^o.._^S..S. "PRIVATE LIBRARY of KIMBALL YOUNG THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS •Tl 1^^ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE ATTEMPTS TO FORMULATE THE CONDITIONS OF HUMAN ADVANCE BY ARTHUR JAMES TODD, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Wefaj gork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 uill rights reserved Copyright, 1918, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1918. NorfajODlI ^KBB J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. f] l^WVfiRSTTY OF CALIFORNIA ^ ' SANTA BARBAEA t4 "The characteristic of Education is this, above all : a Being naturally inclined to live for self and in self is to be made disposed to live for others so as to live again in others by others." — AuGUSTE Comte. II "The progress of civilisation depends, I should say, on the extension of the sense of duty which each man owes to society at large." — Leslie Stephen. Ill " Man is something that shall be surpassed." — Fr. Nietzsche. PREFACE From Comte onward sociologists have pretty generally agreed that the only justification for a Science of Society is its contributions to a workable theory of progress. Hence they have attempted each in his own way to formu- late such a theory and to float it. But historians, econo- mists, philosophers, and biologists as well have been for a hundred years past laying down what they considered to be the necessary conditions of human improvement. So far we have had in English no easily accessible comprehen- sive digest or summary of these widely scattered and divergent materials. This volume essays to bring together the most important contributions of English, American, and Continental writers to the literature of social progress. But it is more than a mere digest ; it attempts at least a critical analysis and an evaluation. Events have con- ferred a certain timeliness upon such a study ; for when the human values of a whole world are cast into the crucible, as in the present war, it becomes imperative that the world be rebuilt according to some sounder principles, principles which will make the world safer and assure its improvement. Under such circumstances the study of the underlying facts of human progress is no mere academic performance ; it is an issue forced upon all thinking men by dint of a world in arms. Even a superficial survey of three centuries of opinion reveals that the attitude toward social progress varies, like that towards God, from bhnd acceptance of it as the vii Vlll PREFACE solidest of facts to utter rejection of it as the greatest of illusions. This book frankly takes a middle course, not -from a timorous habit of playing safe, but as the result of accepting the challenge of what seems to be fact. It records the gradual emergence of six propositions and the growing conviction of their truth and importance : (i) Social progress is theoretically possible. (2) But it is not necessary or inevitable or inherent in the nature of things. (3) Social progress is a term used with reckless imprecision : many phenomena are called progress, or are confused with it, which have little kinship with it in either fact or theory. (4) It should be possible to work out a series of objective tests for social progress; and if we are ever to have a Science of Society such objective tests must be part of its ultimate purpose. (5) Social progress is a complex, more or less organic, and cannot be interpreted in terms of any one set of factors or conditioning phenomena. (6) If humanity is to hold the threads of its own destiny and rise from ages of bHnd drift to a plane of mastery, it will be through discovering and utilizing new types of edu- cation. No apology is necessary for these propositions. But a word as to the attitude of mind in which they were reached may not be out of place : I mean, concretely, the appeal to objective fact. Perhaps we cannot discover objectively any long-range cosmic plan in the world of men. But philosophy and religion may take up the problem where we leave it. Speculation is not to be damned because phi- losophers have made mistakes. I am perfectly wilhng to indulge in speculation but must not stamp and issue it as objective truth. When I say, for example, that man's history, stretching back, as it probably does, twenty mil- lion years, leads me to feel that all this elaborate expendi- ture of time and energy is an earnest of some manifest PREFACE IX destiny for man and the world ; when I count the facts of man's evolution as suggestive of purpose in the universe; when I figure up what it has cost to produce the race and my individual self, I can easily let myself go on to the point of feehng that both the race and myself should fare fur- ther, hfe upon life, beyond this scanty allotted span of years. But in all these emotional outbursts and flights of speculation I must not allow their seductive warmth to delude me into beheving that they rest upon proof. They may stimulate me in a way, but they may also paralyze me into complacency, a sense of the priceless value of my own amiable self, and other like immoralities. Hence integrity and safety made it imperative to go out into the open and attempt at least to confront objective fact. While most of these chapters were worked out before the great catastrophe overwhelmed Europe, no serious modification of either fact or conclusion has seemed nec- essary in consequence. My original plan included a detailed treatment of the educational reconstruction implied in the conclusions here outlined. But the writings of Professor John Dewey and other modernists in education have rendered such a dis- cussion not only gratuitous but presumptuous. This book is frankly not the result of an uncontrollable impulse to tell the world how to run its affairs. It grew honestly out of an attempt to meet an academic situation, to teach a course in which no text was available. Hence it is a cooperative venture, and it is fitting that I should dis- claim all originality save in the analyses, the arrangement, and the point of view. The materials were furnished by the great brotherhood of scholarship which has been striv- ing to make this world of ours somewhat more habitable. But special credit is due those friends and colleagues who have been self-sacrificing enough to read and criticize the X PREFACE manuscript. I am particularly indebted to my friend Ray C. Brown for his patient reading of the whole volume ; to Professor Joseph Peterson for his aid in clarifying the psychology of the first five chapters ; and to Dean L. D. Coffman for reviewing the chapter on educational impli- cations. ' TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface PAGE vii PART I. CHAPTER HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS I The Paradox of Human Natxjre II Primitive Notions of the Self III The Psychological Analysis of the Self IV Self as a Social Product V Self as a Social Product, Continued 3 lO i6 31 S8 PART II. VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI ^XVII XVIII XIX XX THE CONCEPT AND CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 83 113 The Concept of Progress The Criteria of Progress PART III. THE PROPHETS OF PROGRESS Introductory Note on Interpretations of Progress . 151 (a) Materialistic Geographic Determinists 157 The Technicians or Inventionists 176 Money 185 Capital 188 Division of Labor 195 The Economic Interpretation of History : Statement . 202 The Economic Interpretation of History : Criticism . 214 (b) Biological The Selectionists 239 The Eugenists 257" The Racialists 274 The Militarists 287 On Peaceful Group Contacts 309 xi ^^ xii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE (c) Institutional XXI Property 325 XXII The Family 332 XXIII Government 336 y XXIV Law . 352 XXV Public Opinion 365 XXVI Great Men, Heroes, the Elite 373 XXVII Great Men, Heroes, the Elite, Continued . . . 394 XXVIII Language 407 XXIX Religion 414 (d) Ideological XXX The Idealists 44i XXXI The Intellectualists 465 XXXII The Artists 488 PART IV. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS XXXIII Some Educational Implications of Social Progress . 505 XXXIV Summary and Conclusions 535 Bibliography and Supplementary Readings . . 549 Index 575 PART I HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS CHAPTER I THE PARADOX OF HUMAN NATURE The conservative from his easy-chair at the club dis- courses ghbly of what he chooses to call Human Nature, and frequently joins forces with the man in the street in condemning offhand some simple innovation as "contrary to human nature." Too often pohtical economists, and other less able critics of social reform, have taunted the re- formers with forgetting poor weak human nature in their schemes, and have insisted that human nature must be changed before any comprehensive or enduring amehora- tion is to be expected. But the taunt is hardly justified. Social reformers from Plato and Jesus onward, including even the much abused sociahsts who are considered to have been most lax in this particular, have recognized the necessity of modifying human nature along with or even preceding changes in economic, political, and other social institutions, the objective expressions of human nature. These critics and easy-chair philosophers are not absolutely without guile in their animadversions. Their taunt is really but one horn of a dilemma set for the reformers. What they really mean is this : Your schemes won't work unless human nature changes ; but human nature doesn't change — science, philosophy, rehgion, and ethics all 3 4 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS agree on this ; hence your schemes are the idlest vagaries ; save your breath and stand by the estabhshed order. Now, all sensible people accept the first part of the dilemma ; but many of us reject the second as ignorance or willful cant. We hold that human nature is indefinitely, yes, infinitely modifiable. We assert that it is not a fixed quantity or quality given in toto once and for all. Men who argue for this fixity usually have some ulterior purpose or delude themselves. Such a concept of human nature is flung at us or piled up into a barricade to obstruct essen- tial reforms, where reform means the loss of some oppor- tunity to exploit, the foregoing of some personal advantage, and the socializing of opportunity. But the very crudest view of human evolution must a priori admit that human character is plastic and poten- tially progressive, or else remain vague and meaningless. , Mysticism might deny it, but the type of critic we have in i^/mind would hardly be dubbed mystical. The cynic might, .iwvr with George Mered ith, chaff "that wandering ship of a , I"' _ drunken pilo t, the m utin ous^ crew and the angr y captain, calle^TIuman Nature"; but the evolutionist islast~of all ~men^ a cynic! THetrue evolutionist must believe that neither human nature nor man's environment is a given fixed quantity. Neither is static, neither is mere motley nor fantastic. Both are dynamic. Man and his envi- ronment along with him (perhaps including God) are evolv- ing. And this process of 'creative evolution' is the true order of nature. Hence there is truth in the idea that dis- content with any "present order" is the highest virtue.^ But there is a sense in which everything and anything may be set down as against human nature. For we are all a complex of competing ideas, tendencies, instincts, ^ See Berton Braley's poem " Discontent " in The Survey, February 8, 1913- THE PARADOX OF HUMAN NATURE 5 sentiments. We nre n mnlliplo prr^on;ility, or perhaps jifhor ,-1 ^niiilljvprsp' of potential personalities, forced int o a sembki , n((- of unity and orderly behavior by the situation s whic h confront and menace us if we fail to offer a solid and coherent fron t to them. Failure means a mental house divided against itself — insanity. But it is altogether conceivable that a given individual or the race as a whole may present different types of unity according to the strength and coloring of the several ideas forced into this unity. Hence there is a certain show of validity in the as- sumption that this institution or that privilege runs counter to human nature, for the assumption includes the further assumption that this human nature is only factitious unity and holds in it certain rebellious ideas or sentiments ever ready to break loose and to destroy. Thus Mr. H. G. Wells wrote awhile ago: "Socialism is against human nature. That is true, and it is equally true of everything else ; capitahsm is against human nature, competition is against human nature, cruelty, kindness, religion and doubt, monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, decency, indecency, piety and sin are all against human nature. Human nature is against human nature. For human nature is in perpetual conflict ; it is the Ishmael of the Universe, against everything and with everything against it."^ Our immediate problem, then, is to examine haw human nature is made and Qf_what it is made, in order to determine w hether it may he ad apted to the de mand s of profprt^ xl new types of .politic al and ec onomic organizat ion. We assume, of course, in our discussion that social life and individual life are organic unities ; not, to be sure, on any narrow biologic analogy, but in the sense that they are real wholes and that any analysis of them into parts is 1 New Worlds for Old, p. 203 ; cf. Gelett Burgess, The Romance of the Commonplace, p. 42. I <>* 6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS necessarily artificial and involves a certain amount of error. We agree with M. Bergson in rejecting the common scientific methodology of analysis and resynthesis as a means of getting at absolute truth ; its resultant is a mosaic-world instead of a living real whole-world. And yet such analyses and mosaics are the price of our in- tellectual existence. Imagine sitting on your leopard skin and trying to think or feel "society," or *'I," or "human nature," as living wholes! We must perforce fall back upon analysis. But in our present study we shall go only so far in the analysis' of human nature as to pick out the "concept of self" as its really significant element. This is the common center for the self-regarding or the altruistic motives and sentiments. It is the core of human life. What makes a man, or what determines his conduct, if it is not what he thinks of himself, or what others think of him, or what he thinks others might think or should think of him, that is, of his self? We must insist sharply that our problem is not the nature of selfishness, but of the self. It is a problem of sociology and only incidentally of psychology. That it is of tremen- dous practical interest will appear if we but suggest that on the proper interpretation of self and self-building depends the working out of such social problems as the moral imbecile, the criminal, the apartment house, the ownership of houses of prostitution, the rich malefactor, eugenics, municipal socialism or semi-socialism, industrial peace, cooperative production. It is unnecessary to bring in at this point a critique of theories of progress, for one can in perfect consistency accept the principle of progress, and deny with Bernard Shaw that we have progressed an inch since the days of the Hittites. Yet it is eminently fitting to remind ourselves that no sound principle of progress can be formulated without a sound and THE PARADOX OF HUMAN NATURE 7 accurate notion of the human self.. Whatever progress mankind has made has been largely of the hit-or-miss order, planless, sporadic, more or less unconscious. One great difficulty has been ignorance or neglect of the real significance of the human personality. If we are to have any conscious, reasonable plan for prog- ress which shall turn our factitious winnings into real improvement of men and conditions, we must proceed ap- parently by creating a human type with a personality or "self" so modifiable as to render it better fitted for effective social service. Can it be done? I believe it can. I believe it in spite of, and perhaps even because of, the critics of human nature. One of the most savage of early nineteenth century critics of the "progressists," Thomas Love Peacock, admonished his contemporaries to beware of trusting too much in their powers of modifying human nature. His "Beech and the Sapling Oak" is a typical example of this preaching : "For the tender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut down which you will. " But this you must know, that as long as they grow, Whatsoever change may be. You can never teach either oak or beech To be aught but a greenwood tree." But so far as I know, not even the most ardent social reformer (who is moderately sane) ever plans to get any- thing but greenwood trees out of beeches. He is not so silly as to hope to gather figs from thistles or to turn men into angels. Modern forestry proves, however, that there are ways of getting more good timber out of a given area of 8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS mere greenwood than we used to imagine possible. The most superficial observer gazing idly out of a German railway window cannot fail to notice this. Practically our whole forestry service in the United States is based on this principle. Further, the stock breeder and the botanist, if they do not offer us the means, at least show us certain positive encouraging results. Such processes as budding, grafting, or varying the nutrition, produce marked changes in the plants and animals thus treated. In less than a generation Luther Burbank shears the cactus of its spines. Where is the wizard who will turn thorny, unproductive, selfish, shirking, exploiting, cross-grained human natures into cooperators, good citizens, and members of a great united human brotherhood? He is perhaps even now in our midst. But whoever he is, it is safe to say that his means will be social education, centering about a new concept of the human self. And his philosophy will be a con- structive optimism that includes a liberal view of human nature, precisely because human nature and the self are trustworthy when given proper surroundings. "Human nature is all right as it is " declares a modern preacher; . . . "Human nature needs no change, and nobody is trying to change it. It only needs a chance." ^ One need not go so far as to say that human nature is all right ; it is enough to credit it with being right enough for most present purposes if given proper opportunities. By opportunities I mean not taking away every let or hindrance to personal whim or the satisfaction of instinct ; that is, allowing human nature to "go on the loose." Opportunity to develop includes education to self-control, discipUnes, rewards and ^ J. H. Holmes, Revolutionary Function of the Modern Church, pp. 233-4. Cf . for a lively presentation of the thesis that human nature is not inherently evil, and that it is not human but distorted animalized nature which con- stitutes the real obstacle to progress, R. G. Davis, " Social Inequality and Social Progress," Westminster Review, 170:388-95. THE PARADOX OF HUMAN NATURE 9 penalties, inspirations, renunciation, and all the other devices for rational social control. The first part of the present study does not presume to be more than a slender and tentative effort to outline this new concept of the ''self." Three main lines of evidence will be tapped. First, ethnography furnishes much illuminating material to demonstrate the savage's hazy and mystical sense of personality and especially of its subordination to the group unity. Next, psychology (and especially pathologic psychology) reveals how the self is fixed, altered, united, dispersed, divided, or even lost. Finally, sociology and social psychology declare in no uncertain terms that the sense of self is a social product and should indicate how the self may be controlled, molded, colored, and adapted for human welfare and progress. CHAPTER II PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF THE SELF Many of the quaint and superstitious practices of primitive men are referable to a very hazy notion of their "persons," their "selves." In this they strongly resemble children, who, it is notorious, are frequently very slow to identify themselves with their own physical organism and feelings. A Kafir boy could not tell his European visitor whether a certain pain was within his head or in the roof of his hut. American schoolboys have been known to locate "an awful sore throat" in their stomachs. Such vague definitions of the physical self illustrate the lack of sharp duahsms which is the distinctive mark of rudimentary thought ; that is, failure to distinguish between subject and object, in-consciousness and outside-of-consciousness, self and other-self ; between imagination or feeling and reality, between belief and knowledge. Hence one need not be surprised to find the primitive man conceiving his self and its changes in, to us, absurd and incongruous terms. Thus the name has been almost universally considered as part of the self.^ To change his name meant to change a man's character, because the name not only represented him, but was in a sense actually himself. The same prin- ciple holds nowadays when initiation into an order or brotherhood involves taking a new name : the name is an * For detailed evidence on this and other points to follow see the writer's article in Amer. Jour. Psychol., 27 : 171-202, April, 1916. 10 PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF THE SELF II ideal to be incorporated. Again, the shadow as a part of the self was an extremely common behef, which survived in European folklore and medieval poetry, and which still occurs among school children. Likewise, the image or likeness or picture is identified with the self by savages and by the modern superstitious who cling to miracle- working icons, pictures, medals, scapularies, rehcs, and all the paraphernaUa of fetish-worship. By whatever means belief in the soul or dream-double of men arose, there is no doubting its influence on their philosophy of the self. Changes in health or character are charged to mishaps suffered by this very material part of the personality : if it loses its way in the dark, I sicken ; if somebody steals it, I die. Another fascinating development of the primitive sense of personality is _the identification of propertv as par t of_the_.S£ji. A man's tools or weapons, utensils, even his [ cattle, his slaves, and his wives are counted as part of,' himself, hterally and unequivocally. Hence they are fre- quently destroyed at his death or buried with him. But in all these attempts to define the limits of per- sonahty the individual gets his cue from the group to which he belongs : folk ^ belie f stamps iJselfja2on_dieJiidivi^^ Frequently there is a distinct sense of some mystical sort of relationship between the individual self and the larger \ self, the group personality. Each man is sunk in the matrix of his family or village or tribe. This more or less instinc- tive subordination of individual to group in both his actions and his thought of himself results from the exigencies of the primitive struggle to live and propagate in the face of a menacing environment. Safety lies along the path of solidarity. It was just this utter like-mindedness, this coalescence of the unit with the mass that permitted the human species to subjugate its rivals ; but at the same time it made the process of development almost infinitely slow. 5-^ 12 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS The bearing of this subordination of individual self to group unity can be illustrated in various ways. When, for example, the stage of the Hero- God is reached in human history, these gods are at first group deities, not personal gods. Likewise, just as the individual totem grew out of the group totem, so the patron saint of the individual appears later than the more universal saint. Even more striking are primitive notions of sin and its punishment. Sin at this level was wholly an objective or ( ritualistic breach, not a sense of ethical short-coming. Precisely because it was objective and because of the close- knit life of the group in other respects, the sense of sin be- came, too, a group sense. Hence the breach of any member involved the whole. Ten righteous men might have saved Sodom, but the un-rightness of one would have sufficed to bring down its destruction. Thjs ^sense of ..g rov ip_ re^p nT)^;^- bili ty becomes the _source ^f a t remendous sanction J qx discipline and appr oved conduct^ I t gives to the taboo i ts invio lability. Beliefs in reincarnation and family or tribal totems re- enforce this palpable sinking of individuality in the mass, not only of contemporaries or posterity but also of the leg- endary past. Still further evidence crops out of the ritual practices by which savage children are endowed with per- sonalities distinct from those of their parents or tribe- mates ; for, be it remembered, birth does not necessarily confer personality ; often it must be acquired by a rec- ognized social procedure. It is evident that in such vital matters as acquiring or losing one's self, the beliefs and sentiments of a primitive group wielded absolute authority over the individual. It is equally evident that those folkways and rudimentary philosophy served as the wellspring of social control and social order. Therefore, since order is one of the elements PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF THE SELF 13 in any concept of progress, the bearing of the savage philosophy of the self upon the early history of mankind is apparent. But for our purposes it is even more important to find out how primitive men looked upon changes in the self. This whole aspect of savage life can be summarized in the doctrine of nietarriiirphijsis, as it forms one of the three cardinal principles of primitive naturcrphilosophy, namely, that all is poss ible, that all isj :elated, and thaJ_alLchanges. The second of these principles is of profound significance ; for it meant that not only were men related to other men, but also that a vague, emotional feeHng of community (based upon failure to mark off the various kingdoms and forces of nature) fused and identified them with animals, with stocks and stones and cosmic powers. This 'pathetic fallacy' of forcing nature's moods and powers into accord with those of suffering gods and heroes is as old as real religion and literature, and still remains a trump card for the melodramatist or romantic novelist. But to the primi- tive mind it was much more vivid and compelling, par- ticularly when combined with the idea that all might change. For by it all barriers were let down and the human per- sonality became so fluid that this could become that or the other at will : man is transformable into buffaloes or wer- wolves, pigs, deer, paroquets, or churchbells ; women into pillars of salt, laurel trees, or lakes; statues or ravens into lovely maidens ; frogs into princes ; dry bones become living men ; St. Januarius' blood hquefies to order ; human beings mate with and beget animals and vice versa; cabbage and parsley beds yield human babies. Myth, folklore, legend, religious dogma, magic, and witch-baiting all unite in testifying to this common behef in metamorphosis ; that is, in modifying — more than that, in revolutionizing — human nature. The legends of Pygmalion, Circe, Acteon, 14 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the Golden Ass, Proteus, Apollo and Daphne, and Shake- speare's creation of Puck are but a few classic and familiar outcroppings of this rich and widespread stratum of thought. The same idea appears in the miraculous beliefs about renewing youth, such as crystallized in the legends of the Wandering Jew, Joseph of Arimathea, and the 'fountains of youth.' Initiation ceremonies and early dramatic art |/also testify to the belief that real transformations of personality are possible. It is significant that even so late as Plato's time philosophers could fear the metamorphosis of the actor into his role. It may not be out of place here to recall to mind such modern survivals of belief in metamorphosis as the change vin personality of the priest when he dons his ecclesiastical \Tstments ; the judge when he put on his robe and mounts *Jthe bench; the convert when he claims ''entire sanctifica- Jtion"; the dogma of papal infallibility resulting from a ^\/ mysterious interchange of personality between the pope / and the Godhead ; the soldier with his ' f rightfulness ' ; t/ or the policeman when he lays aside his ordinary humanity \ and citizenship to become the 'personification of the law,' and tells you with shocking naivete that he tortures a suspected prisoner not as a man but as an officer. These illustrations from the history of human nature yield several important conclusions on the methods by which our sense of self is constructed. In the first place we must have been impressed by the large role of the feelings in coloring primitive perception and especially perception of the self. The emotion of fear begot many curious and all but incredible beliefs about metamorphosis. The feeling of safety derived from close association strengthened the tendency of the individual to merge himself in his group. Ignorance of the scientific order of nature, errors in seeing and hearing, faulty analogies and judgments, all PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF THE SELF 15 conspired to suppress sharp dualisms in primitive thought, and promoted in particular the failure to distinguish rigidly between ego and alter. This was largely responsible for early communism in property and for those broad defi- nitions of kinship which merged the individual into his totem-clan, family, or tribe. That is to say, the notion of the individual soul and its priceless worth, and the mili- tant sense of self as a property holder were characteristics lacking in early men ; hence they must have been acquired in the course of comparatively recent religious and industrial evolution, and are therefore modifiable. Moreover, what- ever we may think of the ways in which belief in metamor- phosis has expressed itself, it is quite undeniable that the changes in human character and circumstance are authentic and cannot be repudiated. They yield emphatic affirmation upon the possibihty of molding and modifying the human self. The phenomena of religious conversion (the broken and contrite heart, the miracle of tongues, the pulverized will of the initiate, "twice-born men," etc.), of "double personality," of hypnotic suggestion, or even of more normal and commonplace educational experiences indicate that this belief may still retain a valid place in our thinking. Could we once peer into the depths of that dim valley, the subconscious self, we might well be startled at the un- dreamed-of possibilities of transformation. But the final and most important conclusion from the ethnographic data we have gathered is a strong hint that the sense of self is essentially social and that as the mind is a working unity, so the concept of self reflects this totality of mind — feehngs, ideas, desires, percepts, concepts; and is con- trolled, shaped, and colored by it. i CHAPTER III THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF Our study of primitive thought and customs has sug- gested that the self is not a fixed or static quantity, but is a variable, depending upon the whole content and coloring of the mind for its shape and texture. Suppose we turn to psychology and inquire whether it supports such a con- clusion. It is understood that we are not concerned here with speculative theology and its identification of the immortal God-given soul as the real self speaking through 'conscience' to our other selves, which are really not us in the eternal sense. Remember that our purpose is to keep these discussions rigorously objective. We might begin by setting aside the old metaphysical notion of the self as expressed, for example, by Bishop Butler: "It is not an idea, or abstract notion, or quahty, but a being only, which is capable of life and action, of happiness and misery."^ To be sure we cannot treat such a concept too cavalierly, for a host of problems psychological and sociological seem to demand such a concept for their solution. For example, can evolution account for the separation by the self of itself from its sensations? In other words, can the self have evolved out of simple mechanical reactions upon exterior stimuli ; or has there always been a self-exist- ent spiritual principle distinct from the impressions and * "Dissertation of Personal Identity" in Bohn's ed. of his Analogy and Sermons, pp. 328-34. 16 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 17 sensations it receives ? Is there a preestablished conscious self, anterior to all sensation, a self-constituted or 'injected' feeler before all feeling? Ancient Hindu philosophy answered, yes. "Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (Buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins." "Let him know that the person within all beings, not heard here, not reached, not thought, not subdued, not seen, not understood, not classed, but hearing, thinking, seeing, classing, sounding, understanding, knowing, is his Self." 1 Thomas Hill Green asserted that mere sensation could not be even a beginning of conscious experience to the individual.^ For, he argues, sensation is essentially per- ception of relation, and relation implies conscious thought, a thinker. Nature, he says, implies a non-natural principle which we may call a self -distinguishing consciousness, and which cannot be subject to the relations it establishes between phenomena. "If we were merely phenomena among phenomena, we could not have knowledge of a world of phenomena." Human experience is on the one hand an order of events, on the other a consciousness of this order. This consciousness cannot itself be a part of the process of nature. (Man cannot lift himself by his boot- straps !) In his chapter on the Will, he applies the same method to distinguish a 'want' from a 'wanter,' a 'desire' or impulse to satisfy a desire from a 'desirer ' ; " the reflect- ing subject traverses the series of wants which it distin- guishes from itself." Yet on the top of all this. Green denies the existence of a 'mysterious entity' called the Self. How he can escape it I am unable to see. For what can be more mysterious than an eternal self-knowing, ^ Upanishads, Sacred Books of the East, xv : 12, 132-6, 163 ; i : 263. ^ Prolegomena to Ethics, pp. 47, 59, 90-100, etc. c ) 1 8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS I self-distinguishing consciousness, or what more of an entity ? The great fallacy here seems to He in considering sensa- */ tions or perceptions as absolutely discrete solids entering a receptacle as bees would swarm into a hive. But a sensation is not alone a something- felt; i t is j-lso something which feels. ^ Furthermore, life is not to be marked off into sensations, perceptions, thoughts, desires, will, nervous ener^/ muscular tissue, metabolism,* etc., as the green- grocer arranges his stock of fruits and vegetables into piles. It is a dynamic unity, and these various phenomena are but its manifestations as they appear to an outside observer. The central fact is that whatever is alive, feels and knows as a whole, and needs no special injection of a self-conscious ego to unify and direct its feeling and think- ing. We grant that this still leaves open the question of the self-conscious feeling of the self. But what, may we ask, bestows or secures to the self its sense of unity? Is it a unity of perceptions-of-the-outside-world, or a perception of unity-of-activity in response to sensations and situations from somewhere? Is it the feeling of a "little man" inside of us, or is it the feeling of the whole organism discharging itself at a given situation? Does the amoeba or even a higher organism perceive a bit of food as something in rela- tion to itself as an eternal, self -regarding, food-desiring entity, or does it get its notion of its own unity from a perception of its own unified reflex action in going after the food ? It appears to us unquestionable that the "self" is not some mysterious "little man" injected or inherited as a ^ " Each has only to ask himself, ' WTiat do I know myself to be ? ' And if he answer honestly, he will, I think, say : ' I am a feeling or sensibility modi- fied, in innumerable ways, by influences which I do not originate. These modifications, when grouped, are what I call the world, or wy world, for I know no other. I am the sentient unity of a sensible world.' " — Thos. Davidson, Educ. Rev., xx : 327. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 19 distinct entity, but that it is a developin g entit y ; that it does not originally poss ess unity but attains it i n sofar as the circle of thought is organ ized, not di sconnected.^ AiuT this circle of thought is unified through activity and to a certain extent through conscious memory of activity. The thread of personality, of selfhood, which connects our past with our present and gives continuity to the self, is accomplishment and the echoes it leaves in mind and body ; it is not what wejvere, but what we di d. The self is never_ an absolute, but always a becomin g. It is as Bishop Butler himself says, "perception by memory," where the object perceived is the sum of past perceptions — the past perceiver itself; it is "self-participation in experi- ence." But the sources of personal continuity are not confined to such memory echoes. Our selves go on develop- ing and our past experiences continue to affect us even though not consciously recalled. We insist, then, that the self as an independent entity, savoring of the Uncaused Cause, is a mere abstraction or symbol without any foundation in reahty, a pure assump- tion based on primitive beliefs about the soul, and a relic of the days when so-called mental science was unilluminated by psychology or sociology. The self, the ego, is simply a derivative from conscious hfe itself. We are in thorough accord here with Bergson, Ward, Mach, and other psycholo- gists in rejecting the old theories that imagined a "formless ego, indifferent and unchangeable, on which it threads the psychic states which it has set up as independent entities." ^ * Cf. W. Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics (transl. Van Liew), p. 103. 2 Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 3-4. Cf. Ward, Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., vol. XX, p. 83, note: "Self is psychologically a product of thought, not a datum of sense." Also Ernst Mach : "We feel that the real pearls of life lie in the ever changing contents of consciousness, and that the person is merely an indifferent symbolical thread on which they are strung " {Popular Scientific Lectures, 3d ed. transl. pp. 234-5). y 20 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Lest we lose our way in a fog of metaphysics, let us now turn to psychology for more precise definitions of the processes involved in self-building and for illustrations of the principles which we have already laid down. The older theologians, metaphysicians, and metaphysical psychologists held firmly to the persistent sense of personal identity as the basis for belief in the eternal ego as the real self. But the newer psychologists tell us that self is simply one among a multitude of presentations to consciousness, though dis- tinguished, it is true, by unique interest, relative persistence, activity, self-knowledge, etc. We reach flagrant heterodoxy in the doctrine that the final basis of the self lies in sense of one's body — in somatic consciousness. "The earliest and to the last the most important element in self ... is that variously styled the organic sensations, vital sense, coenaesthesis, or somatic consciousness. This largely deter- mines the tone of the special sensations and enters, though little suspected, into all our higher feelings. ... As soon as definite perception begins, the body as an extended thing is distinguished from other bodies, and such organic > sensations as can be localized at all are localized within it. • . . The body then first of all gives to self a certain measure of individuality, permanence, and inwardness." '• "It is the organic sense, the sense of the body, usually vague and obscure, but at times very clear in all of us, that constitutes for each animal the basis of its psychic in- dividuahty." ^ David Starr Jordan carries the 'somatic' theory to its extreme limit. "So far as the evidence goes, we know of no ego except that which arises from the coordination of the ^ Ward, /. c, pp. 83-4. ^ Ribot, Diseases of Personality (Open Court ed.), pp. 18-19; cf. p. 22, where he speaks of "this general sense of the body," and of "this confused feeling of life . . . which by incessant repetition has become ourselves." THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 21 nerve cells. All consciousness is 'colonial consciousness,' the product of cooperation. . . . The / in man is the expression of the co-working of the processes and impulses of the brain. The brain is made of individual cells, just as England is made of individual men. To say that Eng- land wills a certain deed or owns a certain territory, or thinks a certain thought, is no more a figure of speech than to say that 'I will,' 'I own,' or 'I think.' The England is the expression of union of the individual wills and thoughts and ownerships of Enghshmen. Similarly my ego is the expression of the aggregate force resulting from coordina- tion of the elements that make up my body." ^ What do these facts argue concerning the sense of self? It is certainly, to say the least, a neghgible quantity, a very shiftless Bo-Peep sort of an ego, or a very apathetic, hstless one, if in spite of its eternal and self-distinguishing nature it requires bodily sensations to wake it and set it going. But does this prove that if the self springs from, and to a certain degree remains colored by, bodily sensations, it must always remain the subject or captive of these sensations ? ^ Analogies are dangerous, but it is not wholly metaphorical to consider that the self may build itself up with a scaffolding ^ Footnotes to Evolution, 271-2. I am aware that psychologists are still not at one on whether single cells in complex organisms are conscious. 2 Christian Scientists would, of course, say no. A typical expression of their position occurs recently in a letter of Mr. Frederick Dixon to the Scvenoaks Chronicle: "A man . . . might have been dropped as a child and had his spine injured. By the time he is forty or fifty, the belief of curvature of the spine has become an actual part of his human mentality. It might take him years to get rid of this belief though there is no reason why it should take him five minutes." The study of the effect of mind upon body is being seriously undertaken by many broad gauge modern physicians. See, for example, Doctor Richard Cabot's plea for psychology in medical and social work, in National Conference of Charities and Correction, 191 5, pp. 220-6. For a striking example of how an idea may cause blindness while the eye and optic nerve are organically perfect and intact, see Pearce Bailey, M. D., "The Wishful Self," Scribncr^s Magazine, July, 1915, PP- 115-21. 22 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS of bodily sensations and later tear away the scaffolding and subsist on its own habitual coherence. How far we can dispense with such scaffoldings it is impossible to declare. We cannot here follow out this idea to its logical sequence, namely, the problem of immortahty and whether there could be a coherent person, mind, self, without a body. We must confess humbly that we do not know ; though it is possible that mind and body are not so absolutely parallel as we are in the habit of beheving, and that the mind, having wrung the body dry of its resources, having cKmbed to the top of its body-ladder, may calmly and unregretfully kick over the ladder and march away on other planes of experi- ence. "And as a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold, turns it into another, newer and more beautiful shape, so does this self, after having thrown off this body and dispelled all ignorance, make unto himself another, newer and more beautiful shape." ^ But until we attain this transcendent state, so long as we are bound to the wheel, the warp of our "self" will be spun from bodily sensations. Hence variations in the body will alter materially the constitution of the self. What becomes, then, of the eternal self? Well, it turns out to be a very temporal, variable thing, not at all supra-mun- dane, nor shrouded in traihng clouds of mystery. The truth is that the self is constantly changing. Indeed, in this regard the mind seems to resemble a nominating convention ; now A has a certain plurality, now B, now C, again A ; with the exception that when A or B reappear in the ballotings, they are no longer A or B, but A or B plus the intervening experience. This by virtue of the fact that the Hfe process is a constant unfolding or a sweUing stream. We repeat, that at any given moment the self is merely a 'working majority' of our multifarious possible selves, 1 Upanishads, S. B. of the E., xv, 176. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 23 that is, of our various ideas, feelings, etc. The great thinker, the dominant self, is merely the algebraic sum of the various thoughts (thinkers), habits, memories, etc., that make up the mind and body at any given instant. That is what M. Ribot means by the human person as a coalition, "a whole by coalition, the extreme complexity of which veils from us its origin, and the origin of which would remain impenetrable if the existence of elementary forms did not throw some light upon the mechanism of that fusion." ' Yet we must not be so carried away with our analogies as to forget that life is a whole, that the mind is a working unity — when normal — and that ideas are not imprisoned birds in an aviary, to use a classic figure. We might express this warning diagrammatically. The concept of the self we have is rather that of a bulge in an organic whole, something after the plan in diagram A. In spite of what we seem to have written, our concept of the self is not that of thought grains clustering about magnetic centers, as in diagram B. S represents the self at this present moment in consciousness; S' one of many possible selves below the threshold of consciousness. It would be an exaggeration, however, to assert that the self is a Hteral unity in the sense of being a persistent core of matter or thought. For even the normal ego has little unity of cohesion. We are all bundles of habits, tendencies, ^ Op. cit., 3 ; cf. p. 82 : "The ego is a coherent group in the midst of the processes that assail it." 24 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS contradictions, oppositions, of every variety of shade, texture, and capacity for combination. The great bloom- ing, buzzing confusion of the outer world has more or less of a counterpart within us. Hence must arrive those variations and contradictions in personality which have been called successive attitudes of the ego, or "partial scissions of the ego." ^ It is probably not too much to say that most of the fallacies into which economic and poHtical theorists have fallen in their discussions of human nature are referable to mistaking one of the attitudes of the ego for the dominant ego, or the whole ego ; and the theorist usually selects the attitude most favorable to his own bias of mind. To each of the phases of the ego we find it con- venient to tack some general name. Economic Man, Family Man, PoHtical Man, Soldier, God's Man. To each of these selves — and we each have them all more or less — correspond a set of mores, customs, laws, and frequently a system of education. But neither in our analysis of the individual nor of society should we take one of these phases as the person, as the social fact, as the essential mark of human nature. The problem is still further complicated by the fact that our conscious personality is never more than a feeble part of our total personality. The much exploited " subcon- scious self" is only a half-truth ; it would be much nearer the truth to say that within submerged or subconscious mind there are many potential selves. /- There are, too, certain organic rhythms which add to ^ Cf. for variations of personality in the normal self, Paulhan, Rev. Philo- sophiqiie, June, 1882. That such variations are normal is the apparent conclusion of modern experimental genetics. Works like Lock's Recent Progress in the Study of Variation Heredity and Evolution and T. H. Mor- gan's Critique of the Theory of Evolution emphasize the fact that an indi- vidual is no longer considered as a unit in biology but as " a mosaic of independent unit characters, each inherited separately and with marked definiteness." THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 25 our sum of impulses, dispositions, habits, and leading ideas, and which vary the character of our bouquet of selves. We have, for example, a nutrition-self, which in normal persons seems to diminish from the period of infancy onward. The epicure carries a larger share of this baby food-self than the normal individual ; the ascetic, an abnor- mally small share. Then we have a sexual personahty which varies extraordinarily. It is apparently absent in infancy, and springs up only at puberty, though certain modern investigators claim to find quite definite manifesta- tions of the sex-self in very tender years. But we are per- fectly assured of its appearance at puberty. And so power- ful is this new-born "sexual character" that it frequently dominates and overshadows all the others ; witness the variety of puberty disturbances of mind and body, the vagaries of adolescent conduct, etc., noted by Hall and other observers. But these phenomena, which we might call crises in personality or in the history of the self, are by no means confined to youth ; a bewildering variety of erotic disturbances in adults testify to the explosive metamor- phosis of character wrought by sex experiences. Mr. Wells' New MacUavelli and Butler's Way of All Flesh yield excellent examples of this sudden outbreak and domination of the sexual self. The connection between organic modifi- cations and mental changes is evident enough in such cases. But even more striking are the mental effects of such physi- cal crises as castration. Several writers (Ribot, Maudsley, Tarde, etc.) state that castration in men and animals effects a notable change in character and personality. Hermaph- roditism further illustrates this connection. It indi- cates a lack of physical balance. We are told that it is marked also by lack of balance in the person or character, for hermaphrodites are observed to alternate between masculine and feminine character. 26 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS As a final illustration we might adduce the metamor- phosis of the ego of insane persons due to physical disturb- ances. Ribot repeats a typical case. An insane woman of Charenton with a very distinguished and gifted mind, would change from day to day in person, condition and even sex. "At one time she would be a princess of royal blood, betrothed to an emperor ; at another time a woman of the people and democratic ; today married and enceinte; tomorrow once more a maiden. It would even come upon her at times to be a man." Ribot insists that such patho- logic alterations of personahty are genuine. When a patient maintains he is changed or transformed, "he is right, notwithstanding the denials or hilarity of his friends. It is impossible for him to feel himself differently, as his consciousness is simply the expression of his organic state. Subjectively he is not the sport of an illusion ; he is merely what he ought to be." ^ In addition to such transforma- tions or alterations of personality we have to reckon with cases in which the ego is absolutely lost. For instance, Hack Tuke cited the case of a patient who for several years was an inmate of Bedlam. This patient had lost his ego (that is, the one famihar to him) and was in the habit of hunting for himself under the bed.^ Somewhat similar are the cases of loss of the self as a center of reference for sensations of pain or pleasure. We have already observed among primitive men this failure to refer sensations to the feehng ego. Dickens in Hard Times furnishes a fictive example in the death of Mrs. Gradgrind : "Are you in pain, dear mother?" "I think there's a pain somewhere in the room," said Mrs. Grad- grind, "but I couldn't positively say that I have got it." ' Ribot. op. cit., 59, 55; Cf. Dr. Southard's remarkable collection of similar cases in Contributions of Massachusetts State Board of Insanity, No. 47, 1915. 2 Journal Mental Science, April, 1882. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 27 Insane patients frequently attribute to others the sounds they utter themselves, and complain of being disturbed by their cries. Others are victims of compeUing "voices" which seem to come from without. Still others lose the reference for their own physical needs. A case is reported of an old man whose faculties were extremely enfeebled, and who had the habit of constantly imputing his own sensa- tions to the people who surrounded him. "Thus he would say to his keeper and the assistants that he was sure they were hungry or thirsty. He was subject to violent fits of coughing. After each paroxysm he would resume the thread of his conversation, but only after having expressed in appropriate terms how sorry he was to perceive the sad state of his friends' health. " I am grieved, " he would say, " to see you suffering from such a painful and exhausting cough." " ^ It will have been noted that I have said nothing about "double personality" or "multiple personality." The reason is that they do not constitute separate categories of the variable self. Reference to what has been already said repeatedly about the multifarious potential selves which constitute our personality or character, and another glance at diagram A will sufficiently explain double personahty. It will thus appear only as a special variation of the general case. The ' double ' is simply one of the many other possible selves which has attained a considerable degree of coherence and, as it were, remains suspended in the subconscious until a favorable somatic variation enables it to pop into the place of the reigning self. Another organic revolution will in turn hurl it from the throne. The anaesthesia existing between the rival personahties need not detain us here as it has no particular bearing on the general process.^ ^ Cited from Hunter by Ribot, p. 132 ; for other cases from French sources see ibid., 127-31. 2 The case of Rev. T. C. Hanna, described by Sidis and Goodhart in their Multiple Personality, pp. 81-226, illustrates many of the points brought out 28 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Another interesting phase of this problem suggests itself, but cannot here be followed up. Put into the form of a question it is this : Would multiple personality in any way account for the curious explanations which primitive men offer for changes in personality ? Can it be that our minds may split themselves up into, say, critical, credulous, alert, passive personalities, corresponding to some lines of cleav- age as yet undiscovered? Would such a theory account for the "water-tight compartments" which some men are accused of having set up in their minds ? There is a strong temptation at this point to loose rein and canter over into C^ the field of metaphysics, for it has been suggested that such ^ a cleavage in the Infinite Personality might account for the Vs problem of evil. >■ What after all is the ' identity of the ego ' ? It is simply J a question of quantity, of potential rather than actual unity Q or identity. "Identity persists so long as the sum of the \ states that remain relatively fixed is greater than the sum iU- of the states that are added to or detached from this stable \ T group." ^ Am I one person, then, or many? Am I in my essential nature under the despotism of a single self? Or, at the other antipode, am I the victim of the most exaggerated sort of anarchy and mobocracy? Or is my mental Ufe a combination of the two into a well-balanced Umited monarchy ? The latter metaphor seems to represent the relation of the self to the entire content of the mind as nearly as a phase of Hfe lends itself to a symbol of language. in this chapter — organic unity, functional dissociation, struggle between rival selves, sudden alternations between selves ; it also illustrates with startling clearness the lack of dualism in primitive minds : see particularly p. ii6. Boodin {Am. Jour. Sociol. 19 : 22) observes : "What the pathologi- cal cases bring out is that normally the so-called individual self is in reality a colony of selves, an integration of systems of tendencies, fusing more or less into a common field and to a greater or less extent dominated by a common purpose." ^ Ribot, /. c, 28. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SELF 29 But whatever the identity or unity of the ego is, the problem, or situation, and our response to it are the means by which identity and unity are achieved or conferred. A certain constancy of situations, problems, needs {e.g. food or sex) begets certain pretty uniform responses. This uniformity of response when consciously felt constitutes our habitual selves. Thus habit or some dominant idea forms what we have sometimes called a 'nodule of self- hood.' Psychologically this means that personaHty in- volves some sort of psychic tension the lowering of which dissolves the unity of personaHty. Pr actically this tens ion may jje conceived of a s purpose or motive. What do we extract, then, as the net results of psychology for our discussion of the Self in human nature ? In the first place, we are any number of possible personalities or selves. Our selves are constantly changing. To recall a single example, puberty completely reorientates our selves. Our self is at any given moment only a sort of organic coalition, a tacit working unity. The study of normal and pathologic minds among our own people, and the comparative study of tribal mentality agree in the suggestion that "the logical unity of the thinking subject, which is taken for granted by the majority of philosophers, is rather a desideratum than a fact." There is in all normal individuals a certain basis in the somatic consciousness for a persistent sense of the self. But this of itself is manifestly insufficient to yield that habitual coherence of the personality necessary to confront society and the world with equanimity. For a man may lose his arms or legs, or other members, without any abridgment of his sense of self. Furthermore, recent de- velopments in mental therapeutics and hypnotism prove that what we might call the ' suggested self ' can dominate and change bodily sensations ; hence, as it were, recreate somatic consciousness according to a pattern suggested 30 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS either from without or within. The real basis for the solidarity and permanence of the core or nodule of selfhood appears to lie in uniform reactions upon certain situations. These situations or problems are not mere food questions, belly problems. Responses to such situations yield only a general or vegetative sense of self and not the highly specialized self of human nature. Apparently social situa- tions and problems alone could develop such a self. And the reason, in psychological terms, is that this idea of the self as a member of a coherent group becomes a dominant and unifying idea in all normal persons. It is the social self, then, that is the predominant self (at least for the practical administrator) , and it is participation in the give-and-take of social Hfe that unifies consciousness into selfhood. This principle suggests a variety of fascinating problems. Are men, as Lombroso thought, by nature either conserva- tive or progressive ? Are we the blind victims of bhnd Fate — Heredity ? Is it all a question of temperament or phys- iology? Do I get my notion of myself as a conservative from my grandfather, from my mother's body, or from my actual experiences ? Can the leopard not change his spots ? Are my radical spots dyed in or am I a chameleon ? Am I born with a rigid "set" to my mind, and therefore to my self, or do I acquire my "set" from social contacts and experiences? If social activity unifies our consciousness into a coherent and permanent sense of the social self, will a certain t\^e of activity produce a certain typical sense of self? Will, for example, cooperative activity in home or schoolroom develop a self that thinks of itself as a cooperator ? Such are the problems which the psychologi- cal interpretation of the self raises but does not answer. Sociology, or perhaps better, social psychology alone seems in a position to answer them. CHAPTER IV SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT "No man can take a walk, without bringing home an influence on his eternity." (Jean Paul) "Nothing can injure a man who is a member of a community which does not injure the community." (Marcus AureHus) The mind of the ne\v-born child is not a tabula rasa as the empiric psychologists were prone to beheve. But, in truth, so little is written thereon, the ink so pale, the char- acters so fragmentary, that the tabula, for any purposes of Hfe, is Uttle better than some torn and faded manu- script unless the characters be brought out, the writing completed. What, in the case of the child's mind, is this bringer-out or completer of the writing? Speaking popu- larly it is experience ; speaking scientifically it is social heredity. But what is social heredity? It is the process by which the stock of incomplete instincts and tendencies secured to the individual by natural selection is completed, strengthened, shaped, and matured. In other words, it is the process by which the individual who arrives into the world with only a very incomplete kit of rude hfe-tools is enabled to fill up his kit with sharp tools which he knows how to use, and to go on his way equipped in the struggle for life. Briefly, it is education conceived in its widest sense ^ It is a social p rocess, tlic social process. This is what we mean when we say that the human mind is a social product. But if this is true of the mind as a whole, it is, if possible, 31 , 32 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS even truer of that phase of mind called the "self" or the person. For all the time I am creating or building a mind I am building a world, and in and by the same process I am evolving a self. I cannot mark myself off from my world ; I am only thinkable in terms of it, and vice versa. I am not apart from it; / am my world. "We usually set our- selves over against our world, as if we were one thing and it another ; but the truth is, the two are one ; our world is wholly our feeling, wholly subjective, except in so far as we place hypothetical essences behind different groups of our feelings, thereby transforming them into things.".^ Walt Whitman said almost the last word on this point in his poem, " There was a child went forth." The world with which we are identified, which is our "self," is, however, not a world of atoms and ions, vortexes of motion, cosmic dust and all the other apparatus of physics and chemistry. Our world is a world of persons, and only very incidentally a world of things. If man is endogenous, as Emerson insisted, he only knows it be- cause he has compared notes and finds every other person growing in the same way. We are all world builders, true ; but our worlds hold together only for the reason that, like the ancients, we build human beings into foundations and walls. Foes and friends alike are worked in. We differ from the ancient builders, however, in this particular, that while they tossed in only now and again a living body, we use nothing else for our worlds ; stone, mortar and all are Hving, throbbing flesh. To quit the metaphor, experience, and preeminently experience of persons, furnishes the materials for our world and for our selves.^ ^ T. Davidson, Educ. Rev., xx: 327. 2 Cf. Ward, Encyl. Brit., gth ed., vol. xx, p. 84; Howison, The Limits of Evolution, 359: "Our self-thought being is intrinsically a social being; the existence of each is reciprocal with the existence of the rest, and is not think- able in any other way." SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 33 "Der Mensch erkennt sich nur im Menschen, nur Das Leben Ichret jedem was er sei." (Goethe, Tasso, Act 2, Sc. 3) Through the "us" we learn of the "me." It is difficult to say at precisely what point self and world-building commences. But probably the unborn child has made a start in laying his foundations, of which his first faint stirrings may be taken as the index. Feelings o f comf ort and discomfort, sensati ons of movement, begin to be correlated with or distinguishedirom-dim-sensations of pr essure , resistanc e , perhaps even taste and other forms of conta ct. This dim dawning of the self we have already summed up under the term so matic consciousne ss. Who- ever prefers to use the term self-instinct is at perfect liberty to do so, though instinct is such a vague omnibus expression that it may mean everything or nothing. The first glimmering of a world the child l earns as part of hisjnotherVbody. The social process has begun . But immediately upon his separation from the mother's flesh his world grows ; a huge, vague, whirling, chaotic world to be sure, but a world which soon begins to take on more definite form, substance, and meaning. Now the curtain rises upon the great drama which with Baldwin we may entitle the "Dialertir of Mental Developme nt." Like the Chinese plays, this drama is a real continuous performance, a cycle wherein one day's playing writes the next day's action. But the unique quaUty of this drama is, that sper- tators unite with the child who plays the title role. You and I, everybody within range, are pressed into service. There are no supernumeraries. The young actor in his evolution-play casts us all and practices with or upon us. As he begins to practice or correlate his experience with persons through activity, to establish by i mita tion a common center of reference, his sense of self emerges. 34 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS "The baby new to earth and sky, . . . Has never thought that 'this is I' ; But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of 'I' and 'me,' And finds 'I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch'; So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, And thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined." (Tennyson, In Memoriam, XLIV) Tennyson seems here to see the self emerging by a sense of difference. Professor Howison expresses the same thing philosophically. To him the spirit is intrinsically indi- vidual ; it is itself, and not any other. " But such a getting to exact identity can only be by means of differen ce; and difference, again, im pHes contra st, and 9,n refr,rr.nop, tn nthpra. Thus in thinking itself as externally real, each spirit in- herently thinks the reahty of all other spirits." ^ But are the poet and philosopher, after all, right in making sense of difference the method of self-realization ? Were not the savages in their crude philosophy of identity nearer right? That is to say, are not comparison and a resultant sense of similarity equally valid if not more valid principles of self- building? The philosopher seems to recognize this, for elsewhere he says : "That a mind conscious of itself as a self, means at the least that it discriminates itself from others, but therefore that it also refers its own defuiing conception to others, — is in relation with them, as un- questionably as it is in the relation of different from them. It cannot even think itself, except in this relatedness to them ; it cannot at all he, except as a member of a reciprocal society." ^ ^ The Limi's of Evolution, pp. 352-3. ^L. c, p. 311. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 35 The meaning of "I," "mine," "me," is learned in exactly the same way as any other concept or sentiment is grasped, that is, by observing the fact or feeling in others, by com- paring it with our own, and by standardizing, as it were, the feeling or idea by coupling it with its conventional symbol, a word. PersonaHty is acquired through the habit of correlating activity, self-expression.^ Conversely, this process of fixing a center of gravity goes on only as the outer world, and especially the world of persons, defines itself. "For we learn to know ourselves, first of all, in the mirror of the world ; or, in other words, our knowledge of our own nature and of its possibilities grows and deepens with our understanding of what is without us, and most of all with our understanding of the general history of man." ^ The ego and the alter are thus seen to be one in substance and process. The world of copy and the world of practice are two faces of the same shield. "The development of the child's personahty," says Baldwin, "could not go on at all without the constant modi- fication of his sense of himself by suggestions from others. So he himself, at every stage, is really in part some one else, even in his own thought of himself." ^ This same fact is brought out obversely by Professor Cooley's experience with his child R. He was much slower in understanding the personal pronouns and in his thirty- fifth month had not yet straightened them out, sometimes calling his father "me." "I imagine that this was partly because he was placid and uncontentious in his earliest years, manifesting little social self-feeling, but chiefly occupied with impersonal experiment and reflection; and ' Cf. Thistleton Mark, Unfolding of Personality, pp. 27-28. ^ Edward Caird, Evolution of Religion, vol. i, p. 25. ^ Social and Ethical Interpretations, 24 ; cf. id.. The Individual and Society, 26; E. W. Hirst, Internatl. Jour. Ethics, 22 : 298-321. 36 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS partly because he saw little of other children by antithesis to whom his self could be awakened." ^ All of which goes to show that in our knowledg e, as in our conduct, we are n ever conscious of others except as relat ed to ourselves; an d perhaps never of ourselves except as connected with other selve s. Even in what we are pleased to term our inmost selves we never fail to include "the silent witness," "the all-seeing eye," "the still small voice," or other ideal persons. Conversation with imaginary persons is proof of the essentially social nature of the mind ; indeed it / seems Hterally true, as some one has observed, that the mind lives in perpetual conversation. Normal Hfe, then, is never solitary, but always a deux. The fact of such eternal companionship reduces knowledge to terms of conduct. Thus neither the process of knowledge nor its functioning in conduct can go on properly in vacuo, cannot, in other words, be impersonal. Imagine, if you can, Robinson Crusoe, not as Robinson the castaway Euro- pean, but as an unnamed something spontaneously gen- erated on a lonely island. Where are his adventures, where his knowledge, where Robinson, indeed ? You have robbed him of all that makes him Robinson. Robinson could only have been Robinson because like Tennyson's Ulysses he was already part of all that he had met. "What are we in fact, what is our character, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth — nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal disposi- tions?" 2 It is easy enough thus to account for one's physical self or one's accumulation of knowledge in social terms. But what of one's moral nature? Morals are born of social life, say the students of social origins. Morahty is the * Human Nature, etc., 161. 2 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 5. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 37 result of a special moral faculty, moral instinct, conscience, said the elder theologians and morahsts. They had to postulate some such injected moral nature because they ignored the social genesis and nature of the personal self, and failed to observe that moral conduct is an adjustment between self and society. '^ In sketching the development of the child's personahty it would not be difhcult to trace out paralleHsms in the sense of ''self" of the child and of the savage. This does not mean, however, that the child recapitulates Hterally the KuUurgeschichte of the race. For while child mind resem- bles savage mind in many points it also varies materially from it. To cite only one difference, it develops much faster than primitive mind. The reason of course hes in the greater stimulus coming from the social milieu of the civilized child. The child resembles the savage in vague notions about his physical "self." The earUest parts of the physical self to attract attention are hands and fingers. Yet we are told that little girls often scold their fingers, as if they were things apart. Feet also are frequently apos- trophized, punished, beaten, for breaking things, throwing the child down, etc.^ At the age of three to five years the bones are generally noticed ; next the stomach, heart, lungs, breath. Yet notwithstanding this growing knowl- edge children often fail to mark off sharply their sensory apparatus. Thus sometimes they think they hear with eyes, feet, or hands. And President Hall mentions "the very common impression of young children that if the eyes ^ Cf. McDougall, Social Psychology, 180-1. This agrees with Bentham's theory that the 'moral sanction' and the 'social sanction' are one. Pro- fessor Fowler, in attempting to refute this theory, is compelled to admit the constant personal reference in judgments on conduct. See his Progressive Morality, chap. i. 2 G. Stanley Hall, "Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self," Amer. Jour, of Psychol., 9:351-82, an article based on 523 replies to a question- naire sent out in 1895. 38 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS are covered or closed they cannot be seen. Some think the entire body thus vanishes from the sight of others, some that the head also ceases to be visible, and a still higher form of this curious psychosis is that when they are closed the soul cannot be seen." ^ Such facts indicate a rough free-hand blocking-in of the ego. "In fine, the ego may be first roughly conceived as all that is within the skin, and the non-ego as all outside it. . . . Within the surface, the child's somatic consciousness does not at first pene- trate." ^ The reason here seems to be the psychologic prin- ciple laid down in the preceding chapter, namely, that the * physical self is not felt and distinguished as some separate . Ding-an-sich ; it is only known by its activity, or we might even go so far as to say as an activity. It is perfectly obvious that the activities of exterior members, hands, feet, mouth, nose, eyes, etc., will attract attention and be built into the self concept long before the silent workings of the visceral organs attract notice. Here again the social reference. For these exterior members are more readily observed by the child in others and by imitation and comparison knit up into his own consciousness. "The child does not at first work out the I-and-you idea in an abstract form. The first personal pronoun is a sign of a concrete thing after all, but that thing is not primarily the child's body, or his muscular sensations as such, but the phenomenon of aggressive appropriation, practiced by himself, witnessed in others, and incited and interpreted ^ by a hereditary instinct." ^ On the other hand President Hall found that discovery by the child of his inner organs led to asking whether parents, other children, God, animals, etc., had similar organs. Here then we have illustrated 1 L. c, p. 359. "^ L. c, p. 362. ^ Cooley, Human Nature, etc., 160. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 39 both sides of that process whereby the child defines his self by his world and his world in terms of his self. The prominent place given to names and nicknames in the child's early sense of his self indicates a further resemblance between the child and primitive mind. The parallelism is even more striking in the belief in meta- morphosis common to both. For example, sixty-three girls in Hall's returns expected when they were older to be boys, and fourteen boys to be girls. "This change, how- ever, involved no thought of organs but mainly only of dress." This of course because the sexual self and the functions of sex organs have not at this age been distin- guished. Here the personality is socialized up to the point of social convention. It indicates even in this grotesque form the child's idea of its own plasticity. And is not this after all the kernel of the whole matter? For what is the basis of education if not the plasticity of the child's self and the infinite possibilities of molding it for noble ends? Indeed President Hall concludes his study in somewhat that mood. "These phenomena," he says, "are hard to interpret, but suggest that childhood is generic and full of promise and potency of many kinds of personality and consciousness before the shades of the prison house close in upon it." ^ Heaven may lie about us in our infancy, as Wordsworth claimed; but it is certain that Heaven does not dwell within us during our infancy. Perhaps this is fortunate, for it opens the gates of the infinite universe to the grow- ing child. Hence we are inclined to resent the bathos and sentimentality that strive to make us believe that this world of experience and especially social experience, is the shade of the prison house. It may be that the inno- cence of the infantile animal or of the imbecile is a good ^ L. c, p. 382. 40 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS personal asset and the mark of heaven ; but it surely is not the mark of the normal human being. For normal children prison doors open outward and release the em- bryonic personality for its sojourn in free society. They open to force the child out of "vegetative torpor," out of that jelly-fish sort of mysticism which floats unresisting toward insanity, or feeble-mindedness. They force him out into the swirl of persons and events which is to make him man. But why should this process of making man out of the youth cause him to lose his "vision splendid"? What is the youth's vision splendid and why should it "fade into the light of common day"? For the child of fortunate parents this vision is ordinarily one of a world vof plenty, a world of love, devotion, service, justice, coopera- tion. Unfortunately to the child of the slum, the child- laborer, the child of vicious or ignoble parents, comes a vision vastly different, of a world of misery, squalor, fatigue and pain. The first child has been surrounded with com- fort, care, loving discipline, opportunities for education ; has been trained to love and to serve. What shatters his romance world, his paradise of love and service? What disintegrates his sense of himself as a server, as just, kindly, chivalrous? Simply the rude impact with other youths and men whose dominant idea and therefore whose pre- ( dominant "self" is that of exploiting, shirking, getting something for nothing, success at any price, brute competi- tion for existence. He is dashed upon the rocks of a false philosophy of egoism which sets man against man as mutually exclusive and fundamentally locked in a death struggle for existence. But is this tragic smashing of ideals of altruism and serv- ice necessary? Is it the inevitable price of maturity? Is a "Social Darwinism," which tortures Darwin's ideas into conformity with preconceived systems of injustice, a SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 41 true philosophy? Sociology must not be identified with such a philosophy. It may hold for the sub-human world, but Sociology insists that its subject, man, transcends the categories of biology or "natural history," and that man as he stands to-day is far more truly the result of com-^i munion, cooperation, common interests than of opposition) ] warfare, or competition. Empedocles taught that love is the creative and binding principle in the universe, hate the disintegrating force ; and Aristotle made friendship the basis of the social order. ''Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle" (Kropotkin). Human al- truism is a natural instinctive product (K. Pearson). "Each of the greater steps of progress is in fact associated with an increased measure of subordination of individual competition to reproductive or social ends, and of inter- specific competition to cooperative association " (Geddes and Thomson). "The human struggle for existence, differing from the animal fight between independent creatures, and analogous to animal parasitism, is never a factor in selection and progress, but on the contrary is always a potent cause of deterioration and retrogression of the species" (Loria). "The social type inherits the earth. It does not defeat itself. It succeeds " (Hob- house). "The education of the Race like that of the Individual, prepares us gradually to Live for Others " (Comte).^ The sentiment of loyalty makes a strong ap- peal to the normal man. The loyalty may be misplaced ; it may cleave to illusions ; it may fail to discriminate be- tween a ward-boss and a true patriot ; but the fact remains that the binding principle is active. Homo lupus hominis is not at all the primal condition of mankind. For instead * Kropotkin, Nineteenth Century, 18 : 339 ; Pearson, The Chances of Death, etc., pp. 103-139 ; Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, 311 ; Loria, Contemporary Social Problems, ch. vi ; Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 25; Comte, Catechisme, 334. THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS / of being, as commonly supposed, in a constant state of violent and bloody warfare, primitive men are more or less pusillanimous and rather inclined to peace and quiet. This does not mean, of course, that competition and selection count for nothing. For war has undeniably been of considerable service in disciplining to group activity and in cross-fertihzing tribal cultures by bringing hostile peoples into close contact with each other's ideas. Nor is struggle to be ruled out of modern civilized life. Social life is now and always has been a ceaseless struggle between invention and convention, the new and the old, between youth and crabbed age; it is in this sense that Giddings is right in calling society a mode of conflict. The only question is where it should legitimately operate. Should men in a world of plenty be obliged to compete for a bare minimum of subsistence? Or for a scanty dole of education? Or should not struggle rather be Hfted to a plane of competi- tion between ideas, devices, institutions for developing the world's resources for the common weal? In other words, a struggle between ideas rather than between ani- mals, a struggle over who shall serve rather than who shall shirk or exploit ? This sounds like social ethics : perhaps it is, and rather roseate ; but at the same time it is sound common sense and sound applied sociology. Is there any sociologic truth in Emerson's obscure dictum that "the man is but half himself; the other half is his expression"? Or is it merely vague sentiment? An American savage visiting France in Montaigne's time made an observation that is the cry of SociaHsm to-day; he observed "that there were among us (the French) men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, while, in the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors, lean, and half starved with hunger and poverty ; and he thought it strange that these necessitous halves were able SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 43 to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats or set fire to their houses." Montaigne quaintly explains, "They have a way of speaking in their language to call men the half of one another." / Such notions of participation of every member of the group in an organic group unity are paralleled by more modern, equally positive, though less naive, statements of the fact that we are all part and parcel of each other. This deep meaning might easily be read into Plato's Symposium without detracting from its more obvious significance as a symbol of ideal love. The old Christian doctrine of the mystic body of Christ, certain aspects of Professor Royce's pantheism, the Christian Science philosophy of individuals as manifestations of an underlying unity of good, are more or less familiar expressions of the same conception. Per- haps all these ideas, including even Plato's, are children of the ancient Hindu philosophy of man and nature. Quite as positive in their concept of society as a literal organic unity stand out the "organicist" group of contemporary sociologists. However, we need not go to extremes of mysticism or biological analogy in order to establish the sober sociological fact that men are part and parcel of each other. If we once grasp the fact that society is a phenom- enon of mental integration and that life is a dynamic unity, the matter is easy. The mind is not given to the child en bloc, but grows through experience, experience largely of persons, social experience. Hence whatever experience is shared by a group of persons weaves them into a common web of unified thought. This is precisely why certain sociologists in looking for the social unit have hit upon, not the individual, the socius (for where is he to be found?), but upon the activity or interest which is common to and which therefore unites a group. 44 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS M. Gabriel Tarde in a picturesque passage once wrote : *'We are told that our body is a little condensed air living in the air ; might we not say that our soul is a bit of society incarnate living in society? Born of society it lives by means of it." ^ Lest this may seem to be the far-fetched hyperbole of a mystic, let it be said that such doctrine is the utterest commonplace of social psychologists. In plain unmetaphorical language they insist that human minds are not separate but interwoven, that we have no higher life apart from other people, that our mental outfit is not divisible into the social and non-social, simply be- cause it is all social in the largest sense. ^ Even cautious Sir Francis Galton hazards the belief that there "is de- cidedly a solidarity as well as a separateness in all human and probably in all lives whatsoever : and this consideration goes far, as I think, to establish an opinion that the con- stitution of the living Universe is a pure theism and that its form of activity is what may be described as coopera- tive." ^ It is a barren theory which makes the ability to sociahze himself one of the individual's qualities, which, indeed, he may lack. This is to unthink him as man, and to conceive him either as a little lower than man, or as a great stony, unrelated. Monad deity. It is for this reason that in looking for the principle of societal life we do not need to grub around for some special or recondite "social instinct," "altruistic impulse," or "group faculty," either inherited or injected. The princi- ple lies implicit in man and his development. He cannot become man, a human individual, without at the same time becoming incorporated beyond recall and almost beyond analysis into the mental whole which constitutes ^ Philosophie Penale, sec. 78. 2 See Cooley, Human Nature, 90-1, 61, 12 ; Jenks, Social Significance of the Teachings of Jesus, 5; Boodin, /. c, pp. 30-1. ^Hereditary Genius, ed. 1892, p. 361. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 45 society, for the social bond is established and rooted in the development of self-consciousness itself.^ Here we are plumped once more into the problem of the individual versus the group. Is the individual, and there- fore his self, merely a basket of fruits gathered from the multitude of trees and shrubs that make up the social orchard? Or is he something besides, say, a separate tree ? Is the Individual made for Society or Society made for the Individual? Neither. Which was prior? Again, neither. They are complementary and indispensable to each other.- Yet the individualistic philosophers, and even so modified an individualist as Professor Eucken, charge us unceasingly to remember that the individual is every- where and always something above and beyond a mere portion of the social whole. He is fundamentally and eter- nally himself, unique, a member if you please of some higher spiritual order, God's Universal Kingdom. "The individual," says Eucken, "can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society, of a church, of a state ; notwithstanding all external subordination, he must assert an inner superiority ; each spiritual in- dividual is more than the whole external world." On the other hand he apportions to the group its separate unified life above and beyond the individual.^ In another place he reproaches the philosophy of Plotinus because of its isolating tendency, because "there is no path leading from this inwardness back to the wide field of life"; because it recognizes "no inner solidarity between men, no assimilation of another or of the whole into one's own inner being"; because "there is ^ Baldwin, The Individual and Society, p. 26. 2 Cf. the chapter, "Was the Individual Prior to Society?" in Carus' The Nature of the State (Open Court Publishing Co. 1904) ; Baldwin, Individual and Society, chap. i. ^ Quoted in Current Literature, July, 191 2, p. 69. 46 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS here no inner world encompassing men and forming a bond of union between them." ^ It is idle thus to oppose society to the individual, for several reasons. First, they are simply two ways of look- ing at the same thing. Again, they are two of perhaps the many ways in which the life process has chosen to express itself, both equally valid and equally useful, both comple- mentary. From a study of biology M. Bergson finds that Nature constantly vibrates between the two poles of in- dividuality and sociality, and at times seems actually to hesitate between the two forms as if to ask whether she shall make a society or an individual.^ In human society and the human individual nature seems to solve the puzzle by creating the individual's real self out of the stuff of society, and, on the other hand, to have trusted to variations in the individual for the con- stant renewing and freshening of the social mass. The function of society in molding the individual's knowledge is indubitable, as we have already frequently pointed out. The body of social thinking which, with MM. Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl, we may call "collective representations," constrains the individual not only in his sentiments and his will, but even in his very intelligence, his process of knowing, itself. According to such pragmatic conceptions, knowledge is a sort of polling the jury, a matching of stories. A gets a certain experience, technically called a 'reaction'; ^ The Life of the Spirit, 353-5. Professor Urvnck attempts to resolve the puzzle, which it seems to me that Eucken complicates rather than clears up, by assuming three natures in each of us : (i) the natural self-seeking self; (2) the social and socially created person; (3) the true individual. The first two are made of society and human experience, hence subordinate to and determined by them. The third is spiritual, free, with no duties or responsibilities to the group. Of course such a solution, as its author frankly admits, soars outside the region of objective science and reaches the heights of philosophy ; it cannot be called a sociological solution. ^ Creative Evolution, 259-61 ; cf. B. Thorsch, Der Einzelne und die Cesellschafl, I, 13-14. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 47 he goes to B and to C to compare notes ; B and C do like- wise ; those reactions which the consensus of opinion establishes become validated and erected into facts of experience or knowledge. A's ideas without this social reference would have remained vague and inchoate, if indeed they remained at all. But by the very communi- cating of them — and he must communicate them ^ — they get clipped and pared down to a certain definiteness ; their comparison with the ideas of others clears them up still more ; if the social reference results in a verdict of approval, then they become collective, socially capitalized, funded in the common social experience. Social reference and approval once secured, the idea becomes fixed, consolidated, crystallized into a conviction. Quod uhique, quod semper, quod ah omnibus creditum est hoc est vere catholicum, etc. This process of concept and language forming Professor Jerusalem calls eine soziale Verdichtungr Most of our life, bodily and mental, goes along according to this sheep-like process. To be sure, there is in every individual thought an element of originahty, due to the universal tendency to mutation and variety : that is, every one is at the same time himself and Herr Omnes ; he is an "absolutely singular and unrepeatable personality," and withal a bundle of wholesale borrowings and imitations, a "collective self -consciousness." The more of himself, the more he is a heretic and departs from the mere on dit or social-accord standard of truth and knowledge. If the dose of himself be extreme, we have the genius, the scientist, the seer, the perceiver of new verities, the announcer of new ideas, the prophet of new heavens and new earths. But ^ "The impulse to communicate is not so much a result of thought as it is an inseparable part of it. They are like root and branch, two phases of a common growth so that the death of one presently involves that of the other." Cooley, Human Nature, p. 56. ^ "Sociologie des Erkennens," in Die Zukunjt, 1909, pp. 236-46. 48 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS here again the inevitably social character of the knowledge process reappears ; for social reference must intervene be- fore the new ideas can be incorporated into the group in- telhgence to become new convictions. At this point enters the function of education and its opportunity for social control, control not only of sentiments and will, but also of the very stuff and fiber of intelligence as well. And this education will always bear in mind that the social self, character as a social product, does not mean absolute dead level of capacity, that monotonous egalitarianism which used to be the nightmare of thoroughgoing individualists. It merely demands a minimum -of effective socializing and admits of unlimited variations in ability and aptitude. But in addition to common knowledge its correlative, common activity, creates a society out of individuals. If men were purely static, self-sufficing, contemplative, fixed, each like a bronze Buddha upon his separate pedestal, then we might very well talk of absolute, discrete individuals. But men are by nature active, and for the fullest play of their activity require their fellows to act with and upon. And it is really out of this common activity that we get our socialized knowledge and sentiments. Hence group ac- tivity is the forge blast which fuses the unit selves or persons into the social whole ; and conversely it is through this same group activity that the units find their selves and become real persons. It is perfectly in order to assume, if anybody chooses to do so, that there is a Person-in-itself, akin to the meta- physical abstraction of the thing-in-itself. But neither the assumption nor such a hypothetical being could have any serious value. For, as we have sought to show over and again, the human person has become human and a self-conscious person only through identification with his fellows in human society and through activity with and SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 49 upon them. Not one of us knows himself as some eternal, colorless person-in-itself, but as a warm, living complex of our social fellows. "It is . . . the most remarkable outcome of modern social theory — the recognition of the fact that the individual's normal growth lands him in essential solidarity with his fellows, while on the other hand exercise of his social duties and privileges advances his highest and purest individuality." ^ Further, the group activity not only really confers person- ality upon the individual, but it also actually increases the individual's ability and output. It is frequently assumed that the output of a given group of, say, laborers or school children, is merely the sum of the unit, individual outputs, and that such a sinking of individuals into the mass even lowers the total capacity. But the contrary seems to be true. Dr. Mayer of Wiirzburg found that the boys of the fifth school year in the people's schools in Wiirzburg did superior work when in groups than when working as in- dividuals. Another investigator after a careful test of school children in their home work as compared with school group work concluded that for most kinds of work the product in the classroom was superior. Mayer's study indicated that the tendency to distraction is di- minished rather than increased by class work. The class acts as a sort of pace-maker; it also contributes certain affective or emotional stimuli. The imaginative stimulus of the group has too often been proved in both primitive and contemporary society to need further argument. Group work through its mental rapport or "class spirit" * Baldwin, The Individual and Society, 16 ; cf. Paul Natorp, Sozialpadago- gik, p. 84: "Der einzelne Mensch ist eigentlich nur eine Abstraktion, gleich dem Atom des Physikers. Der Mensch, hinsichtlich alles dessen. was ihm zum Menschen macht, ist nicht erst als Einzelner da, um dann auch mit Andern in Gemeinschaft zu treten, sondern er ist ohne diese Gemeinschaft gar nicht Mensch." 50 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS develops superior concentration and yields not only a larger product but also a better work-spirit. Tests in the psychological laboratories confirm these conclusions. Er- gograph and dynamometer experiments show uniformly that when the subject of the experiment is alone he works less, and more painfully, than when others are present. The evolution of industry adds striking testimony to the same fact. Karl Bticher's Arbeit und Rhythmus is full of illustrations of the disciplinary effects of rhythmic con- certed action. An excellent example of Bucher's theory occurs in a recent description of Negro labor on the rail- ways of the South. A southern railway ofHcial says that a leader must be provided for each gang of workers, and that he must be gifted with a good voice. He uses a chant which enables the men to work in unison. "Every pick rises and falls at the same instant in time with the rhythm of the song of the leader, and it is surprising to note the speed with which the work can be done by this means." ^ At Calavan and other places in the Philippine Islands the natives transplant rice to rhythmic tunes on a banjo ; this device was introduced by the Spaniards to secure steady and sustained work from their untutored dependents. Such schemes are not by any means mere "speeding-up" devices ; for, in addition to securing a larger product, they yield a by-product of pleasure in the process. We conclude, then, with Professor Burnham, that like the constant peripheral stimulation necessary to keep us awake, "a social stimulus is necessary as an internal con- dition, as we may say, of consciousness." ^ Perhaps we should add that this conclusion holds good in spite of the exaggerated criticism of the group stimulus and its formula- tion into the bogy of "mob-mind." M. LeBon has re- ' The Outlook, June 8, 191 2, p. 318. ^Science, May 20, 1910, p. 767. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 51 cently reiterated his former pronouncements on this subject by saying: "Democratic theories pretend that the iso- lated individual is nothing, but acquires all his capacities by participating in that entity called the 'people.' Psy- chology teaches, on the contrary, that the collective in- dividual is mentally very inferior to the isolated man." ^ But it is perfectly evident that, put in this unqualified way, psychology teaches no such thing. It is further apparent that for M. LeBon the group, the collectivity, society, association, always spells Mob. Sound thinking needs both society and solitude ; society for stimulus and access to the common heritage of culture ; soUtude for digestion and elaboration. But, some one objects, this is determinism. If society furnishes the mold into which our very selves are cast, and furnishes moreover the materials to be poured into the molds, if social organization is essentially an integra- tion of individual wills, what becomes of us, of our personal responsibility, our self-respect, our free will? Well, our sense of personal responsibility, our sense of self-respect, our sense of free will are created and developed in precisely the same way that we achieve a sense of our self in general. They come through activity with and upon our fellows, through experience, through imitation, through trial and error. But does this not destroy the moral order by putting a premium upon irresponsibility ? Not in the least ; for to have a stable society the idea of cooperation, of social service, of social responsibility, if they have not grown normally into the individual's sense of self must be incor- porated into it through proper social discipline and treat- ment. Responsibility to some supra-mundane moral order is replaced by obligation to develop and maintain an efficient social "self." ^ Figaro, January 11, 191 2. 52 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Since the mind is a whole both in its feehng of itself and in its expression in the activity of any given moment, there is always reserved to it the feeling of freedom which is the only essential point to this ancient controversy. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." The suggestions to thought may come from our social fellows, from God, from the remotest corner of the cosmos, from other orders of experience not yet grasped by our workaday intelligence. Yet in coming to the mind, who can deny that they cause, determine the mind, whether in its knowing phase, or its feeling, or its willing ? They determine not only what we are, but what we do. In this sense we are free, and in this sense only : we are free to do as we please, but we must please what we are. We learn to speak by the exercise of will, so we are told. But my Chinese friend, Mr. Fong Sec, who came to America as a boy, might have willed his life away willing to learn English, but if he had not thrown himself among English speaking people, or read English books, or attended public schools and an American univer- sity, he could not have spoken a word of English though he lived as long as a Chinese sage. Furthermore, when Mr. Sec wanted to return to China mere willing could not recall his Cantonese dialect. He was to all intents and purposes an American. He was free to speak Cantonese, true enough ; but he had to re-become Cantonese by hard study before he could regain the tongue. I wonder what the slum child is free to do? When, for example, did the freedom of Jacob Beresheim — New York tenement dweller and boy murderer — begin ? Only, if we may judge from Mr. Riis' story (in his "Battle with the Slum"), when the law yanked him out of the wretched conditions that created him a murderer. The whole trend of modern thinking upon the causes of poverty is to sweep away such concepts of freedom. Growth in the understanding of the nature SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 53 and causes of feeblemindedness has also forced a recon- sideration of the problem of freedom. Now, since, as we have already seen, our feelings, ideas, sense of self, are social products, in the fullest sense of the word we are socially determined. In this process we really achieve a wider freedom — the freedom that comes from thinking widely and feeling deeply. Our own petty designs and choices are enlarged to the highest measure of our group. Our own limited free will acquires tremendous significance from its federation with that of our fellows. Freedom is a relative term and implies law. As we shall see later, the more primitive men are, the narrower their range of interests and the more they are the sport of natural forces. As their thought horizon widens an almost in- finitely greater number of thought combinations and choices become possible. This is freedom increased, in no mean sense. By the same process, and it is a social process, man's control over nature through reading law into it adds to his sum of freedom. Therefore we are justified in saying that the sense of the self as a conscious free agent is, like other aspects of the self, largely if not wholly a social creation. To some minds physical determinism, that is to say heredity, crops out as an objection to social determination of the self. But no one has been able to show that per- sonality, character, is inherited en bloc. It is the merest balderdash to assume that men are born conservative or radical. They are both ; as infants they resent changes which discommode their tiny comforts, and at the same time are greedy for new experiences even at the cost of temporary scratches or bruises. Again, the most ardent hereditarian would not risk the absurd contention that the child carries in him all the elements of his mature self. Whether along with his stock of truncated and rudimentary 54 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS instincts the child brings with him into the world also a bundle of quite definite and specific mental qualities and aptitudes which are only different aspects of physical predispositions is a debatable question by no means easy to prove. Shakespeare was able to prove it only by sacrificing probability to dramatic effect and to his favorite thesis "blood will tell" (as in Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, Winter s Tale). That physical and mental elements have so combined to give the child before birth a certain mental "set" or temperament we may assume as likely. But in the same breath we must assume, too, that this set or temperament may be, and a thousand to one will be, over- borne and modified by his social environment. Social suggestion and habit (which Dr. Jordan calls the "higher heredity") will dissolve hereditary granite. Heredity is its own undoing. For while transmitting "characters" it transmits also the impetus by which the characters are modified or annulled. Indeed it is not too much to say that we only possess our inheritance by earning it. Goethe, while believing fully in the heredity of mental aptitudes and tastes, delivers himself of this apparent paradox: "What thou hast in- herited from the fathers, labor for, in order to possess it." Why? Because our mental and physical inherit- ances become really ours only as we actually develop them. The infant's body, however complete, would remain a flabby mass unless he began to exercise and develop him- self by imitative and premonitory plays. His mind would remain, too, a vague, schematic outfit of half-emerged instincts unless he completed them by social activity. In spite of Galton's elaborate attempt to prove the inherit- ance of mental superiorities, it appears from fuller evidence that the real determining factor in perpetuating a strain of intelligence was social inheritance, the inheritance of SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 55 superior opportunities for maintaining intellectual pre- eminence. It seems pretty generally proved that the dis- tribution of ability does not coincide with classes. The inheritance of such ability, or superior capacity, is, to say the very least, so questionable that it must yield a rather shaky foundation for any broad and sound social policy.^ It breaks down also in the commonest affairs of daily life ; people with a heavy baggage of family pride who assume that they are to the manner born are frequently the rudest, most ungracious, and ill-mannered. Good manners are made, not born. To the common objection that no two children in a large family are alike it is proper to answer that no two of these children are placed in the same environment. The first child comes bathed in nuptial love. The second takes its place in a family of four instead of three ; the third finds himself a member of a group of five. To say nothing of the differing possibilities of experience based simply on the mathematical principles of permutations and combinations, the fourth and fifth children find their parents older, less romantic, more driven by exigencies of employment or social getting-on, perhaps haunted by the fear of death, widow- hood, or failing income. In every child, then, we should expect marked variations quite independent of their com- mon physical heredity and of variations in the germ plasm ^ Cf. Ward, Applied Sociology, pp. 95-110, chap, ix; Odin, La genese des grands homnies, vol. i; .Fahlbeck, Archiv f. Rassen- und Gesellschafts- biologie, Heft i, 1912. The famous debate between Woods and Cattail {Science, vol. 30, 1909) ought to be read in this connection. Cattell's argu- ment fortifies the position here taken. Recent studies in psychology, par- ticularly psychology of "the unconscious," tend to establish the presump- tion that many traits of the adult are due not to organic heredity, as radical eugenists claim, but rather to impressions received during early infancy. These impressions constitute those potential other selves discussed in the preceding chapter. A good summary of this line of evidence will be found in Kohs' brief paper, "New Light on Eugenics," Journal of Heredity, 6: 446-452. His bibliography permits a full investigation of the subject. 56 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS itself.^ In so far as bodily feelings — somatic conscious- ness — form a part of the sense of self, it is accountable to physical heredity. Physical heredity seems to furnish the vase, but social heredity pours in the contents. We are beginning to realize, too, that even the body is not nearly so fixed by heredity as we were wont to presume. Changes in diet, climate, beliefs in disease, faith in the recuperative power of mind, elimination of worry, pressure of fatigue, germ damage through alcohol, febrile disease or temporary subnormalities of the parent at the time of con- ception, all of these things in either child or adult can break the mold of genuine heredity. It is perhaps too early to pin our faith to such results as those apparently attained by Prof. Boas in his anthropological measure- ments of immigrants to New York.^ But even if his thou- sands of Jews and Sicilians of the first and second genera- tion in response to their new environment did not actually become so much rounder or broader headed, or so much taller, or so much heavier, as the figures seem to show, still they indicate that something physically important hap- pened. And the very fact that the experiment was made proves that we believed more in plasticity than our faith in heredity would permit us to avow. It is perhaps not ^ "Environment, in the sense of social influence actually at work, is far from the definite and obvious thing it is often assumed to be. Our real environment consists of those images which are most present to our thoughts, and in the case of a vigorous, growing mind, these are likely to be something quite different from what is most present to the senses" (Cooley, Human Nature, 271). 2 Franz Boas, "Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants," Report of Immigration Comm., vol. 38, 1910. It may be well to call attention to Radosavljevich's savage criticism of Professor Boas' methods and results in American Anthropologist, 13 (n. s.) : 394-436; also Prof. Sergi's critique, "La pretesa influenza dell' ambiente sui caratteri fisici dell' uomo, " in Rivista Ilaliana di Sociologia, 16: 16-24 (1912). On the other hand the studies of Moritz Alsberg in Archiv fiir Rassen- und Geselhchaflsbiologie (March, April, 191 2) seem to confirm Boas' results; so also Prof. Ridgeway's study in Pop. Sci. Monthly, December, 1908. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT '57 impertinent to point out that if the Italian or Russian Jew leaves his old self at Messina or Odessa or Ellis Island and proceeds to achieve an American "self," it does not matter much whether his skull gets broader or not. If, however, to become dolicocephalous will help along the growth of his new self, so much the better, and we welcome the cali- pers and yardsticks of the anthropologists. CHAPTER V SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT {Continued) "Every cherished idea is a self." (Cooley) Having established that the self grows and can be molded, perhaps we are in a position to ask, what is a socially valuable self and how may it best be grown? One of the greatest religious teachers of the nineteenth century declared that the "human self must be evangelized." But what is the objective point of such evangelization ? In the first place, do we want a society made up of self-less or un- selfed beings ? No, for we should have jelly and not society. We need individual selves well developed and active, for somewhat the same reason that life achieves greater fiexi- bihty through separate ribs, joints, articulation, than when it becases itself in the bony prison of the crustacean. Human society is not Nirvana and has scant use for the hermit or the self-less nihihst. Such selflessness, far from being unselfish, is the height of selfishness. It is that sort of aesthetic individualism which seems to have contributed to Greek decadence, and to the feeble civic life of Catholic Europe in the Middle Ages. Love to one's neighbor does not mean annihilation of one's self, but simply the recog- nition that self and neighbor are fundamentally one. To deny one's self is merely to retire from the field and do nothing. Such renunciation is folly, for life is dynamic and insists that we act out our social nature ; otherwise we must shrivel and die. For this reason the widest oppor- S8 SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 59 tunity for the cultivation of Pcrsonlichkeit must be de- manded and granted ; but not for the adornment of a perfumed ego : the / in us must be realized and cultivated through the realization and cultivation of the / in others. But through it all the self must be permitted to assert and express itself normally ; otherwise it will degenerate into colorless asceticism or monasticism on the one hand, or explode into a wild riot of anarchic individualism on the other. It is not by any means necessary for the cultivation of a valuable self to march with Tolstoi in the rejection of all personal service, provided we are equally ready to render personal service. But it is doubtful whether at our present stage of economic and social development we either could or should revive primitive ideas of personal service. Eco- nomic self-sufhciency is out of the question ; the hands of the clock will not turn back. There are of course — as the Social Settlements have proved — many avenues yet neglected for the exercise of personal good neighborliness. Yet, after all, in the effort to create opportunities for the full development of everybody's self it is possible that what the poor need most from the well-to-do and cultured classes is not mere "old-fashioned neighborliness," but better citizenship ; not so much a self-denying altruism of volun- teer personal service as an income altruism that will create and maintain more favorable living conditions. The Friendly Visitor might often do more effective service as the citizen who refuses to buy "sweated" clothes or finery. It is conceivable that if working and living conditions are made tolerable, acquaintance and friendship will spring up spontaneously among those who are natural neighbors, who are thrown into ordinary industrial and social relations. For suspicion is eliminated and mutual confidence enlisted, without which there can never be the slighest basis for real 6o THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS neighborliness. Good will must always rest upon social justice. Only a sentimental, feudal sort of egotism will insist upon maintaining that ranging of classes which will permit of Lord and Lady Bountiful as the type of the good neighbor. Not alms, but a friend, says the new charity. But that friend will express his friendship in efforts to eliminate the need of alms or charity of any sort. The democracy of selves for which we contend and dream has no place for patron or pauper. If I were asked to state in two words the mark of a socially valuable "self," I should say without hesitation efficient imagination. For without imagination we can have no broad and abiding sympathy; without it we are mere clansmen or tribesmen, or narrow members of a guild, trades-union or profession ; or we lock ourselves in by our own firesides as momentary patterns of domestic virtue and like Meredith's Egoist chant to our lovely bride, "You and I and the world outside !" But to attain that 01>Tn- pian sort of sjonpathy which will overleap the boundaries of craft or class or country and create new worlds out of old requires a vigorous responsive imagination. I believe we have not utilized a tithe of the possibiUties of developing an imaginative self. Social reformers, teachers, preachers, capture the imagination for social service, and behold the new world ! Lockhart in his life of Scott says that Sir Walter once remarked in the course of a conversation on the high senti- ments often expressed by uneducated persons : "We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart." For out of the heart flow imagination and sentiment where- with to meet the issues of life. A notable Danish sociologist recently wrote: "Moral evolution has consisted almost SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 6l wholly in the increasing liberation of the imagination." ^ W. E. H. Lecky in tracing a large share of immorality to lack of imagination follows it up with a plea for education as the means of increasing morality by enlarging the im- agination. "If our benevolent feelings are then the slaves of our imaginations, if an act of realization is a necessary antecedent and condition of comparison, it is obvious that any influence that augments the range and power of this realizing faculty is favorable to the amiable virtues, and it is equally evident that education has in the highest degree this effect." ^ Whether expressed in so many words or not, this is evidently what Superintendent Brockway had in mind when contending for the reformatory effects of intellectual education at Elmira.^ And as Mr. Wells points out, if we are going to arrest our present pretty clear drift towards revolution or revolutionary disorder it must not be through training a governing class to get the better of an argument or the best of a bargain ; it must be through laying hold of the imaginations of "this drifting, sullen and suspicious multitude, which is the working body of the country." ^ If we are justified in interpreting Socrates' axiom that knowledge is virtue, as meaning that complete, illuminated knowledge which by imagination sees through, behind, and around things and thus perforce expresses itself in right conduct, we are likewise justified in saying that much, per- haps most crime, is the result of limited, unimaginative knowledge. Likewise selfishness as a mental and social quality is always the result of a certain mental squint or astigmatism, defective imagination, especially inability ^ C. N. Starcke, La famille dans les differentes Societes, p. 272. 2 History of European Morals, 1 : 139. ' See, e.g. Journal Social Science, 6 : 149. * Symposium, "What the Worker Wants," conducted by the London Daily Mail, 191 2, p. 11. 