This position and the discussions offered to prove it imply more than has been explicitly stated.  In this closing chapter it seems desirable to state concisely, and therefore with technical terminology, some of the more fundamental principles of social philosophy assumed or implied in this work.  Brevity requires that this statement take the form of dogmatic propositions and unillustrated abstractions.  The average reader will find little to interest him, and is accordingly advised to omit it entirely.

Let us first clearly see that we have made no effort to account for the origin or inherent nature of psychic life.  That association or the social order is the original producing cause of psychic life is by no means our contention.  Given the psychic nature as we find it in man, the problem is to account for its diverse manifestation in the different races and civilizations.  This, and this alone, has been our problem.

Psychic nature is the sole and final cause of social life.  Without psychic nature there could be no association.  Personalized psychic nature is the sole and final cause of human social life.  Numberless conditions determine by stimulation or imitation the manifestation of psychic life.  These conditions differ for different lands, peoples, ages, and political relations, producing diverse social orders for each separated group.  These diverse social orders determine the psychic characteristics differentiating the various groups.  Social life and social order are objective expressions of a reality of which psychic nature is the subjective and therefore deeper reality.  The two cannot be ruthlessly torn apart and remain complete, nor can they be understood, or completely interpreted, apart from each other.  They are correlative and complementary expressions for the same reality.

Similarly physical and psychical life are to be conceived as profoundly interrelated, being respectively objective and subjective expressions of a reality incapable of separate interpretation.  Yet each has markedly distinct characteristics and is the subject of distinct laws of activity and development.

Heredity is of two kinds, biological heredity, transmitting innate characters, and social heredity, transmitting acquired habits and their physiological results.

The innate characters transmitted by biological heredity are either physiological, anatomical, or psychical.

The acquired habits transmitted by social heredity are essentially psychical:  but they may result in acquired physiological, or even anatomical, characters.  Here belong the physiological effects of diet, housing, clothing, occupation, education, etc., which have not yet been taken up and incorporated into the innate physiological constitution by biological heredity.  The physiological effects of social heredity are through the daily physical life and activity of each individual, in accordance with the requirements of the social order in which he is reared; and these are reached through its influence on the acquired psychical habits, which are transmitted through association, imitation, and the control of activities by language and education.  In biological heredity the transmission is exclusively prior to birth, while in social heredity it is chiefly, if not entirely, after birth.