useful labor, and if wealth did not lead us to store up or take good care of the things which industry had produced. We see the close and constant dependence of these three departments. The most perfect government is that which most favors the complete organization of industry.

In the front brain, the counterpoise or balance of industry is science. For science discovers and formulates laws and rules; then industry uses these in every part of its varied work, giving them a material embodiment.

The counterpoise of ambition in the back brain is the group of culture in the front. That is, however ambitious we may be, we cannot rise actually higher in the ranks of life except through actual culture, by becoming wiser and better. And all assumption of social rank merely because of wealth, is unbalanced and false assumption. It indicates a lack of wisdom in those who assume and in those who assent.

Marriage naturally results in its counterpoise, the family. We cannot exalt one very high without the other. Without the family as a center of increase, there could be no communities and nations. And there could be no religion. For history proves to us that religion has always dealt with the relations of man to man no less than with the relations of man to superior or spiritual beings. And it has always deduced, more or less, one from the other. Differences of rank and power are conspicuous among men, and easily form a basis for conceiving of beings still higher

SOCIAL BALANCES.   79

than man. We may say that the true function of religion is two-fold.. First, it must unite the entire human race in one composite and responsive life. Second, it must unite and harmonize man with the living, conscious beings of the universe.

UNITY OF PLAN. In this phase of our general subject we may well consider for a moment why we should not divide up the necessary functions of society among a large number of quite independent organizations and leave the mass of the people free to support and use these as they please without any concern of the civil government. This would be the kind of social growth that has taken place in the United States, in Britain and various civilized countries. It seems to the people themselves that it secures them a great amount of freedom. However, We shall soon see that it involves an unnatural and unhealthy social growth and defeats its own apparent ends. The argument here will rest upon laws of evolution now accepted by science.

EVOLUTION OF TRADES. The division of labor

the specialization of functions, governs the social progress of man no less than it does the development of the entire scale of animals. For example, in national infancy each person performs every kind of labor pursued by any of the rest. Each man, in a rude way, is at once hunter, farmer, mechanic and merchant. The savage chief hunts his own game, dresses and cooks it, gathers his own nuts and wild fruit, and makes his own rude clothing of skins, and his ruder hut of sticks and mud.

In later periods, persons who show particular aptitude for special kinds of labor begin to devote