62 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS to imagine one's "self" in its correct proportions and in its true relations with others' selves. For if we once grasp the idea that society is simply the aggregate of our images of each other, it is easy to see that imagination is the pre- requisite not only to social reform, to that ideal of society we dream of, but also to any sort of societal life at all. In- deed for my fellows to exist in the slightest degree for me as social beings they must be visualized ; and no form of social control is possible without this constant imaging of one's fellows and their presence. But this is merely to reduce my own sense of my self as a social person to the same terms, for, as we have repeatedly observed, I get my self only by observing others and by comparing these observations of ego and alter in my imagination. It is not too much to say, then, that a man is just so much of a man as his sympathies are wide; "what a person is and what he can understand or enter into through the life of others are very much the same thing." Imagination is the social periscope through which we can see around the rough corners of our fellows. It is just this abihty to put one's self into others' places, to enter into the life of our fellows, to slip, with Balzac, into the very skins of others, that makes the great artist, man of letters, poet, lover of men, or real constructive social reformer. For it is not some special quality of altruism or sentimentality, but simple imagination and its correla- tive, kindly sympathy, both growing out of a rich, compre- hensive, and coherent experience, that form the basis of social ethics and of serious social reform. It is likewise the basis of our whole social organization if we accept Aristotle's maxim that "friendship or love is the bond which holds states together." Foreign missions, quite aside from our opinion as to their rehgious and economic value, appeal to us at least on the score of their imaginative stimulus. Adam Smith observed SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 63 that we are more moved by our neighbor's suffering from a corn on his great toe than by the starvation of milHons in China. And LesHe Stephen generaHzes this experience into the maxim, "My interests are strongest where my power of action is greatest." Instead of 'power of action' he might better have said 'power of visuaHzation.' With the growing world-organization of trade and means of com- munication the way begins to open for wider circles of visualization, action, and sympathy. The man who can fully visualize Central Africa or the Marquesas while not neglecting in imagination and fact his next door neighbor or the child of the city slum is just so much more the large- hearted citizen of the cosmos, member of a world society. Such an experiment as the First Universal Races Congress which met in London, 191 1, is a concrete instance of the power of imaginative sympathy to pave the way to better international and interracial understandings and policies ; hence a wider conception of the "self." It is perhaps impossible to measure the impulse to religious tolerance and breadth which has sprung from the appeal to the im- agination offered at the World's Congress of Religions at the Chicago World's Fair. Race prejudice and religious prejudice are impossible when my imagination is working at its best, for every man is my brother, is identified with my self, so long as I can conceive him without antipathy ; and the chances are ten to one that if I take the trouble to learn of and about him my antipathy vanishes. The maxim tout comprendre tout pardonner reduces to mere tautology — one equals one — for to understand all leaves nothing to pardon. And to tolerate is the beginning of understanding. Our sense of self, then, grows richer as we perceive con- stantly newer and wider possibilities of conduct, through either direct contact or through imaginary relationship 64 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS with persons. It holds equally true for sociology and psychology that our self grows only in proportion to our world. We know "our self" only as we know our "other self." Hence the absolute necessity for wide experience. The man who wears blinders of indifference or prejudice is the man who knows httle of the world, therefore but little of himself, and becomes what we call narrow-minded. Such being the case, the wider the range of alters the larger and richer the give and take which is the essence of ego- building, as also of social consciousness. Personality must acquire a three-dimensional activity. The third dimension, depth, can only come from wide experience. Two-dimen- sional personality is merely a reflecting surface, mostly copy with but little practice or invention, and fit only for automatic, suggested, or reflex action. But where shall this wide experience be culled? It begins with the mother, and with the family, obviously enough. But is the family, as some have supposed, a sufficiently wide pasture ground for the raising of a full- grown personality — a socially efficient self? Does it offer that wide and varied experience of persons and things requisite for mature intelligence and conduct? Does it provide for that expression of Good Will which is ascribed to scientists and socialists — their conquest over the mean- ness of concealment, their systematic devotion of them- selves to large impersonal ends ? Professor Giddings in his presidential address before the American Sociological Society in St. Louis, 1910, said : "Now, habits are acquired, we say, by doing things, or thinking things many times over. That is true, but it is not all. The repetitions that make up habit are imitations ; they are copies of models or examples. Many of our ele- mental and most useful habits are imitations of parents, but, plainly if we imitated parents only, there would be no SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 65 national traits, and in the strict sense of the word, no nations. There would be only some millions of families, each abiding by its own mental and moral law. National habits, and therefore national traits and character, are copies of those relatively conspicuous models that are widely imitated, irrespective of kinship ; imitated locally at first, perhaps, but at length throughout a population." Albeit a strong tendency among experimental psycholo- gists to discount the imitation theory, this still remains a fair statement of the case for which we have been arguing, namely, the need of a rich and varied pasturage for that process of imitation and practice which shapes the self. Where is it to be found? Manifestly the family limits by its numbers the opportunities for the child's practice. His position is largely one of subordination. His means are largely therefore copy, and not its necessary correlative, practice. His very imitation of his parents is in part copy- ing second-hand copy in so far as they reflect the larger movements of the social life. This second-hand copy is no doubt valuable in the beginning, for it is selected from an enormous mass which would only serve to confuse the child's indiscriminating sense of values were he projected immediately into it. It is a short cut and would be su- premely valuable if the selections were always wise and socially sound. Unfortunately they are not always so, for parenthood does not bring with it, per se, wisdom and capacity, and parental love is by no means self-less ; it is appropriative and frequently mixed with procreative pride. But were the parents ever so wise and just in their selection, there must come a time when the child shall have done with mere second-hand imitation and have access to original sources. An education and experience confined to the limits of famihal life would be "incest" just as surely as the most 66 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS flagrant physical in-breeding. As John Locke put it, such circumscribed experience yields a pretty traffic with known correspondents in some little creek ; but it hinders ventur- ing out into the great ocean of knowledge. Life is largely stress, but family life is consciously opposed to strain and conflict, or at least offers only limited opportunities for it. By its very physical proximity and intimacy, family life gives full swing to imitation, both conscious and uncon- scious. It is, therefore, essentially conservative. It tends to stagnate, to recapitulate, to venerate the past, to dis- count novelty, experiment, and adventure, to encourage submissive receptivity instead of independent activity. Home is rather an ark of refuge than a laboratory. It is rather the place whither one retires to enjoy the fruits of his intellectual rotation of crops than the experiment station which would discover the value of and insist upon such a rotation. The strength of family life and its social utility should lie in its exercise of sentiment, of sympathy, rather than of mere intellectual interest. But so long as marriage and family life savor so strongly of custom, law, property, and sensuality, and so little of healthy sentiment and social responsibility, they are hardly in position to outfit children with "selves" broadly conceived, warm with sentiment, and socially valuable. Here we may be permitted to record a doubt as to the validity of Sir Francis Galton's claims for parental educa- tion. He says : ^ "Those teachings that conform to the natural aptitudes of the child leave much more enduring marks than others. Now both the teachings and the natural aptitudes of the child are usually derived from its parents. They are able to understand the ways of one another more intimately than is possible to persons not of the same blood, and the child instinctively assimilates the habits and ways ^ Inquiries into Human Faculty, section on "History of Twins." SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 67 of thought of its parents. Its disposition is 'educated' by them in the true sense of the word." That is to say, the parents are best able to determine the child's self. But even granting that parents by the fact of their relationship alone enjoy any peculiar advantage of recip- rocal knowledge and understanding, it is still far from true that the result in self-and-other-self-building, measured in terms of social efficiency, would attain a maximum. There is no advantage ipso facto, to the child or to society, in assimilating the "habits and ways of thought of its parents." There is rather a distinct disadvantage save where society is Utopian, or ranged on a rigid caste basis. A narrow family feeling breeds selfishness, and a selfishness pecuHarly repellent and difficult to extirpate ; for, as Professor Mackenzie observes, "The evil spirit is there masquerading as an angel of light." ^ It is absolutely essential for a growing man to get outside his family to achieve that en- dowment of sympathetic imagination which alone can deliver him from the mental warping of a narrowed educa- tion. Mr. Wells shows clearly how this sort of mental "incest" causes a great EngHsh family to think of Eng- land as "a world of happy Hatfields, cottage Hatfields, villa Hatfields, Hatfields over the shop, and Hatfields be- hind the farm yard, wickedly and wantonly assailed and interfered with by a band of weirdly discontented men" — social reformers.^ But we cannot even grant that parents understand their children better than others outside the family circle can hope to. The reverse is often true. And the reason Is this, that rarely do we find a person, unless he has been ' Introduction to Social Philosophy, 364 ; cf. G. E. Dawson, Hartford Seminary Record, 13 : 16. "^ New Worlds, p. 51. Cf. Schmoller, Grundriss, etc., e.xcerpt translated in Am. Jr. Social. 20 : 521-2. 68 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS specially trained in psychology, who can recognize in the child the genesis of traits and characteristics which will mature into those possessed by the parents. Even if he could, prejudices of various sorts would enter to confuse his understanding and treatment of the problem. Let the the reader recall, for example, Meredith's Richard Feverel : Feverel senior is a perfect illustration of Galton's thesis; and the complete breakdown of his educational pohcy, through misreading the boy's character, together with its tragic results for Feverel junior, quite as perfectly illus- trate the criticism here offered.'^ To that wider process — definite, conscious Social Education — we shall have to look for the creation and maintenance of socially valuable and efficient "selves." We cannot here go into any details of what this process of Social Education involves. The key to it is simply this : to develop a dominant idea of the self as devoted to the building up of a rich and efficient personality in terms of others' equally rich and efficient personahties. In other words, a dominant self pledged to social justice, to the creation of opportunities for the free development of all others' selves. Or to phrase it still differently, a self con- ceived in the most ardent, flexible, and intelHgent sympathy, determined to express that sympathy in brotherhood — Hterally and consistently.^ It is primarily a problem of capturing the imagination, of creating centers of imita- tion, and of injecting a new idea into the mores ; that is, it is a problem of making good will "good form" in the best sense. Can this be done? It can and must.^ We ' Cf. discussion in Letourneau's Evolution of Marriage and the Family, 356, etc. ^ Cf. Urwick, Pliilos. of Social Progress, chaps, v-vii, for somewhat similar point of view. * "A lazy nation may be changed into an industrious, a rich into a poor, a religious into a profane, as if by magic, if any single cause, though slight, SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 69 have already seen how, under a stress of competition, aft exaggerated sense of property and other disagreeable phases or corners of the self have developed. The self may be identified with the "cause" or aim for which one works or in which one is interested. One's philosophy, one's creed, class, party, business becomes literally himself : witness the feeling of outraged personal honor when one's class morals, party honor, etc., are impugned. I have heard an en- thusiastic bank messenger, sixteen years old, after two weeks of service speak famiHarly of "our" bank, our directors, our profits, etc. Ribot says : "Nothing is more common or better known than the momentary appropriation of the personality by some intense and fixed idea. As long as this idea occupies consciousness, we may say without exaggeration that it constitutes the individual. The obstinate pursuit of a problem, invention, or creation of any kind represents a mental state in which the whole personality has been drained for the profit of a single idea." ^ Lowell expressed the same idea fehcitously in his poem Longing. ("The thing we long for, that we are," etc.) Such a dominant idea can become an idee fixe or hobby, so that a man may be defined by his hobby. Sterne's Uncle Toby is a classic example in point. ^ But our own dominant self need have nothing of the dangerous character of the idee fixe, nor of the grotesque extravagance and annoyance of the hobby. In the doc- trine of the dominant social self-idea there lies no suggestion of fixity. The socially valuable self is not rigid. It may vary from day to day. It may achieve and hold as its right or any combination of causes, however subtle, is strong enough to change the favorite and detested type of character." Walter Bagehot, Physics 6° Politics, chap. vi. >— ^ Diseases of Personality, 1 18-19. / ^ Tristram Shandy, chap. xxiv. 70 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS that sacred inconsistency for which Emerson argued so eloquently as the essential mark of real hfe and thinking. But with our social self as with Emerson, the variations and inconsistencies will always be within the range of what is socially good and valuable. To Emerson it was never an inconsistent balancing or wavering between what was right and what was wrong. By no means. His course was alv/ays toward the true and valuable. If he tacked hither and yon, if he seemed to waver and hesitate, it was merely in the attempt to choose the Best from out several possible Merely Goods. Hence in the long run, sub specie cBternitas, so to speak, we are consistent when we con- stantly manifest as our dominant self that which socially is most valuable and efficient, whatever temporary day to day variations may appear. Even the tides of the sea show marked diurnal variations ; yet, in polar seas where the variations appear most considerable, nobody would doubt the general consistency of their course. It is only this general consistency for good that modern efficient rehgion demands. Professor Peabody, for ex- ample, writes: "the Christian rich man ... is not hard in business and soft in charity, but of one fiber throughout. His business is a part of his religion, and his philanthropy is a part of his business. He leads his hfe, he is not led by it." ^ A cross section of the modern Big-Business sinner reveals such a general unsoundness of fiber, hypertrophy here, rottenness there, ossification yonder, that our young radicals are clamoring for a social poHcy that will administer heroic remedies to heal his unsoundness and force him to be of one fiber throughout. The self struggling for life for others as a "ruling passion" comes nearest this ideal of consistent good. For, if we are to beheve Dr. Van Dyke, in all of us that amount to any- ^ Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p.. 224. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 71 thing (or at least are worth writing about) there is a ruHng passion which weaves "the stuff of human nature into patterns wherein the soul is imaged and revealed." Any one of the ordinary ruling passions, romantic love, music, nature, honor, money, pride, children, loyalty, revenge — those of which Dr. Van Dyke writes — requires to be dis- cipUned and subjected to great broad rules of social justice and decency. But the self dominated by the idea that it is part and parcel of its fellows and must work out the salva- tion of all together lest all fail, has no need of elaborate checks and discipUnes. It finds poise and discipline in the inertia of other possible dominant ideas, potential selves, and in the drag-weight of bodily consciousness. Its stimu- lation and its safety-valve lie alike in the difficulty of its enterprise. And the enterprise becomes all the more difficult with the growing variety and complexity of our interests and experience, or with the delicate sensibility of a highly cultivated, keenly appreciative soul. Henri Frederic Amiel was such a soul and here is his confession : "This inner identity, this unity of conviction, is all the more difficult the more the mind analyzes, discriminates, and foresees. It is difficult, indeed, for hberty to return to the frank unity of instinct." ^ But will the dominant idea or ruling passion of the social self obliterate the other pleasant and possible selves — the music lover, the poet, the wealth-producer, the man of honor, the nature worshiper? Not in the least. "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and ... all these things shall be added unto you." The Kingdom of God — justice, good-will — by insisting on the socializing of opportunity for all to enjoy these things, insures them absolutely for me. Heine's demand for Zuckererhsen fiir jederman means also sugar peas for me. So that if you choose to call ^Journal Intime, April 6, 1851. 72 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS identifying myself with my fellows and seeking to co- operate in hearty good will with them, losing my hfe, very well ; but the fact still remains that in so doing I find it in deed and in truth. And what is this but formulating into a conscious policy what humanity, and the animal and vegetable world as well, have been doing uncon- sciously for eons as the price of evolution? The principle of commensahty runs through all nature. Take, for example, the plant and animal hfe of the desert. There is an unconscious, but no less real, mutual understanding between plant and plant and even between plant and ani- mal. Plant shades and feeds animal ; animal digs and fertiUzes for plant. It may be that misery loves com- panionship, but it is certain that the harsh conditions of desert Hfe originate and enforce a soHdarity between flora and fauna which not only alleviates their misery but saves them from extinction.^ But we need not go so far to illustrate this principle. Every loaf of bread, every ounce of meat, every flagon of wine or milk embodies this fundamental law of the struggle for service of others. If some one objects that division of labor, not mutuality, is emphasized here, I answer that it is our business to elevate mutuahty to the focus of con- sciousness where it may be brought to white heat for the service of humanity. For it would be easy to show that mere division of labor leads to the most iron clad sort of egotism and selfishness, and becomes a principle of retro- gression instead of progress, even in the economic sense alone. But what sanctions exist, powerful enough to make this service sense-of-self dominant? Any regnant interest can only be displaced by a stronger interest through what Seeley called the expulsive power of a new affection. Will ^ Cf. the late W J McGee's brilliant paper on "Influences of a Desert Environment," American Anthropologist, 8: 350-75. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 73 religion alone, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd thinks, furnish the motive for this subordination of the self to social ends? Is the problem, after all, how to get men to become eunuchs for the Kingdom of God's sake ? Is it not rather a prob- lem of self-realization and identification with fellow men? If this is so, is it not possible to secularize the process? Can one not reaHze and live out his social self without the leverage of some supernatural concept of the self? I be- Heve we can. But merely to substitute philosophy for religion will not bring it generally to pass. Perhaps we may yet design a philosophy of service which will carry us far on the way. It will be difficult, however, to reach the great masses by any made-to-order system of philosophy. Perhaps even a made-to-order religion such as is now being devised by the governing classes for Japan would offer stronger sanctions. It is not improbable that shorn of its grotesqueries and absolutism, Comte's Rehgion of Hu- manity might work ; for it appealed to sentiment even more than to intellect, and the sentiment was social and healthy. Yet there is more of promise in such a religious movement as the Bahaists. The secret of its marvelous growth in the past fifty years seems to He in its elimination of elaborated dogma and in its concentration of intellect and feelings upon the two fundamental precepts of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The test of the sincerity and power of this movement is that under most trying and complex racial or rehgious antago- nisms (as in India or Turkey) it has actually made the the- ory of brotherhood a living social fact. Dill tells us, that despite the influence of Roman philos- ophy upon the legislation of the Antonines, and its practical efforts to give support and guidance to moral life and to refashion the old paganism so as to make it a real spiritual force, it failed to touch the people as a whole. It failed 74 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS "as it will probably fail until some far-off age, to find an anodyne for the spiritual distresses of the mass of men. It might hold up the loftiest ideal of conduct; it might revive the ancient gods in new spiritual power; it might strive to fill the interval between the remote Infinite Spirit and the Hfe of man with a host of mediating and succouring powers. But the effort was doomed to failure. It was an esoteric creed, and the masses remained untouched by it. They longed for a Divine light, a clear, authoritative voice from the unseen world." ^ It is the longing of even strong-minded men of science for this clear, authoritative voice from the unseen that gives the church and dogmatic religion its age-long hold. Hence we are not surprised to find Mr. Chatterton-Hill claiming that it is the Church which embodies the supra-social principles of integration and constitutes that solidarity which alone can secure adequate social adaptation.^ From the same loom comes the social philosophy of such young English Neo-Catholics as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. The former's criticism of Wells' view that selfishness need not be eternal is typical. Wells does not believe in original sin. Chester- ton does ; in fact, he holds that an examination of the human soul shows original sin "almost the first thing to be believed in"; and that "a permanent possibihty of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. . . . The weakness of Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor car or balloon." ^ It ^ Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, Preface. ^ Heredity and Selection in Sociology, p. 546. ^ Heretics, p. 79. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 75 is perfectly evident that Mr. Chesterton is here conceiving you and me as possessing a self much as a child cleaves to his penny savings bank. The self and the bank are things given once for all, do not change, and must be given away or lost as a whole. But we have already demonstrated almost ad nauseam how the self is not a fixed entity but a social becoming. The point to such reactionary criticism is therefore turned. And the critic who holds such a theory of the self or selfishness is simply the victim of what Dr. Washington Gladden calls Ptolemaic sociology. We prejudice our chances of reahzing our ideal of the "social self" if we neglect altogether the sanctions of either religion or philosophy. But the final basis of any hope in Social Education must be laid on definite, conscious pro- grams of training in sociahzing activity. ''Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments," wrote Mill, "will make a common man dig or weave for his country as readily as fight for his country." There is no need for beating tom-toms or strutting or straining in high tragedy to train children to devote themselves heartily and simply to humdrum unsensational doing for others. For human nature is already biased toward service. The psycholo- gists tell us that there exists in all normal people a genuine instinct (as instincts go) for seeing others well off and happy. There is no reason whatever, short of human stupidity and inertia, why the child in school should not be given opportunity to act and to reahze himself as a cooperator, as a social self devoted to the service of his mates. We have the machinery, the plant, the pedagogical systems. It makes very Kttle difference after all whether you vote Froebel or Signora Montessori for your children. If the purpose and spirit animating the system is that of social service the name counts for naught. It is possible to believe so far in the James-Lange theory 76 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS of the emotions that if the school will apply itself to train- ing the child to act as a social person instead of as an in- sulated individual, sufhcient unto himself, he will soon develop the feehng of himself as a social self ; this will offer him a new and compelhng sanction for acting socially ; the new actions by a sort of snowball process pile up and in- tensify the social f eehngs ; and so on indefinitely until the social self becomes a firmly fixed habit : the doer of good deeds feels himself a good-deed-doer ; good-will becomes second nature. Our species, more than any other, as Comte said, needs duties to generate emotions. Max Beerbohm's deHghtful Httle allegory of The Happy Hypo- crite illustrates this process. A dissolute young lord smitten by a noble and sincere love for a beautiful maiden puts on the waxen mask of a young saint to win her. His hypocrisy succeeds better than he had planned, for it com- pels him to renounce his evil ways and to make restitution. At a terrible crisis later the mask is torn oiT, and lo ! be- neath it the face is discovered molded to the noble hnea- ments of the mask. Three thousand years ago the Upan- ishads taught exphcitly this very doctrine. "Now as a man is Uke this or hke that, according as he acts and ac- cording as he behaves, so will he be — a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds." ^ Behold how nature triumphs over herself, and the leopard changes his spots. The precise point to be seized now is that since James warned us that we may become hardened into old fogies at twenty-five, we must catch our leopards as cubs if we would change their spots effectively. ^ Sacred Books of the East, XV: 176; Plato's chance remark (Republic Bk. IV) that "as healthy practices produce health, so do just practices produce justice," took on a far-reaching significance in Aristotle and became a fundamental part of his ethical system. His maxim, "good actions produce good habits," is precisely the principle that we are arguing for here. SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 77 As a half-way measure, until schools, churches, homes, and other social institutions become infused by the new spirit of socialized effort and consciously work to develop socialized ''selves," other organizations for stimulating ''social service" may spontaneously arise to prepare the way. Some years ago, for example, the Agenda Club and the Nobodies Club were organized in London for this pre- cise purpose. They are twentieth century Anglo-Saxon orders of chivalry, samurai divested of medievalism, with the avowed purpose of organizing and directing into prac- tical and useful channels the mass of vague idealism which is wasted for want of some such form of direction. Human nature may for a long time to come need the props of re- ligion and formulated codes of duties (as in fraternities and castes like the samurai), for the attainment of its so- cialized sense of self ; but we have the surest grounds for beUeving that through rational education it will come in time to more spontaneous realization of itself and be able to discard every suggestion of priggishness or condescension. Let us now review briefly the ground we have traveled in this study. The kernel of the whole matter is that human nature is not a fixed quantity. It is infinitely diverse and infinitely malleable ; infinitely sensitive to change. It is a weathercock ; it is thistledown rather than the fixed star or adamant we are urged to believe. It is not altogether the nature of things ; human nature is modifiable by human will, as Lowes Dickinson reminds us. This we saw clearly in primitive men. Their mystical and elastic concepts of their "persons," their identification of self with the group, cosmic powers and processes, the universal beHef in metamorphosis, "possession," reincarna- tion, "contagion of quahties," indicate historically and genetically a sound basis for our beHef that the self is a function of the will, and is socially determined. From 78 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS psychology we gathered the fact that we are a bundle of potential selves and attain unity through unified activity ; that a dominant activity will build up and color a dominant self ; that the social self is the real self because the idea of self as a member of a coherent group becomes a dominant idea in all normal persons. Social psychology and sociology show us how this social self is built up out of social ex- perience ; how social life furnishes not only the mold but even the very materials that are poured into it for the cast- ing of a social self; how it is no mere metaphor to insist that through the meaning of "us" we learn of "me," and that the self is thus a social product. We are all of us part and parcel of each other. And it is the very community of our selves (the old "Communion of the Saints") that has hauled us up out of the Eocene pit and made us men out of protoplasm. This identification of our selves with our fellows we found to be a real gain in breadth and freedom, instead of a suicidal crushing of our own wills and person- alities. The key to such an identification of self with other-self as would be socially valuable we discovered to be "efficient imagination," the power to tolerate, to sympa- thize with, and to visualize others' selves. But such an elastic imagination requires a wide range of social experi- ence which in our opinion can come only from a wider definition and practice of education ; in other words, from social education. And in social education we find the means ready to hand for that molding and fashioning of the sense of self which is the prerequisite to any conscious plan of progress towards the new worlds of which we dream. Through social education men will realize and actually live out that prime social law long ago glimpsed by the Roman Emperor-sage : that they were born for the service and benefit of each other. The method, so far as it can be compressed into a single phrase, must be to develop in the SELF AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT 79 child's mind the dominating thought of himself as a con- tributing personality, and to project this dominant concept upon the plane of imagination. Thus have we accepted frankly the challenge that human nature is forever fixed and therefore unadapted to social betterment. Of the two ways of looking at the problem of society and social change (the individual on the one hand, the mass and its environment on the other) , we have now finished the discussion of the personal element in con- trolled or purposive social change, namely the problem of the human self and its manipulation. We must now try to find out the meaning of social change ; to give a precise definition to social change conceived as progress or better- ment, to determine along what path or paths human per- sonaHty can best express itself in order to secure improve- ment. This will involve a critical analysis of what the word progress covers and the various tests by which it may be identified. PART II THE CONCEPT AND CRITERIA OF PROGRESS CHAPTER VI THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS It is perhaps true that "the fundamental task of the sociologist is to furnish a theory of social progress." But it is not a task to be rushed at Kght-heartedly. Indeed, we approach it much as Huxley screwed himself up for his famous Romanes Lecture on Evolution and Ethics. He wrote jocosely to his friends calling himself an egg dancer and applying other epithets indicating the difficulty and delicacy of the undertaking. The attempt to formulate a theory of progress meets precisely the accumulated store of misconception, prejudice, and half truths which Huxley had to face in his apphcation of the evolutionary formula to ethics. For we must remember that there are three very well-marked classes of opinion regarding this whole matter of progress. There are the impressionistic opti - ^ mists who know from the general 'feel' of things that God's in his heavens and all's progressively better for the world. They erect a particular into a universal and general- ize a good digestion or personal good fortune in love or business. There are the pessimists who insist that retro- J3) gression or decadence, not progress, is the law of social life. Note that pessimism, Hke its opposite, is frequently a generalization of states of health or luck. And there are the Q^iiics who laugh and tell us that like squirrels in a cage, ^-^ or convicts on a tread-mill, we go through the motions 83 84 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS but get nowhere. Perhaps history can decide which is correct. But in order to read history aright the student of sociology must reject all three of the attitudes just ex- posed ; he must attain the scientific and critical mind which rejects all mere impressionism and goes after con- crete facts and tests. Surely the stream of history is no more vague than the stream of individual consciousness. Consciousness can be tested, measured, and compared. The history of human society should likewise yield to measurements of depth and composition, ebb and flow. But to make history really mean anything we must somehow or other grasp the time element, we must get some kind of cosmological perspective. Only by getting a gHmpse of the enormous span of years through which humanity has traveled can one have the remotest hint of the evolutionary process, whether you call it drifting or stream headed for some vaster deep. As a suggestive mechanical device I should recommend the History Clock as sketched on the opposite page or in the form adapted by Professor Robinson. "Let us imagine," he says, "the whole history of man- kind crowded into twelve hours, and that we are Hving at noon of the long human day. Let us, in the interest of moderation and convenient reckoning, assume that man has been upright and engaged in seeking out inventions for only two hundred and forty thousand years. Each hour on our clock will then represent twenty thousand years, each minute three hundred and thirty-three and a third years. For over eleven and a half hours nothing was recorded. We know of no persons or event ; we only infer that man was living on the earth, for we find his stone tools, bits of his pottery, and some of his pictures of mammoths and bison. Not till twenty minutes before twelve do the THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 85 Evolutionary Types of Man Arranged on a 24-Hoitr Clock Each Hour of Which Represents 25,000 Years H 9, 13 10 12 11 ~i , Modern Man (including the Iron, Bronze, and New Stone Ages) less than half an hour 10,000 years Cro-Magnon type one hour 10-25,000 years Neanderthal type two hours 25-40,000 years Piltdown type five hours 125,000 years Heidelberg type ten hours 250,000 years Pithecanthropos twenty hours 500,000 years (Estimates based on Osborn's Men of the Old Stone Age.) 86 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS earliest vestiges of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization begin to appear. The Greek literature, philosophy, and science of which we have been accustomed to speak as "ancient," are not seven minutes old. At one minute before twelve Lord Bacon wrote his Advancement of Learn- ing . . . and not half a minute has elapsed since man first began to make the steam engine do his work for him. . . . Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hip- parchus, Lucretius — are really our contemporaries." ^ In order properly to estimate whether humanity has pro- gressed or not, we must assume the possibility of move- ment, then set up a starting point from which to measure our movement, if there has been any, and its direction. Only by setting a line of stakes from bank to bank of its mountain channel and by noting that the Hne became bowed in the middle could Tyndall prove the flow of an Alpine glacier. We must, then, take a look at certain phases of very primitive life and use them as our stakes for determining whether we have moved onward, or whether, like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, we have been run- ning and running, gasping for breath, through centuries upon centuries, only to find ourselves at the last under the very tree from which we started. To estabhsh man's complete pedigree, to relate him properly to his fellows in the animal world, we must pre- suppose a state of culture far below any now existent on earth. To conceive his primeval condition one must strip away bit by bit almost everything that constitutes what we know as the arts, refinements, and comforts of life. The earhest men we have any traces of stalked naked even in rough weather, were without the arts of spinning, or cutting and fastening together of skins, or pottery, or agri- culture, or fire ; with no weapons but perhaps spear and ^ J. H. Robinson, The New History, 239-40 ; cf. Ward, Pure Sociology, 38-40. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 87 club, and no domestic animal save the dog. There have been in historic times tribes manifesting one or more of these lacks, even that of fire. Indeed in the first decade of the twentieth century a reputable ethnographer an- nounces the discovery of a tribe in Dutch New Guinea so primitive that it knows nothing of pottery, of metals, or of the use of fire in preparing food. If such a condition could obtain at the high noon of civiUzation (according to our History Clock) it is altogether probable that in the twilight hours of, say, one to six o'clock, the state of man must have been at least as low, perhaps lower. Neither was primitive man necessarily happy. If his ignorance spelled bliss it was joy so interlarded with vague uncertainties and terrors that it was at least dubious and paradoxical. He hved in an environment of fears ; fear of food shortage, fear of the medicine man, fear of an enemy's magic, or fear of being accused himself of prac- ticing magic, and a thousand other fears that always hover about a twiUght of intelligence. If primitive man was not the 'happy savage,' neither was he free as the idyllic imaginations of eighteenth century philosophers saw him. "It is difficult," writes a noted English missionary, "to exhaust the customs and small ceremonials of a savage people. Custom regulates the whole of a man's actions — his bathing, washing, cutting his hair, eating, drinking, and fasting. From his cradle to his grave he is the slave of ancient usage. In his life there is nothing free, nothing original, nothing spontaneous, no progress towards a higher and better life, and no attempt to improve his condition, mentally, morally, or spiritually." ^ Is this a picture of freedom ? After making due allowance ^ Rev. J. Macdonald, " Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of South African Tribes," in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, xx, 140 ; cf. Curr. The Australian Race, i, 51. 88 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS for the writer's superlative negation, and recognizing that there must have been some positive, spontaneous force in savagery, some proddings to variation, else we should not be here to tell the tale, after all this toning down, the picture is anything but attractive or reassuring. ^ Primitive man speculated httle or not at all. If the processes of nature, the course of the seasons, movements of sun and moon, were considered at all, it was in relation to daily bread. His philosophy and, for that matter, his rehgion, reduced to the lowest terms of self -maintenance and self-perpetuation. His heaven was a place of ease and full belhes. And it was only a day-to-day philosophy. The savage had no past ; and posterity or future existence and provision for their maintenance came only later with growing intelligence, religion, and other social institutions. When I say self-maintenance, I do not mean to assume hghtly that primitive life was marked by ' each for himself and all against all' even in the matter of food. For in all probabihty, as we have already seen, man could only have become man by reason of his previous long sub-human training in cooperation and associated effort. But even this crude association was insufficient usually to secure thrift and foresight. Many of the American Indians within the last fifty years had not yet learned from hard experi- ence to lay up stores for a rainy day. Mr. George Kennan, commenting on the periodic famines and starvation in North East Siberia, observes that no experience, however severe, no suffering, however great, teaches the natives pru- dence.^ In general, the Bushman, whom Fritsch calls " the wretched child of the moment," might be taken as typical of savagery. If the savage fails to store up even food for the rainy day, his failure to store up capital for use in future production is still more apparent. ^ Tent Life in Siberia, 384 fif. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 89 This uncertainty of the food quest, and primitive man's lack of machinery and institutions for conquering the un- certainty, account for the narrowness of his range of Ufe interests. Hence we need not be surprised to find that primitive language reflects this narrowness in its paucity of terms for the more complex and refined hfe-processes. Its stock of broad concepts is extremely meager. The narrowing process is observable further in the childish standards of social value, in volatility, lack of persistent purpose, immature self-control, and naive sense of self, as we have repeatedly pointed out. In calling attention to primitive magic and other super- stitions there is no thought of condemnation. For super- stition is only a term of degree. It is not so much positive error as incomplete truth, and is by no means peculiar to savage times. For we ourselves live in a perpetual bath of superstitious survivals or in superstitions of our own making. Superstition is not something imposed from with- out or separate from other elements of Hfe. It is an attempt to meet the problems — principally ills — of Hfe, to set up a working hypothesis, a life philosophy. It is just as much a tool for the furthering of life interests as an ax, a spear, fire, medicine, or government. If civilized man makes less use of bald superstitions, it is only because he has in- vented better tools for accompHshing the same work . Hence myth and science are one in essence and origin. Yet hav- ing premised this much we cannot dodge the fact that primitive hfe was surrounded by a baffling universe of mystery and uncertainty to which only the rule-of-thumb empiricism of superstition gave any clew at all. It is un- deniable that the darkness is less extensive and less im- penetrable now than to our savage forbears. Primitive ignorance expressed itself also in very hazy ideas of kinship, relationship, and the whole process of pro- 90 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS creation. This of course marked early domestic institu- tions. The family as we know it can hardly be said to have existed. It was based not on affection or desire for the joys of home, but rather upon economic necessities, the desire of the male to exploit the female and her children. There was, to be sure, a certain biologic or instinctive attach- ment between mother and child, but children failed to receive that rational sort of care and affection which we attribute to true parenthood. Education was largely picked up, as one writer puts it, "quite as a young fowl learns to scratch and get its food." Children early attained economic independence and deserted the family circle. Family affections were thin and fleeting. Marriage was a brittle and transitory bond ; chastity practically un- known ; divorce and separation rather the rule than the exception. Children were valued rather as chattels than as objects of affection, and means of parental training. They were killed if in the way, sold into slavery, even eaten. Infanticide is almost universal in savage Hfe, though the motives vary. And infant mortality, due to parental ignorance of child hygiene, reaches such proportions that we sometimes wonder how enough survived to maintain the thread of human generation. On the other hand, fiHal respect is scanty and short lived. The aged who can no longer 'pay their way' are suffered to perish or deliber- ately sacrificed. That the motives were not ostensibly brutal only signifies that standards of sentiment or deUcacy or the fitness of things were still low. Early human groups carry little "dead weight."^ The pressure of life condi- tions scales down the number of dependents which a society can safely bear. Such savage institutions and practices as cannibahsm, ^ "Dead weight" or bouches iniitiles is a statistical term used to cover children under 15 and adults over 60. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 91 slavery, torture of captives and suspects, need only to be mentioned in passing. To say that cannibalism was good economy and that slavery was a distinct economic advance over cannibalism because the captive's labor power was more advantageous than the flesh from his bones, after all witnesses to a very rudimentary state of economic develop- ment. And torture or blood revenge or lex talionis may also be set down as marks of a very crude juridical organi- zation. From whatever standpoint we regard primitive life, then, whether from the economic, juridical, moral, or domestic ; whether we consider the quality or content of primitive mind, its limited range, its superstitions, its lack of pru- dence and foresight ; or whether we have regard to the bareness and lack of arts and comforts which mark savage life, we can come to but one conclusion, namely, that life at this level is bald, crude, and raw. Common sense and our own experience unite to testify that we have outstripped the meager and painful life of our forbears. Such ques- tions as how we did it, was it necessary or merely accidental, does this past warrant any conclusion about the future, still remain. These are, perhaps, the most difficult prob- lems sociology has to answer. For social development is tremendously complex, complex as life itself. It involves a solution of such problems as 'social causation,' 'social forces,' and such distinctions as those between 'change,' 'evolution,' 'development,' and 'progress.' Progress is a human concept. So very human, indeed, that everybody conceives it after his own fashion. It belongs perhaps rather to the arts of life or philosophy than to either the exact physical or the social sciences. 92 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Physical science knows only change, not progress. Prog- ress always involves a standard of values and of achievement. It is telle, at least to the degree of assuming that if humanity is moving, it is moving somewhere, toward some goal. Mr. G. K. Chesterton states the literary-religious view of this question thus : "Nobody has any business to use the word "progress" unless he has a definite creed and a certain cast-iron code of morals. No- body can be progressive without being doctrinal ; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible — at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction ; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress." ^ To be sure, the thesis is here set down in somewhat ultra- montane fashion. But we all lend ourselves to a charge of ultramontanism whenever we set up a standard of values and attempt to measure the movement of humanity by it. It remains, however, to step beyond the merely dogmatic and to demonstrate as objectively as possible the validity of our standard. In taking this step one should not be required to state with absolute geographical exactness the latitude and longitude of society's destination. Possibly it is sufficient to hint at the general trend and direction of movement. The final bourne may be guessed at least from this trend. But when we say that progress is a human concept we do not mean that it is an 'innate idea.' On the contrary it is an acquired characteristic won by selection and pre- served and transmitted by social heredity.^ It may be that the idea of progress is a gross illusion. It is possible ^ Heretics, p. 36. ^ Cf. De Greef, Lois Sociologiques, 167. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 93 that it is simply the sense of movement which the squirrel has in his rotary cage. But it is none the less one of the most persistent illusions which selection has preserved in our race history, and for this if for no other reason demands respectful treatment.^ Whether the behef has really been of utility or not is another question. Kant held that the destiny of the whole human species is toward continued progress, and that we accomplish it "by fixing our eyes on the goal, which though a pure ideal, is of the highest value in practice, for it gives a direction to our efforts, con- formable to the intentions of Providence." Yet it is per- missible to doubt the necessity of such a belief to evoke human efforts ; for if we may trust Balfour, the best efforts of mankind have never been founded upon the belief in an assured progress towards a terrestrial millennium.- Both the word and the idea, progress, are relatively new. In general the thought of antiquity clung to the decadence concept rather than to that of development. The pinch of poverty, the mutability of things human, the lack of materials upon which to arrive at the idea of 'humanity' as a universal — the unity of the human species — a similar lack of materials which might declare a chain of sequences in the whole animal series, conspired with the 'cake of 1 Any follower of Professor Sumner would at this point naturally say the illusion of progress has no other basis than the folkways ; that is, it is one phase of the mores of optimism. We are not surprised to find Professor Keller {Societal Evolution, p. 198) declaring : "it is evident that it is man's earthly destiny, under some powerful natural constraint, to persist in setting up his reason against 'natural law.' He will continue to do so. Hence the objections based upon misgivings and fear, however strong theoretically, fall out of practical reckoning ; that a thing looks doubtful or impossible has never seriously deterred man from attempting it if he has wanted to — and sometimes his assault has not been a failure." That last somewhat grudging admission inclines one to remind any cynic that a great scientist like Huxley had no patience with people who "think the difficulties of disproving a thing are as good as direct evidence in its favor." 2 Kant, Criticism of Herder, quoted by Marvin, The Living Past, 217; Balfour, A Fragment on Progress, 281. 94 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS custom' and the system of social status to obscure the vision of advance. Occasionally only a voice like that of Varro disputed the decadence theory. And although Christianity is credited with "the first dawning sense of human progression," it must be admitted that the chief emphasis was laid upon progression to and in another world : this world was the scene of the Fall of Man ; his rise was to be accomplished rather by denying this in favor of the world to come. The advance in human knowledge and in control over nature has made possible both a wider scien- tific view and the newer mores of optimism whose child is the ideal, progress. It is fairly obvious, then, that progress is not synony- mous with change ; for change may be for better or for worse ; it means mere quantitative variation, and implies no idea of values. The biologist watching a guinea pig that has been inoculated with poison and produces a litter of degenerate young, notes that there has been a change, a breaking down of certain structures. But he cannot speak of progress or retrogression, except in the loose sense of development, without adding some extra-scientific concept to that of organic change ; for progress implies ameliora- tion, an altogether human notion except in so far as more perfect adaptation might be called progress. In the case of the guinea pig the adaptation test would hardly serve, since from the standpoint of pure science the inoculated specimen is forced to adapt to prescribed conditions ; it is not a question of a better or a worse guinea pig, except as it happens to serve or fail to serve well the experimenter's purposes. Hence the formula imputed not altogether justly to Bergson (life = change = progress) is unsatisfactory : to say that all is process, perennial becoming, offers in no sense a tangible qualitative judgment. Nor is progress mere evolution. Progress is evolution THE CONCEPT OE PROGRESS 95 measured by an assumed standard of human values. Evo- lution may or may not spell progress ; progress is only one among many possible turns to evolution ; degeneration is always a lurking possibility, whether in the form of lessened racial vitality or of lost arts of life.^ Hence the impression of polar sterility we get from such a philosophic statement of the law of progress as Mr. Fiske's : "The Evolution of Society is a continuous establishment of psychical relations within the Community, in conformity to physical and psychical relations arising in the Environment; during which, both the Community and the Environment pass from a state of relatively indefinite, incoherent homo- geneity to a state of relatively definite, coherent hetero- geneity ; and during which the Constituent Units of the Community become ever more distinctly individuated." ^ Our hearts cleave perhaps even less to M. De Greef's con- cept of organization and progress as synonymous. "Social progress," he says, "is directly proportional to the mass, to the differentiation, and to the coordination of the social elements and organs." ^ Social evolution only attains significance when it is interpreted in terms of human welfare. Hence we ask if the purpose of social evolution is to pro- duce at some far distant time a limited but perfect social fabric, a sort of Super-Society ; or if it is to weave an age- long roll of crazy patchwork, teeming with variety, with ^ There is no lack of evidence that arts of the greatest utility have dis- appeared or degenerated, even such basic inventions as the bow and arrow, pottery, the canoe. Rivers cites numerous examples with a suggestive discussion of the reasons for such disappearances and degradations in his essay, "The Disappearance of Useful Arts," in Festskrift tillegnad Edvard Westermarck, pp. 109-130. ^ Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii, 223 ; cf. H. Spencer, Progress Its Law and Cause. ^ Le Transformisme Social, pp. 295, 353, etc. Let the reader derive what succulence he can from Mikhalovsky's formula: "Progress is the gradual approach toward integrality of the indivisibles, and thus to the subdivided and redivided division of labor among men." 96 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS contrasts, with incongruities. Does the beauty lie in the length of the roll, or in the variety of its patterns, or in the final web for which the weavings of the past were mere practicings and experiments? Whatever the answer, the very fact that such questions are asked indicates an irre- ducible tendency of the human mind to think in terms of purpose and design. Humanity and its petty doings and purposes may not be the end and aim of social evolution, but humanity is interested in its evolution only because of its own fancied or real connection therewith. Certain writers have attempted to set up a distinction between change and progress according to some standard of adaptation or adjustment. Professor Ross, for example, says: "Progress is better adaptation to given conditions. Change may be adaptation — at first, perhaps, very im- perfect — to new conditions." Carver also declares that the "whole evolutionary process, both passive and active, both biological and economic, is a development away from less toward greater adaptation, frorn less toward greater harmony between the species and its environment." ^ But is this distinction accurate or illuminating? What condi- tions are given? Is the world static? Or do we not in some measure create our conditions, our world, as we go ? Is not even the very prerequisite to change a certain mal- adjustment to given conditions? Discontent, dissatis- faction, chafing, and tension prepare the load and are the triggers which discharge it in the process called progress. It is incorrect, then, to measure progress by mere adapta- tion. For perfect adaptation is death, the negation of all progress. Progress means struggle to adjust rather than adjustment, struggle against both natural and social en- vironments. Man's struggle is perhaps not so much against nature directly as it is indirectly through a selective struggle ^ Ross, Foundations oj Sociology, 185 ; Carver, Essays in Social Justice, 41. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 97 between ideas, desires, standards, or tendencies in himself. For, in a sense, he and nature are one ; he and his environ- ment are identical, and this in no fantastic sense. . Some- times rebellion, heresy, and selection counter to the given environment must set in. On this score we may say that man's progress has been won at the expense of nature's laws. If this be adaptation, it is always an attempt to adapt to something which is not yet. In justice to Carver and to Bristol, who follows him closely, we believe that this is their real meaning. For they distinguish between passive or non-purposive adaptation (including physical evolution and some phases of language, mores, laws, insti- tutions and social control), and active adaptation, the pur- posive modification of man or social group to suit it to its environment, or of the environment to make it suit the organism.^ Much ambiguity could be averted by substi- tuting the term, "control," or "utilization," for active adaptation, since the idea is admittedly adaptation oj cir- cumstances to human needs. Perhaps, next, we should point out a distinction between social evolution conceived as achievement, and progress as the appropriation of achievement. Professor Ward phrases the conflict of terms as that between 'achievement' and 'improvement.' - He would make the real test an increase in happiness. It is easily demonstrable that, for example, economic evolution is not synonymous with enlarged sense of happiness. A full manger may mean only an occasional fat ox, not a better breed of cattle. The transition from the old household or consumption economy through the industrial revolution to our modern factory economy is a case in point ; for the old household producer felt no less happy, probably, than the modern factory employee. In- ^ Carver, op. cit., 158; Bristol, Social Adaptation, 8, etc. ^Applied Sociology, 21-2. H 98 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS deed, a reading of the modern literature of socialism and other movements of protest might easily leave the impres- sion that the modern workman is less happy than his for- bears. Perhaps he ought not to expect to be. Perhaps the industrial changes have not wrought in him the moral improvement necessary to increased happiness. Indeed, John Stuart Mill held that there might be progress without corresponding improvement, though, to be sure, he adds his belief that "the general tendency is, and will continue to be, one of improvement ; a tendency toward a better and happier state." ^ Are we justified in going so far as to say that progress does not mean the full attainment of happiness but only movement towards attainment? A recent young radical wrote : "... society does not strive towards fulfillment, but only towards striving. It seeks not a goal, but a higher starting point from which to seek a goal. . . . Our present ideal of a socialized democratic civilization is dynamic. It is not an idyllic state in which all men are good and wise and insufferably contented. ... It is not a state at all, but a mere direction. "^ Highly admirable as this athletic ideal may be, it must not be taken so literally as to exclude a certain element of satisfaction and a certain storing up of the fruits of achievement. It simply means that complacency is death. Hence the apotheosis of activity. It is just this insistence on concrete achievement which the American mind demands as the price of its activity, that makes it difficult, as Professor Dewey points out, for Americans to understand the German cult of the will. Ceaseless willing and striving just for the sake of willing and striving beget conceit, historical myopia, and mysti- cism; or in a word, romantic nullity. Even Germans * Logic, 8th ed., N. Y., igoo, p. 632. ^ Walter Weyl, The New Democracy, 354-5. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 99 themselves, says Professor Dewey, recognize that their "idea of universal striving as an end in itself is a child of Romanticism." ^ But Romanticism is reversion, not prog- ress ; it is eating up one's capital, not creating new values. Social progress must further be distinguished from racial progress. Man as a member of a race is a mere zoological specimen. Man as part of a family, a state, a nation, belongs to culture-history, to the history of the human mind, to the history of real values. It is not the natural but the social history of mankind that is really significant. We assume, of course, a certain maximum racial development as the minimal basis upon which to plant cultural or social progress. For purposes of a discussion of social progress the biological or race element may be almost wholly ab- stracted. While the race has been relatively stagnant, society has rapidly developed, for social changes are mainly determined, not by alterations of racial type, but by modifications of tradition.^ As we shall see later in dis- cussing the selectionist interpretation of social progress, fundamental human types were pretty well fixed through natural selection ages ago. And social selection has tended to make up for any deficiencies of strength or other bodily quahties in man where natural selection left him. As Darwin pointed out, the small strength and speed of man, his want of natural weapons, etc., are more than counter- balanced by his intellectual and social qualities.^ But the biologist may persist in a desire to know how we can be sure that we are maintaining the certain maximum racial development which we assume as the starting point for cultural or social progress. Sir E. Ray Lankester raised the question nearly thirty years ago, and it is still per- ' Atlantic Monthly, February, 1916, p. 260. ^ Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 39. ^ Darwin, Descent of Man, 2d ed., 63-4. lOO THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS tinent. "Possibly we are all drifting," said he, "tending to the condition of intellectual Barnacles or Ascidians." But in spite of a good deal of alarmist newspaper and pseudo-scientific talk (not excluding much Eugenics dis- cussion), there seems to be not the slightest proof of any- thing approaching a general and constant tendency for the human race to degenerate, physically or mentally. The general level of race fitness won by natural selection has been on the whole maintained. And the reason is to be found in man's growing intelhgence and mastery over his world : these give him more than mere nominal control over his own course of development ; they have enabled him to retain physical efficiency with one hand, and with the other to carve out the great lines of his achievements in civiHzation.^ Is progress necessary ? Change is necessary ; indeed it appears to be the fundamental characteristic of all phe- nomena in our universe. Though Lucretius has been quoted as stating an inevitable law of progress, I doubt if he meant more than perpetual change in the Heraclitan sense. Pascal conceived the whole succession of men as a single man, living forever and continually learning. Certain of the older pohtical thinkers, among them Burke, not yet quite disengaged from theological preconceptions, posited a universal law of Progress, impelled by some Mover or Purposive Plan.^ Comte quoted with apparent approval ^ In this connection should be read the concluding paragraphs of Lankes- ter's famous essay Degeneration : A Chapter in Darwinism. His plea was for full and earnest cultivation of Science as a protection from race relapse and degeneration. His plea is valid provided it includes social as well as physical science. For a good statement of the degeneration theory we rec- ommend St. Paul's Epistles or Rousseau's Discours sitr rinegalile: the latter contains the familiar thesis that individual progress carries with it decrepitude of the species. 2 Burke in his Reflections speaks of a world order "wherein, by the dis- position of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS lOI Pascal's "immortal aphorism"; and even while ostensibly pitching metaphysics out of the window and rejecting what he called the chimera of indefinite perfectibihty, neverthe- less let metaphysics in again by the door ; for despite his positivism he assumed a tendency to development in man. Spencer and other evolutionary philosophers laid down the law of progress in terms of development or change. To Spencer social progress was only one example of the uni- versal, inherent tendency of the cosmos to develop from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The new vitalistic philosophy of Bergson, Eucken, and their disciples intro- duces once more the notion of an extra-human 'vital impulse,' vis a tergo, or moving force which propels humanity onward — just whither no one knows, but at least onward. Even sociologists with a certain philosophical bent have fallen into the same comfortable but unscientific habit of attributing social phenomena, including social evolution, to the play of so-called 'social forces.' Is there a 'force' in social evolution corresponding to gravity, which makes the stream of history really stream instead of stagnate or collect in puddles and lakes ? What makes the stream go ? The springs at its source ? The rivulets that flow into it ? No, they simply mean the making of pools, ponds, lakes. Gravity makes it really a stream. What is social gravity? Is it Bergson's elan vital? Is it some Primal Force? Sociology cannot tell. It observes an apparent fundamental impulse of men and all things else to change and develop. But it cannot rest content with this observation if it expects to explain anything of human phenomena. Medieval speculation ascribed the earth's diurnal revolution to middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. . . ." JMfBKSITY OF r .MP0H*i^4 ^^ SAMXA BARBARA I02 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS damned souls trying to climb up the inner crust of the earth out of hell-fire. They were the ' force ' in question. To say that the earth moves or that society moves because of some force that moves it is no less medieval. That is only stat- ing the problem anew in the guise of an explanation. To say with Turgot, or Condorcet, or Pelletan, or Wergeland that because nature's laws are constant humanity marches inevitably, irresistibly towards perfection would demand of us more evidence and more exact inductions than we can yet command ; moreover, would require a convincing definition of what we- mean by 'perfection.' Undoubtedly we should like to beheve Tolstoi when he declares that "progress is an inevitable growth and that the aim is simply the welfare of all men," and that if we all knew and accepted this fact everything would fall into its proper place ; but something more than mere assertion must be offered as the basis of such a conviction. Can we say with Bachofen that progress is due in the last analysis to an in- born instinct for improvement or to a bias for perfection? Or with Federici, that progress is the natural order, the only thinkable condition, the universal rule ; that progress and being are equivalent terms ; or that civilization owes its development to the 'irresistible impulse of innate forces'? Or with Carmichael, that man's inventions and achieve- ments are not direct causes of progress, and because they merely released man's inherent capacity and activity there must have been a power of development inherent in human nature already? Or with Chernishevsky, that to deny progress is just as absurd as to deny the forces of gravity or chemical affinity ? ^ To do so would be to lie tamely down and beg the ques- ' Bachofen, Antiqiiarische Bricfc, ii, 237-8; Federici, Lois du progres, i, xix, 209 ; ii, 32, etc. ; Carmichael, "Prospect of Human Progress," Science, 39 : 883-90 ; Chernishevsky, Works, v, 491, summarized in Hecker, Russian Sociology, 80. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 103 tion. This sociology must strenuously refuse to do. I admit that our hearts burn within us when the historian descants upon "the vital principle of betterment." How can one resist such a song as this? "At last, perhaps, the long disputed sin against the Holy Ghost has been found ; it may be the refusal to cooperate with the vital principle of betterment. History would seem, in short, to condemn the principle of conservatism as a hopeless and wicked anachronism." ^ Yet the sociologist must lash himself to the mast and make a brave show of sailing past the siren in the effort to prove objectively the historian's intuition. Sociology must not even accept certain primary impulses (the impulse to self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, self- gratification, altruism, good- will), or certain groups of 'feehngs' or 'interests' as final causes or undecomposable forces ; at least not before a persistent attempt to reduce them to lower terms. Hence, it is altogether possible that there is a force for progress, but that if we look closely enough we shall discover certain busy, thinking, feehng individuals grouped into an organic association, and that they, their association, and their doings, are the real social forces.^ And it is from their nature that we must deter- mine, if it be possible or profitable, whether there is any surety of or any limit to human progress. So far there is not the slightest evidence to warrant the behef in continuous, automatic, inevitable progress; still less the behef that it is a blessing conferred by some mys- terious Power from without. Progress is rare, evolution and change universal. Just as the dead far outnumber the Hving so the abortive civilizations exceed the success- ful. The past counts far more savages and barbarians ^ J. H. Robinson, The New History, 265. 2 Prof. E. C. Hayes, in an article in the Amer. Jour, of Sociol. 16 : 613-25, has given what ought to prove the definitive refutation of this * Social Forces' fallacy. I04 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS than truly civilized. Balfour says, and rightly, progres- sive civilization "is no form of indestructible energy which, if repressed here must needs break out there, if refused embodiment in one shape must needs show itself in another. It is a plant of tender habit, difficult to propagate, not difficult to destroy, that refuses to flourish except in a soil which is not to be found every- where, nor at all times, nor even, so far as we can see, necessarily to be found at all." ^ Too often behef in progress is sentimentalism rather than science ; or it is pious dogma whose purpose, like that of religious dogma, may be to serve as an anodyne to real thinking. Or again it appears as a baleful kind of com- placent egotism which mistakes certain gains in the means to physical comfort and ease for signs that cosmic forces are working irresistibly to improve the whole state of human affairs. Mr. P. E. More accuses some evolutionists of this perfectionism, a romantic belief in some ameliorative drift ; for it is just that and nothing more, he declares, "a faith in drifting ; a behef that things of themselves, by a kind of natural gravity of goodness in them, move always on and on in the right direction ; a confiding trust in human nature as needing no restraint and compression, but rather full hberty to follow its own impulsive desires to expand. . . ." ^ He is quite justified in denying to such soft thinking the name science or even proper philosophy of progress. Race egotism, the ethnocentric beUef that we are the Chosen People, the Sword of God, the Divine Scourge, and that we must hack our way through to demonstrate this Destiny, is bad enough ; but even more fatal the comfortable behef that we can drift along on the river of events and wake up ^ A. J. Balfour, "A Fragment on Progress," Essays and Addresses, 2d ed., pp. 243-4. ^ Aristocracy and Justice, preface, pp. viii-ix. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 105 each morning to find ourselves still nearer the great ocean of God's Providence. Such beliefs are worse than fatuous : they are paralyzing fatalism. Says John Morley : "To think of progress as a certainty is superstitious — the most splendid and animated of all superstitions, if you like, yet a superstition still. It is a kind of fatahsm — radiant, confident, and infinitely hopeful, yet fatahsm still, and hke fatahsm in all its other forms, inevitably dangerous to the effective sense of individual responsibihty." ^ Science, philosophy, history and common sense unite in testifying that progress is not a free gift of the gods but something to be earned by clear vision and hard work ; that is, a human contingency based upon human effort, foresight, and constructive utilization of human powers.^ We are forced back, then, upon the search for real causa- tive factors ; and it is to be expected a priori that this search will bring to light many complexities and inequali- ties in the evolutionary process. We actually find that progress is never unihnear but zigzag ; not along one straight road as the crow flies, but by a network of criss- crossing paths.^ It may show little perpendicular rise but much lateral spreading out of the gains of advance. Certain elements in a given society or given historical period will move faster than others. There is never any absolute unity to the social mind (using that term to mean only certain well-marked sentiments and ideas which are * "Some Thoughts on Progress," Ednc. Rev., 29 : 7-8. '^ Ci. Dewey, Internl. Jour. Ethics, Apr. 1916, 311-22; Sergi, "Qualche idee sul progresso umano," Rivistaitaliana di sociologia, 17 : No. i ; Shana- han, "Evolution and Progress," Catholic World, 101:145-156. See also Groos' study of Julius Schultz' " Maschinen-theorie des Lebens" in the Internationale Wochenschrift, Aug. 27, 1910 : Schultz calls the idea of pro- gressive amelioration of the world "das widerliche Pobelschwatz vom unend- lichen Fortschritt." ^ Cf. Tarde, Transformations du droit, p. iii, and Lois de limitation, 2d ed., 55-63 ; Gettell, Problems in Political Evolution, preface, p. iv. Io6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS common property), there is never such a social consensus, such an intimate sohdarity between the diverse activities within a social group that the progressive movement of all is in the same direction or at an equal rate. It may well be, as Sorel holds, that economic progress is continuous, while in the moral and intellectual worlds the forward movement is discontinuous. A group may attain prodi- gious economic development with an inconsiderable moral or. aesthetic progress ; or a leisured aristocracy may win culture by leaps and bounds, leaving unnoticed the toiling mass of an ilhterate proletariat or slave class. Or, as in the case of India, a marvelous capacity for rehgious philoso- phy may accompany puerility in government and economic stagnation. Neither can we assume too lightly that, say, scientific progress is tantamount to social progress. For the same science that Hghtens toil, releases leisure, accumu- lates masses of capital and spendable wealth, may, and frequently does, bring with it social decadence and disin- tegration instead of progress. M. Nobel must have recog- nized this sardonic consequence. For with one hand he gives the world dynamite, and with the other a Peace Prize to offset the international tendency to utilize his discovery in more effective warfare. The same agency that tunnels mountains and digs canals is used by revolu- tionary labor leaders to blow up bridges and wreck news- paper offices. Hence the progress of any social institution or mode of activity is not an absolute good, is not absolute social progress, but is only relatively good or bad, consider- ing the whole movement of society. Thus a more complex and highly evolved government — say, representative re- publicanism — may not bring ipso facto greater social well being. It is just these discrepancies that have led to the phrases "the costs of progress" and the "pathology of THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 1 07 progress." ^ For the law of compensation as formulated by Emerson seems to hold to a certain degree. Or, stated in sociological jargon, it is at least arguable that there is a cer- tain necessary solidarity, a relation of cause and effect, be- tween certain phenomena of progress and those of decadence. One is not surprised to find some wastes through friction and experimentation in so complex a mechanism as the social organization. They abound in both government and private business. Adaptation or control is never a free gift of nature ; it is always an achievement, a conquest, born of much toil and expenditure of energy. Yet in dis- cussing these wastes, or costs of progress, we must be sure that we mean real progress, progress that can be measured in terms of some tangible, general human good, and not merely change or evolution along some one line of social activity. Progress could only mean poverty, for example, in a condition of laissez faire industrial development. But progress bought with a poverty-eaten population could scarcely with propriety be called progress at all. In esti- mating the costs of progress, I repeat, we must be careful to discriminate between real progress, whether social or industrial, and temporary industrial supremacy. English Poor Law and Factory Commissions, the intensive surveys of Charles Booth and B. S. Rowntree, have shown that Britain's industrial supremacy has been secured and up- held at a cost of millions of human lives and of the physical and spiritual degradation of other millions. The Com- mission which reported on physical deterioration in 1904 was none too optimistic as to the physical tendency of ^ See the chapter (IV) "The Pathology of Progress" in Farnham's Economic Utilization of History. His treatment of the topic is somewhat superficial ; the main points being that so far as economic reforms through legislation have no assured result, prediction is uncertain, and disastrous by- products come from well-meant schemes. lo8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS twentieth-century Britain.^ Many thoughtful Enghshmen have reported during recent years a general spirit of pessi- mism as characterizing their countrymen. These allega- tions, if proved, might be set down as evidence that either there has been little or no progress in England during the last century or two, or that it has not been worth the candle. On the other hand, progress along one line does not necessarily mean the exclusion of progress along others, in spite of the general principle of group preoccupation. In- deed the contrary is almost inevitable, namely, that one social influence will tend to reinforce another by a sort of 'summation of stimuH,' and that advance in the scientific, industrial, or political fields is likely to contribute to advance in other fields of knowledge and activity. Is there, then, a law of progress? This is merely the question of the 'force for progress' in another dress. To speak of the law of progress is completely to beg the ques- tion. Scientifically, we cannot speak of a law here. In- deed, we must admit that law in even the exact sciences is essentially a product of the human mind and has no mean- ing apart from man. It is mere generalized human experi- ence. Its only necessity is not the logical must of a geo- metrical theorem, nor the categorical must of a human law-giver; "it is merely our experience of a routine whose stages have neither logical nor vohtional order." - It is simply the shorthand expression of certain associations, relationships, and sequences between certain groups of ' Lord Brassey and Professor Chapman, however, in the latest part of their great work on Work and Wages (Part III, 1914) firmly state their con- clusion that modern industrialism has not degenerated the race ; moreover, that the germ plasm of the unskilled mechanic is as valuable as that of the so-called higher classes among whom restricted birth rate is so notorious as to cause alarm to certain scientists. 2 Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science, 3d ed., i, 120-87, 82, etc. Cf. J. S. Mill, Logic, Bk. V, chap. v. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 109 human experiences, and has no existence outside the mind of men. We need scarcely look for a more precise notion of 'social law' or 'social causation.' We cannot, for example, say with strict accuracy that the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route to the Indies caused the decHne of Vene- tian supremacy, or that the Industrial Revolution has caused the twentieth-century proletariat. At best we can only say those phenomena are associated. Cause is some- thing we read into them. Similarly with social law. All we can posit is that these associated phenomena tend to recur, and that with probability of recurrence there is also probabihty of exceptions. Hence, when one attempts to work out a ' law of social evolution ' he will have to con- tent himself with less of strict mathematical generaliza- tion and with more of descriptive synthesis. At the same time he will recognize that human phenomena are analyz- able and subject to causation of some sort. It may well be that cause as conceived by the chemist or physicist may not apply, but cause in the sense of stimulus or motive is perfectly conceivable and perfectly valid. The motive of fear or revenge, for instance, is no less causal than the most tangible and measurable mechanical cause. It is for this reason that the descriptive synthesis of social movements is so complex as almost to defy unraveling. Humanity moves at no uniform rate, we say. Not because some underlying 'force' fails to apply itself with regularity, but because the interactions of men with men and with their environments vary in quality and quantity. Human evolution is like an adventure story. Some chap- ters move fast (the fight with the pirates in Treasure Island, or the appearance of Man Friday in Robinson Crusoe) ; others in which the author is preparing the way for a 'thriller' seem to drag. In a sense humanity is like the no THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS proverbial small boy. It is continually getting into * scrapes ' and then getting out, only to land in new ones ; for instance, overpopulation, immigration, ghost-worship, imperialism. This is simply to say that human hfe and social evolution are but a series of problems, and that the solution of one only opens the way to a new one. What- ever aids in getting out of the scrape or solving the problem determines how fast we proceed to the next ; in other words, determines our rate of progress. This is why some historical ages appear dull, others brilHant. The reign of Henry VII was. extremely drab and slow; but it was a period of incubation, a season of trying out such new inven- tions as paper and printing,^ which helped to prepare the way for the Reformation and the age of Elizabeth. Like- wise eighteenth-century England was tedious, but again a time of elaboration out of which came the material equip- ment for the Industrial Revolution. One is strongly in- clined to compare the movement of nations and smaller social groups with the "curves of learning " in an individual's education. The curve rises to giddy heights, then drops abysmally, then runs along a plateau, rises again, drops, and again flatland. While it is true that there may be no law of progress in the strictest sense of the word 'law,' it may be quite within the range of possibility to lay down certain broad condi- tions which, if they are met, might prove favorable to social advance. In general, these conditions would reduce to terms of surplus energy. In particular, vigor, health, and leisure are the prime requisites. Moreover, by reason of the limited sum of time and energy at our disposal, and because the human mind is prone to wander and hard to concentrate, vigorous minds not distracted by too meticu- * Cf . W. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediceval and Modern History, Oxford, 1886, Lecture XV, "The Reign of Henry VII." THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS ill lous devotion to lichen-grown conventions are indispensable. A man with his face turned back or sidewise must walk slowly and gingerly forward if he walks at all. Finally, those minds must not be depleted by fixation upon non- progressive activities, the routine of self-maintenance, the corrupting chase after luxury, mere animal sports, or sex, or growing a belly. ^ Progress can come only when social change is comparatively easy : that is, when less energy is wasted in overcoming inertia and social friction. These conditions bear upon the rate of movement. Progress, if it comes at all, is usually gradual, even pain- fully slow, not cataclysmic. Sudden spirts like biologic mutations may occur, but they rarely or never take on the aspect of revolution. Humanity moves oh by the accu- mulation of small impulses and causes, the step-by-step elimination of hindrances, not by explosions. It would seem, however, that once the conditions have been met, * It would be extremely illuminating and probably self-chastening if we could get a reliable statement from every adult American, men and women, as to how they spend their time. By using a time schedule, such as Giddings suggests {Am. Jour. Social. i8: 629), covering truthfully and accurately every minute of time for a month or a year, and by analyzing the grand totals we could get by inference if not directly some idea of how much energy the average citizen has for definite conscious social advance. The Independ- ent (April 17, 1913) asked if anyone would take serious exception to the following as a truthful list of the great "interests" which make up our American life: i, the ticker; 2, female apparel; 3, baseball bulletins; 4, the "movies;" 5, bridge whist; 6, turkey trotting; 7, yellow journal headlines and "funny" pages; 8, the prize fight. It further asked if any- body would dispute that 100,000 Americans are genuinely interested and excited by these eight matters, to every 10,000 that are more than perfunc- torily interested in religion, to every 5000 really interested in politics, to every 1000 interested in schools and education, to every 100 interested in reasonably good music, to every solitary individual interested in literature or science. Perhaps nobody would care to dispute the issue, largely because nobody at present is armed with facts. The study of household budgets, a series of time-schedules, a comparison of attendances, cost, and time con- sumed by various recreational devices, and the inclusion of such items as sex and ceremonial would give us a proper arsenal of facts from which to deduce the social-progress surplus of time, energy, and money. 112 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS and a certain surplus of attention and energy is released, there is something cumulative in the process, akin to the acceleration noted in the physical 'law of falling bodies.' ^ But the movement is never completed ; it is a series of approximations. Finally, it is not inevitable nor in the nature of things ; it is contingent upon human energy, human intelligence, human discipline, foresight, and will. ^ Suggestions of this occur in John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii, 292-3; see also Morgan, Ancient Society, Part IV. This principle of acceleration holds good at least for progress in the arts of life : Morgan phrases it as slow in time but geometric in ratio. On his scale of ethnic periods, Savagery and Lower Barbarism cover four .fifths of man's entire life on this planet. Domestication of animals and the discovery of new sources of power gave a tremendous push forward. The galloping industrial development of the nineteenth century even more strikingly illustrates this cumulative process. CHAPTER VII THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS A GENERATION OF two ago if you had asked Western historians or philosophers, What is the test of progress ? they would probably have replied, 'increasing civihzation,' and smiled complacently. But they would have left the question still unanswered. For what is civilization? Guizot, the historian of civilization, said: "Wherever the exterior of man becomes enlarged, quickened or improved, wherever the intellectual nature of man distinguishes itself by its energy, brilliancy, and its grandeur ; wherever these two signs concur, and they often do so, notwithstanding the gravest imperfections in the social system, there man proclaims and applauds civilization." A more modern Latin expresses the idea more precisely and less rhetorically : "Civilization is human progress integrated and intensified. Its most essential and characteristic manifestations are diffusion of culture, a high moral and intellectual level, and respect for law. Hence civilization is above all the result of the domination of man by himself, it is a work of interior culture in which three civilizing forces par excel- lence cooperate; religion, art, science."^ Lester F. Ward defined it as "the artificial adjustment of natural objects in such a manner that the natural forces will thereby pro- ^ Dellepiane, Rev. International dc Sociologie, Jan. 1912, p. 19. 1 113 114 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS duce results advantageous to man." Carver introduces the idea of productivity: "Now civilization is essentially a storing of surplus energy, and is due to the fact that men have had more energy to expend than was necessary to procure subsistence." William T. Harris pronounced a people civilized when it has formed for itself institutions which give men command of the earth and likewise com- mand over the experiences of the entire race. The Great War has renewed on all sides the old discus- sion of what civihzation really means. Apparently civili- zation is culture plus something else if we may judge from the following definitions. Ellwood finds civilization to be at bottom "the creation and transmission of ideal values by which men regulate their conduct . . . the discovery, diffusion, and transmission from age to age of the knowl- edge, beliefs, ideas, and ideals by which men have found it possible to conquer nature and live together in well-ordered groups." Tylor in his classic work held that "Culture or Civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." ^ It is evident that ' civilization ' is a complex term involv- ing many factors, and that it is also purely relative, since savages have a measure of culture. Hence the term must be broken up in order to arrive at the quantity, quality, and direction of culture necessary to enter the class of 'progressive civilizations.' I shall begin by a rapid sum- mary of test-formulae proposed by divers writers widely separated in time, country, and pursuits. ^ Ward, Dynamic Sociology, ii, 205 ; Carver, Sociology and Social Prog- ress, 12 ; Harris, "A Definition of Civilization," an address before the Car- lisle Indian Industrial School, printed in the Report of the U. S. Commis- sioner of Education, 1904; Ellwood, Am. Jour. Social., 20:495; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, p. i. THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 1 15 Progress in civilization, according to Cond orcet, is moral and intellectual; accomplishes three objectives, namely, destruction of inequality between nations, progress of equality between citizens of the same nation, and the real perfection of man ; by means of new discoveries in the sciences and arts, and their application to individual and communal well-being, or by improvement in the principles of conduct and practical morality, or by perfecting man's intellectual, moral, and physical faculties. Comte's criteria of progress include : the development of order (his com- monest test, particularly in the Polity), increasing social differentiation and integration, a growing preponderance of reason over animality, an enlargement of man's power over the forces of nature, increasing satisfaction of wants in the face of increasing populations, increasing aptitude for mental combinations and abstract thinking, develop- ment of the social faculties and their expression in industrial cooperation and efforts toward social amelioration. Von Lilienfeld, like Tylor and De Greef, conceives progress as spiral instead of rectilinear ; and applies in the economic field the test of increase in property with growing economic freedom ; in the pohtical, greater individuality of action and enlarged freedom ; in the legal, more exact definition and greater assurance of the rights of individual and com- munity. Progressive civilization, according to Bryce, in- cludes physical improvement, material comforts, intelli- gence, improved social relations (freedom, security, order), and moral improvement. Professor Patten uses both objec- tive and subjective measures : a higher social structure is marked by increased activity, surplus, invention, wealth, and will power ; and his five tests for progress cover : a desire for intenser forms of happiness, removal of fear, stability of social institutions, growth of voluntary associa- tions, and spread of the spirit of toleration and decision by Il6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS compromise instead of by combat. To Marvin knowledge, applied power, and social unity and organization are the striking differences which the historian finds between civil- ized and uncivilized men. Crozier applies the single test of "elevation and expansion of the individual mind," or "greater and greater respect for individual expansion and enlargement," working in two directions, "the diffusion and extension of equal justice, equal rights, equal privileges, equal opportunities," and "the ascension of men's ideals from brute force upwards to the coronation of intellect and virtue"; and posits as the fundamental presupposition, the real test, the practical equalization of material and social conditions. Closely alhed with this view is Henry George's categorical statement that "association in equahty is the law of progress. . . . Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of equality with the growth of association." So also a group of Russian thinkers. To Kropotkin progress consists in social solidarity with com- plete freedom of individual initiative. In Lavrov's hands the formula becomes a harmonizing and synthetizing of the social forces of solidarity and individuality. Kareyev expands the formula to include "the gradual elevation of the standard of human developrrient accompanied by con- ditions which make it possible for a larger and larger num- ber to attain this standard," a just division of labor, free interchange of thoughts, feelings and tradition, cooperation, opportunity for realizing spiritual interests and an im- proved view of life, freedom, equality, soHdarity, and im- provement in social institutions and the arts of life.^ ^ Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historiqiie des progres de I'esprit humain, ed. 1797, pp. 250-1; Comte, Positive Philosophy, Martineau 2 vol. ed., i, 120, 361; ii, 140, 150 ff., 83-90, 128 ff., 257, 288, 554, etc.; von Lilienfeld, La pathologic sociale, mtroAucXXon; Bryce, Atl. Mo., \oo: 145-56; Patten, "The reconstruction of economic theory," chap, xv, in Ann. Amer. Acad., 44 (supplement) : 83-8 ; Marvin, The Living Past, 4-5 ; Crozier, Civilization THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 1 17 From these quotations, order, domination over self, and the conquest of the material world, stand out as touch- stones for civilization. More concrete tests, however, have been demanded and proposed. From the standpoint of social welfare, for example, Professor Ogg summarizes the last 125 years of European history as a period of wonderful progress, with abolitioiLJiL priAn'leg e, estabhsh- ing of equality, freeing of thought and expression, scie ntific discovery applie H~to human amelioration, ,jL nd a multi- plicity of iorms ot msurance as its chief marks. ^ From the standpoint of poHtical theory Professor Hobhouse finds notable progress in the extension of social order, solidarity, widening of the social unit, impartial justice, rational moral- ity, freedom, mutual forbearance and aid.- To M. Delle- piane is due credit for a remarkable attempt to work out an objective analysis in extreme detail. It may be impossible to agree with him as to the existence of all the indices of progress he cites or as to the exact significance of each and all of them; nevertheless his list is challenging. It in-'^ eludes (to select only a few) : amelioration and generalizing of material well-being ; spirit of enterprise ; high develop- ment of social and industrial machinery; elevation of coefficients of nuptiality and natality; rarity of genesic aberrations ; disappearance and disapproval of dueling and bullying ; preoccupation with public affairs, interest in civic life, strict performance of duties as citizens, annulling of influence of politicians, absence of electoral corruption, or narrow chauvinism ; disdain for plutocracy ; prestige of and Progress, 3d ed., 135-140, 397-408; George, Progress and Poverty, Bk. X, chap, iii; Kropotkin, Anarchist Morality, 23; Lavrov and Kareyev, quoted in Hecker, Russian Sociology, 117, 195-6. ^ F. A. Ogg, Social Progress in Contemporary Europe, chap, i ; ex- Justice Hughes has practically a parallel list in his Conditions of Progress in a Democratic Govcrmncni, p. 6. ^ L. T. Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 152-3. Il8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS intellectual and moral elites; respect for performance of individual duties; sentiment of security for persons and property; respect for law and the principle of authority, wide-spread conviction that every attack on the rights of another is an attack on one's own rights ; religious toler- ance, respect for ecclesiastical properties ; elevation of the level of popular education and reduction of the number of illiterates; spread of scientific curiosity and absence of unhealthy curiosity ; tendency to metaphysical speculation and ideahsm ; love of noble and serious art, disdain for the frivolous and unhealthy, diffusion and purifying of esthetic taste ; purity of morals, absence of pornography in streets, spectacles, and publications ; family solidarity, cultivation of domestic virtues, moderation in expenditures for luxuries, respect for parents and superiors ; spirit of order and dis- cipline ; love of work; general observance of rules of courtesy and civihty, hospitality for strangers; aversion for bloody spectacles (e.^., bull fights, cock fights, pugilism) ; diminution of the coefficient of mortahty, rise in the aver- age duration of hfe ; immigration ; decrease of pauperism, begging, vagabondage, prostitution, alcohohsm, morphin- ism, tobacconism, criminaHty, insanity, suicide, gambling, illegitimacy, infant-abandonment, abortions, Malthusian practices ; education of the social conscience ; tranquiUity and general optimism ; faith in progress and confidence in the future.^ By grouping these several concrete tests we reach a number of well marked indices of progress, industrial, educational, humanitarian, institutional. Or, expressing these ideas in somewhat less highly generalized form, we find a higher level of material wants and means of satisfy- ing them; an expansion of the numbers of men, their energies and their contacts ; greater emphasis upon intel- 1 Rev. Internl. de Sociologie, January, 1912, pp. 21-2. THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS II9 lectual values ; wider participation in all material and in- tellectual gains ; therefore, wider concepts of truth, greater liberty, greater order, and finally greater solidarity ; for we are freest when love and intelligence constrain us to identify ourselves with our fellows. The humanitarian gain should express itself in the growing sentiment against war and slavery, in the conservation of infant and adult life, prevention of such diseases as tuberculosis, syphilis, and typhoid ; in the desuetude of corporal and capital punish- ments ; in fact, in the radical change of front in our whole penal machinery from retribution and terror to reformation and prevention. Institutional progress seems to be in- dicated by a general trend from force to rational persua- sion. You may trace this movement in government, in education, in religion, in the family.^ Industrial progress should mean more real needs of more people more ade- quately satisfied, with a surplus for further development. Educational progress should mean generalizing social achievement, increasing self-control, and decreasing social control by repression. In the light of such comprehensive analyses some of the narrower tests for progress must be examined. First, the(T) PjQPulatioi LJest. Does progress mean necessarily a large and growing population? Does the total of well-being consist in a small per capita well-being multiplied into the largest number of units, or in a small number of units multiplied into a much larger per capita well-being? * On the whole, I prefer the phrase "rational persuasion" to such words as "reason" or "justice" used by some writers (for example, G. L. Beer in The New Republic, Feb. 12, 19 16). Reason and justice sound static and savor of absolutes, besides carrying with them two millenniums of metaphys- ical controversy. I20 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS What, after all, is the test of a proper-sized population? The Social Darwinists reply, it must be large enough to admit of proper selection of the fit; population must be larger than economic or social development requires; it must be large enough to admit of necessary ''wastage." ^ But such doctrines are melting away before the common- sense policy of conserving the population already born in- stead of over-stimulating the birth rate to serve some hypothetical race-end. The most serious-minded Eugenists now agree that not large populations, but good popula- tions, are the ideal of civilized men.^ The King's strength lies more in the quality than in the mere numbers of his subjects. The greatest contributions to civilization appear to have come from small nations in the past; the future may tell a similar story. Close analysis of the plea for large populations will usually reveal one or all of five motives : an attempt to justify existing social abuses and injustices on the score that nature is niggardly and that she must have a large number from which to choose those worthy to receive and hold her gifts ; or a demand for cheap and superabundant labor, whose very abundance is the means of its subjection to capitalistic over-lords ; or international fear and jealousy, whose natural expression is a large reserve force of military strength at home and colonization abroad with the sur- plus ; or desire by a militant church or sect for the money, the votes, the children, and the souls of cohorts of behevers ; or sentimentalism prating about millions of baby souls that knock sweetly, earnestly, even desperately at the gates of hfe, and demanding with a tear in its voice. Shall we commit the crime of denying them entrance? On the ^ See, e.g., Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, chaps, ii, iii, pp. 209-10, etc.; Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science, 25, etc. 2 For example, Havelock Ellis, Yale Review, April, 191 2, ■^ THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 121 other hand, it is perfectly true that only with large (but note carefully, not too large) populations can come the minute division of labor necessary for a highly developed system of production, or the rapid increase of wealth and comfort according to the law of increasing returns. Among the marks of a "right-sized" population might be set down : high average expectation of life , no p erceptibl e deaths from need or misery ; in creasing fitness of th e average individual ; ste adv improvement in the arts_ of life ; rising standards"of living.^ It is evident that the test of numbers tails unless accompanied by certain qualita- tive tests. A second test i'^- iprrpaginp; lip^l^^ha^^^^ longevity. An able American representative of the medical profession declared recently that "the average length of life is the one and only sure index of whether the world is growing better; it is the unemotional but inexorable measuring- rod of real social progress that can be told in figures. Other standards of measurement there are, but they are mostly vague, and founded largely on faith and hope. Here is one that is based on definite statistical facts." ^ In spite of many protests to the contrary, both health and longevity seem at the present moment actually to be on the increase. Throughout practically the whole of the Western world the death rate is pretty steadily declining. M. Levasseur by comparing statistical studies of France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries discovered an increasing vitality in the French population, measured by decreasing or postponed mortality.^ Professor P. C. Mitchell states that the mean duration of life in France ^ Cf. Haushofer, Bevolkerungslehre, 96-7. ^ Dr. Norman Bridge, Aincr. Jour. Sociol., 20 : 449; cf. for a general dis- cussion of the relation between sanitation and progress, W. H. Allen, Amer. Jour. Social., 8 : 631-43. ^ La Population Frangaise, ii, chap. xvi. ® 122 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS rose during the nineteenth century from 29 to 40 years.^ In the United States the average age at death was 31.1 years in 1890, 35.2 in 1900, 38.7 in 19 10. The average age at death is of course not to be confused with the average expectation of Hfe, but it may be taken as an approximate measure of it ; and in the absence of accurate Hfe tables in the United States, we have to content ourselves with such rough approximations. In Germany, within the last 25 years or so, average longevity has risen for males from 38.1 to 48.85 years; for females from 42.5 to 54.9 years. ^ Professor Finkelnburg estimates that the average length of human life in the sixteenth century was only between 18 and 20 years, and that at the close of the eighteenth cen- tury it was a little over 30 years, while to-day it is between 38 and 40 years, — a gain of one hundred per cent, in three centuries. Professor Irving Fisher comes to the same conclusion from life-span records of Geneva, running back three centuries : they indicate a rise in the expectancy of life from 21.2 years in the sixteenth century to 39.7 in the nineteenth.^ As to the criterion of decreased physical sufifer- ing Doctor Osier writes : " . . . measure as we may the progress of the world . . . there is no one measure which can compare with the decrease of physical suffering in man, woman, and child when stricken by disease or acci- dent." And Dr. E. T. Devine, who quotes these words with manifest approval, concludes that on the whole hu- manity meets this test and that health is rising.^ But we must remember that a pasteurized, sanitized society is not necessarily progressive nor dynamic. Health, long life, sanitation are contributors to social well-being, but are ' Eleventh ed. Encyclopedia Britannica, Article "Longevity." ^ Stalistik fiir das Deutsche Reich, vol. xx. ^ Report on National Vitality, Its Wastes and Conservation, p. 17. * Misery and its Causes, 74-89. THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 123 not its only benefactors ; they make it possible, but do not guarantee its increase or permanence. Third test: wealth . Professor J. B. Clark ^ sets down as the five marks of a dynamic society : (i) an increase in population ; (2) an increase in capital ; (3) changes in methods of production ; (4) changes in economic organiza- tion ; (5) changes in consumers' wants. But each of these or all of them taken together may yield certain pathologic by-products which may overtop any absolute gains in social well-being. We encounter frequently the statement that increase in numbers and in national wealth are the indices of "verifiable progress." But statistics cited to prove soaring national or per capita wealth may only represent highly inflated speculative values and may say absolutely nothing about the real distribution of wealth. Hence, if we take material wealth as a criterion of social progress it must be from the standpoint of general participation in real wealth. There must be something more than shoddy campaign speeches about the full dinner pail and passing prosperity around. Conversely, before joining in the hue and cry raised by opponents of economic reform as 'raids on prosperity ' and hindrances to progress, one must be sure that he has received a valid definition of what this prosperity is and clear-cut knowledge of whose prosperity is involved. Thus progress to Professor Ashley, the English economist, spells "improvement in the economic condition of the body of the people." It would not appear unfair to assume that Professor Ashley meant to stress the phrase, "body of the people." If you compare this test with Cardinal Manning's phrasing of it a generation ago you will see how much more generous and really constructive the economist is. The Cardinal, speaking as a religious humanitarian, found a progressive society to be one in ^ Essentials of Economic Theory, 203-6. 124 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS / which the benefits of material progress were extended to the poor.^ If we accept the principle involved in the phrase "body of the people," can progress mean the bettering of any one class in any of these directions at the expense of any other ? Of an educated and artistic elite, say, at the cost of the pro- letariat ? Or of workingmen at the expense of employers ? Should the scholar arrogantly ride on the shoulders of all the other classes and professions? Manifestly, no. Social progress involves the harmonious development of every constituent member and group in society, this harmony to be determined by the fitness of the society to meet the exigencies of nature and self-conscious life, to grapple with its problems of to-day, and to provide for going on to-morrow. This does not mean that the utili- tarian formula of the greatest good of the greatest number might be clapped to the concept of progress and made to fit exactly. Some American sociologists have revised this formula until it more accurately defines progress, though, I grant, in less euphonious terms. They call progress that change taking place in society whereby society as a whole is enabled to function at an ever decreasing cost to the individuals composing it — scientific management applied to the Costs of Progress? — or put more positively, the change that affords an ever-increasing amount of happiness to an ever-increasing number of individuals. Put in still another way, the economic test for social progress is the satisfaction of the needs of the individual more and more efficiently by means of community life.^ H. G. Wells applies practically the same yard-stick; he believes we are progressing because the "world is a better ^ Oration "On Progress," delivered to the Young Men's Catholic Associa- tion, Oct. lo, 1871. 2 Prof. Andre de May, Rev. Internatl. de Social., June, 1913. THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 1 25 place for a common man than ever it was before, the spectacle wider and richer and deeper and more charged with hope and promise." ^ Other writers phrase the test as the democratizing of social opportunity. George Gun- ton, for example, writes: "Under all conditions, without regard to race, climate, or state of development, the uni- versal principle — the first essential condition upon which the permanent progress of society depends — is the en- larged social opportunities of the masses.'' ^ David Starr Jordan carries the test a step further: "The actual condition of a nation is not judged by its wealth, by its universities, its arts or sciences, still less by its military pomp or prestige. The final test of any nation is in the opportunity it gives its average man and still more in the fitness of the average man to grasp this opportunity."^ Hence it is apparent that progress means an increasing ability for every individual, for 'all the children of all the people' to interest themselves in and to participate in every healthful winning that humanity has made. It means for every member of society a wider share in hfe, the life more abundant, and not merely in the means of increased production. The elder Lord Asquith once said, "The test of every civilization is the point below which the weakest and most unfortunate are allowed to fall." Or, from the historial standpoint, progress may be measured by the decreasing ratio of those who live or are compelled to live from hand to mouth. ^ Hence a progressive society is one which not only favors the mountain peaks of excep- tional ability and opens to the widest the door of oppor- * New Worlds for Old, 10. * Wealth and Progress, 229, 240, 376. 3 Heredity of Richard Roe, 88. * Cf. Dealey, Sociology, Its Simpler Teachings and Applications, 108. 126 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS timity for the average man, but which also will not tolerate hving conditions below a relatively high minimum standard of decency. A mountain peak has but little significance Nin a world of pigpens. Fourth, the moral test. Does progress reduce to terms of moral progress? Froude defended this view. What is often called progress, he argues, is only change, and change sometimes for the worse. Mere heaping up wealth, or extension of sujffrage, may not be progress at all. Purity, justice, right, unselfishness, are the criteria of real social advance. The progress of civilization depends on the extent of the domain which is reclaimed under the moral law. Nations have been historically great in proportion to their success in this direction.^ But here we must ask, what is the moral law? Morals are a social product.^ Whose ethical standards shall we apply ? There is another difficulty. Some philosophers have declared that mankind really make no moral progress ; that the human spirit is in some way or other absolutely and irreducibly moral ; hence that the only possible moral progress is a mere substitution of one set of moral values for another, both equally good and 1 In Short Studies, 2d series, the essay on "Progress," particularly pp. 274-5. 2 Professor Carver in his criticism of those who can find no simple moral order because they find such widely varying mores and conscience codes, seems to me to beg the whole question. He posits the moral order as that demonstrably right order which has been selected from the great mass of moral systems. The moral order is the sum of the principles of the universe. Accepting them and conforming to them, that is righteousness, that is morality, that is the morality. But how does Professor Carver know what the principles of the universe are? Let him read the 38th chapter of Job, let him try to define a "law of nature," or clear up the mystery of the atom or psychophysical correlation, and see if it is still possible to dogmatize on the natural order or the moral order. Are we sure that the selective process has picked out the final winner, the moral order? Remember always that folkways or conscience codes are attempts to find and fit into a moral order. The pragmatic test of health, longevity, intelligence, order, productivity, is the only one we can apply to determine whether this or that is the better moral order. ^^ , - - ^1 THE CRITERIA OF P| ^35j 169, Funk & Wagnalls ed. N. Y., 1913. Mrs. John Martin's Is Mankind Advancing? is similar in materials and argument, ending pessimistically in a plea for breeding great men, a discouragingly difficult sort of eugenics. I40 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS scarcely more convincing. He begins with the dogmatic separation of men's character from their actions. Charact er is inherent and unchangeable ; it is not cumulative ; the re is no proof of continuouslv inrr^pmiri g inti^ll^rinal <^ni^ti^np^ OT rnoral powers in familie s or in the rarp a s a. wh^|p; f r> thexontrary "heredity follows the law of ' recessioii_and j22fHinrrify ' '^ But, on the other hand, character is sub- ject to inherent variation, and what is more contradictory still, "its manifestations in conduct can be modified in a very high degree by the influence of public opinion and systematic teaching." But these latter changes are not hereditary, "and it follows that no definite advance in morals can occur in any race unless there is some selective or segregative agency at work." This whole argument bristles with inconsistencies. How can we separate conduct from character? If we accept Dr. Wallace's own definition of character as "the aggregate of mental faculties and emotions which constitute personal or national individuality," we are constrained to inquire if the motives for given acts, whether they come from in- herited promptings or social pressure, are in or out of the mind. If they are out, conduct is the merest topsy-turvy ; if they are in, they form a part of that aggregate which constitutes character. Hence, if conduct can be "modi- fied in a very high degree," it must be because motives for conduct, that is to say, character, can be modified. But, Wallace would object, what is termed conduct or morality is not wholly due to any inherent perception of what is right or wrong conduct ; it is to some extent and often very largely a matter of convention, local and tem- porary, not permanently affecting the character. That is to say, conduct is contingent, but character is "the influx of some portion of the Spirit of the Deity," breathed into man eons ago when man became man, a Hving soul. Here, THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 141 of course, wc leave the domain of objective science and ascend into the empyrean of theology.^ Since it is preferable to keep the discussion upon an objective plane, it would be better to eliminate so dubious a term as moral character distinguished from social forms of conduct, and to accept such a contrast as Professor Graham Wallas makes between "nature" or "inherited dispositions," and habits. His argument is to the effect that habit, while necessary to social life, is much less stable than inherited dispositions ; hence, variable and un- certain.- But since "inherited disposition" includes in- stinct, and since the moral instinct is only a fragment of that inherited equipment, the question of whether the sum total, "Man's Nature," with its complementary forces. Nature and Nurture, has developed or not through the ages remains just where it was. The whole problem of mental inheritance is so closely bound up with the question of the inheritance of acquired characters that an appeal to his- tory rather than to biology or psychology seems to be the only way to extricate us from the tangle. After all, we are interested in men's acts, and not in some assumed absolute inherited character ; and we can- ^ It must be remembered that Wallace always refused to extend evolution to the development of the human mind ; he held by organic evolution only in so far as it is consistent with or required by a spiritual interpretation of man and nature. See, for example, his TJic World of Life (191 1), especially the latter chapters ; or his essays on spiritualism reprinted in Studies Scien- tific and Social (1900). But supposing one grants the mental and spiritual influx as accomplished at one swoop some time in the remote past, is progress not conceivable as the gradual stripping away of hindrances to man's full understanding and appreciation of his mental and spiritual endowment? There has been unquestionable progress in exploiting the resources of the material world. Is it not possible, at least, that the course of human history has been a steady progress in knowledge of the mental and spiritual resources that lie within ourselves, however they got there? It would seem that from the theoretical standpoint at least, this statement of the case would relieve Wallace's position from most of the inconsistencies which encumber it. ^ See his The Great Society, chaps, iv-v. 142 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS not judge those acts by some fancied race or individual character but by their social consequences. Projecting the whole problem on this plane, then, there can be no quarrel with Dr. Wallace's conclusion that agencies for social selection are imperative if we are to have moral im- provement. Of course, they are necessary. But the hitch comes with his denial that they exist. If our own is the worst social environment ever seen, these agencies are cer- tainly out of commission. Yet this stern critic admits, that "in the very worst of times there was an undercurrent of peaceful labor, art, and learning, slowly molding nations towards a higher state of civiUzation" ; but no evidence is disclosed to prove that such an undercurrent is not running in our own times. Salvation can come through a socialism that will enable women to choose worthy mates, and will eliminate automatically the wastrel, the gilded rake, the curses of economic antagonism, monopoly, and social in- justice. The sum of the matter, then, according to Wallace, is that we are not progressing, and cannot progress until we actually will into being the proper agencies for selecting favorable variations of moral character. One may reserve judgment upon his denial of progress and his analysis of the stigmata of social degeneration, while still accepting his general principle of creating selective agencies. At the risk of appearing tedious through multiplication of examples, we must add a word on what might be called the sentimentalist denial of progress. Mr. Wilham Butler Yeats for instance bewails "this slow dying of men's hearts which we call progress." Yet there is not the slightest shred of evidence to show that men have lost any essential part of their pristine delicacy of feeling, any of their tender- ness, or any of their love of what is really good and true. Others mourn the loss of cathedral builders, but forget the economic exploitation which they represent. A past pic- THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 143 turesque age of beggars brings a sense of loss to those who fail to see that a new and healthier art might be created in gladness by a social group no longer oppressed by starva- tion and superstition. The cross-bow, the caravan, and the galleon look charming enough in the pages of a romantic novel, but were symbols of an age of painful isolation and narrow ethnocentrism. Wonderful frescoes and rose win- dows have given place to the printed page as the educator of the masses. The sentimentahst, if he is really serious, will save his tears over the lost past and consecrate himself to evoking an art equally noble, but more expressive of our own times. Creative imagination, sentiment, and the esthetic impulse have never been lost. They merely shift their plane and seek new media. Decadence No one has ever yet been able to work out a satisfactory list of the marks of social decadence. Rome fell because of paganism, because of luxury, because of slavery, because of impiety, because of divorce, because of refusal to accept Christianity, because of sin, because of corrupt politics, because of race suicide, because of militarism, because of the growth of the capital city, because of land monopoly, because law got the upper hand of liberty, because of con- tact with the orient, because of Greek learning, because of this, because of that. Every critic knows why Rome fell and warns us to beware of Rome's fate by avoiding her evil way. And yet, on top of all this explanation it is not mere perversity to suggest that perhaps Rome never "fell." All we can safely affirm is that if we are in possession of certain criteria of social progress, the absence of certain of these marks in a given group may be taken as an index of 144 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS social decadence. But group life is so complex that it is frequently impossible to say it is not going forward even when certain signs hint the contrary. In citing such a hst of indices of decadence as that offered by Dellepiane/ one must be sure that these things actually exist to a degree sufficient to characterize the society and measurably in- fluence its hfe ; and one must have evidence that their role is of increasing importance. Otherwise they may be merely incidental and transitional, Hke many temporary phases, say, of American frontier hfe. Because of its virile challenge, if for no other reason, we must in this connection mention Mr. Brooks Adams' no- table essay on The Law of Civilization and Decay. I hope A \ no unfairness, except that of trymg to condense a book into one paragraph, crops out in the following summary of this writer's thesis. He assumes, (i) that human life is a form of solar energy; (2) the hereditary transmission of rigid instincts and " energetic material " ; (3) that these are not modifiable ; and (4) that they control conduct almost in- variably. From these assumptions it follows that human character is not adaptable through reason or the mores. But the external world and the social environment change, the latter at a cumulative rate. Hence, since the organism cannot adapt to its swiftly changing social environment, the very swiftness of that social change means probable decay. If this opposition between organism and environ- ment does not utterly destroy a society, it is only because by an infusion of more barbaric blood, a partial reversion to an earher, more energetic human type is secured. Hence, the ceaseless oscillation between the mihtary and the ^ Loc. cit., p. 23. The list includes : misery, public and private ; depopula- tion through malthusianism or emigration; ignorance; superstition; political intolerance; religious fanaticism; predominance of politicians; plutocracy; civic indifference; pornography; incivility; misoneism, xenophobia. THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 145 economic social types, the ceaseless supplanting of king and warrior by capitalist, of art by business, the stagna- tion, exhaustion, conquest, reversion, which mark the somersaults from civilization to barbarism and vice versa. All of which means that there is no real progress but only a constant cycle of revolution, decay, or doubling back. The fact of reversion, and in Mr. Adams' own terms, is undeniable. But it is by no means universal or inevitable. The fallacy in his position lies, of course, in the shakiness of three out of the four assumptions. Instincts are not nearly so rigid as he holds, and are constantly modified by social heredity. They by no means control conduct in- variably. To the contrary, custom is king. Conventions, mores, beliefs, institutions, check or stimulate our instincts at every turn. More than that, the process of selection goes steadily on, not only securing better adaptation to social environment, but also, it may be, providing resist- ances to the physical environment. Discrepancies in societal adaptation occur, as in modern great cities. But it is quite within the range of probability that human types are being wrought out more or less immune to the strains and stresses of our modern accelerated pace, and at a de- creasing expenditure of vital energy. These criticisms hold to a certain extent also of Vacher de Lapouge's Selections Sodales. He revives the old theory of vicious circles popularized by Machiavelh, Vico, Herder, Montesquieu, and others, but couches his argument in eugenic and aristocratic terms. Civilization, he holds, is Hke a biological organism, with stages of growth and decay. *'Les nations naissent, vivent et meurent comme des ani- maux ou des plantes." The period of national develop- ment is that "where superior elements multiply, take the direction of affairs, and put on them the stamp of their per- sonal genius. . . . The golden age is the culmination of eu- 146 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS genics. . . . The period of decadence follows the weaken- ing of the superior elements and proclaims itself by the division of power with inferior elements. The end comes with the complete exhaustion of eugenic capital, but a nation may still survive in this state so long as a shock from out- side does not oiver throw the worm-eaten structure." He beheves that civiHzation leads inevitably to cerebral regres- sion, just as domesticated animals lose their native vigor, and that since education can afifect the individual only, it is limited in influence and is worth nothing for race-stock im- provement. Like Rousseau he wails: "The future is not to the best, at most to the mediocre. To the degree that civiHzation develops, the advantages of natural selection change to a bitter scourge upon humanity. All apparent progress is at the expense of capital drawn from the force and energy, from the will and intelligence, and this capital becomes dissipated." Hence progress is a Utopia.^ Here we encounter anew the fallacy that superior social distinc- tion is inherently connected with superior racial stock. Moreover, there is no sound evidence that 'eugenic capital' is exhausted. But we shall reserve detailed criticism of this position for the chapter on eugenics ; meanwhile it is to be noted that this argument fails to take account of two factors, namely, the gradual elimination of fixed social status and the generalizing of opportunity through which sound racial stocks, though socially depressed, may rise to sturdy expression. Henry George, while holding to the theory of decadence for all past civilizations, differs from the out-and-out pessimists through offering a, to him, extremely simple way of escape. Not the pullulation of inferior stocks, nor coohng of the sun, nor kings as such, but social inequality ^ Op. cit., pp. 61, 77 ff., 100 ff., 118, 443, and ch. 15. See for criticisms of Lapouge and other anthropo-sociologists, Ferri, Criminal Sociology, sec. 81; Loria, " L'antropologia sociale," Rivisla Moderna, Dec, 1898. THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS 147 through land monopoly is the key to national decay. Man is naturally the progressive animal, but his social arrange- ments bar the path. "What has destroyed every previous civiHzation has been the tendency to the unequal distri- bution of wealth and power. Everywhere it is evident that the tendency to inequality, which is the necessary re- sult of material progress where land is monopolized, cannot go much further without carrying our civilization into that downward path which is so easy to enter and so hard to abandon." ^ While in general accepting the principle that gross inequality in opportunity and in distribution of re- wards or power is the mark of a weak society if not of national decadence, yet this presentation of the principle fails to strike conviction ; largely because it rests upon two assumptions which the author, in the present situation of statistics and the social sciences generally, could scarcely prove: (i) the increasing inequality of wealth; (2) the inference that inequality of wealth means necessarily in- equality of power and influence. On the whole, then, it appears to us that the existence of an inevitable law of decay, call it the disease of civiliza- tion or what you please, remains still an undemonstrated theory, valuable largely because of its challenge to senti- mentalism and complacency. 5 Summary As the net result of all this discussion we come to the conclusion that an interest in human well-being is the basic test for social progress in any legitimate sense of the word. But this interest must become more and more conscious and rationalized. It must not remain the bovine contented- ^ Progress and Poverty, Bk. x, ch. i, 4. 148 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ness of sharing in a warmer stall and better filled manger. It must have a projective aspect. It must look forward to the ' realization of an ethical order ' which will yield definite and coherent guidance and support to human effort. It will not fo cus on increase of happiness as end and aim, for happiness can never be more than the accident or in- cident of progress. If progress has heretofore had any purpose at all it is the preparation of mankind for rational purposive direction of its own future course, the enlarge- ment of human powers to fit men for a future which they only dream of now but the general direction of which can be indicated clearly enough. The progress of society, then, is not merely m oral pro gress, or intellectual progress, or material progress, or Institutional progress ; it is a complex and combination of all these^and more. It is probable, however, that the natural order of these may be through the material and intellectual to the moral ; the material furnishing the basis, the intellectual and institutional the means, working toward the moral as the result.^ But, remember, progress is not written into the nature of things : it comes, if at all, only as the fruitage of conscious and persistent human effort. This introductory analysis of the concept and criteria of progress is admittedly sketchy and general. Likewise its conclusions tentative and subject to possible review. Therefore we propose next to examine in considerable detail the various causative factors offered as determinants or explanations of progress, and from these provisional 'inter- pretations' to arrive, if possible, at sounder, more complete and synthetic inductions. The chapters which follow have to do in the main with what we have called the mass ele- ment as a source of social change. 'See Gunton, Principles of Social Economics, 15-17; Ward, Dynamic Sociology, i, 461 ; Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii, 245. Crozier, Civilization and Progress, 414. PART III THE PROPHETS OF PROGRESS CHAPTER VIII INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON INTERPRETATIONS OF PROGRESS The attempt to classify interpretations of social progress is a sufficiently difficult task, for humanity's motives and interests are so complex, so varied, and intertwined as to be almost inextricable. And the prophets of progress, although subjectivism, unequal acquaintance with facts from diverse fields, and a striving after simplicity of state- ment lead them to propose lopsided formulae, are usually not men of one idea. This does them credit, of course, but makes it difficult for us mousing academics to place them in their appropriate niches. Suppose, for illustration, we try Professor Sumner's proposed classification of social activities and evolution under the four heads : self-mainte- nance, self -perpetuation, self-gratification, mental and social reactions. It is evident that the geographic explanation of progress would cut across all four. So, to even a greater degree, would the economic explanation ; for are not marriage, procreation, amusements, wars, classes, govern- ment, religion, the mores, causally related to means of subsistence ? Hence the classification that follows has not the slightest claims to water-tight logic. It is perhaps pedagogic or homiletic rather than scientific. It came by dint of neces- sity and looks merely to clarity and convenience. Classifi- cations Hke treaties are mere scraps of paper. For our 152 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS purpose the prophets of progress divide themselves into the materialistic (including advocates of climate, wealth, inven- tion, technique of production and trade, division of labor) ; biologic (champions of race-selection, war, eugenics, popula- tion-growth) -; institutional (property, the family, govern- ment, law, public opinion, language, religion) ; ideologist (intellect, ideals, aesthetic sentiments, Hterature). It is of course true that anybody who has studied human progress and whose mind's door is the sUghtest ajar is to that extent an eclectic. To that extent our classification "does him injustice. But it is equally true that each of the prophets we are about to study took care to state his major position so strongly that not infrequently he over-stated and exaggerated, and in so far left no great uncertainty as to the pigeon-hole he would have chosen. Such marked differences of emphasis occur within the general group of economic explanations that they merit separate attention before considering the extreme Left, namely, the socialists, to whom indeed the terms economic materiaHsts or economic determinists were originally ap- plied. The technicians or inventionists constitute one of these special groups. Perhaps a word of explanation is due also for including the chapter on criticism of economic determinism. The chief justification for it is that Professor SeHgman's classic Httle book covers neither the anthro- pological nor the psychological angles of criticism. Under the general concept of the biologic interpretation of progress I propose to lump together such rather ill- assorted ideas as natural selection, social selection, race conflicts, race migrations, race contacts, war, eugenics, and growth of populations. It is obvious that elements other than biological enter here. This is inevitable, since we are deaUng with life and history, which are organic wholes. But the various viewpoints lie close enough together to INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON INTERPRETATIONS 153 warrant uniting them into a single aspect of social evolution and progress. Other, even grosser, breaches of good order have been committed. Language, which is a fundamental invention, has been thrown into the institutional section because it is more closely related to society's ideas than to its material equipment, and because it has many institutional aspects. The treasuring of archaic forms of speech, the insistence upon styles and phrases as marks of class or caste culture, the work of the "purist": all these are distinctively in- stitutional modes. After some hesitation over the proper place for religion it was decided to include it with institutions like law, government, and classes, with which it is closely allied in function, rather than alongside of ideaUsm, where it might go with equal propriety. Again, public opinion can only by adolescent chivalry be called a real social in- stitution ; yet we have classed it as such because of its kinship with law and government. Education, though obviously institutional, has been given a separate place because of its relation of climax to the whole argument. MATERIALISTIC INTERPRETATIONS CHAPTER IX GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS "The environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment." (L. F. Ward) Geographic determinism assumes that the cosmic factors in human environment are the basic determinants of human conduct. Man's body, hence, his thinking, feeUng, wilHng, his advances, and his debasement are molded and to a large degree controlled by climate, fertiUty of soil, food, altitude, configuration of the ground and other aspects of nature, earthquakes, and other striking natural phenom- ena. It was inevitable that modern positivist science should at least forecast some such conclusion. Occa- sionally, even in classic writers of antiquity, appear some more or less inconclusive passages hinting at geographic determinism. Aristotle seems to have ghmpsed the prob- lem. And Plutarch, speaking of differences in the Athe- nian population, suggests the influence of atmosphere and altitude in accounting for them. We hear httle more of the theory until Bodin stated it somewhat broadly at the end of the seventeenth century. But to Montesquieu and Herder, in the eighteenth century, is due credit for opening up fully the problem of climatic influence. To them, however, as to most earlier writers, climate meant much that is now termed our whole physical environment. The nineteenth century materialistic philosophy of "man 157 IS8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ist was er isst " took simply one element, food, as typical of what we call cosmic determinism. Recent studies show a decided tendency to revive the rather naive doctrines of earlier centuries, and to express them even more rigidly. But the manifest exaggeration in them will speedily be ex- punged by healthy criticism, and a proper evaluation of geographic forces reached. Climate Everybody knows through experience that changes in temperature or humidity affect human activity. The procession of the seasons marks off seed time from harvest, rush times from dull times. Extremes of heat or cold produce extreme variations in the organism exposed. The cHmate of Cerro de Pasco, Peru, 14,200 feet above sea level, for example, is so severe that no child is born in that city of 14,000 people. The llamas, or native sheep, will not bear young ; even hens will not lay, and pure bred dogs cannot live.^ Certain types of crime against the person seem far more prevalent in hot weather ; while crimes against property soar in the cold season.^ Prisons and reformatories report a notable increase in offenses against order and good discipline in summer months ; police arrests also rise ; patients in hospitals for the insane manifest more acute mental disturbances and general restiveness; good deportment and discipline in ordinary public schools grow increasingly hard to maintain as temperature rises. Indeed this sort of "summer complaint" is pretty general among children as well as among the institutionahzed ^ Newbegin, Man and his Conquests of Nature, 131. ^ For statistics and graphs illustrating this point see Aschaffenburg, Crime and its Repression, pp. 15-30. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 159 classes. We must beware, however, of accepting these phenomena as ipso facto proof of direct cHmatic influence in every case. It is altogether possible, as Tarde points out,^ that the increase of crimes against the person in summer months is due not to the direct action of heat, but to the greater contact of person with person permitted by open weather; and similarly, the cold does not make a; thief, but merely makes the want of food felt more keenly/ during winter months. In such cases the direct causes are social, and temperature only a conditioning phenomenon. From the standpoint of social activities and social structure it is obvious that a fairly wide range of tempera- ture means a proportionately wide range of wants, of oppor- tunities for gratifying variations in tastes for food, for rec- reation, and the like. On the other hand, too wide or too sudden climatic fluctuations may occasion great loss through destroying food, through making labor and the products of one's labor uncertain ; in other words, through forcing man to concentrate his efforts upon outwitting nature and win- ning the barest necessities of life. Racial character or racial types of mind are sometimes attributed to geographic environment. At least such types of mind, however they may have arisen, are conceived to be preserved by reason of the presence of favorable geography. Daudet hinted that his fellow Provencals were constitu- tionally drunk with sunshine and blue sky ; but it was only a novehst's gibe at their voluble good nature. Taine saw in the rigor and gloom of German cHmate the determinant of the Germanic mind. Likewise Professor Huntington claims that in Japan a certain type of mind has been selected and preserved by reason of the stormy climate.^ According to Miss Semple the origin of a people can be investigated ^ Penal Philosophy, sec. 61. ^ Jour, of Race Development, 2 : 256-81. l6o THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS and stated only in terms of geography, including climatic variations ; and in general, a close correspondence obtains between climate and their temperament.^ But the anthropo-geographists do not stop with these general principles. Details and illustrations multiply. Miss Semple grows poetic: "Everywhere a cold climate puts a steadying hand on the human heart and brain. It gives an autumn tinge to Ufe. Among the folk of warmer lands eternal spring holds sway." ^ Montesquieu was equally impressionistic. Heat, he said, affects courage, it relaxes body and mind. The people of warm countries are timid hke the aged ; those of cold countries, courageous like the young. Heat begets laziness, cowardice, and ^ induces despotism on the one hand, slavery on the other ; despotic empires hug the equator. By way of contrast, cold begets love of Hberty; nearly all the smaller free tribes cluster towards the poles. Scandinavia and England are thus free and leaders of the free. "Slavery always begins with slumber. But a people which has no repose anywhere, which hunts about ceaselessly and finds every place uncomfortable never can slumber." ^ Cold also may y induce a certain toughness of hide, literally and metaphori- cally. The economic effects of heat are stressed by both Montes- quieu and Buckle. Heat makes lazy men and laggard nations, says the former. The energy and regularity with which labor is conducted will be entirely dependent on the influence of cHmate, echoes the latter. A certain degree of heat, however, will produce the same results as a certain degree of absence of heat ! Hence Buckle arrives at the conclusion that Sweden and Norway, Spain and Portugal, ^ Influences of Geographic Environment, 121. '^ Op. oil., 620-1. 3 Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Bk. xiv, ch. 2 ; xvii, 2, 5 ; xiv, 13. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS i6l though so different in other respects, are all remarkable for a certain instability and fickleness of character. The conclusion is unqualifiedly absurd, for the Swedes and Norwegians are anything but fickle, and many Portuguese groups have shown remarkable industry and thrift. Buckle's general conclusion is that "of the two primary causes of civilization, the fertihty of the soil is the one which in the ancient world exercised most influence. But in European civilization, the other great cause, that is to say, cHmate, has been the most powerful." ^ Heat makes food easy to get, for nature in tropical climes is lavish. And man in such climates requires less clothing and less food to maintain his bodily heat. Hence less effort is necessary to maintain life. Hence, in turn, the tendency to populate recklessly and without restraint or calculation. From this tendency to overpopulation follows naturally a supernumerary laboring class, low wages, great differences in distribution of wealth, monied classes, castes, and des- potism. ^ In passing we might suggest that China is not a tropical country, yet China is a stock example of just these phenomena. But probably ancestor worship and not climate is the determining cause in China. Further- more, wealth is scarcely more unequally divided in India than in the United States ; yet no one would think of referring the American situation to high temperature. A warm climate inclines to overemphasis on tradition and worship of the past ; hot countries are static, declares Montesquieu.^ Here again China bobs up as a stumbling block, especially China's educational and moral systems. And in general it is true that monotony of climate, and isola- ^ History of Civilization in England, chap. ii. But is the truth not just the reverse? Civilization certainly began in the ancient world before agricul- ture was developed and it is notorious that it reached its greatest heights on some of the leanest soils. Safety was even more desirable than soil-fertility. - Buckle, op. ciL, chap. ii. ^ L. c, Bk. XIV, chap. 4. M l62 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS tion, either by natural barriers or artificial hedges of cus- tom and taboo upon intercourse with strangers is more likely than mere high temperature to produce a static society with overemphasis upon the past. Again, we are assured, warm climate tends to express ^^ itself in mild laws, while cold induces vigorous and bar- barous codes. Montesquieu attributes the severity of Japanese laws to the barbarity of the Japanese character induced by a rude cHmate. In contrast he cites the Hindus to whom he ascribes tenderness and compassion. Hence, says he, Hindu legislators have decreed few penalties, and these very light and these few not rigorously enforced. ^ "Happy cHmate, which engenders frank manners and pro- duces mild laws!"^ On the other hand DeTocqueville ascribed the mildness of American penal laws, not to climate, but to democracy. Japan's prison methods cast our own in the shade. The suttee in India was not a specially mild custom and was only abolished at the instance of the Englishman from his rude climate. The most superficial •^ study of comparative jurisprudence, and in particular the evolution of criminal procedure, would establish that the rigor of laws and penalties does not vary with latitude. They are an affair not of Geography but of Culture- History. Moreover, a warm climate is supposed to relax body and mind, but stimulate imagination. As if the imagination were something added to the mind, like will or memory ! Both Montesquieu and Buckle agree here, however. "Nature which has given these peoples (Hindus) a weak- ness which renders them timid, gave them also an imagina- tion so lively that everything touches them to the point of excess. This same delicateness of organization which makes them fear death serves also to make them fear a 1 L. c, Bk. XW, chap. 15. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 163 thousand things more than death. It is the same sen- sibiht}^ which makes them flee every peril and brave every peril." ^ Buckle is less paradoxical. "An imagination, luxuriant even to disease, runs riot on every occasion." ^ Put in this extreme way without quahtications such a position needs no specific refutation. Hume in his Essay on National Characters did that for us a century and a half ago. One needs only run through a list of great names, like Homer, Socrates, Sophocles, Plato, .^schylus, Lucre- tius, Caesar, Pope Gregory, Abelard, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Moliere, Goethe, Hoffman, Poe, Pushkin, Balzac, Dickens, Ibsen, Bjornson, Tolstoi, names immortal in the kingdom of the imagination, to prove that imagination is not a matter of isotherms. It is true that India developed a richly imaginative, almost grotesque and exaggerated mythology ; but even admitting that it was more imaginative than Norse mythology — and this is doubtful — we may be sure that such a social phenomenon involved many other factors besides climate, and in any event was rather a rank "sport" than the nor- mal flower of the imagination. The natural environment of course furnishes many suggestions by way of scenery, the fierce play of the elements, abundant vegetable and animal life, to the creative imagination ; but the situation parallels the case of a genial climate permitting the play of the more genial qualities in man's nature. In both cases the environment permits but does not confer the results ;^t condit ions but does not cause. It may be true enough that the cloudless skies of Greece inspired Greek poetry and philosophy, and produced a type of national mind un- equaled in all history. But what of modern Greeks, Macedonians, and Turks dwelling under those same skies? ^ Esprit des Lois, Bk. XIV., chap. 3. 2 Qp. cit., p. 76. / 164 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS One is reminded of Hegel's outburst, "Rede man nichts von ionischen Himmel, denn jetzt wohnen da Tiirken wo ehemals Griechen wohnten, damit Punctum und lasst mich in Frieden." If it be true that race is simply climate, and that modern Greece is debased because of mixture with inferior races from regions of similar climate, what becomes of the theory ? Is it not a vicious circle ? ^ Religious forms might with some show of plausibility be held to follow geographic lines. Thus Catholicism might go with the Latin or Mediterranean temper, which in turn depends upon the mild climate of the South ; or a vigorous individualistic Protestantism might grow out of only such hardy climates as Switzerland, Scotland, and Scandinavia. Carlyle found Mohammed's character to be the peculiar child of the desert. And Abercromby worked out two maps, one showing the area of Mohammedanism, the other the regions of Africa and Asia with a mean annual rainfall of less than ten inches. The maps proved strikingly similar, but the author did not insist that they represented more than a rather curious correlation.^ The only connec- tion between climate, geography, and religion comes from the fact that religion is a practical aid in the solution of ^ life problems, — food, health, sex, order, and safety ; and that in consequence it is colored by local needs and sur- ^ Professor Frederick Starr is responsible for the theory that the composite population of America is being slowly molded to the physiognomy of the aboriginal Indian. But he offers no sufficient proof for the inference that the climate of the United States is endowed with any such power. Even if it were demonstrated that we were acquiring the Indian features, it would still remain to be proved that we were also approaching the Indian mental type. And as our comments upon Professor Boas' anthropological measurements of immigrants showed, this latter problem is the more significant. Indeed the whole trend of present-day thought denies any important causal connec- tions between head form and mind. 2 Abercromby, Seas and Skies in Many Latitudes, 42-3. Peschel, in a famous chapter on "The Zone of the Founders of Religion," was somewhat more positive as to this correlation. See his Races of Man, pp. 314-18. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 165 roundings. But since human needs follow pretty closely a few general planes it is evident that religious forms like- wise are fairly well generalized and distributed in time and space. The great founders of world religions came from the tropical orient, because civilization had reached a higher level there. But religion and religious practices of enormous significance are by no means referable merely to the Orient. The almost universal customs of totemism, ghost avoidance and propitiation, ancestor worship, in- dicate that latitude, longitude, humidity, or temperature have little to do with religion as such. The presumed connection between climate, races, and certain types of disease might be offered as a proof that climate plays a fundamental role in the selection of biologi- cal types. The argument runs something like this : those stocks that can resist certain prevalent and virulent diseases are selected and become immune ; certain climates aid or hinder this process of immunity ; therefore climate is the decisive factor. Such has been the common view, not only of the valetudinarian but also of the scientist. But, says Professor R. D. Ward: "The old view concerning the paramount influence of chmate upon health is being replaced by the view that good hygiene is of more importance than climate alone. . . . Man himself, not climate, is being held responsible for the occurrence of this or that disease or epidemic, for its distribution, and for the death-rates resulting from it." ^ The race problem (meaning here the problem of race contacts, race collisions, race fusions) varies with chmate. "The phenomena of contact differ fundamentally according to the climate of the area of contact." ^ For example, the ^ Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man, 217-8. 2 A. G. Keller, "A Sociological View of the 'Native Question,'" Yale Review, November, 1903, p. 260. • 1 66 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS white meets the black at a disadvantage in the tropics; there can be little question of amalgamation ; usually some form of benevolent guardianship or paternahstic exploita- tion results. The unequal relation between white men and their tropical women has long offered novelists and play- wrights materials for tragedy. In the more temperate zones black meets white at an even greater disadvantage, and he is pressed into actual or industrial slavery. In those same regions the peoples of approximately equal cultural level pass easily back and forth or fuse without shock to either economic systems or the mores. Indeed, spontaneous migration usually is a phenomenon restricted to temperate zones. It is not necessary to conclude, however, that these limiting conditions are inherent and permanent. Climate, particularly climatic change, indirectly impels to social change and even progress, by forcing race migrations, and therefore race contacts, with probable cross-fertilization of cultures. It is not beyond the pale of possibility that sudden or permanent change of climate forced Jacob and his sons to migrate into Egypt. It is even more probable that climatic changes in Arabia induced the Arabs to migrate, and paved the way for the Moham- medan conquests. Professor Ellsworth Huntington is the most ardent supporter of the thesis that climate, especially increasing aridity, is the great determinant of race move- ments, wars, barbarian invasions, Dark Ages, and even of such supposedly pure domestic matters as strikes or pres- idential elections.^ This theory though stated repeatedly with almost apostolic fervor is not to be taken without a grain of salt. * The Pulse of Asia, 3-6, 14-16, 312-326, 373 ff., etc.; for references to his Climate and Civilization and other works see supplementary readings; of. Waitz, Intro, to Anthropology, i, 344, Collingwood's transl. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 167 We cannot go into an exhaustive criticism of its details. Suffice it to observe that so far no searching examination of the theory has been made. No large body of evidence has yet been brought to light to prove beyond question climatic variations of such intensity nor operating over such long periods as to produce the national and ethnic crises suggested by Dr. Huntington. The authentic history of the barbarian invasions remains yet to be written ; when it is written, pressure of population and other human factors will probably be seen in higher relief than changes in temperature and rainfall. The examination of old lake margins, or of the rings of ancient trees, may yield valid inductions for climatic changes provided always the observer does not see shore lines or rings just where they ought to be to fit a theory. And even granting a goodly measure of importance to climatic crises, they are at best only indirect influences and must combine with other distinctly social elements before they can operate upon a people to cause depopulation, decadence, or migration. 3 Soil Fertility of the soil is set down as the prime determinant of early civilizations. Buckle makes the accumulation of wealth the most important result of fertile soil, and hence the most important prerequisite for progress. For without wealth there is no leisure and without leisure no knowledge. Yet Buckle qualifies his own contention. "In estimating therefore, the physical conditions by which civilization was originally determined, we have to look, not merely at the exuberance, but also at what may be called the manageability of Nature." 1 68 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Since he is at bottom an idealist, he insists also that although such civilizations are the earliest, they are by no means the best or most enduring, and that the only prog- ress which is really effective depends not upon the bounty of nature, but upon the energy of man.^ Montesquieu's view is almost antipodal to Buckle's. Goodness of soil, he contends, leads to slavish dependence. "Thus government by One is most often found in fertile lands, government by the Many in those which are not. ..." Natural fertihty and democracy seem thus irreconcilable.^ In fact sterility of soil is necessary to develop industry, effort, exertion, and ingenuity, without which there can be no real progress. Our own ethnog- rapher, Mason, held to the same notion in criticizing the geographists.' Darwin, too, de Molinari, Hilgard the soil expert. Ward the climatologist, and Cunningham the economic historian all agree that soil fertility and other great natural resources only give an opportunity for, but cannot produce or maintain a high and cultured civili- zation.'* There must be wisdom and power to direct those latent natural energies. But this wise direction is attribu- table at least in part to education. It is precisely what the new preachers of "efficiency" are pounding away at. "It is psychology, not soil or climate," says Mr. Emerson, "that enables a man to raise five times as many potatoes per acre as the average of his state." ^ 1 Op. cit., 28, 62. ^Op. cit., Book xviii, chaps, i, 3, 4. ^ Origins of Invention, 20. * Darwin, Descent of Man, i, 153 ; de Molinari, The Society of Tomorrow, 137; HilgciTd, No. Amer. Rev., 175: 314; Ward, C/Z/wa/e, etc., 233 ; Cun- ningham, Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects, i, 39. ^ Harrington Emerson, Efficieficy as a Basis for Operation and Wages, 107. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 169 Topography "Place determines work and work determines social organization," said Frederic Le Play. Configuration of the land may play a considerable role, particularly in the ele- mentary stages of human life. Montesquieu sees in the remoteness of the island an explanation of the greater liberty of island peoples.^ Miss Semple finds two antag- onistic influences at work in an island environment ; on lower peoples the isolation is supreme, and tends to beget a certain aloofness which gives them a peculiar and indelible national stamp ; with higher cultural development and increasing nautical technique islands tend to become cul- ture foci because of their greater accessibility.^ The play of these opposing influences results in strongly marked conservatism opposing equally marked radicalism, fresh- ness and vivacity in culture, a quick and nervous give and take in culture exchanges, rapid fluctuations in population and character, differentiation in language, racial unity, a certain amount of pohtical stabiHty and security, emigration, and intensive agriculture. Miss Semple's chapter on "Island Peoples" is an excellent discussion of this subject. Great plains are accounted unfavorable to the early de- velopment of civilization. For they are not only monoto- nous but they also postpone the transition from nomadic to sedentary life. Petrarch declared, too, that no flat country ever produced poetry. Again, the mountains of Greece and Switzerland are presumed to have elevated the souls of their inhabitants. But a certain bovine content- ment that goes with her cowbells and cheese rather than the * Op. ciL, xviii, 5. 2 Qp ^/^^ ^J2. lyo THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS dramatic patriotism of William Tell seems to mark modern Switzerland. To be sure a varied topography yields varied climate, and climatic variations within moderate limits may administer healthy shocks to temper. But high altitudes usually thin out a population ; they also tend to induce a certain austerity and parsimony in standards of living ; emigration must ceaselessly operate to carry off the slightest surplus population. Conservatism, clannishness, suspicion toward strangers, superstition, intense individ- ualism, frugality, and a certain moral inelasticity mark the mountaineer. Most of these things are due to the natural isolation of mountainous regions. But modern trans- portation and the resultant frequent contacts with strangers tend to obliterate these primitive effects of topography. Indeed this whole question of topographical determinism is losing most of its point owing to the rapid and persistent internationalizing of life and the incessant extension of means of rapid communication. Even the poles have lost their arctic isolation and succumbed to civilization. Other aspects of nature are sometimes held responsible for effects in human affairs. Buckle made much of earth- quakes in Japan and southern Europe, and tried to corre- late them with the prevalence of superstition and artistic imagination. Hence he declared that all the greatest painters and nearly all the greatest sculptors modern Europe has possessed, have been produced by the Italian and Spanish peninsulas.^ Buckle's critics have not let slip so favorable a chance to cry his fallacies. They have pointed out errors here both of fact and of inference. Portugal has not produced some of the greatest painters of * Op. cit., p. 70. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 171 the world. And while in Peru earthquakes are more common than in any other section of the world we have no record of any great Peruvian imaginative literature or art. On the other hand the Netherlands produced a school of art that rivaled the best of the Mediterranean painters; yet the Netherlands are a most uninspiring stretch of low- land and marsh, and worst of all are free from earthquakes. "Buckle overlooked the principle of economic evocation, which alone finally accounts for the development of sculp- ture in ancient Greece, and of art in Renaissance Italy. The main factor was the economic demand of the church for pictures," comments Mr. J. M. Robertson, Buckle's recent editor. In the Netherlands, the wealthy burgher vied with the church as a patron of art ; and his interest in art was not conferred by awe in the face of great land- scape beauty or of racking cosmic phenomena: trade with the orient had given him pride, a taste for rich colors and fabrics, and best of all the ability to pay. Hence, on the whole, it is the economic and cultural factors, and not the physical, to which artistic evolution is referable. Man as a Geographic Agent It is not mere fancy or metaphor to say that man secretes his physical environment as he goes. We agree that Egyp- tian life might have been very different if the Nile had ceased to rise. But even the prehistoric settlers in the Nile valley handed over to their descendants of the Memphite epoch an environment very different from the one they had received from the hands of nature.^ This tendency might be stated almost in the form of a law : each progressive nation passes * Metchnikoff, La civilisation et les grands fleuves, 225. 172 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS through a series of environments even though its own geo- graphical position has not been measurably changed.^ While man has not yet succeeded in making rain fall at his will, he is able to manipulate his water supply to make it serve his purposes more adequately. He may irrigate the desert or drain the swamp ; dikes, canals, levees, and wells illustrate the point. For examples near at home, take the reclaiming of the Bitter Root Valley in the arid Northwest, or the draining of California marshes and tule lands, or the lowered rainfall and freshets induced by reckless deforesta- tion. It is true that climatologists discount man's effect upon his climatic environment. The point is still debatable. Whatever we may decide as to man's direct effect upon natural chmate he must be reckoned a direct geologic agent. 2 It is true then that man is made by Nature ; and it is equally true that Man remakes his maker. Buckle himself admits this reciprocal modification, and holds that the powers of man, so far as experience and analogy can guide us, are unlimited ; yet in the same breath he places a climatic control upon man's intellect.^ But man is con- stantly discovering means of nulhfying this climatic control. The invention of cold-storage, central heating plants, the generation of heat by water-power electricity, the devices for supplying cool air to modern houses and ofhce buildings all indicate that climate as a conditioning factor in human life is becoming a more or less negligible quantity. The suc- cesses of Colonel Goethals at Panama and of Peary during 1 See Simon Patten, Theory of Social Forces, 11 ; Goldenweiser, "Culture and Environment," Am. Jour. Social., 21 : 628-33. 2 Professor Marsh's The Earth as Modified by Human Action remains still, in spite of its age, one of the clearest and most comprehensive discussions of man as a geologic agent; see particularly chap, vi, for materials bearing directly upon the points brought out in these paragraphs. ^ L. c, pp. II, 29, etc. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 173 a series of winters at the North Pole hint that man may within certain Hmits laugh at climate. Perhaps both the Tropics and the Poles need civilization more than a change of climate ! The use of feeding barns for cattle in winter, the subduing of such pests as the mosquito, the introduction of new plants hke the Australian salt bush, alfalfa, date palm, spineless cactus, mesembryanthemum and eucalyptus further illustrate abihty to overcome natural disadvantages of climate. If man is not able directly to control his physical environ- ment he can do so indirectly by electing a new one. No other single factor so marks man's possibilities of develop- ment as the power to move about freely, and this power is constantly increasing. Modern transportation has multi- plied the mobility of man's resources ; it annihilates geo- graphic distance and modifies the old determinism of "favorable location." Transportation plus a sense of international brotherhood enables India to control an un- propitious season or year by a call for aid from America. Indeed man seems to become more and more the captain of his soul in the struggle against dead mechanical cosmic forces. Professor J. A. Thomson, the distinguished biolo- gist, in a burst of enthusiasm cries : ''Increasingly we find the organism — be it bird or mammal or man — much more master of its fate, able to select its own environment in some measure, able to modify its surroundings as well as be modified by them. As we take a bird's eye view of the course of evolution, must we not recognize the gradual emergence of the free agent?" ^ In any event, climate, topography, soil, are hardly to be set down as "causes" of human evolution or progress. They are merely conditioning phenomena. To quote ^Heredity, p. 517; cf. Goode, "The Human Response to the Physical Environment," Jour, of Geography, 3 : 342-3. 174 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Professor Small, they have the same relation to human asso- ciation that the temperature of a hall has to the rendering of a symphony.^ This is simply a restatement of Herder's theory that climate influences but does not compel. "Das Klima zwinget nicht, sondern es neiget." The native vital force {Sinnlichkeit) of the race itself fights and resists the influence of climate except when the transplanting to a new climate is too brusque.^ In other words, speaking philo- sophically, we are to reckon geographic influences as 'neces- sary' rather than as 'suflEicient' explanations.^ Summary If we attempt to evaluate the influence of these geo- graphic determinants, we shall discover that such things as climate and soil may dominate man at first. But only at first, while intelligence is rudimentary, science scarcely more than crude superstition, social organization halting, the arts and prudential institutions limited, means for register- ing the group memory and group accomplishments feeble, education and social inheritance imperfect. So soon as mental capital is stored up, human groups begin to lay by stores of food, tools, seeds, in other words, capital, which free them from the grip of seasonal vicissitudes. Indeed man is only able to appropriate or exploit Nature — • that is, to release Nature's dominating latent powers — when his intelligence or consciousness of needs and powers enables him to read into Nature the meanings he desires. Water- ^ Amer. Jour. Sociology, 12 : 643. * Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit, Zweiter Theil, Riga and Leipzig, 1785, Bk. I. ' Cf . Wm. James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philos- ophy, 237-9. GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISTS 175 falls or river currents could only become a determining force in social and economic life when human intelligence saw the possibilities hidden in them. The falls were falls in the aboriginal days; but they did not determine in any appreciable way the life of the American Indian because he saw no economic meaning in them. Hence intelligence and the education of intelligence must actually be evoked before cosmic determinism can operate with fullest power. Furthermore, man is attaining domination over his environment by federated activity, by cooperating with his fellows, by the development of his own self-knowledge and self-control through social discipline. Man tames earth and air by taming himself and yoking his own will with that of his fellows. This is preeminently an educational process. And it was only because educational forces were more or less unconscious and unformulated that the geographic environment could ever have played so considerable a role as a conditioning factor in human life. CHAPTER X THE TECHNICIANS OR INVENTIONISTS "The true epic of our times is not "arms and the man," but "tools and the man," an infinitely wider kind of epic " (Carlyle) This group of interpreters of progress includes a consider- able variety, those who see in new varieties of food, new forms of the technique of production or distribution the real ground for progress. In our Southern States "Cotton is King." In the Middle West "Corn is King." To the French, "Rubber is civilization for the Kongo." We have already seen how Buckle laid stress upon food as a deter- minant : rice in India, dates in Egypt fixed the social type. Likewise, McGee and Thomas make maize the foundation of the great Mayan civilization in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guate- mala and Honduras.^ In South America the domestica- tion of the llama is accorded equal significance. Eurasian civilization is due in no small part to its possession of or access to a greater number of domesticable animals than are found on other continents. The social consequences of this invention are almost incalculable. Domesticated ani- mals served for food, as a medium of exchange in redeem- ing captives and paying fines, and in religious sacrifices. Moreover, as they could be indefinitely multiplied in numbers their possession opened to man his first conception of wealth.^ In accordance with the general rule that inci- ' Prehistoric America, p. 30, and particularly chap, viii, "Maize, the great Civilizer." 2 L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, Part IV., chap. II. 176 THE TECHNICIANS OR INVENTIONISTS 177 dence of domestic and political power follows incidence of ownership, it is not surprising to find that domestication of animals plays a preponderant role in the transition of domestic organization from a maternal clan basis to that of the individual patrilineal family in its various forms. The invention of agriculture must have been no less significant. For both agriculture and domesticated herds — the substitution of an artificial for a natural basis of subsistence — established for man a sort of insurance against the world of uncertainty and vicissitudes in which he lived. So did the invention of fire for cooking. So did the various types of tools from which the prehistoric archaeologists deduce their succession of Ages — Stone, Copper, Bronze, Iron. But in this latter instance we must remember that the Ages overlap. Certain peoples use iron axes but wooden plows. From what we know of the 'folkways ' it is safe to assume that custom usually decides what particular invention shall live to dominate, and how far. Tradition, for example, decrees that sacred fire for religious purposes shall be made in the old-fashioned way with a wood-borer, even though easier ways of obtaining fire are known and used for other purposes. Ceremonial adzes of polished stone linger side by side with secular tools of metal in the Pacific islands. But sooner or later metallic tools drive out all rivals. From this point, rather than (as Morgan suggests) from the date of smelting iron ore, begins "the accelerated progress of human intelligence." By some curious process of reasoning it is often assumed that inventions are spontaneous creations, happy accidents, uncaused causes, and that man is somehow or other made their beneficiaries. But progress in mechanical technique is never a pure accident ; it is based on previous ideas and N 1 78 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS abilities. For example, Mason says of the application of fire to cooking : "Just how it first occurred to the primitive folk that cooked meat would last longer and digest more quickly than raw meat is unknown. The ever-ready guesser will say that a lucky accident was the teacher. But lucky accidents give no lessons to those who are not already alert." Moreover, savages may go at the problems of invention no less consciously and definitely than an Edison or Maxim or Nobel. Mason says the Eskimo make invention a part of their sport. "They go out to certain difficult places, and, having imagined themselves in certain straits, they compare notes as to what each one would do. They actually make ex- periments, setting one another problems in invention." ^ There is no lack of evidence to show that such an inven- tion as domestication of animals is a mark of advanced culture. Australia, for example, shows a combination of low civilization and no domestic animals of importance. Almost all present-day domestic plants as well as animals originated in the centers of ancient civilization, the tem- perate river regions of Eurasia. Although the horse, to take only a single example, ranged wild over Europe in paleolithic times, paleolithic man had not the wit to tame him, "No appropriation from the animal world becomes con- sistent and its products stable until in the absence of exceptional conditions, civilization has attained to some degree of advancement." ^ That is to say, nature may give the hint, and the means for utilizing the hint, but man himself through experience ^ Origins of Invention, 102, 23. "^ A. G. Keller, unpublished lectures in MSS. ; cf . ^dt,rtVi, Anthropology, io8. THE TECHNICIANS OR INVENTIONISTS 179 must have developed sense enough to take the hint before such resources become available. It may very well be that inventions in both modern and primitive times do not always follow a strictly syllogistic course into the unknown and out again. It is altogether probable that many an invention results from the universal tendency to variation and to our inability to duplicate the past or copy literally a model. The slow and painful method of trial and error accounts better than rare flashes of genius for perhaps all our fundamental and epoch- making inventions. For inventions are group products even when apparently they issue from the personal skill or genius of the hero, the great man, the innovator. Yet I do not mean to disparage the genius. For in the truest sense he represents the group's best self, the group function- ing at its highest point of eflficiency. He is that variation in ability which makes possible the crystallizing and refining of the crude materials of group inventive experience. On that account and because national progress depends to a considerable degree upon these new and refined inventive ideas, there is wisdom in the proposal made from time to time to endow original scientific research, the chief source of new technical processes.^ But the question inevitably arises, if you are going to endow the hunt for progressive and therefore socially valuable innovations, where will you draw the line, and who shall decide what sorts of innovations are to be so fostered and rewarded? Will you not have the spectacle of com- peting groups of investigators clamorous and self-centered ? Will not the spectacle of the "interests" lobbying for legis- lative favors repeat itself? It should not be so if the spirit ^ See Gore, Scientific Basis of National Progress, pp. 2-17, 83-4, 121, 167. To Francis Bacon is due credit for early stating both the need and the possibility of progress to be achieved through scientific knowledge of natural conditions crystallized in inventions designed to ameliorate human conditions. l8o THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS and tradition of real science prevail, the tradition of pa- tience, courtesy, generosity, self-denial and veracity. That still leaves undecided what types of innovating thought shall be included. Let me set down a few of these innovations by way of illustration. Caesar invented the principle -that debt should not carry with it loss of liberty. The Christian church invented the doctrine of the "mystic body," a tremendous generahzation for social theory and practice. The Hebrew prophets originated worship without sacrifice. The preachers of justification by faith broke down the fence between clergy and laity. St. Benedict's "Rule" was a staggering blow at the in- dividualistic and quietistic hermit or anchorite. Howard and his prison reforms ; Cruikshank with his Gallows-Bill ; Pinel and Tuke, the fathers of the modern insane hospital ; Raikes, creator of the Sunday School ; the Rochedale and Le Claire groups of cooperators ; Spencer, Darwin, Huxley and other protagonists of evolution and "the suspended judgment"; or to take only one other example, the founders of the Juvenile Court movement — all these were inventors of the highest order. But shall they be included in a scheme for encouraging inventive research ? They must be if the scheme is to be of any service whatever. Whether in practice it should work along the lines of the Academie-Franfaise, or the Royal Academy, or a Carnegie Hero-Fund is not our present concern. The essential is that our definition of invention must be catholic. This would appear to raise an issue with Professor Ross, who includes in progress-making inventions only geographi- cal, scientific, speculative innovations, since, as he contends, they are condition-making and furnish the foundations of religious and moral inventions.^ I do not question the popular definition of man as the tool-making animal; ^ Foundations of Sociology, 230 and passim. THE TECHNICIANS OR INVENTIONISTS l8l neither do I deny a measure of truth to the maxim exploited by the industrial educationalists to the effect that the history of man is the history of his tools. I grant with Bergson that human intelhgence, in its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.^ I only seek to point out that man is more than a tool-maker ; he is above all else an institution-maker. This, I take it, is what Aristotle really meant by his term 'political animal.' It is of course true that his institutions rest on a basis of tools ; or at least their development is furthered by the economies of time and energy effected by the invention of mechanical devices. But without institutions (their source, by the way, is not mere tool-making intelligence) not one of man's primal discoveries would have been preserved to his successors, nor would any refinement or development of them have been possible. Selection has operated not only for the choosing of this particular tool and the rejection of that, but even more surely for the electing of this partic- ular brain rather than some other because it can use and im- prove the crude tool delivered to it, and for certifying the institution which can protect and preserve both the tool and its user. Here we might reiterate our previous principle that even the expression of human knowledge in inventions may not necessarily and per se carry with it progress in real well- being. If materialistic knowledge is power it is not wisdom. Man again and again has to be rescued from the dire effects of such half-knowledge. Charles Lamb once wrote a letter to his friend Dyer, which, if we can overlook the characteristic snobbery and rhetoric, illustrates admirably the dangers of unguarded science : ^ Creative Evolution, p. 139. 1 82 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS "Poor Enfield that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever ; the tokens are upon her ; and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and hay- stacks of a farmer, about half a mile from us. There is no doubt of its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic ; but how is he to be discovered? ... It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly they jogged on with as little reflection as horses. The whistling plough-man went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather breeches, and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half the country is grinning with new fires. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake to perceive that some- thing is wrong in the social system — what a hellish faculty above gun-powder ! . . . Think of a disrespected clod that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their growers in a mass of fire ; what a new existence ! what a temptation above Lucifer's ! Would clod be anything but a clod if he could resist it? . . . Alas ! can we ring the bells backward ? Can we un- learn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science: but who shall beat the drum for its retreat? . . ." ^ Take the science of mechanical invention itself, engineer- ing ; what is its function, its relation to human welfare and progress? As I have said elsewhere, "Engineering means far more than carrying a transit or designing a steam shovel, constructing a new type of rein- forced concrete roof or discovering a new explosive. Mori- son tells us that nearly ninety years ago Tredgold defined civil engineering as the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man. Mori- son himself insists that the business of a civil engineer is ^ Everyman's ed. of the Letters, vol. ii, 288-9. THE TECHNICIANS OR INVENTIONISTS 183 " to design the tools by which the sources of power in nature are directed for the use of man." "But what uses, and for what man? Precisely because men had overlooked these pertinent questions John Stuart Mill uttered his famous doleful comment on the failure of machinery; "Hitherto it is questionable if the mechanical inventions have made lighter the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an in- creased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. . . . But they have not yet begun to eflfect those great changes in human destiny which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish." And after sixty years the cry is repeated by an English economist, who proclaimed recently: "Vain have been the strivings of the most gifted of men. The machines they have constructed have but created a new race of machine-slaves, and made it possible for an increasing proportion of civilized men to live by useless work, while liberating entirely from work, useful or useless, a limited leisure class which alone enjoys the fruits of the earth as multiplied and harvested by machinery. . . . Must it be said of civilized man that he can analyze the light of Sirius but cannot shelter all his children ? — that he can achieve scientific miracles but is baffled by the commonplace?" "We are assured that not only is machinery not neces- sarily progressive, but that it may actually condemn to utter ruin and degradation thousands of families. Only dullness of general perception and capitalistic inertia or conservatism hold back the development of the labor saving devices which might turn our whole industrial system topsy-turvy. A professor of physics announced recently that physics and chemistry might soon be expected to pro- duce nitrogen compounds that would put agriculture out of business and consign us all to cities. Engineering may have similar resources up its sleeve. "Only the social spirit and intelligence warmed with humanity can determine whether a given invention or art of saving shall result in bane or blessing. We withhold matches and scissors from babes. Perhaps a social view 184 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS of his profession may prompt the engineer to refuse to launch on its career a new machine which, however curious and interesting in itself, might curse rather than bless his fellows. The Connecticut Yankee, with his wooden nut- meg machine, was a clever engineer, perhaps, but a poor sort of citizen. Machine-making for machinery's sake is just as foolish and unproductive as the cry of art for art's sake. All the arts and all the sciences are human instru- ments for human purposes, and are to be judged solely by the sum of positive good they produce in terms of human welfare. "The same principle applies equally to systems of 'scientific management' — to 'efficiency engineering.' The efficiency expert who fails to take account of all the factors concerned in his scheme — laborers, managers, capitalists — may construct a very pretty but also very inhuman, very dangerous, and in the long run very uneconomical machine." ^ While in no wise sympathizing with Rousseau's extrava- gant claim that "it is iron and grain which have civilized man and ruined the human race," or that inventions have ruined the race because of the surplus of time and goods which they created and which were transmuted into leisure and new commodities, which in turn softened bodies and minds and strengthened the tendency toward inequality which had already set in ; while discarding these notions as largely fantastic, it is still legitimate to conclude that the tool, the invention, brings about social change only if intelligence is sufficiently developed to grasp its significance and to use it ; and if popular mores accept it and allow it to live. It contributes to real social progress only if accompanied by such a corresponding gain in intellectual and moral vision that its services may be made to over- balance its social costs. 1 << Socializing the Engineer," The Technograph, May, 1913, pp. 131-3. CHAPTER XI MONEY The invention of metallic money should be set down as one of the landmarks in social evolution. It permitted the transition of industrial organization from a natural to a money or credit basis. The substitution of a money for a natural economy released men from a variety of static per- sonal relations and gave greater flexibiHty to social organi- zation, by creating a stable measure of value and a durable medium of exchange. It hastened the development of economic interdependence and social individuality, which are marks of advancing civilization. In other words, the way was cleared for division and specialization of occupation and for the worker's transition from status to contract.^ But further than that, Professor Cunningham bases the "high ideals" of the Greek states and especially Athens upon this economic process : ''It was possible for the Athenians to cherish these high ideals, because they had taken a very important step in economic progress and had become habituated to the regu- lar use of money." ^ That is, money, like any other tool, saved time which could be capitalized for other and presumably higher ends ; it widened men's personal relations by the very imperson- ^ Cf. Gunton, Principles of Social Economy, chap, i, and other authors cited in the list of supplementary readings. ^ Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects, i., 73. 185 1 86 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ality of money transactions as compared with wages or other Hquidations in kind (cattle or other clumsy media of exchange). Modern opposition to the "truck system" of paying wages or to "welfare work" indicates how thoroughly the impersonality of a money wage system appeals to the worker. Men do not want orders on a company store or payment in rent-checks good for company tenements; they want money which will pass where they want it to go; they realize that the check or truck system spells subjection and further exploitation. They resent the too obvious paternalism of welfare work and say flatly that they prefer higher wages to g^innasiums, swimming pools, and tea rooms. Perhaps they are wrong. Perhaps they ought to realize that these welfare devices are really well meant and not at all mere substitutes for wage-justice. Perhaps we should censure the workpeople of Pullman for striking against their benefactor. But both Shakespeare's Lear and Mr. Pullman, whom Miss Jane Addams calls a modern Lear, made the mistake of using their resources to inflict their own personal whims upon their subordinates. This was an historical blunder ; both these kings forgot that their people had climbed beyond a mere natural economy of the patriarchal type ; and Pullman's car-builders struck a winning blow for the more democratic and independent money-wage system. But this explanation of progress must not be pushed too far. Here, as in other theories, where emphasis is laid on mere economic technique, the constant progress of ideas and feelings is obscured. A money economy is not some industrial Ding-an-sich, but represents a certain level of ideas and sentiments which really condition it. It is not a purely technical phenomenon, but implies a series of social institutions — state, classes, law, moral codes, — which MONEY 187 in turn connote a more or less highly developed level of intelligence.^ Moreover, nobody can fail to see that an industrial organization based merely on money relation- ships is not necessarily permanent, flexible, or sound. It is quite likely to degenerate into what Carlyle called the Cash-nexus, a state of pseudo-liberty, of that impersonality which thing bears to thing, but which robs and cheats man of his humanity. We are free to imagine that in the past as in the present the characteristic anonymity of money might serve equally well the fool and the wise man, Belial and the saint. ^ Schmoller, Grundriss der Volkswirtschaft, ii, 659. CHAPTER XII CAPITAL To what extent may increase in wealth, in the form of pro- ductive capital, be considered the measure and the means of progress ? It is unquestionable that mankind took an enor- mous inventive stride forward when our primitive forbears learned the art of saving, of storing up food, seed, capital, of discounting the present in favor of the future. How this habit was learned it is difficult to say. We are prone to affirm off-hand that experience teaches. But just what experience ? Many of the North American Indians within the past fifty years had not yet learned from experience, and sad experience, to lay up stores for a rainy day. In Colonial New England only the most skillful finesse of the Indian women saved the seed corn from the heedless bellies of their lords. Periodic famines and starvation occur in many contemporary retarded peoples, yet, great as their suffering is, they apparently are unable to put two and two together for the initial lesson in the mathematics of prudence. The aborigines of Tasmania are a characteristically improvident race, " For although dependent almost entirely upon their hunt- ing for subsistence, yet they will slaughter indiscriminately, long after they have supplied themselves with sufficient for their present use." ^ Father Le Jeune related of the Canadian Indians : ^ Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, 48. 188 CAPITAL 189 "I told them that they did not manage well, and that it would be better to reserve these feasts for future days, and in doing this they would not be so pressed with hunger. They laughed at me. 'To-morrow (they said) we shall make another feast with what we shall capture.' Yes, but more often they captured only cold and wind." ^ Of course, some individuals and some groups must have learned prudence and self-restraint or we should not be here to tell the tale. Hence we are not surprised to find that the Wanika of East Africa consider the destruction of a cocoa palm matricide, for it gives them food like a mother. The palm was early protected by a sort of inter-tribal law. A sidelight on the frugality and farsightedness of the Hopi is shown by their storage of a reserve supply of corn for two years. The aborigines of Victoria take great care of bird nests, sink wells, and protect the natural water holes against the encroachments of animals.^ Suffice it to say that there was no conscious prudential education, and only the crudest technical methods of preserving to-day's surplus of food and capital for to-morrow's needs. Only rarely do we encounter in savagery anything that could be called a warehouse or storeroom. But once they were devised, and once the concept of saving was grasped and sanctioned by the folkways, these ideas, like any tool, wrought a wonderful economy of time and strength. We are so used to the pantry or the corner grocery that it is almost inconceivable, unless we have roughed it or been a castaway on some desert island, how large a share of one's working hours can go into 1 Jesuit Relations, vi., 283. Cf. Curr, Australian Race, i, 82 ; von Rosen- berg, Geelvinkbaii, p. 88 ; Hoffman, on the Menomini Indians, Rep. Atner. Bur. Ethnology, 14: 287; Turner, on the Eskimo, Rep. Avier. Bur. Ethnology, II : 240 ; Niblock, on Haidah Indians, Smithsoniati Report, 1888, p. 277 -j Carr, Mounds of Mississippi, 522 ; Fothergill, Five Years in the Sudan, 64-5. 2 Lippert, KuUurgeschichie, i, 247, 249; Rohlfs, Afrikanischc Reiscn, 70; Hough, American Anthropologist, 10: 35; Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i, 143. I go THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the bare process of satisfying the belly. Let any one try a two days' diet of roots or shell-fish or tiny grass seeds, which he must himself dig or winnow, and he will soon grasp the limitations of a mere household or consumption econ- omy. He will understand Father Baegert's remark on the Lower California Indians : "The time of these people is chiefly taken up by the search for food and its preparation ; and if their physical wants are supplied, they abandon themselves entirely to lounging, chattering, and sleep." ^ We may admit, I suppose, that such forms of wealth spelled freedom to primitive men and released them from bondage to the dreadful uncertainties and vicissitudes of raw nature, without committing ourselves to the view that all increase of wealth is an unmixed blessing and a force for progress, or falling afoul of the poets and philosophers who describe conditions "where wealth accumulates and men decay." This will become evident if we enumerate some of the social effects o£ growth in wealth. Among the most obvious are the creation of new social classes, the breakdown of birth-castes, shifting the incidence of political power from the military or noble class to the property owners and capitaHst-producers. With these changes comes a redistri- bution of function between classes, for example, in the army : the soldiers are now drawn from the lower classes to fight battles for their wealthy overlords.^ New standards of morality and law grow up, property becomes sacred, and government a policeman to protect property; the virtues of order, saving, and thrift are preached and lauded. Lei- sure for the arts is released, for "conspicuous waste" hits upon the aesthetic as means for displaying itself. Mr. ' Nachrichten, translated for Smithsonian Report, 1863, p. 363. ^ See the expressive cartoon in Life, Dec. 14, 191 1. CAPITAL 1 91 Murdle cultivates the arts by patronizing the jewelers whose wares he spreads out on Mrs. Murdle's broad bosom to convince all the world that he is a success. Unless these vulgarities or excrescences of wealth are too obvious, re- ligion and popular philosophy are likely to be acquiescent and superficially optimistic.^ It should be perfectly apparent from this list that the distinction we made between social change and progress was valid and not mere hair splitting. For many of the social effects of wealth just noted — for instance, the new codes of morals, law, and religion — are changes which may or may not be for the better : they may even give a distinct set-back to real social progress. The generalization that growth in wealth is a social good requires extensive qualification. Indeed one is almost inclined to the cynical statement of the opposite extreme, that "nothing fails like success," and that no race or civilization has hitherto been able to survive luxury. Job intimated that it was a grave danger to have made gold one's hope or to have said to the fine gold, thou art my confidence. Here, of course, enters once more the question of the costs- of progress. President Wilson in his first inaugural address intimated that the United States has been paying too heavy costs for a too rapid growth in wealth. It is time, he urged, to slow up and look after the producers of wealth and the conditions under which it is pro- duced. Achievement is not progress : not mere increase of wealth but increased socialization of wealth (well-being) is desirable. Or, as a young Progressive puts it, what the people demand is not a trebled production of coal, not more smoke, not more ashes, but more heat ; not a statistical demonstration of rising national wealth, but distributed wealth, more economic satisfactions more widely distributed. ^ ^ Cf . Ross, Foundations of Sociology, 217 S. 2 Walter Weyl, The New Democracy, 145. 192 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Capital in the form of metallic treasure is often regarded as a sort of insurance fund against the day of battle. The policy of hoarding cash indemnities, as in the case of Prussia after the war of 1870, has been frequently and vigorously challenged as bad economics. The military wisdom of such a poHcy is perhaps equally questionable, as two historic cases seem to suggest : "Powerful as money is, it is not omnipotent ; the treasure of Darius and his hordes of tributaries could not resist Alexander, and Carthage could not maintain herself against the discipline and undaunted determination of the Romans. In military matters money may do much, but the struggle really lies between men." ^ We should add, however, that the struggle in its most real sense lies between organizations. German and British economic and social organization, not mere gold reserves, test their respective war strength. There is another reason why wealth taken just as it stands is not a test of real progress, and that is because wealth does not increase proportionately to increased pro- ductive capacity. Why? "Because," says Theodor Hertzka, "wealth does not consist in what can be produced, but in what is actually produced : the actual production, however, depends not merely upon the amount of productive power, but also upon the extent of what is required, not merely upon the possible supply, but also upon the possible demand : the current social arrangements, however, prevent the demand from increasing to the same extent as the productive capacity." ^ He might have made this point more convincing if he had added that increasing productive capacity does not express ^ Cunningham, Western Civilization, etc. i, 148. ^ Freeland, preface, p. xviii. CAPITAL 193 itself in proportionate increase of real wealth because so much creative energy goes into producing rubbish — stuff like Hodge's razors, made to sell and not to use or to last — and extravagant luxuries. Such a disproportionate share of economic energy is drained off into pseudo-pro- ductive channels that one of the first steps of a government in the throes of war must be to prohibit such useless employ- ments, or lay crushing taxes on luxuries. A glance at the English prohibited list of 191 6 is an eye-opener. Another fallacy connecting wealth with progress remains to be disposed of ; namely, that the organization of society for production of wealth makes for peace within and between nations. To Herbert Spencer we owe the familiar theory that the normal line of social development is the supplanting of the lower militaristic type of social organization by the industrial type, because industry is distinctly peace-loving, and because it requires not only domestic order, but also friendly osmosis between the nations for its supplies of raw materials, its interchange of technique, and its markets. So far as this theory goes it is sound. But if the Great War and other wars mean anything, Spencer left ofif just where the real problem begins. As Professor L. P. Jacks points out,^ the actual process of producing wealth works in favor of peace, but the wealth produced becomes a stimulus to war. We are in the habit of considering wealth, whether personal or national, as an insurance fund which ought to promote peace of mind and contentment. But, just as the rich must rent safe deposit boxes for their jewels or hire plain-clothes men to patrol their premises, and even then are in constant fear of being robbed, so nations with vast accumulations of wealth, where wealth getting is the approved mode of acti\ity, are a prey to fears and sus- picions, to envy and cupidity. Hence armaments, colonial ^ "War and the Wealth of Nations," All. Mo., September, 1915. o 194 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS conflicts, dollar-diplomacy, Welt-Politik, and all the rest of it. The whole horrible sequence seems to hinge upon the one initial blunder of making production an end instead of a means. From the ethical standpoint it is a misreading of social values. Since, then, wealth-producing may carry with it not progress but actual disintegration, and since it appears that the prime difficulty lies in too great concentration of social energies upon mere production for production's sake, the way of wisdom would seem to lead toward the pro- vision of other socially approved outlets for our energies and somewhat broader areas for expression and endeavor. Some economists have already begun to demand that more attention be given to the processes of distribution and con- sumption of wealth. At this point wealth might become a sure force for social progress, if the technique of distribution and consumption could be defined in terms of what we hold to be the true function of positive eugenics, namely, the creation of social opportunity for the vast amount of potential genius lying latent in the masses. Wealth pro- duced and consumed for such a purpose would create a culture whose victories would not spell hatred and devasta- tion but rather social solidarity and international peace. CHAPTER XIII DIVISION OF LABOR Division of labor or specialization of occupation is frequently accorded a predominant role in economic and social progress. One writer, indeed, goes so far as to define society as a group of men bound together by division of labor. ^ Plato, while making division of labor his point of departure in social analysis, clearly indicates the other elements in social life ; and modern sociologists tend to hold that specialization of occupation determines the character of society rather than actually makes it ; that is, it provides a means for social development, but does not of itself create or insure a society. Now, while division of labor is part of the industrial technique it is hardly to be reckoned in the Hst of human inventions, any more than the syllogism, memory, or spe- cialized bodily organs and functions are inventions. Occu- pations are distributed according to supposed fitness ; in rudimentary societies according to very obvious possession of special skill. But the possession of superior abihty or skill is not the result of invention but of happy variations, superior endowment, or opportunities. Nor does human society arise and continue merely because of the association of several differently endowed individuals who agree to pool their specialized talents. Specialization of occupation, let ^ Sacher, Gesellschaftskunde als Naturwissenschaft, S. 7. 19s 196 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS US repeat, is neither the occasion of society nor its funda- mental fact or mode of expression. There may well be social life quite outside all division of labor. Social inte- gration must always have attained considerable dimensions before anything that might be called specialization of occupation sets in. To take only a single illustration, means of communication and exchange must be developed before specialization can become effective or even worth while. But once the principle begins to operate it opens the way to an increasingly broad, supple, and productive industrial organization within human groups. Specialization of occupation is usually unconscious at first, and grows out of such natural social divisions as sex and age groups. These elementary distinctions compound themselves with observed differences in size, strength, intelligence, and experience to produce occupational groups. Selective experience tends to pass on through social heredity the lessons in efficiency won by these early, almost instinct- ive experiments. One of the first of these lessons was the value of specialized intelligence in production and prepara- tion of food. This was and remained for ages woman's field. Women have contributed to human progress not only by virtue of their inventions ^ (agriculture, textiles, etc.), but by their cultivation of routine, regularity, steadi- ness, application, and purposive foresight, qualities at once both cause and result of specialized occupations. Conserv- atism is as necessary to social life as nitrogen is to the air we breathe. This conservation is the outcome, at least in part, of the steadying life of woman. The adventurous radical element in social evolution may be traced also in part to specialization of occupation by men. War and ^ See Mason, Woman's Share in Primitive Culture; Lippert, GcschicJite der Familie, 31. On the disciplinary and educative effects in general of occupations see P. Descamps, La Science Sociale, November, 1913, p. 39, etc. DIVISION OF LABOR 1 97 hunting are more stimulating than planting corn or suckling babies. They enlarge the area of mental contact and break the dull, stupid monotony of drudgery. They also beget new forms of discipline and cooperation, valuable for social integration and advance. It has also been suggested that intermediate sexual t3^pes, particularly feminized males, have by accepting specialized occupations created new skills and new social classes. To them are ascribed a con- siderable share in the early progress of religion, art, and science, and in the addition of the priest, the diviner, the prophet, the medicine man, the artist, the poet to social structure.^ Hence division of labor has stimulated advances not only in the practical arts of hfe but also in the reach and elaboration of man's intellect and aesthetic capacity. Moreover, whether due to favorable environment or to special race aptitude, or otherwise, the principle of special- ization of occupation holds as well between social groups as between individuals and classes within a given group. Im Thurn says that there exists among the Guiana Indians a rough system of division of labor between the tribes and that this serves not only the purpose of supplying all of them with better made articles, but also brings the different tribes together and spreads among them ideas and news of general interest. Each tribe has some manufacture peculiar to itself, and its members visit other tribes, often hostile, for the purpose of exchanging the products of their own labor for such as are produced by the other tribes. These trading Indians are allowed to pass unmolested through an enemy's country.^ The primitive prototype of the peddler-gossip is illustrated by these same Guiana folk. ^ See Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk, especially chap. iii. The documentary evidence is of interest regardless of whether we accept the author's conclusions. 2 Among the Indians of Guiana, chap, xiv ; cf. Mason, Origins of Invention, 364-S. 198 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ''When living along the Macusi," says Im Thurn, "I was often amused by a number of those Indians rushing into my house . . . who with bated breath, half in joy, half in terror, used to point through the window to some party of their enemies, the Arecunas, coming with cotton balls and blow-pipes for exchange. It is these traders who carry with them the latest news." ^ Such customs lead easily to "peaceful access" to sources of such common necessities as flint, salt, water, timber, and finally to more highly generalized peaceful relations. The principle of division of labor is, however, a principle of progress only within certain limits. In so far as it tends to fix inequalities of social status it is a source of weakness. Economic Hterature abounds with protests against the loss of industrial skill which comes from reducing the worker to a mere "hand" who must perform year in and year out a routine task which represents only a tiny fraction of a com- plete manufacturing process. Much of the friction between labor unions and employers over the use of apprentices reduces to the demand of union men that apprentices shall really be taught the trade and not a single phase of it.^ Continuation schools are broached, partly at least, to over- come just this tendency to over-specialization on fragments of trade technique. Fortunately, also, a like reaction has set in against over-specialization in scientific research and higher education. But from another standpoint this specialization of occu- pation might easily proceed to such a point as to become a positive social menace. The guilds and crafts of the Middle Ages lent themselves to selfish monopoly and exploitation * Op. ciL, p. 271. See Federici, Lois dii Progres, ii, 146-7, for a generaliza- tion of such facts into an historical law. 2 For an admirable exposition of the human costs of too great division of labor under "Scientific Management" see J. A. Hobson, Work and Wealth, chap, vi-vii. DIVISION OF LABOR 199 of vested advantages. Indeed, it was the reaction against the constricting economic and social effects of their atomistic policy that led to their ultimate suppression in favor of free industry. Ferrero notes the same process in Egypt just before the beginning of our era. '' The old and glorious monarchy of the Ptolemies was in its last agony. Division of labor, the result of a high state of civilization, had been driven so far in Egypt as to quench every spark of social and national unity. Trades, professions, famihes, and individuals thought solely of their own interest and their own pleasure. Appalling selfishness and invincible indif- ference to anything but their own immediate concerns isolated social groups in every class. "^ Most of the resent- ment of the citizen towards labor unions and employers' associations in these days comes from the recognition of the obvious fact that both are attempting to exploit their syndicated advantage. The forgotten third party, the unorganized public, is caught between the upper and nether millstones of this inter-guild warfare. Syndicalism, which to some minds spells the end of this industrial anarchy, is simply the principle of guild-exploita- tion raised to the wth degree, a dream of an impossible social fragmentation, as H. G. Wells puts it. Even the more advanced syndicalists themselves perceive this and are getting away from their earlier dreams of industry organized on the basis of mutually exclusive trade interests and control. For the slightest shadow of success, these exclusive groups would have to submit to some central, representative, regulative council. But the fundamental difficulty with syndicalism is not its theory of direct action, nor the difficulty of carrying on industry upon a purely democratic basis : its real difficulty is ethical. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, probably the best Enghsh authorities ^ Greatness and Decline of Rome, vol. iii, p. 241. 200 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS on modern labor movements, make this point very clear: the basic fallacy of syndicalism is its grounding of society upon mutual rivalry, hostihty, envy, and hatred, instead of upon community of interests, fellowship, and love. Social reconstruction must proceed not along lines of craft interests but of community of service, neighborliness, and willingness to subordinate oneself to the welfare of the whole.^ No scheme of industrial reorganization can hope for the ghost of a chance to succeed if it does not show some pretty evident promise of more highly developed moral values than those which hold under our present system. That vague something which we still call the general welfare, is at least so far formulated in the public mind as to preclude any superficial change of masters and owners of industry that does not carry with it an advance not only in material, but equally in moral values. We may safely say, then, that progressive division of labor furnishes the means for great social change; but whether that change be trans- muted into progress depends upon the motives of the members of the disparate industrial groups and upon the social control that can be brought to bear upon them in the direction of conscious unity for conscious social ends. In other words, it depends upon the development of rules of the game, just rules, moral rules, if you will, for the guidance of members of these separate branches and twigs of industry in the conserving of their mutual interests, and for the ad- justment of relations between the various branches to the end that the industrial organism may be a sound living tree, not a dangerous bunch of rotten branches. A rational social polity will, in short, encourage by all legitimate means the division and specialization of occupa- ^ What Syndicalism Means, published as a supplement to The Crusade, Aug., 1912. DIVISION OF LABOR 201 tion so long as the process really results in division of labor and not divisions of laborers ; that is to say, so long as it does not foster strongly marked castes or social strata based on occupation ; and so long as it holds in check the tendency of tightly organized crafts or guilds to exploit the general public for their own particular benefit. But in no event can we trust social progress to a laissez-faire policy with regard to labor "interests." Only education and disci- pline can secure from them the fullest advantage to the general welfare. CHAPTER XIV THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY It remains now to examine the general doctrine known as the economic interpretation of history and its bearing on social progress. We are accustomed to meeting this doctrine in its extreme form in socialist propaganda. But it is by no means confined to the sociahsts. A recent writer on vocational education is no less extreme: "The evolution of industry is the evolution of humanity." In the writings of Marx and Engels we find the doctrine that on the organization of the forces of production depends so- cial organization in all its multiplicity. "The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life, and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure : that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders, is dependent upon what is produced, how it is pro- duced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and pohtical revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in man's better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the eco- nomics of each particular epoch." ^ ^ Friedrich Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific, chaps, ii-iii. Cf . for a statement of the same proposition in almost identical language, Engels' preface to the English translation of the Communist Manifesto, li 202 THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 203 Marx and Engels have not lacked for American disciples to popularize their doctrines. Mr. A. M. Simons, for in- stance, in the preface to his Social Forces in American History says : "Changes in the industrial basis of society — inventions, new processes, and combinations and methods of producing and distributing goods — create new interests with new social classes to represent them. These improvements in the technique of production are the dynamic element that brings about what we call progress in society." ^ Perhaps, after the Communist Manifesto, Mr. W. J. Ghent states as vigorously as any one the economic basis of morals and the impotence of ideals against the economic motive. ''That idealistic or spiritual forces are part of the causa- tion in many of our acts and behefs, that they are apparently the entire causation in other acts and behefs, is not to be denied. Nevertheless, there are two pertinent facts not to be lost to view. First, that all of our idealistic or spiritual conceptions (apart from conceptions of the supernatural) \iaxQ their origin in past or present social needs, and these in turn have their base in economic needs ; and, second, that everywhere and always the economic environment limits the range and effect of the spiritual forces. . . . The prevailing mode of production determines in large part what is moral and what immoral, and the ruling class are always the formulators of the code."^ Lest it appear that these quotations are the rash ohiter dicta of untutored radicals it might be well to compare 1 Pp. vii, 69. a. G\\tni, Mass and C/aj^, pp. 22-3. Carver generalizes on this point in the following dogmatic statement : "... the ultimate basis of all social conflict is found in economic scarcity of one form or another " {Essays in Social Justice, 35 ; this is also the substance of chap. ii). 2 Mass and Class, pp. 15, 16, 17, 18-19, 29. Cf. for other socialistic expres- sions of the same idea : Loria, The Economic Foundations of Society; M. H. Fitch, The Physical Basis of Mind and Morals; Kautsky, Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History; L. Boudin, Socialism and War. 204 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS them with the conclusions of men recognized as eminently safe and sober. "The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits than by their opinions," said Mr. Lecky. He cites the Romans as an example of how from their military pursuits military mores were set up long before the introduction of philosophic systems of morality. Again, he attempts to show that truthfulness is not a virtue of nature nor of education, but is industrial.^ Parenthetically one might ask Mr. Lecky to explain why it was necessary to have a special merchant's code in the earlier days of European business, or what was the significance of the principle of caveat emptor, if truthfulness was preeminently the commercial virtue. At best business veracity seems to be prompted more by fear of loss than by essential love of truth. From no less an authority than the learned Rector of the University of Brussels comes equally radical doctrine. He has the biological bias, but with Spencer's notion of social evolution as an organic law, combines ideas that sound unmistakably like economic determinism : "It would not be rash to affirm — basing one's affirma- tion upon acquired inductions and experiments — that the structure and functioning of every society are determined in general by the economic structure and functioning, and primarily by the laws of their economic circulation." ^ For at least half a century an economic interpretation of the United States Constitution has been accepted by reputable American scholars. Charles Francis Adams, as early as 1856, announced that the Constitution was the work of commercial people in the seaport towns, planters of the slave-holding states, officers of the revolutionary ' History of European Morals, i. 158, 236, 145. ^De Greef, Les Lois Sociologiques, 147. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 205 army, and property holders everywhere.^ Professor Beard is the most outspoken contemporary exponent of that view. "No less an important person than Washington," he writes, "assigned the satisfaction of the claims of the public creditors as the chief reason for the adoption of the Con- stitution. . . . This stubbornly fought battle over the Constitution was in the main economic in character, because the scheme of government contemplated was designed to effect, along with a more adequate national defence, several commercial and financial reforms of high signifi- cance, and at the same time to afford an efficient check upon state legislatures that had shown themselves prone to assault acquired property rights, particularly of personalty, by means of paper money and other agrarian measures. . . . That other concUtions, such as the necessity for stronger national defence, entered into the campaign is, of course admitted, but with all due allowances, it may be truly said that the Constitution was a product of a struggle between capitalistic and agrarian interests." Professor Beard sees also in Jeffersonian Democracy merely the political expression of the agrarian discontent with a government which was building up a moneyed aristocracy. Its supporters came from the farmers, smaller tradesmen and mechanics.^ In the following chapter some critical comment will be offered upon the attempt to reduce politics to a mere phase of economic life ; but for the moment let the theory stand in this unabashed form. We only need to substitute Professor Sumner's phrase *Ufe conditions' for the cruder concept of 'the prevailing mode of production' to bring the dicta of Lecky into close * The Works of John Adams, vol. i, p. 441. ^ C. A. Beard, Economic Origins of Jcfersonian Democracy, 2-4, 466-7. Cf. his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 296, etc. See also Walter Lippman, New Republic, February 19, 1916, p. 64: Rabbeno, The American Commercial Policy, 292 ff. 2o6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS parallelism with the Marxianists. The leading motive of Sumner's monumental exposition of the 'folkways' is that the mores have followed the changes in life conditions, have reacted on the current faiths and philosophies, and produced ethical notions to justify the mores themselves. He de- clares flatly that we live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies, "the ethical poHcy taught in the books and the schools, and the success policy"; and that the success policy is the determinant. In other words, mankind is incurably pragmatic (in a narrow sense of the word), for whatever works is right. Here again, we have a searching criticism of ideals. "Wilberforce," he declares, "did not overthrow slavery. Natural forces reduced to the service of man and the dis- covery of new land set men ' free ' from great labor, and new ways suggested new sentiments of humanity and ethics. The mores changed and all the wider deductions in them were repugnant to slavery." Again : "We can find all kinds of forces in history except ethical forces. . . . The ethical forces are figments of speculation." ^ Beyond question, self-maintenance or provision for life needs was primitive man's primary interest. But does this mean that things were not tilings to the savage, but only things-in-relation-to-his-stomach? Is the food-quest his first interest? Probably so, the closer he approaches to his simian ancestors. But even at these lowly stages the claims of sex, play, and vanity were scarcely less im- perious. In the satisfaction of these desires, which con- stitute the sum of early well-being, three elements are involved : (i) conquest of nature, through (2) ap- ^ Folkways, pp. 166, t,:^, 114, 163, 475-6. Cf. Crozier, Civilization and Progress, 386, 395, etc., for a very vigorous statement of a similar thesis, viz., that since things in this world make their own relations and moralities, the material and social conditions, are, if not the sole cause, at least the con- trolling factor in civilization. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 207 propriate social relations, permitting (3) individual culture. Though the three orders of facts are closely interwoven and often coterminous, it is certain that in primitive society emphasis was laid upon the first two of these categories. Many observers have made the mistake of calling the savage indifferent and inattentive. Now, as a matter of fact, he is no more indifferent than you or I ; he is only interested in other things. Father Baegert waxed pathetic because the Lower California Indians looked upon the "most splendid ecclesiastic garments, embroidered with gold and silver, with as much indifference as though the material consisted of wool and the galoons of common flax. They would rather see a piece of meat than the rarest manufactures of Milan and Lyons, and resemble, in that respect, a certain Canadian who had been in France, and remarked, after his return to Canada, that nothing in Paris had pleased him better than the butcher-shops." ^ Another missionary writing a little later of the Delaware Indians, says : "If you expect them to value or admire any art, it must have reference to hunting, fishing, or fighting. To these you may fix their attention, and nothing gratifies their curiosity to a higher degree. They wish immediately to imitate it." ^ The Polar Eskimos strikingly illustrate this selection of categories of well-being and activity. Knud Rasmussen in his fascinating and sympathetic study of this people ob- serves : "The harsh natural conditions which render the existence of the Polar Eskimos an ever-ending struggle, quickly teach ^ Nachrichten, p. 378. 2 Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America, 82 ; cf. Crantz, History of Greenland (London, 1 767), i, 135. 2o8 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS them to view life from its practical side : in order to live, I need, first and foremost, food. ... All his thoughts are thus centered on hunting expeditions, seal-catching, fishing, food. Beyond this, thought is as a rule associated with care. Once, when out hunting, I asked an Eskimo who seemed to be plunged in reflection, ''What are you standing there thinking about?" He laughed at my question, and said : " Oh ! it is only you white men who go in so much for thinking ; up here we only think of our flesh-pots and of whether we have enough or not for the long Dark of the winter. If we have meat enough, then there is no need to think. I have meat and to spare ! " I saw that I had insulted him by crediting him with thought. On another occasion I asked an unusually intelligent Eskimo, Panigpak, who had taken part in Peary's last North Polar Expedition : " Tell me, what do you suppose was the object of all your exertions ? What did you think when you saw the land disappear behind you, and you found yourself out on drifting ice-floes?" "Think?" said Panigpak astonished, '' I did not need to think : Peary did that ! " " ^ Savage notions of the "other world" furnish further evidence that no small part of the primitive Man's universe revolved around his belly as an axis. Into his heaven went none of the finer ethical values, and only whatever of crude morality was carried over from the folkways of this world. However much idealization crept in, it was almost without exception couched in material terms. The spirit world of the Tuscarora Indian, for example, "lies a great way off in this world which the sun visits in his ordinary course." There the Indian expects to have "the enjoyment of hand- some young women, great store of deer to hunt, never meet with hunger, cold, or fatigue, but everything to answer his expectation and desire." This is their 'heaven'; but "for those Indians that are lazy, thievish among themselves, bad hunters, and no warriors, nor of much use to the nation, ^ Tlte People of the Polar North, 1 17-18. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OE HISTORY 209 to such they allot, in the next world, hunger, cold, troubles, old ugly women for their companions, with snakes and all sorts of nasty victuals to feed on." ^ The Heaven of the Greenlanders is perhaps even a more perfect case in point. ^ The range of primitive life-interests strikes us moderns as pathetically narrow, and the early struggle for existence as painful and stultifying in the extreme. Yet from that very concentration of effort upon the food-quest have come part at least of present day institutions and virtues. Not all, as we shall see, but some. It worked at least in two significant ways. First, it selected individuals of superior intelligence and became in turn a great stimulus to mental development. There would seem to have been a sort of ' rent of ability' even in remote ages, and this rent of ability was capitalized for group welfare. Second, it wrought social coherence. We noted in discussing the primitive sense of personality how the individual was subordinated to the group. Hence it will not do to over-emphasize the role of the highly endowed individual in the primitive struggle for existence. Sumner hits much nearer the truth in his demonstration of how this struggle forced social organization through cooperation, a vastly more significant element in human progress.^ It matters little that he called this form of organization 'antagonistic cooperation.' The point remains that there was organization, that it proceeded from the exigencies of the food-quest, and that it made possible such a control of nature as would provide the muni- tions for struggle up to a higher plane. To be sure other primary impulses to social organization existed from the beginning. Ties of blood and family, associations for war ^ John Lawson, History of North Carolina (London, 1714), 295., ^ Crantz, History of Greenland, I, 201. ^Folkways, 16. 2IO THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS and peace and for control of other-worldly powers loom prominent. From them we derive the cult of the gods, custom, education, art, medicine, and the institutions of law, morals and religion. Yet all these institutions affect and are affected in return by economic exigencies. The development of human marriage and the family still further illustrates the economic basis of social life and insti- tutions. The family, as I have shown elsewhere, is a strictly pragmatic institution both in origin and develop- ment. It is rooted in physiology, economics, and the mores. ''Its origin was prosaic enough. ... It was simply and solely an improved bread-winning and breeding device, whereby man might increase his brain capacity through economic leisure. ... Its origin is to be found in the necessities of infancy and the food-quest rather than in the pleasures of marital companionship. Love played little or no part in it. Its forms and above all its duration are to be ascribed to other contingencies, notably property, or force on the part of the male." ^ On the island of Timor the word for marriage is haafoli, which means to buy something. Practically all savage peoples pass through the stage of wife purchase. And there is considerable evidence to show that the very obvious mercantilism connected with international exchanges of fortunes for titles is not altogether unknown in the middle and lower classes. But apart from this, statistics show a rather remarkable correlation between marriage rates and such economic phenomena as the price of grain and other staples, the totals of export and import trade, crises, and ■ ^ The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, pp. ii, 18-22, 140, etc. Cf. Ernst Grosse, Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirtschaft. This study is the most elaborate and uncompromising exposition of economic determinism in the field of domestic institutions. But the reader should be on guard against numerous over-statements and strained deductions. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 211 industrial depression. Indeed, Dr. Farr called marriage rates the "barometer of national prosperity." ^ The dependence of education upon industrialism may be taken as a final illustration of the economic thesis. We have already shown how the storing up of capital and the inven- tion of a money economy released a certain amount of leisure which might be apphed to cultural ends. We might put the case much more strongly. The transition from a mere consumption or hand-to-mouth economy to an economy of production for exchange and trade revolutionizes education. We could hardly be charged with overstatement if we said that education lags behind the march of commerce and industry. Industry, commerce, and religion are organized on a world scale, but only the faintest attempts have been made to do so with education. Universal race congresses, international conferences on science, hygiene, social welfare, etc., and international exchanges of professors and students are only crude beginnings. While it is true that education helped to bring about the Industrial Revolution, it is equally true that the Industrial Revolution with its staggering gains in productive power, its heaping up of capital and consumable goods, its develop- ment of cities and its demand for more intelligent labor, has furthered the progress of education. Out of this indus- trial commotion has come social progress along two lines ; namely, conservation of the worker through sanitary meas- ures (including restraints upon the labor of children and women) ; and the beginnings of a definite system of na- tional, universal primary education. The one aims to prolong the laborer's life, the other to increase his efficiency. But is this educational gain substantial? Is it more * Vital Statistics, pp. 67-70. The U. S. Bureau of the Census worked out very clearly the depressing effect upon the marriage rate in this country wrought by the commercial "hard times" of 1893-94 and 1904. See Ccfi- sus Bulletin 96, 1908, p. 8. 212 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS than a mere optimistic suspicion ? The economic historian answers, yes. Granting all the disadvantages of town life, the high rents, bad air, congestion, even slums, it is superior to country life as now organized ; largely because of superior opportunities for self-improvement, imaginative stimulus, and satisfaction of social and intellectual aspirations. The difference in mental caliber between a town-bred artisan and an agricultural laborer in either England or America may be taken not unfairly as the gauge of progress in in- tellect and culture which has paralleled in time and area the industrial revolution. The correlation here between economic and educational advance if not mathematically proven is at least highly probable.^ The same process of adjustment between education and industry may be observed in the Orient. Confucianism set the mold for centuries of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean thought. Why? Because, we are assured, the economic system to which this education comported did not change. It is suggested that Confucius personally had more sympathy with power than with weakness, and would overlook wickedness and oppression in authority rather than resentment and revenge in men who were suffering from them. He could conceive of nothing so worthy of condemnation as to be insubordinate. Because he was thus the spokesman of a ruhng class with its mores and economic policies he was frequently partial in his judgments on what happened to rulers, and unjust in his estimates of the conduct of their subjects.^ Deliverance came not through a new rehgion or a new philosophy, but through ^ Cf. Thorold Rogers, Industrial and Commercial History of England, 40; Cunningham and McArthur, Outlines of English Industrial History, 229, 234; H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay, -jq; Theodore Roosevelt, Special Message as Preface to Report of the Country Life Commission, igog. ^ Cf. Legge, Prolegomena on the Chun Chin, p. 50; Lewis, Educational Conquest of the Far East, p. 2 1 . THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 213 new trade relations. Merchants from Holland introduced Western learning into Japan about 1630. These merchant- teachers were resorted to by young Japanese at Nagasaki. Sakuma embodied the new zeal for Occidental institutions and was assassinated for his pains in 1864. Perry, Harris, and Lord Elgin on their commercial missions opened the way for the new education. As we shall see later the process completed itself by reacting on the economic system and produced a real industrial revolution from which Japan has not yet emerged, and which China is just entering. According, then, to the economic theory of social life, social progress in its sum and in its most important elements is the product of the play of economic forces. Moral codes, ideals, the family, education, religion, and social structure in general, all alike hark back to some form of the food- quest. According to this view the first arts were economic, and these primal arts have never ceded place to any others. The social question is and always has been primarily a ques- tion of nutrition, and particularly the methods of producing and distributing food. Progress means in the last analysis an enlargement of the sources of subsistence, and history in its highest significance is the story of this material conquest. CHAPTER XV THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY {Continued) Criticism Any just criticism of the economic interpretation of history must be prefaced by two qualifications. In the first place we must credit many adherents to this view with more moderation than they are usually believed to possess. For they freely admit that the economic condition is only the basis of history not the sole element in shaping it. That is, to take a mechanical analogy, while other motives or institutions may serve as governors to the social engine, the economic interest is the steam that really makes it go, that makes it a machine rather than a heap of junk. Some economic determinists, loyal socialists, and even leaders of the socialist party, make still greater concessions. For example, Benoit Maloin frankly declares: "Les facteurs de revolution sont non seulement economiques, mais encore religieux, philosophiques, politiques, senti- mentaux, esthetiques." And even so ardent a believer as Mr. Ghent does not require us to believe that men's motives and ideals are consciously economic. Indeed he expressly says that men give themselves up to wounds and death in the struggle for foreign markets, under the belief that they are impelled by patriotism or religion.^ He tilts with ^ Mass and Class, 12-14. 214 THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 215 apparent vigor at those who exaggerate the influence of the economic factor : for not every historic episode is reducible to mere economics. An unfortunate attempt of this kind, he points out, is the ascription of an ulterior economic motive to the agitation in the United States for the Cuban War. Yet he hedges with the suggestion that it happened there was no adverse economic motive prevalent at the time sufificiently strong to obstruct the exercise of this altruistic motive.^ Even Mr. Rubinow, polemic Marxianist that he is, admits that "in the very nature of things, the doctrine of economic interpretation of history does not admit of proof. It is a Weltanschauung . . . and we cannot conceive a Weltan- schauung that can be proven." ^ It is obvious that such concessions destroy absolutely the characteristic marks of the economic view of history and social evolution ; for they open the door to all manner of interpretations, and even to the overbalancing of the economic by a massing of other factors. This is particu- larly disturbing to those who have been led to pin their faith to this view as to a religious dogma. For the very essence of dogmatic religion is its uncompromising ad- herence to a principle which is the all-suflEicient explanation of human life and its manifold problems, and which if accepted without qualification or reserve offers a complete plan of salvation. The inference here is that since socialists have begun to qualify the dogma of economic determinism, they no longer consider it an indispensable element in socialism considered either as a religion or as a body of economic and political theory. ^ Ibid., p. 24. The cloven hoof reappears in the statement farther along (p. 29) that "though the Cuban war began and was prosecuted in an out- burst of humane sentiment, it is probable that in its continuation, for the holding of the Philippines, economic considerations dominated the adminis- tration." 2 Was Marx Wrong, p. 15. 2l6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS In the second place, we may with equal frankness admit that the economic activities still consume the largest share of our time and energies. Even Emerson confessed that his belly was his master. We are still in the flesh. And much as we should like to consider the lilies how they grow, and to imitate them in their apparently joyous, care-free, vegetative career, few of us yet have the faith to try their methods. The protagonists of economic determinism, drunk as with new wine, have been fascinated by the brutal direct- ness and novelty of the theory. Their opponents have been terrified and all but paralyzed also by its utter disregard and contempt for well-consecrated tradition. The Marx- ians never weary of describing how modern economic thought has dislodged an almost incurably idealistic con- cept of history. Scientific Socialism is supposed to have driven idealism from its last refuge, the philosophy of history. But the materiafistic concept of history and human life is not really new. It is essentially primitive, because it is the most obvious. Any ethnographer knows that it covers the easiest element to grasp in the life of savages. Their world of feelings and ideas is incomparably more difficult to enter. I do not mean to intimate that the materialistic interpretation is a savage philosophy and therefore ipso facto untrue. I mean merely that it is not at all new (for as we have already seen, savages think largely in terms of material satisfactions) ; and therefore by virtue of its newness alone it cannot claim superior truth or accuracy. When we come to examine this doctrine critically and in detail, four serious defects crop out. They are : (i) faulty historical perspective; (2) neglect of the biological or racial factors ; (3) an almost complete overlooking of the psychological elements in the social process ; (4) incomplete sociological analysis. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 217 The art of comparative ethnography and the genetic phase of sociology were scarcely born when the bases of this economic philosophy were laid. But in the last fifty years a great mass of evidence has been brought to light which bears heavily upon our problem. One of the first effects of these facts was the overthrow of the old naive behef that mankind have all come through successively and without exception the stages of hunting, herding, and agriculture. There has been no necessary sequence here, just as there has been no absolutely uniform sequence in religious or family forms. Another assumption demolished was the belief that other elements of culture vary directly with the economic factor. But many peoples have been found whose economic hfe is cast in molds ranging all the way from simple hunting and fishing up to the lower forms of agriculture, yet whose culture in other respects is remark- ably uniform. Professor Steinmetz has ably demonstrated how a classification of social types arranges itself into a progressive series when the predominant character of their intellectual hfe is the basis of comparison ; and also how this progressive series is broken across, not paralleled, by another series of types based on the general character of economic life.^ The lack of symmetry between these two series indicates an important x unexplained by facts of economic organization. But suppose we inspect history from the angle of social evolution or progress. By hypothesis economic progress ought to spell social progress, or at least social evolution. Now, to come at the matter concretely, in what is economic progress really supposed to consist? Turn back to the typical economist's analysis of a progressive society (Pro- ^ S. R. Steinmetz, Classification des types sociales, Annee Sociologique, ill, pp. 82-143. 2l8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS fessor Clark, ante, p. 1 23) . Compare that analysis with the other indices of progress noted in the same chapter. Its painful meagerness is apparent. Ask yourselves the ques- tion : Would the literal fulfillment of those economic terms — and they are liberal terms — constitute satisfaction of the whole range and promise of human life ? These are neces- sary terms ; they perhaps are the bridge thrown across the chasm which man must pass in his ascent from the clay to divinity. These things spell wealth. But as the elder texts on political economy used to tell us there are some things which are not wealth but which may be better than wealth. What are the means of economic progress? Professor Schmoller analyzes them into four : (i) certain psychologic- economic premises ; (2) technique ; (3) increase of popula- tion ; (4) storing up of capital.^ It is evident that not one of these is wholly economic. Economic progress demands a large well-knit population. But no mere economic interest will incline large bodies of people to reside per- manently, peaceably, and healthily together. Moreover, a long previous social discipline — largely political, religious, moral, educational — is the prerequisite to such intensive group life as highly developed industrial organization de- mands. The denser a population the greater the demand for mutual regard and considerateness. All of these economic terms are only superficial concepts. Increasing needs, technical progress, denser population, larger pro- duction, all these, says Schmoller, are only externals ; progress really rests on the total development of mankind, though most intimately bound up with development in the direction of greater economic capacities and virtues and the creation of larger, more complex, and better regulated social- industrial organs and institutions. For this development ^ Crundriss, etc. ii, 653. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 219 there is needed not only an elite already capable of expert leadership, but also the possibility of education and advance- ment for all the other members of the community.^ That is to say, not only economic interdependence and high specialization and complexity in the industrial regime, but also some elasticity in the personal factors in industry, some means of free circulation of goods and men, are necessary to transform economic development into social progress ; and the means for securing such social elasticity are by no means wholly economic.^ Suppose we look at another phase of history, namely, history as past politics, and search out the economic im- plications. Unfortunately, there is altogether too much evidence at times of unholy alliances between economic interests and politics. But that in itself does not warrant the conclusion that all politics is past economics. Indeed, the reverse seems nearer the truth. Economic progress fre- quently lags behind political advance. Times of political development through wars, conquests, or internal solidarity usually are followed, not preceded, by periods of intense economic activity. SchmoUer goes so far as to declare that industrial advance comes usually a full generation or two in the wake of political movement. Thus the indus- trial rise of Greece succeeded the Persian wars ; that of Rome appeared between the conquest of central Italy and the end of the Punic wars ; that of France after centrali- zation under Louis XI, Louis XIV, and Napoleon I ; that of Holland after the Wars for Independence against Spain ; that of England after Elizabeth, Cromwell, William of Orange, and the Napoleonic wars ; that of Italy and Ger- many after their unification through the fierce struggles of 1859-70.^ We might also add that the gigantesque in- * Ibid., ii, 654. ^ Cf. Macgregor, Evolution of Industry, pp. 54-61. ^Grundriss, ii, 675. 2 20 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS dustrialism of the United States appeared after the Civil War. Much as we Americans have been taught to hate cen- trahzation and absolutism, we have to admit that a strong central government, even though absolute and despotic like those of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Louis XIV, and Riche- lieu, is a force for progress towards modern nationahsm, which alone could have given rise to modern economic institutions. European state building of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, together with mercantilism, paved the way for the industrial revolution. And both were based on education. It was precisely during this period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century that printing, literature, schools, and secular as well as religious propa- ganda created unified bodies of thought, pubhc opinion, real organic social unities. Just this process of more intense socialization was necessary to further pohtical and indus- trial advance. And, through it all, the head and the soul are no less involved than the belly. The transition from household or village economy, like the transition from a natural to a money economy, is possible only when preceded or accompanied by changes in law, government, morals, and intelligence. Modern money, for example, is in no uncer- tain sense a governmental institution. Similar discrepancies occur if we envisage history in terms of educational movements. We have already shown how education is dependent upon economic processes. But it is no less true that economic progress depends upon im- proved education. Hints of this dependence have ap- peared throughout the preceding discussion. But it is worth while to labor the point if for no other reason than to demonstrate the complexity and interdependency of social activities. Arnold Toynbee pointed out four causes of the progress THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 221 of the English working classes during the nineteenth cen- tury : (i) Free Trade, permitting cheap and steady prices of food, and steady employment and wages ; (2) Factory Legislation ; (3) Trades-unions ; (4) Cooperative Societies.^ Three out of these four causes are dependent unreservedly upon education. The chief hindrance to the spread of cooperative enterprise is the lack of definite training for cooperators. Toynbee recognized this and told his work- ingmen friends that plain truth. The same applies no less to the spread of disciplined trades-unionism. The chief reason why the class of casual labor catches the dregs of the labor market is its unorganized character. And the chief reason why casual labor is probably the most resistant element in the problem of poverty is that it is too ignorant, too untrained, too inefificient to organize itself or be organ- ized. The third cause, factory legislation, was if anything more of an educational than an economic or sanitary cam- paign, especially in its attacks on child labor. ^ Indeed, the economists are beginning to stress more and more the economic role of popular education. One of the most orthodox and most influential of modern political economists went out of his way to demonstrate how education permits the Law of Increasing Returns to counterbalance and nulHfy the Law of Diminishing Returns.^ The mere statement that industry is dependent upon education might be taken to mean that man is no more than a producer or consumer of economic goods ; for the motive of his education might be wholly economic. But there is plenty of evidence outside the sacred books of the world and works on philosophy to show that man is not quite as the ^ The Industrial Revolution, chap. xiv. 2 See Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners :'n the United States, vol. vi, "The Beginnings of Child Labor Legislation in Certain States," passim. ^ Marshall, Princ. of Econ., 5th ed., i, 318-19, 205-20. 222 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS beasts of the field. Even in the most primitive peoples the aesthetic combines with the economic motive. Schwein- furth testified to this fact from his travels in Africa : "It is among the most secluded inhabitants, indeed among the rudest tribes, who are partly still addicted to cannibalism, aye, in the very heart of Africa, whither not even the use of cotton stuffs and hardly that of glass beads has penetrated, where we find the indigenous mechanical instinct, the delight in the production of works of art for the embellishment and convenience of life, the delight in self-acquired property best preserved." ^ In accounting for the huge industrial structure which to many people means America, it is not sufficient to enu- merate the vast natural economic resources of the country, its natural advantages of climate, soil, configuration, har- bors, etc. The quality of its people is the preponderant factor. The making of colonial America, hence the making of the twentieth century United States, was based on the intellectual baggage and the educational traditions which the colonists brought with them from Europe. Vast natural resources give an opportunity for civilization, they facilitate the march of progress, but they cannot initiate nor maintain a rising state of culture. The creation of an industrial Orient has been no less an educational triumph. It was neither a great army nor modern Big Business, but five thousand foreign-educated scholars that prepared the way of progress for modern China. I shall not attempt to assess the share of the mis- sionary in this educational conquest of the Far East. An English writer, however, credits American missionaries with the breakdown of the old static regime of the classics, under which ninety-five per cent of the people could not ^ Aries AfricancE, cited by Mason, Origin of Inventions, 23. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 223 read and ninety-nine per cent could not write, and with the sudden rise of modern, more nearly universal, education.' As a final illustration of the educational basis of indus- try take W. K. Clifford's essay on Higher Mathemalics and Scientific Progress. In this study he demonstrates with his customary lucidity how certain forward steps in both science and invention have been seriously hindered through neglect of higher mathematics. Fantastical as they appear to the practical farmer, or electrician, or engineer, the ethereal experiments and mathematical demonstrations of the laboratory have a marvelously concrete bearing on the field work of the manufacturer and the artisan. Voca' tional education, which is designed to guide youth into more skilled occupations and away from "blind-alley jobs," will itself become a blind alley if it focuses all its energies upon mere routine craft operations and neglects the theoretical and social background of those crafts ; for the background alone confers relationships and meaning upon the individual job and provides in addition the means for improving craft technique. 3 For reasons both of policy and conviction, economic determinists have assiduously overlooked the race factor in their efforts to concentrate attention on economic class interests as the motive force in social change. But whether we like it or not, the race element obtrudes itself. In the interests of progress it may be desirable, as Professor Patten demands, "to reduce this mass of rabid race-an- tagonisms and unite people of similar culture into super- racial units," and to put culture above race aspirations.^ But from the historical standpoint, things have never gone ^ Soothill, Contemporary Review, 98 : 403. 2 Letter to The New Republic, Nov. 14, 1914, p. 21. 2 24 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS this way. Professor Patten admits that "each national aspiration is local, and so interwoven with interests other than economic that it blocks the social progress of the con- tinent." But the dictum is just as true when put into the past tense. This peculiar kind of group feeling, whether city, tribal, or national, becomes a class-consciousness which cuts across all others. And it makes not the slightest difference whether there is any such reality as race or not. It is enough that people believe there is. The sudden col- lapse of the International Workingmen's Association in those terrible days of July and August, 1914, was a dra- matic illustration of how easy it is to burn away the flimsy walls of economic class consciousness in the leaping fires of race-prejudice and national patriotism. I am not arguing for maintenance of strict racial lines and race passions. But the fact remains that given things as they are, race constitutes a serious limitation upon any exclusive eco- nomic view of history. The cry of race peril has always been enough to snarl up the economic order. But even more serious than neglect of the race factor is omission of the psychological elements in history and con- temporary social life. It is evident that much or most of the race question is purely psychologic in essence. But mental factors cut across other parts of the economic field. They include sex and other instincts, tropisms like love of contact, reflexes and stimuli in general, imitation, desires, habit, custom, convention, law, religion, and the art im- pulse. Study love of contact for example ; it drives men to form groups, not only because they can feed better together, but also and primarily for protection and peace of mind, THE ECONOMIC INTERrRETATION OF HISTORY 225 two presuppositions for economic development. Out of such fundamental tropisms are built up social structures and activities. Marx conceived other activities of life as mere outcroppings of economic processes. But this is clearly fallacious ; and for the very good reason that thought is deeper and wider than mere economic activity. An individual's occupation is largely contingent upon local circumstances, while his mental outfit reaches back hundreds of generations quite beyond the absolute control of circum- stance. His leisure activities frequently overtop his voca- tion as a determinant of conduct. It is social convention and discipline that reduce the nomad in us to the sedentary life of conformity and economic preoccupation and stand- ardization.^ Again, economic activities have to do largely with habits. But habits are not nearly so stable as we might believe. I cannot go quite so far as Professor Gra- ham Wallas would carry us in emphasizing inherited mental outfit, but on the whole we may accept his generalization that not only are habits when produced more unstable than our inherited dispositions, but the process of producing habits by mere repetition is uncertain in its results.^ Further difficulties emerge when we attempt to apply the economic yard-stick to motives, desires, instincts, and sentiments. First, it is safe to deny that there is any such thing as the economic motive per se. I have tried to dis- tinguish clearly between such a supposed motive and the satisfaction of the whole range of human desires and needs. The economic interest, that is, an interest in food, clothing, and shelter, is subordinate to the even more fundamental air interest and sunlight interest. The really basic interest is life, the will-to-live. Nobody wants food or clothes or shelter in themselves. Everybody wants to be comfort- ^ Cf. EUwood, Am. Jour. Social., 17 : 42-3. ^ The Great Society, 78. Q 2 26 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS able, happy, well-off, safe, healthy, insured against mishap and deficit. Our desire is for well-being, for equilibrium. But since economic activity most obviously satisfies the majority of these cravings it was easy to make the mistake of assuming that the economic activity was the real motive and end-in-itself.^ Indeed, I believe that the primordial motives for property were not in the remotest degree economic. The origin of real property was in all probabil- ity the grave or burial mound. And personal property was born of vanity ; it was ornamental. Savages are fre- quently reckless about such basic property as food and clothing, but will cling sedulously, aye, ridiculously, to their petty ornaments. In this connection it might be well to examine somewhat critically again Mr. Ghent's statement of the case. You will remember he implied that men are not always or even generally conscious of the economic motive which impels them, and that the motive they believe dominant is a mere illusion. But what is a motive ? Can you have an uncon- scious or illusory motive ? Is it not a contradiction in terms ? There may be a conflict between instinct, habit, and deliberate reasoned conduct, or between the various selves which make up one's personality. There may be a struggle between motives. There may be hypnotic control over one's action. There may be illusion as to the facts upon which a given resolution to act is based. There may be deception on the part of an individual's teachers, leaders, tribe-mates as to the real purpose of a missionary expedi- ' Cf. E. C. Hayes, Amcr. Jour. SocioL, i8 : 4Q5. It is of interest to note that Professor Taussig can find no economic interest as such, and rejects the notion, "economic man," because he cannot discov'er any instincts of accumulation or barter ; the instinct for contrivance or workmanship rather than desire for wealth explains inventiveness; desire for wealth is a com- posite of instincts of contrivance, domination, emulation, etc. See his Inventors and Moncy-Makers, pp. 4, 79 ff., etc. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 227 tion, a voyage of discovery, a war, or the founding of a university or charitable endowment. But when that in- dividual's thinking reaches the stage of formulating a motive dominant enough and compelling enough to explode into action, that motive for him is no illusion ; it is not vague ; it is clear-cut, it is definite, it is conscious, solid, honest, sincere. Otherwise it may be something else, but it is not a motive, economic, or any other sort. Other questions apropos of motive demand a. statement here, if not a detailed answer. Why does the savage spend months decorating his spear or shield or pottery? Why does the college professor or pure scientist work year after year at a far lower wage than he could command in other work ? Why does the preacher or the social worker or the Salvation Army undergo deprivations and insult for the sake of men's souls and a cleaner, better world? Why does a vigorous, independent, prosperous woman leave her eco- nomic independence to marry and suffer the pangs of ma- ternity and the pinch of limited income ? What prompted that famous group of young doctors to submit themselves to mosquito-fever tests? What drove Arnold Toynbee, the brilliant young economist, to the East End of London? Why did two students recently brave filth and vermin in- numerable to gain authentic knowledge of cheap lodging house conditions in Chicago? Was the Hippocratic oath an economic formula? Is progress in medicine due to the economic motive, to a desire for higher fees, to a desire to conserve human life because of a reverence for life or be- cause of a sense of the economic value of life and labor power? Granting the presence of a dose of the economic in these cases, it is perfectly obvious to an open mind that it is completely outweighed by devotion to science, pas- sion for life, love of men. In fact, the economic aspect of health conservation is a development of very recent 2 28 THEORIES OF SOCLVL PROGRESS years, and is largely the result of an excellent and vig- orous propaganda by economists, actuaries, and insurance companies. After bread, education, cried the intrepid Danton. But before bread, sentiment, is the rallying thought which alone can explain the recrudescence of nationalistic feelings in modern Poland, Bohemia, Finland, or the Balkan States. Lester F. Ward attempted a refutation of the economic interpretationists and a reconciliation between them and the ideologists.^ Yet his compromise reminds one of that compromise between a wife who wanted linen and her husband who stood for muslin : they compromised on muslin ; Ward compromises on the economic basis. "The universal world ideas," he says, "which are said to lead or rule the world are simply beliefs. . . . Beliefs rest on interest. But what is interest? It is feeling. World views grow out of feelings. . . . Now it is just this element of interest that links beliefs to desires and reconciles the ideological and economic interpretations of history : for economics, by its very definition of value, is based on desires and their satisfactions. Every belief embodies a desire, or rather a great mass of desires." So far so good. But next comes the extraordinary prop- osition : "Desires are economic demands arising out of the nature of man and the conditions of existence. . . . All interest is essentially economic." This is manifestly exaggeration. For what is the eco- nomic element in the procreative instinct, in the relation of mother to infant, in the instinct for play? Yet all these things represent definite and universal desires which eco- nomic goods can neither motivate nor satisfy. No, there is ^ Applied Sociology, Part I, chap. v. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 229 an enormous range of feelings, desires, ideas, and satisfac- tions completely outside the economic pale. Some of these, like the sex instinct, are so imperious that they may shatter economic bonds. So far is it from true that our economics wholly control our ideas, that we are almost justified in afHirming the opposite. For example, so long as we hold to our present ideas of profit, of property, of what is most worth while, our economic system will persist in all its force and with all its evils. Of course this is overstating the case, for on the other hand, so long as we cling to the present system, our ideas will be colored by it. The real solution of this apparent antagonism between ideas and economics must come, as we shall see later, not by exaggerating either but by considering both as merely elements in an organic unity — the whole life of society — larger than either. The sociological analysis of thorough-going economic determinists is in general faulty and sometimes extremely naive. While society is not an organism in the strict biological sense, yet societal life has an organic character of its own, rigorous in its functioning and no more reducible to fixed categories than is life itself. Every part of the social structure is more or less closely articulated, every function of society is more or less conditioned by every other, every product of a social group, whether law or classes or religion or ideals is not a chemically pure metal but is essentially an alloy. Hence, the economic interpretation bears just the same relation to the whole truth of history and social life as, say, the science of mathematics or chem- istry bears to the whole of human knowledge. There is no one science which englobes the sum of truth, or which is more fundamental than any other. Each separate science > ^ 230 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS deals with only one aspect of truth, picks out certain factors which fit in with its methods and aims, and studies them from an angle suited to its purposes. Likewise with any interpretation of human history. It is quite beyond re- proach to take the economic view or the chemical view of human life if that will further the general purposes of human life or the particular science involved. But it is wholly indefensible from any standpoint whatever to foist this narrow angular view upon us as the whole social truth or even the most important phase of that truth. ^ The phenomena of class struggle, of which Socialists make so much, may serve as an illustration. Classes are just as normal and essential to social life as is the web to the spider. But the hitch occurs in declaring that any one type of class is any more persistent and dominant than any other. Another difficulty lies in the fact that classes are not water-tight ; they interpenetrate, because a given individual is at one and the same time member of a dozen or a hundred classes, because he pursues a dozen or a hundred interests. And circumstances alone decide which interest, therefore which class, shall claim his supreme fealty. His- tory does not prove that the economic interest commands this unfailing allegiance. It is only necessary to recall the failure of the General Strike or to remember that so far every attempt to unite Irish workingmen on an economic basis has failed signally because of the dissensions along class lines resulting from the interjection of political or religious issues. Law, while to a certain extent the mere crystallization of economic sentiments, cannot by any means be limited to them ; it is a chart which records the crossing and ^ Professor Cooley has contributed perhaps the most able criticism of this squint-eyed method of interpreting history. It represents the "organic" as against what might be called the "factor" or particularist view. Publ. Amer. Econ. Assoc, 3d series, vol. v, pp. 426 ff. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 231 eddying of various counter-currents within the stream of social life. The folkways, customs, taboos, which contain the seeds of law, correspond to demands of group welfare, which as we have already seen, means more than mere food, clothing, and shelter. Custom decides what inventions shall live, and determines in no small degree what shall be produced and how, and also to whom the product shall go. Tradition, the dead hand, not only tends to perpetuate ancient economic institutions as well as other social forms, but it also may act as a serious drag upon present and future economic movements. Comte's assertion that the living are more and more governed by the dead, applies no less to industry than to religion and law. Primitive taboos codify the fact that man is puny and environed by mighty dangers. But these dangers reach beyond starvation, drouth, poisonous food, and other purely alimentary inter- ests. They cover relations between the sexes, between men and gods or demons. Some are protective and positive, others negative and destructive. The taboo on fields of growing crops is an economic device to insure a mature harvest against undisciplined appetite. So also is the Seri Indian taboo on pelicans to prevent their extermina- tion. So, too, our closed game seasons. But on the other hand the taboo sometimes cuts directly across the economic interest. Where totemism prevails (it has been almost universal) it invariably taboos eating the totem animal, and frequently this animal would afiford a ready food supply. Whole groups have been reduced to starvation because of this taboo. Again, while there is and always has been an organic connection between religion and the prevailing mode of pro- duction, it is quite possible to exaggerate the direct influ- ence of the economic motive on religion and thereby to exclude other cognate influences. To be sure, a class or 232 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS caste system of wealth or politics is not laid aside as one leaves his rubbers and umbrella at the church door, but actually enters the church and dominates both pulpit and pews. St. James gave his contemporaries some very direct and even caustic advice on this subject. But on the other hand religion has in all ages, though perhaps more strikingly in primitive times, interfered in the industrial realm. The custom of destroying all a man's property at his death ; the habit of burying most costly clothes, weap- ons, tools; of slaughtering slaves, wives, or animals as funeral offerings; the taboos upon use of land in certain phases of demonism ; the desertion of whole villages for ceremonial reasons; fasting; the Sabbath: all these typify the huge wastes and frictions which religion may introduce into an economic system. Medieval prejudices and laws against usury bear witness to the same fact. Even in more modern times industrial development has frequently been hampered by religious prejudices.^ Another example of the failure to observe the organic nature of social life occurs in the claim that ideas, knowl- edge, science, that is, the very content and method of education, do not on their own merit contribute directly to social progress. Professor Patten defends this claim in no uncertain terms. "Science has little power to alter na- tional thought by direct means, but it has great power in creating new economic conditions, and these modify na- ^ Richardson in his Industrial Problems, p. 222, cites an illuminating instance of just this state of mind : "The school board at Lancaster, Ohio, ^in 1828, refused to permit the schoolhouse to be used for the discussion of the question as to whether railroads were practical or not, and the matter was f recently called to mind by an old document that reads as follows : 'You are welcome to use the schoolhouse to debate all proper questions in, but such things as railroads and telegraphs are impossibilities and rank infidelity. y There is nothing in the Word of God about them. If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles ( an hour, by steam, He would have clearly foretold it through His holy \ prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to Hell.'" THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 233 tional thought." This sounds suspiciously Hke tweedle- dum and tweedle-dee ; for thought must have been changed before men adopted new inventions or other changes in economic conditions. A new economy is not a bolt from the blue but a solid precipitate of human minds in commo- tion. New increments to knowledge produce revolutions in economic technique, and these revolutions induce further adjustments and accommodations in thought, and so the process goes on, each phase appearing as both cause and effect. At this place should come the criticism which the idealists lay up against the materialist-economic school. But in the interests of peace and clarity of exposition I shall reserve the statement of their case for the general chapter on the idealistic interpretation of history and progress, and rest content there with pointing out that sometimes ideas or sentiments, perhaps even poHtical shibboleths, become im- perious enough to subordinate and overlay accepted eco- nomic interests. A good illustration of this particular type of criticism of the economic interpretation may be found in Professor E. D. Adams' Power of Ideals in American History. Professor Adams attacks both the militant geographic and economic views of history; or at least refuses to see in them the whole explanation of man, and shows how in several episodes in American history ideals and emotions to an appreciable extent dictated the course of events : such ideals, notably, as nationality, anti-slavery, and manifest destiny. An American economist, moreover, goes so far as to assert that ideals and not mere economic logic or financial expediency are at the bottom of American financial pohcies. It is almost a truism that financial pohcies of this nation and economic reforms in general have to. be translated into moral terms or ideals before they command the interest and support of the larger pubhc. Thus protection and capital- 234 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ism become moral monstrosities before they are extirpated as economic heresies. Here, as elsewhere, the fact that the ideal may be a gross illusion is immaterial : its power to dictate action remains. But here again, just as there is no economic interest-as-such, neither is there any ideal- as-such. The ideal colors and is colored by other motives at work in group life. All we mean is that certain ideals other than economic must be reckoned with in social inter- pretation. As we shall see later, there is a profound philo- sophical and psychological reason in human nature which appears to make it necessary for men to ideahze their con- duct. Emotion hastens to generate ideas which will fit into and dig deeper the emotional channels. Emotion recognizes its own instability and calls thought to rationalize it and hold it up. Just as Nietzsche declared that a good war hallows any cause, so perhaps any persistent emotion can sooner or later secure the benediction of an intellectual ideal. It is on these grounds that Professor Dewey analyzes the strange debacle of the German intellectuals and their naive apologetics during the earlier stages of the Great War. "Men," he says, "are profoundly moral even in their immoralities. Especially do they in their collective and persistent activities require the support of a justifying conscience. Nothing is so paralyzing to action as pro- longed doubt as to the justice of one's cause. . Jhe notjp n th at men can act e nrlun'npd y and deliber ?^tfly ^t the pype^iRe of others, in b ehalf of their owiiadvantage^jjstJieiiause t hey perceive it~tb be th SrI^wn_aB vanla^e^ _J£--ar-jaTth — /io-spite of its cur-gency. Ideal ends and moral responsibil- ities are always invoked, and only uninstructed cynicism *^ill assign conscious hypocrisy in explanation. Men must be stayed in their serious enterprises by moral justi- fications, — this is a necessity which knows no law but THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 235 itself." ^ Hence mere economic analysis cannot be trusted as a sufficient guide to the factors involved in social progress or decadence. Economic factors like geographic factors are necessary but not sufficient explanations. Only the fullest exploration of the depths of man's organic and social nature will yield a trustworthy answer. The conclusion of the matter, then, from the stand- point of social polity seems to be this, that in so far as economic influences have dominated human Ufe harmfully irL its upward struggle, it has been largely because of a lack of proper standards of real value and of a conscious aim and a coherent plan for improvement. Since economic interests cut so large a figure still in human life, and since economic motives are only part of an organic social complex and therefore sensitive to pressure from other factors, it is the business of constructive statesmanship and a dynamic educational system to focus attention upon economic passions and to mold economic systems to fit a rational social order. In a word, economic life must become means and not end. Education can make industry promote human advance if it will teach us how to save our energy, order our time, concentrate our efforts, rate real productiv- ity, and distribute the products of our labor with such equity and efficiency that we shall have leisure and surplus energy for the cultivation of other and equally imperious human interests. To this process of estabhshing some- thing more nearly approaching a regime of social justice, government and the other agencies for social control may contribute by so regulating the productive energies of the group that dependency is eliminated and economic reward distributed according to real contributions to social strength. 1^ ^ John Dewey, Atlantic Monthly, February, 1916, p. 252. BIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS CHAPTER XVI THE SELECTIONISTS Of the three basic factors in biological evolution, namely, variability, selection, and transmission, we shall consider only the second specifically. The discussion of the other factors is distributed throughout these chapters. This much might be said, however, on the subject of divergence or variability : variability, which we recognize as indispen- sable to any sort of social life at all, to say nothing of social progress, is rendered infinitely less difficult in highly organized human society than in the sub-human world. ^ Man's posi- tion of advantage comes through social heredity and such social institutions as capital, education, literature, art. The great problem of social policy is how to estimate what varia-' tions in the germ plasm are socially valuable in the long run, and how to focus upon them the forces of social heredity in such a way that they may be encouraged and preserved. For our particular purpose we need go only so far into a discussion of heredity as to analyze diagrammatically the two lines of heredity which converge in every human in- dividual. Social heredity is the field of the sociologist; he is only concerned with natural heredity in so far as it is acted upon by and reacts upon the social environment in accounting for human behavior. The diagram on page ^ See Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, Everyman's ed., p. 130, for a very picturesque illustration of this point. 239 240 THEORIES OF SOCML PROGRESS DIAGRAM OF FORCES CONDITIONING INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR ^:^^:^^ci ii:$t:^^^^: SOMATIC CHARACTERS MENTAL CHARACTERS ORGANIC HEREDITY (HUMAN NATURE) FOLKWAYS PROBLEM EXPERIENCE (human ACHIEVEMEN T) SOCIAL HEREDITY PHYSICAL ENl/IRONMENT THE SELECTIONISTS 241 240 ought also to throw some Hght upon the problem of selection. When we come to speak of the final factor, selection, and in particular of progress through selection of the fittest (that is, of the most valuable germinal variations), our difficulties begin. That there is selection nobody can doubt for a moment. Indeed it is the fundamental corollary to life itself. Without choice there would be no power to ward off danger, to avoid, say, poisonous foods, to select desirable conditions ; there would be no chance for conscious life ; for consciousness implies tension, problems, suspense, the balancing up of possibiKties, the rating of values, hence choice or selection. What is thus true of the individual is true of the world of life taken as a whole, and of human evolution as an episode in it. Granting the universality of the principle of selection, shall we call it "natural selection"? What is natural selection? Is there any selection which is unnatural? Do we mean by natural some power or person outside the world of men which thrusts in its hand to direct their activities and to pick out certain marked individuals for its own purposes? Is it legitimate to oppose "social" to "natural" selection? Is not society a part of Nature? Are not man's will, his likes and dislikes, his whole range of activities, natural? Again, what is natural selection selecting for, and what sort of things or quahties is it supposed to be interested in and to choose? These are questions trite enough, but they have to be confronted because people never cease asking them. By way of reply it may be said, in the first place, that whatever the source, whether social or extra-social, all selection is for life. Second, that it is the choice of certain specific qualities which relate to the breadth or security of life, or which develop and insure life. Third, that all selection is natural. 242 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS But Nature is broad and includes an infinite number of factors, of which now one set and now another may play the predominant role. By natural selection we mean that more or less automatic, unconscious, and irrational process of picking out the winners in the pre-human and anthropoid stages of organized life, electing those individuals and species whose wits and bodies bore marks of superiority from the standpoints of survival and development. As to precisely what this selective impulse really is science must plead ignorance, mystery. Perhaps "one increasing purpose" ran and runs still throughout nature ; and perhaps that purpose is man and superman. Or, it may be that by blind chance and happy accident the human species was spun out of its crude ancestry. But this much remains, that until we reach the distinctively human stage, selection was tremendously wasteful, largely unconscious and coercive ; that a hundred perhaps several hundred thousand years ago maximum racial selection, the terminus ad quern of the natural process was reached. The physical mold of man- kind was chosen, and certain norms of agihty, strength, wits, fertility, and the like were set up.^ But this was merely the starting point of the social process. The principle of selection now begins to work on another plane, or to work in other media. The same old workman, if you choose, but new materials. From now onward the center of selection is more and more shifted from without to within man himself, from passive adapta- tion to active self-determination. With the growth of consciousness the tendency is away from irrational and instinctive choices to deliberate and rational selection. Man's wits have already been roughly determined by the ^ "The history of human progress has been mainly the history of man's higher educability, the products of which he has projected on to his environ- ment." C. Lloyd Morgan, "Mental Factors in Evolution," in Darwin and Modern Science, p. 445. THE SELECTIONISTS 243 coercive process of the struggle for existence ; now he turns those wits definitely to the task of further improving themselves. This is a mental, hence a social process, and while this process has not become altogether conscious or rational yet, it certainly is moving more and more directly toward rationality and deliberation. Hence the student of the social sciences or the man of affairs is concerned chiefly or altogether with selection in its social aspect. He realizes that while the principle of selection is just as opera- tive as ever, it makes use of new methods, new agents, and new standards ; ^ and that these new agents and stand- ards are social. He recognizes the survival of the fittest, but demands a re-definition of the concept, fittest, in terms of "ability to survive by means of useful powers and qualities." An illustration or two will show how the concept of natural merges into social selection. Take, let us say, sexual selection. While Wallace advanced somewhat beyond Darwin in positing the impor- tance of sexual selection, the latter went far enough to say : "For my own part I conclude that of all the causes which have led to the difference in external appearance between the races of man, and to a certain extent between man and the lower animals, sexual selection has been by far the most efficient." 2 The Polar Eskimo illustrate how the selective process may work by means of competitive strength or valor. Commander Peary writes of them : * Darwin himself concluded, two years after publishing the second edition of his Descent of Man, that he had overstressed the principle of natural selection. In a letter some time in 1876 he wrote: "In my opinion the greatest error which I have committed, has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e., food, climate, etc., inde- pendently of natural selection." Life and Letters, vol. iii, p. 159. Huxley also with his accustomed clarity outlined the cleavage between nature and society in the selective process in his famous essay, "The Struggle for E.xistence in Human Society," Nineteenth Century, January, r^ ^ Descent of Man, ii, 367. 244 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS "If two men want to marry the same woman they settle the question by a trial of strength, and the better man has his way. These struggles are not fights, as the disputants are amiable : they are simply tests of wrestling, or sometimes of pounding each other on the arm to see which man can stand the pounding the longer." ^ It is impossible to escape the suspicion that together with the wresthng and pounding here described there is going on a more subtle selection of good nature, temper, pride, forbearance and other purely social qualities. This point becomes more evident if we consider such a sex-selective agency as dancing. Deniker says : "It may be presumed that the alternating dances of men and women were, at the beginning of societies, a powerful aid to sexual selection." ^ Here, manifestly, something more than mere strength of limb, endurance, or length of wind was involved. This something must have been what the older psychologists called the "amiable qualities." It is true that more recent studies in biology tend some- what to discount the supreme importance formerly given to sexual selection. Disregarding the extreme and fatuous claims of certain eugenists, there is still something to be said for it, however. Wallace offered a most provoca- tive view of the problem of sexual selection in future societies. Woman is to be the great selective agent. He denies that education, training, or surroundings can affect permanently the march of human progress. Prog- ress will come as the result (i) of continuous and perhaps increasing elimination of vice, violence, and recklessness through early destruction of those addicted to them ; and (2) of the far more important factor of selection through increasing freedom and higher education of women. That is, women's taste in men is to be refined. Hence, in spite of ^ North Pole, 59. 2 Races of Man, 208. THE SELECTIONISTS 245 apparent contradictions, he is forced to conclude that "education has the greatest value for the improvement of mankind . . . and that selection of the fittest may be insured by more powerful and more effective agencies than the destruction of the weak and helpless. ... It is only by a true and perfect system of education and the public opinion which such a system will create, that the special mode of selection on which the future of humanity depends can be brought into general action." ^ It is highly illuminating thus to find that the most important factor in selection reduces in its modern appli- cation to terms unreservedly social. The process, if it has any significance and validity whatever, is no longer merely natural or unconscious, or instinctive ; it is, or rather is to be, preeminently rational. We leave the matter in its future tense largely because sexual selection lies still in the domain of the conventional ; the conventional is rational only in so far as the mores are considered as the rationalized precipitate of much cruder irrational rule-of- thumb tradition and folkways. A study, however super- ficial, of the rules of mating in either primitive or civilized groups reveals the power • of codes of propriety, canons of beauty, pride of blood, the cult of social position, class cleavages, differences in wealth, admiration for certain types of achievement, family organization, educational methods, religious beliefs and prejudices, and other forms of social pressure in determining the choice of mates. To rationalize sexual selection and make it serve progress will mean to revise the mores and inject into them new principles. This eugenics attempts to do. But what of survival of the fittest? "The law of the survival of the fittest was not made by man and cannot be ^ The Arena, January, 1892 ; reprinted in his Studies Scientific and Social^ vol. ii, pp. 506-8. 246 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest." ^ This is the American echo to English and German selectionism. Again, we repeat the question : Who is the fittest socially? Long arms, swift legs, sharp teeth, the billowy muscles of the Farnese Hercules — are these the marks of fitness? When man invented tools and other forms of property his days of pure instinctive or reflex action were over. He had leaped the bounds of the natural. Mere physical selection working on his organs and members was checked. When once he had a staff or club he no longer needed an extension of his arm. Nor must he strengthen his jaw, his teeth, or his stomach when armed with knife and fire ; nor grow fur or wool when he learned to stitch and weave his clothes. Selection now plays on new instruments — man's wits and sentiments. Natural selection plays second fiddle. IntelHgence directs the whole vast harmony between man and his sur- roundings. Human progress, then, is a struggle of intelligence, the selection of ideas. The battle may not be to the strong, but to the persistent, not to the heavy brain but to the agile mind. "The social type inherits the earth." For example, the battle for the enfranchisement of women is being won in spite of physical weakness. Parentheti- cally, let us say that of all the silly arguments against woman's suffrage, the supposedly fundamental and un- answerable argument that nationality rests on armed force and that woman is too weak to bear arms is the very silhest. As well say that a man cannot be president of the United States or inventor of wireless telegraphy or maker of war munitions because he does not measure eighty-four feet from tip to tip like the Di plodocus Carnegii or carry a house ^ Sumner, Essay on "Sociology," in the collection War, and other Essays. THE SELECTIONISTS 247 on his back like an elephant. Indeed I am not sure hut that I agree with M. Jules Gaudard's thesis that humble infirmity is the most powerful force for scientific and general progress.' One need not limit his argument for the power of the weak and humble to the four gospels or to St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. The physical unite with the social sciences in demonstrating the cumula- tive and irresistible force of infinitesimal causes repeated, persistent, and consciously concerted. How, for example, have we higher animals come by our many-celled bodies, while our humblest ancestors were only one-celled? Through weakness somewhere in that ancestral chain, biologists suggest. Thomson and Geddes say : "We know of some simple units that have a habit of coalescing into composite masses, of others in which the nucleus divides over and over again within the cell so that the multi-nucleate organisms are formed, and of others again that break their definition, and do their best to get beyond the unicellular state, by forming loose colonies. It was probably in the third of these ways that body-making began. Certain simple organisms, unable fully to complete that division into two or more separate units which nor- mally occurs at the limit of growth, bridged what Agassiz called "the greatest gulf in organic nature." It was perhaps through some weakness that the daughter-units, formed by division of the mother-cell, remained associated, instead of drifting apart in individual completeness. But out of this weakness — if weakness — strength arose, the strength of animals with a body." ^ ^ J. Gaudard, Lafoi par Vhumilile 011 la force par rinfirmite, 1912. John Burroughs, in a suggestive article, "The Still Small Voice " {Atl. Mo., Mar. 1916), argues from scientific grounds that the most potent and beneficent forces are stillest. '^Evolution, 86-7. Nietzsche, with his inveterate apotheosis of the individual as against the group, came to doubt if natural selection really ever favored the strong, for the grouped species rather than the superior individual survived. See citations from his Will to Power in Salter, Intcrnl. Jour. Ethics, 25 : 396. 248 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Weakness again in our anthropoid ancestors begot that habit of mutual dependence and concerted action which has made Man and enabled him to lord it over every other animal. Progress is effected, we said, by selection of wits and sentiments. Perhaps the order should be reversed. For I believe that in the task of creating Humanity through checking natural selection, more has been allotted to the sentiments than to any other element in human nature. We must frankly face the fact that the whole meaning of civilization has been won at the expense of raw physical selection. Spencer, Sumner, and the rest of the sturdy individualists may decry interference with natural selec- tion and threaten us with all manner of dire consequences if we do. The fact remains that Spencer, Sumner, and all their contemporaries were permitted to live out their comparatively peaceful and comfortable lives precisely because their forbears had interfered (unscientifically, perilously, it may be !) with the brute struggle which sur- vival of the fittest connotes. It was perhaps because men chose to chase after illusions. It was certainly because human sentiments had interposed. It was because a sense of care, a sentiment of responsibility, of common defense, an understanding of social unity, were generated. According to Wallace, these sentiments have to some extent been antagonistic to physical and even intellectual race- improvement ; but they have improved us morally by the continuous development of the characteristic and crowning grace of our human, as distinguished from our animal nature. Darwin also held that while man is the only animal that allows its poorest to propagate, still it is in obedience to the instinct of sympathy. ''Nor could we check our sym- pathy," says he, "if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature ; ... if THE SELECTIONISTS 249 we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only, be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil." ^ But even granting the possibility of losses through the policy of social sympathy, there may easily be cases where preservation of the weak does not lower the general level of race fitness. Why should not the increased science and care devoted to the weak and sickly also yield as by- products better means of insuring health, education, and general fitness to the strong? The care of the diseased has led recently to such organizations as the Life Extension Society, devoted primarily to the benefit of the eminently fit, and to a general demand for health conservation. The legislation growing out of the study of factory con- ditions on behalf of women and children has flowered in scientific management and industrial hygiene for all workers. Medical care of the sexually diseased leads up to general movements for rational sex prophylaxis. Care of the insane develops into broader preventive agencies like the Society for Mental Hygiene. Signora Montessori's methods of educating normal children proceed naturally out of her study of educational methods for defectives. While no sane person would argue that nature or human society ought to create pathological types for the direct purpose of offering laboratory materials or drawing out our sympathies,^ and while the most elementary prudence and sympathy urge ^ A. R. Wallace, " Human Selection," Fortnightly Review, September, 1890; Darwin, Descent of Man, i, 162. ^ I have heard men deliberately arguing for the increase of mental and bodily defectives, the allowing them to roam at large and to propagate their kind as a stimulus to our sentiments, which would lapse and grow cold if we developed a perfect race. Sympathy that needs such coarse, strong food may hardly be worth the price ! It seems to proceed from the same crass romanticism that urges men like a certain New York Catholic publicist to oppose birth control on the ground that it is better even to be born an idiot than not to be born at all. 250 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the prevention of such wreckage, yet it is equally obvious that mere extermination of those types or passive tolerance of them in no way meets the problem. Is this science or sentimentahty ? Herbert Spencer cried out vehemently that "fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty." But I suspect that when he wrote that, Spencer was manifesting the personality of a very cranky dyspeptic philosopher. He was imagining a sort of pseudo-science which afflicted more than one of his generation with the disease of ' Social Darwinism.' To the contrary, may not these sentiments of pity, of tolerance, of amelioration, be taken in the strictest scientific sense as elements in a rational social prophylaxis ? For does not the actual progress of mankind depend far more on the survival of the best, than on the extermination of the good-for-nothing? Professor Hobhouse maintains that society has always progressed in spite of the higher fertility of the unfit, and argues that this is only one sign among others of the general truth of the view that human progress is social and not racial.^ At this point other bitter corollaries to the selectionist theory must be faced. Spencer held that poverty is an inevitable incident of the working of natural selection in social evolution. 2 Professor Giddings presents a bill of miseries in which poverty and suffering, crime, suicide, insanity and vagabondage are gloomy items in the costs of progress.^ As we indicated in an earlier chapter, the notion of costs of progress must be carefully scrutinized to be sure that real progress is at stake, and not mere social change or even decadence. To Mr. Kidd the requisites for human progress are class struggle within the group, persistent ^ "The Value and Limitations of Eugenics," Sociological Review, 4: 297. ^ See, e.g., The Man versus the State (N. Y., 1888), pp. 67-8. ^ Democracy and Empire, chap. v. THE SELECTIONISTS 251 over-population, selection by death and subjection, and a constant mass of poverty and misery.^ The lower and miserable classes must without reasoning accept their lot. It is their cosmic destiny. To reason about it and put an end to class strife and poverty would put an end to progress. This forsooth is the wisdom of the foolish. Mr. Kidd forgets that the 'fittest' are not thus selected. Nor is the real course of selection now natural ; it is societal, through law, convention, property, medical skill, religion, education, and kindred social achievements. He moreover assumes the hereditary transmission of selected qualities and also the monopoly of superior talent by the upper classes — two rather shaky foundations for an edifice of social theory. One may grant easily enough that suffering generally accompanies social change, though perhaps not always. To plunge into the new and untried means the pangs of uncertainty, doubt and dread even more than the gnawing of hunger. There are also, however, certain thrills of anticipation. Fear itself may have its pleasurable side. There is no doubt that the presence and mission of pain in evolution have been exaggerated. But why should poverty as a form of suffering be conceived as the inevitable cost of social change? Poverty, some men say, is a multiple of three factors, stingy nature, ineffective economic technique, and personal defect; others would add a fourth, over- population, corollary to the first three. Twentieth century economists are beginning, however, to talk openly and con- fidently of abolishing poverty.^ They claim that Nature is just as generous as man cares to make her ; that the world 1 Social Evolution, chap. iii. 2 See, to take only two notable examples, Hollander, The Abolition of Poverty; Withers, Poverty and Waste. I should like to add Kropotkin's stimulating little book, Fields, Factories, and Workshops. Professors Irving Fisher, E. T. Devine, and Simon Patten also are contributing to this economic optimism. 252 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS has already entered an era of economic surplus ; and point out certain industrial readjustments, particularly in the fields of conservation and distribution, which will refute the old theory of chronic economic deficit. But would not the abolition of poverty let loose all the forces of counter- selection and defeat the process of selecting the fit? Not necessarily. Much would depend upon the social code by which the methods of obtaining, distributing, and holding wealth are directed. On the other hand, would abrogation of the current property code, say, by abolition of inheritance, as Mr. Carnegie suggests, plunge us again into the depths of natural selection? Again, no. We should simply be confronted with a substitution of one standard of social selection for another. The theory connecting over-population and progress runs somewhat like this : over-fecundity is necessary to heighten the struggle for existence under natural selection, by increasing the number of contestants and angles of conflict ; but over-fecundity means pressure upon the means of subsistence; in other words, poverty, food-shortage, even starvation, are modes of the selective process. If we cast overboard the concept of social selection and hark back to purely natural selection, such a theory may be valid. But selection is no longer dependent upon over-fecundity. Modern means of communication and transport for men, goods, and ideas make possible a greater number of contacts, conflicts if you choose, than were possible in earlier societies. This permits a larger number of clashes and variations. That is, a given unit of population has a larger chance of happy variation and testing than ever before. This reduces the necessity for large populations to provide a wide area for selection. Hence whatever theoretical foundation selec- tion ever had in over-fecundity and food-shortage, now crumbles away. Likewise the inference that poverty is THE SELECTIONISTS 253 inherent in the selective process also falls. Selection for progress must state itself in other terms than natural parsimony and an excessive birth-rate. The real selective forces in human society, then, are social, generated out of the very heart of group hfe itself, from the exigencies imposed by the communal struggle for existence. Chief among these selective forces are to be rated property, the family, the institution of saving, lan- guage (the means of handing on past records of successful selection), the mores (the philosophy of successful social selection), religion (as the consecrator of successful selec- tions), education (as the means of developing and refining means and standards of selection). As an illustration of how rehgion works in selection, I need only call to mind the attitude of early Christianity to- ward marriage and self-perpetuation. Asceticism, celibacy, and the extreme cult of virginity were a very consider- able influence in determining the population type of early and middle age Christian centuries. That they are believed still to do so is evidenced by the propaganda of anti- clericalists for a married clergy and abolition of celibate nunneries in countries with an extremely low birth-rate. The church in the middle ages, through its chase of heretics and its Inquisition, selected in the direction of dead- levehsm in religion, and against that variety which is absolutely essential to social health. The obverse of this condition appears in the maxim that the more heretics a society includes the more alive it is. But the religious selec- tion made itself felt to no inconsiderable degree also in the economic realm. Modern France has not yet recovered from the Dragonnades of Louis XIV which drove out thousands of her most industrious and skillful artisans and small manufacturers, the Huguenot textile workers. Spain is trying to entice back to an impoverished land the Ladinos 254 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS (Spanish Jews) which her narrow policy of anti-Semitism and anti-everything but fifteenth century Spanish Cathol- icism had driven to European Turkey and thereabouts.^ Education has not always been recognized as a very significant selective agency. Yet it is fundamental to the whole process of social selection. Plato saw this, and the Republic, which is little else than a treatise on rational social selection, is for that reason avowedly an educational text of highest rank. His whole system of eugenics and govern- ors and classes rests on a definite and conscious policy of rigid education. The other great Utopists who succeeded him lay under the same unavoidable necessity of connect- ing up their eugenic schemes with educational policies. Modern scientists have caught up the same thread of ideas. Paul Broca, the great anthropologist, once wrote : "Education in all its forms is the intelligent force which enables society to improve the race by struggling against the rude processes of natural selection. Add to it just the institutions that permit each individual to obtain a position commensurate with his worth and you will have done more for the race than the most pitiless natural selection could ever do." ^ It is quite true that the science of society has not developed sufficiently yet to be able to say with precision how education may be applied to public opinion or the mores in such a way as to act as the predominant selective and sanative force. That is perhaps sociology's most pressing task in this stage of the science. But an answer must come, will come. The church dominated education in the 1 See The Survey, April 26, 1913, pp. 136-8. On the general topic of selection by persecution, see Galton, Hereditary Genius, 359 ; Lecky, His- tory of England in the i8th Century, \, 188 ; Smiles, The Huguenots in England arid Ireland, Preface, pp. vii, 64 ; Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, ii, 389 ; Weiss, History of French Protestant Refugees, Preface, p. v. ^ Quoted in Revue Scientifique, 36 : 760, Dec. 12, 1885. THE SELECTIONISTS 255 middle ages, and its doctrines of monasticism, celibacy, pov- erty, and resignation shaped to a great degree the thought and activities of Europe. Only such titanic upheavals as the discovery of America and the Protestant Reformation could burst the molds which this selective agency had laid for her children. The teachings of Malthus and the Neo- Malthusians — a conscious educational propaganda — are seriously to be reckoned as among the causes of the falling birth-rate during the past forty years. ^ The definite teach- ing of individual success as an ideal has contributed to the same end. The vision of being president of the United States or the more humble vision of owning a shop or a home, when coupled with the teacher's assurance that these things are possible to everybody, makes the workingman calculate the denominator — size of family, which will adjust itself properly to his numerator — income, and secure a substantial fraction — standard of living. Whether this is better than the uncalculating life of the beast, the candid reader must decide. There may be room for argument, but there can be no question that such a gospel of success taught by a mighty system of public schools reenforced by compulsory attendance is bound to express itself in the population type. From all this it would appear that the business of the social sciences and particularly of sociology is to determine what is socially most worth while, and to propagate by education an appreciation of these social values. Thus will we raise the principle of selection to the plane of complete rationahty. Thus will man win his highest freedom. From the standpoint of biology this means the conservation of the physical mold already won by humanity through natural selection. From the standpoint of sociology it means- adding such social sanctions as may be necessary to main- ^ See J. A. Field, The Survey, Feb. 19, 1916, p. 600. 256 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS tain biological fitness at its present high-water mark ; but it means even more clearly the selection of sanctions that are not inconsistent with the constant refining of that social type which will continue to inherit the earth. Perhaps all these ends and means might be summarized under the term 'positive eugenics.' CHAPTER XVII THE EUGENISTS By all odds eugenics is the most popular phase of the selection question under discussion in this generation. Since so much misconception and utter nonsense are current regarding the aim and methods of eugenics, and since its methods bear so intimately upon the whole subject of conscious social progress, a brief excursion into its field is unavoidable. What is eugenics? Sir Francis Gal ton, the inventor of the term, defined it at one time as the "science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race ; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage"; and later as "the science which deals with those social agencies that influence, mentally or physically, the racial qualities of future generations" ; still later as the "study of the agencies under social control that may im- prove or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." Dr. Saleeby, one of the foremost English eugenists, defines it succinctly if not con- vincingly as "selection for parenthood, not selection for life." "^~ It is obvious that these definitions are vague, that they are not entirely consistent, and that they deal with most uncertain quantities. What, for instance, are the "racial qualities" to be seized upon eugenically? Are they social types or race types or germinal types ? Can there be any s 257 258 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS selection for parenthood that is not preeminently selection for life? Is this ''science" coextensive with that whole process we call social selection ? It is to be devoutly hoped that a science to guide social selection may be developed. But whether eugenics meets that need does not by any means yet appear. Prince Kropotkin hit off the situation very wittily by remarking that it is not a real science, but the ideas, generalities, and desires of a few people. The nascent science has suffered from over-zealous propa- gandists, with the embarrassing result that popular usage plays so fast and loose with the term "eugenics" that it has come to mean anything from general hygiene and infant welfare to evolution and the control of venereal disease. It has also suffered from over-statement as to its present command of facts and methods. Unfortunately, among the eugenists are numbered some unblushingly assured souls. One of them does not hesitate to aver that the "individuals have the power to improve th^race, but not the knowledge what to do. We students of genetics possess the knowledge but not the power ; and the great hope lies in the dissem- ination of our knowledge among the people at large." ^ It is a testimonial to the strength of the eugenics cause itself that it is able to make headway in spite of such rash followers. May it not have been a premonition of just such exaggerations that led Galton towards the end of his life to fear that the new science would do more harm than good ? As Galton's third definition clearly shows, eugenics has nothing to do with natural selection. It is limited, Pro- fessor Johnson insists,^ simply and solely to "the Galtonian concept of the science and art of the control of human germinal characteristics." While some eugenists contend that their science is bound to become a very much larger, ' A. G. Bell, Joitrnal of Heredity, January, 19 14. ^ Amcr. Jour. Sociology, 20: 103. THE EUGENISTS 259 more complex and more difficult matter than Galton fore- casted/ yet there is substantial agreement that they are not trying to interfere with nor improve on nature. They merely strive to avail themselves of natural processes for high social purposes ; that is, they aim at conscious social progress through biological methods. Biology is to become a leading partner with sociology in social improvement. Sometimes, it is true, eugenics, and for that matter biology itself, would appear to be attempting to assume a sort of rough and ready guardianship over a group of toddhng infant wards, the social sciences. But, on the whole, eugenics cannot be accused of opposing social reform, except so far as it allows the unfit to multiply. On the other hand, the eugenists hold that selective breeding will relieve the social reformer of most of his work. Eugenists are not by any means so nearly at one among themselves on the score of methods. . A eugenist parlia- ment would look much like any continental legislature with its Right, Left, Center, Conservatives, Ultramontanes and Radicals. But, as so often happens, their differences are largely a matter of emphasis. A certain common policy is discernible. That policy is, to be sure, negative — the extirpating of the unfit. Dr. C. B. Davenport's "proper program for elimination of the unfit " is typical. It includes "segregation of the feebleminded, epileptic, insane, heredi- tary criminals and prostitutes throughout the reproductive period and the education of the more normal people as to fit and unfit matings."^ One end of the eugenist's program apparently touches that of Malthus and his followers, Place, Owen, Bentham and the two Mills, with their preaching of self-restraint to the poor. John Stuart Mill expressed this attitude in ' See, for example, Saleeby, Forum, April, 1914. ^ Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, 259. 26o THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS declaring that "little improvement can be expected in morality until the producing of large families is regarded with the same feelings as drunkenness or any other physical excess." ^ Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century sporadic attempts were made to rouse English public opinion to a sense of its duty to check the increase of weaker classes in the population. Drysdale, Bradlaugh, and Mrs. Besant preached contraception. Their ill- advised prosecution by certain self-appointed watch-dogs over public morality simply added fuel to the otherwise feeble flame of public interest in birth control. A theory of political economy threatened to become a religion with its quota of martyrs. The hitch, however, lay then and still lies in the proper means for carrying out this policy of limitation. The means proposed, marriage restriction, voluntary celibacy, contraception or self-restraint, segregation, sterilization, are all of them more or less open to serious objections. Marriage restrictions are notoriously ineffective. Whole- sale segregation is too expensive to appeal to the tax-payer. Sterilization, particularly of feebleminded women, would prevent reproduction but would not protect them from abuse, and might induce a stolid complacency in police, courts, and the general public that would preclude ade- quate attention to these victims of lust. Voluntary celi- bacy and self-restraint are not to be expected from the feebler, less resistant members of society. But all of these principles, if used with discretion, might serve effectively as negative means. Need we go so far, however, as to assume that the future of civilization and race health can only be accomplished by wholesale extirpation? A group of American genetists ^ Principles of Political Economy, 4th ed., Vol. I, Bk. II, chap, xiii, p. 448, note. THE EUGENISTS 261 representing the Breeders' Association are accused of meditating a monstrous scheme to sterilize the entire lower one-tenth of our population from generation to generation.^ The charge is not quite justified, however. The committee report upon which the charge is based was published as Bulletin lo-A of the Eugenics Record Office. While it did not say in so many words what it is accused of saying, yet it is easy to see how ambiguity might creep in. Here are its actual words : ''For the purposes of eugenical study and in working out a policy of elimination, it seems fair to estimate the anti- social varieties of the American people at ten per cent, of the total population ; but eveh this is arbitrary. No matter in what stage of racial progress a people may be, it will always be desirable in the interests of still further advancement to cut off the lowest levels and to encourage high fecundity among the more gifted." The chief source of misconception lies obviously enough in the phrase "to cut off " ; that is to say, the means for elimination. On this point the committee was explicit. The means recommended, in the order of their importance, were chiefly three : (i) Segregation for life or during the reproductive period ; this would require a progressive in- crease in institutional capacity, so that by 1980 custodial care could be provided for 1500 persons out of every 100,000 of the general population. (2) Sterilization as a purely supplementary policy, to reach, prior to their release, all inmates of institutions supported wholly or in part by public funds, who are marked by "undesirable hereditary potentialities"; beginning with approximately 80 persons per year per 100,000 of the general population, and pro- ^ See the remarks of Mr. Charles Boston of the New York Bar in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, January, 1915; also his annual address before the 1914 meeting of the American Association for Medical Jurisprudence, reprinted in the Medical Times (New York), March, 1915. 262 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS / gressing to 150 per year in 1980. (3) The encouragement of proper matings. Polygamy among the "fit," euthanasia, and other devices were rejected as out of the question.^ This program itself is on the whole less shocking than the pseudo-facts upon which it is based. We shall need more convincing evidence that one-tenth of us are hopelessly misfits before embarking too gaily upon this quest of the absolute — progressive race health. And we shall want a very explicit definition of "undesirable hereditary poten- tiahties," before legislators and courts and schools and the mores can be expected to sanction ^uch a program. After all will mere extinction of the known defectives touch the core of the eugenics problem ? Not at all. In- deed, some critics ^ hold that negative eugenics is not eugenics at all. The defectives who would thus be eugeni- cally exiled, so to speak, constitute but a tiny fraction of society, only one-half of one per cent. But suppose one per cent, were negatived by eugenics. What of the nearly ninety-nine per • cent, of merely average normal people ? Most of them, if we judge by income and ownership of property, are weak and not very solid timber for a sound society. Are we a degenerate lot? Is our race going to seed? A good deal of popular excitement in England caused by the many rejections of recruits for the Boer War, crystallized in the Duke of Devonshire's committee to report on physical deterioration in 1903. Their report in three volumes appeared the year following. While it noted incontestable evidences of degeneracy, it found nothing to warrant a belief in general and progressive de- terioration. Dr. Eichholz (of the committee) affirmed that there was every reason to anticipate a rapid physical Improvement as soon as exterior conditions improved. ^ Loc. ciL, pp. 15, 46-61. 2 For example, H. S. Skelton, Contcmp. Review, January, 1915, pp. 105-12. THE EUGENISTS 263 Among these he inckided bad housing, filth, drunkenness, poor food and clothing, crowding, slack domestic manage- ment. The English race was sound, but English social arrangements diseased. The remedy lay not in breeding and scientific pedigrees, but in such humble social prescriptions as fighting alcoholism, teaching temperance, interdicting the sale of tobacco to minors under sixteen, organization of school corps, development of playgrounds, and opening of municipal milk depots to cut down infant mortality. From Germany also comes evidence that not physical but social heredity is responsible for degeneration among civilized peoples. Dr. Fahlbeck finds in increasing wealth, changes in the status of women, disintegration of religious and philosophical ideals, etc., these deteriorating factors.^ One may take issue with him on certain points, for example, the status of women ; but his general argument for direct- ing attention to the social factors in degeneracy is sound. This is a well-recognized principle in modern medicine. No first-rate doctor nowadays attemps to treat a case without considering its sociological bearings. This runs clear through from diagnosis to prognosis and after-care. Sociological medicine is recognized even to the point of having its own regular periodical literature. The alienists, too, have fallen into line, and begin to urge .the study of 'social misery' as a cause of mental defect. The protection of the disinherited and care of the unfit need not exhaust the possibilities of rational eugenics. Should we not include purposive breeding? This is, of course, not a new idea. Long before Plato, primitive peoples are presumed to have had some eugenic notions. I doubt seriously if eugenics had anything to do with exogamy or the feeling against incest. But the idea of sound breeding appears unmistakably in certain phases ^ Archiv fur Rassen- tind Gesellschaflsbiologie, Heft i, 191 2. 264 THEORIES OF SOCE\L PROGRESS of the custom of loaning or exchanging wives : for example, among the Eskimos. ''We are told," says Starcke, "that the Eskimos are very willing that the Angekoks (medicine men) should have intercourse with their wives, since in this way they believe that they shall obtain sons who will excel all others. The same thing is said of the Keiaz of Paropa- missus." Similar ideas have been met among the Arabs.^ As a matter of fact, a good deal of the modern discussion of eugenics and the inheritance of superior abilities is no less naive and unconvincing than the ideas of these Eskimos and Arabs. Much of Galton's work comes no nearer the mark. Of course, Galton never for a moment wanted to breed a race exclusively of one exalted type. He expressly declared that society would be very dull if "every man resembled the highly estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede. The aim of Eugenics is to represent each class by its best specimens ; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilizations in their own way." ^ But who shall determine these best specimens? Shall we adopt Plato's device and elect a committee or appoint a com- mission on breeding ? Or have we any sound evidence that such a commission could so stack the cards of heredity that these best specimens would infallibly reproduce themselves ? Is society willing to rest its future upon deductions from the study of guinea pigs, white mice, and the Jukes family ? I am reminded here of a London editor's reply to a correspond- ent who asked the best way to get a good bag of lions in the Kalahari desert. The Kalahari desert, he said, is princi- pally composed of sand and lions. First you sift out all the sand with a big sieve. Then the lions will remain. These you place in a bag which is carried for the purpose ! There are four heretofore insuperable obstacles to any * C. N. Starcke, The Primitive Family, 123-4. 2 Quoted by Holmes, Atlantic Monthly, Februaty, 1915, p. 226. THE EUGENISTS 265 successful policy of eugenic breeding. First, most of the data from breeding experiments with plants and animals, upon which the program of the eugenists is based, belong, as Professor Miller has shown, to the world of description ; while good and bad, character, the social qualities, belong to the world of appreciation and value, and are subject to wholly different laws, resulting as they do from the play of another order of forces and experiences.^ Second, nobody knows enough about human heredity, at least with sufficient definiteness to serve as the basis of absolute social polity. Nobody knows the myriad poten- tialities of parents, nor how to bring them to the surface in offspring. The 2500 human traits already isolated represent the barest beginning. Eugenists may assume that coming events cast their shadows before, but it is possible to cite cases upon cases of genius in which, as Proctor long ago pointed out, " the approach of a great man was in no sort indicated by scintillations along the genealogical track." Gal ton's own researches into the inheritance of genius leave the question approximately where it stood before him. Third, procreation is only one of the objects of mating — generally a wholly secondary or even more remote purpose. Since we cannot legislate attractiveness it is impossible as things stand now to order marriages as one does combination breakfasts at a restaurant. Marriages may or may not be made in heaven, but they are certainly not made by laws or policemen or laboratory experts. Fourth, children are not begotten to order, even by war- brides at the Emperor's behest. Voluntary polygamy has been suggested more than once (most recently at the 15th International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Washington, 191 2) as an inducement to the self-con- 1 Cf. H. A. Miller, "Psychological Limits of Eugenics," Pop. Sci. Mo., April, 1914, p. 392. 266 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS stituted "fittest" to stimulate their birth-rate. But polyg- amy has been known to act as a notorious check upon the birth-rate. Moreover, the fit, meaning the prosperous and gifted, rarely beget children up to their supposed capacity. And no amount of eugenic scolding will change their poHcy. Oddly enough the scare-head type of eugenist forgets that as a rule population varies inversely as intelligence ; not because the intelligent cannot bear children : for, despite Herbert Spencer, the fecundity of highly educated women is amply proved ; but because the highly gifted woman con- ceives herself as something more than a rabbit, and her husband aims higher in his idea of social service than the mere keeping of a rabbit warren. If standards of con- spicuous waste dominate or can be brought to dominate a social group, it may be altogether possible to raise the birth-rate of the "higher classes " ; for if the humbler and middle classes restrict their families in order to "get on," their social superiors will beget and rear large families if for no other reason than to be different and to consume grandly and conspicuously. Children under a monogamous non-slave regime must be made to take the place occupied of old by plural wives and regiments of slaves. On the whole, then, it is a slow and at best uncertain task to pit the higher classes against the unfit in the population race; society as its chief measure of self-defense must turn to eliminating, or at least diminishing, the causes which operate to produce the incapable by birth or lack of care. That is to say, if birth is to become a considered process and not a wholesale accident, it must depend rather upon such in- direct factors as generalized economic opportunity and liberal education than upon repression or coercion. The wiser among the eugenists reject utterly all notions of external compulsion. They decline, as somebody recently put it, to "conjugate biology in the imperative THE EUGENISTS 267 mood," and appeal only to educated public opinion for the realization of their ideals. Galton saw this clearly. One of his disciples, Havelock Ellis, is of like mind. He recognizes the futility of mere legislation in the elevation of the race and believes that the hope of the future lies in rendering eugenics a part of religion. "The only com- pulsion we can apply in eugenics is the compulsion that comes from within." Health certificates as preliminary to marriage, and segregation or sterilization of the unfit, he considers, may be excellent when wisely applied, mis- chievous and ridiculous in the hands of fanatics.^ If, as Wallace contended, racial improvement in the future is to be accomplished through the agency of female choice in marriage,^ it is evident that whatever will render woman freer to choose men of character and vigor, clean men, men who love, will release her from the necessity of taking the first comer in order to escape from bondage to her family, from the contumely of spinsterhood, and from the uncertainty which surrounds getting a living in a 'man- made-world.' The political and economic equality of women thus appears to Wallace the most effective eugenic measure possible. It would give woman a commanding position. It would add to the mores the idea that it is a degradation to marry except for love and esteem. Men would be forced upwards. The idly dissolute, lazy, diseased, impure, and ignorant would stand small chance of marriage and perpetuation of their kind. But what is even more significant for social as dis- tinguished from mere physical or racial health, the equaliz- ^ "The New Social Hygiene," Yale Review, n. s. 1:373-4. Cf. idem, The Problem of Race Regeneration, pp. 60-71 ; see also C. W. Saleeby, The Methods 0/ Race Regeneration, especially pp. 16-63 ! Dr. Davenport also rec- ognizes the ineffectiveness of restrictive marriage laws and customs, par- ticularly upon the " socially inadequate classes " : see Bulletin No. 9, Eugenics Record Office. 2 "Human Selection," Fortnightly Review, September, 1890. 268 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ing of womankind should pour into the common social store a stream of energy and capacity altogether unsuspected and of splendid quality. Lester F. Ward stoutly maih- tained the thesis that while the amount of visible genius has never exceeded one-tenth of one per cent, of the general population, at least 200 times as much really exists and might be brought out : the greater part of such genius Hes latent in the great mass and has never had an opportunity to manifest itself.^ Just before his death Professor Ward published in the American Journal of Sociology a brilliant address, "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics," in which his views are reiterated with supreme vigor and clarity. Discarding the familiar spindle-shaped graph of "distribu- tion of ability" (used by Ammon, Sumner, etc.) which shows most of us in a great middle zone of mediocrity, with an infinitesimal fraction of genius at one tip of the spindle, he adopts the much more democratic and liberal diagram which is here reproduced. Genius One-tenth of One Per Cent. A (Latent genius and talent scattered somewhat equally throughout the mass, amounting in all lines to at least 50 per cent., needing only to be called out.) Normal-minded 90^*5 Per Cent. (Transition from defectives to normal not gradual, but abrupt, the latter sound, the former pathologic.) V Defectives One-half of One Per Cent. ^ Marshall, the English economist, measured this waste by declaring that more than half his country's best natural genius lay among the working people, and that the greater part of it was never developed through lack of opportunity. (Princ. of Econ., 5th ed., i, 212-13.) THE EUGENISTS 269 I am not so certain as Professor Ward was that the transition from defectives to normal is abrupt, since many grades and shades of defectives are encountered. It is only recently, for example, that the moron type of feebleminded- ness has been isolated. Heretofore this class was accounted normal and dealt with by schools and courts as normal. But at the other end of the field Professor Ward seems to be on inexpugnable ground in declaring that by virtue of the many forms which genius takes -we cannot escape the con- clusion that some measure of genius exists in nearly every one, and that this genius is scattered somewhat uniformly throughout the whole mass of the population. Now, would it not be the utterest absurdity to allot this store of genius on strict sex lines to the male half of society ? Is it not common sense to assume that a general share of this latent genius is lodged in women? Since the object of positive eugenics is to develop and evoke this latent genius, one of its most obvious means would seem to be to improve the status of women. This is not a question of chivalry, of petty politics, or of pettier wit ; it is a question of applied sociology, of science devoted to the real prog- ress of human society. Two very concrete examples may be cited to show the intellectual power lying latent in "the masses." The London Morning Post in an article (April 29, 19 10) review- ing the labors of the Workers' Educational Association, which organizes lectures and classes for mill-hands and other workers, said : "The standard of work achieved in the first classes started was remarkably high. An experienced history examiner in Oxford, who went through a large number of essays, selected at haphazard, made the dehberate pro- nouncement that over one-third of them reached the first- class standards of the Oxford Modern History School." 270 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS 'The history of the great Austrian peasant philosopher, Konrad Deubler, also illustrates the contention that great intellectual power slumbers in the lower classes. Deubler was the son of a poor miner, early apprenticed as a miller's hand. His schooling was the scantiest; indeed, he never learned to write correctly in spite of intimate acquaintance with great scholars. But he developed a passion for read- ing, particularly in philosophy, natural science, art and economics. His intellectual activity and broad learning made him the peer of the professional thinker. This brought him into close contact with Strauss, Haeckel, Lasalle, Marx, Engels, Heyse, Rosegger, and many other brilliant minds. But he was no mere sponge. He became a lighthouse to his fellow peasants. He published books and newspapers for them, converted his house into a library and museum, and may be said in no mean sense to have anticipated much that is best in the social settle- ment movement ; for both peasant and scholar met at the common center, much as French university professors and workingmen have dreamed of coming together in the Universites Populaires. The best evidence of Deubler's power and influence appears in his arrest and sequestration by the Austrian government ; no less by his subsequent rehabilitation in all civil rights and his election as burgo- master cf his home community. We could be much more patient with the eugenist if he ceased wailing over the infertility of the higher classes ; for there seems to be no use in crying over this sort of spilled milk. The fact is that society suffers far less from race suicide among the capable or exceptionally endowed than from failure to utilize the capacities of the ordinarily well- endowed. This, in a current and pregnant phrase, is the "social waste of unguided personal ability." Suppose we analyze this waste in terms of education. One-half the THE EUGENISTS 271 male population of the United States is not carried far enough by our educational system to see, far less to under- stand, the vocational opportunities of modern life. Little rational vocational selection is provided even for those boys who reach the last years of the elementary school. Poverty, lack of foresight and outlook entailed by a narrow and difficult social environment, momentary whim, conta- gious admiration, ambition divorced from sound reason, dominate the youth in the selection of a vocation, where he ought to have definite guidance and education in the per- ception of compatibility between personal traits and occupa- tional demands. Indeed, frequently such crude intuitions as whim or naive self-appraisement must capitulate before the exigency of the moment, and the youth is forced into the first gainful occupation that presents itself, regardless of the fact that it may be a 'dead-end' job, an industrial blind alley that leads nowhere except perhaps to the slough of casual labor. ^ Since eugenics cannot create anything new or good in human nature — mind or body — and since it can only free it from hindrances or constrictions, here would seem to be a legitimate and fruitful field for the operation of positive eugenics. Robert Owen saw this clearly a century ago. In an address to the superintendents of manufactories, written toward the end of 181 3, he anticipated the call of positive eugenics, factory welfare work, and scientific management in his appeal for the cotton mill operatives. He urged his fellow captains of industry to consider the human values in the productive mechanism, and stood thus in rather sharp contrast to the crude political economizing of his day. "Far more attention" said he, "has been given to per- fect the raw materials of wood and metals than those of ^ Cf. Woods, "Social Waste of Unguided Personal Ability," Amer. Jour. Sociology, 19 : 358-69. 272 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS body and mind. . . . Man, even as an instrument for the creation of wealth, may be greatly improved. . . . You may not only partially improve these living instruments, but learn how to impart to them such excellence as shall make them infinitely surpass those of the present and all former times." In no mean sense, then, positive eugenics means the socializing of opportunity, which is the final significance and aim of social education. While it is true that a biological embargo preventing the multiplication of the unfit would eliminate much social legislation and social patchwork, it is evident that the laying of this embargo is a problem in the sociological field of the mores. Hence the task of eugenics is not after all biological but social. In short, it is merely one phase of social selection. The issue reduces, in consequence, to a choice between direct action upon the parties to sexual reproduction and that indirect action which might be expected from the creation of a more favorable social environment.^ Perhaps the best way to sum up this whole discussion of selection and eugenics, and at the same time show the limitations of natural selection, is to say that natural selection picks out the individuals fitted to thrive in or withstand a given or changing environment, but does not select individuals who will fit into a progressive environ- ment or who will better it. Natural science knows nothing of a progressive environment ; that is distinctively a human concept. Hence rational selection, having in view a pro- gressive humanity in a progressing environment, is a social process. It is not mere adaptation or conformity we want, but the abihty to react on an environment for its benefit. Such a process cannot go on blindly ; it must be conscious. ^ Cf. A. R. Wallace, Studies Scientific and Social, i, 516-17 ; for the eco- nomic hindrances to positive eugenics, see W. L. Holt, " The Economic Fac- tors in Eugenics," Popular Science Monthly, November, 1913. THE EUGENISTS 273 It must not be acquiescent ; for it must realize that the struggle for existence tends to make those forms of economic and social organization prevail which are best fitted to thrive in but not necessarily beneficial to their environment, and hence in the long run to the individuals or groups placed in that environment. It is for this reason that the selective process must ceaselessly strive to call forth the genius and the heretic for the health and progress of society ; for genius is contagious, just as contagious as stupidity. On the other hand, the dearth of visible genius as compared with the great store of potential genius lying latent in the masses, makes it clear that the selective processes have hitherto worked more or less blindly and haltingly. To utilize the principle of selection as a force for progress it must be divested of all its purely mechanical and irrational aspects and conceived as a human, social, supremely rational instrument for a clearly defined, conscious social purpose. Eugenics may be destined to become this instrument ; if so, it must work somewhat along the lines of reclamation and utilization of latent human resources which scientific analysis, common sense, and human sentiment unite in declaring necessary. CHAPTER XVIII THE RACIALISTS (Inter-Group Selection : Race Conflicts) Selection in the terms so far stated is a process that goes on between members within the same group. But there is a wider range of its activity, that is, inter-group selection. Corresponding to the struggle between whole species in the vegetable and animal world the race-conflict theorists of social progress find a keen struggle between human groups aligned according to racial quahties, prob- ably the last stage of the primordial human fight for survival. A dogmatic Enghsh eugenist goes so far as to claim that history shows him "one way and one way only in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely, the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race." ^ These theorists usually assume the polygenetic origin of man and certain irreducible race quahties capable of pro- ducing those apparently invincible race antagonisms which, they claim, form the real stuff of history. M. Gobineau was if not the first at least the most influential protagonist of this doctrine. His great treatise, the Essai sur Vinegalite des races humaines, fell in well, both as to time and content, with German pretensions to the hegemony of Europe, and incidentally to a world Pan-Germanism. It at least has ^ Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science, 19. 274 THE RACIALISTS 275 made possible the enormous popularity of such Germanists as Stuart Houston Chamberlain, and probably paved the way for the sudden exaltation of the philosophy of Nietzsche with its apotheosis of brutal force, hardness, and the will-to- power. It also attracted some men of science and was partly responsible for the false interpretation of Darwin's principles which currently goes by the name Social Dar- winism, and which seems to have been financed, in part at least in Germany, by the Krupps, who had everything to gain by the exploitation of chauvinism. The essentials of Gobineau's theory are : the multiple origin of the human species^, that ethnic differences are permanent; that the h uman race is not a unit but is a congeries of ethnic groups tu i ntellectuallyj inegual ; th at neither the race as a whole n or ^l\a^ an y of its pa rts is indefinitely pe rfectible ; that the course of ^^ ra ce histories i s independent of government^ religionL,_or^ o ther institutions, also of ge ogmphiml q iirroj rmding'^ ; that all races tend to degenerate because the higher allow the b lood of lo wer races to mix with and contaminate their prim eval purity and stre ngth ; hence that the whole hurna n sp ecies is destine d inevitably to jjerl sh wlthm from twelv e to fourte e n thou san cT year s.^ These exaggerated and unfounded conclusions are less important in themselves than in their bearing upon modern imperialism, the relations between conquering and subject nationalities, and upon a certain tendency in sociological theory. The assumption by the imperialists (of whatever race or time) of inherent and unquestionable superiority is a fact too common to require comment. It is merely an exaggeration of the ethnocentrism which marks every petty tribe. It is obvious enough that race egotism among primitive groups was due to their ignorance and isolation. . ^ For an acute criticism of Gobineau, the "race mystic," see J. M. Hone, Contemp. Review, 104 : 94-103. ? 276 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS But shall we set down modern race boasting and strutting ] to the same causes ? To ignorance, yes ; and to deliberate fostering of imperialism or dynastic pretensions ; and to the "headiness" which comes from the new wine of quick and easy success. Thus America, though young, believes in ] her "manifest destiny" to show the world how to make money, do business, win battles, and take up the white man's burden. Thus England sincerely believes herself the repository of colonial wisdom. But for the choicest illus- tration of race egotism run riot, we must look to modern Pan- Germanism. Wilhelm II declares in all gravity that the German people are the chosen of God ; that on him the Spirit of God has descended ; that he is the weapon, the sword, the vice-regent of the Lord. Bernhardi has no doubt that the Germans are the "greatest civilized people known to history." And S. H. Chamberlain, the Germanized Englishman, wins the reading suffrage of hundreds of thou- sands by his theory that "true history begins from the moment when the German with mighty hand seizes the inheritance of antiquity." He claims the genius of the earth as German. Dante's face strikes him as "char- acteristically German"! And St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians he regards as a "document in which one fancies one hears a German speaking who was exceptionally gifted for the understanding of deepest mysteries." Whether Christ was a German or not, he does not definitely decide; he goes so far, however, as to declare that "who- ever maintains that Christ was a Jew is either ignorant or dishonest." Another, but less discriminating German au- thority did not balk at claiming the founder of Christian- ity as a member of his race. The statement of similar ideas by such a really great social scientist as Gumplowicz merits some attention. He assumes the polygenetic origin of man and of man's typical r THE RACIALISTS 277 institutions — language, religion, etc. ; hence irreducible natural variations reenforced by diverse human histories. On the analogy of the two factors in every physical or chemical process, — (i) heterogeneous elements, in the pres- ence of (2) reciprocal action, — he finds in human history certain heterogeneous elements, ethnical diversities, and a reciprocal action which we might not unfairly paraphrase as eat or be eaten. Gumplowicz' formula for this process runs : E very powerful ethnic or social element seek s to use f or its own ends every wea k e lement which is found in or which penetrates its zone of influence .^ To this a generalization he accords ail the validity of the most certain ^)\r laws of the physical sciences. Elsewhere he puts the matter more concretely : The highest j aw of s ocial development i s group je lf-interest. the struggle for group self-mainte- nance^ Pressure of increasing population from within ' fo rces ex p nnsio" ^^^ ronflirt wit Jio ut, with a gg lomerati on, . amalgamation, or extinction as the resul t. This agglomera- tion and its corollaries form the social process.^ Thus the almost bewildering number of small primitive human tribes was diminished by literal extinction, by conquest, and con- sumption. It was all a process of absorption more or less literal and gross, first by eating, later by intermarriage and peaceful assimilation. It goes almost without saying that war is the great means \ by which this process of absorption, this unity out of hetero- ( geneity, is accomplished. For Gumplowicz the great motive force behind the scenes is syngenism, a natural sentiment of synthesis, of social union, of cohesion. This is of course only a name and is open to the same criticism that has been leveled at other supposed "social forces." Yet the fact remains that to secure this unity, which ought ^ Rassenkampf, French transl., p. 159. 2 Sociologie imd Polilik, 78 £f . 278 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS to mean peace, war is the sublime instrument. Indeed, Gumplowicz is inclined to agree with Odysse Barrot that the idea of war is the only innate idea.^ This is simply another way of saying that all is conflict, a maxim which will come up for criticism later. Meanwhile let us run down to its bitter end Gumplowicz' doctrine. Amalga- mation by struggle, says he, is the only real thing in history. It goes on in peace and in war. Perpetual peace is only the dream of idealists. But with a hardihood rarely matched this modest college professor propounds the monstrous principle that this whole business of race conflicts is a perpetual struggle and without progress } It does not alter the matter nor soften the shock to learn that this is ' salutary pessimism.' His final conclusion merely develops this idea : "In a word, throughout the whole of the historical process there is neither progress nor retrogression. There is only progress here and there, in certain periods of this eternal cycle, in certain countries where social progress ever recommences. There it is true there is a beginning of development, a culminating point, and necessarily also a decline." ' There is neither progress nor going backwards. There is only eternal conflict that gets us nowhere. We are like fighting squirrels whose fruitless combat serves only to keep the cage spinning forever. Strange philosophy. And stranger science. For the whole structure rests upon a flimsy foundation. Nobody has the slightest evidence of the multiple origin of man. By the blood or mating test the human species is a unit. Neither does anybody know that race characters are fixed, nor that races are ineluctably superior or inferior. Most recent studies tend to show ^ Sociologie und Politik, 97. ^ Rassenkampf, French ed., 350. 3 Ibid., 348. THE RACIALISTS 279 exactly the opposite. Race prejudice, which is commonly assumed to prove natural and inbred antipathies, turns out to be the result of clash of mores, of economic interests, or the product of deliberate policy. And the lessening of race prejudice is set down as one of the marks of progress. Moreover, race conflicts by no means require the assump- tion of superior and inferior races. It would not be diffi- cult to show that racial equality in intelligence and morals tends to sharpen the rivalry between races, or as in our own South, between diverse racial elements in the same population. Gumplowicz' theory is unsatisfactory, not because it is pessimistic, but because it is lop-sided and exaggerated. It is indisputable that race-confficts have formed a con- siderable part of the stuff of history. It is also true that many superficial differences exist between races. But conflict is only one of the phases of race contact. Conflict may persist to the crack of doom, but to base a theory of necessary conflict on certain assumed inherent differences of racial character or constitution is incautious, to say the least ; for greater variations of skull formation, brain weight, mental and physical capacity, are to be found between members of the same ethnic group than between separate ethnic stocks. Inherent differences in "racial vitahty, " though frequently asserted,^ are by no means demonstrated ; they seem to partake less of the character of inherent variations, and more of degrees of adaptability to artificial environments. It proves nothing to say that Negroes and Indians are more liable to tuberculosis ; for tuberculosis is predominantly the result of fatigue, lack of food, air, and sunshine. Again, brain weight corresponds in no way to degree of intelligence. Craniometry is of no value in ^ E.g., Davenport, "Racial Element in National Vitality," Popular Science Monthly, April, 1915, 331-3. k 28o THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS attempting to fix racial differences. For cranial measure- ments place Hottentots and Portuguese, Bushmen, Kurds, Solomon Islanders, and certain French types ; Bororo and Dutch ; Battas and Perigord French, all on the same level. Recent studies in human pigmentation show that it, too, is not a fundamental mark of racial character. Skin pigment is a protection against too much sunlight and varies with intensity of sunlight. It is an acquired resistance and has no necessary connection with other traits. As a matter of fact the race question in its physiological aspects is of comparatively little significance to sociology. / Races there are, to be sure, in the physiological sense of the . y*^\:elative persistence of a certain group of bodily char- ^ acteristics. Yet this physical persistence through heredity ^ /is of little or no importance by comparison with the vast ^^ I significance of race mores, the social heredity of races and / I smaller groups, that vast accumulation of tribal ways and means of meeting local situations, the philosophies and cults that grow out of such reactions, together, it may be, with echoes of prehistoric conflicts for Hfe between neighbor- ing groups. All these social elements become woven up into a web of psychic antagonisms which we call race prejudice, clash of race mores, etc. And they are the true meaning of race. One might even go farther and assert I with considerable show of validity that not only is race a \ psychological and sociological concept, but it corresponds to \ no objective reafity ; it is purely subjective. The raciafist • is really a metaphysician busied about reifying his own per- suasion. A friend of mine touched off this situation to a nicety by a happy paraphrase of Shakespeare: "There is nothing either Jew or Greek but thinking makes it so !" Race is psychological. That is why the concept remains vivid despite the somewhat mythical character of the term from the physical standpoint. Races persist because the THE RACIALISTS 281 majority of men believe in them heartily, passionately, desperately. Such warmth and solidarity of thinking preserve and transmit the myth. Race, we repeat, is psychological. But does that mean that races or nations have souls? Is there such a thing as 'national mind' or 'race psychology,' unique and distinct? Those who claim there is, range in the intensity of their conviction all the way from belief in a literal social brain to mere predication of certain easily recognizable group qualities. When Sumner, for instance, speaks of the ethos or ''specific char- acter" of a society or a period,^ he simply means that certain habitual reactions have been bred from communal experiences. But when a representative of the folk-psychologists, say, M. Le Bon, speaks of race character, he means some- thing much more intense. He sets far greater store by the soul of a people than by its skin or its cranium. He never questions that it has a soul. And the three solid bases of this soul are common sentiments, common interests, common beliefs. He distinguishes between natural and historic races : but the distinction is of small significance, since the really important thing is the process by which a people gets its soul and becomes conscious of it. This process is the cumulative experiences of the past. Hence his aphorism (strongly reminiscent of Comte) that a people is led by its dead far more than by its living.^ Thus each race has certain fundamental psychological traits which modify very slowly, if at all ; each has certain accessory traits which modify easily and lead to the superficial conclu- sion that variability and not fixity is the rule. "The divers factors susceptible of acting on the mental constitution of peoples . . . act on the accessory and ^ Folkways, 36-7, 59. 2 L'Evolution psychologique des peuples, 2d ed., Bk. I, chap. i. 282 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS transitory sides of character, but do not touch in the slightest its fundamental elements, or touch them only as the result of very slow hereditary accumulations . . . psy- chological characteristics like anatomical characteristics possess a very high degree of fixity." ^ Further, "intellectual discoveries are transmitted easily from one people to another. Quahties of character cannot be transmitted. . . . The character of a people and not its intelligence determines its evolution in history and governs its destiny. ... It is upon character and not upon intelligence that societies, reUgions, and empires are founded." Moreover, members of a given race differ little in character. This of course is absurd. And what- ever of generality exists in a group is due probably rather to imitation and nurture than to some breeding in of race character. But what, after all, is this 'character' or 'soul' of a people? "It is precisely that net of traditions, ideas, sentiments, behefs, common modes of thinking which forms the soul of a people." ^ This is famihar doctrine. So far so good. But can this soul be modified? Yes, and no; it is hardly amenable to moral or climatic milieux ; but it may be conquered ; not by a flip of the hand, it is true, but slowly. Ill-timed attempts to superimpose culture (whether in the form of art, reHgion, education, etc.) will change merely the names but not the spirit of the cultures they aim to supplant. The capacity of a people for absorb- ing a new element of civilization is always very restricted.' On the other hand, by a sort of somersault M. Le Bon affirms that after all the soul of a people may be very pro- foundly influenced by apparently small causes ; for he is, perhaps unconsciously, an extreme ideahst. "The presence ^ L' Evolution psychologique des peuples, 2d ed., Bk. I, chap. ii. Cf. S. H. Diggs, "Relation of Race to Thought Expression," in Jour. Philos. Psychol, and Sci. Methods, xii, 346-358. 2 Ibid., Bk. I, chap, iii ; Bk. IV, chap. i. ^ j^i^^ gk. II, chap. ii. THE RACIALISTS 283 of strangers," he says, "even in small number suffices to alter the soul of a people." ^ This peaceful invasion is far more significant in its effects on race character than military invasion. Rome changed far less by barbarian ravages than by peaceful assimilation through intermarriage, com- mon service in the army, etc. But have we not traveled in a circle and come out with the equation = 0? Race characters are fundamental and practicably unalterable ; yet they are highly alterable through the injection of a small dose of new ideas. But this is precisely what was to be expected. Even Gumplowicz maintained that race is a historical rather than a physical concept, "a unity which has arisen during the course of history by and through social development ; and it is a unity which finds its origin in intellectual phenomena such as language, religion, customs, law, culture, etc." ^ In short, to historical contingency, or environmental agencies in the largest sense, and not to innate faculty, we must turn for the real causative factor in racial differences and variations in culture. M. Leroy-Beaulieu has demon- strated conclusively that supposed Jewish traits are not original racial endowment but the product of special types of occupation and isolation.^ Therefore we are driven to conclude that there is no such thing as the national or racial character, fixed and hereditary. Race is not a static unity : it is only an eternal becoming. Historic races have had no very well-defined folk-mind, ethos, or psychology. Race sentiment, as such, is of comparatively recent origin and significance as an effective factor in inter-group con- ^ Ihid., Bk. Ill, chap. iii. 2 Rassenkampf, 193. 3 See his Israel chez les Nations, chap, vi ; cf . for a good criticism of inborn race characters, Ross, Foundations of Sociology, 310, 318 ff. On the causal effect of the environment upon race character see further, Boas, Mind of Primitive Man, 17; Babington, Fallacies of Race Theories, 246; Ross, The Changing Chinese, chap, ii-iii. 284 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS flicts ; it was practically unknown as a determining element in struggles in the ancient classical world; it is, at least in part, merely an incident in modern great state and nation building of the last two centuries ; it has been deliberately fanned by honest enthusiasts or subsidized literary and scientific men who flattered the national vanity to give a background for pretensions to world power, colonial squatting and Big Business. Owing to the internationalizing of human activities, an international osmosis, so to speak, the concept of race is of diminishing importance, and may disappear from the focus of men's thought and passions. Hence it turns out that the real selective forces in complex societies are economic or moral, or psychological, or educational, but not ethnic. The significance of this to the matter of progress is that, granted environmental changes are the predominant forces in modifying group character, and that group char- acter is the reahty about group hfe, the uncertainty about the future of inferior races is cleared up. It becomes possible to forecast the progressive development of all primitive peoples if only the environment can be appro- priately modified. This is the conclusion of several propositions laid before the First Universal Races Congress in 1911.^ Race conflicts may go on for ages; but not because some assumed biological principle of selection for improve- ment necessitates these conflicts in their present form. In no event is it demonstrated that race conflict is a means of progress or that the fittest, in any final sense, survive. The fundamental error in Social Darwinism is that develop- ment is ascribed to struggle of beast with beast or man with ^ Proceedings, p. 73. Cf. Babington, Fallacies of Race Theories, Essay I; Cornejo, Rev. Inlernl. de Sociologie, March, 1911, pp. 161-189; Finot, Race Prejudice, 214. /U— ^^-^^"^^ o THE RACIALI^S'S^^ 285 man, instead of to what William James called the ''im- memorial warfare of man against Nature." ^ Darwin nowhere warranted such a misinterpretation of his hy- pothesis. Many possibilities may arise as alternatives to present day organized group murder as a method of race hygiene. It is possible that man's control over the physical environment may stop race-making, and that race-mixture may attain such proportions that conflict may become regional rather than racial. Or selection may tend toward cooperation rather than conflict. Or race conflicts may gradually eliminate the warhke nations just as social selec- tion has bred out violent types within the group. That is, it is possible that the end of inter-group selection, which is now apparently brute strength, may be transformed and become cooperation or the abihty to federate, much in the same way that natural has been supplanted by social selection within the group. With international and inter- racial osmosis it is possible that the contribution of a given race to culture may be preserved, in part at least, to the world at large, even though that race itself perish in the conflict. But from the standpoint of progress this is much like the drowning man's despairing clutches at a straw. It is to pin one's faith to a gigantic evil in order that a tiny and highly contingent good may result. But this may be our earthly destiny. If so, we cannot dodge it. God's will be done. But neither can we blink the fact that there is little hope for genuine advance in such a wasteful pro- cess. If race antagonisms are essential to the eternal cosmic order, we may without dishonor surrender all hope of human development and go down with the pessimists. But the inevitableness of race conflict is still only a hy- ^ See J. Novicow, La critique du Darwinisme Social; Id., Les Ltittes entre les societcs humaines ; Id., War and its Pretended Benefits ; Nasmyth, Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory ; W. E. Ritter, War, Science and Civiliza- tion; J. Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics, 286 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS pothesis ; rather, let us say, a superstitious survival in our world mores. The recrudescence of nationalism and race sentiment leading up to and enhanced by the Great War need not be considered as proof of eternal race characters or of irre- ducible race hatreds in the future contact of European peoples. The line-up of the armies themselves reveals many examples of members of presumably the same racial stock fighting each other. Ignorance on the one hand and pseudo-science on the other will no doubt conspire to post- pone the day of peaceful race contacts, and to hold us in the dreary treadmill of cycles of unprogressive conflict which Gumplowicz saw. But if human groups are to reach higher levels that great day must come sooner or later. ^ Group selection by conflict may have a salutary element in it, and may therefore persist for ages ; but should it not be confined to exceptional cases, as a sort of final unction in extremis? Perhaps an analysis of militarism will answer. ' It will not come until such sentiments as those of Professor F. von Luschan, German delegate to the First Universal Races Congress, are re- futed. "Racial barriers," he declared, "will never cease to exist. . . . If ever they show a tendency to disappear, it will certainly be better to preserve than to obliterate them. . . . The brotherhood of man is a good thing, but the struggle for life is a far better one. Athens would never have become what it was without Sparta, and national jealousies and differences, and even the most cruel wars have ever been the real causes of progress and mental freedom. . . . The respect due by the white races to other races and by the white races to each other can never be too great, but natural law will never allow racial barriers to fall, and even national boundaries will never cease to exist. . . . Nations will come and go, but racial and national antagonisms will remain ; and this will be well, for mankind would become like a herd of sheep if we were to lose our national ambition. ..." CHAPTER XIX THE MILITARISTS War is the everlasting corollary to the principle of race struggle. Heraclitus, I believe, is responsible for the doleful epigram that war is all. And he has had able disciples. Carlyle, with customary grim exaggeration, announced, "The ultimate question between every two human beings is, 'Can I kill thee, or canst thou kill me?'" Nietzsche proposed to revise the Beatitudes somewhat after this fashion : "Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars ; and the short peace better than the long. ... Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war ? I say unto you : a good war halloweth every cause. . . . War and courage have done more great things than charity. ... Be hard, ..." etc. Ferri adds his mite with the sentiment, "Truly the human race progresses by two uplifting ener- gies : war and labor." Recently a group of Futurist poets, among them Signor Marinetti, has proposed to glorify war, " the only true hygiene of the world." Anatole France makes one of his characters say that "man may be defined as an animal with a musket." But while M. France was bitterly ironic, many of his contemporaries would have taken his definition in all seriousness. To Professor Stein- metz, for example, war is not a mere human foible ; it is an ordeal estabhshed by God for the welding of nations ; it is the essential form and function of the state ; only in warlike states can human nature adequately develop 287 288 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS its full capacities. Benjamin Kidd makes war the selective agency between nations, and indeed their chief business. Not because of its scientific value (for it is naively ridic- ulous), but because it epitomizes the philosophy and the code of conduct of a considerable section of modern Ger- many, must be cited General F. von Bernhardi and his book, Germany and the Next War. The three most signifi- cant theoretical chapters in this singular work are entitled "The Right to Make War," "The Duty to Make War," and "World Power or Downfall." He deplores the habit of regarding war as a curse and refusing to "recognize it as the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power." He states boldly his thesis in these unmitigated terms : "I must try to prove that war is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of culture, in which a true civilized nation finds the highest expression of strength and vitality." That is, war is not a mere incident in the life of nations, but their highest aim and at the same time the worthiest means for realizing that aim. From every standpoint, he declares, war is necessary and inevitable : natural law, biological necessity, man's nature, a supposed right of conquest, a very explicit law that makes might the supreme right, the very nature of the state, moral necessity, national health, the Christian religion, idealism, and other consider- ations all conspire to this one great end. "Theinevita- bleness, the ideahsm, and the blessing of war, as an indis- pensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized." Hence, "God will see to it," as Treitschke declared, "that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race !" Waitz, the veteran anthropologist, was more discriminat- ing. While recognizing that war through its wastage THE MILITARISTS 289 hindered progress, he held that it roused nations from psychical indolence and lethargy, stimulated effort and invention, and wrought cohesion. Tylor also bears wit- ness to its consolidating effect, as revealed in the sinking of private quarrels, subordination to leadership, and larger patriotism. Spencer, although an avowed anti-militarist, hating the base treacheries and brutal aggressions of the military spirit, refused to let his feelings blind him to the proofs that inter-social conflicts have furthered the develop- ment of social structures. Bagehot claims that all Euro- pean history has been the history of the superposition of the more military races over the less military, hence the history of efforts to improve the art of war. This meant the focusing of intelligence, invention and moral sentiment upon the supreme military virtues, coherence, discipline, obedience, veracity, valor. Everywhere the compact tribes win, and the compact tribes are tamest from the very necessity of presenting solid fronts to their enemies. Lester F. Ward also, while careful to premise that if sociology has any utihtarian purposes, one of them is certainly to diminish or mitigate the horrors of war, goes on to assert that for pure sociology war has been the chief and leading condition of human prog- ress, and that for all primitive races peace means social stagnation.^ Certain of these general claims will bear closer exami- nation. First, in the absence of historical proofs it is diffi- cult to estabhsh that the germ of most of the mechanic arts lay in the primordial arts of strife as practiced against beast and fellow-man. But this theory has been advanced with considerable show of authority. Mason, for example, * Waitz, Introd. to Anthropology, 346 ff. ; Tylor, Anthropology, 432; Spencer, Princ. of Sociology, sec. 435 ; Bagehot, Physics and Politics, section on "The Use of Conflict"; cf. Ross, PiM. Amer. Social. Soc, vol. x, pp. 2-4 ; Ward, Pure Sociology, 238. u 290 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS at the end of an impressive chapter on the primitive art of war concludes that war, at least in primitive times, stands forth preeminently as an incitement to the genius of invention and discovery.^ But, on the other hand, to say that the offensive weapons are nearly always the same for hunting and war, or that the same magical and religious rites accompany both, does not mean that tools always had their origin in weapons. The reverse may be equally true. The whole history of warfare was revolutionized by the discovery of lire and the art of working metals. Another enormous leap was made possible by the invention of the wheel. Still another by the researches of the inoffen- sive German priest and his English rival, Friar Roger Bacon, who gave to the world the dubious invention of gunpowder. Finally, the discovery of steam and other motor-driven machinery has permitted military movements that would have stupefied and overwhelmed earlier cap- tains of war. Second, from the standpoint of group conflicts soli- darity is perhaps the supreme social virtue. More than that, it is the price of individual as well as social sur- vival. There is no question but that war has contributed in all ages to secure this necessary coherence. It evokes common interests and emphasizes the habits of attention and obedience. It provides for a certain amount of in- dividual variability, originaHty, and inventive genius. It aids in the creation of those common sentiments and desires which make up the social reality. How war acts 1 Origins of Invention, pp. 408-09 ; Cf. Sumner, War, etc., p. 30 : "In his- tory the military inventions have led the way and have been afterwards ap- plied to industry. . . . The skill of artisans has been developed in making weapons, and then that skill has been available for industry." "All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war : no great art ever yet rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers. . . . You must have war to produce art . . ." (Ruskin, Crown of Wild Olives), THE MILITARISTS 29 1 as a religious unifier may be illustrated from the history of the Israelitish campaigns against their heathen neighbors, by the Arabic invasions, by the Crusades, by the Spanish- Moorish wars. War also furnishes the occasion for intro- ducing doses of new ideas into an otherwise perhaps stag- nating society. The introduction of captives, whether as slaves or by a process of absorption by marriage or other- wise, must have had a profound and permanent effect when tribes were small. Waitz is inclined perhaps to under- estimate this effect and to consider that if there is any positive effect it would be merely transitory. But it was not mere literary bravado that prompted the famous aphorism that captive Greece took captive her rude con- querors. The Hebrew myth of Esther, all due allowance made for national egotism and errors of transcription, indicates a similar conquering invasion of ideas. This form of conquest is not always without certain counter- vailing disadvantages. Japan, for example, received Chi- nese learning in the third century a.d., and Buddhism fol- lowed in the sixth to the eighth centuries. Two results followed. Manners were softened, and art and literature were refined. On the other hand, Japan's primitive ruggedness was weakened. Military and political effi- ciency declined. A strong central government ceded to feudal anarchy. Epicureanism, monasticism, and priestly predominance ultimated in moral and poHtical degradation. It is freely granted that war has been a valuable school- master to the race in the past, that it has been perhaps the means of welding large coherent masses out of tiny scat- tered groups, nations out of tribelets. But these amalga- mations made, is it still a force for progress ? Is it a perma- nent and unavoidable element in future history if mankind is to mount higher? The peace societies say no, but their 292 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS voices have not yet been caught up by the world, even the scientific world, in unanimity. Over three hundred years ago Sir Walter Raleigh voiced the opinion that the general who leads an army to a war which kills many, sometimes does a service greater than he knows, by relieving a con- gested country of its surplus ; for, said he, a state can have so great a population that it becomes sick. We may neg- lect the naive theory of population here involved : we may also forgive Sir Walter his lack of grasp of economic principles, for the economic wastes of warfare are com- paratively recent discoveries. But we really need not be patronizing to the least degree in granting him such indul- gences, for without them he stands the test of comparison with certain modern scientists obsessed by notions of selec- tion. Professor Karl Pearson is one of these. His address on National Life from the Standpoint of Science is an elo- quent, almost passionate, defense of war in the service of natural selection. Incidentally he takes a stand almost identical with Sir Walter's : mankind must choose between the bitter alternatives of race struggle or physical selec- tion through over-population, famine, and pestilence, and experience proves that war will do a cleaner job of it.^ Those, however, who are not fuddled with the new wine of imperialism nor hypnotized by doctrinaire science will be more inclined to search for other alternatives and to listen to other counsellors ; namely, the men who by apply- ing the principle of cost accounting to human history have reached the sober conclusion that while war has destroyed the worn-out and effete, it has done so at such tremendous costs that civilization moved on with leaden feet if it moved at all. ^ Op. cil., pp. 34-5 ; cf. Knox, Forum, 3 : 96 ; Brooks Adams, Piihl. Anier. Social. Soc, vol. x, pp. 103-124; B. L. Putnam Weale, The Coming Struggle in Eastern Asia, 626, etc. THE MILITARISTS 293 In spite of benefits presumably conferred by war, it is apparently by no means an unmixed blessing. Indeed, many of our most profound thinkers are disposed to fleny any virtue whatever to war, and to assert that whatever progress we have made has come not through war but in spite of it. One of the very last of M. Novicow's papers was a brilliant exposition. of this idea in reply to M. Gaul- tier's criticism of his book on Social Darwinism} He sees a fundamental difference between struggle {lutte) and war {guerre). Progress is due to struggle, its set-backs to war. In another more extended work, Les Luttes entre les societes humaines, he shows clearly how advance is the result of struggle between ideas, ideals, languages, and how the struggle by arms has been a real retarding influence. His critic, M. Gaultier, perhaps unwittingly, illustrates just this warfare of ideas. The pacifism of some ideologues, he says, is but a paradoxical form of the warlike instinct itself.^ But why not say that it is a natural expression of the instinct for struggle? Does to compete mean only to bite or to stab? May it not mean also good-tempered rivalry? Are we forced to believe that economic compe- tition, athletic contests, zeal for the spread of a particular theory in science or religion, are watered or faded forms of the warlike instinct? Is it not equally proper to consider that war is a debased form of the instinct to compete? At least it will not do to assume by ipse dixit that war is the more fundamental form of this competitive impulse. War is only one expression of man's fundamental energy. The real argument against war can never be that it is force, and that force is inherently and eternally evil. Force is neither good nor bad. Only stupid kings or popes have flogged the waves and excommunicated comets, and ^ Mercure de France, 191 1, pp. 5-28, ^Ibid., xcii, 65-94. 294 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS they did it only because the force seemed personally hos- tile to themselves. War is violence ; true, but violence is only force running wild without constructive purpose. Even non-resistance is an intense apphcation of force to oneself. What particular form of manifesting force shall be adopted in attaining a particular end must be deter- mined by the pragmatic test of economy of effort and civilized goods. ^ Another assumption cannot be passed without question, namely, the notion that primitive men are always in a state of war. This is by no means true. The successes of our animal forbears, the social monkeys, came no doubt more from agility of limb than from capacity to fight. Similarly, savages prefer avoiding to precipitating a fight. I am rather suspicious of the Cockney phrase of "having your monkey up." It is picturesque as an unconscious satire on the thorough-going natural selectionist. But it is no more accurate than is that other way of announcing that a man is angry, namely, that he "has his Irish up"; or that when a man does something he ought not to do " the old Adam comes out" in him. Now both Adam and the monkeys were rather peaceable, pusillanimous, frugiferous creatures, who fought, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Olivia, only when they were plumped into each other. Man in the most primitive and uncivilized state does not practice war all the time. Real warfare comes only with the collisions of more developed societies. ^ Savages fight, undoubtedly, but how? In some parts of the world quarrels between tribes are often settled by a * See Professor John Dewey's suggestive article in The New Republic, Jan. 22, 1916, pp. 295-7. 2 See W. G. Sumner, War and Other Essays, p. 31. Mason adds corrobo- ration : " It is not to be supposed that war was ever the normal occupation of any people. As now, so in all ages, war is an incident, an outbreak, a frenzy that soon exhausts itself." {Origins of Invention, 368.) THE MILITARISTS 295 single combat between chiefs. Real fighting is rare and even then is only carried on by taunts and wrestling, a war of words and hair-pulling. The first wound ends the com- bat. Some tribes of New Guinea have no offensive weap- ons at all. In certain islands of German Melanesia war is entirely unknown. Livingstone reported that the tribes of Central South Africa seldom resorted to war except about cattle, and that on that account some tribes refused to keep cattle in order to avoid temptation. These cases are typical of much of primitive tribal life.^ It is apparent that such petty squabbles are not to be dignified by the august name of war and could scarcely contribute to social integrity or discipline. Solidarity, or social integration, we said awhile ago, is the supreme social necessity. But integration depends upon other things besides conflict. Indeed, from many standpoints war tends to break down social integrity. For example, it destroys the economic fabric, it separates families, it dissolves political bonds, it breaks old cultural links, it dries up the streams of good will, it abrogates standards of conduct and of social welfare which have taken long and cost much to establish. We said that war is sometimes a religious unifier. But not always so. Our own civil war illustrates that. Great religious bodies like the Presbyterians and Methodists were cleft in twain by the issues at stake in the conflict. We might even go so far as to say that the social cohe- sion presumed to result from the stress of war must in reality precede war, and that the whole process of warfare would be impossible without the cementing principle of sympathy or altruism. This is the position taken by Tarde : "In reality would war and conquest ever have accom- plished anything other than to divide up and pulverize * Cf. others in Sumner, War, etc., pp. 4-7. 296 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS humanity to infinity, instead of collecting it into sheaves, if before, during, and after battles and victories, the instinct of sympathy which causes men, even when fighting, to reflect one another in everything, had not been continually acting ? . . . The labors of war are only useful to the extent to which they serve this fruitful instinct by overcoming obstacles in its path. Without this instinct nothing social can exist, not even war." ^ Hence we must look beyond war for the integrating prin- ciple. Pythagoras said it was love ; Aristotle, friendship. But they were philosophers ! There is a measure of truth in Chatterton-Hill's contention that religion has to be invoked to restore the solidarity which war breaks down. Still other agencies enter to dispute with war the primacy of integration : ties of blood and family, totemism, the cult of local divinities, the common fear of common dangers from the unseen world, language, the possession of common economic goods and processes or certain cultural advan- tages, secret societies, alcohol, and, by no means of least importance, dancing. By what means, asks M. Kreglinger, can primitive society succeed in submitting all its members to the disci- pline indispensable to community action — say, fertilizing crops by magic, magical increase of fish, game, etc. ? The dance ! And the dance only ! ^ Recalling that war is only a man-hunt, we need not be surprised that savages resort to the dance to secure that unanimity of spirit and that willingness to subordinate the individual will for group purposes which are indispensable to successful war- fare. "The war-dance is a war-play, a preparation for common action." ^ Among the Iroquois Indians, * Penal Philosophy, sec. q6. 2 Bulletins Mensuels dc rinsiitut Solvay, iii, No. 20, p. 629; cf. Kunike's article in Anthropos, 1912, pp. 206—29. ' R. Wallaschek, Primitive Music, p. 274. THE MILITARISTS 297 "Any person was at liberty to organize a war-party and conduct an expedition wherever he pleased. He announced his project by giving a war-dance and inviting volunteers. This method furnished a practical test of the popularity of the undertaking. If he succeeded in forming a company, which would consist of such persons as joined him in the dance, they departed immediately, while enthusiasm was at its height. When a tribe was menaced with an attack, war- parties were formed to meet it in much the same manner." ^ I have italicized the phrase about utilizing enthusi- asm at its height, because in that phrase lies the key to this whole question of social solidarity. It was not the fact of war but the fact that unity of idea and sentiment had been worked up regarding the motives and methods of warfare that constituted the social discipline of warfare. Further support is given this presumption from the role played by dancing in the attempts at social reintegration through peace overtures. Many kinds of songs and dances were in vogue among the Carolina Indians in the seven- teenth century : not the least important of these was the peace ratification dance, for which several towns and sometimes different 'nations' gathered to celebrate the end of dissension and the promise of future good will.^ More recent evidence confirms this observation. When the Sun Dance, the most important rite of the Plains Indians, was to be celebrated, messengers were sent out to invite all the tribes privileged to participate. Some of the visitors were hereditary enemies ; that mattered not during the sun-dance : they visited one another ; they shook hands and formed alliances.' The supreme value of the primitive dance lay in the fact that it offered every member of the tribe an opportunity ^ Morgan, Ancient Society, Part II, chap. iv. ^ Lawson, History of North Carolina, p. 285. ' Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, 31, after Bushotter and Dorsey. 298 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS to participate ; and the whole tribe did actually participate so long as it cohered as a tribe. ^ Miss Barbara Freire- Marreco, writing of the Indians of the arid Southwest, says : "They dance out their society. The dance is both the measure and the machinery of organization. In a pueblo, you sum up political discord in one word when you say that 'all the people are not dancing together.' And when a reconciliation is in progress it would be hard to say whether the accompanying dance more truly expresses the movement or brings it about. A revival of social sol- idarity means a revival of dancing." ^ Such practices suggest that what confers group solidarity is not so much war as it is belief in the efhcacy of magic, charms, priests, and gods ; moreover, that dancing is not mere pastime but a magical ritual as well. War is a crisis to be met. The common belief, the common religious tradition, the common magical practice nerves and con- solidates the group to meet the test. The magical aspect of warfare is not confined to preparations for it but also runs clear through the actual hostilities themselves. In- deed magic cuts so large a figure in primitive warfare, so many struggles are fought out vicariously by magicians, that one is inclined to suspect the common assumption that clash of arms always decides relative merit. To the warrior and his accouterments (if we demand a complete account of early military equipment) must be added the priest, the sorcerer, omens, oracles, dreams, auspices, and spells. These elements from the "imaginary environment" supply the cement for group cohesion.^ ^ Cf. Wallaschek, op. cil., p. 278. 2 Sociological Review, iv, 328. Cf. my Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, pp. 213 ff. for further details. ^ See R. Holsti's illuminating article, "Some Superstitious Customs and Beliefs in Primitive Warfare," in Festskrift tillegnad Edvard Weslermarck, PP- 137-75- THE MILITARISTS 299 War is honored as the great agent in diffusing culture and in the development of culture unity among the nations of the earth, through paving the way for race contacts and cross-fertilization of cultures. But commerce is also a means of culture contacts. Trade follows the flag : quite true, but it is notorious that the flag, 'manifest des- tiny,' and rifles follow trade. Indeed, in no small sense, war with all its trappings and hullabaloo is only one small fraction of industrial organization. Soldiers frequently bring back with them as the best part of their loot new ideas, new women, new inventions. They may also bring back widened views of the reach of mankind, a new respect for their antagonists, a new sense of the unity of the race. Yet the chances are rather that they will return with their own ethnocentrism or provincialism heightened. More- over, war tends to secrete a hard shell about the combat- ants that renders them impervious to any but most super- ficial exchanges of ideas or sentiments. The advocates of war as the great selector of the strong, the vigorous, the brave, seem to forget that the process is negative. War selects men to die, not to live and radiate or propagate virility and valor. Or it marks them for slow consuming by disease or habitual idleness or debauchery. Recall the German proverb, that every war leaves behind it three armies, an army of heroes, an army of cripples, and an army of thieves. We might add another, the army of slaves. And slavery always reacts as a selective agency for the inferior elements in a population. In Rome, where long-continued wars had begotten the habit of dependence upon war captives for labor power, breeding of slaves was resorted to when the wars no longer brought sufficient levies of captives. Sexual vices, laziness, decline of energy and enterprise, cowardice, and contempt for honest labor marked the free and favored who were the unfortunate 300 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS beneficiaries of slave-power.^ Rome fell because this form of artificial selection cooperated with selection by civil war, proscription and foreign campaigns of conquest, by means of which her best stocks were extinguished.^ I will not go so far as to say with Jordan that only cowards and weaklings were left. But I am convinced that the flower of the Republic was blighted either directly or in- directly by the five centuries of warfare. -And I agree unreservedly in Jordan's general conclusion that the war- like nation of to-day is the decadent nation of to-morrow. Moreover, modern warfare is probably vastly more dis- genic in its effects upon a population than more primi- tive military enterprises could have been. And the newer developments in sanitary science have not yet nullified these heavier risks. War still selects the parasite and corrupts the streams of social strength and sanity. It spells, not progress, but retrogression of the species. Alfred de Musset has left us by all odds the most finished and at the same time the truest and most exact analysis of this maleficent military selection. He himself was born of the Napoleonic era of blood and iron which wiped out nearly four million selected men. He was part of a gen- eration, as he declares, ardent, pale, nervous, flabby- muscled, melancholy, conceived between two battles, edu- cated in the colleges to the roll of drums. "It was a stainless air radiant with glory, resplendent with sparkling steel, that these children breathed. They knew that they were destined to the hecatombs — but they believed Murat invincible ; and they had seen the emperor pass over a bridge with bullets whistling so thick that no mortal man might live. . . . Every cradle in * Cf. Seeck, Unlergang der antiken Welt, ii, chap. iv. * Cf. Jordan, Pop. Sci. Mo., 59 : 129. THE MILITARISTS 301 France was a helmet, every coffin as well. And there were no longer any aged — there were only corpses or demi- gods." ^ Only corpses or demigods in France ! Cripples and thieves as well as heroes in Germany ! And neither Mul- hall nor the Almanach de Gotha can tell us how far the battered wrecks outnumber the demigods and the heroes. It is currently believed that the real significance of the Mohammedan conquests lay in the prowess of the Arab armies. It may be that Europe was scared into unity by those armies, and that this temporary unity was good is unquestionable. But the fierce tornado of militarism which swept Europe from the seventh to the ninth cen- turies was a positive check not only to European but to Mussulman civilization as well. M. A. Le Chatelier, pro- fessor of Mussulman Sociology at the College de France, writing of the economic position of Islam, declares that a century after the death of Mahomet, the Arab empire sur- passed that of Alexander, and as heirs of Greek science the Mussulmans had improved upon it. But progress in civilization (taking Bagdad as typical with its university, astronomy, and chemistry) dechned as Turkish and Mon- gol militarism advanced. ^ War had welded Mohammedan Asia and Africa into a factitious sort of unity, but had moved the center of world culture and learning from Bag- dad to Western Europe. A similar shifting might be said to have operated in Western Europe since 1870. The reign of materialism began in Germany immediately after the sentiment of national unity generated by Bismarck's suc- cessful wars against Austria and France had abated. The armies of France were shattered ; but the treasures of Ger- man ideahsm had been rifled in the victory. Business ^ La Confession d'un enfant du Steele, chap. ii. ^ Revtie economique inter nationale, 1910. 302 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS has grown apace, but the Empire has produced no succes- sors to the philosophers or humanists of the German states a hundred years ago. It is obvious that war must affect both the form and content of social organization. And it is equally obvious to the candid observer that its contribution of ideas to the social melting pot is by no means without dross. Professor Veblen punctures the vainglorious militarist on this score. "Habituation to war," he says, "entails a body of pred- atory habits of thought, whereby clannishness in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity, and a sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse to equitable, everyday serviceability. As an outcome of the cumula- tive action of these factors, the generation which follows a season of war is apt to witness a rehabilitation of the element of status, both in its social life and in its scheme of devout observances and other symbolic or ceremonial forms." ^ Ritual and anthropomorphism are emphasized. The deity becomes a God of Battles. Titles are flung about; everybody craves military rank. The 'bloody rag' is waved in season and out. Pensions become the football of dirty politics. Chauvinism fans the fire. Meanwhile conservatism and complacent regard for predatory finance dominate the industrial organization. Truly the God of Battles wields a two-edged sword. And mere mortal man brandishing his sword is open to all the wounds and dangers of a puling infant in his first encounter with a pair of scissors. Why does mihtary preoccupation and success mean loss of civilization? Precisely because it is a preoccupa- tion, precisely because it becomes a fixed idea, a mono- mania, a fatal concentration of energies. Mankind are * Theory of the Leisure Class, 373. THE MILITARISTS 303 essentially active, spenders of energy. But their store of energy is limited. It pours into the two great channels of self-preservation at a given level and of striving to raise the level. Manifestly, if a disproportionate share of energy is drained off into mere sustenance-getting, but httle can remain for the "wages of going on." As in primitive life the food-quest monopolized time and energy and left an infinitesimal margin for avowedly cultural activities, so in all times of warfare, whether for real or fancied motives of defense or conquest of bases of subsistence, all the constructive energies of a people are drained off into mili- tary operations. Is it to be wondered at, then, that in consequence the greatest advance steps in art and science have been made in moderately fertile countries and peace- ful times? War threatens the existence of both opposing parties ; for the issues of it are always in the balance. And when existence is threatened there is neither time, energy, nor inclination for advance.^ The inevitable inference is that the abolition of war would not plunge the world into a dangerous lethargy, nor would it engender corruption. To the contrary, his- tory shows that the ages most notorious for their mental and spiritual lethargy, for their brute stolidity, for their dogged resistance to forward movements, were just the ages of overwrought militarism. If in some cases war seems to have acted as a prod or a social ferment, it does not argue that it is the mother of valor, strength, or progress. Indeed, in general we may say that all the virtues supposed to accrue from war are the merest by-products incidental to a process essentially vicious. It may well be that hu- manity owes much of its progress to its illusions and adventurous follies — to wine, religion, altruism, care for * Cf. Sir Oliver Lodge, "The Irrationality of War," International Concilia- tion Tracts, No. 56. 304 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the weak ; but merely to include war in this list of delusions or follies does not mean that it is or ever has been ipso facto a healthy ferment or stimulus. There are ferments which poison and stimuh which deal out death. Life is tension, death the relaxing of the springs of life. This maxim applied to nations accounts for those constant oppositions, emulations, strains and stresses that exist and must exist between live human groups. But that is far from saying that these tensions and stresses must ex- press, or ease themselves in war, or that war is the only vital process. On the contrary, war is often the depleter, the exhauster, the relaxer, that overspans and snaps the bow, destroys the tension, ultimates in slavery and death, and, sadly ironic as it may seem, evokes a world's mourning over the disappearance of a race. War is not an act, but a sentiment. And the deadliest, costliest war consists not so much in fighting and carnage, armaments and cam- paigns, as in losses by suspicion, envy, hatred. Murder in the broad gospel definition is not only to kill your brother, but to hate him. Hatred never did and never can multiply the strength of a single man or any group of men. Blind hatred of a common enemy may have engendered a tempo- rary and factitious unity and therefore have conferred a negative sort of social integration in the past. But the principle of animosity, particularly when institutionalized, can never be accounted as a force for real, positive, and per- manent progress, above all in a program of conscious, willed social advance. We must never lose sight of the distinc- tion between war as a determining and conditioning factor in human evolution and war as an agent for human improve- ment and advance. Suicide is a sociological fact, but hardly a progressive force. But the instinct of struggle remains, and no sensible person wants to emasculate the race. Hence, one cannot THE MILITARISTS 305 help feeling that Professor Giddings is knocking over a straw man or has adopted a one-sided view of social life when he assures us that — ''All activity is a clash of atoms or of thoughts, and the scientific man does not need to waste his time in disputing with those who look for the elimination of strife from human affairs." He, least of all, would assert that strife is the whole of social life; his own doctrine of "consciousness of kind" implies spontaneous cooperations and alliances as well as hostili- ties and suspicions. Indeed, no one is more pronounced in his advocacy of discussion as superior to violence in the settlement of group differences. Moreover, one may recognize the presence and the function of strife while at the same time urging the ehmination of some of the cruder causes of strife. Truth, as Mill said, is mih- tant; and hke the church, it only becomes triumphant through conflict. But such a conflict implies a lack of the petty passions that the word " strife " connotes. And the weapons of truth are established facts, not passion or steel. The triumph of truth is not a squabble but an ad- justment. Old Thomas Fuller declared three centuries ago : ''I love stout expressions among brave men and to have them speak as they think. I love a strong and manly famiharity in conversation ; a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of communication. When any one contradicts me he raises my attention, not my anger ; I advance toward him that controverts, that in- structs me. 'Tis a dull and harmful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us and approve of all we say." Here we have in brief form the code of an Age of Dis- cussion. It is indubitable that the self-control, the honor, the discipline, involved in such a code are the equal of the quaHties derived from physical combat ; they denote a courage much higher than mere instinct of self-defense, 3o6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS pugnacity, or physical bravery. And, from our standpoint at least, they are a far safer guide than the mental quahties hammered out in physical combat. It is not a question of killing off the impulse to combat, but of taming it, or, better still, of utilizing it for higher social purposes. Of course, so long as individuals fail to respond to gentler methods of social control, sheriffs and police will be necessary. And, with all due regard to extreme pacifists, so long as nations run amuck with mad schemes for destroying the world's peace, warfare as a punitive or poHce measure must continue as the lesser of two evils. But the war-police methods and purposes of, say, a League to Enforce Peace, are fundamentally differ- ent from those of an army of adventure in the hands of a Napoleon or a Hohenzollern. Force in either case ; but force rationally applied in the one case, force blind, irre- sponsible and willful in the other. The reduction of the area of violence or even of rational force is a mark of prog- ress; but it is equally true that to remit the intelligent use of force is to unloose a tornado of reckless violence. There are, however, a host of problems affecting national honor and integrity which shrapnel and dreadnoughts cannot solve; and they are vastly more important than the shifting of patches of color on the map. It takes no great skill or genius to make a cannon or to shoot straight. But it taxes man's keenest powers to discern the causes of poverty and crime, or to devise ways of con- serving national health and life. William James in his Moral Equivalent of War and Professor Stratton in his Control of the Fighting Instinct have suggested numer- ous outlets for the combative impulse, problems which leave no doubt that the heroic will not die out if lusty youth applies itself to their solution. The prevention of destitu- tion, the elimination of the criminal, the cure of super- THE MILITARISTS 307 stition, the prevention of disease, the development of clean politics, the destruction of the philosophy and art of "graft," the reduction of profiteering, the attainment of a high standard of sex purity in young men, the disengagement of the discussion and handling of inter-racial problems from the domain of the mob-mind — all these and many others are enterprises worthy the combative powers of any vigorous youth and sure to test every ounce of energy in him. Competitive athletics may also offer to a limited extent an outlet for the fighting instinct. But what of the demand for universal service? Will it not postpone the substitution of such equivalents? Not necessarily. Universal service need not frighten anybody if it be understood as community service, civil conscrip- tion, universal opportunity, and if it be made to include other forms of training besides mihtary drill. The pri- mary objects are a sense of community responsibility and a measure of discipline. If these can be had only at the price of militarism we must pay it. But a whole array of facts and experiences warn us against paying such a price ' with no questions asked.' Perhaps the very best way of open- ing a serious offensive upon the social evils which still threaten us would be such a period of compulsory enlist- ment for pubHc service. Combat we must have, then, but the arena and the weapons are changing. To no small degree the rate of change depends upon educational ideals and methods, and upon the invention of non-military sanctions powerful enough to evoke a people's supreme efifort to unify and express itself. The pugnacious impulse in its most destruc- tive forms has been pretty well reduced within the group through social control. What remains could be canalized. But until some similar provision is made for eliminating the war impulse through international agencies for control 3o8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS (such as the proposed League to Enforce Peace), until some method is found for transvaluing the motive of na- tional fear, and until some more reasonable means of na- tional recreation or relaxation from the tension of progress is discovered, the hope for progress through the arts of peace is scarcely more than a counsel to illusion. CHAPTER XX ON PEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS Migration and Cross-fertilization of Cultures Man is constantly caught between the upper and nether millstones of two opposing impulses, the instinct to root himself to the soil and found home and country, and the lure of wandering without lixed ties of country. Ulysses, the Knights-errant, and recent immigration are all modern types of this age-old conflict of impulses. The tramp and the runaway boy are its less pleasing or at least less con- vincing manifestations. Both the instinct to "stay put" and the instinct to migrate are primarily connected with problems of the food-quest. But they have a far wider significance from the standpoint of human progress. Mi- gration itself has played a role perhaps second to none as a civilizing force. This has come about in two ways : first, by the contact with new physical environments ; second, by new human group contacts. I mean here espe- cially peaceful contacts rather than warlike collisions. Isolation of the individual or small social group means stagnation and degeneracy. AHenists bid us look for the sources of insanity not only in the hurly-burly of great cities with all their super-tense living conditions, but also in the monotonous isolation of country life. Rural peace spells death, unless provided with contacts through books, telephones, and definitely planned institutions for social intercourse. 309 3IO THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS It is equally true that no race ever survived a period of complete isolation. Even comparative isolation tends to produce in groups that gelatinoid and imbecile sort of mental life which we associate with poor Kaspar Hauser. Whether the isolation is natural as in Austraha, or artificial as in China, the result is the same. The Germans in the time of Tacitus were used by Max Miiller to illustrate the social condition of the Aryans in their old Asiatic home. But according to Dr. Montelius, a Swedish ethnologist, the Teutons had been in Europe from two to four thousand years. Allowing for some possible exaggeration, there still is convincing evidence that these peoples had ' marked time' for a considerable period. The explanation lies in their remoteness and isolation, which was to a high degree geographic. No group is self-fertilizing in its culture elements. It is possible that exogamous mating was an unconscious work- ing out of some feeling that continuous inbreeding within the rather narrow consanguine limits of a primitive group was physically degenerative. The importation of wives, even by forcible capture, was deemed necessary for keep- ing the group blood fresh and strong. But the importa- tion of ideas and sentiments was of incomparably greater importance. So far as we know, no human group in the past has ever pulled itself up by its boot straps. It rose, if it rose at all, through constant repercussion upon other groups more or less alien to itself. This is equally true of any modern community which is cut off from the main currents of social life, or which voluntarily through prejudice elects the life of the anchorite. Mr. N. L. Sims, in his excellent study of A Hoosier Village, concludes that — "not a single important change has been wrought in any sphere of the village life which has owed its origin primarily to the community itself. The forces ON PEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS 311 have come from without in the form of various kinds of stimuli. Its activities have been energized and vitalized by disturbing agencies not inherent in the group itself. These extraneous forces have been chiefly either in the form of crises or the coming of new personalities into the village." ^ Among these crises four stand out as epoch- making for the village, namely, the Civil War, the great economic expansion and prosperity succeeding it, the com- ing of the railroad, and the rivalry of a neighboring town for the locating of a college. The history-making per- sonalities that broke the village cake of custom included several temperance and prohibition agitators, religious revivalists, new men in the local college faculty, and more or less chance visitors who had seen the world and were willing to give the village the benefit of their wider experience. But since the Teutons were migrants it is evident that migration alone does not bring with it progress. There must be something stimulating in the new environment. Migration means the throwing overboard of many old traditions. It may also, however, mean sedulously re- taining some of them as mementoes of the home land. A colony, for example, may retain old customs and laws which the mother country has long outgrown. The French language in Canada is not the French of twentieth century republican France, but the French of Henri Quatre. We in the United States still hang on to many English common law practices, especially in criminal procedure, which England long ago discarded. The chief disadvantages of migration are the social instability due to dislocation from a settled abode, the impossibility of forming regular habits of labor, the engen- dering of a desire for constant change. Migration to a * Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, vol. 46, 1912, No. 3, chap. vii. 312 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS poorer country may expose a people to loss of what stand- ards of civilization had already been attained, that is, if there is any connection between a good and plentiful standard of living and individual or social strength. Tran- sition suddenly from want to abundance may induce a gen- eral letting down of the stress of life which may threaten not only substantial progress but existence itself. Any study of frontier life will illustrate these points.^ But on the whole the results of race migration have been as good as the movement itself seems to have been inevi- table. Usually, except as in the case of recent immigra- tion artificially stimulated by transportation companies, the effort to migrate requires a healthy summing up and putting forth of energies. In the effort to adapt to new circumstances the mental horizon expands. Friendly intercourse with new peoples may be established. Even where the intercourse is downright or thinly veiled hostihty it may still in some cases stimulate development. More and more as human groups build up coherent masses of ideas into customs, laws, systems of religion and art, the significance of group contacts rendered possible by migration is expressible less in terms of geography or new flora and fauna, and more in terms of conflicts, borrowings, or exchanges of ideas and sentiments. Men may sit at home and still touch the ends of the earth. Race contact becomes preeminently a contact of cultures. This is what we mean by the cross-fertilization of cultures. No two races or groups can ignore each other when brought into proximity. The results may be peaceful or hostile, good or bad ; but indifference is out of the question. An im- pulse for unity, fusion, or leveling seems to operate as ^ Cf. Wsiitz, Introduction to A7tthropology, Collingwood transl., pp. 344 fif. ; Turner, Significance of the Frontier in American History; Keller, Societal Evolution, chap. ix. ON PEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS 313 irresistibly as water seeks to find its level. Either the weaker race dies out before the stronger, or it is absorbed by the stronger, or the two combine into something differ- ent from what either was before. The first case might be called selection by extermination, the second selection by assimilation, the third selection by the melting pot. The first case we have covered in the discussion of inter- group selection ; the second operates where marked dis- tinctions in culture history separate the groups, but where no hectic antipathy forces a death-grapple. In such cases the ruder people usually adopt the knowledge and arts of their superiors, partly through necessity, partly through shame at the exposure of their barbarous manners. Mean- while their own special culture halts and probably falls into desuetude, perhaps to be revived later by their supe- riors as the inspiration to new advances in art. Witness in our own times the revival or discovery of Swedish, Rus- sian, and Bulgarian "peasant art," the folk-songs of the negroes and Indians, the folk-drama {e.g., of the English Dramatic Revival Society), and the festival movement. From the biological point of view the most important phase of race contacts is the third case, race-mixture, amal- gamation, the actual physical and mental cross-breeding of races. This whole question of in- and out-breeding is still in scientific twihght. In-breeding used to be thought inevitably degenerative to any population. But recent studies cast doubt on that popular belief. Fischer, from experiences with the "Bastards" of German Southwest Africa, concludes that "if a healthy and normal and not too small population inbreeds and lives for several genera- tions, no harm is done." ^ On the other hand, the bugaboo ' E. Fischer, "Zum Inzuchts- unci Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen," Korr. Bl. d. Dcutsch. GeseUcsch. f. Anthr. zii Hamburg, xlii, 105-8; Id., Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem bcim Menschen, Jena, 19 13. 314 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS of corrupting the blood of a pure race by foreign admixtures no longer terrifies as it formerly did. To be sure voices of alarm still rise. Professor H. B. Ward urges the fact that most of the products of cross-breeding in plants and animals are trash, therefore that human crosses may not be more successful.^ Yet it is perfectly plain that such a conclusion takes for granted the existence of pure strains, pure races — an absurd presupposition. A pure race is the Holy Grail of physical anthropologists. We are all mongrels. America is no more mongrel and no more in danger of becoming so than, say, Italy, Spain, England, France, or any other modern people. Successive inundations of invaders have "corrupted" their blood and modified their population types ; and the process still goes on, less noisily perhaps, but no less surely. Instead of being afraid of such mixtures, we should seek them, having granted ahens the right to move about freely and to take up residence among us. The real danger is that amalgamation may not take place, and that we may be faced in the near future with 'pools' of immigrants, or distinct resistant nodules of aliens which defy any sort of amalgamation. So far there are no evi- dences of degeneration in this country as a result of race- crossings, unless a lowered birth rate be called degeneracy.^ Such anthropological measurements as have been secured for the second generation of school children born of mixed parentage show higher weight, chest measurements, etc., than the general average of pure American stocks. The third generation reaches a still higher average.^ ^ Bull. Amer. Acad, of Medicine, April, 191 2, pp. 79-80. 2 Jenks in his "Ethnic Census of Minneapolis," found that an admixture of Scandinavian blood tends to decrease fecundity of other peoples in amalgamation but there is no hint of degeneracy apparent. {Am. Jour. Social. 17 : 776-782.) ^ Cf. Hutchinson, Ann. Amer. Acad., 34 : 43. ON PEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS 315 We cannot go into all the intricacies and conflicting evidence of the problem of race-crossing. But this may be said, namely, that while race-blending is not in every case practicable or even desirable, yet the crossing of dis- tinct races when sanctioned by social approval not only does not result in degeneracy nor extinction, but may even produce a cross of superior type.^ Many of the most dis- tinguished men, particularly men of letters, in recent times are racial complexes. Poe, Whitman, Lowell, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Longfellow, Lafcadio Hearn, Edison, in America ; Tennyson, Swinburne, Rossetti, Browning, Rom- illy, Lewes, Millais, Disraeli, in England ; Sainte-Beuve, Dumas, Taine, de Maistre, Montalembert, Merimee, Hugo, in France ; Kant in Germany ; Pushkin, Lhermon- tofif, von Vizine in Russia ; Ibsen in Norway, — are types of such mixtures. Tennyson was a cross of Danish, French, and English. Swinburne of Danish and French. Morris of Welsh and Anglo-Danish. Browning of West-Saxon British, Creole, and German. Olive Schreiner, of German, English, and Jewish. Walter Pater of Flemish and Anglo- Danish. Thomas Hardy of Enghsh, Jersey-French, Irish. Flaubert of French and Iroquois. Dumas of French and Negro. Hugo of Lorraine-German and Breton. Zola of Italian, Greek, and French. Ibsen of German, Scotch, and Norwegian. Pushkin of Russian and Abyssinian Negro. And so the list might go on indefinitely. ^ Theoretically this is just what we might expect, for two reasons : (i) the mixture increases the possible combinations of traits, hence greater, more complex adjustments to environment; (2) superior mental abil- ity according to modern genetics is 'dominant' in a ^ Cf. the papers of Professor Earl Finch and Dr. Jean Baptiste de Lacerda at the First Universal Races Congress, igii. 2 Cf. Finot, Race Prejudice, 159 fl. ; Havelock Ellis, Atlantic Mo., 71: 382-9. 3l6 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS mixture ; therefore the mixture represents a leveling up, not down. The trouble with the half-breed or any other racial mixture is not racial but societal, not physiological but sociological. The half-breed in South Africa or in Aus- tralia or in our own Southern States may fail. But he fails not because he is by heredity weak and degenerate ; his weaknesses and vices come from his isolation, from the contempt and suspicion, the social disapproval showered upon him. He is a citizen of No Man's Land, a man with- out a country, without a just share in the social heredity which falls to normal persons ; he becomes a pariah, a moral and economic derelict. But exchange of persons and blood through mating is only one of the social transfusions wrought by race con- tact. Trade is a form of group migration and contact. Economic borrowings have been fraught with tremendous and sometimes terrible significance. America gave Europe tobacco, the potato, and the hammock. Europe inspired America and Africa with a consuming love of firearms, whisky, cheap cottons, and glass beads. Through con- tacts and alliances engineered by Solomon, Israel replaced the ass by the horse, flint and wooden tools by metals, mud and stone hovels by walled cities.^ Borrowings of political and social institutions have been no less important. Roman law crossed Italian fron- tiers and still commands the attention of western Europe. Feudalism passed rapidly from group to group. Benevo- lent despotism became the fashion through contact and imitation in eighteenth century Europe. Democracy is still going the rounds : an American scholar writes the constitution for the Chinese Repubhc. Men needed no example to incite them to the institution of slavery ; but ^ Kent, History of the Hebrew People, i, i8o, 240; ii, 48. ON PEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS 317 the example of England did much to set the pace for its aboHtion by all civilized nations. The introduction of the Juvenile Court into nearly every European country is an excellent example of exchange of social institutions. The spread of the worship of Egyptian gods and of Mithra in Rome and the conquests of Christianity show how reli- gion may not figure in the balance sheet of dealings between peoples, yet may be the most important article of trade and the most significant result of contact. Exchanges in art are no less obvious, though less important. Greece is modified by Egypt and in turn affects Hindu sculpture and architec- ture. Rome swallows Greek art almost at a gulp. Peruvian designs in pottery and textiles determine the art of prehis- toric Central America. American millionaires build French chateaux and Italian immigrants returning to their old homes dazzle their fellows with the latest gimcracks of American architecture. Most significant among language borrowings was of course the importation of the alphabet by Greece from Phoenicia. The spread of French and English as world lan- guages bids fair to yield an unsuspected fruitage of interna- tional understandings. The demand for Volapuk, Esperanto, and other artificial languages indicates that nations would be glad to borrow even more heavily in this domain. Finally, there are the borrowings of educational methods and ideals. The introduction of Greek methods and sub- jects into Italy, the spread of Rousseau's ideas through- out Europe, those of Pestalozzi and Froebel into America, those of Europe and America into the Orient, and the recent acceptance of the Montessori methods by many American educators, will suffice to indicate the reach of this product of contact.^ ^ See on the general subject of race-contacts and culture borrowings, Ross, Foundations of Sociology, 234 ff . ; Maine, Early History of Institutions, 176-7. 3l8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS It is not to be imagined that all these borrowings are al- ways necessarily good. "Things" are not good in them- selves. And the evil effects of contact between higher and lower races may come more from the "good" things than from the avowedly bad or contraband things brought in by higher races : for example, clothes, canned goods, spec- tacles. Europeans and Americans usually find it hard to believe that their monogamous form of marriage may do the Africans more harm than their rum or guns. But even missionaries have sometimes found it so. Much of Bishop Colenso's trouble with his generation grew out of the at- tempt to convince them of this truth. The Gilbert Is- landers are said to be dying out by consumption as the result of wearing European clothes. The attempt to throw off an ancient tribal culture and to graft on a new religion, unless preceded by fundamental changes in industrial organization and by economic discipline, may easily result in a chronic state of pessimism or dependence which is inimical to healthy life. The secret of successful peaceable cross-fertihzation of cultures (that is, successful in terms of real progress) is that the process be allowed to go on naturally and slowly. Rapid acculturations are always superficial and temporary. The white man's burden must be judiciously handled. As well try to turn out a world of straight-nosed people in a single generation as to missionary or commercialize West Africans forthwith into Englishmen with bath-tubs and an inexhaustible interest in the Budget. It has been urged, however, that the natural order of development would be more closely followed if we sent industrial instead of religious missions, say, to India or Africa. Primitive men must not be cultured out of existence. Their guard- ians must not force or hurry them along some rigidly pre- conceived line of development. Their own culture history ON PEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS 319 must be tolerated and accepted. Indeed, "the absolute need of tolerance would seem to be the only general prin- ciple which could be laid down regarding the contact with natives." ^ Nansen's polar experiences led him to con- clude that the only rapid change which can be wrought in a primitive race is change toward degeneration and ruin. Every human group must to a very considerable degree be left to work out its own salvation in fear and trembling, along the lines already traced out by its culture history. There are short cuts, however ; and just as edu- cation and other social institutions serve to abridge racial experience for the child, so the higher races with a more fortunate experience may serve the lower at least to the extent of aiding them in avoiding many pitfalls and blind alleys. But just as no teacher or parent can make his own experience en bloc that of the child, neither can a humble race swallow whole a tabloid culture even though, like Alice's cake, most alluringly labeled. Whether we like it or not every nation is every other nation's keeper. There can be no longer any hermit na- tions. The processes of acculturation had (even before August, 1 9 14) taken on world dimensions. These processes can be made supremely available for real lasting progress only if the motives for culture borrowings and exchanges are worthy and the end to be attained is the full brother- hood of men at the flood tidal mark of civilization. These motives and ends do not rise spontaneously but are the product of definite inculcation. Neither is tolerance, which in all ages has eased up the strain of racial contacts, a spontaneous phenomenon ; it is a highly conscious and rational attitude manifested by disciphned intelligence. ^ A. G. Keller, "A Sociological View of the Native Question," Vale Review, 3 : 264. 320 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS In short, to be effective, group contacts must accord with a definite policy of world education. Until the outbreak of the Great War several most prom- ising signs heralded an approaching internationalism and growing international osmosis ; perhaps even yet they are not irretrievably lost. Among these might be noted the never-ceasing stream of foreign travel. Even the much-maligned tourist is not to be overlooked as a culture bearer ; in spite of his apparent arrogance and impermeabil- ity he is bound to carry back some grains of fertilizing pollen. The international exchange of scholars and of students is even more promising. Movements like the Cosmopolitan Clubs and the International Y. M. C. A. smooth away many prejudices between race and race. International conferences are becoming a laudable habit and must be encouraged. To be sure our own government has heretofore pursued a most niggardly policy with re- gard to these conferences ; not long ago the United States Bureau of Education had to beg money from private sources wherewith to send a representative to a world-meeting of educators in Europe. The United States should be repre- sented and adequately represented at every important international conference, and every department of the national government should have a contingent fund for this purpose. Perhaps no other single measure would do so much to elevate us above the mere parochial point of view, and it might incidentally aid in breaking down the habitual "pork barrel" type of financial legislation. The demands for international arbitration machinery and a world language, although they may not attain their end in the precise form demanded, are indicative of a desire to get together. Whether they result in the Parliament of Man or not, they cannot avoid the sharing of culture. ON TEACEFUL GROUP CONTACTS 32 I We should not overlook the fact that some foreign mis- sionaries have grasped their opportunities for the exchange of the best in race cultures and have perhaps brought back more by way of toleration and understanding than they took to the heathen by way of a "gospel" or set of mores. Special training in anthropology would increase still further their service as culture-agents. This leads to the observation that on behalf of certain less favored groups of men the sympathetic and systematic study of "back- ward races" is to be commended. Such studies (to choose only at random) as Dudley Kidd's Savage Childhood and The Essential Kaffir, Johnson's Lion and Dragon in Northern China, Mary Kingsley's West African Studies, Junod's Life of a South African Tribe, or Madame Pommerol's Une Femme chez les Sahariennes cannot fail to awaken a lively feeling of the essential unity of mankind. The new imperialism is also learning that to foster co-education of subject races means huge gains in peace, patience, and cooperation. The experience of Britain in Egypt, and the teachings of Aga Khan and Tagore in India suggest that the static Orient may be rehabilitated otherwise than by rude subjection to militarism or an exploiting bureau- cracy. INSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS CHAPTER XXI PROPERTY Man is essentially an institution builder. What we call human society is simply a web of ideas and sentiments spun out of the common life, a fabric of social habits which has grown up in the attempt to adjust to and control life conditions. It is a shifting expression of the will-to-live. Some of these ideas and sentiments we have learned to call folkways, mores, customs, conventions, rights, and the like. Many of them appear in a somewhat more solid, coherent, and rational form, as precipitated modes of social procedure or definitely organized structures for regulating the intercourse between members of a social group. A more or less persistent and challenging problem or need calls forth the institution for meeting it. Institutions, in turn, become "the molds in which the continued life of society is cast. Now, while there is no institution as such, all institutions being of some specific type — economic, political, domestic, juridical — and while, consequently, there is no institution without ideas, nor any change in institutions without a corresponding and preliminary change in ideas, yet the mere fact of their codification of an approved way of solving a persistent problem implies a considerable fixity of form and therefore a certain per- manence. This permanence gives a basis of continuity to the social process. Hence if the process is a progressive movement it ought to be reflected in the history of social 32s 326 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS institutions, and conversely they should have some definite bearing on the record of progress. It would be impossible to trace out in detail the significance for human progress of the enormous range of institutions. Herbert Spencer touched only a few of them, but it required three fat vol- umes. Therefore, we are reduced to the expedient of pick- ing out a few typical institutions for cursory treatment. These may include property, the family, government, classes and castes, religion, law, public opinion, and, with certain reservations noted in Chapter VIII, language. The institution of property will serve as a point of departure. Real property was held in common by primitive groups. Personal property was confined usually to ornaments and trinkets. Only with the domestication of animals, the development of agriculture, the advance of industrial technique, trade relations with other groups, and the stor- ing up of capital, does the concept of property take firm hold on human thought and get itself erected into a sacred institution. With the growing concept of property grew also an aversion to communism and an emphasis upon individual effort. It is beyond question that on the whole primitive communism was a hindrance to progress. It fostered imprudence, parasitism, and dependence. It discounted those variations in individual ability which further discovery and invention. The competition let loose by personalizing property aided the more rapid ac- cumulation of social wealth. Gradually the idea of the sacredness of property overcomes the old habits of improv- idence and destructiveness. The systems by which property is held depend on the mode of production. Hence there is no necessary dis- crepancy between the idea of property as a good and the idea of some particular method of property-holding as bad. PROPERTY 327 And one is by no means inconsistent if he holds property to be sacred and indispensable to human development, but considers private ownership of land or other basic utilities not only far from sacred but absolutely inimical to progress. Private ownership is only one element in an economic process which aims at group welfare. Primor- dial forms of communism limited that welfare. It would appear that the exaggeration of the impulse for private ownership mihtates no less against future advance. I should not put it so crudely as to say we are throttled by a scheming "money-power." But I should say that we are the victims of a scheme of property ownership that emphasizes production for private gain instead of for public welfare, a system of exploitation instead of serv- ice. For this reason the nimble wit of Mr. W. H. Mallock and the stately eloquence of Mr. Paul Elmer More, when put to the service of maintaining the present status quo in so far as private ownership of property is concerned, fail to strike in us any sympathetic response. They are some- what too certain of their apostleship to redeem them from the suspicion that their diatribes against the radicals who question the current property system are not altogether free from special pleading. Mr. Mallock's thesis reduces in short to this : progress depends upon a struggle through which the fittest great men shall secure influence over others, a struggle, that is, not for mere subsistence, but for domination, power, social inequality ; but the great men who struggle for that domination or social inequahty which is so essential would not do so without some strong motive : that strong motive is none other than wealth. He frankly urges that this concentration of property in the hands of his great men must always rest upon exploitation of the masses through slavery or its mitigation, a wage 328 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS system.^ "The industrial obedience of the many to the few," he declares, "is the fundamental condition of prog- ress." Any change in the direction of modifying the present system of distributing property, however defective it may appear, must cause civilization and progress to mark time. Maintain social inequahty, that is, the rewards to genius, and you maintain civilization. As this question of property is so closely bound up with the problem of classes we may appropriately defer criticism of Mr. Mal- lock's positions until they are more fully exposed in a later chapter. Meanwhile any one whose eyes are not utterly sealed must see that this writer has rehearsed the wearisome old fallacy which confuses the sacredness of property with the sanctity of some particular scheme of ownership and distribution. Mr. More, in his discussions of those wicked un-Latined radicals who meditate and even commit "raids on prosperity," repeats this classic fallacy. He scolds large property holders like Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., for being "a little troubled to know whether their instinctive feel- ings as property owners are hot in some way unethical." ^ For shame, says Mr. More. God or Law has decreed "initial inequahty of men . . . which makes one vessel for dishonour and another for honour." Property magni- fies this natural injustice, this fatal necessity. The attempt to ignore or undo this property inequality would stop prog- ress and throw the world back into temporary barbarism. For to the civilized man "the rights of property are more important than the right to life." ^ But why limit this judgment to the civilized? Property rights are not only more important than the right to life, but they are life to the Fuegian, to the Veddah ; they were life to the * Aristocracy and Evolution, 143-74; Social Equality, chaps, vi-x. ^ Aristocracy and Justice, 129. ^Ibid., 135-6. PROPERTY 329 Neanderthal man, to the Pithecanthropos, to the anthro- poid ape, to the amoeba itself; they are life to the iron molder, the coal miner, and the cloak and suit maker, no less than to Mr. More's patrons of liberal culture and club intimates. No one would quarrel with him for a moment on that proposition if he widen it sufficiently. The issue discloses itself, however, the instant the question is prop- erly put, namely, What is the effect upon social progress when A's property rights conflict with B's right to life? And if the critic has plenty of time and is patient with fatuity he might raise a weary hand to protest against another fallacious stating of the property issue. Men may abuse property rights, says Mr. More, but "it is better that legal robbery should exist along with maintenance of law, than that legal robbery should be suppressed at the expense of law." ^ Only a mind preoccupied and somewhat befuddled by its own apologetics could have closed his case with these two alternatives. Neither theo- retically nor in practice is it necessary to tolerate robbery to support law, nor is the fabric of law so inflexible as to hinder the suppression of robbery, given a Uttle common sense, vision, and patience. Since institutions are not written into the nature of things but are spun out of the human heart, it is evident that, once convinced that the institution of property as it is now formulated hinders rational progress, the public mind will remold it to serve its own highest interests. This would mean a redistribution of ownership in the direction of a greater and more explicit socialization of property. The enormous growth of socialism, the demand for conservation of national resources, the mounting, in- deed irresistible and practically world-wide sentiment in favor of public ownership of public utilities and basic ^ Ibid., 141. 330 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS industries witness to this changing concept of property; and the present war threatens to accelerate this revolution. This does not mean, of course, that the abolition of private property is imminent or even remotely probable ; still less that it would be desirable. A reversion to anything savoring of absolute communism is to the present-day mind almost unthinkable^. Private ownership is still a spur to creative effort, beneficial alike to individual and group. From the standpoint of social advance the govern- ing principle must be such a distribution of ownership as will evoke and develop prudence, self-control, and a sense of responsibility, will release the springs of energy and productive effort, and reward equitably real contributions to social well-being. The function of property as an agency for progress might be stated as a paraphrase of Grover Cleveland's aphorism, ''A public office is a public trust," thus : the institution of property is a progressive force so long as it is conceived as a means in terms of public welfare ; it is a menace and a hindrance when conceived as an end in terms of private advantage, special privilege and exploitation. "A mere property career is not the final destiny of man- kind if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past." ^ So long, however, as 65 per cent, of the people of such an enormously wealthy country as the United States are practically denuded of property save a few personal effects and the shabby clothes on their backs, and so long as two per cent, of the people continue to own or control three fifths of the total available property, and so long as this disproportionate concentration may be- come aggravated rather than lessened ; so long, in other words, as the vast majority of a people are cut off from the cultural and disciplinary effects of ownership, but little ^ Morgan, Ancient Society, Part IV, chap. ii. PROPERTY 331 substantial improvement can be hoped for. Before the present period of preoccupation with wealth can be trav- ersed and a career of something higher than mere pro- duction for production's sake begun, a tremendous conflict over ownership must be waged ; whether this conflict shall be long, relatively peaceful, and proceed by a series of com- promises, or be shorter and more cataclysmic, we have no present means of knowing. But the conflict is inevi- table if the fullest latent energies of property are to be tapped and made available for human betterment. In- deed, the conflict is now on, despite the cultivated gentle- men who cry, Woe, woe ! and turn back their saddened eyes to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. CHAPTER XXII THE FAMILY Opinion on the relation between the family institution and social progress runs clear through the spectrum, from the deepest indigo of those who see in the family a sacro- sanct divine institution/ the chief pillar of order, religion, and the state, the fountain of every virtue, pubhc no less than private, to the violent red of those who find it the adamantine rock which bars the path to race perfection, to a higher morahty, a nobler concept of property, a more fully developed state, a finer sense of civic responsibility, which stifles and freezes the fine emotion of love and debases it to the grossest ends. The scientific attitude finds itself somewhere about the middle of this color scale. While discarding the idea that human society as we know it has developed out of some prehistoric family as the single germ or cell, or that it is now the fundamental social unit, the claims of the family for services rendered in the past to social development are not thereby disallowed. From a biological standpoint it has been and still is indispensable as the conserver of child life : it is in no mere metaphorical sense a sort of extended placenta. Through assuring to the child a longer period of infancy it permitted the little one to absorb its social inheritance and to elaborate its mental outfit, while at the same time it enforced a valuable social discipline upon its parents. Incidentally it saved the time and strength of parents by cutting down a wasteful birth rate and by postponing the period of sexual maturity. 332 THE FAMILY 333 As an economic device it was no less significant in the specialization of occupations, in the history of agriculture, trade, and the manufacturing arts, in stabilizing the insti- tution of private property, in developing the arts of con- sumption and saving. As a cultural device its chief sig- nificance grows out of the fund of leisure created by a les- sened birth rate, and out of its share in the intellectual elaboration of youth. Its political services have been on the whole negative and conservative, if not quite negligible : there is no sound evidence to show that the family ever was h the parent of the state. While it cannot be revered as the mother of all the virtues, its contribution to ethical development has been large : the virtues of sympathy, patience, tenderness, self-sacrifice, obedience, foresight, and courage, to name only a few, strike their roots deep down into the homely strata of domestic life. As I have else- where been at considerable pains to show, the family has not been in all ages par excellence the supreme and basic educational institution ; but it has always been an extremely important element in the educational machinery of a normal social group. The family has served in all these directions ; but it has hindered in others. Largely, it appears, because of a certain inherent passivity and conservatism. In all ages it has tended to take on the form and content imposed by the general living conditions to which human groups have been subjected. At the same time domestic insti- tutions lean backwards and tend to perpetuate archaic forms and relations long after the original conditions which evoked them have been supplanted. The mother-clan family may be cited to illustrate how domestic forms can hinder social development. Under such a clan system communism with all its limitations pre- vailed. Domestic solidarity itself was impossible. Chil- 334 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS dren belonged to the maternal clan ; consequently were pitted against their father in case of strife between his clan and his wife's. The transition to the father-clan illus- trates on the other hand not only how a type of domestic organization may insure greater social strength, but also how domestic institutions depend upon other social con- tingencies. The father-family is the result of the growing concept of private property, sedentary life, domestication of animals, discovery of metal-working, and a more precise knowledge of the procreative processes, hence a refinement in the ideas of kinship and inheritance. While on the whole the father-family has been a distinct gain to the race, in certain forms it also threatened to hinder our advance. The patriarchate, with its insistence upon centralized and despotic control of the property, religion, education, and lives of every member of the family group, checked individ- uality, bred a sort of self-sufficiency and intolerance in edu- cation and religion, hindered the growth of varied arts, and prepared the necks of men for the yoke of Oriental despotism and the theocratic state. An aristocracy of birth with its strong sense of family ties and prestige usually retains many of these characteristics. The perception of this fact led the Head Master of a great English school to declare, "The chief manufac- tories of caste, so far as I can gather, would seem not to be the public schools with which I am acquainted (where indeed we have in existence the chief forces which make against this) but rather the homes from which pupils come to us." The family in all ages, then, has been a rather passive land conservative institution, and has served the cause of Iprogress both positively and negatively in a way by that Very staticism. Fortunately, however, it is not dead in its conservatism, but is on the whole a highly flexible insti- THE FAMILY 335 tution. In the present era of transition and destructive criticism the family has lost much of its ancient authority. What it will prove to be in the future as a progressive force, it is impossible therefore to predict. The steady preem])tion by the state of the fields of education and child welfare means a corresponding shrinkage in the parental domain. The state as Over-Parent may still further 'interfere' with the traditional relationships between parent and child. It may even go so far as to establish certain restrictions upon marriage, or otherwise step be- tween men and women in their sexual relationship. But the family cannot be broke n up. It must 1)c accepted f or better or for worse. So long, however, as it is regarded primarily as a device for extinguishing lust or satisfying it cheaply ; so long as children are born largely as the un- calculated aftermath of passion or in response to artful social suggestion ; and so long as home life is the sphere of | unhmited monarchy, of despotism, physical, mental, and spiritual ; so long but little can be expected of the family by way of serious contributions to social advance. If we want to utilize the inherent power for social discipline, for affection, for altruism, which resides in the family insti- tution, we must see to it that conditions are maintained in which decent, rational home life can thrive. This means, _r.- in the concrete, adequate family income, education for ^^ domestic life, real equality between parents, a decent house (domestic morahty is said to be a matter of square feet), and leisure to devote to the business of home Hfe and parenthood : all of which means, in turn, shortening of the working day, education for leisure, and the application of scientific man- agement to home keeping. The family will serve progressive ends, then, if it is not called upon to do things for which it is inherently unfitted, and if it is given means and con- ditions appropriate to its highest functioning. CHAPTER XXIIl GOVERNMENT It is frequently asserted that religion, classes, economic organization, education, and other dynamic social agencies depend upon political forms. Or, in other words, that education, law, philosophy, economics, and ethics are only the formulation of current needs and tendencies of the ruling classes in terms of social structure. This is obvious enough and true enough when you stop to consider that only those individuals and social classes ha\ang a clear vision of their common interests are sufficiently coherent and organized to impose their will upon their fellows who are more foggy-minded and less closely knit. From the standpoint of social structure ruHng classes are distinctly superior to unorganized masses ; hence genetically and functionally should be expected to leave their stamp upon the whole fabric of social life. But this is far from saying that ruling classes express their will only through political forms; i.e., government; or that government is merely a synonym for ruling classes. One need not bolt entire the Prussian concept of the state to lay hold of the idea that government is wider than any class, that in fact it is all of these in the complementary attitude of agent and isubject. We need only recall that society is a ceaseless (Struggle between invention and convention, in which every human individual is both participant and spectator, in order to grasp that political sovereignty or control is in- alienably vested in all the normal free members of the social group. Only by fiction, or inertia, or expediency can it be conceived as lodged elsewhere. Hence from the 336 GOVERNMENT 337 standpoint of governmental contributions to social prog- ress the problem is perhaps less the shiftings in the inci- dence of political power and more the methods and achieve- ments of political organization. If we conceive society as an organization of various groups based upon interests, that is, of a working, ordered^ ^,r^ competition between i ntere st-groups, it is evident tha some force must have arisen to secure working harmony, "antagonistic cooperation," compromise, on the largest scale. This force is the state or, more exactly, government. Government, said Huxley and Professor Pollock, is the corporate reason of the community. And Burke, a cen- tury before, had declared the state to be "not a partner- ship in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature," but "a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection." ^ But if we hold, and this seems nearer the truth the farther back we go, that men feel, experiment crudely, and conform rather than reason, government appears as that phase of the mores which secures protection and enforces inner conformity. It has developed in the direction of reason. It has broad- ened in scope and function until it may be conceived, some- what oratorically to be sure, as approaching Burke's concept. While the state is now the most powerful and coherent of all the social precipitates which we call social institu- tions, early societies seem to have had no specialized politi- cal, that is, governmental agencies. An analogy will bring out the significance of this fact. High development in the animal scale is not reached until the secretion or pre- cipitation of the shell or bony skeleton is accomplished ; the purpose of this shell or skeleton is inner coherence, strength, and protection. Now the state may be consid- ^ Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 143. z 338 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ered as such a skeleton. Three fundamental needs have always existed in human societies : protection from with- out, order within (both negative) ; group welfare (positive). These needs were met in some way or other even before speciahzed political organizations were developed. That is, they were accomplished through government by reflex or direct action, or by the prestige of salient personalities, by custom, and by taboo. But once set going, the state through organized government has tended to care for these needs, and might be characterized on the whole as a crescendo in power, definiteness of function, and efficiency. Fundamentally, then, the state is an insurance institution, insuring life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, peace, and domestic tranquillity. The very statement of these historic functions of gov- ernment gives some hint by anticipation of at least one way in which government has served human progress. We admit that a certain amount of domestic peace and order are marks of a high level of culture. We may as well admit also that domestic peace and good order are in a certain measure the result, not the cause, of stable govern- ment. Selden in his Table Talk said,, "A King is a thing Men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake." The sociologist being a realist recognizes that domestic peace has been brought to pass not by supernatural doses of reasonableness and love but by the creation of courts and parliaments whose decrees alone could put an end to intolerable anarchy and blood feuds. Stern necessity and not gestures of friendliness enacted such self-denying ordinances. But out of order has been bred the orderly disposition just as peace breeds pacifists.^ 1 See E. A. Ross, Publications of Amcr. Sociol. Society, x : ii. Cf. Carver,.|^ Essays in Social Justice, 108-9 '• "Government and government alone pre-' vents competition from lapsing into the brutal struggle for existence. . . ." etc. By contrast, Balfour's view is, to say the least, tepid. See A Fragment on Progress, 259-62, 277, etc. GOVERNMENT 339 In the process of time three great institutions arise which profoundly affect poHtical evolution and which make the state both necessary and possible. These are privaLe property, a leisured governing class, and ciyiljaw- It is both inexpedient and unscientific to attempt to account for the origin of the state in terms of any one particular exigency or institution. Writers like Oppenheimer, for example, are inclined to overstress the economic and ex- ploitive element in the state. He holds that no state can arise until concepts of social prestige based on property dififerences emerge, and until sufficient property and pro- ductive skill exist to make it worth while for one class or tribe to subject and exploit another. Hence he claims to find no state below the level of herdsmen. "The state," he says, "completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. . . ." ^ It is much more important for our present purpose to (^^J^* indicate the hnes along which the state has developed rather than to confine attention to abstract questions of its origin. First, we note an increase in the size and reach of the gov- ernmental unit. Next, a specialization of organs exercis- _ ^ ing functions formerly distributed and undifferentiated. Third, an e xpansion of_aulhQrity ; paternalism ; the as- , ^ sumption of functions once exercised by other agencies. ^--' Fourth, a new alignment in the incidence of pohtical power, ^ the widening of the classes having and utilizing it. Finally, ^ ' F. Oppenheimer, The State, p. 15, chap, ii, etc. Oppenheimer is a disciple of Gumplowicz, whom he calls "the pathfinder" in the study of politics as race conflict. 340 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ,'the wider use of persuasion and compromise instead of ' force as methods of politicar activity and expression. But are these changes tantamount to progress? Gov- ernment, we said, is insurance ; hence if safety and rehef from danger are categories of progress, here is a distinct contribution. But this is simply a shorthand term for three elements or accomplishments : first, cooperation ; second, coherence or isolation ; third, increase in size by amalgamation or conquest permitting added strength and division of labor. Bagehot noted that political hfe requires cooperation, and that cooperation to a certain ex- tent was secured early in history by customary law. But the isolation which he says is necessary could only result from custom reenforced by religious and poHtical organiza- tions. Political and mihtary activity developed a certain social coherence and discipline, still within the bounds of customary law. This was the first stage. The second came through government by discussion which broke the cake of custom.^ Herbert Spencer, in somewhat similar terms, indicated that a pohtical organization may serve progress in at least two ways. First, by securing the means for cooperation and the strengthening of social structure. Second, by enlarging the size of the group to permit an extensive division of labor.^ These gains are not by any means wholly the work of government ; yet it is evident enough that political organization contributed in no small measure to their accomphshment. But certain liabilities appear to offset in part the assets secured through pohtical organization. Spencer has per- haps given us the best general summary as to how politi- cal organization may hinder progress. His first objection comes from a general biological principle which he states ' Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics, p. 189. 2 Principles of Sociology, sec. 440 ff. GOVERNMENT 341 (with a characteristic rumble as of heavy siege artillery) in this form: " Unchangcableness of structures is a con- comitant of arrested growth." Political organization, he says, tends to a certain static persistence of forms which resist change, which cling to the past, and which hinder new forms of cooperation. We might illustrate here by showing how inter-group comity is hindered by petty nationalism, and how a fixed bureaucracy and a propertied class resist attempts to dispossess them of vested rights to control. Spencer's second subtraction from the value of political organization to progress is a criticism of the excessive costs of government, the heavy taxes, etc., which may make political forms cost more than they are really worth. His final objection — and this is characteristic of the Spencerian philosophy — is that political organiza- tion hinders progress by hampering individual initiative through coercive regulation, over-legislation, and the fixing of status. '^ From the standpoint of conceiving the welfare of the whole social group in its most inclusive sense, early govern- ments were monotonously narrow and static. They were marked by bluff, bravado, prestige-suggestion, wasteful- ness, pettiness, conservatism, and routine. To a certain extent, throughout all the political and economic revolu- tions of the last five or eight thousand years, and in spite of them, government has remained more or less passive, the conserver of past gains, the keeper of the group con- science, the arbiter of contending and ever changing in- terests and rights. It has been preeminently conserva- tive. Its laws and judgments have been interpretative of well-recognized needs rather than experimental in the creating of new needs and breaking paths for their wider satisfaction. Nevertheless certain cumulative ferments ^ Ibid. , sec. 443 S. 342 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS have been at work, which tend everywhere to dissolve and break down old political structures. These are prima- rily four : (i ) industrial development (mechanical inven- tion, transportation, commerce, creation of a surplus econ- omy) ; (2) education, particularly education in critical judgment; (3) discussion instead of insurrection as a method of settling political differences; (4) the gradual elimination of superstition and fetishism as props of govern- ment. These things have meant changes in the size and functions of the state, an enlarging class of "rulers" (changes in the incidence of pohtical power, democracy, the emergence of the individual), a specialization of govern- mental organs, and the development of new political tools, such as the ballot. Not all of these changes have been fully accomplished, however. A chart of them would not reveal a tidy even level of accomphshment ; its gross irregularities, its startling gaps alongside of high reaches, would suggest rather the ragged skyline of lower New York. On the whole, then, we are within the truth when we conclude that government in the past has been rather a conservative than a dynamic element in social hfe. There are certain indications, however, that from the executive branch of government we may expect something more distinctively progressive than we have had in the past.^ New legislation usually presupposes exigencies of adminis- tration ; and courts are largely concerned with interpret- ing and defining what is rather than what may be or ought to be in the future. Hence to the administrative function falls whatever share of progressive activity may inhere in government. And this share is increasing, owing to the cumulative action of faith in public as contrasted with private enterprise, and to the widening sphere of govern- mental activity. We have been hampered in America by ^ Cf. Ward, Dynamic Sociology, i, p. 526; ii, pp. 168, 212, 545, 574. GOVERNMENT 343 Montesquieu's doctrine of the separation of powers of government — a real modern fetish. This means mutual jealousy between courts, legislatures, and the executive. There is reason to hope, however, that this fetish is losing its power. Since the development of the administrative branch of government is the most hopeful hint that there may be a connection between government and progress, every new administrative development or experiment is welcomed by certain elements in the community and is ruthlessly assaulted, vilified, and hindered by other ele- ments. One need here only recall the history of the parcel post, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, of govern- mental attempts to regulate pure food, insurance and bank- ing, housing and public safety. Courts and legislatures have interfered and the "interests" have attempted to throw promising reforms off the track through threats and bribes. Perhaps as Ross pointed out,^ the greatest hin- drance is the jealousy of the courts and the legal profession, for two reasons. First, they consider their field has been usurped and that any extension of power should accrue to them ; second, because the direct, informal, untram- meled, truth-getting procedure of administrative bodies is an ill-veiled insinuation that courts are antiquated, static, and ossified in their own traditions. It must be said, how- ever, in defense of many courts, that they are sincerely trying to get away from the "sporting theory of justice," or trial by combat, in which the judge is merely a passive umpire. But until courts themselves take a larger hand in attempting to ehcit truth, they are bound to compare rather unfavorably with the vigorous and militant attitude of our better investigative and administrative bodies. The problem of how to secure a capable administrative body with continuity and coherence of purpose is at pres- * National Conference on Universities and Public Service, N. Y., 1914. 344 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ent the gravest concern in progressive politics. How can we secure an executive who while class-free and immune to the infection of crude partisanship is at the same time a real human being not completely anaesthetized by his job nor sunk into utter routinism? Schmoller holds/ that in the main it is law and the great institutions, par- ticularly government, which favor or embarrass the classes in their egoistic struggle for economic advantage. Yet he recognizes that class-dominance may exploit govern- ment as well as economic privilege; but finds the way of escape in creating a definite civic power and legal con- trol based upon enlightened monarchy and an educated non-partisan body of civil servants. In practice, says Schmoller, these civil authorities must be unhampered by demagoguery and extreme popular democratic control. They must bargain and manipulate, play off class against class, but on the whole must keep constantly in mind the benefit of the social whole as their final purpose. In other words, Schmoller sees the state as a progressive influence in terms of an aristocratic body of experts not altogether unlike Plato's concept of governors, or of St. Simon's and Comte's vision of a government by a board of bankers and other experts. Anti-capitalists, like Oppenheimer,^ foresee a different form of the state in which there will be neither classes nor class interests, but instead a trained bureaucracy which will have attained "that ideal of the impartial guardian of the common interests which nowa- days it laboriously attempts to reach." The question immediately arises, however, as to whether this body of experts will be any freer from mob mind and prejudice than are our present cabinet ministers. Our experience seems to justify the saying that we need rather more conscience than more knowledge in our experts. ^ Gnmdriss, vol. ii, 542 ff. ^ j/jg Slate, chap. vii. GOVERNMENT 345 The state only becomes a dynamic, progressive, and cultural agent when it is actually felt and understood by the majority of its citizens. In other words, when it and its purposes are consciously accessible to the majority of its citizens ; when it realizes Burke's conception and ceases to be merely a repressive police organ; when it controls through the lure of constructive, forward-reaching policies and not through forcing men into the mold of the past ; when its expression through government is fully representative and not the secret, crafty, narrow machinations of a small dominating caste or class. Democracy is not necessarily the final form of the state, whether considered as an interesting method of organiza- tion or as a tool for human progress. We are in the habit of assuming in America that democracy is the last word in political organization and that it is predestined to suc- cess and progress. But democracy is still a dream and a hope rather than a fulfillment. It is still turbulent and wasteful, embarrassing as a bombastic relative, uncertain as a child, challenging and straining our faith. It is pos- sible that democracy may contribute and contribute largely to progress, but this can only result when democracy is willing to educate .and discipline itself to the point of an intelligent appreciation of what its problems and interests are, and of a willingness to accept responsibility and sub- ordinate itself to the high demands of successful group policy. Democracy must be rescued from the wicked step-mother, Individualism. It is not to be overlooked, however, that political participation on the part of the masses has an educative value which ought to react at least indirectly upon governmental efficiency and therefore in the direction of social advance. The time-wasting art of discussion is enormously valuable, precisely because of its disciplinary and educative effects. 346 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS The whole question seems to focus upon the relation between government and education. Put in its baldest terms the problem, is this : From the standpoint of social progress does the state exist for the purpose of supporting education? Or is education the handmaiden and chief ministrant to the state, therefore to be dominated by it? Or are both simply co-partners in a common plan for social control and the nurture of happy and promising individual innovations ? Montesquieu stated what might be called the classical theory of the dependence of educational systems upon po- litical forms : "The laws of education will thus differ in each sort of government. In monarchies they will have as their object honor ; in republics, virtue ; in a despotism, fear " 1 Aristotle expressed the Greek attitude towards the relation of the individual to the state by declaring : "No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of the youth, or that the neglect of education does harm to states. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives." ^ There is plenty of evidence that governments have taken Aristotle's hint and seized educational institutions for their own ends. Napoleon and Bismarck and Prus- sian Ministers of Education stand out clearly as examples. This seems to be what the vitriolic La Rochefoucauld had in mind when he set down as one of his maxims : " Kings make men as they would pieces of money. They give them what values they will, and we are forced to re- ceive them according to their face value, not according to their veritable worth." 1 Esprit des bis, livre iv, chap. i. * Politics, viii, i. GOVERNMENT 347 It has been one of the great boasts of modern Germany that educators were allowed akademische Freiheit. Helm- holtz, in his great inaugural address as Rector of the Uni- versity of Berlin in 1877, admitted that liberty of teaching had not always been assured either in Germany or in ad- jacent countries ; but he hastened to add : "The advanced political freedom of the new German Empire has brought a cure for this. At this moment, the most extreme consequences of materialistic metaphysics, the boldest speculations upon the basis of Darwin's theory of evolution, may be taught in German universities with as little restraint as the most extreme deification of papal infallibihty." Yet there is no doubt that university teaching favor- able to the Prussian idea of the state and of militarism has been rewarded and fostered by the German ruling classes. There is reason for believing that a German uni- versity is scarcely more than an institution for providing state officials of an orthodox turn of mind.^ Dr. Henry Pritchett in a very conservative paper before the Ameri- can Sociological Society, in 1914,^ declared that while university teaching may be free in Germany, it is largely because the government selects and appoints only men who are "right" and "safe." Social pressure is thus directed obliquely, but even more powerfully than through mere repression of freedom of speech or of teach- ing. The marvelous subservience of the individual to the government in the German Empire, as shown by the conduct of Germans high and low in the present conflict, is an illustration of how education to regard the interests of the state as paramount bears its inexo- rable fruitage. ^ See E. C. Moore, School and Society, June 19, 1915, p. 889. 2 Publications of the Amer. Social. Soc, ix : 150-1. 348 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Certain types of education accompany inevitably cer- tain political institutions, for the latter obviously reflect current necessities or predilections of the population gener- ating them. It is manifest, for example, that the edu- cational system of a great empire founded on conquest must be emphatically military, since the cement which holds intact such a congeries-state is force, not common economic, political, artistic, or religious interests. Rome, the ancient Persian, Hindu, Chinese, Arab, Egyptian, Greek-Mykenian, Merovingian-Carolingian empires, and Germany under the Ottos stand out as illustrations. Again, scholasticism is usually associated with feudal or some other form of despotism. Montesquieu found the education of a despotic government emphasizing servile obedience to authority and ehminating all deliberating, doubting, reasoning ; to desire what your overlords wanted you to desire was the supreme virtue and the aim of edu- cation.^ And this is the essence of scholasticism. This was true of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was true of Japan up to the Meiji era (1868). Prior to this date Japan was in a state of organized (but disorganizing) feudalism, without national education, but with Buddhist temple centers of arid scholasticism. With feudal lords overbal- ancing the central government, education naturally got no national sanction nor foothold and became the property and tool of special classes. Usually in such cases the priesthood seizes the opportunity and makes the temple the school and a strong fortress of the status quo. It was so in Europe ; it was so in Japan during medieval Bud- dhistic supremacy. Coming nearer home, we might point out that owing to an old alliance between government, propertied classes, and the church, it was unwise, until quite recently, for ^ Esprit dcs lois, livre iv, chap. iii. GOVERNMENT 349 college instructors to espouse or even discuss fairly social- ism, free-trade, Unitarianism, or changes in the family. Elementary and higher education were to enforce the pres- ent conceptions of ownership, domesticity, religion, and the republican form of government. Evolution is still tahoo in some institutions of learning, and the "higher criticism" likewise ; both being ruled out because of some lurking suspicion that they menace the patriarchal theory of God, religion, the family, and private property. A California legislator tried not long ago to put through a bill making it a statutory offense to teach the critical view of American history. He feared for the future of patriotism and private property if children learned that some of our Revolutionary ancestors were smugglers and land-speculators as well as patriots. In the long run governments never prosper under a system of education by suppression ; a progressive government needs for its own health and efficiency educa- tion by discussion. Discussion can always be kept con- structive if it is fair, in good temper, and insists on taking account of all the elements in the situation. With this in mind we hardly need fear any undue inter- ference by modern liberal governments in details of educa- tion. Over a century of experience in America and in Europe has demonstrated that there is no inherent incom- patibility between state instruction and liberty of teach- ing. A hundred years ago Benjamin Constant could say and get a respectful hearing : "Government can multiply the channels and means of instruction, but ought not to have the direction of them. . . . By assuming the sole direction of education, government assumes to itself the right, and takes upon itself the task of maintaining a body of doctrine." And William von Humboldt concluded that national education, that is, exclusive state education, lay wholly 350 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS beyond the limits within v/hich poHtical agency should properly be confined. In England, even as late as 1880-86, the Liberty and Property Defense League were arguing for laissez-faire and free trade in education, and opposing every attempt to introduce the state as a competitor or regulator in the various fields of private enterprise, includ- ing education as a "gainful industry." Earl Fortescue, a member of the league, while admitting the right of the state to compel a minimum of instruction, denied its right to maintain gratuitous education ; and this on the flimsy analogy that while the state has a right to compel men to wear clothes it need not furnish them. Fortunately we have outrun these constricting ideas. Government is now regarded as a constructive social agency and is no longer limited to repressive police functions. And we no longer consider for a moment the pretension that education is a "purchasable commodity that can be safely allowed to exist under the ordinary laws of supply and demand, of buying and selling." (Adam Smith long ago exempted it from the economic law of supply and demand.) The compulsory feature of public education is also accepted with scarcely a murmur of objection except from certain rehgious organizations or exploiters of child labor. Whatever criticisms of routine and inefficiency may be laid at the door of our pubhc schools, those criticisms do not relate to the undue interference of government. This is due in part to our extreme lack of centraHzation in government. In fact, it is quite within the range of possi- bility that our school system has suffered not from too much government and centralized control, but from too little. Our modern individualistic idea of political forms reen- forced by a doctrinaire philosophy which smacked strongly of anarchism has left its mark on both the aims, methods, and organization of our schools. A certain aloofness, GOVERNMENT 351 routine, and aridity have resulted. But the developing bias towards sociahsm and internationalism is already- registering itself in school affairs. And, conversely, along the horizon the faintest hints of dawn suggest the begin- nings of a favorable reaction of education upon govern- mental efficiency. This is particularly noticeable in the judicial and administrative branches. The state, like the family, is not a fixed form, not a solution ; it is a continual becoming, a problem of infinite diversity. Education is one of its co-workers in the ever-recurrent attempt to re- solve the problem of government. It may not be too great a strain upon our fund of imagination to hope that out of a free partnership between these two agencies in particular may come, given time enough, a distinctive contribution to human advance. But it must be admitted that so far there is more of prophecy than fullfilment. Burke's vision remains a vision ; to some it seems scarcely more than a mythical pot of gold. But who shall deny that we may overtake the rainbow and discover the pot with a certain very substantial store of golden minted achievement? Meanwhile there is no denying a very significant trend toward governmental control over wider areas of common concern, toward expert administration, and toward organ- ized criticism as a check upon inefficiency and arbitrary use of power; and on the whole this trend is distinctly upward. CHAPTER XXIV LAW A STUDENT was once requested to report on the topic, "Law as a force for progress." Being a victim of the 'back to original sources' policy, he posted off to talk with several lawyers of his community on the history and philosophy of their profession. He came back with the sad report that the lawyers refused to find in law any progressive element. To them law was simply law, what is and what has been. These lawyers seem to be confirmed in their position by certain contemporary radical teachers of law. Dean Kirchwey, for example, surely gave that im- pression in his paper on "Law and Progress" at the Confer- ence on the Relation of Law to Social Ends in New York, 1 91 3. His position may be summarized somewhat after this fashion : " The popular will hastens to express itself in law, be- lieving that progress should record itself in law ; and that law is an apt agent of progress. These beliefs are largely illusory. They are due to the convergence of two prev- alent fictions of the nineteenth century : Austin's fiction, that law is the command of a sovereign, popular or other ; and the political fiction, that this sovereign, in our case the popular sovereign, can only command what is right. The popular will has thus come to regard itself as right, and as deserving to be immediately crystallized into law. As a matter of fact, progress owes little or nothing to law; why should it hope to gain by embodying itself in law? Unofficial social control may well do more than 352 LAW 353 official control. And of these official agencies, the rep- resentative body is a better organ of social reform than the direct popular will, as expressed, for example, in refer- endum." ^ But this may well be somewhat of an over-statement of the case ; for it is altogether possible to conceive that while law is not an explosive force, nevertheless in its conservative aspect as a summary of past approved social methods, as the codification of what is worth while in past and present norms of social conduct, it might still be reckoned an indispensable element in human advance. The decisive answer lies in an analysis of the concept of law itself, together with its sources, and in a review of its place in the history of social origins and evolution. Perhaps, as Professor Pollock maintained, law cannot be defined. Certainly the older definitions in terms of metaphysical content or religious sanctions are unsatis- factory. For example, Hooker's, to the effect that law is "that which reason in such sort defines to be good, that it must be done." Such a definition forgets entirely the basis of law in irrational folkways and customs. Kant's concept of law as the "sum total of the conditions under which the personal wishes of one man can be reconciled with the personal wishes of another man, in accordance with a general law of freedom" would have been sounder if he had omitted the last phrase which seems to assume an eternal principle of Reason in the face of historic Unreason. In the interest of clarity the only safe working concept is a definition in terms of function. From this standpoint law reduced to its simplest terms is simply a body of rules of aci lnn pstnblip^^'^ ^y nnrmqlly recognized authority to define and direct d uty and to enforce accep ted principles 1 From a report on the Conference by Professor W. E. Hocking, in the Jour, of Philos. Psychol, and Sci. Methods, lo : 520. 2a 354 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS of jus tice. In other words, law is th p '^nm r.f C|p r.ular rule s for social control. A summary~ol the sources of these rules will indicate how complex is the legal fabric and how diverse one might anticipate its workings to be. Spencer set down four such sources : (i) inherited usages from the undistinguished dead, which have a quasi-religious sanction — we have now learned to call these folkways or mores ; (2) special injunctions of deceased leaders, the distinguished dead — these assume the character, frequently, of sacred law; (3) the will of the predominant man, the distinguished living — personal allegiance law ; (4) aggregate opinion of the un- distinguished living, vague but influential.^ Here in brief are set out the guiding threads to all those conflicts between secular and ecclesiastical law, between law and custom or public opinion, between the radical innovator and the estabHshed legal order, between constitutions . and statu- tory law. Here appears also the key to such apparent willfulness as Emerson's daring maxim, "the highest virtue is always against the law," or Edward Carpenter's essay, Defenc e of Criminals : a Criticism of Morality. The first service of law to social development and prog- ress lay in its definition of normal group relationships and duties. For, as Carter points out, the ''prime requi- site of human society is that each member should know what to expect in the conduct of others, and that fair ex- pectations should not be disappointed." ^ It goes with- out saying that this service was rendered ages before law became definitely crystallized into written constitu- tions or statutes. Indeed, it is perhaps not putting it too strongly to suggest that custom law is far more powerful in controlling a primitive group than are written ^ Pr. of Social., sec. 533-4. 2 Law, its Origin, Growth, and Function, p. 18. LAW 355 laws among modern peoples. The growth in size of modern governmental areas and the rise of the critical spirit tend to weaken the purchase of law upon the individual. There is no virtue in the argument that because law is largely concerned with negation, with defining prohibitions, there- fore it is not a constructive agency. It is true that law had its origins largely in taboos connected with the ghost cult and ancestor worship. But it is equally true that the taboo was the strongest positive force for social control at the disposal of primitive groups. It contained the first set of prohibitions, negative commandments, and served as the basis for police regulations as well as for property rights. It also conserved the health of early societies by such measures as the prescriptions against touching corpses, against eating unripe fruit, against killing animals in certain seasons. Moreover, every Thou shalt not contains its implied correlative, the positive Thou shalt. Thus the taboo is schoolmaster to the principle of an active ethical attitude. Next, it is evident that no organism can exist without appropriate structure; and the more stable and delicate this structure, the higher the organism ranks in the scale of life. Without in any sense pressing the organicist analogy, the same may be said of societies, having in mind law as an eminent feature of social structure. Indeed, Professor Hobhouse ma kes stability under law one of th e very tests of progress. In building the tower by which we mount to the infinite we build in stories or stages. We cannot build on the empyrean. Each story must rest upon a solid floor. This floor is laid in law, the wisdom and digested experience of the past. If we choose to look upon social structure in its coordinating aspects, then surely law is to be regarded as a binding principle, not only between contemporaries in a social group, but also between / 356 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the past, present, and future of that group. Thus Kor- kunov, in his brilHant essay, holds that the factor which institutes and controls this coordination is no other than law; law permits coexisting individuals to enjoy hberty; it protects minorities, fixes bounds for all new striving in- terests, the predominance of which would quickly ruin weaker ones and deprive society of conditions indispen- sable to its own development; without law the future would be sacrificed to the exigencies of the present.