[Sidenote: The stages of human development always the same.] I have dwelt at some length on the domestic history of Mexico and Peru because it is intimately connected with one of the philosophical principles which it is the object of this book to teach, viz., that human progress takes place under an unvarying law, and therefore in a definite way. The trivial incidents mentioned in the preceding paragraphs may perhaps have seemed insignificant or wearisome, but it is their very commonness, their very familiarity, that gives them, when rightly considered, a surprising interest. There is nothing in these minute details but what we find to be perfectly natural from the European point of view. They might be, for that matter, instead of reminiscences of the spontaneous evolution of a people shut out from the rest of the world by impassable oceans, a relation of the progress of some European or Asiatic nation. The man of America advanced in his course of civilization as did the man of the Old World, devising the same institutions, guided by the same intentions, constrained by the same desires. From the great features of his social system down to the little details of his domestic life, there is a sameness with what was done in Asia, Africa, Europe. But similar results imply a similar cause. What, then, is there possessed in common by the Chinese, the Hindoo, the Egyptian, the European, the American? Surely not climate, nor equal necessities, nor equal opportunity. Simply nothing but this--corporeal organization! As automatons constructed in the same way will do the same things, so, in organic forms, sameness of structure will give rise to identity of function and similarity of acts. The same common sense guides men all over the world. Common sense is a function of common organization. All natural history is full of illustrations. [Sidenote: Analogy between societies of men and societies of animals.] It may be offensive to our pride, but it is none the less true, that in his social progress, the free-will of which man so boasts himself in his individual capacity disappears as an active influence, and the domination of general and inflexible laws becomes manifest. The free-will of the individual is supplanted by instinct and automatism in the race. To each individual bee the career is open; he may taste of this flower and avoid that; he may be industrious in the garden, or idle away his time in the air; but the history of one hive is the history of another hive; there will be a predestined organization--the queen, the drones, the workers. In the midst of a thousand unforeseen, uncalculated, variable acts, a definite result, with unerring certainty, emerges; the combs are built in a pre-ordained way, and filled with honey at last. From bees, and wasps, and ants, and birds--from all that low animal life on which he looks with such supercilious contempt, man is destined one day to learn what in truth he really is.