SOPHEREUS. My general conclusion in regard to the phenomena of human society is the same as that which I formed from a study of the phenomena of the solar system. I find a great many things which I can not explain without the hypothesis of a direct creating power exerted by an intelligent being. I know that you object to the idea of creation, but I explained to you in our last discussion that I understood it to mean the causing something to exist which did not exist before, and the doing it by an intentional and direct act of production. KOSMICOS. No matter about your definition. What are the facts that you propose to discuss? SOPHEREUS. In the social phenomena I find many acts of creation. I do not find that buildings spring out of the ground without human intervention, or that machinery is formed by the spontaneous arrangement of matter in certain forms and relations, or by the tendencies that are implanted in matter as its inherent properties. I find an enormous multitude of concrete objects, formed out of dead matter, by human intervention, availing itself of those properties of matter, which without such active intervention would have remained quiescent, and would not have resulted in the production of these objects. It is a common form of expression to speak of the "growth" of cities, but no one understands by this form of speech that a city has become what it is without the action of numerous individuals projecting and building their separate structures, or without the combined action of the whole body of the inhabitants in determining and executing a general plan to which individuals are to conform, more or less exactly, their particular erections. Again, I find that there are rules of social life, which take the form of what are called "laws," and these are imposed by the will of some governing authority; they are always the product of some one human will, or of the collective will of a greater number of persons. I have looked into history and have found many instances of military conquest, invasions of the territory inhabited by one race of men by another race, domination of different dynasties, overthrow of one governing power, and substitution of another. Although the changes thus produced are often very complex, sometimes rapid and sometimes slow in reaching the consequences, I do not find that they have ever taken place without the direct action of some one human will, or of the aggregate force of many human wills. The conquests of Alexander and Napoleon are instances of what a single human will can do in changing the condition of nations; and I have not been able to read history by the interpretation that makes such men mere instruments in the hands of their age, which would, without their special existences and characters, have brought about the same or something like the same results. The invasions of the Roman Empire by the Northern barbarians are instances of the pressure of one population