^ That is to say, law facihtates social adjustments through definition and compromise. This is what wise old Counsellor Pleydell in Guy Mannering strove to put in his quaint way : "In civilized society law is the chimney through which all that smoke discharges itself that used to circulate through the whole house and put every one's eyes out ; no wonder, therefore, that the vent itself should sometimes get a little sooty." This function of adjustment comes out the more clearly if expressed in terms of economy. According to Professor Dewey, law may be looked at as "describing a method for employing force economically, efficiently, so as to get re- sults with the least waste ... a plan for organizing other- wise independent and potentially conflicting energies into a scheme which avoids waste, a scheme allowing a maxi- mum utilization of energy." ^ It is in this sense of social stabihty, of defining duties and expectations, of adjustment and economy, that law I may be said to further the progress of human liberties. It is quite true, as the editor of a labor journal recently pointed out, that human liberties are not created by law, if creation be taken in the old theological sense of making ^ General Theory of Law (Engl, transl.), pp. 323 ff. ^ " Force, Violence, and Law," New Republic, Jan. 22, 1916, p. 295. LAW 357 something out of nothing. But if conceived as the or - ganized effort which crystalHzes itself in constitutions and c odes, tlien law certainly does deiine and even create liber- ties . The liberties, no less than the bondages of to-day, are in no small degree the creation of yesterday's laws. And the true legislator not wrongfully considers that he has a hand in making the hberties of to-morrow. Law might be called the silent partner in the firm of influences that urge us onwards. Because of its silence it has been often taken as the merest matter of course and neglected by historians. But according to a writer in The Nation it was Maitland's chief contribution to seize the idea that while the growth of law formed an important feature in the history of all civilized countries, it formed the essential characteristic of the history of England. "English law is the most original creation of the English intellect and will be the most lasting monument of Eng- land's greatness. ... he established once and forever that English law lies at the basis of English pohtics, and at the centre of the development of the English constitution." ^ Here also should be ranged Professor Marvin's somewhat perfervid plea for Roman law as a progressive factor. He finds in it the leading agent by which the Romans carried out their incorporation of the West, t he pr eserver of the princ iples of order an d continuity in development, a con- s iderahle element in th e law and organization of the Cath- olic Churc h and i n methods of local and colonial adminis- tration, an influen ce on moral philosophy and theology, a nd thej napiration t o scientific stu dy of history .^ Of course it remains true — and this is the weakness of Marvin's argument — that law is only a small fraction of the sum of social activity, and at that constitutes little ^ The Nation (American), Sept. 29, 19 10. 2 The Living Past, 115-17. t< / 358 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS more than the record of other social interests and activi- ties. Current maxims indicate this. "Law is rather the fruit than the root of progress." "Law is mighty, mightier still is need." When Maine said that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement fro m st atULsJU-Contract, he could not have meant that law of itself had accomplished that movement. He merely stated that the various influences operating upon society had produced a general tendency which might be defined in legal terms as a trQnci'fmn frnm mt;ff)marv-4^4i-^atns law to rational or contract law. Yet he does seem to have conceived that law somehow or other covered the whole field of human affairs and that legal knowledge was the best guide to the comprehension. Law and metaphysics, he says, are capable of employing all the powers and capaci- ties of the human mind, and of these law is as extensive as the concerns of mankind themselves. But, as his critics have pointed out, this leaves the whole problem of social evolution unexplained save by the circular proposition that the laws of a community are the native forces in its evolution. But this is just as barren as Herder's concept of native force {Sinnlichkeit) as the original progressive force. It is equally obvious that when Savigny and his followers of the new historical school of lawyers in the first ■ half of the nineteenth century substituted the concept "juridical consciousness" of the people f or the e ighteenth century concept of "universal reason" as the progressive force, they were simpl v modifying termin.Qlogy. They did Httle toward putting social philosophy upon a scientific basis. Yet having said that, we should avoid going to the other extreme and denying the influence of legal concepts and the personaHties back of them. The fact that a large percentage of the world's great leaders have been lawyers is no mere happen-so. If the war-captain and his trusty LAW 359 sword must hack and hew a way through a barbarous wilderness for us to tread, you will always find him accom- panied by the man of law to gi ve his hackings and hewin gs t he color of~rig[ht and lustice, or to nulhfy them as soc ial needs may r equ ire. Law codes and lawyers are presumably less amenable to the influence of general education than any other element in social life. But this is by no means always true. Stoic teachings colored Roman law. In fact the codes of Theodo- sius and Justinian were based upon the constantly reiterated Stoic doctrine of a law of nature. Hence the Roman lawyer Ulpian said, "As far as natural law is concerned all men are equal. ... By natural law all men are born free," etc. And Cicero declared that nothing is law that is not reason. He who runs may perceive the persistence of these ideas of natural law and reason in Puffendorf, in Rousseau, and the other humanitarians or doctrinaire philosophers who played the prelude to the French Rev- olution, and in our own Jefferson, especially in the Decla- ration of Independence. We need, on the other hand, go no farther than the writings of lawyers themselves to make out a good case against law as a hindrance to social progress. It will suffice to mention three or four reasons. First, th e very stability of (£) legal institutions makes them resistant to social exigencies. IMaine confessed flatly that among progressive peoples, "Social necessities and social opinion are always more or less in advance of law. We may come indefinitely near to the closing of the gap between them, but it has a per- petual tendency to reopen. Law is stable ; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of prompti- tude with which the gulf is narrowed." ^ ^ Ancient Law, chap. ii. 360 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS So true is this that sometimes revolt is justifiable, for only the violent protest of revolution can decide the issue be- tween the higher, real law of social exigency and a time- worn shell of formal law. ''An ordered society is like a field which has periodically to be touched and torn by the plow before the soil receives the virtue to renew its creative power." ^ It has all but required revolution to break the crust of prestige formed over Europe by Roman Law and over the United States by English Common Law. Normally, however, a vigorous, healthy radicalism suffices. To take a somewhat faded analogy : law represents the base which, attacked by the acids of radicalism and change, precipi- tates the salt of healthy progress. This is what Walter Bagehot meant by setting down law and government by discussion as the two prerequisites to progress. Law lays the cake of custom, discussion cracks and dissolves it. r^ Secondly, that very rigidity is partly accounted for b^ ^'^ the early association of l aw with religion . While at the present time custom, and especially religious custom, may be of slight importance as a primary source of law (due to the dechne of ancestor worship, of the family as a political unit, of superstition and fear of the unknown, to the growth of individuahsm and independent thought, to the increase of positive legislation and judicial decisions),^ yet there was a time when the reverse was true ; so true that Maine set the fact down as having prevented or arrested the progress of far the greater part of mankind.^ ''Nothing," says Cherry, "so much checks the growth of law in a community as the identification of it with religion. The recognition of the sacredness of rules, of Law natural!}' offers a very strong obstacle to alteration ^ Ferrero, Greatness and Decline of Rome, i, 1 16 ; cf. SchmoUer, Am. Jour. Sociol., 20 : 517. 2 Cf. L. Dee Mallonee, Amer. Law. Rev., 49 : 238. ^ Ancient Law, chap. iv. '"''^^^^^ m'^^T^nd in t hem. Nothing has so much faciHtated ' legal progress among European nations as the fact that the religion of all of them is derived from a foreign source." ^ Again, th e machinery by which formal law is administered (^\ t ends to reenforce its laggard and inflexible char acter. It is perhaps true, as Dean Kirchwey observed in the paper already cited, that the chief difficulties in making law an agency for social reform spring from the judicial function. There are, it appears, at least four reasons for this : First, QJ the professional attitude of the judges themselves. The judicial fil'ftTtion is a spccialjzation williin tlie general field of law ; moreover, the very secl u sion and independence of the judge heightens his speci alization and therefore his cloistered insensitivit y to public opinion. Bench law thus tends to become a selt-suthcient, self -inclosed body; ver- bal inspiration, driven out of theology, finds refuge in the bench. The outsider is hardly to be blamed for wonder- ing if the vicious circle can be broken save by revolution. . A second reason is the domination of precedent . An ^«« J Ohio judge in a notable decision upholding the teacher's right to join a union went out of his way to castigate this judicial weakness. Said the court : "To make a precedent a fetish to worship is to go round and round a small circle and never to progress. Courts must from time to time make new precedents or become stumbhng blocks in the way of progress." A third, to which the second is really but a corollary: _the (^'-'^ ^ t heory of separation of powers which de bars the courts from exercising legislative functions and forces them iJack ,^ upon the principle of precedentT Fourth, th e amount of V^^ ^ public opinion necessary to penetrate judicial re motenes s before a change in law can Ijc effected through the courts. 1 Growth of Criminal Law, 40; cf. Spencer, Princ. of Sociol., sec. 531. 362 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS While in a representative body change is comparatively "light-footed," the courts feel the pressure of public opinion only when it has become universal. The real reason why we cannot look to courts of justice for very serious contributions to social progress is that they are concerned with remedying abuses which have already been suffered to happen ; they do not or cannot anticipate the fact ; their work is mere tinkering and patching, the treating of "cases" in much the same spirit that marked elder methods of charity and medicine; the preventive and constructive phases of law seem so far to have remained outside their vision. Still there are evidences that law, legislators, and courts of law are beginning to assume a more active and positive role in movements for social advance. Ancient law was markedly recapitulatory, the summation of past experience and wisdom. Modern law retains this conservative and retrospective trait, but adds the principle of revision and tends more and more towards prevision. The old doctrine of the complete separation of the branches of government is crumbling. The highest courts are abandoning their old position as passive interpreters of literalism in the law and are taking to themselves the task of conscious constructive interpre- tation. An Illinois judge declares that he cannot overlook as a judge what he knows as a man. Another judge announces the rule of reason. The present Lord Chief Justice of England says English courts ex ist not to expou nd law but to dispense justice. Hence law may become a more potent arm for social welfare and progress than has hitherto been imagined possible. It may not only register and conserve the standards of past right conduct, but may actually set new and higher ones. Of course nobody expects that merely making or interpreting laws is going to usher in a millennium. It is a truism that you LAW 363 cannot legislate men good. Aristotle, to be sure, declared that the special business of the legislator is to create in me n this benevol ent disposition ; but at the same time he recognized that law is only a convention, a surety to one another of justice, and has no real power to make the citizens good and just. Rightly conceived, however, law is a means of setting up standards for imitation, and in that sense may be considered as a definite force for making citizens good and just and healthy. Most or all of the impetus which is driving the law along new lines has not been derived from within itself, but is the result of healthy collisions with other social institutions of more pronounced dynamic cast. In the history of Eng- lish law Dean Pound finds two important examples of breaking up the undue rigidity of a legal system through receiving into it ideas developed outside of legal thought. First, in the seventeenth century the " unmoraHty " o^ the law was overthrown by Courts of Chancer ^ ^ and the de- v elopment of equit y. Second, in the eighteenth century the in dustrial rev olution and its forerunners injected new el ements into the law. A third element, socializing the law, is fyointr on r\aw ~} Just what this growing sociological concept of jurispru- 1 Roscoe Pound, " Social Problems and the Courts," Am. J . Soc, 18 : 332- 3. In contrast with this broad view of one of the greatest law teachers of his time, I cannot forbear setting down a waspish remark reported by the N. Y. Evening Post from President N. M. Butler's Johns Hopkins University- address early in 191 5. He said : "Just now law is under attack from a curi- ous mixture of sentiment and love that calls itself sociological jurisprudence, and which I understand to be a sort of legal osteopathy." It is quite evident that the man who could argue passionately before St. Louis business men against changing our form of government, and at the same time associate himself with Boss Barnes in an attempt to dominate the New York State Republican Convention is hardly the man to understand or sympathize with a certain trend of the legal mind in the direction of recognizing that law is an outgrowth of group life for the realization of group ends; hence that it changes or should change as the economic, social, and political bases of group life shift. 364 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS dence is has been ably expounded by a former editor of an influential law journal, TJie Green Bag. Mr. Spencer tells us that it ''refuses to isolate the law from life in general and that it treats law not as an inflexible formula, to be expounded only by accomplished technicians, but also as a flexible social institution to be treated, like all other institutions, with regard to the utility of the end served and the nature of the function it seeks to fulfill. . . . With the sociological jurist the readjustment of the law to meet new social de- mands is not simply an actual tendency but a moral neces- sity. . . . Only through such adjustment can the law attain its highest efficiency. . . . The immediate result of the new attitude will be an altered interpretation of current prob- lems of social and economic legislation, and there must inevi- tably be a reaction against the timeworn precedents of the common law and a deliberate attempt to substitute new rules for old. This means that many of the highly individualistic conceptions which survive in the common law, and are really anachronistic, being derived from doctrines long since aban- doned, must yield to a modern ideal of social justice." ^ It seems quite beyond doubt that this healthy change in the spirit of lawyers and courts has been the direct product of recent education, and especially education in the social sciences, notably economics, political science, and sociology. And so far there seems to have been no attendant loss of that technical grasp or logical power which the elder discipline of mathematics and Latin was presumed to confer. If the making of law can be improved, its administration permeated with the spirit of social ends, and its teaching kept on the high level previsioned by the sociological jurists, law, in most of its aspects, can be defi- nitely counted on as a dependable ally in any forward movements society may will to make. 1 A. W. Spencer, "Sociology and the Law," Mid-West Quarterly, 2 : 156-61. CHAPTER XXV PUBLIC OPINION ■ Public opinion can only by a certain straining of the truth be called a social institution. Yet people talk of it as though it were the solidest and most powerful of all our institutions. They also speak of educating pubUc opinion and orienting it in the direction of progress. And it will be recalled that Spencer made it ancillary to law and one of its four sources : that is, if we are correct in interpret- ing as public opinion his phrase, aggregate opinion of the undistinguished living. What is it, then? Has it a solid structure through which to function, or is it the stuff that dreams and nightmares are made of? Was Sir Robert Peel right in describing it as "that great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs"?^ Is it 'mental contagion'? If so, M. Le Bon tells us it is the most puis- sant factor in the propagation of revolutionary movements.^ To use the more familiar term, is it mob mind? Hardly. It differs from mob mind in that while energetic it is more rational and less explosive. Mob mind is passion; public opinion appears rather as sublimated sentiment. Public opinion is, theoretically at least, the product of orderly deliberate persuasion, while mob mind is the re- sult of sudden intense hypnotic suggestion which drowns 1 Cf . J. W. Jenks, Am. Jour. Social., i, i6o. ^Figaro, Jan. ii, 1913. 36s 366 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS all the normal play of rival suggestions and motives. Is it the 'spirit of the people'? If so, it is too vague to be reckoned with from an institutional standpoint. Is it the whole of a group's mental activity? If so, it is a misnomer ; for instinctive reactions, folkways, tradition, or matters-of-course are hardly to be considered as opinion, either functioning or as a precipitated product, any more than breathing or hunger is opinion. At any rate it differs from custom or the mores by virtue of its energy ; it is active, while custom is passive. Is it the social mind? Or, better, is it the social mind in the throes of a problem or crisis ? Some eugenists seem to think it is. Sir Francis Galton, for instance, held that public opinion is commonly far in advance of private morality, because society as a whole keenly appreciates acts that tend to its advantage, and condemns those that do not. Indeed, the eugenists look to 'educated public opinion' or to 'enlightened pubHc opinion' for the realization of their hopes of human betterment through selective breeding. So every other social reformer appeals or claims to appeal to public opinion or the 'best public sentiment.' We are told, too, that public opinion is the "viewpoint of the effective majority," that it is the "common sense and common thought of most people," or that it is "the average of what men believe and how they feel upon a given subject, within a given social unit." But since society is made of men, the voice of a social majority must be neither God's nor the devil's, but man's. Hence such a concept brings us little nearer the problem of relating opinion to progress, unless we assume a potential drive of human opinion irresistibly toward perfection : and this seems, to say the least, unwarrantable. Again, is public opinion a synonym for public conscience or the "pre- vailing sense of right"? It may be, but such a concept PUBLIC OPINION 367 is static rather than functional. Is it ' public spirit ' ? If it is, and if we are pessimistically inclined or can believe Mr. Chesterton, we have but little of it and small prospects of getting it. He declares that we shall have a public washhouse and a public kitchen long before we have a public spirit ! "Public opinion," said Lester F. Ward, "means the sum total rather of the questions which are under discussion," ^ than mere mental activity in general. Or shall we say, a general likemindedness or prevailing opinion on a topic over which sober and reasonable discussion has been pro- voked? If so, it is an open question as to which is the val- uable thing, the opinion or the discussion. Public opinion, or sound, ordered social judgment must therefore be marked off from popular whim or popular impression. The latter may consist of highly prevalent, but frothy, fatuous super- ficialities, passed along by newspapers, preachers, or pro- fessional propagandists. The former is serious and pro- found even if mistaken, and usually gains headway slowly through the spread of genuine conviction.^ If illustration be not redundant, we might take the popular jingo demand that Senor Huerta should be punished for insulting the American flag as an example of shallow popular impression ; the thoughtful conclusion that Mexico must be brought to some show of order and security as an example of ripe public opinion. Or, again, the hasty, ill-considered cry for mothers' pensions is largely popular impression ; the demand for workmen's compensation acts and social in- surance is mature public opinion. From the president of Harvard University comes a most thoroughgoing analysis of public opinion. He criti- cizes such lame definitions as we have exposed and shows the confusion that they beget. For instance, mere majority ' Applied Sociology, 44. ^ Cf. Cooley, Social Organization, 123. 368 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS is an insufficient criterion, for that is force, compulsion, not public opinion. Nor is unanimity a safe test ; inten- sity is better, for ardor may outweigh mere numbers. In short, " public opinion, to be worthy the name, to be the proper motive force in a democracy, must be really pubhc ; and popular government is based upon the assumption of a public opinion of that kind. In order that it may be public a majority is not enough, and unanimity is not required, but the opinion must be such that while the minority may not share it, they feel bound, by conviction, not by fear, to accept it ; and if democracy is complete the submission of the minority must be given ungrudgingly." Moreover, it must be opinion not mere tradition or prej- udice or subjection to authority ; it need not, however, be wholly rational understanding ; it always betrays a commingling of popular desire ; and it may be in part a sense of incongruity, inconsistency, or injustice. To have a real public opinion on any question, the bulk of the people must be in a position to determine of their own knowledge, or by weighing evidence, a substantial part of the facts required for a rational decision. Since racial and religious cleavage interferes with the formation of real public opinion, a certain homogeneity of population is essential both to sound opinion and to popular government ; at least a homogeneity sufficient to be assured that the minority is willing to accept the decision of the majority on all questions normally expected to arise. Racial dif- ferences are not an absolute bar to political homogeneity, as the experience of Switzerland proves. The prime necessity is that all elements in a population should be capable of common aims and aspirations, should have a common stock of political traditions, should be open to a ready interchange of ideas, and should be free from inherited PUBLIC OPINION 369 prejudices that prevent mutual understanding and sym- pathy.^ Two other requisites follow as corollaries, namely, freedom of expressing dissent (that is, freedom of assem- blage, speech, discussion, and publication), and freedom of organization in every domain of interest, in so far as it does not breed hindering factions. In line with this analysis I am constrained to add another, which although prompted by a specific issue, namely, the mental attitude of Americans towards the European war, still, it seems to me, goes to the roots of the whole question of pubHc opinion. Most current reactions to the war, said this writer,^ have not been opinion at all, but "mere batteries of guns in an emotional warfare. In all the discussion little emerges that is not articulate emo- tion or articulate group-interest. This variedly articulate anger, disgust, prejudice, moral reaction, has little more right to be termed opinion than the start one gives when one meets a bear. It is instinctive response clothed with words." But words or phrases are not opinions : "the object of most words is to short-circuit thought." Phrases tend to stifle discussion. A good phrase is un fait accompli; as to discussion, or opinion, there's an end on't ! Genuine opinion is neither cold logical judgment nor irrational feeling. It is scientific hypothesis, to be tested and revised as experience widens. It is a view of a situation based on grounds short of proof : to be valid it must be just short of proof, but neither flabby nor uncertain. Good opinion does not try to carry water on both shoulders, but is gen- uine conviction — a provisional conviction, at least, to be held as a conviction until new hght appears — pressing * A. L. Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, 14-15, 24, 34-5. 2 Editorial, New Republic, Sept. 18, 1915, pp. 171-2. 2b 37° THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS all the time for proof. Hence good opinion though firm is the diametrical opposite of dogma. "Dogma is hard and unyielding, a sort of petrified emo- tion. It is constantly masquerading as proof, as genuine opinion never does. You do not revise dogmas. You smash them." Summarizing these discussions, we can now extract, perhaps, a clearer idea of the real nature of pubUc opinion. First, it is real opinion, scientific hypothesis, if you please, but not scientific fact, nor dogma, nor mere feeHng. Second, it is not to be set down as synonymous with majority opinion, or average opinion, or the consensus of opinions of the man in the street, or the mean between conservative and radical, upper and lower class opinion. It is not democratic in the sense of a pure democracy with universal direct participation in government, or in the sense that one man's voice is just as good as another's. PubUc opinion is rather of the selective or representative type of democratic discussion. Third, it is the result of discussion and effort and not mere easy emotional explosion or in- stinctive reaction. Fourth, it is the habit of thinking, not on indifferent or casual matters, but upon pubHc con- cerns, and is therefore the index of a sense of public re- sponsibility. Next, it means the open mind, free and willing to be ' convinced by argument, and which there- fore offers a certain leverage to education. Finally, and most important of all, it must mean rather less mere opin- ion of the public, good as that may be, and much more sound opinion for the public. The way is now cleared for our real problem, namely, the function of public opinion, and to be more precise, its connection with social advance. But since any dis- cussion of the nature of an institution covers by impUca- PUBLIC OPINION 371 tion some reference to its functions, we need only extract from the foregoing analyses their functional bearings. In brief, the task of public opinion is twofold : social control and readjustment through criticism ; in other words, conservation and innovation. Between these two poles it picks its way, on the one hand cracking and dissolving the cake of custom ; on the other, holding in check the blind, chaotic forces of mob passion. Hence it works through generalizing the ideas of selected groups or individuals, some of which are conservative, others distinctly forward- reaching and adventurous. Both, from the standpoint of progress, are essential. But the critical phase is, if anything, the more important. A progressive society is a flexible minded society whose chief concern is not to adapt its life to its tradition, but to overhaul its tradition in the process of ready adaptation to new social exigencies. The critical function of organized protest is therefore vital to public opinion if it is to be counted a dynamic factor. '^ And it is this aspect of public opinion that relates it to law. It tends constantly to bridge that gap which, as Maine pointed out, always separates the law from social needs. Public opinion is more flexible and less mechanical than law, supplements it, and might be called a recruiting agent for filling up law's depleted regiments. Moreover, being more flexible and more pervasive, it can search out and clean up chinks or crannies into which law may not penetrate, and withal creates less dust and commotion. To use a homely analogy, public opinion is a vacuum cleaner, law a coarse broom. While it is true that law and the courts frequently take ^ This does not mean, of course, that mere denunciation or muck-raking is sound criticism. I remember hearing John A. Hobson say once that only a raising of the general level of intelligence, i.e., creating potential sound opinion, can act as an antidote to scare-heads and the over-dramatization of evils in the movement for progress. 372 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS their cue from popular passion, either through timid ex- pediency or through misreading it as sober pubhc opinion, it is even truer that every solid lasting advance in legal technique is answerable to matured opinion which has be- come more or less generalized and organic to the life of a social group. Other institutions also feel this pressure of genuine opinion if they are not wholly ossified and ar- chaic — the economic order, for example, or education ; and to a lesser degree religion and the family ; but only in so far as they have to do with the general problems of social control and social readjustment. A third problem grows out of the second, namely, the limitations and difficulties of public opinion. Real opinion is valuable if, and only if, it proceeds from coherent thought applied to a problem. But right there lies the whole weakness of the claim that public opinion is the Messiah who shall deliver us from all our social ills and inaugurate the social millennium. Printing and education, we are told, have made possible real public opinion. Improved transportation for men, goods, and ideas should be added. For the telegraph, telephone, and railroad give a marvelous flexibility to the various devices for generating and gen- eralizing public sentiment. But the mere mechanics of printing or transportation could never produce sane or sound public opinion. Professor Dicey says it is guided far less by the force of argument than by the stress of circumstances.^ Why? Because of the general morass of ignorance from which so few have yet begun to emerge : can a nation that bases its political life upon an average sLxth grade elementary school education expect much sober, matured opinion? Because of a general shirking ^ Lectures on the Relation of Law and Public Opinion in England, 300. Pre- cisely for such reasons Ross (Social Control, 101-02) contends that, strictly speaking, public opinion is non-progressive and has in itself no power to rise. PUBLIC OPINION 373 of thought and an easy preference for the emotional line of least resistance. Because primal instincts cut so large a figure still in human life that even though it be true that thinking is an instinct, other instincts so overlay it that the reign of reason is still only a dream. Because man learns to understand himself last of all things in crea- tion. Because of abysmal ignorance of the real nature of society and social processes. More concretely, public opinion is limited by the diffi- culty of getting at facts upon which to base judgment. The increasing complexity of social life, the size of social groups, the bewildering assortment of facts, the rapid development of highly specialized bodies of fact and tech- nique, threaten to outstrip not only the capacity of the individual but even the means for disseminating either facts or opinions. The individual has only a limited sur- plus of time and energy which he can devote to the luxury of public concern. Likewise, there are limits to his powers of interest, attention, imagination, and sympathy. The Aristotles and Shakespeares and Comtes, those universal minds, are rare ; even they might well be staggered by the prospect of reducing this throbbing confusion to some show of orderly thought ; and there is so far no agency for re- ducing this "undigested medley" to coherence. More- over, agencies exist for the deliberate purpose of distorting and suppressing facts. In spite of these odds the attempt to form sound opinion must be kept up. But sound policy will not throw upon such opinion burdens it cannot bear. A pohtical system wisely framed, says Lowell, will refer to public opinion those questions alone on which such an opinion can be expected reasonably to exist. ^ But this must not be wrested to mean that we are to retreat superciliously or ^ Public Opinion and Popular Government, 53. 374 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS yield with too easy complacence to the belief that because public opinion is hard to get therefore it is beyond getting. This leads to our final problem, therefore, how public opin- ion may be created, organized, or guided for a society pre- sumably capable of development. It must be confessed frankly that much of what passes for public opinion is purely adventitious in character. If progress means mastery instead of blind drift, every factor in it must so far as possible be purged of its haphazard elements. Above all is this true of opinion if progress is a matter of the illuminated will ; for will does not work in vacuo: it demands reasonable assurance, judgment, or opinions sound enough and strong enough to discharge action. Pragmatically the great question is not how to ascertain the exact shade of the popular will, but rather how to ascertain what the popular will ought to be. This is the distinction between time serving and constructive leadership. In the last analysis it is evident that the popular will or public opinion can only be what it ought to be when it is based on absolute scientific fact and the laws of the cosmos. But these treasures do not come to us each by direct revela- tion ; they are communicated in earthen vessels, by human approximations to absolute truth. We can do no other, therefore, than make the best of what agencies now exist for getting at and spreading truth. Of these the first is scientific research, unmotivated by creed or party. Next, the machinery of dissemination, particularly education and the press. These requisites make certain assumptions : First, a considerable body competent to form an opinion. Second, a selected group — not necessarily a formal aristocracy, perhaps rather Ross' ''ascendancy of the wise" — with the energy, the courage, and the probity which will command a hearing from open minds. Such a group usually must PUBLIC OPINION 375 have some more or less coherent form of organization — club, political party, commercial body, reform league, or other institutionalized form ^ — to assure itself of that continuity of appeal which stupid minds demand. It is true enough, as the apologists for aristocracy insist, that what seems to be the opinion of the many is generally de- pendent upon the influence of the few. This is evident in any country that is sharply stratified into classes. But there you scarcely have opinion : you have rather the accepted dogma pronounced by your pohtical or class leader. The best you can do is to hope they have received revelations or thought their way through to a reasonable opinion. But in a democracy, while, as Mr. Mallock holds, the few are absolutely essential,^ it is questionable if such a situation is really more than democratic in shadow. If it is true that the real democratic leader does not obey the people, but "regards himself as one of the people with the democratic privilege of having a mind of his own," it is all the more true that the citizen of a democracy must refuse to obey his leaders, the Few, the self-constituted Elite ; he must be led, persuaded, coaxed, even coerced, yea, beaten with many stripes, into the habit of having a mind of his own. The function of an intellectual elite is not to impose its opinions upon the many, but rather to clear away the conditions which hinder the many from arriving at their own. In other words, the Few can serve the Many and themselves best by seeing that the agencies for creating sound opinion are free and unsubsidized. To be specific, I mean an honest press and a system of education which will develop critical judgment. ^ These organizations are to be sought less and less in public, political bodies like legislatures or parties, and increasingly in such groups as the national associations of teachers, social workers, economists, physical sci- entists, business men, farmers, or labor unionists. 2 Aristocracy and Evolution, 185-8. 376 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ''Government by newspapers is government by dis- cussion," Bagehot's ideal, says President Hadley; hence newspaper men should feel a high sense of public responsi- bility. The press, rightly conceived, tends to destroy party machines by making an open and direct appeal to the people, and to their judgment rather- than to their petty selfish interests. But unfortunately not all editors are proof against the temptations to win popularity through appealing to prejudices, suppressing and distorting news, organizing emotion.^ We could neglect their "inspired" editorials if we were sure they did not also "inspire" their news. For public opinion seems to be more open to the facts in news columns than to even the most care- fully reasoned editorial.^ It is undeniable that the average newspaper, run as a commercial venture, is subject to the whims of its proprietor, to the exigencies of his party, and to the prejudices of his advertisers, rather than to the high call of spreading truth.^ For this reason voices have been raised repeatedly for endowed journals which would report news fairly and offer honestly written comments on all sides of vital public questions. Los Angeles tried for two years the not altogether unconvincing experiment of a municipal newspaper designed to give every organized political party an equal opportunity to address the public. And a demand is growing for a national news service similar, so far as its lack of bias goes, to the crop and weather reports now issued. What the outcome will be nobody can predict ; but it is evident that until the press, through a new code of private professional ethics or pubhc owner- ship or censorship or competition with endowed and in- ^ "The Organization of Public Opinion," North American Review, Feb- ruary, 1915. 2 Cf. Foulke, Natl. Municipal Rev., 3 : 247 ff. ^ See the discussions in Piibl. Amer, Social. Assoc, vol. ix. PUBLIC OPINION 377 dependent journals, arrives at a fuller sense of its duty as a disseminator of pertinent facts, public opinion must stumble and go it more or less blind. There is left but one other hope. If public opinion — meaning a rational view of social contingencies — is to be transformed into prevision, a telic program of advance, it must resort to a profound and rigid educational disci- pline. Men of conservative mind conceive that the college, and particularly the ''cultural" or "liberal" type of college, is the only agency capable of conferring this discipline. But the disciplined mind is too often confounded with the conservative mind, and the institutions of higher learning have been accused, not unjustly, of breeding conservatism, just as the elementary schools are charged with mere transmitting of popular mores. The explanation of these criticisms hes, evidently enough, in the fact that our educa- tional institutions have not yet quite disengaged themselves from an aristocratic and medieval regime in which the emphasis was laid upon communicating ready-made opin- ions and memorizing bodies of selected and approved facts. In other words, our schools have not emerged from the shadows of a time when the world and all its social organi- zation was accepted as a firmly fixed order and when a man's chief duty was to adjust himself to that order with the minimum of questioning. But now that we have a vision of a world in the making, of an evolutionary process in which we are active agents, of a social order which we may help to transform into something better, it is evident that the concept of educational processes must correspond- ingly change. While granting without recrimination that education must remain an agency for social control, I maintain here the thesis developed elsewhere,^ that social control will be best served when every student is trained 1 "The College Teacher's Function," School and Society, 3 : 91-5. 378 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS to criticize, to evaluate, to solve problems for himself; that is, to develop the self-winding capacity. This means the ability to form opinions and to change them when the evidence warrants. Your school must deal in facts, surely, but even more in how to utilize them. Thus live teachers are absolutely right in insisting that the public opinion any democratic country most needs is not an opinion shaped by positive teaching on the part of the few and bhndly followed by the many ; and that, consequently, schools and colleges should not try to teach specific opinions or doctrines as matters of fact, but should foster and cul- tivate thorough habits of investigation and independent judicial habits of mind.^ But why limit it to the college? There is no reason under the sun why the same pressure for evoking critical judgment should not be apphed in secondary and elementary schools. Not every youth will respond, of course, because independent thinking is a hard and thorny way ; but enough, a saving remnant, perhaps a hundred-fold more than our feeble faith will allow us to dream, will stand out to become the foci of sound opinion upon public concerns for the public welfare. Unless and until our educational machinery can develop this forward-reaching type of mind, sow it broadcast, and make it vastly more intensive and discriminating than ever before, I can see little to hope for from public opinion as such in the struggle for social advance. But if curricula can be freighted with such materials that youth will be constrained to think in community terms, and if educa- tional methods can be focused more clearly upon evoking minds capable of discriminating social values, then there is every reason to expect that instead of those mere random, ^ Cf. J. W. Jenks, "The Guidance of Public Opinion," Am. J. Social., i : 166-7. PUBLIC OPINION 379 vague, worthless prejudices or accepted dogmas which masquerade now as public opinion, we may have a steady dependable stream of clarified thinking. Even if this stream of opinion fall short of absolute truth, and even if it will not float a dreadnought, at least it may be counted upon to carry the canoe of the pioneer as he paddles off towards the larger waters of the unknown future. CHAPTER XXVI GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE ELITE It is no mere freak of fancy or personal whim that puts down the heroistic or aristocratic theory of progress as a corollary to the section on public opinion. For in the creation of public opinion, as we have seen, individuals or select groups were necessary as the starting points of agita- tion. Heroes, great men, aristocracies are the recognized centers of imitation. They are unmistakably both agents and product of social differentiation. Whether they are likewise active agents in social progress is a problem much harder to resolve. We are familiar enough with the older philosophy of history and its naive hero worship. We recall that to Bossuet the mainspring of progress was the will of princes stimulated by the divine Providence. Carlyle's tribute to his heroes is scarcely less naive, and much noisier. Emerson begins his essay on Uses of Great Men with, " It is natural to believe in great men." He goes on to say that the search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood ; that our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. ''Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus. Every novel is a debtor to Homer." Yet Emerson is a very rationalistic worshiper of the great. He was not befuddled with aristoc- racies. He saw great men, and looking deeper he saw the great man in every man. His real text is not "There are great men;" but "as to what we call the masses, and 380 GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE fiLITE 381 common men, there are no common men. All men are at last of a size : and true art is only possible on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere." Saint Simon and Comte (in his later Hfe) beheved so strongly in the great man that they proposed to reorganize society on the hieratic principle of a nucleus of geniuses, bankers, or philosophers, who should think and formulate programs for Leviathan. But most sociologists and the masses as well have laughed to scorn any such specialized body of patres conscripti; they have realized the dangers and absurdities into which a body of pure scientists or gray- whiskered bankers would plunge us in a month. Aristotle pointed out similar defects in Plato's scheme for a perma- nent body of guardians. But that does not end the case for the hero and the elite. From many points of the compass and from many fields have come arguments in their behalf. Theology and feudal- ism, as was natural, contributed their apologetics. Science, and especially pseudo-science, have added their quota. A good many of the arguments spring from an interpretation of natural selection or survival of the fittest and leap beyond the pale horizon of mere class privilege into the blue infinity of the Superman whose untrammeled will is the law of life. Thus, according to Nietzsche, society is tolerated not for its own sake, but only as a foundation or scaffolding by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties and in general to a higher existence. Great men are, therefore, beyond law. They are, as IVlallock observes, "the ultimate fixers of their own price, . . . the masters of the situation, because no one can tell that they have exceptional powers till they choose to show them ; " they cannot be coerced ; they must be induced, coaxed by a reward, an exceptional reward — • wealth, domination, power, social distinction — which com- 382 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS pounds their own unlikeness to the common herd. They are great because they are successful and efficient.^ Be- cause they can command great prizes as the reward of this superior abihty they must be the cause of all progress. On philosophical grounds, William James argued that social changes are in the main due directly or indirectly to the acts or examples of men of genius who were so well adapted to the receptivities of their time or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became fer- ments, initiators, setters of fashion, or centers of corruption and destroyers. Rejecting scientific determinism, he sees in the great man a happy variation : as great ideas pop sponta- neously out of the mind, so great men emerge spontaneously from the mass. Social change is therefore largely fortuitous.^ Equally positive is De MoHnari, the economist. "There are," he claims, "among men as among the other animals, superior varieties and individuals belonging to the elite. It is to this aristocracy, capable of observing, discovering, and inventing, that we owe the progress which has per- mitted the human species to lift itself little by little above other animal species. Thanks to it, the frontier of primi- tive ages has been overleaped." ^ Likewise Le Bon : "History demonstrates that it is to this small ehte that we owe all the progress so far accomplished. . . . The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the deluded create history." ^ * W. H. Mallock, Aristocracy and Evolution, 276 ff. ; 116 ff. ; 271, etc. 2 " Great Men and Their Environment," in The WiV to Believe, pp. 216-54. Lehmann, the psychologist, goes so far in his worship of the great as to say that there is no such thing as a typical process or law in history. All is individual genius and spontaneity {Zlsjt. f. Kulturgcschichte, i, 245 ff.). ^ L'evolution economique du xix^ siecle, 443. * L'evolution psychologiquc des peuplcs, 2d ed., Bk. IV, chap. 3. Cf. F. Gal- ton, Hereditary Genius, rev. Amer. ed., p. 343. L. F. Ward also maintained repeatedly that only a few elements in a mass really contribute anything to human progress : see his Dynamic Sociology, ii : 12, 72, 175, etc. GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE £LITE 383 Mr. F. A. Woods has made several brilliant attempts in his studies of monarchs to connect the ruling elite with superior stocks and also to associate superior rulers with superior periods of human history. In his Influence of Monarchs he concludes that in seventy per cent, of the cases examined superior rulers are associated with superior or indifferent periods ; in ten per cent, the reverse was true. But as his critics were quick to point out, he fails to take • into account that the character of an historical period isi^'^ not referable merely to individual or social forces actiaa wholly within the period itself, but is fashioned largel}! by the antecedent periods. Comte, Spencer, Sumner; Le Bon and others have made this fact so obvious that it is a sociological commonplace. Moreover, the exceptional individual, even the monarch, may also be formed largely by influences of his time ; at least, he is not to be explained wholly in terms of physical and mental inheritance. Superior indhzi duals com^ from superior opportunity no / less than from SUp prin]- talpnfc; I Renan interjected elements into his phrasing of this same theory which make him appear as the apologist of rich oligarchies capable of infinite condescension and patronage. For him progress presupposes an oligarchy heaped up with every good thing, enjoying leisure which will permit it to cultivate science and art while other men must work in obscurity, ignorance, and poverty. Mr. W. H. Mallock, while not sharing exactly these epicurean views, holds that ^ an ari stocracy of ,_wealth is _thg_ nat ural a ristocracy of virtue and fitness. ' ""The same thought is garnished with a r epellent dos e o f^snobberv bv M. Paul Bour^et in a reactionary essay on the school situation in France. "A people must have organs of acquisition and organs of expenditure," he coolly assumes. It must have "families for the amassing of re- 384 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS serves of vitality and families where these accumulated reserves are consumed." This might pass for the superficial but rather harmless sputterings of a disillusioned cleric. But listen : "To desire that every member of a group should have the same culture or even an analogous culture is to squander, to dry up utterly the latent reserves of the future. Dis- tinct castes with barriers locked but not water-tight so that movement in and out of the aristocracy may be measured yet sure, and middle classes perpetually ennobled by their first born, and noble classes degraded in their younger sons ; such is the arrangement which history shows us as the most propitious for a just equilibrium in society." ^ I am not sure that I catch just what M. Bourget means to convey ; but if I do I am sure the history and sociology from which he draws his conclusions are equally the product of M. Bourget's facile psychosis. Frederick Le Play, in reacting against the French Revolution and in opposing De Tocqueville's idea of the necessity and inevitableness of democracy, allied himself with the heroists. He clung to the hope that the example of a few patriarchal aristocratic families would save a deca- dent world from destruction.^ To Professor Sumner the aristocracy not only holds in itself the radical elements which leaven the conservative masses imbedded in static mores, but also saves society from a state of equality which is no less than a state of nature. "It is the classes who produce variation ; it is the masses who carry forward the traditional mores. . . . Masses of men who are approximately equal are in time exterminated or enslaved." ^ ^ Sociologie et Litter atiire, 131. 2 Les ouvriers europeens, e.g. vol. vi, pp. 548 ff. Cf. Sorel, Les illusions du progres, chap. v. ^ folkways, pp. 47-9. GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE fiLITE 385 According to this theory the masses are conservers rather than creators, judges rather than instigators. Hence the fear expressed by Sumner, and shared by many other LndividuaHsts, of the influence of popular agitation which suggests to the mob its powers and especially its initiative and creative functions. A somewhat grudging tribute to the despot or ruling class is wrung from Professor Carver. They have served progress, he admits, by storing up human energy, by arrest- ing the natural process of dissipating energy. They have, \ in other words, a chieved capit al and in so doing have | enforced disciphne, the habit of thrift and prudence — costly discipline, brutal and oppressive, but discipline nevertheless.^ Finally, we have to reckon with that theory of genius, particularly artistic genius, which sees in the artist a Thing- apart, a special creation, differing wholly in quaHty, quan- tity, and function from the common run of men. Mr. Arthur Symons may be taken as a distinctive protagonist of this theory. Speaking with Paul Verlaine in mind, he declares : "The artist, it cannot be too clearly understood, has no more part in society than a monk in domestic life : he cannot be judged by its rules, he can be neither praised nor blamed for his acceptance or rejection of its conventions. Social rules are made by normal people for normal people, S and the man of genius is fundamentally abnormal. It is the poet against society, society against the poet, a direct antagonism." ^ Here the critic forgets the ordinary norms of common sense and science, for from neither experience nor science can we conclude that the geniu s is a special creation ; he may be a ^ Essays in Social Justice, chap, vi; Sociology and Social Progress, 12-3. 2 The Symbolist Movement, 81. 2c 386 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS curious variety, but is otherwise no more a special creation than is an elephant or a banker. Moreover, he allies himself too closely for comfort with Lombroso's theory that the genius is a degenerate akin to the criminal, the / insane, the epileptic. The genius may manifest some or all f of these stigmata, but in so far as he does, in so far as he is ' abnormal, he cuts the hamstrings of his own power. The genius may scorn the ways and rules of the particular j society in which he finds himself, and may write or paint I for some future society or for the noble company of the I elect of his own dreams, but the inexorable law of selection rules him out if he departs too far from the standards of his ' times. "Art, my children," said Paul Verlaine himself, "is to be absolutely oneself." This is true; art must be sincere ; but the artist must realize who and what he really is; he must pay his just tribute to his times and grasp the inevitable fact that he is part and parcel of his fellows, made of the same clay, the same sentiments, the same sub- stantial interests. There is no gainsaying that the masses need great men. The demand for leadership is instinctive; and the more complex the social order becomes, the more imperative the demand. But it is even more obvious that great men need great masses. It is true that "where there is no vision the people perish" ; but far from true that a people is in- sured against destruction by a blind trust in the eyes of its great. Without the masses to nourish and preserve them, the selected great would be selected to speedy extinction, and the good they did would surely be interred with their bones. Just as granaries, libraries, and reservoirs are mankind's storehouses against the vicissitudes of life, so are the educated masses the reservoirs of strength, health, and genius to succeeding ages. Progress is only possible when along with individual power of initiating changes there GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE fiLITE 387 exists a social aggregate capable of appreciating and con- serving them. Civilization requires the constant refresh- ing which comes from the innovator ; but in the long run it must depend even more upon the accumulation and trans- mission of such innovations.^ Perhaps, after all, the great man is even more result than cause. In their sturdy reaction against the earlier unscientific and more or less sentimental philosophy of history, many social theorists of the nineteenth century tended to exalt mechanical masses and forces and to depre- ciate the innovating individual. Thus Comte held that " the chief progress of each period, and even of each generation, was a necessary result of the immediately pre- ceding state ; so that the men of genius, to whom such pro- gression has been too exclusively attributed, are essentially only the proper organs of a predetermined movement, which would, in their absence, have found other issues. . . . The history of the sciences settles the question of the close dependence of even the most eminent genius on the contemporary state of the human mind." ^ The economic determinists, as might have been expected, were ruthless in their treatment of the hero. Peter Struve, the great Russian Marxist, declared that the exceptional individual may be quite disregarded as a factor in social evolution, since he is but the product of the social group. "The individual is but a form-expression whose content is ascertained by investigating the social group." Apart from his group, the individual is nil ; and so his ideas, apart from the group facts, are of no importance as factors in social evolution.^ Scientific theories no less than politics make strange ^ Cf. Deniker, Races of Man, 125-6; Ratzel, History of Mankind, i, 25. ^Positive Philosophy (Martineau transl.), Bk. VI, chap. 3. ' Critical Notes on the Question of the Economic Development of Russia, ist ed. pp. 40, etc., quoted by Hecker, Russian Sociology, 221. 388 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS bedfellows. Hence we need not be unduly surprised to find alongside the revolutionary socialist such figures as Macaulay and Herbert Spencer. Macaulay in his essay on Dryden allowed himself to declare that "it is the age that makes the man, not the man that makes the age. Great minds do indeed react upon the society that has made them what they are ; but they only pay with interest what they have received. ..." Spencer never wrote so passionately as when attacking the great-man or biographical inter- pretation of history. Recall that famous passage in the Study of Sociology,^ which ends : "And if you wish to understand these phenomena of social evolution, you will not do it though you should read yourself blind over the biographies of all the great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Napoleon the Treacherous." Even M. Le Bon, who is not averse to bold statements and paradoxes, is cautious enough to qualify his thesis about the service of the elite by admitting that if you study the genesis of great discoveries and inventions, you will always find that they are born of a long series of preparatory efforts ; the final invention is naught but a crown to the rest .2 This accords with Vierkandt's analysis of the pre- {[equi gjtes to any cultural innovation. Three conditions, he says, must be simultaneously present. First, the need or demand for a change. Second, a degre e of matu rityin . the conditions of culture. Third, and third only, th e initia - ^ tive of a dominant individual.^ How shall we proceed to evaluate these two opposing sets of theories? From what has been said it is evident that there is a world of difference between the innovating 1 pp. 32-7- 2 L evolution psychologiqtie des petiples, 2d ed., Bk. IV, chap. 3. ^ Zlsft.f. Socialwissenschajt, Hefte 4-5, 191 2. GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE £LITE 389 individual and the formal hero as conceived in the elder fairy-tale type of history. Biologic and social variations are inevitable, since nature never exactly repeats herself and living beings are not mere automatons ; and the social process includes both invention and imitation. The innova- tor is he whose ideas have a certain survival value to which | even his own generation is not impervious. The tragedy of genius unrecogniz ed or pseudo-genius comes not from the intrinsic merit of its ideas, but from the lack of a selective agency so discerning as to seize those ideas and keep them, so to speak, in safe deposit, until future generations have reached such a plane that the splendid new coin of the genius can be released without danger of disturbing the social/ equilibrium by cataclysmic shock. The innovator must be reckoned with in social evolution, but without the tinsel and ex votos which belong to the fabulous Hero-God. Part of the trouble arises no doubt from that obfuscation . of vision which presence of the reputed great induces. Obedience and reverence are all but, if not altogether, instinctive ; perception is distorted ; memory is tricky ; fear imposes upon the will-to-believe ideas normally in- credible. The hero emanates behef : that is part of his mana, his hypnotic spell, his stock in trade. The prestige of personal presence weaves itself a tradition, and behold you have the legend, that fog in which mere man becomes demigod. Moreover, the noisy episode or the man of prestige quickly gets the reporter and a more or less perma- nent record, regardless of the intrinsic importance of either man or event. The small prosaic day by day events perish in oblivion because to report them butters no parsnips. The chronicler or early biog rapher is the greatest enemy of ^ true sor.i f^il ^;along." ■^J'^ J A further evidence of the power of education to dissolve ^ V caste may be found in the hostile attitude of castes toward education. A church that limits to a selected clergy the right to read heretical books creates caste morals and class education. John Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty points out that the Catholic Church has made this distinction between those who can be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction and those who must accept them on trust ; thus, as he declares, giving to the elite more mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it allows to the mass. This would seem to be borne out by the special dispensation 400 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS from the papal bull on mcdernism accorded recently to German theological professors. Other castes sometimes join with the religious hierarchy in common resentment against popular education. In England, over a century ago, Hannah More undertook what would now perhaps be called settlement work among the poor of certain towns in her neighborhood, notably Cheddar. It was essentially popular education. So long /' as it looked like the good old-fashioned free-soup philan- . J>' ■ thropy all went well enough. For free soup always means f \i.\ ac^ukscence in the status quo. Free soup drowns revolt. ^^^ But when Miss More's movement took on the character of »y, ^. an educational renascence, then the powerful scented ^ danger, and her travails and tribulations began. "At Wedmore the landlords strongly protested against the spread of culture, fearing loss of prestige and power. The Dissenters also began to take umbrage in various communities. In fact, Miss More became now the object of fierce invective and persecution by many who should have been the first to support her philanthropic efforts." A recent observer finds India seething in a similar con- test between the protagonists of popular education and a powerful caste. "It is somewhat disconcerting to an observer and student ^ \ Si °^ Indian affairs to find that it is from the Hindu element _ \ ^ and largely from the Brahman caste that the murderers, seditious writers of the vernacular press, and the men who ^ V I shoot down the English officials on platforms and in theaters '.^ \ are drawn. It can only mean that the great Brahman caste, ^ which for centuries have been the social and pohtical leaders r X . . o^ these timid and ignorant masses, are jealous of the English v^l . authority. . . . Instead of aiding in all efforts to improve sanitation, in all efforts to protect the peasant from the money lender, in all schemes for irrigation and education, . the Brahman is the leader of the reactionary party. He p ^.> '5jf> '^ GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE ELITE 401 prefers, apparently, that the mass of the people should remain ignorant . . . and helpless, as his position is magni- fied by just the width of the social chasm between himself and them." ^ A somewhat belated exponent of this aristocratic dislike of equalizing educational opportunity appears in Mr. Mallock.2 He sees in it some few possible good effects, but many more bad. Genius of a lesser kind which would else be lost could be elicited through educational aid from the state. But this gain in the sum of moderate talent would be more than overborne by the danger of rousing in / the average man wants which he cannot satisfy and by the | mischief of stimulating discontent, not in average men, but in men who are really exceptional, yet whose exceptional gifts are ill-balanced or have some flaw in them (bad artists, medical quacks, socialist agitators, etc.!). For if educa- tion sets free and stimulates sound intellectual powers, it will likewise stimulate intellects that are not sound, or will that has no intellect to match, and will generate a desire for wealth in men who are not capable of creating it, and thus will merely .produce needless misery and mischief. The covert insult in all such apologetics lies in the assump- tion that because thinking is hard it is therefore impossible to the average man.^ But thought is not the possession of any one class ; and certainly not the predominant mark ^ Price Collier, The West in the East from an American Point of View, 215-16. ^Aristocracy and Evolution, Bk. IV, chap. 3. ^ Nobody has better expressed this attitude of intellectual snobbery than Coventry Patmore in his Ode, 1867, wherein he speaks of the masses of men as "... that presumptuous Sea Unlit by sun or moon, yet inly bright With lights innumerable that give no light, Flames of corrupted will and scorn of right Rejoicing to be free. . . ." 2d 402 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS of organized aristocracy. Sound thinking is always limited to the somewhat narrow field of which the individual is . master. Your great genius — legal, religious, inventive — 1 1 cuts a ridiculous figure when he tries to play Sir Oracle outside his specialty. The milHonaire iron-master or auto- mobile maker or inventor sometimes loses his sense of fitness and unwittingly tells the world of his own ineptitude through a newspaper interview, just as the hundred German pro- fessors brought down contempt for the cause of their fatherland through their ridiculous "Appeal to the World." Thinking, hke any other natural disposition, can be developed or inhibited. For development it requires ^ specific problems and leisure. It can be starved and atrophied into desuetude by deliberate repression. This, as we have seen, is the danger involved in any aristo- cratic scheme of social organization. That is why we resent such phrases as " the intellectual classes," Mr. More's "natural aristocracy," or "high brow versus low brow." I am not averse, however, to the concept of democracy voiced by Mazzini as "the progress of all under the leader- ship of the best and wisest," provided we are possessed of means for discovering them, and provided above all that those best and wisest devote their genius to the service of all. We are sorely in need of "emancipation from the tyranny of the average man in things of the mind"; but the surest way of delivering ourselves from that tyranny is to do everything possible to release the average man from ' his own bondage to prejudice and emotion ; that is, to so order the conditions of social fife that citizenship in the intellectual Hfe shall be open to all. To pin one's faith to some quasi-organic instinct called the democratic instinct, whose function is "to inform the community both of its vital needs and of its mortal dangers," ^ is fatuous to a ^ Campbell, Catholic World, 98 : 721-31. GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE ELITE 403 degree ; it is to set sail without a rudder. Therefore awakened men will have to light to keep the channels of Hberal critical thought open. They tend to gather weeds and rubbish. Worse yet, timid or selfish men organize deliberately to choke their flow. For, as Bertrand Russell contends, men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. ^ If the privilege of high thinking always carries with it a sense of social responsibility, noblesse oblige, there is no danger in the notion of classes for intellectual leadership. But we recognize both in theory and practice that the problem of problems is how to equilibrate justly the elite and the masses in any state.^ Perhaps a social order com- bining sociaHsm and a Samurai class, of which Izoulet and Wells dream, is too narrow a formula. I am inclined to state the case in more general terms. With Lavrov, I believe that progress in terms of the elite is possible only when "into the convictions of the individual in a developed minority there enters the consciousness that his interests are identical with the interests of the majority in the name of the durability of the social order." ^ Both individual and group are likely to develop when this consciousness of solidarity is persistent, when it is reenforced by imagination, and when it is rendered effective by a technique of service that is uncomplicated by self-complacency. I cannot see, however, that this finely disciplined imagination can be cultivated by Mr. More's method of a sturdy negation of canting humanitarianism and a return to the classics.^ That is rather thin spoon-food for nourishing so important a function. If we are to have aristocracy let it by all ^ Atlantic Monthly, 117 : 757. 2 Cf . J. Izoulet, La cite moderne ; H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia. ^Historical Letters, 336, quoted by Hecker, Russian Sociology, 11 2-16. * See his essay on "Natural Aristocracy" in the volume already noted. 404 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS means range through all the best that the world has thought and said ; but let that wisdom and culture of the past be interpreted in the light of the new humanities — the sciences of social life — and be made not an end in itself but a means towards an alteration of social relations which will lessen gross social inequalities and incidentally the burdens of leadership. One more word on caste snobbery. Narrow and futile is the ignorant opposition of many of our modern economic and religious over-lords to socialism. Not to socialism as a pernicious economic or philosophical fallacy. Not to socialism as a gospel of selfishness and crass materialism. ^ Not to socialism as the theory and practice of class struggles. ■,^ But to socialism as a leveler of classes. A wealthy woman " I know is a liberal contributor to charities but hates socialism as children hate bedtime. "I don't want to abolish classes. I want to maintain them. I like classes," : she petulantly exclaims, as if petulance were unanswerable » argument. Coming from the rich and powerful it fre- V, ■ quently is so : it was formerly dangerous not to laugh at a T i J^ King's jokes or praise my lord's mutton. Perhaps the 5 '!^ij surest way of redeeming us from caste snobbery would be ^ universal compulsory public education and universal ^ y r> vocational training up to the age of eighteen, with com- pulsory community service either military or civil for, say, a three year period, in which offices and leadership should if . be absolutely open to merit. Free pubHc forums, free ; i university extension teaching, and possibly such economic ^ ^ reforms as restriction of incomes and inheritances would aid in this general process of leveling-up. Such reforms would not abolish classes. But no sane person dreams of abolishing them, any more than he would abolish eyes, ears, and nose in favor of one general sense of touch less refined than these specialized forms. Classes GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE fiLITE 405 must remain so long as variations occur in men. And if those variations are not germinal they must be cultivated through diversified education. This means that classes based on specialized fitness must be one of the aims of social polity, with the sole proviso that opportunity be so generalized that real fitness may find its proper class, that gold may rise to the level of gold and lead drop to lead as Plato planned. In short, social classes based on service may be trusted to aid social advance ; classes based upon privilege or freaks of fortune are a menace and a drag- weight. It is well to keep in mind, however, that warlike and religious exploits are the fields of distinction from which social privileges — more often than not, perhaps, without corresponding social contributions — have been garnered from time immemorial. To summarize : leadership is inevitably written into the nature of man as he now exists ; and aristocracy or grades of excellence are equally inevitable. But leadership and aristocracy are progressive factors only in so far as they produce more than they cost : just to pay their way is not enough. Social differentiation into classes with more or less fixed status has served in the past. But the social wastes through inhibited talent and productivity, through exploitation and fostering the mores of servility and resig- nation, make it doubtful whether aristocracy is worth the price. The only upper classes a progressive civilization can tolerate are men and women of superior mental ability who at the same time have social vision, and a sense of social solidarity. If, moreover, we accept the wisdom of Emerson and of Ward, there is a measure of genius and therefore the legiti- mate claim to aristocracy in every mother's son of us. Our social poHcy should not, however, be merely the child's game of *'You are as good as I am," or "I am just as good / 4o6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS I as you," but rather "We are all members of a magnificent I aristocracy whose business it is to serve and not to rule." Such a social policy would yield us an educated leadership marching on an equal plane with an educated body of the led. Or, better still, every member of society could at once be both leader and led. This is the vision of social edu- cation. CHAPTER XXVIII LANGUAGE As an agent of human development language far outranks law. It shares equal honors with the discovery of fire and the invention of tools in hauling man up out of the abyss. "All that man possesses more than the brute is so intimately bound up with language that the two are hardly separable from one another." ^ Language is chiefly significant as a short-cut in social heredity. If each human being had to begin for himself the career of education and improvement, all the energies of the race would be absorbed in taking over and over again the first halting steps. Lan- guage enables each generation to lay up securely and to hand over to its successors its own collected wisdom, its stores of experience, deduction, and invention, so that each starts from the point which its predecessors had reached, and every individual commences his career as heir to the gathered wealth of an immeasurable past. Language is preeminently the social bond. At least it is the tool by which social bonds are forged. It is the medium through which sentiments and ideas are pooled to form community feelings and opinions. Since society is merely our mental image of one another, and language is the chief means of communicating those images, it is evident enough why the science of society must treat it with the profoundest respect. Language is the chief means by which group character is impressed upon the ^ Whitney, Language and the Study of Languages, 441. 407 4o8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS individual. It is therefore the agent par excellence for securing group cohesion and the strength that comes from unity. Federici made it the master key to moral progress, because it alone rendered possible the cooperation of many intelligences.^ Hence the significance of the old Hebrew myth of the Tower of Babel. The "whole earth was of one language and of one speech. . . . And the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language ; and this they begin to do ; and now nothing will be re- strained from them, which they have imagined to do." {Gen. xi, i, 6). To break down this powerful union the Lord resorted not to arms, nor did he invoke the destruc- tive powers of his cosmos ; he simply smote the people with inability to understand each other's speech. Whether languages sprang originally from a single stock, or whether they had a multiple origin, they very early diverged, and this divergence is almost inevitably asso- ciated with strife or misunderstandings. "As a rule the most persistent warfare has been waged between tribes speaking different languages." . . . ^ On the other hand, while unity of language is no absolute guarantee of peace and good will, it facilitates them ; it aids in the composi- tion of differences and paves the way for natural alliances. Hence religious leaders like the Bahai teachers and scientists unite in trying to secure a world language as the means of world understandings and international good will. Vol- apuk, Esperanto, and other artificial tongues are merely expressions of an indomitable hope for the parliament of man. And the ancient maxim that a man has as many souls as he has languages witnesses the striving of the heart of each man to beat in unison with the heart of the world. To prove the progress-value of language need we go so far as to make language and thought identical, as Max Miiller ^ Lois du progres, ii, 127. ^ Morgan, Ancient Society, 111-12. LANGUAGE 409 did? He once gave three notable lectures before the Royal Institution in London on the science of language. It was not mere perversity that led him to name the series Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought; for in the preface to their published form he explicitly states his undaunted conviction of the identity between reason and language : "No reason without language, no language without reason." ^ It is quite possible that this doughty philologist somewhat strained the truth. But whether we can posit the absolute identity of clear coherent thought and language, we know at any rate that they are inevi- tably and indissolubly associated. Whatever makes for a broader range of thought makes pari passu for a richer content of language, and vice versa. And this process is cumulative. It involves, of course, all the other factors in the social process, climate, industry, religion, race con- tacts, war, as well as literature. And they in turn are dependent upon language. Apparently the most difficult of transitions in the history of progress — the transition from its middle to its higher stages, from barbarism to civilization — was due chiefly to the development of lan- guage. What, asks a brilliant historian, is the cause of the higher degree of intelligence which accompanies advance- ment? "The sole reason of our superiority is that we have be- come richer in conceptions. ... It is due to words and to words alone that man's conceptions have increased, not by simple accumulation, but by multiplication. . . . Lan- guage has conferred on man the power, denied to other animals, of dominating, disciplining, and directing his mental conceptions ; and the internal dominion thus gained he has extended over the world around him." ^ ^ Cf. Marett, Anthropology, 130. ^ E. J. Payne, History of America, ii, 98. 41 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS The assimilative power of language is evidenced by the fact that the possession of a universal language helped enforce the unity of Catholic Christianity in the Middle Ages, while the rise of popular literature in many vernac- ulars relaxed and finally helped destroy that unity. ^ Simi- lar evidence appears in the attempts, brutal and not yet successful, of Germany to force her language upon her slice of Poland, upon Alsace-Lorraine and Schleswig- Holstein ; likewise in the Russian aggressions upon Finland. It also accounts for much of the interminable turmoil in Austria-Hungary. In the United States teaching English to the immigrant is counted more than a mere means of protecting him against fraud and accident. It is placed as the easy vestibule by which he may enter into full Americanization. Ever since the days of Wyclif and Tyndale, the teaching of the English Bible has molded not only English speech but also English thought, both lit- erary and political. The same is true of the influence of Buddhism in the Orient. "Before the end of the sixteenth century Buddhism had indelibly stamped itself on the language as well as the literature of Japan. The phraseology of the Japanese people was influenced by the Sutras somewhat as our language has been influenced by the Bible." ^ Whether it be absolutely true or not that metamorphism of a nation may be accomplished by change of language, nationalities apparently tend to express their sentiment of unity in resisting attempts to force new languages upon them. One is inclined to suspect that M. de la Grasserie's view is not so extreme as it at first appears. He claims that while the political constitution, habitat, religious and ^ Cf. Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science, 281. ^ Lewis, Educational Conquest of the Far East, 18; Griffis, Religions of Japan, ^1^-14. LANGUAGE 41 1 economic interests of a nation are not to be ignored, still its language is a nation's most potent distinguishing char- acteristic. Hence real assimilation of a foreign nation cannot be secured simply by inducting it into a new polit- ical order and a new economic and religious process. Some method must be discovered whereby it can be led to give up its own language with all its own peculiar idioms.^ But, as we have already indicated, this method must be per- suasive rather than coercive. It must stimulate free imitation or involve economic and social advantages. Universal, compulsory, free public education under a democratic system acts with perhaps as little of the spirit of coercion as can be expected. Where such a system is coupled with a philosophy of success, and acceptance of the dominant language helps to succeed, the process of peaceful assimilation through language is facilitated. John Synge, the Irish playwright, left a vignette from West Kerry which' shows more concretely than a volume on the history of language the selective and reducing power of a dominant language. He was talking one day with a West Kerry peasant about the Irish language. Said the man : "A few years ago they were all for stopping it off; and when I was a boy they tied a gobban into my mouth for the whole afternoon because I was heard speaking Irish. Wasn't that great cruelty? And now I hear the same busybodies coming around and telling us for the love of God to speak nothing but Irish. I've a good mind to tell them to go to hell. There was a priest out here a while since who was telling us to stay always where we are, and to speak nothing but Irish; but I suppose, although the priests are learned men, and great scholars, they don't understand the life of the people the same as another man would. In this place the land is poor — you can see that ^ R. de la Grasserie, "Du metamorphisme d'une nationalite par le langage," Rcviic phUosophique, September, 1913. 412 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS for yourself — and the people have little else to live on ; so that when there is a long family, one son will stay at home and keep on the farm, and the others will go away because they must go. Then when they once pass out of the Dingle station in Tralee they won't hear a word of Irish, or meet any one who'd understand it ; so what good, I ask you, is a man who hasn't got the English, and plenty of it?"i One word of warning to those who might conclude that language in and of itself must by some mysterious inner force operate as a ceaseless impulse to improve. A language is a clumsy thing at best, "an old barbaric engine added to and altered, patched and tinkered into some sort of capa- bility." Languages do not necessarily progress. They decay and die like any other human product. And their decadence or death is bound up with the decay and death of the thought and the very existence of the people whom it animates. Moreover, in its stage of lingering decrepitude it may actually prove to be a body of death about a society struggling to go on. Any archaic language like Sanscrit or Hebrew or Latin may become the merest fetish, and in the service of ecclesiasticism may check the progress of free thought and cover up meaningless mysteries and down- right fraud. When the symbols of real religious senti- ment degenerate into mere magical formulae there usually comes a religious renascence or even an explosion which weds new religious concepts to less archaic terms. The like holds true for secular culture and education. Only recently has China begun to throw off the sedulous admira- tion of her hoary classics. And the Occident was not much earlier in the discovery that there was no peculiar virtue to a Latin prayer any more than there was in the Hebrew Kabala. Modern democracy, too, is not so easily im- pressed with mere pompous shows of arid learning in dead ^ Works, vol. iv, p. 69. LANGUAGE 413 tongues. Possession of a dead language was at one time a tribal or caste mark, altogether on all fours with the possession of a skin tattooed in a certain pattern. But language to serve as a real tool for progress must be renewed every day, must not only treasure the best words and thoughts from the past, but must reedit them with every sunrise. Language in the service of such a high purpose must be daring as thought must be daring. The purist we may tolerate as we would tolerate the man who insisted on building his kitchen fire with a Papuan fire drill. We must treasure dead languages as we treasure paleolithic flint hatchets or bits of Cretan shards, or the Code of Hamurabai : for the increase of our effective range of sympathy and as sources of our knowledge of the origins of things. But it must never be forgotten that they are descriptive, not dynamic. Language to be progressive must march in time with other elements in the social pro- cess. To be assured of this harmony, sound social policy will include in its program two purposes. It will foster distinguished, forward-reaching thought and noble expres- sion ; and it will strive to generalize them, make them modal, by, on the one hand, making them more easily ac- cessible ; on the other, by cultivating intelligences and emotions capable of appreciating language forms and refining them. This is the legitimate field of public edu- cation, of moderate priced books, of elastic libraries, and perhaps of state or municipal theaters and educational extension centers. The further bearings of this subject will appear later in the chapter on literature and the arts. CHAPTER XXIX RELIGION With the appearance of a new religious idea, a new civilization is born, says a folk-psychologist ; religion is the only factor capable of acting rapidly upon the char- acter of a people ; on the other hand nothing is so destruc- tive as the dust of dead gods.^ Here we have the service of religion to human evolution in a nutshell. It appears as both constructive, disciplinary, progressive, and as a destructij ^Pj hamppn'ng, rptarHing-forrp For the purposes of our discussion it makes no difference whether religion is true or not. Religifln^iy. Religion may be an illu- sion ; but the science of society has to reckon with not only facts of geography, statistics of production, rates of population increase, but also with every human folly, de- lusion, and craze. The personalities in religion may be odious to our senses ; its gods and idols may be hideous. The devotee may curse and abuse his god. A two-and-a- half-y ear-old child of my acquaintance has an ugly two- faced doll which she calls God and which she beats roundly. Man has always beaten his gods. The Italian fisherman may throw overboard his image of the Virgin if the catch fails. But the ignominy and ugliness incidental to reli- gion do not warrant its exclusion from a discussion of the elements of progress ; indeed, they make a reckoning ^ Le Bon, L' Evolution psychologiqiie des peuples, Bk. IV, chap. ii. 414 RELIGION 415 with it all the more imperative. The jipshot of the m atter is that reli gion is a social product. Call it, if you please, as some sociologists do, dealing with the imaginary environ- ment. Conceive it, if you choose, to have arisen from faulty sense perception, self-delusion, and the fear of ancestral ghosts. Account for it as you will, it has for untold ages been an undeniable and dominating force in human history. "At all times, in all countries, religion has assumed the glory of having civilized the people," declared Guizot. Whether the fact of its domination entitles religion to as- sume so much, it is our problem to analyze. In order to anticipate misunderstandings let us note that much futile argument over the history of religion and its effects upon mankind has sprung from a failure to analyze religion into its components. I conceive it to be a compound, more or less separable, of eccles iasticis m, theol ogy, and the religious impulse itself. In ecclesiasticism should be included reli- '^^ gious organization, its mecha nics, cults,_ property, and n functionaries. Theology signifies the religious code of T^ thought, its outlook on life, its interpretation of the world. The religious impulse t understand a s the desire to pene- >-*^ trate the unknown, to grow and expand. To revert to an ancient formula, I mean by religious impulse faith rather than works, the adventurous spirit that dares to search the infinite rather than the industrious performer of ritual- istic duties : in short, the chief mark and service of the religious impulse is faith in the sense G. Lowes Dickinson uses it, as "the sense and the call of the open horizon." ^ Naturally it will be almost impossible to disentangle these three strands and keep them disentangled throughout our discussion. The context in each case should show on which of them the emphasis is being laid. ^ Religion, 84. 41 6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Another source of error may be disposed of, namely, the notion that the progressive function of religion is proved by its instinctive character. The syllogism runs somewhat thus : All instincts being the product of selection must have survival value, therefore are good ; religion is an instinct, therefore it must not only be native and funda- mental, but also inevitably serviceable to man. In answer it is only necessary to observe that all instincts are by no means equally serviceable ; some are themselves survivals, rudimentary in character like the human appendix. Nor is it correct to call religion an instinct : at best itjs _a com- plex^f complexes, not a definite, explicit react ion of strict ly i nstinctiv e type . Religion Ts~rooted, however, in instinc- tive impulses and in such instincts and emotions as fear, love, acquisitiveness, pugnacity, curiosity, reverence, self- abasement.^ In searching out the biological and social services of religion it is unnecessary, it is in fact a confession of weak- ness, to resort to any such flimsy biological assumption.^ The culture-history of mankind is the legitimate field of search, since religion is a purely human product. Within this field it is possible to frame a case for the service of religion to human progress under four heads : (i ) by way of social discipline; (2) in the economic struggle for satis- faction of life needs ; (3) in cultivating the habit of specu- lation ; (4) in fostering ideals, and particularly the posi- tive ideal of altruism. Perhaps a fifth might be added, but simply as summarizing the others, namely, the expan- sion and enriching of human personality. Or, if one is seeking a very broad formula, the historic value of religion ^ Cf. Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, 9 ; C. Lloyd Morgan, article "Instinct" in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. 2 It is this mixture of biology and mysticism which renders so unconvinc- ing such a book as Reichardt's The Significance of Ancient Religions in Rela- tion to Human Evolution and Brain Development. RFXIGION 417 lies in its service to active social adaptation.^ But it will serve our purpose better to follow the fourfold analysis. Since religion is belief, and since men are held together less by actual absolute identity of interest than by what they believe to bgjjidr. m 1 1 1 1 1 n,l inter est s , it is to be expected that religion should function for social order and discipline. Whether it be gain or loss, reHgion has served to "domesti- cate" men. But it is doubtful whether we can claim, as some enthusiasts do,^ that religion's function is to shift the individual's attention from self to society; for reh- gion has an individualistic aspect. Hence Kidd puts the case too strongly for religion as the social constraint which provides an ultra-rational sanction for subordinating the individual where his interests and the interests of the social organism are antagonistic.^ "^^ In early stages of human history men do not stop to dis- ^'-^'^ criminate between natural and supernatural, or between rational and ultra-rational. All their experiences are on a common plane. Hence it is better to say that their experi- ences in the imaginary environment led them to a certain unity of sentiment, thought, and conduct, hence to identi- fication with, rather than subordination to, the group : for primitive groups were so small that individual experi- ences soon became generalized by the whole group and entered into the common stock. It is this unifying of a common behef that does so much to give coherence to primitive groups. They may, in fact, without seriously maltreating the truth, be regarded as cult-unions.^ The ^ Cf. Comte, Positive Philosophy, i, 4 ; Bristol, Social Adaptation, 26. ^ E.g., Elwang, The Social Function of Religious Belief. ^ Social Evolution, chap. v. '' Cf. Lippert, Kulturgcschichte, ii, 261-3, 272, 466 fif. ; De Coulanges, La Cite antique, 2d ed., chap. ii. 2e 41 8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS cult of a local divinity or of a common ancestor glued to- gether families, clans, and even larger groups. This serv- ice is strongly comparable to that of war or blood-kin- ship. It may well be, as Herbert Spencer argued, that common propitiation of local big ghosts may have carried over from the propitiation of the ruhng men, — chiefs, medicine men, and the hke — whose aftermath they are. But that, if it be true, simply estabhshes the more firmly the aboriginal connection between the pohtical and the reUgious forces for social control. The one reenforces the other. Of course, religion at this stage is not very soul- satisfying : for it consists largely of taboos ; it is negative ; it is almost wholly ritualistic, confined to methods of exor- cising, avoiding, appeasing, flattering hostile spirits ; its ethical content is practically nil ; it revolves about the pole of fear rather than of love. Yet the response to a common danger or common fear, shaping itself into a com- mon prohibition, constitutes a tremendous impulse to social unity. Danger makes animals huddle or bunch together ; children cuddle and nestle under the shelter of their elders ; men 'stick together' in times of crisis. The warmth and safety resulting are remembered, and when danger recurs the impulse to stick together is heightened by both prudential and pleasurable motives. Hence even a religion of nega- tion and fear may develop social solidarity. This is the so-called biological service of religion in the struggle for existence. If further details be necessary, we may call attention to the fact that religious and cere- monial institutions aid in amplifying social structure, in creating diversity of social groups, in specialization of functions and classes. It validates and fortifies authority, thus aiding leadership and gratifying lust for power and desire for social distinction. This political service is rounded out by an ethical function also having to do with RELIGION 419 social consolidation, namely, care and protection of the weak, notably women, children, the aged, widows and or- phans. This rather unconscious subordination of indi- vidual to group becomes, as we shall see in a moment, more or less voluntary and ethical with the development of moral idealism ; and in this process rehgion had its due share. Having recognized already and repeatedly the impor- tance of the economic elements in human development, we xaJ^ are not unprepared for the second great function of religion. Men have sought through it life, health, food, peace, se- curity from enemies, children, love, and power; in short, insurance. They have always used rehgion for these life ends when it has been real religion. When they have not put it to practical use it has been mythology or poetry or theology or an exercise in logic, or anything but religion. Leuba says : "The truth of the matter can be put in this way : God is not known, he is not understood: he is used^ ^ At the Sixth International Congress of Psychology in 1909 he defined religion as "that portion of the struggle for life which is made by the aid of certain forces of the spiritual order. It is one of the means discovered by man for hv- ing better and more abundantly." ^ Through taboos, the development of a priestly class, and the worship of nature spirits, religion affects the in- dustrial organization. How the taboo cuts across pro- duction and consumption has already been sufhciently considered in Chapter XV. It cannot be said that the taboo has always been for the best economic interests of the group : indeed, it often works directly counter to them ; but it is at least arguable that what was lost in material ^ The Monist, July, 1910. ^ Quoted in Revue Philosophique, October, 1909 ; cf. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 507 ; Chatterton-Hill, Heredity and Selection in Sociology, Introd., p. xxvii ; see also pp. 544-5, 554; cf. also Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea oj God, chap, ii, etc. 420 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS goods was recouped in discipline and the habit of obedience to law.^ Perhaps the same might be said of priesthoods. They arose by a sort of division of labor in response to a demand for specialized ability in controlling the spirit world. This may have been again an example of gross human credulity, but it was practical. The unseen was peopled with mysterious beings and forces; if A's magic or prayers or offerings worked better than the average man's it was eminently wise to set him apart for this pur- pose. Incidentally, he got leisure to pursue his science ; indeed, he had to pursue it to maintain his own reputation. Thus were laid the foundations for both real natural science and higher technical training. As these educational developments are concerned primarily with food -getting, — agriculture, hunting, fishing — the priest or medicine man is no inconsiderable element in primitive industry. Economically, then, the chief service of religion has been to orient man's mind in the direction of active control over his natural environme nt. To pray for rain or to visit the medicine man for aid in the chase was better than passively to accept untoward conditions. This dynamic attitude served to energize life and make it productive. Hence we can understand Carver's dictum that since group strength is the final test that is the best religion which stimulates to high endeavor and develops the latent ener- gies of a people, enables them to survive in competition with other people and to dominate them.^ Hence any religion which fosters quiescence, passive acceptance, fatal- ^ The costs of the taboo upon labor in rest days, holy days, and fast days may be judged from the fact that these unproductive days eat up frequently a third to a half of the year. Hence Webster {Rest Days, p. 302) concludes : "It is fairly obvious that the observance of tabooed and unlucky days must be included among the many superstitions which have retarded the progress of mankind." His great collection of facts amply bears out this judgment. '^ The Religion Worth Having, pp. 13, 22-3, etc. RELIGION 421 ism, negation of this world, or whose costs (in holy days, churches, rituals, non-productive priesthoods) dry up the springs of productive endeavor, is a positive hindrance to progress. It is possible to distinguish thus two types of religion : (i) the dynamic, experimental, expansive, energizing, con- quering, realistic; (2) the anodynic, passive, apologetic, soothing, deenergizing, narcotic, or pietistic. Unmis- takably, humanity has carried along both these types. In the absence of a proper marking system I shall not pre- sume to say which has prevailed in the past. But at present the chief economic function of organized religion is apparently the conservation of property : this in spite of the conquest of many pulpits by socialism. Its effect upon industrial poHcy is slight. It consumes vast amounts of capital in slightly used buildings, which contribute nothing in taxes. Its rest days are wasteful. On the other hand, those religious movements which aim to conserve health are performing a very notable economic service ; likewise those which seek to provide wholesome recreation and education. (_3} The third social service of religion, namely its culti- ^^^^y^^^^ vating of speculation is, as might be expected, less tangible ' than the first two. Yet it did unmistakably teach men to look beyond their noses, away from the seen into the unseen : it is better occasionally for a man to look at the stars than to keep his eyes forever fixed on his navel, even if he sometimes fall into a ditch — he will usually find good company there ! Comte ^ credited religion with what every philosopher approves of, a germanent speculative class, forward lookers. This speculation has functioned in two directions, answering two deeply rooted longings. The first of them is peaceful adaptation to the present in ' Positive Philosophy, Bohn ed. II, 316. /Cv 422 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the widest sense. James concluded that the religious life consists in belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.^ Speculation, a preliminary to scientific hypoth- esis, must chart this unseen order and open it to man. The other longing is to penetrate the future, to adapt by anticipation. Here appear prophecy, divination, auspices, all the flotsam and jetsam of quackery, but all tending toward scientific prevision and notions of order in the Cosmos. That theology and religious dogma stultified the intellect does not prove that they failed to serve philo- sophic inquiry. Crozier acclaims religion for having stilled the unrest of the intellect by giving each people its satis- factory explanation of the cause and origin of things.^ But this in itself might easily be a dis-service. The great achievement of religion in this regard was indirect and unin- tentional, a by-product — the h abit of inquirv- Remem- ber that religion is positive : it answers questions, never raises them. But speculation once set going jumps the fences of its own field and goes off adventuring. Religion may regard philosophic and scientific speculation with dismay as changeling children ; nevertheless, their origin is pretty obvious. It may sound odd to identify faith with speculation, but it is precisely that identification which we have already approved in speaking of the religious impulse or faith as the "sense and call of the open horizon." The fourth service of religion in fostering idealism over- ops all the rest. Formerly, at least, religion seems to have comprised most if not all the philosophy and idealism f the masses.^ These ideals in the concrete include the vision of a larger, higher life, the domestication of hostile ^ Varieties of Religious Experience, 53. '^ Civilization and Progress, 263. ' Cf. Von Hartmann, The Religion of the Future, 73-5. RELIGION 423 Nature, the triumph of right and justice, moral courage, duty, broadening sympathy, participation in creative power, and cooperation with Divine Perfection in human development. They may be summarized in Stratton's definition of religion as "Man's whole bearing to what seems to him the 'Best or Greatest.'"^ That is, it gave men new concepts of higher power. To be sure, this power (or "the powers") of the unseen was not always nor even customarily friendly. But gradually as men's own senti- ments became refined they conceived the unseen as more lovable and kindly : belief in a Higher Power probably stimulated an ambition to know or to be better. Thus their own circle of kindly acquaintance was widened, and good will was proportionately increased. The worship of ancestors served to broaden and prolong affections. The habit of offerings, sacrifices, and particularly the destruction of property for and with the dead, while en- taihng enormous economic losses, developed the habit and the ideal of liberahty and hospitality. Man is by nature a prodigal son : hence, perhaps, he needed no stimu- lus from religion to make him a good spender : yet a race of men animated by the motive of saving alone would be not only an ethical but an economic monstrosity. If we conceive progress as a movement through a cycle of values, religion must be considered as one of the chief elements in the formulation and maintenance of social value. Many students of rehgion have seized this as one of its most important elements. Professor Ellwood goes farther and claims that it is primarily a valuing a ttitude ; and t hat it is alwavs participation in the ideal values of the s ocial hfe. Hence its social significance is to be found in the support which it has given in all stages of human cul- ture to custom, moral standards, and moral ideals. But ' The Psychology of the Religions Life, 343. 424 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS its paramount social service from the standpoint of pro- gressive civilization is its contribution to maintaining the continuity of standards of typal worth, or put in another way, its conservation of social survival values. Through its peculiar sanctions religion has made it possible easily to enforce the claims of these ideals and social values upon the individual. Lest we might say, very well, we accept the function of religion as social control in the past, but consider it no longer necessary, Ellwood anticipates the objection by claiming that the supreme role of religion in the higher stages of human culture is to enforce the claim to dominance in the hfe of man of the ideal social values.^ In other words, in spite of the conservative, static tendency of religion, in spite of its easy confusion of superstition with duty, of dogmatism with idealism, religion has furnished in the past and will continue in the future to furnish strong sanctions for social morality ; it will provide for that con- scious and voluntary subordination of the self to the group which in primitive societies we have seen was more or less instinctive and irrational. Through its function of social control religion yielded as a by-product an emphasis upon altruism, and usually upon optimism, both indispensable to social health and expansion. Both altruism and optimism may be only parts of the will to illusion. But they have always been marks of a progressive civilization. A people without buoyancy and ideals is doomed. And religion deals in these goods. It has been urged that an irreligious hedon- ism lands a people in anarchy and decay. True. The corollary is that a pessimistic philosophy — like, say, Schopenhauer's — - brings with it race-suicide. Undoubt- edly, that was Schopenhauer's remedy for our world's 1 C. A. Ellwood, "The Social Function of Religion," Am. J. Soclol., Nov. 1913, pp. 294, 299, 301, 302 ; cf. King, Development of Religion, ch. iii-iv. RELIGION 425 ills ; but parenthetically we might point out that economic pessimism, the desire to 'get on,' success, slavery, and primitive Christianity are all open to the same charge of race-suicide; St. Augustine thought it no great matter if the world should come to an end through the refusal of people to marry and procreate. Faith, says the philos- opher who argues thus, faith in the rational world-order and in immortality alone will keep a race sane, healthy, prosperous. Without asserting any a priori certitude that there is a God to whom man's destiny is mean- ingful, or that destiny does not cease with this earthly life, he affirms that Nature decrees that the man who survives, the race that persists, must believe these things. They are a part of the equipment of the fittest to survive.^ I do not know whether this is true or not. But I do_ know that the imaginary environment has had a stupendous effect in the sel ection of certain of m an's ideals, his institu- tions f or control, and his systems o f education. We have laid considerable stress upon contact with foreign environ- ments as a means for the cross-fertilization of cultures. Now this is precisely the supreme function of the unseen environment. It has opened to man a new bourne, a whole continent, nay, a universe with infinite range of oppor- tunities for contact with the unsuspected. There is a land of dreams : it is infinitely rich and infinitely populous. Commerce with it is even more stimulating than with China or Peru. And it is at this point that religion makes its contact with the fine arts. How it has served to evoke architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, and the drama is one of the commonplaces of history. This is the self -transcending element in human life, the field wherein is cultivated most of the values that make life worth while. * H. B. Alexander, "Religion and Progress," Hibbert Journal, g : 169-187. 426 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Here man becomes a real creator. I doubt if the orthodox religionists would accept the philosopher's definition of religion as above all else, "participation in creative power, and therefore creation itself," or his further conclusion that "man is on the path of religion as soon as he makes a serious effort to transcend himself, not only quantita- tively but qualitatively." ^ Certainly if this be true, much of what has passed itself off for religion was something quite different. A religion of fear hke avoidance-cults, primi- tive Judaism, or Puritanism is constricting to the imagina- tion and the creative impulse : the history of art bears out this principle. Evidently M. Boutroux is taking reli- gion at its highest as the rehgious impulse. And it is in this sense that Professor Foster conceives the function of the God-thought as enabling man to enlarge and enrich his personality through self-expression. He starts from what he holds to be Nietzsche's theory that self-discharge rather than self-preservation is the primary interest of an organism ; t hat is, self-expre ssion, hving out Hfe rather than mere being or adjustment. Yet in the highest sense the two are correlative : self-expression is self-preserva- tion, for it is the way to organic and functional self-com- pletion.- Religion has aided the psycho-physiological organism in its ideal-producing capacity largely through the "conviction of achievability." This call to creative effort is immensely valuable. And it is right here that^ religious ideahsm may prove of great service to human I development as a corrective to scientific arrogance, and I more particularly to that chilling pessimism which dog- I matic science spreads. -^ ^ Boutroux, "The Essence of Religion," Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1914, 787- 805 ; cf. his Science and Religion, 378. 2 The Function of Religion in Alan's Struggle for Existence, 18, no. Is not Foster's rendering of Nietzsche's will-to-power as self-expression or self- discharge rather tame? RELIGION 427 In spite of its services to humanity religion has directly and indirectly blocked and hindered our development. It has promoted altruism, but it has also bred heresy-bait- ing, inquisitions, and dragonnades. Dean Swift once caus- tically remarked that we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. It is presumed to be liberalizing and unselfing ; but it is like- wise narrowing and exclusive. WilHam James declared that religion is '' a monumental chapter in thp his1;nrv of human egotism.' ' And certain it is that no man can be meaner or more inconsiderate of others than the man who is bound body and soul to a little idea-tight cult. Reli- gion makes for unity of thought and sentiment ; but it also makes for social dismemberment, a divisive wedge, when it takes on the form of multitudinous exclusive sects. This would indicate that religious unity is effect not cause, that it comes from a common reaction to certain common experiences, and therefore is to be expected only in com- paratively small groups where differentiation by class or occupation or other interest has only slightly set in. Reli- gious orthodoxy is a source of strength to the individuals holding to it ; but communities flourish just in proportion to the number of heretics they include. Heresy means variation, the indispensable acid in the progressive reac- tion. Religion signifies morality, new ethical ideals. But only partially so : for in the beginning religion and ethics were separate. Religion was more closely associated with magical ceremonials than with ideals of what we should call righteousness. The savage does not distinguish clearly between holy and unholy in the persons or things he ta- boos : he lumps them all together into the class ' danger- 428 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ous,' and attempts to insulate them. Hence it is difficult to find out what is unclean and what sacred ; they fuse. Thus, for example, the Greeks were uncertain whether the Jews worshiped or abominated swine. Even the most religious savage may have no concept of sin. It is, as Miss Kingsley said, "a thing he can commit now and again if he is fool enough. Sin to him not being what it is to us, a vile treason against a loving Father, but a very ill-advised act against powerful, nasty-tempered spirits." ^ By the time the religious sentiments are organized into a church, they have become so faded and stiff with conven- tionality that the church serves rather as a reflecting sur- face for certain class morals than as the definite protagonist of splendid new ethical discoveries. Hence the church is constantly faced with the specter of the dissenter, the prophet, the moral and religious changeling. I wonder, however, if Sumner is not somewhat inclined to overstate the case against the church as a moral leader ; he says : "The church never was on the level of the better mores of any time. Every investigation which we make leads us not to the church as the inspirer and leader, but to the dissenting apostles of righteousness, to the great fluctu- ations in the mores." ^ Organized religion is often credited with contributions to moral progress which in all candor should be accounted for otherwise. The religious impulse expresses itself through secular no less than ecclesiastical organizations. Indeed, the church is oftener the follower than the leader in great moral or intellectual advances. Hence such ap- parent contradictions as the Christian Church at one time espousing the cause of the slave, at others helping to forge his chains ; or the wavering support which the * West African Studies, 159. 2 Folkways, 224. RELIGION 429 Catholic Church or the English bishops offer to the tem- perance movement. In the matter of the family, too, while the theory of Christianity placed domestic life upon an exalted spiritual plane, the Christian church never has succeeded in handling effectively or consistently the prob- lems of sex life. From Paul to Augustine, from Augus- tine to the canon law doctors and from them to Luther and onward to the present, the church leaders have per- sistently degraded the spiritual interpretation of the family offered by Jesus himself. To take a concrete example : the position of woman under the Church never attained the height and dignity she had under Roman Law. In this case as in others, the beneficent and kindly elements in religion seem to have been introduced as the result of growth in culture along secular lines. The refining of the parental relation and the grov/th of comradeship through common participation in war, industry, and play react upon cult ideals. The savagery of the physical environment and the hardness of the struggle for existence are reflected in the terrible ' visages of the gods. An era of surplus not only induces the mores of optimism but creates a new race of kindlier gods. Hence, if we adhere to our caution as to using the term 'cause' in social phenomena, and if we recall once more the organic nature of the social process, there is some justification for Buckle's thesis that, looking at things in the large, the religion of mankind is the eft'ect of their improvement, not the cause of it.^ EarHer in this chapter we hinted that religion in cutting across the economic field is not always a constructive agency. Sometimes it destroys property outright, some- times merely allows it to go to rack through taboos, whose ultimate aim is, ostensibly of course, fuller economic in- surance, but whose immediate effect may not be altogether ^ History of Civilization in England, chaps, v-vi. 430 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS wise or calculated to promote the progressive well-being of a group. Religion, moreover, may slice up a working population into mutually hostile and suspicious sects, which are thereby rendered quite unable to perceive the advantage of massing their numbers for economic strategy. It would seem that the religious differences, for instance between Orangemen and Fenians in Ireland, have been deliberately exploited to block the progress of the working classes in collective bargaining with their employers.^ It is also charged by certain critics of religious missions that religious propaganda which does not take into account the economic life of backward peoples, leaves them in a worse plight than they were before ; that is, by cutting them loose from their former industrial ways and providing no substitute, the habits of improvidence and dependency are fostered. These critics propose to substitute indus- trial for religious missions.^ It is perhaps superfluous to point out how religious dif- ferences erect and maintain inter-group barriers. Wor- ship of a strange god brands as an alien and barbarian the man from over the mountain : we are the Chosen Peo- ple ; you are beyond the pale. Even such high-water marks of exalted religious sentiment as the Psalms or the Rig-Veda betray constantly the political and religious hostilities bred of strong national cults. Ecclesiasticism means priestly castes, and what is far worse for both in- ternal and external social polity, intolerance. The author of the article "Toleration" in the Catholic Encyclopedia seems to imply that no religion can be at once alive and tolerant. "Nowhere is dogmatic intolerance so neces- 1 This is the central theme in Mr. St. John Erskine's thrilling little play, Mixed Marriage. ^ See, e.g., Meyer, "Creating Social Values in the Tropics," Am. J. Social., 21 : 662-5. Hindu students at American Universities frequently make the same demand. RELIGION 431 sary a rule of life as in the domain of religious belief, since for each individual his eternal salvation is at stake." The Catholic Church "regards dogmatic intolerance not alone , as her incontestable right but also as a sacred duty. If Christian truth like every other truth is incapable of double dealing, it must be as intolerant as the multiplication table or geometry. . . . And it is just in this exclusiveness that lies her unique strength, the stirring power of her propa-| ganda, the unfailing vigour of her progress." Liberalism, as synonym for tolerance, is identified by the Catholic hierarchy with modernism and officially proscribed by a papal bull. We have already shown that tolerance is the indis- pensable prerequisite to peaceful race contacts and to cultural assimilations, upon which to so large a degree the fertility and health of the social mind depends. Yet it must be recognized that in the past some contacts of race with race or social system with social system have been far other than peaceful ; they were violent clashes, often the death struggles of opposing sets of mores. In such contests it is unquestionable that intolerance meant social stability, a strong battle-front. Perhaps even yet there are occasioris where unconditional surrender is more de- sirable and better social policy than compromise. But more often the intransigent individual or group loses the militant ideahsm of the hero in the animosity of the bigot. Compromise means more than the mere price of existence ; it means equally the price of a broad, deep, sympathetic, well-ordered life. Religion may act favorably upon the population type. But it may also on occasion act as a disastrous counter- selective force. The worship of virginity, the cult of religious poverty, priestly celibacy, and the frequent atti- tude of optimistic fataHsm in the matter of allowing the 432 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS unfit to propagate, have at times proved anything but helpful to the selection and maintenance of a high or effi- cient type of population. Sir Francis Galton almost leaped the fence of scientific dispassionateness in his arraign- ment of the church of the dark ages for its selective policy. He attributed those dark ages in very considerable degree "to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders on their vo- taries. . . . The consequence was that these gentle na- tures had no continuance, and thus . . . the church bru- talized the breed of our forefathers. . . . She practiced the arts which breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid natures. No wonder that club-law prevailed for centuries over Europe." ^ He also makes a side foray into the camp of the Universities, ac- cusing them of cherishing a relic of this same monastic taboo on marriage. There is something to be said, however, by way of criti- cism of Galton's statement of the charge against celibacy. The dark ages, according to recent historical scholarship, were not nearly so dark as they have been painted ; and there is little evidence of a dearth of gentle natures. The assumption that failure to procreate means sealing up or cutting off gentle spirits from all means of perpetuating themselves or shedding abroad their influence is unwar- rantable. It would take considerable scientific evidence, I am sure, to prove that St. Francis married would have influenced more profoundly his generation and ours, than St. Francis celibate. It is quite certain that Professor Karl Pearson, the London Eugenics Laboratory, and the various eugenics societies far more effectively cry up the memory and influence of Galton than half a dozen sons could do. Most of the nonsense talked by race-suicidists falls flat because they fail to recognize the existence of a ^ Hereditary Genius, pp. 357 ff. RELIGION 433 spiritual parenthood and kinship far more powerful and binding than blood ties. There remain, however, some grains of truth in the attack on cehbacy, for frequently that manner of life tends to hypocrisy and sexual aberrations > that corrupt social life. Yet on the whole Galton's estimate of the effect of persecution upon the population type is sounder ; for persecution actually wipes out all means of preserving and perpetuating variations in superior ability, either by natural or social heredity. In this same connection, a word must be given to Nietz- sche's charge that C hristianity ^'has been t he g reate st misfortune hitherto of mankind ." The reason? Because it was the victory of a baser over a nobler type of char- acter. Christianity fostered sympathy and pity, bred generations of weaklings, ran counter to natural selection, cultivated hypocrisy and priestcraft, dwarfed and stultified intelligence by making doubt a sin, and threw a world into decadence by making decency vileness and health sickness.^ In so far as religion fee ds sentim entalism and organizes reactionary impulses N ietzsche is ri ght! But the deeper implications of his theory, namely, that social sympathy, altruism, and the other elements in social selection are weakness, have already, we venture to hope, been suffi- ciently refuted.^ The effect of religious predominance in hindering the free growth of secular law is notorious, as already pointed out. And there is no sound evidence that religion has promoted the growth of international law. Whether it likewise hinders the development of secular order is not so evident. Prominent authorities on criminology have asserted that countries under the sway of a rituahstic type of religion are likely to show a higher rate of crime than those under secular or liberal rehgious leadership ; for the ^ Antichrist, Sec. i-6, 51, etc. ^ Ante, chaps, xvi, xix. 2f 434 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS former are essentially primitive, with no organic tie be- tween religion and ethics.^ But the statistics connecting crime and religion are so far altogether unconvincing either for or against the assumption that religion aggravates or reduces the criminal impulse. On the other hand anti- clericalism is charged with fostering crime on the ground that it stops with a merely anti program, that it is there- fore destructive, and fails to pro\dde even a provisory moral code to replace the one it lays in ruin.- The recent experience of France, however, seems to indicate at least that it is possible to develop a t}pe of rugged, heroic secular morality through lay teaching, entirely independent of religious organizations. The static effect of religion upon law illustrates the gen- eral conservative influence of ecclesiastical institutions. For, at least heretofore, religion has customarily worshiped a fixed, perfect, and therefore static other-world. It is essentially archaic, based on prejudice and tradition ; it uses an archaic language, archaic tools, vessels, costumes, architecture. Ages after other methods of making fire had been discovered, friction-fire was retained for sacred festivals ; it survived even in Great Britain and Sweden at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The reten- tion of human sacrifice — under the form of ritual anthro- pophagy, be it understood — is typical of the ecclesiastical tendency to fossilize ideas. Ancestor worship, too, turns men's minds constantly to the past, apotheosizes the an- cients, places the Golden Age behind instead of before us. It discourages innovations, and finds the highest wisdom in holding intact for transmission to posterity the treasure of the past even though at the expense of moral sensi- bility. It therefore is the bulwark of absolutism in govern- ' Cf. Lombroso, Crime, Its Causes, etc., chap, x ; Ellis, The Criminal, 185. ^ Cf. Fouillee, Revue des Deux Monies, 139 : 430. RELIGION 435 ment. Napoleon felt this so strongly that he once de- clared, "If the Pope had not existed, I should have had to invent him." A highly differentiated priesthood is likewise profoundly conservative. Mr. F. G. Spencer, in his attempt to fmd out why the Pueblo Indians had for so long marked time, discovered that no small share of the stagnation was due to priestly influence, because the priesthood has for its function the reenforcement of already static tendencies, through enhancing superstition, w^onders, and mysteries.^ Buckle insisted that no country can rise to eminence so long as the ecclesiastical power possesses much authority, because the predominance of the clergy is necessarily ac- companied by a corresponding predominance of the topics in which they delight. Now despite the fact that his critics point out Spain and Italy as examples to upset this generaH- zation, it remains substantially true. Spain's eminence was factitious, and Italy's only sporadic. The clerical influence in pohtics has almost invariably proved nefarious. In education even worse. Dogmatic teaching is good dis- ciphne, but it seals up, nay, it kills the mind. Speaking generally, in proportion as the mental influence of a rehgion is wide, the outlook for intellectual advance is poor. For this reason there is apparently some justification for the charge that even to an age of barbarism the church was perhaps more of a curse than a blessing. Usually the schools of a particular religious sect drag behind the pubHc secular schools. One of the most frequent arguments for subsidies of public moneys to parochial schools is that they need to be brought up to the pubhc standards. Such schools are backward because they usuaUy assume religion to be the fundamental fact of Hfe ; whereas it is only one of the elements which make up that indissoluble unity. 1 Education of the Pueblo Child, 73. 436 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS They frequently represent an antiquated notion of family life, wherein the family was held superior to the state. They also stand for an archaic political system, an Index Expurgatorius of some sort or other. They tend to stultify the mind by holding to revelation instead of to free inquiry after truth by the only means of achieving it, namely, science and the personal impulse to search, call it faith or what you will. Hence the most serious charge against religion reduces to its presumed hindering of intellectual development. Draper summarized this line of criticism in the memorable phrase, ^'T^nor anre is the m other of Devotion." Albeit he produced abundant evidence to show how Latin Chris- tianity begot ignorance, superstition, discomfort, disease, demorahzation ; how it destroyed the finest of pagan art, hindered population growth and induced immorality ; how it forged documents and lied outrageously ; how its benefits at best were accidental or incidental and not in the least intentional ; ^ yet we must discriminate, as he did not, between religion on the one hand and theology or ecclesi- asticism or some particular phase of them, on the other. Andrew D. White is much fairer. He goes out of his way to remark that a "thoughtful, reverent, enlightened clergy is a great blessing to any country; and anything which undermines their legitimate work of leading men out of the worship of material things to the consideration of that which is highest is a vast misfortune." ^ But he demon- strates beyond cavil that theology has sought to block every field of scientific advance — geography, astronomy, geology, anthropology, meteorology, chemistry, physics, medicine, hygiene, and economics. Moreover, he shows 1 J. W. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, chap. x. For the typical. churchman's reply, oratorical and undocumented, see Hull, "The Church arid Civilization," The Catholic Mind, 14 : 25-44. 2 A History of the Warfare cf Science with Theology in Christendom, i, 239. RELIGION 437 with equal justness how science (these very sciences at first so hateful), has helped to purge religion of its dross and bring out its higher values, by substituting the Ascent for the Fall of man, the Eternal Law of Righteousness for petty dogma, oracles, and fetishistic observances. By way of summary let us reiterate that theologv has hi ndered rather than helped human d evelopment,;._j£^ept thr ough its by-product, the habit of speculation. Priest- hoods have been enormously expensive, consuming unpro- ductively vast amounts of capital ; they have served to a limited degree as patrons of the arts, as healers, as teach- ers, but their political influence has been nefarious. Or- ganized cults have served to nurture the religious impulse, have fostered the arts of literature, music, and decoration, and have furnished foci for the creation of common bodies of belief and opinion, valuable alike for personal and group stabiUty ; that is, they have added their ballast to the other conservative and stabilizing institutions ; but stability finds all too easily its final term in the fossil and the corpse. The only value that attaches apparently to dogma is the negative virtue of breeding heretics. And it is in terms of these innovating personalities that religion's contribu- tion to the stock of moral ideas is to be interpreted. Fi- nally, if progress be interpreted as an expansion, wherever religion has been conceived of and actually lived as love, sympathy, tolerance, optimism, and a widening of human personaUty, there it has served progressive ends. As to the future, it may be true that there is a world- wide drift in the direction of secular education rather than religion for social control, and that science, not religion, will be the guide to specific action. But there are still vast hinterlands of savagery in all of us which need to be tamed and reduced to order by constructive means if we are to move forward. Rightly viewed, religion ought to 438 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS function positively here ; whether a religion of Humanity, or the Great Unknowable, or Divine Principle, or the Heavenly Father, matters little. With the separation of the church from government, and particularly from con- trol over education ; with the growing concept of a free church in a free state; with the development of tolerance and liberalism in creed ; with the constant iteration of the principles of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God ; and above all with the perception of its mission as a helper in heahng this world's social ills, religion seems to be in the way of freeing itself from many of the objec- tions herein set forth. When it gains once for all the vi- sion of God as developing, and conceives that its only pos- sible service to Him is in the service of human society ; when it displays itself as an altogether spiritual activity, resort- ing to persuasion and relinquishing the last remnant of coercion, then it will have freed itself completely from them. Three significant proofs of having reached that stage will be freedom from fatalism (the acceptance of a fully wrought-out order into which we find more or less subser- viently our appointed place), deliverance from a profes- sional priestly class, and absolute tolerance. Further- more, it will have nothing to fear from science or the critical mind. There will always be a place for faith and imagina- tion to complete the circle of knowledge : that circle must be completed, but since the problem is infinite and science though mighty is limited, the imagination, or faith if you choose, clarified and adventurous, must do it. It seems almost gratuitous to add that in the fight of future social progress religion will be taught through actual practice in healing and stimulating self-help in men rather than by catechising anybody. IDEOLOGIST INTERPRETATIONS CHAPTER XXX THE IDEALISTS "Mind alone is the cause of bondage or liberty for men," said the sages who indited the Upanishads. Ideals are the direct and only progressive forces, echo the ideaHsts : for progress is but the struggle of man out of physical and mental bondage to spiritual liberty. Ideas are not the effects but the causes of public events, declared the most learned English historian of the nineteenth century. To the ideahst history is a transcendental process, whether like the Greek and Roman philosophers he believes in a long past Golden Age from which men have degenerated and to which they must once more attain; or whether with the Church Fathers and their successors in Christian theology and poetry he accepts the Garden of Eden with its story of . . . "Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat . . . ;" or whether with Vico or Ranke he sees in terms of historical forces rather than in terms of God's interfering Providence and Plans ; or whether with Hegel he feels the historical development of the race as a cool unfolding of an eternal Idea; or whether with Kidd he believes in biology and ruthless selection yet can see in an ultra-rational sanction the one firm basis for not only the progress of human society but even its very constitution. 441 442 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS Humanity is incorrigibly idealistic. When, therefore, we point to Plato, St. Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Bossuet, Lessing, Robespierre, or Augusta Comte and say, "They are idealists," we simply mean that they got their idealism reduced to some show of system ; that they organized, taught, and published it. Their idealism is of many shades and textures, but it all comes from the same loom, and that loom is human nature. Hence we all recognize cer- tain familiar homelike strains in even the most naive statements of the idealist faith, even in the crassest kind of behef in a Direct Providence. This may justify the broad principle of selection determining the make-up of the group of idealistic interpreters of progress whose teach- ings are here presented. They are not marked off into groups according to some fancied principle of merit, but to show, rather roughly it is true, the main currents of ideal- istic social philosophy during the last two hundred years or so. Since the intellectualists are cousins to the idealists, but do not share their transcendentalism, we shall reserve their views for a separate chapter. The ideahsm of certain great theologians will serve as a point of departure. Foremost of these, by reason of his real flair for historical analysis and coordination, stands Bossuet. His great Discourse on Universal History was really a treatise on human progress according to divine purpose. His point of view is clearly set forth in such formal summaries as these : The revolutions of empires are regulated by Providence, and serve to humble princes ; the whole preceding discourse demonstrates that .every- thing must be ascribed to Providence.^ The basic plan of the Discourse is set out in its preface : ' Discours sur I'histoire universelle, Part III, ch. i, viii. The Philosophy of Divine Right of Kings is a variant of this theory; survdvals of it extend through the eighteenth century. Burke, for example, speaks of kings being THE IDEALISTS 443 "It is the course of these two things — religion and empire — that you must impress upon your memory ; and since reHgion and poHtical government are the two axes around which human affairs revolve, to see all that concerns them condensed and summarized, and thus to discover their order and sequence, is to grasp all that is great among men, and to hold, so to speak, the guiding thread to all the affairs of the universe." Later he amplifies this thought : "Thus all the great empires of the world we have seen have conspired by diverse means to the good of religion and the glory of God, as God himself declared by his proph- ets .. . God, then, who planned to use the divers empires to chastise or exercise or extend or protect his people, wish- ing to reveal Himself as the author of so admirable a course, revealed the secret to his prophets and caused them to foretell what He had resolved to execute." ^ In the last chapter he restates the same idea : "But remember, My Lord, that this long sequence of particular causes, which makes and unmakes empires, depends upon the secret orders of Divine Providence. Let us speak no longer of chance nor of fortune, or at least only as a name by which to cover our ignorance. What is chance according to our uncertain outlook is a design worked out in a higher council, that is, in the eternal wisdom which includes every cause and every effect in the same order." ^ On the whole Bossuet accepts the principle of historic causality and succession, the necessary order and sequence later postulated by Comte and others. Nations reach hurled from their thrones by the "Supreme Director of this great drama," etc. {RejJcctions, p. 119). ^ Ibid., Part III, chap. i. "^ Ibid., Part III, chap. viii. Neo-Catholics like Brunetiere have re- furbished this idea; "The hypothesis of Providence," he declares, "is the condition of intelligible history." Compare Devas, The Key to the World's Progress, chaps, i-ii, etc. 444 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the level to which they were predestined by virtue of their own qualities and characters. With only a few extraor- dinary exceptions in which God wished to reveal his para- mount hand, no great historic change has taken place without proportionate causes in preceding centuries. "And as in all affairs there is something which prepares them, which determines the undertaking of them, and which causes them to succeed, it is the function of the real science of history to note in every age those secret impulses which have prepared the way for great changes and the conjunctures which have brought them to pass." ^ This, as Comte pointed out, is the true spirit of the philos- ophy of history. But it is not science ; for it is evident that Bossuet assumed what he started out to prove, namely, history is the record of God's will among men. Even as a theological interpretation of history it is less satisfactory than Jonathan Edwards', because less precise and mani- festly overloaded with apologetics for monarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The great American theologian had a firm grasp on the principle of development toward perfection and urged it with considerable vigor. Baldly stated, Edwards held that God created the universe for His own pleasure, and that all the movements of the universe tend to culminate in the full realization of that divine pleasure : the means to that pleasure are the various creatures he forms for that express purpose. These ideas recur again and again throughout his theological writings. For example : "In like manner we must suppose that God before he created the world, had some good in view, as a consequence of the world's existence that was originally agreeable to him in itself considered that inchned him to create the world, or bring the universe with various intelligent creatures * Discours siir Vhistoire universelle, Part III, chap. ii. THE IDEALISTS 445 into existence in such a manner as he created it . . . The whole universe is a machine, which God hath made for his own use, to be his chariot for him to ride in. . . . The inferior part of the creation, this visible universe, subject to such continual changes and revolutions are the wheels of the chariot, under the place of the seat of him who rides in this chariot. God's providence in the constant revolu- tions, and alterations, and successive events, is represented by the motions of the wheels of the chariot. . . . " ^ "Providence is like a mighty wheel, whose circumference is so high that it is dreadful, with the glory of the God of Israel above upon it. . . . We have seen the revolution of this wheel, and how as it was from God, so its return has been to God again. All the events of divine providence are hke the links of a chain : the first link is from God, and the last is to him. . . . God's providence may not unfitly be compared to a large and long river, having innumerable branches, beginning in different regions, and at a great distance one from another, and all conspiring to one com- mon issue. . . ." ^ "The new creation is more excellent than the old. So even it is, that when one thing is removed by God to make way for another, the new excels the old. . . . The wheels of Providence are not turned about by blind chance but they are full of eyes round about, and they are guided by the Spirit of God. Where the spirit goes, they go." ^ The end of the flowing of a river or of the revolution of a wheel (Edwards' two favorite metaphors) or of his "appointed journey," is the salvation of his people, or the "manifestation of his internal glory to created understand- ings." ^ In another place he speaks of "those elect crea- tures which must be looked upon as the end of all the rest of creation." ^ Progress meant, then, to Edwards the ^ "Dissertation concerning the end for which God created the world," Works, First American edition, 1807, vol. vi, pp. 16, 23-4, 34, loo-i. 2 "Work of Redemption," Works, ii, 380-1, 382. ^ Quoted in Bancroft, History of the United States, iii, 399. * Works, vi, loo-i, 117; iii, 393- ^ Ibid., vi, 41. A forecast of Superman? 446 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS gradual perfection of these elect. "All things tend to him, and in their progress come nearer and nearer to him through all eternity." ^ We find somewhat similar ideas in eighteenth century Germany, but stripped of their most repellant theological trappings. Lessing, Herder, and Kant each voiced them in his own way. To Lessing the world is a unity and its history the record of a progressive revelation in necessary sequences ; that is, there is a law in human history. Hu- manity passes through the stages of childhood, youth, and on to maturity. Each of these culture epochs has its typical behefs about itself and its relation to God as marks of the progressive revelation. Revelation is the educa- tion of the race.^ This revelation will inevitably bring man to the fullness of perfection. Exactly how and when this perfection will be achieved is a matter for faith in powers above. "Pursue thy secret path, everlasting Providence," he cries, "only let me not, because thou art hidden, despair of thee. Let me not despair of thee even if thy steps appear to me to retreat. It is not true that the shortest line is always straight." ^ But in words strikingly reminiscent of Edwards he seems to suggest the individual's share in this process : "What if it were as good as proved that the great slow wheel which brings the race nearer its perfection, received its motion only from smaller, swifter wheels of which each furnishes its individual share?"* In Herder we run against a curious compound of mysti- cism and physical science. Man is a summary of all that went before (inorganic, plant, animal) ; he is the last ^ Works, vi, 42. ^ The Education of the Human Race, sees. 1-2, 54, etc. 3 Ibid., sec. 91. ^ Ibid., sec. 92. THE IDEALISTS 447 link in the earth-organization and the first link in a pro- gressively higher order of created beings ; i.e. the con- necting link between two opposing orders of creation, the physical and the spiritual. This accounts for the manifest dualism of our natures. The divine process step by step purifies and refines the material and strips it away to make room for the spiritual, to allow the buds of man's spiritual nature to burst into full bloom.^ Kant apparently was prompted to write of progress in answer to Moses Mendelssohn. The latter had dubbed it mere illusion to hold "that the whole of mankind here below shall always move forward in the course of time and thus perfect itself." Kant contended that the spec- tacle of the human race oscillating up and down, back and forth, but never getting anywhere, would tire even God. For what at first might be a moving and instructive tragedy, when prolonged becomes a farce. The hope of better times warms both individuals and nations for more zealous efforts to improve. That effort to progress has not always succeeded is no proof that it will never succeed. Since an incalculable time will be necessary, progress de- pends not so much on what we may do of ourselves (for example, by education) as on what "human nature as such will do in and with us, to compel us to move in a track into which we would not readily have betaken ourselves." Hence it is from Providence alone, the maker of human nature, that we can expect a result, since men see and act only in parts and do not act in concord, while God sees the whole. Yet it is possible to theorize that to avoid the evils of universal violence a people may agree to subject itself to public law. War will go on until the cost of it (national debts) will through sheer weakness bring about ' See Kant's Recension von J. G. Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Ge- schichte der Menschheit, in Leipzig, 1838, ed. of his Works, vol. iv, pp. 313-37. 448 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS what good will ought to have done but did not, namely, peace, or progress in moral relations and self-maintenance by Right alone, not Force. This is mere hypothesis, however, says Kant ; in reality we must look to Providence for such a beneficent end.^ Some such general assumption runs also through the writings of the early pohtical economists. It is particu- larly clear in Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations with its theory of a harmonious natural order to be let alone is built upon the philosophy of life and conduct expressed in his Moral Sentiments. Providence has so adjusted matters that in spite of the natural selfishness and rapacity of the rich they are "led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same dis- tribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus, without intending it, without knowing it, they advance the interest of society and offer means for the multipKcation of the species." Passages of this sort referring to Providence or the Invisible Hand occur repeatedly in the Moral Sentiments, and illustrate that optimistic fatalism whose children, the complacent professional apologists for the existing order, have so exasperated the open-minded student of the nine- teenth century. Every theocratic state, nominally at least, accepts this providential view of its history. Every petty tribe has its god of battles, as every Tasmanian had his guardian spirit. In fact every human group that has attained a measure of self-consciousness appears to believe in some sort of Destiny that shapes its ends. In so far it is idealistic ; for even if the end toward which this Destiny is working re- ^ Principles of Politics, including his Essay on Perpetual Peace (ed. and transl. by Hastie), chap. iii. THE IDEALISTS 449 mains remote and ill-defined, yet hope and faith persistently whisper that somewhere and somehow or other Destiny will bring things to a bright and successful issue. But in the hands of theologians Destiny is called God and the universe a machine let down out of high heaven, wound up and set spinning for His glory. Men and events are wheels in the machine revolving according to a minutely preestablished schedule. Everything fits. For everything was designed to fit. This concept received its most classic form in the hands of the eighteenth century Deists, in Paley's Natural Theology, and in the Bridgewater Treatises. All that we have to do is to tick, tock, and all will go well. God is both Mover and End, and he does not scruple to dabble in the pettiest details of domestic life or politics to secure his ends. We are the ignorant denizens of a city ward who vote at the beck and call of our ward leader. We are the sheep of his hand, and we are never anything but sheep until — we are transformed into the elect. In the perpetuum mobile of the universe we are the perpetually moved. On the other hand. Providence is a tinker, or as Nietzsche bitterly said, "a domestic servant, a postman, an almanac-maker, after all a word for the stupidest kind of accidents." I grant that the theologians denied vehe- mently that anything of this sort flowed from such a con- ception of creation by design. But if there is any sense to logic or any standards for clear thinking, no other sequence could follow,^ ' It is understood that theology might utilize any of at least five concepts of Providence : (i) God sits in a world of spirit reality unconcerned with this world of shadows ; we ourselves have already reached perfection, the goal of progress, but for some mysterious reason have been placed in this world of shadows. (2) God has created man capable of working out a destiny con- templated and ordained by him, without his direct interference. (3) God has created a race of men capable of arriving at some goal of their own choos- ing, which neither he nor they know yet. Both are aiming, yet without interfering with each other. (4) The world is God, and its striving after 2g 450 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Of course, the two chief objections to such an inter- pretation of history are, first, that it cannot in any way be justified objectively ; second, that it makes and forever keeps man a mere creature, it allows no measure of co- operation. The first objection is formidable from the stand- point of science. Yet it may not be insuperable from the standpoint of common sense. For to call anything intui- tional is not to damn it eternally. Indeed, as Aristotle intimated, we may be far safer in trusting our history to a poet than to a historian ; likewise it is conceivable that the saint, even if as in the case of Jonathan Edwards he is at the same time an inveterate theologian, might be better trusted than the scientist to give us that cosmic sweep of view necessary to interpret the drift of Time. But the second objection is even more formidable, especially from the moral point of view. If it is true that we are the slaves of beneficent providence or wheels in the divine watch, it is better that we should not know it. It were better to maintain the illusion of freedom and cooperation in creation. From the standpoint of the educator such an interpretation is futile, nay, suicidal, and no amount of subtle metaphysics can make him see that it is worth while planning or executing schemes for social progress through education. For if man is already perfect he needs no education. And if he is eternally a creature, education is wasted on him. Here we butt our heads against the end of a blind alley. That the universe has some goal is possible, though what the precise design of the One In- finite Mind is we cannot know. Of this much, however, we can be pretty certain : that the goal is infinitely far off, that infinite change and improvement must intervene perfection is merely his attempt to reach complete self-expression. (5) God steers particular happenings for his own glory. The candid reader shall decide for himself whether these several concepts are of equal value and also which of them is at the basis of the theologies cited, THE IDEALISTS 45 1 before that far-off divine event could be achieved, and that this event, from the standpoint of this our world, is con- tingent upon human action. Right here comes philosophy to the rescue, and especially the philosophy of Hegel. In both Hegel and his contem- poraries it is still a religious philosophy. To Schiller, W. von Humboldt, Ranke and others of their generation it is the idea, the world-idea, or world-soul, mystic, super- worldly, divine, working from without into this world, expressing itself in and directing human history, that is the motive force in human progress. Ranke said : "It is always the forces of the living soul that move the world throughout ; prepared through past centuries, they manifest themselves in our times, called forth through strong and profoundly spiritual natures from the unex- plored depths of the human soul ; it is their very nature to seek to attract the world to them ; it is moral energies that we see in evolution." ^ In Hegel these ideas come more clearly out of the fog and attain grandiose stature. For him the Idea, and es- pecially the Idea of Freedom, is the motive force in human progress. History is simply the unfolding of ideas. "Die Idee ist der Seelenfiihrer der Geschichte." Mental and spiritual freedom is its final goal. It is all but hopeless to attempt in brief compass to give even the most super- ficial gluTipse of how Hegel works out this magnificent thesis, but the attempt must be made. The drama of history is to Hegel essentially a develop- ment. Man is its subject ; Nature merely the super- ficial stage-setting. The real stage is in the human will and knowledge. The drama is neither tragedy nor comedy. Nor is it that sort of disordered stage-play dreamed by Poe, wherein ^ Quoted by Schmoller, Gnmdriss, ii, 660. 452 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS "The play was the tragedy Man, The Hero the Conqueror Worm." Nor is it the tale of a monarch of all he surveys. No, to Hegel the story is not of man's conquest by nature, nor of his conquest over nature, but of his transformation and sub- jugation of himself. Self-knowledge, self-mastery, these are its themes. Man at the outset is a spiritual being, but his spirituality assumes rather the form of instinct. His- tory is the narrative of his winning conscious reason, his spiritual majority. "Universal History is the unfolding of the Spiritual Being in time, as Nature is the unfolding of the divine idea in space. . . . History is progress in the consciousness of freedom." And the end of history is the "consciousness of spiritual freedom, and with it the realization of that freedom." History is a hope and an advance — irregular and fumbling sometimes — toward an ideal, that is, resemblance to God. "God rules the world: the substance of His rule, the execution of His plan, is the world's history." "What has happened, and is happening every day, is not only not 'without God,' but is essentially His work." This seems to plunge us back into our theological cul-de-sac. But not quite : for God is not outside the historic process, but in it. And man is co-worker with God — sometimes willful, unconscious, rebellious, yet growing constantly more obedient as he learns his own nature and origin. It follows that progress in the consciousness of freedom is progress in man's consciousness of God, and the highest freedom of the will is to will the Will of God. Particular historic events or forces exist by virtue of the particular wills of individuals or groups, but the grace of God confers upon them a character beyond what their THE IDEALISTS 453 authors intended. The means whereby the process or end of history is realized are the passions of men, their individual interests and the actions by which they strive to secure them — in a word, their subjective choices. Progress, therefore, is a matter of the will. Even where these choices seemed in the past dark and bloody, God made the wrath of men to praise Him. In the approach to universal self-knowledge and unity, human self-disci- pline has cooperated with providential guidance. Hegel makes much of the share of human endeavor and struggle in this process. Great men lead the struggle. But the great man is only he who comprehends the spirit of his time and becomes its organ. He can do so only because he sees that his time is ripe. Of himself he can do nothing. He is an instrument for working out the logic of events : for the history of progress is a problem in logic. Every positive affirmation contains in it a potential negation. Applied to history this principle emphasizes the fact that every institution or form into which the Idea casts itself bears within it the elements which will in time burst it, permitting, yes forcing, the Idea to clothe itself anew. Hence the notion seized upon by scientific evolutionists, namely, that progress proceeds by fixed steps : there can be no repetition. Marx and his disciples applied this prin- ciple to their theory of an inexorable sequence of economic and other social institutions. But to Hegel the whole process was an inexorable ethical evolution. The subject matter of history is law — -an ethical element. Hence the whole labor of history is to turn this at first abstract and only potential ethical principle into a concrete order, a real Ethical World. In the process of self-realization which is the essence of human civilization, man is not, however, out of touch with nature. He reduces what he needs of it for his own 454 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS purposes, and avoids troublesome conflicts beyond that point. Hence the compromise which Hegel seems to offer between geographic determinism and absolute idealism. The general theory of Hegel is engaging enough. It commends itself to the swelling imagination of men. It offers hope and confers a dignity upon us all. For are we not collaborators with the Infinite in the creation of an Ethical World? But the details which Hegel musters by way of facts to support his general thesis are not so convincing. He divides world history into four great periods or types, Oriental, Greek, Roman, Germanic. The Orient represents the childhood of history — the rudimentary concept of freedom as a spiritual attribute, as an "abstract universal." At this stage only monarchs disengage themselves from the mass and are free. Greece represents the age of youth — freedom not yet a ''concrete universal"; some only are free. Rome was the age of manhood. Individuality was recognized only formally by law as exemplified in the ascription of specific "personal rights." It is left to the Germanic world under the in- spiration of Christianity to take the step into full maturity. Its mission is to comprehend and carry out the truth that freedom is the birthright of all men. Politically, then, the movement passes from absolutism to democracy; socially from subordination by status to individualism and self-subordination to an ethical ideal. Philosophy of history is quite out of fashion nowadays, and it is as much as one's scientific reputation is worth to treat it with seriousness and dignified respect. And what scientific martyrdoms must he undergo who not only respects but actually embraces, even in part ! Neverthe- less all things considered, Hegel has given us at least four permanent and irrefragable elements in any convincing theory of progress. First, there is progress. Second, THE IDEALISTS 455 progress docs not repeat itself nor go back on its tracks. Third, progress is a matter of ideas or ideals in the direc- tion of a soundly ethical world. Finally, progress is a movement of the human will. Hence we ought to be able to conclude that progress may be willed as the will is il- luminated and disciplined through social experience and sound teachings. These principles may be disengaged from their theological matrix without serious loss. Thus divested they stand as a seven-leagued step between the somber theologizing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and recent attempts at a scientific formulation of the principle of progress. Parallel to this philosophic idealism of Hegel and his school runs what might be called the sociological idealism of the first half of the nineteenth century, cropping out particularly in the work of St. Simon, Comte, and J. S. Mill. St. Simon propounds a half philosophical, half economic solution to the riddle of social evolution. He finds the key to social advance not in political forms but in the history of economic forms (property, classes, etc.), and in the history of ideas ; for, he declared, every social system is founded on a philosophy. Similarly, Proudhon in his Philo Sophie du Pr ogres makes progress a moral question, calls it the natural state of humanity, and makes Justice the strongest of all its conflicting causes. The socialist- materiahst group of the thirties and forties seized the first half of St. Simon's teachings. Auguste Comte ap- propriated the other half and turned its vague suggestions into a mammoth system, the Positive Philosophy, from which modern sociology dates its advent. Comte makes progress an evolution of ideas from super- stition to positive knowledge. For him the history of so- ciety is ruled by the history of the human mind. This history divides itself according to the Law of the Three 456 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Stages, into three great epochs or stages, the theological, metaphysical, and positive. In the theological stage a phenomenon is regarded as explained when it is attributed to the will of a being or god powerful enough to produce it. Fetishism and divine right of kings are typical beliefs of this period. The metaphysical age is characterized by explaining phenomena through abstractions personified, i.e., by general principles to which all things are presumed to be subject. Such shibboleths as social contract and popular sovereignty are illustrations. (Might we not add "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest"?) The third or positive stage of history has barely dawned, for it is the era of empiric science, the age of laws deduced from large numbers of concrete facts. Throughout, Comte fights shy of metaphysics, yet inevatably falls into meta- physicking of his own particular brand. And he also con- structed a set of historical facts that bear out his Sequence but follow real history just about as closely as a Greek mask fitted the actor beneath. From his masters Mon- tesquieu, Condorcet, De Maistre, and St. Simon, Comte gathered the ideas of progress and perfectibility. It re- mained for him to stamp this idea with the seal of a neces- sary law to lay the basis for his system. For progress is no hit-or-miss affair. It is inevitable. There are definite rungs of the historical ladder to be climbed, and none can be avoided. Neither can there be retrogressions nor repetitions. Rapidity in cUmbing is alone susceptible of variation. The various social institutions may contrib- ute to hasten or retard the process. Neither is progress aimless nor colorless. It stretches toward the goal of social well-being, the harmony and perfection of the only individual worth considering, namely, Humanity. To be sure, Comte disclaimed any metaphys- ical notion of progress as continuous perfection. He pro- THE IDEALISTS 457 fessed faith only in development. But withal he was steeped in the telic view of science. Sociology was not a mere academic pastime but supremely practical. It was an exact science whose business is to point the way to human welfare. His whole positive philosophy is dominated by a moral and social passion. Savoir pour prevoir et connattre pour ameliorer. The moral aim of his system comes out best of all in his doctrine of the organic unity of mankind and in his emphasis upon altruism. Man is not sufficient unto himself; he is part of a whole, in and of which and for which he must live. Vivre pour autrui, he sets up as a new positive and scientific sanction to replace the older religious and moral sanctions derived from the twilight which preceded the dawn of the social sciences. ''With all our efforts, the longest life well employed will never en- able us to pay back more than an imperceptible part of what we have received." With Comte as with Hegel the spirit of his philosophy is more acceptable than the letter. For the letter is some- times grotesquely wide of the truth. The Positive Phi- losophy may be, as its critics insist, only philosophy of his- tory once more and in no sense either historical or scientific, or an accurate concept of progress.^ Yet it gave an impetus to all successive steps in the science of society and yielded three sofid principles : (i) The organic relation of the individual to his fellows {11 ne faut pas definir Vhumanile par VJiomme, mats au contraire, Vhomme par rhumanite) ; (2) the duty of altruism ; and (3) the definite effect of social institutions in accelerating or retarding progress. Ac- cepting these, we may do as we will about the idea of progress as a necessary law, and we may reject utterly the ^ See for example, Crozier's criticism that in his zeal for order Comte strangled the chief hope of progress, individual expansion and development. {Civilization and Progress, 142-4.) 45^ THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS law of the three stages as a literal and correct interpre- tation of history. That we are correct in linking Comte with other ideahsts is apparent when we recall that he made the heart the impelling force in development. On the whole, then, we come from an examination of Comte to substantially the point where we left Hegel ; namely, progress is essentially moral and it is, or may be, willed. One of the most straight-away and brilliant defenses of the idealistic view of history that ever appeared occurs in Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson's Justice and Liberty, A Political Dialogue. In addition to being a piece of magnificent EngHsh prose it sweeps the reader along by the power, the very audacity, of its emphasis upon the spiritual factors in human development. I call it prose only because of its form ; for in substance it is lyric rhapsody. But to be lyrical is not necessarily to be fallacious, any more than to be dull is to be scholarly or truthful. Mr. Dickinson is answering his conservative opponent's claim that ideals are not cause, but effect ; not an inspira- tion, but a pretense. He begins by showing how man has subdued an inhospitable Nature, and how the brutality of Nature evoked the will and the intelligence of man. Yet many possibihties of science and invention are still at the mercy of Nature and cannot be hastened to birth nor re- tarded by mere effort of the will ; because "hazard and chaos are within us no less than without." On the other hand, while man cannot control the conjuncture of genius with opportunity he can prepare or neglect to meet it when it comes : and the means of thus making or marring fate are his institutions. "Human institutions ... all through history have thwarted rather than aided the conjuncture of genius with chance." These human institutions are largely an inheritance from pre-human hairy biped days. THE IDEALISTS 459 Man's history is the tale of his disentanglement from these bestial institutions and the creation of others more be- fitting him. "This animal, Man, this poor thin wisp of sodden straw buffeted on the great ocean of fate, this ignorant, feeble, quarrelsome, greedy, cowardly victim and spawn of the unnatural parent we call Nature, this abortion, this clod, this indecent, unnamable thing, is also, as certainly, the child of a celestial father. Sown into the womb of Nature, he was sown a spiritual seed. And history, on one side the record of man's entanglement in matter, on the other is the epic of his self-deliverance. All the facts, the dread- ful facts at which we have timidly hinted, and which no man could fairly face and live, all those facts are true ; stop at them if you will ! But true also is the contest of which they are the symbol, real the flood no less then the deposit it has left : real, of all things reallest, the ideal ! Do not conceive it as an idea in somebody's head. No ! ideas are traces it leaves, shadows, images, words : itself is the light, the fire, the tongue, of which these are creatures. Poetry, philosophy, art, religion, what you will, are but its expressions ; they are not It. Thought is a key to unlock its prison, words are a vessel to carry its seed. But It is Reality of Realities, fact of facts, force of forces. It refutes demonstration ; it unsettles finality ; it defies experience. While all men are crying "impossible," it has sped and done. Even in those who deny it, it lies a latent spark : let them beware the conflagration when the wind of the spirit blows!" This out-Hegels Hegel. It soars almost recklessly into the absolute with all the ecstasy of a Plotinus. Its Delphic incoherence is all but intoxicating. He feels this himself and proceeds less rhetorically to the conclusion that man is both brute and spirit, that history is both a sordid chron- icle of crime and a solemn school of righteousness. It is natural to fall into pessimism if one merely chronicles the meannesses and idiocies of his fellows, or the swarming 460 THEORIES OF SOCE\L PROGRESS fears and weaknesses within ourselves ; it is impossible under such an obsession to believe that the ideal is anything more than an idea; to attribute power to it seems idle. But this is only a superficial aspect of truth. Those who look closer find a sap flowing through the dead wood of human nature, and a fire burning at the heart of the world. That is the ideal, the greatest of all energies, though world- lings call it a mere dream. ^ But where shall we look for ideals? Industrial forces cannot, as the sociahsts think, independently of human choice dehver "from the womb of class-war a babe of fraternity and peace." Ideals do not come as the gentle rain from heaven nor as cosmic crises, like the Lisbon earthquake. No, says Mr. Dickinson ; if an ideal is to result, an ideal must he willed. Here we come to earth again after our long lyric flight and find ourselves once more in the company of Hegel and Comte, having gained meanwhile a new sense of exhilaration and piety, with which to strengthen their halting science and phi- losophy. I have reserved for briefer mention two other typical attitudes toward the ideological concept of history, those, namely, of the socialist and the pessimist. It is true, as we have already seen, that most of the Marxian socialists lay great stress on the economic basis of ideals. But some of Marx's followers, for example, Bernstein, either tacitly or openly recognize ideological forces in social evolution. And all the so-called philosophical socialists like Jules Guesde urge the fundamental importance of ideals. H. G. Wells as a Fabian Socialist insisted that there can be no change in social institutions without change in ideas. Signor Ferri, positivist, sociaHst, supposed materialist, and homme de politique, is not to be outdone. ^Op. cii., pp. 222-32. THE IDEALISTS 46 1 "Of course," he writes, "we positivists know very well that the material requirements of life shape and determine also the moral and intellectual aims of human conscious- ness. But positive science declares the following to be the indispensable requirement for the regeneration of human ideals : without an ideal, neither an individual nor a col- lectivity can live, without it humanity is dead or dying. For it is the fire of an ideal which renders the life of each one of us possible, useful, and fertile. And only by its help can each one of us, in the more or less short course of his or her existence, leave behind traces for the benefit of fellow-beings." ^ This sounds mightily like an heroic attempt to marry the ideal to the material ; but it is no less significant as a testimonial to the undying fact that one man or the whole of humanity can live or have a history only as they build and cleave to an ideal. This irrepressible tendency of men of vision is a striking hint that man is essentially spirit and that his history is a spiritual record. The passionate defense of Utopias by Anatole France and by Oscar Wilde must stand as final proof that socialism is not necessarily limited to class struggle and surplus- value. I heard M. France once urge the students of Paris not to be afraid of Utopias, but to cherish them, to pursue them, to devote their lives to them. His own life is an example of how a social ideal, the passion for fellow-men, may give poise and center to a hitherto somewhat dilettante sort of existence, and may yield a new dignity and com- pelling power to literary art. He found himself when he found an ideal, a cause. A good deal of Oscar Wilde's work was the purest sort of anarchistic estheticism. But on one occasion at least his voice rang out true and sincere. "A map of the world that does not include Utopia," he cries, "is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out ^ Positive School of Criminology, 6. 462 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias." 1 Henrik Ibsen has been frequently maligned for his pre- sumed indomitable pessimism and for his slashing war- fare upon ideals. Yet he it was who declared that "what is wanted is a revolution of the spirit of man." In his doctoral address at Upsala, in 1877, he said : "It has been asserted on various occasions that I am a pessimist. So I am to this extent — that I do not believe human ideals to be eternal. But I am also an optimist, for I believe firmly in the power of those ideals to propagate and develop." The proof of his sincerity on this occasion is the never- wavering conviction that the function of his plays, and of all drama for that matter, was to aid in social progress by leveHng a piercing and if need be a destructive criticism at erroneous ideals and by replacing them with newer and truer ones. Hence his dictum that neither our moral conceptions nor our artistic forms have an eternity before them, was not the mere fling of a relativist in philosophy ; it was a dedication of himself and all his powers to the service of humanity through the purification of ideals. It was a striking justification of the concept of history as one long process of creating an ideal, adoring it, destroying it. The limits of this chapter will allow only the briefest reference to other statements of the ideahst position. To a group of American philosophers, progress is essentially the development of new and higher moral imperatives, i.e., new moral values, new ideals.^ To a notable American scientist it is idealism alone which civilizes : ^ The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 28. "^ See the discussions of Royce, Baldwin, and White in the Internatl. Jour. Ethics, 5 : 489-500 ; 6 : 93-7, 99. THE IDE/VLISTS 463 "That which is purely practical, containing no element of idealism, may sustain existence and to that extent be valuable, but it does not civilize. I believe it is the idealism of pure knowledge, the idealism in applied knowledge, the idealism in industry and commerce, the idealism in literature and art, the idealism in personal religion, which leavens the life of the world and pushes forward the bound- aries of civilization." ^ 1 must confess that while the cosmic sweep of idealistic formulas moves me profoundly, those formulae themselves are as a rule so highly generalized that I do not know which way to turn. That I should turn somewhere is evident if we accept the Hegelian view that man must cooperate with the Infinite in working out his destiny. The ideal is too vague, so vague as to draw the lightning flash re- proach that all ideals are illusions.- When I am told that society does not move on to better things by thought and reasoning and knowledge of its path but "by the impulse of a sound life, with faith in the ideal for its guide," ^ the reproach seems justified. Ideals to motivate conduct must be more or less specific. Moreover it must be recog- nized that in practical affairs the temporary expedient has a nasty way of electing itself to a seat among the Eternal Verities. At any rate, the Ideal, if it is to func- tion progress- ward, must be stripped of its capital letters and be translated into terms of concrete reality, with due reference to means as well as ends. The only ideal that ^ W. W. Campbell, Presidential Address to the Amer. Assoc, for the Ad- vancement of Science, 1915, printed in Science, 42 : 238 ; cf. Newcomb, Side- lighls on Astronomy, chap, xx ; Wells, New Worlds for Old, chap. ii. 2 Recall Sumner, Folkways, 201 : " An ideal is entirely unscientific. It is a phantasm which has little or no connection with fact." And Carver sneers : Where there is no vision the people perish.' They likewise perish where there is a vision. It has not yet been statistically determined whether they perish faster in the one case or in the other." Essays in Social Justice, 232. ^ Urwick, A Philosophy of Social Progress, 286. 464 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS is of much permanent value to human society is the vision of a social organization which will permit the highest de- velopment of the individual at the minimum cost. Such an ideal can actually be broken up into particular ideals, themselves translatable into working programs. Suppose you call the summarizing ideal, social justice : it can parti- tion itself into the fields of pure science, applied science, art, rehgion, politics, industry, what you will. Our argument has led us again inevitably to the point reached in other chapters. In order to form ideals that are something more than fads, crotchets, lusts, or moonshine, a large body capable of thinking clearly and persistently is essential. No matter whether you call your ideal Jus- tice or Freedom or Morality or Absolute Science, how else can you achieve it or even start toward it without minds purged and disciplined ? In other words, ideals, like public opinion or leadership or government or any other element in social advance, presuppose inexorably education, op- portunity, the increase of exact knowledge and its trans- mutation into conduct. The transcendentahsts in the final issue must rest their case with the intellectualists. We shall hear them next. CHAPTER XXXI THE INTELLECTUALISTS The intellectualist interpretation of progress must be able to solve a handful of closely related problems. First, how much power have thought, ideas, knowledge and reason compared with instinct or emotion in human be- havior? Second, how can- knowledge function pro- gressively for morality and justice? Third, what kind of knowledge is best calculated to develop the intellectual life? The last problem summarizes the others from the standpoint of practical policy : it is, how can society assure itself of an increasing reservoir of this vital knowledge? While casting away utterly the cloak of mysticism which we have seen enveloped the theologians and trans- cendentalists, the role of ideas in social progress is warmly espoused by Mill and Buckle. In them the doctrine takes on more of an intellectualist color. Increase of knowledge is the predominant force in human advance. This doctrine is not original with them. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Bacon had announced it ; Condorcet and Francis Wright made it the basis of their teachings. Coleridge likewise treated all history as an education of the mind of the race.^ Lessing had seized upon the same concept in terms of stages of a Divine Plan for the Education of the Human Race. But to Buckle is due the most elaborate exposition of this 1 Friend, vol. iii, Essay lo. 2h 465 466 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS view of history. He accords to climatic and geographical influences certain conditioning powers over human develop- ment, as we have already seen. Hence civilization thrives in moderate climates where nature is less helpful but not quite adverse. Here population will be less redundant, and here knowledge may be stored up and turned into fruitful progress, material and intellectual. Here civilization will be governed mainly by intellectual laws. Progress in civilization is determined by two factors, moral and intellectual ; or perhaps we should better say the twofold test of civilization is moral and intellectual elevation. Which, then, of these two is the prime mover? Buckle clears the way by denying that there has been any perma- nent improvement in the moral or intellectual faculties of man, or that these faculties are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous country. Note the word faculties. Buckle here sweeps away all arbitrary racial distinctions. We are all set down on one immense plane of equality of capacity. Progress then resolves itself, not into a progress of natural capacity, but into progress of opportunity, of external advantage. Now moral motives, he claims, have exercised extremely little influence over the progress of civilization, for moral truths are stationary, little subject to modification. By contrast, the progressive aspect of intellectual truths is startling. The intellectual element is not only far more progressive than the moral principle, but is also far more permanent in its results. Intellectual gains are more easily collected, preserved, and transmitted than are the good products of the moral faculties.^ ^ Cf. Patten, Survey, July 5, 1913, p. 469 : "When a canal is dug or the mosquito excluded, the environment is altered for all time. But a character change spreads slowly from person to person, and must, to remain effective, be incorporated into the social tradition and handed on to each generation." THE INTKLLIXTUALISTS 467 As a typical example of the contrast between morality and intelligence in their application to national character and history, he selects war. War is the expression of unin- telligence and backwardness. One of its forms, persecution, is frequently the direct result of a moral code desperately espoused. Hence militarism is not immorality but in- tellectual density. Russia, for instance, is a warlike coun- try, not because its inhabitants are immoral, but because they are unintellectual.' The step from the ancient era of war to the modern more peaceful and industrial age was a tremendous advance: how did it come to pass? "The warlike spirit of the ancient world has been weakened by the progress of European knowledge." In three ways, or by three notable discoveries : First, the invention of gun- powder, which brought with it new and expensive engines of war, created a special war class, the standing army ; this released the great majority of the population for productive enterprises, and weaned them from their war- like habits. Second, the discoveries of political economy, especially its demonstration of the falsity of the "balance of trade" theory of international relations and the advan- tages of international free trade, cut away many of the old occasions for commercial jealousy which formerly meant warfare. Third, the application of steam to transportation has facilitated intercourse between different countries, and thus destroyed "that ignorant contempt which one nation is too apt to feel for another." These three significant elements in European progress are all applications of in- creasing knowledge. Hence the general conclusion : that ^ Query: How would Buckle have accounted for Prussia? From his notes it is probable that both countries would have been included under his general principle that the preponderance of the military classes is the inevi- table fruit of the national ignorance. In that case universal compulsory edu- cation merely as such could hardly be reckoned as synonymous with genuine national intellect. 468 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS in a comprehensive view, changes in a people are, in their aggregate, dependent solely on three things : first, on the amount of knowledge possessed by the ablest men ; secondly, on the direction which that knowledge takes ; thirdly, and above all, on the extent to which the knowledge is diffused, and the freedom with which it pervades all classes of society.^ J. S. Mill arrived at the same result as Buckle, but by a different road. Intellectual changes, he too held to be the most conspicuous agents in history, not because moral or economic conditions are inconsiderable but because intellectual conditions limit the other two sets of conditions and because practically they may be said to work with the united power of all three.^ Buckle's theory is difficult to criticize for it is not wholly consistent with itself. Now he tends to overstate the influence of climate and geography ; now he underestimates them : for example, he neglects to point out the importance of site which may render the contact of cultures eminently fertile in new ideas. Again, in his chapter on the History of the Spanish Intellect, he shows how Spain is a mixture of races, languages, bloods, varieties of laws, constitutions and governmental methods, lavish abundance of material apphances, foreign contacts : in a word, a nexus of condi- tions favorable to progressive change. Yet she has not progressed. And this because ''there has been every sort of alteration except alterations of opinion : there has been every possible change except changes in knowledge." But at the very end of his book, after having delivered him- self of the very noble aphorism that "so surely as the human ^ This and preceding citations are taken from the one volume edition published by Routlcdge, edited by J. M. Robertson, pp. 96-129. 2 Principles of Logic, Bk. VI, chap. xi. ; cf. Bk. VI, chap, ix, sec. 7 ; also W. H. Mallock, Aristocracy and Evolution, 132 ff. THE INTELLECTUALISTS 469 mind advances, so surely will that emancipation come," he goes on to nullify his aphorism and in fact his whole position by leaving the impression that it is not after all the human mind that carries us onward, but that we are moved by some outside power which reduces the universe and human his- tory to a single scheme "permeated by one glorious principle of universal and undeviating regularity." How have the mighty fallen ! Here the baiter of metaphysicians falls into temptation and announces a principle that would have made even Jonathan Edwards green with envy.^ We may accept within reasonable limits the general proposition that all progress is in terms of new knowledge. We advance by new ideas. True. But men do not pick up ideas as they gather blackberries or smell sweet odors on the morning breeze. Nor do ideas appear mysteriously as the dew. Inspiration itself requires food and a milieu. Men do not think in vacuo nor for the mere exercise of thinking. They think about things, they draw ideas from the vicissitudes of daily life. There is some danger of getting the notion that ideas are a force separated from other social realities. It is only necessary to remind ourselves once more of the organic nature of social life to see how dependent ideas are upon human activities. Furthermore, it is not true that men progress only by direct operation of new knowledge. Progress depends on beliefs and ideals no less than on positive knowledge. Indeed clear knowl- edge is only a simple refming of old opinions and ideals, and in turn usually crystallizes itself into new ones. In this sense progress might be defined as the catharsis of belief by fact. But since fact is always relative and never absolute the best we can say is that when the new belief works better ^ See for a brief but acute criticism of Buckle, Crozier, Civilization and Progress, 369-71, also P. Earth, V ierleljakrschrifl f. wissenschajtlichc Philos- ophie, 1899, pp. 75-116. 470 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS than the old in terms of social welfare it is a step forward. But it is still belief.^ There must be some question, too, about Buckle's esti- mate of the moral element in progress. It is bad psychology to separate thus absolutely the moral from the intellectual. True, knowledge is virtue : but such knowledge must be whole knowledge ; and whole knowledge must include moral as well as intellectual discoveries. Moreover it is perfectly evident that mankind as a whole has emerged from narrow ethnocentrism and enlarged its area of sym- pathy and love. Now, this increase of sympathy may be the result of new knowledge, may be the fruits of explora- tion, travels, missionary relations, scientific anthropology and ethnography. Yet the mere knowledge that the Dyaks are head-hunters may cause us to shiver and exclaim, how horrible, how inhuman ! The fact that the Indians of the Northwest carve their genealogies on totem poles fifty feet high may make us smile and murmur, grotesque ! when we compare them with our pretty heraldry and the elegant statuary turned out by our artists. We need not mere facts about other races and peoples, but facts that will show our fundamental likenesses as well as our super- ficial differences. And such a principle of selection implies that somehow or other the principle of charity has slipped in to illuminate our knowledge. Our moral or religious ideas always react upon our knowledge, even so far as to taboo utterly this or that kind of fact or idea, and to place superlative value on some other kinds of knowledge. Another point : no amount of intellectual achievement, whether in the form of machinery, science, or art can be counted a real force for progress unless its proceeds are ^ Nietzsche throws a dash of cynicism into his paradox : "Wahrheit ist die Art von Irrthum, ohne welche eine bestimmte Art von lebendigen Wesen nicht leben konnte. Der Werth fiir das Leben entscheidet zuletzt." Der Wille Zur Machl, sec. 493. THE INTELLECTUALISTS 47 1 distributed according to some principle of equity. In other words, morality and moral progress are active principles indispensable to the capitalization of all the other useful winnings of man's powers. If it is true that 'waves of personal influence' are needed to make these intellectual gains effective for advance, it is doubly true that such waves must be moral in content. Whether you call the moral principle social justice or sense of brotherhood, or simply love, is immaterial. Society can live and move by means of law — meaning moral law — and by means of that alone. Yet for our purposes there need be no irreducible conflict between the moral and the intellectual elements in progress. If we are careful to define our terms broadly enough so that knowledge means full, rounded knowledge, including ideas of moral values, then we can march with Buckle and inscribe in our basic platform of social education for social progress this principle, that social advance depends upon the extent to which knowledge is diffused and the freedom with which it pervades all classes of society. But there is a still more intimate sense in which moral progress may be said to depend absolutely upon increasing intelhgence. Morality is the experimental code of social relationships. This code grows in sweep and in refinement as perception of the nature and complexity of the world, of life, and of society becomes more delicate and comprehensive. An expanding intelligence alone can confer this heightened sensitiveness of perception. Fundamental human dis- positions have already compassed most of the ordinary social situations and have worked out laws, mores, and moral codes to fit them. But new moral problems can ordy be handled in the light of new increments of knowledge and constructive imagination.^ Certainly if, as we believe, * Cf. ante, chaps, v and vii ; see also Ross, Sin and Society. Federici con- ceived progress as fundamentally intellectual and therefore moral, because 472 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS superstition and passive acceptance of dogma are im- morality, new scientific truth means growth in morahty. Certain strident voices of criticism bid us stop here. Your argument is all very fine, they say, but it is false, because it starts from unsound premises. You assume that men are reasonable, thoughtful beings ; but really they are animals, lucky indeed if they think their way through one problem a week. They are creatures of instinct and passion, habitually drunk with emotion ; all that saves their tipsy stagger from a series of inglorious tumbles are the mores of their group and the fears imposed by a code of organized supernatural Schrecklichkeit} Now we grant without reservation that neither thought nor reason are ever found in their pure state. Ideas always come swaddled in feelings. We recognize that reason in men is only the very tip of their iceberg of mental life : they live by habit, impulse, illusion ; they are to a certain degree automatons, reflecting the customary acts and ideas of their sect, class, enlarging knowledge acts as a check upon the passions and reason supplants force ; in other words, knowledge spiritualizes the passions. He drops into mysticism, however, in holding that intelligence has an innate tendency to develop itself, and that progress is inevitable. {Lois dii Progris, II, 136, 223, etc.) Comte, too, held that the positive philosophy with its elevated social point of view would resolve any apparent discrepancy between knowledge and morality. (Positive Philosophy, Book VI, chap. 16.) ^ Brooks Adams is typical : "Another conviction forced upon my mind, by the examination of long periods of history, was the exceedingly small part played by conscious thought in molding the fatQ of man. -A.t the moment of action the human being almost invariably obeys an instinct, like an animal ; only after action has ceased does he reflect." {Law of Civilization and Decay, prefact to 2d ed., p. iii.) Mr. Balfour rounds out this criticism by contend- ing that progress cannot be effected wholly by cold reason because society "is founded — and from the nature of the human beings which constitute it, must, in the main, be always founded — not upon criticism but upon feelings and beliefs, and upon the customs and codes by which feelings and beliefs are, as it were, fixed and rendered stable." {A Fragment on Progress, 273-) THE INTELLECTUALISTS 473 or nation ; they are played upon by all the streams of suggestion ; they lapse into pure sentimentality to escape the tension of thinking ; their desires, like Bullstrode's in Middlemarch, are stronger than their theoretical beliefs, and they easily compel a satisfactory harmony between belief and the gratification of desire. This is why human development has been so painfully slow. This is the lead in humanity's wings. But instinctive behavior is modifiable and constantly modified in the direction of habit and in- telligence. Every man thinks — really thinks — sometime or other ; and the world has always had a saving remnant of men who were able to keep their heads above the surging level of impulse a little longer than the average. In- telligence is not a subordinate apparatus, set in motion by instincts. Curiosity, thought, and its other manifestations are just as truly native dispositions and act just as naturally as the instincts or emotions. This is why the plane of life has risen at all. Since these criticisms are so fundamental, we must en- deavor to analyze them more in detail. Take first the problem of instinct. To account off-hand for this or that behavior in a man or a social group as ''instinct" is fre- quently to play the ostrich. Instinct, like other phrases, is a ready way of saying, "I don't know." Of course there are certain primary impulses or instincts which form at least the point of departure for social life. There are also certain elementary sentiments — fear, pride, vanity, shame — with which we must reckon. All these psychological factors — and we might add imagination and ideals — are the colored threads out of which the social fabric is woven ; they design and execute the patterns economic, domestic, political, moral, or religious. All this is trite enough. But there is another factor which in a sense is the epitome and expression of all the rest, which seems to be the ulti- 474 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS mate -condition of mental and social life : this is the factor of desire, of wants, of choices deliberately pursued. Human hfe is a constant theme with variations, in which value is the theme. The whole economic process, the entire range of political and domestic activities resolve themselves into shiftings in the incidence of value. Morality, too, is nothing more nor less than this. Virtue is a correct selection of values ; vice or sin a faulty emphasis upon or choice of apparent values. Since it is desire that confers value upon things or institutions we are ultimately thrown back upon some philosophy of human desire as the only sound basis upon which to erect social theory or to formulate a program of advance. "Desire is the steam which drives the machinery of society," says Professor Ross. Herbert Spencer had put the same truth less pithily a generation before : . . . "The force which produces and sets in motion every social mechanism — governmental, mercantile, or other — is some accumulation of personal desires." ^ He of course drew the — for him — inevitable conclusion that desire will provide for itself all necessary satisfactions, spontaneously, with- out state-fostering, and better than the state could ever do. The premise is correct, but the conclusion fallacious. For desire is not some mystical driving force originating from without. Spencer himself would have been the first to deny it. Desire, like the will, is merely the motor side of certain experiences as they touch certain aspects of inherent constitution. What are the experiences necessary to stir up desire? Strong suggestion, pressure of popula- tion, storing up of capital with visions of its possibilities, migration with its new scenes, contact with other peoples in war or trade, and the like. Desire thus appears in- extricably bound up with human experiences and probably ^ Essay on Over-Legislation. THE INTELLECTUALISTS 475 makes respectful obeisance to imitation as its sovereign principle. Since imitation may be spontaneous or cal- culated and directed, it is evident that considerable room must be left in any social theory for the play of fostering and cultivating desires. The principle of desire may be phrased in various ways. It may be stated simply as the wish is father to the deed, which seems to be the key to Mr. Gunton's theory of prog- ress. He makes economic wants, or a progressive standard of living, the motive force to larger and more economical production, and also to higher real wages, which in turn become the marks of progress.^ I must confess to getting very little illumination from this supposed explanation, for it fails to tell me why I should increase my economic wants and therefore set going a progressive standard of living and therefore again speed up the economic organization and therefore finally arrive at progress. Have we not traveled around a vicious circle and merely come back to our point of departure? We have a progressive standard of living, therefore we progress ! Or, to try again, we may state the concept more absolutely as a law, as an irreducible principle. This, Mr. Blair has attempted in his "law of the evolution of human wants," to the effect that the satisfaction of any want gives rise to the development of another want, and the new want is, under normal circum- stances, of a higher order than the want whose place it takes.^ This principle bears in itself no necessarily mystical elements. It may easily be resolved into psychological quantities. It is made up of the inabihty to maintain a high state of tension for a long period, the necessity for ^ Wealth and Progress, 194; cf. pp. 188, etc. ; also Id., Principles of Social Economics, chaps, i-iii. ^ Human Progress, 168 ff. ; cf. H. George, Progress and Poverty, Book X, chap. iii. 476 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS increasing after a certain point the increments of stimulation to produce proportional increments of pain or pleasure ; and, at the risk of appearing cynical, we might add, childish ennui and ingratitude. Humanity is easily bored. It demands ceaseless variety. Off with the old and on with the new. Le roi est mort. Vive le roi ! Discontent is perhaps the only really primal quality with which we are eternally and inalterably stamped. So when M. Durkheim asks if progress does not proceed from the ennui which worn out pleasures leave, he is not indulging in a bit of smart sarcasm. At any rate he is in good company, for Comte and Lacombe had cracked the same joke. But this is not cynicism ; it is sound psychology. It proceeds from the same mental principle that induces me to eat the crust of my pumpkin pie first or to wish that the heart of a water- melon grew next the rind. It is a causal principle, in so far as we can talk of causal principles in social phenomena. Therefore, I believe Professor Ross is incorrect in criticizing the ennui theory as confusing cause with condition. The reaction against stufl&ng one's stomach or one's standard of living is no less causal than the forces which conspired to produce the stuffing. Dissatisfaction or discontent is the negative aspect of this problem. But being negative it is none the less valid. Action is initiated by a feeling that something is lacking and is directed toward the filling up of voids, physical, intellectual, spiritual. As Bergson points out, this con- stant creation of new needs is the very essence of intelligence. Here it is obvious that we can carry analysis no further. If we accept the idea that the pressure of vital necessities cooperates with the nature of intelligence itself to expand the circle of our desires and therefore of our life, we are in the clutch of metaphysics ; we are either floundering in the morass or we are winging our course gaily into the THE INTELLECTUALISTS 477 empyrean according as you estimate metaphysics. At any rate we are hopelessly out of range of objective science. An interesting study on "social progress as the substitu- tion of values," by an Italian scholar illustrates how this view of history leads us into the bourne from which no scientific traveler returns. He denies that science can deal in values or in progress in values. Value is a subject for philosophy or ethics. But what standards of value can we use in working out a systematic philosophy of history? Evidently not the mere sentiments of pleasure and pain, not a mere eudasmonistic criterion : for the value of life, individual and social, does not reside in the element of pleasure. Nor will simply a dry sociological formula of increasing complexity and specialization serve as the test for increasing value. Some end or purpose must always be posited as the motive for increasing social complexity. Hence it is impossible to determine objectively any direct and continuous increase or diminution of values : progress is rather a succession or substitution of values. Each successive form of historic civilization is the adequate expression of a value determined by human life. As each successive people incarnates or exemplifies some aspect of life — art, war, rehgion, industry — we may posit progress. Each epoch produces a form of value which is eliminated in historical development by another form expressed by a social class which appears on the scene. The sum of virtue and of morality remains essentially the same from genera- tion to generation, but its form changes. Moral progress consists not in discovering new principles, for they are already indelibly written into our conscience, but by more precise, delicate, and profound appHcation of principles already known and even traditional. If individual virtues seem to decrease, civic virtues increase visibly. This substitution of values explains the common sighing after 478 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS the ' ' good old times . ' ' For while we may lose one dimension only to find another, we do not always take kindly to the wrench. In short, to this writer, as to Eucken, progress consists in discovering all the latent energies of humanity and in making them grow to infinity. But this signifies that something has always existed in us which was capable of this expansion — something always identical with itself, some unchanging residuum. In Goethe's words, ^^ Der Mensch bleibet derselbe, die Menschheit schreitet immer fort." 1 Surely this is debatable ground. As to its general position we can only point out that it is avowedly non- scientific, and therefore will get us nowhere in an attempt to formulate the psychologic presuppositions of progress. It would be easy to demonstrate its inconsistencies even with itself : we shall stop to point out only one of them, however. Why, for instance, having accepted the principle that man is latently perfect, that he is sown in incorrupti- bility, should we infer that this group of men can discover and exemplify only one phase of our native perfection, that group another phase of it, and so on, instead of assum- ing that every individual and every group is capable of bursting into the fullness of perfection? Really accord- ing to this view there is progress for neither man nor humanity. History is for both Mensch and Menschheit simply sloughing off erroneous beliefs about human nature ; it is simply self-realization and self-identification with the Infinite Perfection which is the sum of all ReaUty. Now if this is what Sr. Chiapelli means, I have no quarrel with him ; for it is perfectly admissible to conceive human history as merely the faithful record of a wholly factitious life. ^ A. Chiapelli, "Nuovo teorie sul progresso civile," Niiova Antologia, De- cember, 191 1 ; the same article somewhat expanded appears, as "Le progres social comme substitution des valeurs," Rev. de melaphysique et morale, xx., 623-37. THE INTELLECTUALISTS 479 Accordingly we are a sort of amphibious species, living at once as Real Beings in the great ocean of Pure Being, and as make-believe beings going through a meaningless round of petty doings in a factitious world called the world of time and space. We are sitting as it were on the solid banks of eternity dabbling our feet in the stream of time. Now, this is all very well. I like to think of myself as free to dabble my feet or not. But after all for some darkly hidden reason we are compelled to dabble whether we will or no. Perhaps I ought to say we are pitched headlong into the stream of time and spend our whole lives trying desperately to swim to the banks of eternity which some sturdy guesser has described to us. The point is, if we hold strictly to this view of things we may as well give up once for all any hope of rationalizing our world or establishing anything worthy the name of scientific order. No, it is not necessary to plow over the field of meta- physics to appreciate the role of desire, especially in its aspect of discontent. Whatever its ultimate philosophical bearings it remains true that men want new and better things, get them, begin to compare them not with what they used to have but with what they think they ought to have next, are uneasy, struggle, strive, agonize, hope, pray, attack high heaven, and finally win the newly-desired, only to repeat the old round ad infinitum. Grimm's fairy tale of the fisherman and his ambitious wife, if we can forget their sad end, typifies this ceaseless process. And it is just as true of communities as it is of individuals. Democracies are not satisfied with democracy : hence "the cure for democracy is more democracy." Revolu- tions usually occur not when people are starving but in times of comparative plenty. The submerged tenth are in general not nearly so concerned about their steady advance up the cultural or industrial ladder as some of 480 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS their over-lords are. For this reason many over-lords object to teaching economics or politics to the disinherited : a little of this sort of wisdom is a dangerous thing — it creates a taste for more. To the benevolent despot sweaty nightcaps are a deal less problematic than teeming brains. Csesar would have men about him that are fat, sleek- headed men that sleep o' nights. The lean and hungry men have vast appetites for ideas which only whet themselves the more. The truth is that you may have a sort of resent- ful discontent in a state of poverty. But poverty is too weak, too unorganized, too unresistant to express itself. Really effective discontent must have a base of supplies. A fairly adequate income, some leisure, more education, and a vision of better things are its sinews of war. Does this not deny, then, the common formula for progress (ex- pressed, for example, by Novicow) as the passage from a smaller to a larger sum of enjoyment ? Manifestly there is no abiding place for happiness in things won. The joy in life must come, if it come at all, in the process of winning, in the sensation of matching one's powers against worthy odds. The kernel of the whole matter is that desires are open to suggestion, to molding, to pruning, and educating. It matters not how you classify them or what terminology you employ,^ they are each and every one of them funda- mentally an educational problem if we are not to abandon the field utterly to animal impulse. Take any of them at random just as they come — hunger, sex-appetite, play, showing off, curiosity — however instinctive it may seem, each one of them must be eked out by some sort of educative process before it can function at its highest efficiency. They all reduce to a question of educating the will. Here we return once more to Hegel and the idea of progress as * See Ross, Foundations of Sociology, chap, vii, for a summary of such classifications. THE INTELLECTUALISTS 481 will. But since desire is multiform, there being no desire- as-such, this education of the will means educating to desire rightly, to choose between conflicting desires, to arrange the various types of desires, not as in Ross' scheme accord- ing to a principle of logic or convenience, but according to definite standards of value, to be determined by their bearing on real development. In other words, education must determine the standards of wants which will make for substantial progress and not for mere economic or political evolution. Desire is the steam which moves the machinery of society and propels it upward only when it is properly applied. Otherwise it may burst the boiler, scald the engineer, and dump us all into the ditch. It is understood, then, that man is a surging mass of desires and impulses, but that this ocean of animality has its strong currents of wisdom and conscious reason. No man is always and everywhere either knave or fool. Hence we are thrown back once more upon the problem of how to purge and guide desires through knowledge. Brutish desires are spawned in the mud of error. If, then, we frankly discard the term "knowledge" and talk of truth, are we likely to come any nearer the mark? Progress to both the religious and the scientific mind has always been growth out of error into truth as each conceived it. This is the meaning of Comte's Three Stages. Huxley restated part of it in declaring that the historical evolution of humanity, which is generally and not unreasonably regarded as prog- ress, has been, and is being, accompanied by a coordinate elimination of the supernatural from its originally large occupation of men's thought.^ Error, of which this reli- ^ Cited in his Life and Letters, II, 317. 2i 482 THEORIES OF SOCL-VL PROGRESS gious superstition is only a fraction, becomes to Ward almost a substance, real as witches and devils were to medieval churchmen. Error is the most contagious disease in the world. The only hope for progress lies in making truth even more " catching." This is the mission of social science, says Ward. But is not this the business of all science? It is, rephes Ward. But nevertheless he sadly admits that all the science in the world has failed to remove any of the great world errors. "The great bulk of the population on the globe is steeped in error. Ignorance is comparatively safe. It is error that does the mischief, and the stronger the reasoning faculties working upon meager materials the more mis- leading and disastrous the erroneous conclusions thus drawn are for mankind." The problem is how to make truth accessible to more than an insignificant fraction of men, the elite. It must come through making truth more attractive than error, more alluring, more contagious. We shall not stop now to say how this shall be done. That problem will crop out again in its proper place. Meanwhile we shall only record Ward's general conclusion that the progressive character of any age depends upon the amount of truth embodied in its philosophy, i.e., in its ''world views." ^ This con- clusion tallies pretty closely with the net contribution of Buckle. It has the added advantage of stating very pre- cisely just that needed corrective to Buckle's view, namely, that knowledge if it is to function as progressive must be true knowledge, not merely true science, but true humanity. Here the paths of Buckle and Ward join those of Hegel and Comte : What is "the truth" (Ward) that generalized and spread throughout a population (Buckle and Ward) will make it free, will express the highest measure of human ^ Applied Sociology, 80-3. THE INTELLECTUALISTS 483 freedom (Hegel) ? The truth that we are all one and that it is our business to serve (Comte). Such socially dynamic truth implies on the one hand the use of constructive imagination and rational criticism ; on the other, the organization of conditions favorable to producing them. These are the only terms on which organized thought can undertake to transform drift into mastery. Mr. A. J. Balfour, in one of his addresses, made good use of the term ''moral imagination."^ I am not at all sure but that every real step in human progress up to the present moment has been secured by moral imagination rather than by imagination in the invention of new tools or new methods of production or new systems of govern- ment. It was brought out in a preceding paragraph that intellectual advance must rest on a distinctly moral basis, and vice versa. This will bear reiterating. In terms of imagination we might say that any conception of any public question whatsoever which was not morally sound must prove, however brilliant it might appear, inevitably detrimental to social welfare. Neither conservatism nor radicahsm, protection nor free trade, democracy nor aristocracy, state socialism nor private ownership is sound unless moral imagination has entered into the construc- tion of its program. Every scheme of political or eco- nomic reform which went to pot has done so because it lacked that absolute essential. Every scheme for wel- fare work for employees and all kindred welfare schemes must fail as Pullman failed if they neglect it. Not only the social system as a whole, but every detail in it must relate itself to this ethical passion and must continue to maintain itself through constant use of the moral imagination if it is to remain healthy and survive. This is precisely what ^ Essays and Addresses, 2d ed., ch. vii. 484 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS we meant by the term 'efficient imagination' in the discus- sion of the social self. It might also without violence to logic be made a synonym for 'truth.' The significant point about the whole matter is that we do not have to sit in our rocking-chairs and wait for soft breezes from the southland to blow moral imagination into us ; it is some- thing which can and must be cultivated. In fact, as it is the basis of social progress, so is it the fundamental element in social education. But moral imagination is not sufficient unto itself. Its reservoirs need constant cleaning and overhauling. Here is the function of critical thought, or science. This seems to be the real idea behind W. K. Chfford's bold claim that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.^ The springs of imagination are not released so long as tradition and superstition hold sway. Imagination is dynamic, tradition and dogma static. The chief glory of science, — far overtopping its contributions to material achievement, — ■ is to have broken through those crusts of authority; in other words, to have stung man out of his dream of quiescent or passive adaptation and into the waking state of active adaptation.^ On this basis rests the claim that the criti- cally minded individual is the paramount force for progress.^ Since organized error will yield only to organized truth it is essential that deliberate provision be made in social ^ Lecture on The Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought. ^ Cf. Draper, op. cit., chap, xi ; Crozier, Civilization and Progress, 419-28; Bristol, Social Adaptation, 277 ; Bushee, Pop. Sci. Mo., 79 : 236-51. ^ Cf. Lavrov: "Without criticism there is no development; without criticism there is no perfection ; without criticism of one's environment man would never have progressed beyond the animal stage." Hence the need for enlightened individuals as disseminators, and the categorical im- perative of the enlightened minority towards the majority. (From Three Discussions on the Contemporary Importance of Philosophy, quoted in Hecker, Russian Sociology, 108 ; cf. Ibid., 199, for a statement of Kareyev's sub- stantially similar position.) THE INTELLECTUALISTS 485 polity for creating conditions under which science may flourish. We have already seen how under present hap- hazard conditions it is all but impossible to get real public opinion. Harder still is it to secure real scientific truth. Hence we are forced to discard the old trust that thought would appear miraculously like art under the patronage of the wealthy few, or that it would slip in as the by- product of religion or invention or voyages or state- craft. The Great Society of the present or the future must heed the demand for some form of public (not private) endowment of thought.^ I mean not only scientific in- vention, but all forms of scientific research, including the social sciences and every branch of human knowledge which gets beyond mere recapitulation of the past and strives to enlarge the horizon of truth. It may be said that our universities already offer this opportunity. But the pres- sure of administrative authority, the whims of benefactors, the ignorant interference of trustees and legislators, to say nothing of the multifarious outside demands made upon the time of university faculties, hamper the creative search for truth. We must depend upon the higher institutions of learning, but we must go deeper and fare farther than that. The specialist is always in danger of being con- founded with the charlatan in the minds of an illiterate pubHc. The inference is obvious. Before scientific truth can bear its fruit in rational progress the pioneer of thought must be backed up by an ever widening group of the criti- cally minded and discerning who know the value of research and will fight to maintain the conditions favorable to it even though they may not be able to follow the sesquipeda- lian terminology of the individual scientist. Here we touch finally a basic condition to the progress of truth (likewise to the promotion of health) : I mean the ^ Cf. Wallas, The Great Society, chap. x. 486 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS elimination of fear. Fear may have been one of the great disciplinary agents in our animal past, but it is always coercive, repressive, conservative, constrictive. Fear never achieved any positive end. It is negative. It tames but does not expand. Hence its value is limited, particularly for an age somewhat emerged from pure savagery. An age of progress is an age of faith and hope — in the broad scientific sense. An age of progressive thought demands a fearless search for truth, unhampered by dogma or class prejudice or organized hindrance. The call of the horizon not the fear of dead gods discovered the Americas and un- locked the principle of evolution. This is the truth that makes free. Courage to face the issue of pohtical privilege would complete the revolution of democracy against autocracy which has been seething for three hundred years. Courageous casting ofT all bondage to authority and super- stition would carry through the religious revolution begun four centuries ago, wipe out the last vestige of religious privilege, and settle the claims of spiritual liberty against ecclesiasticism. Courage to think about the nature of property and the history of ownership would pave the way for the great revolution against economic privilege now under way, would adjust the rights of persons against those of property, and create industrial democracy in place of autoc- racy. This is why privileged classes and individuals often prefer that men should remain stupid, ignorant, and sensu- ous. Thought is dangerous when once unleashed, for it begins to question. The real menace of privilege is its tendency to substitute anodynes for stimulants. This is the answer of science to passion and haphazard day-dreaming. This is the judgment of thought upon aristocracy. This is the inexorable condition of real prog- ress. Humanity can move onward only as it generates imagination, moral imagination, clarified by untrammeled THE INTELLECTUALISTS 487 critical thought, daring imagination based upon fact and enlarged by scientific faith. Only when the majority of a social group are provided with the means of finding out truth for themselves and actually develop the capacity for constructive thought can we hope to realize the noble vision of the ideahsts. If that dream of a society made up of conlrihiitive types of personality, real aristocracy, univer- sal aristocracy, coincides with some Divine Purpose, so much the better. If not, we must travel the road alone. For along that road lies the only hope of achieving mastery over blind drift. CHAPTER XXXII THE ARTISTS I In Literature In admitting the sheer power of sound thinking as the mainspring of human progress there was obviously no intention of limiting thought to the physical sciences, or indeed to what is called science in general as opposed to other forms of thought. A world that put its whole trust in chemistry or mathematics would not get very far. The creative impulse striving after truth is the sole determinant of the value in a thought-form. If it is true that this creative impulse often finds its highest expression in the fine arts, we should expect to find them functioning largely in human development. Hence another group of ideolo- gists demand a hearing, namely, those who make the some- what extraordinary claim that ideas-in-literature are the moving forces in human progress. Walt Whitman was one of its most outspoken protagonists. In Dejnocratic Vistas he avows : "To the ostent of the senses and eyes, I know, the influ- ences which stamp the world's history are wars, uprisings or downfalls of dynasties, changeful movements of trade, important inventions, navigation, military or civil govern- ments, advent of powerful personalities, conquerors, etc. These of course play their part : yet it may be, a single new thought, imagination, abstract principle, even Hterary style, fit for the time, put in shape by some great literatus, 488 THE ARTISTS 489 and projected among mankind, may duly cause changes, growths, removals, greater than the longest and bloodiest war, or the most stupendous merely pohtical, dynastic, or commercial overturn. In short, as, though it may not be realized, it is strictly true, that a few first-class poets, philosophs, and authors, have substantially settled and given status to the entire religion, education, law, sociology, etc., of the hitherto civilized world, by tingeing and often creating the atmospheres out of which they have arisen, such also must stamp, and more than ever stamp, the interior and real democratic construction of this Ameri- can continent to-day and days to come. ... In the civi- lization of to-day it is undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond all — ■ shapes the character of church and school — or, at any rate, is capable of doing so. Including the literature of science, its scope is indeed unparallel'd. . . . The writers of a time hint the mottoes of its gods." Everybody is familiar with the poet's challenge to the statesman : "Let me make the songs for a nation and I care not who makes her laws." A more recent member of the brotherhood, Mr. A. W. E. O'Shaughnessy, has caught up the same idea in his We are the Music-Makers. I have already spoken of Anatole France's ardent defense of Utopias. In Clopinel he sketches his own Utopia. But how realize it? By the word, he replies. "The word like the sling of David strikes down the violent and brings low the strong." And this word is literature, whether the polished eloquence of an address on Utopia or the mor- dant satire of the lie des Pingouins, or in the warm and genuine sentiment of Opinions Sociales. It is the power of the word removed from priest and medicine man, divested of trumpery magic, reclothed with the garment of truth in idea and sentiment, and entrusted to the great soul which can best communicate itself in the rhythm and ca- dence of noble prose and poetry. Aristophanes expressed 490 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS this idea in The Birds by calling words wings for the eleva- tion of human nature. Is there any justification for such faith in literature? Is literature ever a national or progressive force, or is it, as De Tocqueville asserted, always subordinate to social conditions and political institutions? It is both, now cause, now effect. Uncle Tom's Cabin was unmistakably the product of the economic, political and ethical conditions of America in the fifties ; but it was just as unmistakably a causal factor in the upheaval of the sixties. The popular song Lilliburlero, crude and trifling as it now sounds to us, is said to have contributed not a little to the great English Revolution of 1688. It cast in popular form the racial and religious prejudices of the day and served as a battering ram against the House of Stuart and the Catholic Church. A contemporary anonymous writer was not far afield when he stated Lord Wharton's conviction that by this song he had "sung a deluded prince out of three kingdoms." James G. Blaine lost his race for the presidency partly at least through his ill-timed reference to the forces of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebelhon" which opposed him. The alliterative aphorism proved a boomerang more effective than tons of campaign literature. ^'Marching through Georgia " sung by campaign glee clubs or played by brass bands at the head of torchlight processions has probably won more votes for the Republican party in the last forty years than all its stump orators or campaign literature. The Spanish-American war will never stand for much to the American people, largely because it generated no first-rate song or ballad. The popular cry "To hell with Spain," while it had what the short story writers call "punch", was too slender a sentiment to endure. It lacked the good humor and vision that make for popular or epoch-making literature. THE ARTISTS 49 1 These simple illustrations indicate the power of litera- ture to work social change. But social change is not prog- ress. Now should literature be reckoned a force for progress also, and, if so, why? For two reasons, the one psychologic, the other sociologic. Taine said, and rightly, "The proper office of literature is to note the sentiments." Since ideas can only be minted for popular circulation through stamping them with feelings, it is evident that Hterature, especially exoteric literature, is one of the readi- est means in this process of mintage. Or if we prefer a more philosophic view of the function of literature, Pro- fessor Corson has clearly stated it : "Literature, more especially poetic and dramatic liter- ature, is the expression in letters of the spiritual, cooperat- ing with the intellectual, man, the former being the primary, dominant coefficient." ^ The sociological argument for literature, especially poetry and the drama, grows out of the fact that both are indis- solubly united in their origins with primitive pantomime, music and the dance ; all were fused into those ancient ceremonies of magic and social polity whereby the gods were appeased and human neighbors coerced into peace and unanimity. Curious examples of how poetry might heal feuds between individuals no less than between groups sometimes crop out. Crantz, for instance, in his History of Greenland, describes an eighteenth century hyperborean singing combat somewhat similar to those noted by Darm- stetter among the Arabs : "If one Greenlander imagines himself injured by another, he betrays not the least trace of vexation or wrath, much less revenge, but he composes a satirical poem : this he repeats so often with singing and dancing in the presence of his domestics, and especially the women, till they have ^ The Aims of Literary Study, 24. 492 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS all got it in their memory. Then he publishes a challenge everywhere, that he will fight a duel with his antagonist, not with a sword but a song. . . . The whole body of beholders constitute the jury, and bestow the laurel, and afterwards the two parties are the best friends." ^ The two chief hindrances to literature as a social power are its lack of moral sincerity and its remoteness from aver- age life. Too many writers are merely men of letters who very skillfully 'play the sedulous ape,' exploit the fashion or prejudice of the hour, manifest pleasing facility and win great popularity, but whose ideas go no deeper than the a-b, ah of the Horn Book. The chief difficulty, however, lies in the inaccessibility of literature to the great mass of us upon whom lies the burden of sustaining and perpetu- ating the achievements of our race. Literature still has too much of belles-lettrism about it to serve very seriously the cause of social progress. With a few exceptions it is largely the mouthpiece of a few privileged circles. There is too much affectation of the purist, the precious, the esoteric. Literature really to serve must not live in tiny jeweled private chapels, but must fill to overflowing a vast Gothic cathedral capable. of holding a whole city population, or must stand the test of the hillside amphitheater, with its glare of sun, its dazzling blue sky, and its cheering, yes sweat- ing thousands. "Not until, from some cause or other, the whole population shall be brought to interest itself actively in intellectual affairs will it be possible for a truly national literature to come forth which shall become the common property of all classes of society," concludes Odin after his profound study of literary genius.^ And it will become the common property of all classes only if it springs out of the common heart, only if it reflects the com- ^Op. cit. i., 178. ^ La Genese des Grands Hommes, 564. THE ARTISTS 493 mon origin and the common destiny of us all, only if it be allowed to choose its subject and its own manner of expression. No literature, no science, and no art can grow in an age of repression. Puritanism produced but a scanty crop of real literature ; Catholicism, but little science ; Judaism, no art worth consideration. The decree of the Council of Nice in 787, which declared that the subjects of painting, their arrangement, etc., was the province of the clergy and the execution alone that of the painters, was almost fatal to art. The sense of proportion and form, likewise imagination and personal vision, were lost; stiffness, brutahty, ugliness, and steriHty prevailed. Of course this view of literature throws overboard all pretense of art for art's sake. It frankly requires that by the very charter of its hberties art shall have a definite moral purpose, that it shall have a distinctly social mis- sion. Many straws indicate that hterary art is conceiving its function anew. One of the minor French poets, Clovis Hugues, has perhaps most vigorously expressed the social mission of the poet in his poetical credo. "The poet has a social function. It is his province to glorify the beautiful, but it also belongs to him to serve the just, which is its highest representation. . . . We must love and sing of the rose because it is beautiful ; but we must also remember that its thorns often crowned the thinker's brow. Poetry is only great if it completes dream by idea, idea by action." It was such sentiments that won for him early the title of the "poete du socialisme." We have already seen how the greatest living French literary genius found him- self only when he found a social cause to which he might devote his powers — the cause of the humble and dis- inherited. We have also seen how Ibsen conceived the function of drama as wholly social. And the greatest 494 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS living English dramatist, Mr. Bernard Shaw, under a mask of facetiousness plants himself squarely on the same platform. In the Preface to his Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet he declares : "I am not an ordinary playwright in general practice. I am a speciahst in immoral and heretical plays. My reputation has been gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals. In particular, I regard much current morality as to economic and sexual relations as disastrously wrong ; and I regard certain doc- trines of the Christian religion as understood in England to-day, with abhorrence. I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinions in these matters. I have no other effectual incentive to write plays. ..." Give literature a conscious social mission conceived in heroic terms ; and teach it not after the manner of differ- ential calculus or soil-analysis but, as Professor Corson taught it, with the Spirit and with power, or as the late President Harper is said to have taught Hebrew, like a succession of hairbreadth escapes, and literature must become the common property of us all and join in that stream of energy which is raising us out of the pit. In the Graphic and Plastic Arts But little remains to be said on the role of the other arts. What apphes to hterature applies equally well in general to the plastic arts or to music. Real art never has been divorced from common life, and from this constant asso- ciation must always be reckoned with in analyzing human development. For man always struggles for happiness, not mere subsistence. And art is the expression of joy THE ARTISTS 495 in life. Hence the aesthetic motives tend to overlay the mere economic basis of desires. The tension between desire and fulfillment sets in higher up. The symphony of life is played in a higher key with greater complexity and refinement of instrumentation. All social evolution and individual culture are a constant cultivation of the higher levels of idea and sentiment at the expense of the lower. Progress is a growth in imaginative power, in ability to discount present for future, lower for higher. It is partially true that memory of pain was the goad to progress in lower stages of culture ; but pleasurable anti- cipation is certainly more active now. Thus the higher prudential and pleasurable motives supplant the old retrospective-pain-economy. The sign and seal of this supplanting is the healthy growth of art. Art, conse- quently, is not only an index of past achievements ; it may become the indispensable element to future advance, particularly if we accept civic ideals or democratic ideals as enduring elements of human progress. The art impulse is one of the astonishing marks of even neohthic man. His cave-paintings, carvings in bone and stone, spear heads, chipped axes, all reveal aesthetic grop- ings. Hence we can almost say that with self-conscious- ness comes art. Therefore art becomes, if not nature, at least second nature. And its role increases in proportion as humanity climbs up out of the pit. From the sociologi- cal standpoint one of man's most wonderful achievements is his art. A brief analysis will show why both theoretical and applied sociology are interested in it. First of all, art is a social product. The artist is not a special creation, a sort of divinely constituted mandarin who sits apart from his fellows, owing them nothing, — a Samuel dedicated from his youth to the service of the god- dess, or idol, Beauty. Granting his claim that he must 496 THEORIES OF SOCL\L PROGRESS be intolerant and narrow does not confer on him the patent of self-sufficiency. Art is not a mysterious El Dorado hid- den by taboos from the common gaze or aspiration. It is part and parcel of the same history and pohtics, commerce and religion, that have yielded us our Constitution, our sewing machine, our fireless cooker, our women's clubs. A glance at savage art will illustrate. Savage art, while to a certain extent an expression of the play instinct, is at the same time tremendously serious and bound up with every activity of life. The South Sea Islander carves his spear or his canoe because of love of line and color, because of pride in his skill, because of a practical belief in the magical virtues of the figures he cuts and colors. He tattooes his skin because the design and color tickle his fancy, but still more because his tattoo marks give him a rank among his fellows, indicate his nationality, and will serve him as a passport to the gloomy world hereafter. Indeed the savage decorates his spear or his person not altogether from vanity, but rather in the spirit in which we write genealogies, or make prayers, or do other work pleasing to the gods and our fellows. Furthermore, sav- age art is a means of tribal control and government.^ All the savage arts are just so many bonds of union between the tribesman and his fellows here in this world, and with the ghosts and gods beyond the grave. Graphic art may function as literature in generating social sympathy and cementing a social group. Thus Pope Gregory in the seventh century decreed that paintings fill the churches in order that those who could not read in books might at least read on the walls. A thousand years before, Chinese art had become epic, as it were, being devoted to the representation of national heroes and the portrayal of sages. The hand of Confucius is ^ Cf . ante, chap, xix, on the role of dancing in social solidarity. THE ARTISTS 497 evident here, for like Plato, he felt that art could be made to serve social ends. Secondly, art is a moral agency. Its purpose and func- tion is the deepening and broadening of our sympathies through stimulating healthy emotion. Tolstoi said, "Art remains what it was and what it must be, nothing but the infection by one man of another, or of others, with the feelings experienced by the infector." Guyau carries the thought a step farther: "The artistic emotion then is just the social emotion which a life analogous to our own (and made by the artist) produces in us." All the arts are at bottom nothing but means of condensing individual emotion to render it transmissible to others. We might define art in this light as emotion so stamped and minted as to circulate and become social ; that is, as an emotional means of communion with our fellows. In this sense it enables us to live the lives and adventures of others, where in default of it we should be confined to our own narrow round of experiences. It is imagination, and thus participation in a larger Hfe. It is communion, and as man is by nature social, he has a universal need for communion, hence a universal art hunger. Prison art and prison inscriptions nicely illustrate this theory of the origin and function of art, namely, the communication of feehngs to stir up sympathy. Prisoners go to the greatest lengths in their often crude and naive attempts to communi- cate with their fellows through artistic expression. They will spend months carving nut-shells or whittling boats or writing poetry or sketching, not merely to kill time but because whenever the average human being is isolated for any considerable length of time from his fellows, he feels the need of embodying some literary or artistic expression of himself.^ This desire for self-expression, however, is ^ Cf. Ellis, The Criminal, 211. 2k 498 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS quite another thing from hunger for absolute beauty or skillful technique. Indeed prison graphic art is usually very rough and coarse, frequently highly expressive, but rarely or never beautiful ; its subjects spring from the criminal's interests — sex, acts of violence and prowess, or contests with the law. This bears out the dicta of that group of critics who tell us that art is not craftsmanship, nor beauty, nor has it aught to do with beauty. Beauty is only one element in life, one of the things that art as a language of the finer emotions seeks to share and communicate. Art then is essentially the means of registering and com- municating sympathies. If so, we have a standard by which to judge works of art, both as works of art and as elements in progress : do they stir up sympathy with the best and worthiest things about us? It is the same old test that Plato would apply to music and poetry : do they communicate greatness to the soul? Do they initiate us into the great mysteries of the universe? Or do they merely stir an admiration for the cleverness of the artist? But what of the common objection that while art may be moral enough artists are immoral? It may be true that some painters are notoriously loose in their living. But no great artist was ever loose and immoral when he produced a great painting. The fine frenzy of artistry is a refiner's fire that drives out common grossness. This is why Huysmans cried: "Art is the only clean thing on earth, except holiness." It is not abihty to draw or appre- ciate color values that creates a masterpiece; the artist's technique is merely the mechanical expression of his own superior vision and greatness of heart, or in other words, his own indefinable nobiHty and moraUty.^ ^ It is this function of mental and moral enlargement that should rank the artist along with the scientist, the teacher, or the inventor in any social readjustment having as its purpose the organization of conditions favorable to creative thought. THE ARTISTS 499 It is this finer vision of the good and true that permits art to "improve upon Nature" and to kindle love for Na- ture itself. Browning in his Fra Lippo Lippi says : " We're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see." A new love of contour and mass of mountains we may catch from Leonardo's fascinating dim blue backgrounds. Light and clouds take on a new significance from Turner's brush. If we have never taken thought for cherry blos- soms, a Japanese artist will force their beauty home to us. Why are these things so? In a word, it is because love begets love. The love of a noble artist soul for mountain or cloud or cherry blossom kindles a like love in us. He is an artist because he loves, not because he can paint. Hol- man Hunt, the Enghsh artist, lived his own maxim, namely, that "art inspiration is the redundance of an overflowing heart. It is the spirit of love." When we speak of art as having an essential moral pur- pose we do not mean that the artist is to say to himself as he works : Now I must make this figure teach not to steal, that one not to kill, the other not to commit adultery. But rather that, consciously or unconsciously, he communi- cates through his work a deep feeling for beauty and truth, an emotional suggestion which may be capitahzed into social morality. This was what Brunetiere meant when he said : "Art has its object or end outside and beyond itself; and if this object is not precisely moral it is social, which is almost the same thing. Art has a social function ; and its true morality is the consciousness of having accom- plished this function." In estimating the value of art to social development and the expansion of the human personahty one must be careful SOO THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS to avoid the fallacy of confounding the evolution of art itself with art as an outlet for the impulse to create, to love, and to worship. I do not care to enter here into the old controversy as to whether art has advanced or declined since the age of Pericles. It certainly has developed since the Stone Age. And Sumner was just as surely extrava- gant in declaring that while useful arts advance the fine arts do not.^ Some fine arts have improved noticeably in the last two millenniums, notably painting and textiles. But in general we must accept the principle that each suc- cessive age redistributes its energies and reapportions by a pragmatic rule of division of labor, the functions to be required of its various institutions and arts. That age which skimps its art atrophies a very large part of its crea- tive energies. That society which consciously cultivates its art impulses Hves broadly and stamps its name upon an epoch in human history. Let me summarize : Art has served as a means to human development in so far as it has refined man's interests in self-maintenance, self -perpetuation, and self-gratification, or as it has ministered to his altruistic and transcendental impulses. It has created less and less gross satisfactions for the needs of food, clothing, and shelter. It has created an atmosphere of nobler sentiments surrounding the rela- tion of the sexes ; love conceived by art transcends mere physiology. Art widens the whole area of the aesthetic impulses and thus broadens and refines the methods of self-cultivation and self-expression. It has always been a powerful aid to group cohesion, whether in the form of song, dancing, the drama, poetry, painting, or the plastic arts. And finally through its connection with religion and philosophy it sustains the transcendental interests through the worship of universal harmony and beauty. ' Folkways, p. 604. THE ARTISTS 501 Herbart held that art was unnecessary to life. He was wrong. Life in itself amounts to little. It is the "good life" that counts. It is beauty that opens up the highest values of life. Hamlet said : "What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more." Art has widened and deepened the "chief good and market of his time " ; hence has helped deliver man from the matrix of the beast. PART IV IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS CHAPTER XXXIII SOME EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Civilization may be looked at from two standpoints, as we have already hinted: first, as the necessary conse- quence of man's nature and the forces which have con- strained him ; second as, in part at least, the result of his own conscious design. The first is civilization by divine fiat or natural necessity or by definition. The second is civihzation by choice and aspiration.^ Both views com- mingle in any true view of human development, especially in its earlier stages. Most of past civilization is, so to speak, of rather an instinctive type, a more or less uncon- scious electing of fairly effective means for attaining on the whole fairly worthy ends. I say this achievement was rather instinctive than rational and conscious, for it was more or less spontaneous and it was comparatively easy. " Nature " is vastly more amenable to human direc- tion than is man's own nature. Consequently, as Ward points out,^ material civilization has moved more rapidly than moral progress. Nature has been fairly tamed and gives up her treasures freely. Man is confronted with the tremendous problem of squaring himself with himself in the effort to utilize these riches justly. Future civili- zation must, in consequence, become more and more ra- * Cf. Ward, Pure Sociology, 20-1. ^ Pure Sociology, 255. 505 5o6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS tional, self-motivated, definitely willed. The haphazard, unconscious, and halting progress of the past may be con- sidered simply as the preparation for a conscious and deliberate movement toward social reorganization in the interests of a program of conscious advance. The problem of social progress, and therefore of the social arts, is whether societal organization shall always be left to nature and chance development, shall be allowed to struggle aimlessly along, or whether it can be made the subject of a specific science with its appropriate technique ; in other words, whether intelligence can assert its mastery over the drift of passion. We agree with Ward that social progress is artificial in contradistinction to racial evolution which is natural and more or less blind ; it is the fruit of purpose and design, however vaguely or crudely formulated. All the science and philosophy of the past and of the present will avail only as they contribute to the formulating of an "articu- late social philosophy." In other words, if we are to avoid the wastes and incoherences of the past and if the sum of our social efforts is to have the success which we anticipate and which it deserves, a definite social will must be evoked and allowed to function with increasing definiteness. Will, as Wundt conceives it, may have created society : from atom and animal group to human society we may see only will-units ; but it remains for society in the future to demonstrate Wundt's definition of it as a real Gesamt- personlichkeit. It is a person barely roused from deep sleep. In a Httle while this Leviathan may reach the deadly serious stage of Rodin's Penseur. From that rapt meditation on itself shall come the will-to-transformation. Is all this moonshine? Can society by taking thought create itself anew ? Man has hitherto, according to Ferrero, produced two types of civilization : the violent and the EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 507 fraudulent.^ Can man by any means whatsoever now at his disposal do anything towards producing a new type of civilization marked by justice, brotherhood, and service? I believe we can. Our analysis of how the social person- ality is built up and orientated supplied the evidence for this belief. It ought to be possible to build up a civiliza- tion in which the virtues of intelligent self-discipline, cour- age, moral vigor, and community sense would predominate. What is more to the point, we have already at our disposal at least the beginnings of forces wherewith to propel our- selves onward to that desired end. It is unnecessary to appeal to supra-rational sanctions or powers. Society is a stupendous storage battery of energies equal to the task if it once gets a clear vision of its own ends. It will modify itself in the interests of advance and nothing outside of it can so modify it. No one has more clearly seen or stated this than John Morley. In the essay On Compromise he wrote : "It would be odd if the theory which makes progress depend on modification forbade us to attempt to modify. When it is said that the various successive changes in thought and institution present and consummate themselves spontaneously, no one means by spontaneity that they come to pass independently of human effort and volition. On the contrary, this energy of the members of the society is one of the spontaneous elements. It is quite as indis- pensable as any other of them, if indeed it be not more so. Progress depends upon tendencies and forces in a community. But of these tendencies and forces, the organs and repre- sentatives must plainly be found among the men and women of the community, and cannot possibly be found anywhere else. Progress is not automatic, in the sense that if we were all to be cast into a deep slumber for the space of a generation, we should awake to find ourselves i"Violenti e Frodolenti in Romagna," // Mondo Criminale Italiano, 1894. 5o8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS in a greatly improved social state. The world only grows better, even in the moderate degree in which it does grow better, because people wish that it should, and take the right steps to make it better." ^ There is, as we have seen, a philosophy of man which makes him not human, nor a citizen of this country, but rather a child of the Infinite, who is merely a pilgrim and a stranger in this world of illusion. Hence to such a phi- losophy there is no use in voluntary effort at progress. Man is already perfect and no amount of willing or strug- gling can make him any more so. To those who acknowl- edge this philosophy I can only say that the same Infinite which begat both them and their philosophy has seen fit to plunge them into a world of problems and activities, a world which at least constrains them to eat and sleep and procreate their kind. We are all of us living in the infinite ; still we must determine and definitely choose to bring our mortal and finite history up to the plane of the immortal and infinite, and into harmony with it. Hence, as Morley insists, we must not so misunderstand the doctrine of evolution "as to beheve that the world is improved by some mystic and self-acting social discipline, which dispenses with the necessity of pertinacious attack upon institutions which have outlived their time, and in- terests that have lost their justification." The religion and the social philosophy of progress are mihtant and active ; there is no place for fatuity or quietism in them. I do not mean by this that progress into the millennium is to come about like a stage transformation-scene. We shall not go to bed in an age of exploitation and wake up in one of service. The making over of human nature and of human society must be gradual to be permanent. Hence * Op. cit., ed. 1906, pp. 209-10. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 509 there must be moderation in all things, even in self-criti- cism. This is no time for morbidness over past stupidity or regrets over the snail's pace at which we seem to have traveled. We have no surplus energy for tears. The job of hauling society up to a basis of justice and service is a heroic one and demands every ounce of energy in us. Up to this point the various theories of human progress have on the whole regarded man either as the pawn of exterior powers and forces — ■ cosmic, divine, chemical, biologic, climatic, geographical, economic — which them- selves aimed perhaps at some ulterior goal of which man was ignorant : or as only indirectly conspiring at progress, his direct aims being adaptation to environment, storing up capital, subduing enemies, enjoying his family. Now we must look at man as a conscious agent aiming directly at his own improvement and advance. In other words we are confronted with the problem of whether man can lift himself by his own bootstraps. To avoid any possible ambiguity we now propose to answer this question with a categorical yes : man not only can, but must lift himself by his bootstraps ; that is the only appointed way for his salvation. To be sure he has in the past made a very poor show of this method of lifting himself. But the trouble was, he did not know he could do it ; indeed he scarcely knew whether he had boots on at all or not ; and certainly he did not know that his arms could connect up with his bootstraps. He did not even know that he could lift himself up into the air and navigate in a medium lighter than himself. Fifty years ago a good deal of time was wasted in proving how absurd was the idea of airships. And about the same time more breath and ink were wasted in proving how man is a mere focal point for a complex of physical and chemical forces, and therefore that he is the football of blind forces, blinder than Fate, urging and 5IO THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS prodding him onward, but whether up or down or in a circle nobody knew. Fortunately we are getting out of this scientific treadmill. But we are still a long day's journey from the full knowl- edge of how to utilize the proceeds of human achievement in a workable program for human advance. The future is not something already made which we must positively await, said Michelet ; it is for us to make it what we want it to be. Yes, but how ? The great difficulty is that society is not yet clearly self-conscious, self-knowing. Just as man as an object of nature is the last thing to which man has given serious attention, just as the breeding of men comes at the tail-end of a century or two of thremmatology and animal husbandry, so knowledge of its own nature and powers is the latest quest of society. The most recent infants born to the family of sciences are just the sciences that deal with this self-revelation of the nature of society, namely, psychology and sociology. Men are beginning only faintly to glimpse their real social nature ; and human groups are still stumbling about in the twilight like blind men among tombs trying to know themselves, trying to get out of their toils, struggling to formulate some purposive goal and to lay out a highway thither. If Goethe was right, and we must win self-knowledge through eating our bread with bitter tears and through nights of sorrow, human society has certainly paid the full price and ought now to be in a fair way to receive its promised guerdon. But where is the mighty agent which will bring about this conscious and well-articulated plan of social advance ? Education, reply the teachers and some sociologists. Dewey speaks of the school as a fundamental means of social progress. "To an extent characteristic of no other institution, save that of the state itself, the school has power EDUCATIOiNAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 51 1 to modify the social order." ^ Ellwood points to education as "the chief means to which society must look for all substantial social progress." ^ But the problem of education as a factor in social progress is not so simple as might appear. It is one thing to say with Ward that education is the paramount "social force," and quite another to claim that it is the supreme or even an important element in "progress." How, if at all, is education a social force? Does it counteract natural selection? Is it an independent force? If so, how can it be determined and measured? Can you classify "civic worth" by it? Can you measure it by statistics of crime or insanity? Or by relation to health and longevity? Or by increase of wealth and earning power in the individual or group? Or by the prevalence of general well-being and the capacity to enjoy? Or by the growth of good government and the abatement of civic nuisances? Or by cessation of war? Or increase of genius? Or increase in power to work ? Or, finally, by expansion of sympathy, brotherhood, and the power to love? Much depends upon what we include under the term " education." If we limit it to school instruction or home teaching it is easy to prove that such education may be not only non-progres- sive, but even anti-social and anti-progressive. Much of primitive formal instruction was rather of the repetitive, memoriter, and therefore non-progressive type of educa- tion ; its chief aims were to secure and develop keen per- ceptive powers, physical endurance, and discipline.^ It satisfied chiefly the three primary interests of men. In the absence of most of our prudential motives and lacking the stimulus of a developmental theory of life, it tended ^ Moral Principles in Education, p. v. ^ Sociology and Modern Social Problems, 2d ed. p. 359. ^ Cf. my Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, 146, etc. 512 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS naturally to become static and repressive. Such education had the effect of secreting and hardening the cake of custom. Social variations came less from conscious teaching than from exterior forces such as war, migration, exogamy, trade, and that whole process we have learned to call the cross-fertilization of cultures. Any system of formal instruction may be considered from two standpoints ; first, as the mirror of the prevailing "interest" or the current type of social desire and activity; second, as an active element in the social process. Edu- cation reflecting other social activities is thus both strength and weakness. If the school uses methods and a curric- ulum quite out of touch with current history it works in a social and intellectual vacuum and loses its force. Here as elsewhere the educational genius must be related to his times and get his inspiration from them. On the other hand education that mirrors decadence, as later Greek schools did, hastens the process of destruction. Greece, after her period of glory, when the privileged classes failed to do their public duty, when communal life decayed, when interest in public Hfe waned, and mercenary soldiers were called in, reflected this degradation in her schools. Gymnastics was generally dropped or emasculated into mere acrobatics and personal feats of strength. Most of the Pentathlon had lapsed by Plutarch's time. Rhetoric and music took the place of athletics. Personal enjoyment of hfe supplanted the old ideal of service to the state. These decadent forces are typified on the one hand by the growth of large landed estates ; on the other by rapid depopulation.^ The danger that education may run in reflecting not the best but the worst or the mediocre in a current civili- ^ Cf. Barth, "Erziehung und Gesellschaft," in Rein's Encyklopadisches Handbuch der Padagogik, Bd. ii. EDUCATIONiVL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 513 zation may be further illustrated by the apparent failure of our present school system to counteract such phenomena of industrial anarchy as the Macnamaras. Instead of withstanding or eliminating them our educational system has fed them. By fostering an extreme individuahsm (so intense that, as Dewey points out, we have made it a crime for one student to aid another at school), by empha- sizing the principle of "get ahead at any price," by abetting the spirit of exploitation for profit, the schools have con- tributed to that recklessness of cost in men or money which spells industrial anarchy.^ The history of education since the middle ages offers an interesting example of how it is at the same time a social agency engaged in fixing a peculiar type of mind, and a target for other forces. Middle age teaching was essentially didactic ; for the whole of truth had been revealed and communicated en bloc and was in the custody of God's Holy Church. Since no more truth was discoverable it only remained to learn literally the body of truth and to keep it intact. Hence the emphasis on memoriter method, on dogma, and the rigorous repression of free untrammeled inquiry. If Aristotle and St. Thomas had between them compassed all possible learning, the pathway to intellectual salvation lay through absorption of what these masters had set down, not through reaction upon their ideas. Hence the premium upon imitation, consent, conformity, ortho- doxy, interpretation, and the discounting of originality, dissent, heresy, or healthy skepticism. The relativity of human knowledge is lost sight of in prostration before the authority of supposed Absolute Truth. It is easy to see that free discovery and innovation must have been throttled in such an educational system unless and until new economic and political experiences broke through this ^ See the symposium on the Macnamara case in the Survey, Dec. 30, 191 1. 2l 514 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS crust of traditionalism, disturbed the educational "set" of the times, and demanded new educational doctrines and methods. The heretics like Columbus and Wyclif brought their heresy successfully to light only because a new economy had forced breaches in the old walls of reli- gious and secular conservatism. The new birth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not the flower of scholasticism, and could not have happened until the Arab migrations and conquests had forced European captains of trade to strike back through the Crusades and to pro- voke the orientalization of Byzantium. The Indian trade flooded Italy with wealth and prepared the way for the retreat of Byzantine scholars with their new-old learning. In this way commerce, wars of trade and adventure, pulled Europe out of the slough of sodden dogmatism, and forced a new taking account of educational stock. The same history of relative inelasticity in the school might be projected down to the present day. Suffice it to say that the school, speaking by and large, has never of its own motion added a single subject to its curriculum. Social pressure has always forced it to adjust. Hence the inevitable paradox : education is constantly behind the march of industrial progress, and yet necessarily in the fore of any further advance. This comes of its two- fold character as the preserver and transmitter of past knowledge and skill, and as the adapter of these stores to constantly new situations. Education then is both static and dynamic ; in one age conservative, in another radical and progressive. What determines whether it is merely the handmaiden of a pre- vailing system of production or religious thinking, or whether it is the destroyer of superstition and special privilege? It is largely a question, first, of content and method of instruction ; second, of incidence, i.e. whether EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 515 it is universal or Ihe privilege of certain classes; third, of control, i.e. by whom administered. An archaic system of religion and morals or an ancient collection of primitive writings (Bibles or "classics") if it become the chief subject of instruction, and if that in- struction be rote-learning, cannot fail to land the learner in the bog of conservatism. China, we are told, is a choice example of systematic education as learning, of conservative education gone to seed, producing a succession of 'stand- patters,' of supporters of the old order, of tradition, of an educated caste in which religion, mores, politics, and lit- erature were inextricably united in common adoration of the letter. Indeed social leadership by such a learned class of scholar-philosophers may become shameful retreat. Babington attributed Chinese stagnation to 2000 years of scholar-governors. He also rather pointedly insists that if James I of England had made Parliament a Witena- gemot of the learned men of the country, and had placed the whole administration in the hands of men trained in the classics, a stationary condition would have ensued.^ We know, too, that during the nineteenth century the universities and other higher educational institutions, the so-called educated and intellectual classes, have pretty uniformly objected to and opposed the march of liberalism and democracy. The Factory Acts were attacked almost unanimously by economists and other public teachers.^ The intellectuals have frequently laid themselves open to the charge of fostering class domination. Professor Commons boldly told his fellow economists " that economists have had their greatest influence at these critical points of class struggle, when they have ^ Fallacies of Race Theories, Essay iii. 2 Cf. Kidd, Social Evolution, chap. vii. ; Ghent, Mass and Class, 106-9; Id., Our Benevolent Feudalism, chap. vii. 5l6 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS helped to shape the legislation of a class just acquiring new power (classical economists 1815-45 in England, pro- tectionist economists in United States, 1840- 1900)." ^ Education for "culture" is always in danger of becoming the tool of classes and the badge of conservatism, especially if this culture has received the approval of past leisure classes. The uneducated frequently respect and honor what they do not understand ; hence they may join in approving a traditionalist and static system of education which really perpetuates their own position of disadvantage. This accounts in part at least for the persistence of folk- superstitions and mores that have outlived their primitive utility. Since much of current education is powerless before superstition and the mores (as Mr. Dresslar and Mr. Chapin have shown), we may not illogically suspect that part of the difficulty at least may be traced to sur- vivals of traditionalist subjects and methods in our schools.^ Again, education that is not universal may result simply in fixing upon a social group a system of classes and castes that is positively retarding as well as annoying and burden- some. Professor Ward gave what is perhaps the most eloquent and convincing argument for the spread of knowl- edge through education as the paramount means for social advance. But such knowledge must be universally dis- tributed. A society with wide gaps between the intelli- gence of its several ranks may be much worse off than one whose general level of intelligence is much lower but in which intelligence is general. "The distribution of knowl- edge underlies all social reform." Why? Because the existence of great gaps between the ignorant and the more * Publications of the Amer. Econ. Assoc, 3d series, vol. i, p. 64. ^ Cf . Dresslar, Superslition and Education, Univ. of California Publications, vol. V, No. I, 1907; Chapin, Education and the Mores, Columbia Studies in History, etc., vol. .\liii, 191 1. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 517 intelligent means that the social machine must be geared to the capacity of the less intelligent : consequently a loss of power. It means also wastage of energy through the cleavages between class and class ; and this wastage is compounded where — as is the natural tendency — such cleavages are, so to speak, institutionalized. It means a regime of status, autocracy, and exploitation. Third, the personnel or the authority that administers education has much to do with its character as static or dynamic. We have already discussed this phase of the subject in the section on government. It is obvious that if education be committed to priests or ministers of religion, it will be chiefly concerned with dogma, tradition, and a social system that will support them. If it be governed by a class, say the prosperous upper section of the middle class, it will reflect the mores of prosperity ; if by an aris- tocracy, the prejudices and conservatisms of the leisure class. This of course is what prompted Mr. Galsworthy to charge English "Public" schools with being caste- factories ; they are under control of aristocrats and clergy- men.^ German schools are presumed to turn out obedient and militarist students because of predominance of the military caste. French schools are accused by their critics of being socialistic, because the central school authorities to a considerable extent affiliate with the radical parties. American schools are accused of becoming feminized because of the overwhelming majority of women teachers. Private schools are sometimes condemned as not only bad, but worse than none, because they tend to increase the inequality of knowledge, because of bad methods, and, we might add, because they tend to magnify certain inci- dentals (military drill, sports, costume, manners) somewhat ^ Edmund Burke counted this the glory of eighteenth century English schools ! 5i8 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS to the possible detriment of the more generahzed branches of knowledge. Again, practical or vocational education may turn out to be only a thinly veiled scheme to provide manufacturers with an abundant supply of cheap appren- tices for whose training they no longer have to pay. There is evidence that the much vaunted German system has not benefited the worker himself, at least from the standpoint of real wages. Hence it is evident that if we are to find in education the means to social improvement we must qualify the loose general meaning of the term, we must specify some par- ticular and definite type of education. To cut the matter short, social education is the means by which change may become progress, and material achievement may be turned into improvement. It alone can supply that moral element which is the essence of real progress. It can turn exploita- tion into service, and capitalize achievement for the gen- eral weal instead of for personal aggrandizement. Freeing of the individual may be taken as the index of world- progress in the past. Man has come from status to con- tract, from no rights to nominally full and equal rights. It still remains for him to free himself from himself, so that he will voluntarily bind himself to the wheel of life, instead of being bound by some exterior constraint. Defi- nite, purposive, social education is the most potent means in our hands for developing this spirit of self-dedication to the commonwealth. Social education offers the tools by which an articulate social philosophy may express itself in the conquest of a rational future for humanity. Having used the term " social education " so frequently, it now becomes necessary to define it more clearly. This precaution is the more imperative because the phrase is EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 519 rapidly entering both technical and popular parlance.' Most of the older definitions of education were in terms of information, discipline, individual culture, or harmonious rounding of personality. Later entered the biological element, with notions of adaptation to environment, selec- tion or counter-selection. Sociologists have added the element of the mores, of the social mind, of social adaptation.^ 1 Mr. C. A. Scott's book Social Education, Mr. Betts' Social Principles of Education, and Dr. King's Social Aspects of Education are typical of a new crop of educational writings. A French publicist recently issued a work called L' education sociale des races noires. A Social Education Association was formed in the United States not many years ago and held a Social Educa- tion Congress at Boston in igo6, which was anticipated by the Congres international de I'education sociale at Paris in 1900. Harvard University boasts a fellowship in social education. The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 18, 1913, printed a thoughtful editorial on "Moving toward social education." " Supervisors of social education " were demanded in an article in The Survey, July 25, 1914. The Christian Social Service Union of Pitts- burgh announced a program of lectures on Social Education for the winter of 1914-1915. 2 E.g. Milton : "I call therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." Or J. S. Mill : Educa- tion is "whatever helps to shape the human being, to make the individual what he is, or to hinder him from being what he is not . . . the culture which one generation gives to the next in order that the culture already exist- ing may continue." Or Muensterberg : " Education is to make youth willing and able to realize the ideal purpose." Or Basedow : " the chief purpose of education should be to prepare the child for a useful, public-spirited and happy life." Spencer held that "under its biological aspect, education may be consid- ered as a process of perfecting the structure of the organism, and making it fit for the business of life." Professor Small writes that the "prime problem of education, as the sociol- ogist views it, is how to promote adaptation of the individual to the social conditions, natural and artificial, in which the individuals live and move and have their being." President Vincent takes the stand of the social psychologist : " In general, education may be regarded from the social point of view as a reflective effort to preserve the continuity and to secure the growth of the common tradi- tion." Similarly, Guyau called it "nothing but a totality of coordinated and reasoned out suggestions;" and John Galsworthy speaks of education as "that machinery of infection." To Ruskin the entire object of true education was "to make people not 520 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS In many of these definitions the word 'social' occurs; but the term is so grossly abused as to provoke the criticism that it "covers a multitude of squints." At a single ses- sion of the American Sociological Society I noted the following phrases : social lines of thinking, social point of view, social perspective, right social directions, socializ- ing social institutions, social church, social religion. A "social economist" opposes the "social view" to the "old view." A historian contrasts "social politics" and its goal of social equality with party pohtics. Jesus, by an- other writer, is called the prophet of "socialized religion" — a truly democratic reforming agency. Still others speak of "social salvation." And a whole brigade of writers are occupied with "the social question" — whether it be ethics in general, or the contradiction between economic and social welfare, or prostitution, or the elimination of waste, or socialism versus individualism. But by the adjective social in reference to education, I mean to convey simply a sense of mutual interdependence and concern. I am trying to get away from the archaic use of the word as "capable of being associated or united to others," and to reach a plane where it signifies an actual conscious realization of voluntary association grounded in sympathy and friendly interest; that is, away from association merely * do ' the right thing, but ' enjoy ' the right things : not merely in- dustrious, but to love industry — • not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity, — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice." Professor E. C. Moore, inspired by John Dewey, conceives education as "a process of organizing and remaking the experience and acts of the individual, giving them more socialized value through the means of increased individual efficiency." Finally Dr. Scott urges as the highest aim of the school "the capacity for effective social service of a self-organized and voluntary charac- ter;" and the real test of school success is "social capacity and productive powers"; in other words, that moral life whose flower and fruit is "self- organized cooperative production for the service and upbuilding of human beings." EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 521 based upon force, fear, instinct, imitation, or status, to something finer based upon sympathy and good will — away from a horrible sense of being common victims of the Black Hole, to a perception of common citizenship and brotherhood in the City of God. We are now close on the heels of our elusive definition. Social education is evidently not socialism nor socialistic education. Nor is it merely universal education ; nor state or governmental schools ; nor a combination of uni- versal and state education as Ward thought. Nor is it simply secular. Neither is it synonymous with a socio- logical curriculum, nor with economic or industrial train- ing; nor with 'cultural' or 'practical' education ; nor with school subjects (for no one subject is inherently any more ' social ' than any other) ; nor for that matter with any sort of mere learning, as such. Nor is it tantamount to ethical culture, unless we mean social morality or conduct in its widest sense. Likewise it is not to be confused with ideas of equalizing property or standardization of desires.^ On the other hand, it does involve recognition that the individual is ineluctably social ; that social mal-adjustment hinders individual development ; that therefore social education must aim to prevent social waste and to develop social capital in men and goods. Moreover, it means that its business is to create a favorable atmosphere rather than precise solutions of social problems, to create in all of us social intelligence, power, efficiency, and interests. It recognizes the school as a definite field of social relation- ships, where social tools are forged for future social situa- tions, an institution which, however, scarcely so much ' I have in mind here Aristotle's scheme {Politics, ii, 7) of equal education for the equalizing of desires. But is it not rather the selection and direction of desires that we seek, their stimulation and guidance rather than Pro- crustean measures? See Amiel's protest (Journal Inlime, pp. 34-5) against such standardizing. 52 2 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS fits for society as really is society — a cooperative and democratic society. In short, social education means con- scious and definite training through and for certain specific types of social relationship. Social education for social progress, then, would use as means and end those types of social value and relationship which appear most likely to contribute to progress. Rightly conceived, it is a highly conscious instrument for selecting contrihiitive rather than adaptive or dependent social types. Hence it must be uni- versal and stand for generalizing opportunity, for distribut- ing the products of human achievement in material goods and knowledge, and for a friendly, voluntary type of as- sociation in place of a coercive, exploitative relationship. In a word, social education aims to create social solidarity by means of a social type marked by service rather than ex- ploitation. That such a social type is theoretically possible it was our purpose to demonstrate in the opening chapters on the self. But that the type has not yet been achieved is all too pathetically obvious. Equally obvious, also, that our educational plant has not been organized for that purpose, and is not functioning in that direction. Nothing is easier than to mass the damaging evidence on a score of counts. Space and the spirit of charity will permit only the barest enumeration of a few. The United States confesses still to the shameful figure of 6,000,000 adult illiterates. Even more painful is the high rate of ''school mortality." The National Child Labor Committee estimates that 1,000,000 children of school age are out of school. Only ten per cent, of the whole school population ever complete the high school ; only a bare third ever finish the elementary grades ; half of them never reach the sixth grade ; and only one in every two hundred achieve a full college or university course. I EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 523 heard an educational authority say recently that more children were out of school and unaccounted for in a single Middle West community of a third of a million inhabitants (who boast of their city as a second Boston) than in the whole German Empire ! This deplorable record is only in part the fault of the school. It is referable to a whole complex social situation and a material philosophy of life as contemptible as it is shortsighted. It is the silliest fallacy to talk of industry outbidding the school for the child's interest as though that were all of it. The school is remote from life, it is stiff with tradition and routine, it is individualistic as its critics claim ; but it is also unable to compete on fair terms because hampered by scheming employers, greedy parents, jealous churches, complacent police, recreation purveyors and a none too generous body of taxpayers. Teachers, too, are not as efficient as we should like to see them. They fail in matters of personality, training, discipline, and genuine interest ; perhaps most of all through their profound ignorance of the world in which they live. There used to be a good deal of justice in Shaw's maxim, "He who can does. He who cannot teaches;" but with the professionalizing of education the gibe loses more and more of its point. The 'undigested immigrant,' meaning by that the failure to put into motion the machinery for social assimilation of the foreign born, is also in part an evidence of weak and 'unsocialized' education. No small part of the nation's illiteracy and distress proceeds from this source. Our wasteful industrial system with its reckless unconcern for either natural or human resources is the biggest single item of reproach against American education. Losses through destruction of timber, coal, farm lands, birds, fish ; through unemployment, underemployment, prevent- able disease and accident, infant mortaUty, child labor, 524 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS haphazard vocations, and all the rest of a depressing list of items make up a bill of wastage, ten, twenty, fifty times the cost of an adequate national system of education. The fundamental cause of this orgy of destruction (in the name of development!), that is, the rampant spirit of exploitation and the philosophy of getting on at any price, is a confession of educational failure. The constant specter of from a tenth to a fifth of our whole population in the poverty zone is also a challenge to education to equalize opportunity and develop efficient industrial training. Crime, too, has failed to diminish in terms of one prison closed to every school opened. Classes and castes with class morals, class law, and class wars are still hatefully evident. The result of these causes is another mark of failure — an undemocratic democracy. Democ- racy is hypocrisy unless it is educated. We live in a pseudo- democracy which is so big and so ignorant that it cannot govern itself, yet which is so suspicious of others that it denies full support to representative government. We are genuinely in danger of realizing Oscar Wilde's notion of democracy as "simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people." We are certain to realize it unless the popular vision can be widened. Other evi- dences of educational mal-adjustment could be added — bearing notably on fragile domestic life, sexual aberrations, the vogue of yellow journalism, and rural depopulation; but the picture is already somber enough. One must not be blind, however, to certain counter- vailing testimonials to the power of education in con- temporary social life. There is much talk of and a good deal of practicing the "Golden Rule in business." It is no longer considered sentimentality to think of an economy of men rather than of things. The tide for conservation has unmistakably set in. Courts incline more and more EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 525 to interpret law in favor of the rights of persons as against those of property. The growing doctrine of the police power means ascendancy of communal over private prop- erty interests. The concept of 'social justice' no less than the phrase itself is creeping into the field of poli- tics. President Wilson's 'new freedom' seems to aim at precisely the same target claimed by the Progressive party and by some dreamers in the more radical camps of socialism and philosophic anarchism. Albeit these movements are infested with sentimental camp followers, they are not to be interpreted as mere spineless humani- tarianism ; they should be regarded rather as genuine evidences of sound social apprehension. Furthermore, in the specific domain of educational activity, kindred stirrings are to be found. I need only mention the wider use of the school plant, extension courses, vocational guid- ance, workingmen's colleges, playgrounds, vacation schools, library centers, settlements, clubs, institutional churches, social centers, and education for health and sexual decency. In order to draft a Bill of Rights for social education one need only take these hints and develop them. The first principle will cover training for industrial efficiency. I mean not only craft technique, for an age of machinery presupposes that : rather, we need a proper attitude of mind, disciplined intelligence, a training which will release men from bondage to their machines, which will touch the whole domain of industry with real ethical ideals. We have already seen how economic activities absorb the ma- jority of the population for the larger part of their time. If, therefore, they are ever to be seized of the community spirit it must be by investing industry with some new code of moral action. This can only be done by making busi- ness a means instead of the end; by making industrial 526 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS training public, universal, and obligatory ; by cultivating the critical mind, i.e., emphasizing brains over strength; by dramatizing daily work. Such a radical reconstruction of attitude can only come through reorganizing industry upon a basis of service instead of profit and by commanding the cooperative intelligence of the workers through some plan of wider copartnership. It may involve a develop- ment of public ownership, state socialism, nationalization of land and cooperative industry. But the name signifies little. The essential is to evoke full productive capacities and full participation in the product. Mere vocational steering, vocational courses, welfare work, continuation schools, or corporation schools, will accomplish little of permanent value. We must first come to regard produc- tion as a creative art instead of a mere profitable exploita- tion whose final outcome is increased social stratification and grossly disproportioned rewards. Vocational educa- tion will serve social education truly when it is designed not to adapt the worker to some present social system, but through him to transform it. The business of the school is here quite apparent : to uncover vocational aptitudes, to confer industrial skill, to evoke a dynamic intelligence, to breed 'divine discontent,' to sow seeds of cooperation and to breathe the spirit of creative art into industry.^ * For details on these points compare : Carlton, History and Problems of Organized Labor, 462; Commons, Labor and Administration, pp. 375 ff. ; Dean, The Worker and the State, 6, 13, 122 ff., 199 ff. ; Dewey, J., New Repub- lic, May 15, 1915, p. 42 ; Durkheim, De la division da travail, 2d ed., preface; Dutton and Snedden, Administration of Education, 419 ff. ; Hearn, Pliitology, chap, iii, iv ; Henderson, C. H., Pay Day, chap, xiii-xvii ; Hobson, Problems of Poverty, 180, etc.; King, Social Aspects of Education, chap, vi, ix, x; Lippmann, A Preface to Politics, 57, etc.; Morison, The New Epoch, 1-90; Morris, W., Useful Work vs. Useless Toil; Rogers, Industrial and Commercial History of England, 24-5 ; Ruskin, Political Economy of Art and Pre-Raphael- itism; Sadler, Continuation Schools, chap, ix; Toynbee, The Industrial Revo- lution (Address on The Education of Cooperators). EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 527 To accomplish these ends will require profound modi- fications of current educational equipment and method ; but chiefly along the lines of making vital contacts between school and industry, of real civic teaching, and of oppor- tunities for perennial reeducation. These problems in- volve continuation schools for both youths and adults, university extension, such cooperative organizations be- tween universities and workers as the French universites popidaires, workingmen's colleges, public lecture systems as in New York and Chicago, polytechnics, and public urban universities. Most of these have to do with city life. But no less important is the problem of rural social education and reeducation. Hence the demand for in- troducing and adapting the Scandinavian Folks Hoysckoler or People's High Schools, designed to combine liberal, vocational and civic reeducation for adults. So far we have reached only the elementary stage of response to this demand ; for example, in the Moonlight Schools of rural Kentucky, and in Agricultural High Schools. To these forms of education must be added some five hundred Social Settlements now at work. They have done a notable job of pioneering in educational experiment, particularly along lines of manual art, recreation, and civic intelligence. Side by side with them are to be reckoned the institutional churches and boys' clubs. And frequently growing out of them, the various forms of vacation schools, vacant lot gardening, manual training centers, little thea- ters, traveling museums, and, above all, playgrounds. One of the most hopeful aspects of recent educational develop- ment is the rapid extension of organized recreation. Every important city in America is striving to equip itself with playgrounds. The tendency is sound ; for it is no futile paradox to hold that the best introduction to sound work is sane play. If we want cooperation and the creative art 528 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS impulse in industry there is no surer way of getting them started than through organized team play. If we want to teach conservation and self-government, again there is no better road than through the directed playground and its adjunct, the school garden. The forces of recreation and education can be focused through such institutions as public social centers, to include healthful forms of dancing, outdoor play, baths, public lectures, the drama (primarily amateur), educational moving pictures, art and nature collections, and the housing of neighborhood organizations like Boy Scouts, Women's Clubs, civic and commercial bodies. Such a plan is work- able alike for country or city. The library, too, has heard a new educational call and tends to become more than a safe deposit for books. Its ideal now is to send out its treasures into the schools and thence into the remotest neighborhoods. It feels the pulse of public affairs, and advertises. It seeks to antici- pate private needs and to clear the weeds from channels of public opinion.^ Hence, reading and study classes for school children and classes for the foreign born are formed, lecture courses and debates added, art collections installed. Some libraries have become full-fledged social centers, with swimming pools, gymnasiums, and dancing rooms. Education tends also to function along the lines of health and moral education. I do not mean that medical inspec- tion of children has justified its claims or that it is an end in itself. Its chief service has been to awaken the public to the meaning of community ill-health and the need of health conservation through cooperative effort. This health thought expresses itself in the care for mental and ^ For example : the mother of every new born baby in Minneapolis receives at once a post card from the Public Library, containing a list of books on child care. Reference libraries are located frequently in business dis- tricts ; reading lists follow closely every stirring public event. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 529 physical misfits — the truant, incorrigible, unstable, and inapt — as well as the downright defectives. The new education will widen it to include prevention of disease through decent incomes, proper housing, sanitation, pure air, the elimination of needless smoke and noise, sex pro- phylaxis, and the reduction of fear. Such a program means both health and civic morality. By moral education I mean not so much teaching abstract ethics for so many minutes per week (the state law of Illinois requires half an hour a week) as investing and suffusing the whole educational curriculum with a sense of its effect upon conduct. That means, in short, stimulating the imagina- tion and helping it to function in social terms. For ex-- ample : geography can be made to bring out facts of social interdependence, and, by adding a dash of ethnography, to teach race tolerance. History can be vastly more humanized. As Seguin pointed out in his famous Report on Education, if history is to be written about great per- sonalities, they can be portrayed not only as kings and bloody warriors, but also as patrons of science and the arts.^ Moreover, such moral training, while distinctly not anti-religious, will in no wise base itself upon religious dogma for its sanctions. Some provision in school organi- zation may hereafter be made for recognizing religious teaching in the child's daily program, but not as part of the regular prescribed educational work. Social educa- tion does not mean Christian education or Jewish educa- tion, or CathoHc, or Baptist, or Bahai education. It means tolerance for all these and more, so long as they may serve the common purpose of improvement. It does not mean exiling God from the world ; it holds no right of eminent domain over religious beliefs or opinion ; ^ Alexander, for instance, scoured the East for specimens in botany and zoology for Aristotle. 2m ' 530 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the most, and at the same time the very least, it can claim is the sacred duty of cultivating in every child the abihty to test and revise his own convictions. But does not moral education include provision for discipline? Surely, but preferably through promoting self -discipline, self-control and independent judgment. Notwithstanding Rousseau on the one hand and Le Play on the other, children are neither born angels to be cor- rupted by society nor wholly savages to be reduced to order by parental authority. They are both ; and the school, like the statesman, must steer between the extremes of brute force and foolish non-resistance. Order there must be if real freedom is to flourish; if "soft pedagogy" will not secure it, then some more virile methods must be invoked. Organized schemes for self-government may be used ^ so long as they really teach children to control themselves instead of "bossing" others. Likewise, the 'honor system' may contribute to this end. The success of such devices depends more, however, upon the char- acter of teacher and public than upon the students them- selves. The safest general principle to guide in the thorny path of school discipline for normal youth is Spinoza's maxim that "minds are not conquered by arms, but by love and magnanimity." Magnanimity is the key to discipline if it can be constantly expressed as the will to lead growing minds to think and feel largely, persistently, daringly. Edmund Burke's bete noir, Richard Price, somewhat scandaHzed his generation by cleaving to this view of educational discipline. "Education," he said, "ought to be an initiation into candor, rather than into ^ Such as those worked out by Mr. B. Cronson, Mr. W. L. Gill, Mr. J. T. Ray, Miss Brownlee, Mr. W. R. George, Mr. J. M. Brewer, and others. They appear under such various names as: The School Republic, The Junior Republic, The School City. Their success has led to a demand for introducing similar methods into penal institutions. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 531 any system of faith ; it should form a habit of cool and patient investigation, rather than an attachment to any opinion." Such candor or wholeness of thinking will of itself provide the antidote to any reckless action or social dissolution. We must expect the explosion of passion and the drift of instinct so long as school or parental discipline clouds the issues of life by taboos and dogma. Typical, indeed, is the hfe of Ernest Pontifex (in Butler's, The Way of all Flesh) of whom the author says, "By far the greater part ... of his education had been an attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers, as to gouge his eyes out altogether." Those forms of vapid social unrest which profit nothing never come from wide-open eyes habituated to light. In- variably they are the angry protest of eyes suddenly un- bandaged or unblinkered through bitter experience of reality. Kaspar Hauser's tribe make excellent institu- tional inmates, but poor citizens of a progressive com- munity. A youth fed on dogma may become the most implacable anti-cleric. And the social group suddenly released from intense repression may react to the wildest anarchy. Social education for industry and public affairs must be supplemented by training for domestic life if the family is to function constructively. First, in the arts of wife- hood and husbandhood : such fine arts as the joint bank account, the recognition of rights to full personality, the wholesome sex life. These involve training in sex hygiene and home making for both men and women. The kinder- garten or Kitchen Garden or Montessori school room may be the point of departure. Second, the arts of motherhood and fatherhood, including the care of children and the control of sexual appetite (call it eugenics or birth control, as you please). So long as knowledge of the duties of 532 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS motherhood fails to come simply by nature, it must be com- municated both by schools and other quasi-educational agencies.^ Potential fathers need training also for parent- hood, and this training must include some concept of in- dustrial reorganization which will so shorten the industrial work day that time will be left for rational fatherhood. Third, the art of harmonious cooperation between home and school. This involves much already undertaken by so-called Parent and Teachers' Associations, Parent Leagues or Home and School Associations ; by Mothers' Clubs; and, as in Council Bluffs, by Fathers' Clubs. Contacts are formed in some communities by visiting school teachers, home gardening teachers, visiting housekeepers, and school nurses, in addition to the ruder, more official visits of attendance and probation officers. Converting schools into social centers and making them the axes of neighborhood life seem to promise the most natural method of developing a zone of healthy contacts. A very genuine sort of cooperation might be developed through parental criticism of the schools, were that criticism genuine, well- informed, constructive public opinion, and not ill-tempered resentment, prejudice, or petty revenge. In time Howard's vision of Colleges of Domestic Relations alongside of Law and Medicine may be realized. But if instruction for progressive home keeping is to reach the great ninety-nine per cent, of our home makers it should not be postponed till the college course ; it must begin with the child's first entrance into the educational world. And as an increasing density of population forces us into more momentous con- tacts with our fellows, domestic education that is truly social will include deliberate training in thoughtfulness, consideration, cooperation in consumption, cleaning, ^ E.g., The Federal Children's Bureau, The National Association for Prevention of Infant Mortality, Mothers' Clubs. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 533 cooking, and the ability to put oneself in the other's place. ^ I cannot prolong this account of social education : it has been done in detail and in authoritative manner by Professor John Dewey, Alexander Morgan, and others. The machinery for working out these hints is the concern of schoolmen. My problem ends with convincing them that social progress demands capacity to produce and willingness to think communitywise, and that education can aid in meeting the demand. If we believe theoretically with Felix Adler that a new moral and spiritual feudahsm, the rightful vicarious spirit of feudalism purged of its false reverence for the few, can create social solidarity, we must also be prepared to place our faith in homely practical pedagogic devices for this training in service. Brother Barnabas infused the raw boys in his Lincolndale Farm with the social spirit by simply showing them that if they turned out clean certified milk they were cooperating to save infants in congested cities. This is the real meaning of leadership, namely, repaying "the unearned increment of social advantage." And it can be taught in schools just as it can be disseminated through Cavendish Associa- tions or Agenda Clubs or samurai. But since it takes leaders to train leaders, schools must be able to attract first-rate men and women. To do this schools must be- come, if they are not already, social groups where the open, liberal, critical mind can flourish and breed its own kind. Moreover, they must offer certain appropriate prizes for specialized ability. Educational work has too long suffered from the medieval concept of education as charity and of teachers as celibate clerics living off doles from the benevo- ' Any one who has ever lived in an apartment house will agree that train- ing is essential in such elementary habits as walking lightly, playing the piano at reasonable hours, speaking gently, cooperating in the use of the laundry, etc. 534 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS lent. Current business philosophy with its ideas of profit and of labor as a commodity (summarized in one of E. H. Harriman's favorite maxims, "Never pay a man all he is worth. If you do, there is no profit in him"), has also conspired to depress the economic position of the teacher. Perhaps business men and clerics and taxpayers have been right. Why waste good productive capital on a man who produces nothing of tangible value? So long as conformity to the mores is the prime demand, very little teaching, and that quite uninspired, is needed. Fourth- rate men are good enough to pass on superstition, tradition, and colorless orthodoxy. But let education become dy- namic, let it thrill with a vision of becoming the chariot horses and the chariot in which society shall urge itself forward to a better day, and men and women of first rank will arise and consecrate themselves to making the vision full reality. Without that vision "educational measure- ments," movements to increase "school efficiency," re- forms of curricula, "child study," and all the rest of it are but the clattering of machinery grinding chaff ; with it they become the tools for generating the self-criticism and creative energies essential to the process of producing an environment in which Social Man can flourish and rise higher and higher above Man the Clod. >^ CHAPTER XXXIV SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The long survey ended, it may be worth while to gather up the conclusions formulated along the way and to sum- marize and unify them. First, we learned to distinguish progress from mere social change or evolution, on the ground that progress means social change for the better, socia l amelioration accor Hi^p- fn c;nmp fairly ripfinffp stnnd?rd '^f human valu es. We recognized man as distinctively the progressive animal, that is, potentially progressive ; almost infinitely adaptive, and with a nature slowly but indefinitely modifiable. We concluded that modern man has risen above the primitive in social integration, in the content and sweeping expression of his intelligence, and in the insur- ance aspects of life. This progress represents in the main a change from passive to active adaptation, from fitting into, to utilization and control of, his natural environment. Control tends to pass more and more from geography to intelligence. Mental progress has consisted rather in mind-content than in inherent capacity, rather in sharpness and breadth of intellectual perceptions and a keener sense of moral relations than in sharpness of sensory powers. It seems correct to say also that man has progressed morally, in the sense that moral standards have been refined and extended, while moral values have risen and grown more sensitive. Is progress, then, natural and necessary? Is it true that the opposite is unthinkable, or that man and the world, 535 536 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS by definition, have an inherent tendency toward better- ment ? Perhaps they have ; perhaps there is even a Prime Mover who communicates the eternal impulse to improve. But we have no tangible evidence of him in this capacity. Such a Power may be assumed pragmatically^ but at present is beyond the scientific ken. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence that the opposite of progress is quite thinkable : philosophical pessimism denies it utterly, and many religions conceive humanity as dead in its trans- gressions ; while from the historical angle the principle of retrogression or decadence is to be seen very active if not triumphant. We are forced to conclude that while evolu- tion is universal, progress is rare. Mankind, whatever level it has reached, is always faced with the possibility of de- generation. No people is immune. There have been more failures than successes in the historic past, more savages than civilized peoples. Progress, when it occurs, is not in a straight line, nor at a uniform rate, but is shifting and uneven, up and down, from one side to another, at varying speeds, but sometimes with cumulative momentum. In military parlance it resembles the nibbling, attrition methods of modern trench warfare rather than the more spectacular big drive. Progress has not been on the whole conscious or definitely aimed at, since conscious rational fife is only a fragment of mental life, and since social processes are so complex as to have defied any attempt at scientific formulation until recently. Probably whatever progress mankind has won is the result of a more or less instinctive struggle against losing any advantages by whatever means already won (individual or group conscience), and of an equally instinctive dissatisfaction with the old and reaching out for the new (ennui, curiosity), by the method of trial and error. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 537 Social evolution and progress result from the interplay of various factors or conditioning influences, which, albeit they cannot be isolated legitimately from the total organic complex of which each is a part, may for purposes of expo- sition be distributed under such headings as natural environ- ment, improvement in the arts, racial character, or develop- ment of mental outfit, but which all reduce finally to one common denominator, mind, in which the elements of desire and rational choice become gradually more distinctive and powerful. Hence progress is the result of a constant con- flict of man with himself, with his natural environment, and with his social milieu (including unseen powers) ; in other words, is a constant balancing up of interests and desires. There is, moreover, apparently a tendency, general though painfully slow, from a predominant interest in the arts of self-maintenance through those of physical conflict and coercive association to the higher arts of in- tellectual culture and gratification, and finally to a more spontaneous type of association. That is to say, progress is marked by a shifting and raising of the incidence of values and by transition from a social organization wherein status and custom predominate to one characterized more by free contract and individual judgment. Or, if we follow Hegel, progress is growth in freedom. In current ter- minology this growth in freedom is a change in which passive adaptation to nature and instinctive subordination of individual to group becomes active control over nature and emergence of the individual, with his voluntary identifica- tion of himself and his social group as a possible next step. Examination of concrete tests for progress uncovered the fact that mere size of a social group is no determinant. Not big populations but sound, efficient, integrated popula- tions are potentially progressive. By integration we do not mean uniformity or dead-levelism : the need is rather for 538 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the greatest possible variety. Hence sound social policy will foster favorable social variations (including a goodly dash of heretics) rather than stereotyped uniformity, and distributed rather than concentrated authority. In the economic sphere we found th at inv entions or tools cont ribute to progress when and if they are acc ompanied by such corresponding gains in intelle ctual and moral Vision that their servic e overtops their costs in noxiou s by-products. L,ikewise^ spec ialization in occupations is positive gain so long as it does not degenerate into social [fatmcation or self-centered and exploiting interest- groups or guilds. It can be dehnitely counted upon only when general intelligence and moral perception devote that specialized craft ability to the social weal. Again, progress comes not by mere increase in wealth but through wealth distributed in such a way as to offer opportunity to all, to evoke creative energies, and to permit of social contributions from all. It is a question of enlarged opportunity for the average man and his fitness to seize and utilize it. Wealth- getting when conceived as end rather than means leads to class-strife, war, and destruction of wealth itself instead of peaceful advance. Industrial expansion is progress only when other outlets for creative energy and expression can compete with it on equal terms. The ownership of prop- erty has such important disciplinary and cultural aspects that but Httle advance can be hoped for until a reconstruc- tion of property systems (through socialization of land and other natural resources, inheritance restrictions, increasing individual productivity, or some other method of assuring the normal individual a decent income and of distributing products more nearly according to productive capacity), will evoke and develop the qualities of prudence, foresight, self-control, and a sense of economic responsibility ; in other words, will release the springs of energy and productive SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 539 effort, and reward equitably every real contribution to social well-being. Much biological teaching on social progress we discovered to be only dogma complicated by mysticism and often ob- viously inspired by obscurantism. It became evident that some .process of social selection, conscious tehc selection, must replace the old irrational, wasteful, "natural" pro- cess of conserving the socially fittest and eliminating the parasitic or degenerate. This is the function of positive eugenics, rightly considered ; which means that its funda- mental task is to reclaim and utilize latent human abilities by creating social opportunity in the forms of income, leisure, discipline, and education. Incidentally we were unable to discover any proof of a general or constant tendency toward racial degeneration. On the whole the general level of biological fitness was attained ages ago and has been maintained, yet cannot be guaranteed for the future. Hence, while inter-race conflicts may continue indefinitely, there is no present proof that they will ulti- mate in higher racial health or in selecting the fittest in any final progressive sense. On the contrary, if race-con- flict be written into the eternal order of things, there is scant hope for huma.n advance. If it is but a transitional phase of evolution whose purpose is finally to eliminate war- like race types just as social selection has weeded out the more violent types within social groups, there is less ground for pessimism. War, likewise, is an unproductive form of human activity. It may have cooperated with other agencies to weld to- gether social groups, but always at great cost. Biologically it has worked both selectively and counter-selectively. While it may have served to maintain a given level of cul- ture — and this is by no means an unqualified fact — it is usually a waster of culture (in capital, energy, men), which 540 THEORIES OF SOCE\L PROGRESS must be turned into productive channels if the world is to go forward. Industry builds up, militarism depletes. War-begotten virtues are mainly incidental by-products. Hence, while a conditioning circumstance in social evolu- tion, war is only in a remote sense an agency for progress. The dispositions of pugnacity and competition will, so far as we can see, continue indefinitely as part of the human endowment ; but there is no good reason why they should not be canalized for constructive ends. The heroic impulse will not perish if suppUed with appropriate moral and physical equivalents for armed combat. Here is an opportunity for a new educational technique. And not the least challenging of its problems will be to eliminate poverty and to work out a rational method of peaceful inter-racial contact. In our brief review of the family institution we concluded that it might be expected to yield larger contributions to social well-being if men and women were definitely trained ■for both marital and parental duties. The family and sex life in general offer notorious examples of blind drift. If concepts of race-health and controlled reproduction can displace laissez faire and mere explosion of instinct, and if economic organization can be so adjusted as to allow ade- quate time and income for healthy domesticity, then home life may take on enhanced values. It may contribute to new moral idealisms and esthetics, while still functioning economically and physiologically to raise the level of average hereditary ability. The institution of government, depreciated as it com- monly is, may yet grow progressively as a welfare agency ; particularly in its administrative capacity as the remover of social hindrances and as the restraining hand upon destruc- tive competition when it threatens to degenerate into brute struggle for existence. But this function of social justice SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 541 will develop only as political capacity is attained by the whole people. If education without political responsibility is a menace to the peace and life of society (as, for example, it was argued in the middle ages against schooling the Third Estate, or in the Southern United States against educating negroes), how much more menacing is political responsibility without the capacity which genuine education can confer in part at least? Law may be counted as a silent partner among the pro- gressive agencies from its character as a map or code of social obligations ; particularly if lawyers and courts can be taught to revise the map more easily ; that is, if law can be related more closely to concrete social life, and inter- preted less in terms of formal precedent and more in terms of contemporary social utility. This again is an educational problem, above all for the colleges. But little is to be hoped for from public opinion as ordi- narily conceived. On the other hand, everything to hope for from an increase of critical intelligence and a system of education which would develop truth-seeking minds ca- pable of forming real opinions on matters of vital public concern, and sow them broadcast or universalize them. Leadership and the function of elites or privileged classes are by frank confession the most difficult of all the problems centering about social progress. Leadership is essential, and speciahzed capacity not only natural but altogether desirable. Progress requires constant increments of superior minds to freshen the streams of knowledge and to quicken their current. There are classes, there are aristoc- racies, and rightly, so long as differences in ability exist. Nobody would question or object to the sanctification of these class distinctions did they not carry with them certain pretensions, unconscious or avowed, notably the right to exploit rather than to serve. Perhaps it is true that in 542 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS the evolution of the race any aristocracy was better than no aristocracy. But I can find no irrefragable evidence to support the pessimistic conclusion that the majority of human beings are predestined by tragic necessity " to consti- tute the pedestal of an oligarchy." Leadership at any price has been the cry, and it has meant usually the extinction or oppression of one class and the selection of another, or it has meant anarchy and warfare in high places. It is not inappropriate to wonder if men have not labored under a superstition of leadership and trusted too naively in exterior circumstances to provide a guide instead of looking within themselves for light and guidance. Modern psy- chologists hint at enormous unsuspected sub-conscious reservoirs of energy within us — second, third, twelfth, fiftieth "winds" perhaps. Is it not time to cease paying with no questions asked the price demanded by Caesar or John, Warwick or Richard Third, Napoleon or Bis- marck ? Many so-called popular uprisings used to illustrate the incapacity of the "hydra-headed monster, the popu- lace," were in reahty only ghastly regimes of selfish interest personified in egotistical or fanatic 'leaders.' This must not be construed as minimizing true genius. Utilize the elite ; cultivate genius, if that be possible ; endow it if necessary to protect it from want (great inventive genius has scarcely ever been appropriately cared for) ; reward it according to real contribution ; but make it an aristocracy like that of Aristides, who in a memorable debate challenged his opponent in these terms : "it is for us to struggle both now and ever, which of us shall perform the greatest services to his country." To accomplish this noble purpose two technical problems must be solved. First, some method of grading accurately productive service in order to secure proper recognition and reward : neither monarchy nor plutocracy has worked out a solution yet ; whether democ- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 543 racy can do so remains to be seen. Second, an educational system which, albeit unable to breed geniuses, can train specialists and develop high abilities, while at the same time performing the equally indispensable function of raising the whole people to such a measure of self-reliance and cooperation that they can utilize the treasures of skilled leadership. Religion, like war and leadership, has been costly in human evolution. But on the whole it has been worth at least part of the price and will easily be worth all it costs in the future if it can free itself from the mummy clothes of organized superstition, from intolerance and the use of coercion, from identification with dogma and ecclesiasticism; if it can function increasingly as demonstration instead of dogma, as pure spiritual activity, nourishing the roots of faith, imagination and moral idealism, opening up new hori- zons, and redeeming men from the lower interest-planes of food, sex, and social domination. To a considerable extent it can aid in energizing the social sentiments and offer an antidote against mechanized thought. Systematic theology, however, is of very dubious value to social progress. Its dogma and its speculations appear rather as a disservice, because they tend almost inevitably to passive adaptation and quietism, if not fatalistic acceptance of a given social order. Theology becomes so easily mechanistic that religion itself must come to the rescue. The notion of an Infinite Intelligence in which we live and move and with which we cooperate {i.e., Infinite Cooperative Conscious- ness), is valuable so long as it does not degenerate into a trivial meddlesome Providence. And the God-thought in general is of service so long as it challenges to personal spiritual attainment and does not suffocate the attitude of free inquiry or cherish the illusion that progress is a gift of the gods. 544 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS To the idealist, as we have seen, this world's issues are at bottom mental, and progress is a two-dimensional move- ment, the elevation of ideals and the extension of justice and right. Liberty and justice, then, rather than mere con- tentment or happiness are its touchstones. Both idealists and intellectualists agree that drift can be turned into mastery only by willing it ; that is, by taking thought humanity can master its fate and captain its soul. But it is a costly process : mastery comes only by intense effort along the lines of enlarging the zone of positive knowledge, developing critical intelligence, overcoming fear, particu- larly the fear of thinking resolutely, and harmonizing senti- ment and thought. These are the real ''costs of progress." Since progress can come only through the ministry of thought (some of it definitely applied to problems of human advance, the rest to doing each sort of work in the best possible way, hoping that it or its by-products may func- tion progress-wards), and since human energy is limited in quantity, it follows that thought and energy must not be diverted into wasteful or needless channels — warfare, manufacture of extravagant luxuries, production for pro- duction's sake. This does not mean any sort of taboo on art, however. Art is not a luxury ; it is a spirit, an attitude. It is what makes life worth while. It is not things but a life to lead. It is the mark of a fine discrimination of values; hence is inseparable from the Hfe of a progressive group. The critics of this view of progress contend that mere endeavor to advance is not enough, because progress is largely the by-product of unintentionally beneficent moves. Leisure and good intention, they say, will produce audiences and buyers, but not artists. Knowledge would appear to be under some kind of control, but cannot insure mastery over fate because, in the first place, great advances in SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 545 knowledge depend upon individual genius, which is wholly accidental and incalculable. Secondly, there are surely limits beyond which human knowledge cannot pass, and those limits are already in sight. Thirdly, the uses and results of ideas cannot be controlled : witness the evil by- products of invention. Fourth, it is idle to set ourselves definite goals, for the world with all its phenomena is absolutely purposeless. To the first objection we reply that education and improved means of dissemination put both the results and the tools of science at the disposal of a constantly increasing number of men ; which means that latent stores of human ability are more easily unlocked and that the area from which genius may be recruited is con- stantly widening. The second objection is answered by the plain everyday fact that the higher science climbs the wider stretches its possible fields of conquest. Physical science, psychology, and the science of society are still in their veriest infancy. The burden of proving the exist- ence of an early limit to their career rests upon the objectors : so far they have merely stated their feeling without pro- ducing the proofs. The third and fourth objections are more formidable. We may admit that absolute mastery of our course is a dream rather than a fact, since the world of Chance overtops the httle province of Law. But it does not seem impossible to control the main direction of movement. Surprises like the judicial interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment may occur, but in the long run they are neutralized. In any event man must make the effort to control. To do otherwise is to sit down fatalisti- cally and invite destruction. Bear in mind, however, that by effort I do not mean mere random activity, or good will, or kindly intention : I mean resolute intent, informed by science. If we perish in spite or because of that effort, we perish, that is all. But we shall have had the satis- 2n 546 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS faction of trying to eliminate blind luck and to reduce the dimensions of ''skittish fortune's hall." Meanwhile it is idle to trust to by-products of unintentionally beneficent moves. If they ultimate in progress it is always because somebody other than the immediate mover grasps the significance of the move and turns it to good account in terms of human value. From another angle is thrust the objection that growth in knowledge will not insure progress because man is only slightly rational : sentiments, emotions, instincts, habits, predominate over intellect. This we admitted. Yet with the proviso that instinct is no safe guide, being altogether too crude. And feeling, while undoubtedly the final arbiter of conscious behavior, is equally blind unless illu- minated by knowledge. Ignorance and superstition beget a nasty brood of sentiments. Imagination, likewise, needs feeding on fact. Moral perception is sheer relativity, and requires increasing knowledge to function at higher levels. Hence the office of education takes on a new significance. If it is to become an effective ally in social advance, it must add to its work of social control and passing on the mores the higher function of releasing mind and evoking intelligence. The educational system for a democracy should insure opportunity for mental output and social expression to all. It should spread the ideas of the fittest, the elite, the great minds, instead of coddhng mediocrity and tradition. Social education involves the twofold task of communicating a sense of social responsibility and of challenging individual mental power : on the one hand the "practice of associated action," the ability to sub- ordinate oneself to a clearly perceived and worthy social purpose ; on the other, the practice of independent thought even though it run into heresy, radical non-conformity, and deliberate rejection of petty canons of respectability. This SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 547 is the excuse for having devoted so much space to the analy- sis of human personaHty. For society is mental integra- tion, an integration of selves. Consequently when we speak of willing progress we mean really rearranging cer- tain elements in the human self, evangelizing it, in the widest sense. But this cannot come about merely by moral preaching. Social organization, including economic, political, domestic, and educational institutions, will need readjusting to make ethical appeals more than empty words. This is not by any means Utopian, but calls only for the broader application and utilizing of certain familiar natural dispositions in men. You will not need to stand men on their heads to force them into a 'social point of view.' The impulse is there already and only needs encourage- ment, like prairie grass in April. This long analysis will hardly admit of compression into a Single formula : truth balks at such narrow limits, and men have learned to suspect the aphorism as an insidious half-truth at best. But as nearly as I can state what to me is the end of human progress, it would be somewhat in this form : that the final goal of all things, if they have or can be made to have a goal, is not some merely static per- fection for God, society, or the individual ; it is the identi- fication of personal interest with social interest to an increasing degree. You may paraphrase this as consecrated intelligence, or as reconciling freedom of individual will with evolution of society, or as the identification of man individualized and man socialized. Anybody who has ever tried it knows that such a harmony does not come at one swoop. To believe so is to revert to the age of fable. Neither can humanity dodge the final responsibility for its own fate. To call in the gods is to court disaster. However you conceive the end of all things, man was surely placed on this planet to work out his own salvation. I am 548 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS not at all sure that the inevitable and automatic end of the social process is increasing installments of justice and greater and greater elevation and expansion of the great masses of men. But I believe it can be made the end by steady, persistent, preoccupation with the problem, and by that alone. Moreover, I hold it to be neither sacrilege nor lese- majesty to believe that with applied sociology and an edu- cation leavened by it rests this problem of harmonizing more closely through enlightened will the facts of social achievement and progressive social welfare. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS CHAPTER I Moody, W. v., Gloucester Moors (in his Poems, 1901). West, J. E., The Epic of Man (in his Poems of Human Progress). Whitman, Walt, Song of the Open Road, Pioneers! O Pioneers! and other poems. CHAPTER II Hamel, Frank, Human Animals. Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, pp. 48-70, 198-204, 240-272. Lehmann, A., Aberglaube and Zauberei, Kapitel i, 2, 27-40. Levy-Bruhl, J., Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures. Todd, A. J., "Primitive notions of the self," ^w. Jour. Psychol., 27 : 171-202, Apr., 1916. The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, ch. iv. CHAPTER HI Bax, Belfort, The Roots of Reahty, ch. iv. Bergson, H., Creative Evolution, ch. i-ii. Boodin, J. E., " The existence of social minds," Am. Jour. Social., 19 : 1-48. Butler, Bishop Jos., Dissertation of Personal Identity, in his Works, vol. i. Green, T. H., Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec. 55-73. Janet, P., The Mental State of Hystericals, especially pp. 484 ff. Subconscious Phenomena, ch. iv. (A symposium inch Miinsterberg, Jastrow, et al.) Jordan, D. S., Footnotes to Evolution, ch. x. Mackenzie, J. S., Introduction to Social Philosophy, 2d ed., ch. iii-v. Ribot, T., Diseases of Personality. 549 550 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Sidis, B., and Goodhart, S. P., Multiple Personality, pp. 81-226, Sidis, B., The Psychology of Suggestion, ch. x-xxvi. Stratton, G. M., Experimental Psychology and its Bearing upon Culture, ch. vi, xi, xiv, xv. Ward, Jas., Article "Psychology" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. CHAPTERS IV-V Books Baldwin, J. M., The Individual and Society. Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, (esp. ch. i-iv, xi-xv). Mental Development in the Child and the Race, esp. ch. vii-xii. Bergson, H., Creative Evolution, ch. i-ii. Brinton, D. G., The Basis of Social Relations, ch. ii. Bynner, Witter, The New World. Cooley, C. H., Human Nature and the Social Order, ch. i, iv-vi, xii, etc. Fowler, Thos., Progressive Morality, ch. i. 'Kropotkin, P., Mutual Aid (rev. ed. 1910), ch. i-ii, appendices i-vi. MacDougall, W., Social Psychology, 3d ed., ch. vi-viii. ark, Thistleton, The Unfolding of Personality. Natorp, P., Sozialpadagogik. Odin, A., La Genese des Grands Hommes, vol. i, pt. ii-iv. Pearson, K., The Chances of Death, etc., pp. 103-39. Royce, J., Outlines of Psychology, ch. xii. Scott, C, Social Education, ch. i. Tarde, G., Laws of Imitation, ch. iii, v-vii. Thorsch, B., Der Einzelne und die Gesellschaft. Trotter, W., Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, pp. 11-59, 112- 38, etc. Urwick, E. J., A Philosophy of Social Progress, ch. v-vii. Ward, L. F., Applied Sociology, ch. ix, etc. Whitman, Walt, Poem, "There was a child went forth." Periodicals Boodin, J. E., Am. Jour. Social., 19 : 1-48. Hall, G. S., "Some aspects of the early sense of self," Am. Jour. Psychol, 9:351-382. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 55 1 Hirst, E. W., "Morality as inter-personal," InternaU. Jour. Ethics, 22 : 298-321. MacDougall, W., "The social basis of individuality," Am. Jour. Sociol., 18 : 1-20. Mead, G. H., "Social psychology as counterpart to physiological psychology," Psychological Bulletin, 6 : 401-8. "Social consciousness and the consciousness of meaning," Ibid., 7 : 397-405. Stoops, J. D., "The institutional self," Internatl. Jour. Ethics, 23: 193-203. CHAPTERS VI-VII Books Adams, Brooks, Law of Civilization and Decay, Preface, ch. xii, and passim. Alexander, S., Moral Order and Progress, pp. 384-98. Balfour, A. J., "A Fragment on Progress," in his Essays and Ad- dresses, 2d ed., pp. 241-82. Bristol, L. M., Social Adaptation, Introduction and ch. xvii. Biicher, K., Industrial Evolution, ch. i-ii. Carpenter, E., Civilization, its Cause and Cure, ed. 1910, pp. 1-50. Carver, T. N., Sociology and Social Progress, pp. 1-14. Comte, A., Positive Philosophy (Martineau transl.), bk. vi, ch. ii, vi. Condorcet, M. J. A., Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de I'Espece Humain. Crozier, J. B., Civilization and Progress, 3d ed., pp. 366-440. Federici, R., Les Lois du Progres, vol. ii, pp. 32-5, 44, 127, 136, 146-7, 158 ff., 223, etc. Froude, J., Essay on Progress, in Short Studies, 2d Series. Giddings, F. H., "The Ethics of Social Progress" in the collection Philanthropy and Social Progress (Crowell, 1907). Gramzow, O., Geschichte der Philosophie seit Kant, S. 650 ff. Guyot, Yves, The Tyranny of Socialism, pp. 16-25. Harris, Geo., Civilization Considered as a Science (Lond. 1861), Preface and pp. 1-60. Hecker, J., Russian Sociology, pp. 80, 128, 247, 195-6, 223, etc. Hobhouse, L. T., Social Evolution and Political Theory, pp. 8, 152-3, etc. Morals in Evolution, vol. i, pp. 20 fif. ; vol. ii, pp. 278 fif. 552 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Hughes, C. E., Conditions of Progress in a Democratic Government, Lecture I. Joly, F., Man Before Metals, pp. 327-58. King, L, The Development of Religion, ch. iv-vii. Lankester, Sir E., Degeneration: a Chapter in Darwinism. Lilienfeld, P. von. La Pathologic Sociale, Introduction. Mallock, W. H., Aristocracy and Evolution, pp. 93 ff. Marvin, F. S., The Living Past, pp. 4-5, etc. Mill, J. S., System of Logic, Bk. vi, ch. x-xi. Nietzsche, F., Der Wille zur Macht, sec. 90, etc. Osborn, H. F., Men of the Old Stone Age, Preface, Introduction, and ch. i. Patten, S. N., The Reconstruction of Economic Theory, ch. xv (in Suppl. to Ann. Amer. Acad., 44: 83-8). Petrie, W. M. F., The Revolutions of Civilization, 2d ed. ch. i, vi, vii. Robinson, J. H., The New History, pp. 239-40, 265, etc. Rousseau, J. J., Discours sur I'inegalite, etc., part ii. Schaeffle, A., Abriss der Sociologie, S. 235 ff. Bau und Leben des Socialen Korpers, 2^ Aufl. vol. i, pp. 8, 266, 306-7, etc. Shaw, G. B., Three Plays for Puritans, pp. 199-203. • Man and Superman, pp. 181-2, 193, 206-7. Sorel, G., Les Illusions du Progres, ch. v. Spencer, H., "Progress, its law and cause," Westm. Rev., Apr., 1857, repr. in Everyman's ed. of his Essays, pp. 153-197. Todd, A. J., The Primitive Family, pp. 44-8, 110-34. Urwick, E. J., A Philosophy of Social Progress, ch. x. Vacher de Lapouge, Les Selections Sociales, pp. 61, 77 fif., 100 fT., 443, ch. XV, etc. Wallace, A. R., Social Environment and Moral Progress. Ward, L. F., Pure Sociology, pp. 223-55. Applied Sociology, ch. ii, iv, vii, xi. Wines, F. H., Punishment and Reformation, ch. iv. Periodicals Abbott, L., "Henri Bergson: The philosophy of progress," Outlook, 103:388-91. Barth, P., "Der Frage des sittlichen Fortschritts der Menschheit," VierteJjahrschrift f. wiss. Philos., 1899, pp. 75-116. Bryce, J., "What is progress?" Atl, Mo., 100: 145-56. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 553 Campbell, W. E., "A philosophy of social progress," Cath. World, 98:721-31. Carmichael, R. D., "Prospect of human progress," Science, 39 (N. S.) : 883-90. Chapin, F. S., "Moral progress," Pop. Sci. Mo., May, 1915, pp. 467- 71- Dellcpiane, A., "Le progres et sa formule. La lutte pour le progres," Rev. Internatl. de Sociologic, Jan., 1912, pp. 1-30. Dewey, J., "Progress," Inlcrnall. Jour. Ethics, Apr., 1916, pp. 311-22. Hibbcn, J., "The philosophical aspects of evolution," Philos. Rev., 19: 113-36- Morley, J., "Some thoughts on progress," Educ. Rev., 29: 1-17. Niceforo, A., "Les transformations du crime et la civilisation mo- derne," Scuola posiiiva, 11 : 641-2. Patten, S. N., "Theories of progress," Am. Econ. Rev., 2 : 61-8. Ramsay, Sir W. M., "St. Paul's philosophy of history," Contemp. i?CT., 92:327-43. Sergi, G., "Qualche idee sul progresso umano," Rivista italiana di Sociologia, vol. 17, No. i. Shanahan, E. T., "Evolution and progress," Cath. World, loi : 145-56. Sims, N. L., "Social progress and the purposeful utilization of sur- plus," Am. Jour. Sociol. 22 : 369-380. Trobridge, G., "Progressive and unprogressive nations," Westm. Rev., 166:41-53. Vierkandt, A., "Bemerkungen zur Frage des sittUchen Fortschritts der Menschheit," Vierteljahrschrijt J. wiss. Philos., 1899, pp. 455-90. Woods, E. B., " Progress as a sociological concept," Am. Jour. Sociol., 12 : 779-821. Yarros, V., "Human progress: The idea and the reality," Am. Jour. Social., 21 : 15-29. CHAPTER IX Abercrombie, R., Seas and Skies in Many Latitudes, pp. 38-44. Bonacina, L., Climatic Control, ch. v-vii. Buckle, H. T., History of Civilization in England, ch. ii. Davis, W. M., "Geographic factors in the development of South Africa," Jour. Race Developm., 2 : 131-46. Dexter, E. G., Weather Influences, ch. vii-xv. 554 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Dickson, H. N., Climate and Weather, ch. x. Giles, G. M. J., Climate and Health in Hot Countries, pt. ii, sec. i. Goldenweiser, A. A., "Culture and environment," Am. Jour. Sociol., 21 : 628-33. Goode, J. P., "The human response to the physical environment," Jour, of Geography, 3 : i2>3-Ai- Gregory, H. E., Keller, A. G., and Bishop, A. L., Physical and Com- mercial Geography, ch. vii-ix. Hayes, E. C, "Effect of geographic conditions upon social realities," Am. Jour. Sociol. 19 : 813-24. Hettner, A., "Geographie des Menschen," Geographische Zeitschrift, 13:400-25. Huntington, E., Climate and Civilization, pp. i-io, 251-94, etc. Pulse of Asia, Introd. and pp. 312-4, 325, 359-85. The Climatic Factor as Illustrated in Arid America, ch. ii-iv, vi-vii, ix-x, xvii-xviii; "Geographic environment and Japanese character," Jour. Race Developm., 2 : 256-81. Hume, David, Essay on National Characters. Leroy-Beaulieu, A., The Empire of the Tsars, vol. i, pp. 138-94. Montesquieu, C. L., Esprit des Lois, livres xiv, xvii, xviii. Peschel, F., Races of Man, pp. 314-8; reprinted as "The Zone of the Founders of Religion," in Carver, Sociology and Social Progress, pp. 271-5. Ripley, W. Z., Races of Europe, ch. xxi. Schliiter, E., "Ueber das Verhaltniss von Natur und Mensch," Geogr. Ztsjt., 13: 514 ff. Semple, E., Influences of Geographic Environment, ch. i, v, vii, xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii. Ward, R. D., Climate Considered especially in relation to Man, ch. vii, viii, xi. Wissler, C, "Aboriginal maize culture as a typical culture complex," Am. Jour. Sociol., 21 : 656-61. Woodruff, C. E., The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, ch. i, vi, viii-xii. CHAPTER X Arreat, L., "Inventions et changements sociaux," Rev. Int. de So- ciologie, 20 : 241-55. Burgess, E. W., The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution, ch. ii-v. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 555 Mason, O. T., Origins of Invention, esp. Preface, ch. i-iii, ix, xii. McGee, W.J, and Thomas, C, Prehistoric America, ch. viii. Morgan, L. T., Ancient Society, parts i, iv. Rousseau, J. J., Discours sur I'inegahte, etc., pt. ii. Tanner, Amy, "Certain social aspects of invention," Am. Jour. Psychology, 26 : 388-416. Taussig, F. W., Inventors and Moneymakers, ch. i-iii. Todd, A. J., "Socializing the engineer," The Technograph, May, 1913, pp. 132-9. Tylor, E. B., Anthropology, ch. viii-xi. CHAPTER XI Bagehot, W., Lombard Street, ch. iii. Carlile, W. W., The Evolution of Modern Money, pt. ii. Del Mar, A., Money and Civihzation, Introd. and selected chapters. ■ — A History of Money in Ancient Countries, ch. i, xix, xx. . Gunton, G., Principles of Social. Economy, ch. i. Jevons, W. S., Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, ch. i-iv. Kinley, D., Money, ch. i, ii, v. Ridgeway, W., The Origins of Metallic Currency and Weight Stand- ards, ch. ii, iii, v, vi. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, sec. 142-55. Walker, F. A., Money in its Relations to Trade and Industry, ch. i-ii. Wells, D. A., Robinson Crusoe's Money (ed. 1892). Withers, H., The Meaning of Money, ch. i-ii. CHAPTER XII Cunningham, W., The Use and Abuse of Money, pt. i. Huxley, T. H., Capital the Mother of Labour, in his Collected Essays, vol. ix, pp. 146-87. Jacks, L. P., "War and the wealth of nations," All. Mo. 116 : 419-26. Marx, K., Capital, vol. i, parts vii-viii. Ross, E. A., Foundations of Sociology, pp. 217-25. Shaw, Albert, The Outlook for the Average Man, ch. ii. Sumner, W. G., Power and Beneficence of Capital, in his Earth Hun- ger and Other Essays, pp. 337-53. Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, pp. 156-8. Veblen, T., The Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. ii-iv. 556 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS CHAPTER XIII Allin, A., "The basis of sociality," Am. Jour. Social. 8: 75-84. Brooks, J. G., American Syndicalism, esp. ch. viii-xiii, xvi. Descamps, P., La Science Sociale, Nov. 1913, p. 39, etc. Durkheim, E., De la Division du Travail Social, 2d ed., pp. 98-102, 211-66, 391-406. Federici, R., Les Lois du Progres, vol. ii, pp. 146-7. George, H., Progress and Poverty, bk. x, ch. iii. Hobson, J. A., Work and Wealth, ch. vi-vii. Hunter, R., Violence and the Labor Movement, pt. ii, esp. ch. x. Levine, L., The Labor Movement in France, A Study in Revolu- tionary Syndicalism, ch. v, vi, viii. Mikhalovsky, U. K., Works, vol. iii, and Durkheim's Theory of Division of Labor, summarized in English by Hecker, Russian Sociology, pp. 146-50. Plato, Republic, bk. ii. Webb, Sydney and Beatrice, "What Syndicalism Means," published as a supplement to The Cnisade, Aug. 191 2. Zitslaflf, J., Arbeitsgliederung in Maschinenbauunternehmungen, (Sammlung nationalokonomischer und statistischer Abhandlung des Staatswissenschaftlichen Seminars zu Halle, 19 13). CHAPTER XIV Beard, C. A., An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. Boudin, L., Socialism and War, esp. ch. i-ii. Carver, T. N., Essays in Social Justice, ch. ii, v, vii. Clark, V. S., "The influence of manufacturing upon pohtical senti- ment in the United States from 1820 to i860," Am. Hist. Rev. 22 : 58-64, Oct. 1916. Crozier, J. B., Civilization and Progress, pp. 386 ff. Culbertson, W. S., Alexander Hamilton, pp. 81 ff. and passim. Engels, F., Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, ch. ii-iii. Fitch, M. H., Physical Basis of Mind and Morals. Ghent, W. J., Mass and Class, pp. 1-30. Gregory, Keller, and Bishop, Physical and Commercial Geography, ch. xiii-xiv. Kautsky, K., Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History, ch. v. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 557 Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals, vol: i, pp. 143, 158, 236, etc. Loria, A., Economic Foundations of Society, esp. pt. i. La Morphologic Sociale, pp. 5-22. Marx, K., and Engels, P., Communist Manifesto. Mill, J. S., On Liberty, ch. i-ii. Rabbeno, U., The American Commercial Policy, Essay 3. Seligman, E. R. A., Economic Interpretation of History. Simons, A. M., Social Forces in American History, Preface, ch. vi, viii-xi, etc. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, pp. SS^ ii4. 163-6, 475-6, etc. Todd, A. J., Primitive Family, pp. 11, 18-22, 140, etc. CHAPTER XV Adams, E. D., Power of Ideals in American History. Hayes, E. C, "Social values," Am. Jour. Social., 18: 470-7. Macgregor, D. H., Evolution of Industry, pp. 54-61. SchmoUer, G., Grundriss der Allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre, vol. ii, pp. 653-4, 675, etc. Taussig, F. W., Inventors and Moneymakers, ch. i-iii. Toynbee, A., Industrial Revolution, ch. xiv. CHAPTER XVI Cockerill, T. D. A., "Biology and human progress," All. Mo., loi : 728-37. Conklin, E. G., Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men, ch. iv-vi. Conn, H. W., Social Heredity and Social Evolution, ch. i, xii. Giddings, F. H., Democracy and Empire, ch. v. Huxley, T. H., "The struggle for existence in human society," Nineteenth Century, '^a.n. 1888; reprinted as ch. i in his Social Diseases and Worse Remedies. Keller, A. G., Societal Evolution, ch. i. Nietzsche, F., The Will to Power, passim. Stephen, Sir Leslie, "Ethics and the Struggle for Existence," in his Social Rights and Duties, vol. i, pp. 221-55. Thomson, J. A., and Geddes, Patrick, Evolution, pp. 143-82. Wallace, A. R., "Human selection," Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1890, reprinted in his Studies Scientific and Social, vol. i, pp. 509-26. 558 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS CHAPTER XVII Bulletins of the Eugenics Record Ofifice, Cold Springs Harbor. Conklin, E. G., Heredity and Environment, etc., ch. v-vi. Darwin, Leonard, "Eugenics and war," Eugenics Rev., July, 191 5. Davenport, C. B., Heredity in its Relation to Eugenics, pp. 1-4, 252-71. Devine, E. T., Editorial in The Survey, Apr. 27, 1912. Ellis, H., The Problem of Race Regeneration, pp. 60-71. "The new social hygiene," Yale Rev., n. s. i : 364-75. Gallon, F., Hereditary Genius. V " Eugenics, its scope and aims," reprinted in Am. Jour. Social., 10: 1-25. \ "Studies in eugenics," Am. Jour. Sociol., 11 : 11-25. Holt, W. L., "The economic factors in eugenics," Pop. Sci. Mo., Nov. 1913, pp. 471-83- Johnson, R., "Eugenics and so-called eugenics," Am. Jour. Sociol., 20 : 98-103. Kellicott, W. E., Social Direction of Human Evolution, ch. iii. Kohs, S. C, "New light on eugenics," Jour, of Heredity, 6:446- 452. Meyer, A., "The right to marry," The Survey, June 3, 1916, pp. 243-6. Proctor, R. A., Hereditary Traits. Saleeby, W., Methods of Race Regeneration, pp. 16-63. "The progress of eugenics," Forum, Apr. 19 14. Schuster, E., Eugenics, esp. ch. iv, vii, ix-xi. Skelton, H. S., "Political aspects of eugenics," Contemp. Rev., 107: 105-12. Southard, E. E., "Eugenics vs. Cacogenics," Jour, of Heredity, 5: 408-14. Thompson, J. .A., "Eugenics and war," Eugen. Rev., Apr. 1915. Wallace, A. R., "Human progress: past and present," Arena, Jan. 1892, repr. in Studies Scientific and Social, vol. ii, pp. 493-509- \ Ward, L. F., "Eugenics, euthenics and eudemics," Am. Jour. Sociol., 18: 737-54- Woods, E. B., "Social waste of unguided personal ability," Am. Jour. Social., 19 : 358-69. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 559 CHAPTER XVIII Babington, W. D., Fallacies of Race Theories, Essays i, vii, etc. Baker, R. S., Following the Color Line, esp. ch. viii. Boas, F., The Mind of Primitive Man, ch. i, ii, iv, vi. "Race mixture, etc.," Science, n. s. 29 : 847 ff. ryce, Jas., The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind : Romanes Lecture, 1902. Chamberlain, S. H., Die Grundlagen des xix Jahrhunderts. Cornejo, M. H., "La race," Rev. Intend, de Sociol., 19 : 161-89. Cummings, J., "Population and ethnic character," Quar. Jour. Econ., 14 : 1 71-2 11. Darwin, C, Descent of Man, vol. i, ch. vii. ^ Davenport, C. B., "The racial element in national vitality," Pop. Sci. Mo., 86:331-3. "Influence of heredity upon human society," Ann. Amer. Acad., 34 : 18 ff. »► Diggs, S. H., "Relation of race to thought expression,^'- Jo2ir. Philos. Psychol, and Sci. Mcth., 12 : 346-58. ^Finot, J., Race Prejudice, pt. i, ii, v. Freeman, E. A., "Race and language," Contemp. Rev., 29: 711-41. ^Galton, F., Hereditary Genius (ed. 1914), pp. 325-61. Gobineau, J. A., Essai sur ITnegalite des Races Humaines. Gumplowicz, L., Der Rassenkampf, sec. 10-38. Sociologie und Politik, sec. 23-35. Outlines of Sociology, pt. iii. "^ Hall, G. S., "The point of view toward primitive races," Jour. Race Developm., i : 5-1 1. Holmes, W. H., "Sketch of the origin, development and probable destiny of the races of men," Amer. Anthropol., n. s., 4 : 369-91. Hone, J. M., "Count Arthur of Gobineau: Race Mystic," Contemp. Rev., 104 : 94-103. '^eane. A., Man Past and Present, ch. i-ii ; Ethnology, ch. vii-ix. "^ Keller, A. G., "A sociological view of the ' Native Question,' " Yale Rev., Nov. 1903, pp. 259-75. Kelsey, C, "Influence of heredity and environment upon race im- provement," Ann. Amer. Acad., 34: 3-8. Kidd, B., Social Evolution, ch. ii-iii. Le Bon, G., L'evolution psychologique des peuples, 2d ed. Lyall, A. C, "Race and religion," Fortn. Rev. 78 : 926-42. 560 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS "Marett, R. R., Anthropology, ch. iii. Mayo-Smith, R., "Theories of mixture of races and nationalities," Yale Rev., 3 : 166-86. Mecklin, J. M., Democracy and Race Friction, ch. ii, iii, v, vi. Odum, H. W., "Standards of measurement for race development," Jour. Race Developm., 5:364-83. Petrie, W. M. F., The Revolutions of Civilisation, ch. vi-vii. Ross, E. A., The Changing Chinese, ch. ii-iii. Royce, J., "Race questions and prejudices," Internatl. Jour. Ethics, i6:265flf. -Ripley, W. Z., Races of Europe, ch. xix-xx; Qiiar. Jour. Econ., 14: 426-8. Shaler, N., "Race prejudice," Atl. Mo., 58 : 510 ff. Spiller, G. (editor). Papers on Inter-Racial Problems Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress, Lond. 191 1. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, pp. 70-8, 109-18, 473, etc. ^Tenney, A. A., Social Democracy and Population, pp. 72 ff. Thomas, W. I., "Psychology of race prejudice," Am. Jour. Sociol., 9:593-611. V Tylor, E. B., Anthropology, ch. i, iii. Woodruff, C. E., "Some laws of racial and intellectual development," Jour. Race Developm., 3 : 156-75. Woodworth, R. S., "Racial differences in mental traits," Science, n. s., 31 : 171-86. CHAPTER XIX Books Angell, N., The Mirage of the Map, Internatl. Conciliation Tract No. 53. Bagehot, W., Physics and Politics, section on The Uses of Conflict, von Bernhardi, F., Germany and the Next War, ch. i, ii, v. Carnegie, A., War as the Mother of Valor and Civilization (Peace Society of N. Y., 1910). Fried, A. H., A Few Lessons Taught by the Balkan War, I. C. Tract No. 74. Holsti, R., Some Superstitions, Customs and Beliefs in Primitive Warfare, in Festskrift tillegnad Edvard Westermarck. Kidd, B., Social Evolution, ch. ii. Lodge, Sir O., The Irrationality of War, I. C. Tract No. 56. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 561 Nasmyth, G., Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory. Nietzsche, F., Der VVille zur Macht ; Also Sprach Zarathustra. Novicow, J., Les Luttes entre les Societes Humaines. La Guerre et ses Pretendus Bienfaits. Patrick, G. T. W., Psychology of Relaxation, eh. vi. Pearson, K., National Life from the Standpoint of Science, pp. 24 f. Publications of the American Sociological Society, vol. x, "War and Mihtarism." Steinmetz, S. R., Die Philosophic des Krieges (Natur und Kultur- philosophische BibHothek, bd. vi, 1907). Stratton, G. M., The Control of the Fighting Instinct, I. C. Tract No. 73. Sumner, W. G., War and Other Essays, pp. 1-40. Woods, F. A., and Baltzly, A., Is War Diminishing? A Study of the Prevalence of War in Europe from 1450 to the Present Day. Periodicals Bourne, R., "The moral equivalent for universal military service," New Republic, July i, 1916, pp. 217-9. Bryce, J., "War and human progress," All. Mo., 118 : 301-315. James, W., "The moral equivalent of war," Pop. Sci. Mo., 77 : 400- 410 ; same in McClure's Mag., 35 : 463-8. Johnson, G. E., "The fighting instinct, its place in life," Survey, Dec. 4, 191S, pp. 243-8. Jordan, D. S., "The human harvest," Chautauqua Mag., 53:178- 194. Smith, W. A., " Some false consolations of war," AU. Mo., 116 : 843-7. Steinmetz, S. R., "Die Bedeutung des Krieges bei den Kulturvolk- ern," Zeitschrift fur Socialwissenschaft, May, 1914- CHAPTER XX Capen, E. W., "The Western Influence in China," Jour. Race Developm., 3 : 412-37. Keller, A. G., Societal Evolution, ch. ix. Lochner, L., The Cosmopolitan Club Movement, I. C. Tract No. 61. Ross, E. A., Foundations of Sociology, pp. 225-53. Sims, N. L., A Hoosier Village (Columbia Studies, vol. 46), pp. 163- 181. Waitz, T., Introd. to Anthropology, pp. 344-9- 2 o 562 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS CHAPTER XXI Dickinson, G. L., Justice and Liberty, pp. 54-133. Ely, R. T., Property and Contract, ch. i, iii, xxii. Evolution of Industrial Society, pp. 255-70. Hayes, E. C, Introd. to the Study of Sociology, ch. vii-x. King, W. I., The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, pp. 78-82. -Letourneau, C, Property, its Origin and Development. ^Mallock, W. H., Property and Progress. ^ More, P. E., Aristocracy and Justice, pp. 127-48. •Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society, pt. iv. Parmelee, M., Poverty and Social Progress, ch. vi-vii. Rousseau, J. J., Discours sur I'origine et les fondements de I'inegalite parmi les hommes. Spahr, C. B., The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States, p. 69, etc. Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology, sec. 536-41. CHAPTER XXII Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics, ch. iii-iv. Bosanquet, Helen, The Family, pt. i. Dealey, J. Q., The Family in its Sociological Aspects, ch. vi, vii, xii. Fiske, J., "The Meaning of Infancy," Essay xii in his Excursions of an Evolutionist. Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ch. xvi, xxi, xxii. Gillette, J. M., The Family and Society, ch. i. Grosse, E., Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirtschaft. Parsons, E. C, The Family, pp. 20-1 11. Riis, J. A., The Peril and the Preservation of the Home, Lect. i. SchmoUer, G., Grundriss, etc., selections transl. in Am. Jour. Social., 20 : 521-2. Snider, Denton J., Social Institutions, pp. 59-163. Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology, vol. i, pt. iii. Starcke, C. N., La Familie dans les Differentes Societes. Sutherland, A., Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, vol. i, ch. i-ii, vi, x, etc. ; vol. ii, ch. xix-xx. Thwing, C. F. and C. B., The Family, ch. vi, vii, xii. . Todd, A. J., The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency. / BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 563 Westermarck, E., History of Human Marriage, 3d cd., p. 50, etc. VVhetham, W. C. D. and C. D., The Family and the Nation. CHAPTER XXIII Aristotle, Politics. Bagehot, W., Physics and Politics, pt. iii-iv. Balfour, A. J., A Fragment on Progress, in his Essays and Addresses, 2d ed., pp. 259-80. Burke, E., Reflections on the Revolution in France (ed. 1790). Garner, J. W., Introd. to Political Science, pp. 316-7. Harrison, Frederic, Order and Progress, pp. 107-124, 207-241. Jenks, J. W., Governmental Action for Social Welfare, ch. ii-vii. Lieber, F., On Civil Liberty and Self Government. Mill, J. S., Essay on Liberty. Montesquieu, C. L., Esprit des Lois, bk. iv. ^L. Oppenheimer, Franz, The State. Pollock, F., History of the Science of PoHtics. Russell, B., "Education as a political institution,", yl//. Mo., 117: 750-7- SchmoUer, G., Grundriss, vol. ii, pp. 542 ff. ; see also excerpts in Am. Jour. Socio!., 20: 528-9. Sidgwick, H., Elements of Politics, p. 604, etc. Snider, D. J., Social Institutions, pp. 336-48. Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology, sec. 440 ff. Ward, L. F., Dynamic Sociology, vol. i, p. 526; ii, pp. 168, 212, 545, 574, etc. CHAPTER XXIV Berolzheimer, F., The World's Legal Philosophies, ch. vii. Carter, J. C, Law, its Origin, Growth and Function, passim. Cherry, R. R., Lectures on the Growth of Criminal Law in Ancient Communities. y Dee Mallonee, L., "The growth of custom into law," Am. Law Rev., 49: 235-48. • Dewey, John, "Force, Violence and I^aw," New Republic, Jan. 22, 1916. Gareis, K., Introduction to the Science of Law, pt. i. Ihering, R. von, Law as a Means to an End, ch. vi, viii, Korkunov, N. M., General Theory of Law, bk. i, iii. y 564 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS ^ Maine, Sir H. S., Ancient Law, ch. i-v. Marvin, F. S., The Living Past, pp. 11 5-7. Miraglia, L., Comparative Legal Philosophy, bk. i, ch. vii-x. Pattee, W. S., The Essential Nature of Law, ch. v; "The place of law in civilization," The Advocate, i : 225 ff. Pound, Roscoe, "Social problems and the courts," Am. Jour. Sociol., 18:331-41. Ross, E. A., Social Control, ch. xi. Spencer, A. W., Mid-West Quarterly, 2 : 156-61. Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology, sec. 529-35. Stevens, E. G., "Christianity and law," Am. Law Rev., 49: 1-44. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, ch. i-iii, xi, xiii, etc. ■ Earth Hunger, pp. 161 ff. Thompson, D. G., Social Progress, ch. iv. CHAPTER XXV Bagehot, W., Physics and Politics, section on The Age of Discussion. Butler, N. C, "Law and public opinion," Am. Law Rev., 49:374- 88. Carver, T. N., Essays in Social Justice, ch. i. Dicey, A. V., Lectures on the Relation of Law and Public Opinion in England. Foulke, W. D., Natl. Municipal Rev., 3 : 245-55. Ghent, W. J., Our Benevolent Feudalism, ch. vii. Godkin, E. L., Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, pp. 183-225. Hadley, A. T., "The organization of public opinion," No. Am. Rev., 201 : 191-6, Feb., 1915. Harrison, Frederic, Order and Progress, pp. 95-106. Jenks, J. W., "The guidance of public opinion," Am. Jour. Social., 1 : 158-169. Lowell, A. L., Public Opinion and Popular Government, ch. i, etc. Mallock, W. H., Aristocracy and Evolution, pp. 185-7, etc. Muir, Ramsey, Nationalism and InternationaHsm, ch. i. Publications of the American Sociological Society, vol. ix, "Freedom of Communication," 1914. Ross, E. A., Social Psychology, ch. xviii, xxii. Social Control, ch. x. Russell, B., "Education as a political institution," Atl. Mo., 117: 750-7. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 565 SchmuUcr, G., Grundriss, clc, vol. ii, pp. 542 ff- ^ (^« Shepard, W. J., Am. Jour. Sociol., 15 : 32-60.^ K.^ • Yarros, V., Am. Jour. Sociol., 5:372-82; 15:321-34; 22:203-'' II. (Various aspects of the problem of the press and public opinion.) CHAPTERS XXVI-XXVn Bristol, L. M., Social Adaptation, pp. 283-91. Burke, E., Rellections on the Revolution in France (ed. 1790), pp. 53, 76, and passim. Carlyle, Thos., Heroes and Hero-Worship (ed. 1907), pp. 1-17, 196- 200. Carver, T. N., Essays in Social Justice, ch. vi. Cooley, C. H., Social Organization, ch. xiii-xv, xviii-xxvii. Crozier, J. B., Civilization and Progress, 3d ed. History of Intellectual Development on the Lines of Modern Evolution, vol. i, iii. Davis, R. G., Westminster Rev., 171 : 639-45 ; 174 : 379-82. Dickinson, G. L., Justice and Liberty, pp. 13-33, etc. Emerson, R. W., Essay on Uses of Great Men. —— Fite, W., Individualism. Gal ton, F., Hereditary Genius. Harris, Geo., Inequality and Progress, ch. iv, v, ix-xvii. Howard, C, Atl. Mo., 105 : 120-3. _ Izoulet, J., La cite moderne. James, W., "Great men and their environment," and "The impor- tance of individuals," in The Will to Believe and Other Essays, pp. 216-262. Lippmann, W., A Preface to Politics, esp. ch. i, vi, ix. •• Ludovici, A. M., A Defence of Aristocracy, ch. i, vi-ix. Mallock, W. H., Aristocracy and Evolution; Social Equality, ch. vi-x. Mecklin, J. M., "Academic freedom and status," School and Society, 3 : 624-30. Michels, R., Political Parties : a Sociological Study of the OHgarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, pt. i. Mill, J. S., System of Logic, bk. vi, ch. xi, sec. 3-4. More, P. E., Aristocracy and Justice, pp. 3-38, 103-23. Mumford, E., "The origins of leadership," Am. Jour. Sociol., 12 : 216- 40; 367-97, 500-31. 566 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Nietzsche, F., Antichrist, sec. 57, etc. Paine, Thos., The Rights of Man. Richter, J. P., Levana, ch. i. Rogers, A. E., "Burke's poHtical philosophy," Am. Jour. Social.;. 18:51-76. Ross, E. A., Foundations of Sociology, pp. 227-34. Rousseau, J. J., Discours sur I'origine de I'inegalit'e, etc. Shaw, G. B., Socialism and Superior Brains (Fabian Tract No. 146, ''^^ 1909; originally printed in Fortn. Rev., 1894). Spencer, H., Study of Sociology, ch. ii (pp. 22-42 in 191 2 American ed.). Veblen, T., Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iii-v, viii, xiv. Woods, F. A., The Influence of Monarchs. CHAPTER XXVIII / Deniker, J., The Races of Man, pp. 127-43. Dewey, J., How We Think, ch. xiii. Federici, R., Lois du Progres, vol. ii, p. 127, etc. de la Grasserie, R., "Du metamorphisme d'une nationalite par le langage," Rev. Philosophique, Sept., 1913. . Gumplowicz, L., Der Rassenkampf, pp. 249 fif. Keller, A. G., Societal Evolution, pp. 59, 77, 131, 211, etc. -'Marett, R. R., Anthropology, ch. v. 'Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society, pt. ii, ch. v. MiiUer, Max, Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought ; Three Lectures on the Science of Language, 3d ed. ... Noire, L., Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes, ch. ix, pt. iii, transl. and publ. by Open Court Co., as "On the origin of lan- guage and the logos theory." ^^,-^rylor, E. B., Anthropology, ch. iv-vii. ^^'AVaitz, T., Anthropology, vol. i, p. 277, etc. Wallas, G., The Great Society, pp. 51-3. j 2 ^ ^^ Whitney, W. D., Language and the Study of Languages. - '^^^^^^'^ JlL^*-/' CHAPTER XXIX Books Allen, Grant, Evolution of the Idea of God. Bois, H., La V'aleur de I'Experience Religieuse. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 567 Boutroux, E., Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy. Brace, C. L., Gesla Chrisli, 4th ed., esp. ch. x, xxiii. Buclde, H. T., History of Civilization in England, ch. v. Burke, E., Reflections on the Revolution in France, pp. 134 ff. Caird, E., Evolution of Religion. Carver, T. N., The Religion Worth Having, esp. pp. 1-90. Chatterton-Hill, G., The Sociological Value of Christianity. Coe, G. A., The Spiritual Life: Studies in the Science of Religion. Comte, A., Positive Philosophy, Bohn ed., vol. ii, pp. 315 f?. Clodd, E., The Childhood of Religions. Crozier, J. B., Civilization and Progress, 3d ed., pp. 214-75, 412-3, 415-9- History of Intellectual Development, etc., passim. .Davenport, F. M., Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. Davies, T. W., Magic, Divination and Demonology. Dickinson, G. L., Rehgion. Dill, S., Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurehus, bk. iv. Dobschiitz, E. von. The Influence of the Bible on Civilization. Draper, J. W., History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, 4th ed. ■ Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, bk. i. Elwang, W. W., The Social Function of Religious Belief (Univ. of Missouri Studies, Soc. Sci. Ser., vol. ii). