rstition of
the people. The governments of the past, basing their claims upon divine
right, bear about the same relation to democracy that astrology and
alchemy do to the modern sciences of astronomy and chemistry. The old
political order everywhere represented itself as superimposed on man
from above, and, thus clothed with a sort of divine sanction, it was
exalted above the reach of criticism. The growth of intelligence has
dispelled one by one the crude political superstitions upon which the
old governmental arrangements rested. More and more man is coming to
look upon government as a purely human agency which he may freely modify
and adapt to his purposes. The blind unthinking reverence with which he
regarded it in the past is giving way to a critical scientific spirit.
Nor has this change in our point of view in any way degraded government.
In stripping it of the pretence of divine authority, it has in reality
been placed upon a more enduring basis. In so far as it can no longer
claim respect to which it is not entitled we have a guarantee that it
can not persistently disregard the welfare of the people.

Democracy owes much to modern scientific research. With the advance of
knowledge we have gained a new view of the world. Physics, astronomy,
and geology have shown us that the physical universe is undergoing a
process of continual change. Biology, too, has revolutionized our notion
of life. Nothing is fixed and immutable as was once supposed, but change
is universal. The contraction of the earth's crust with its resultant
changes in the distribution of land and water, and the continual
modification of climate and physical conditions generally have
throughout the past wrought changes in the form and character of all
animal and vegetable life. Every individual organism and every species
must change as the world around it changes, or death is the penalty. No
form of life can long survive which does not possess in a considerable
degree the power of adaptation. Innumerable species have disappeared
because of their inability to adjust themselves to a constantly changing
environment. It is from this point of view of continuous adjustment that
modern science regards the whole problem of life individual and
collective.

We must not, however, assume that what is true of the lower forms of
life is equally true of the higher. In carrying the conceptions of
biology over into the domain of social science we must be careful to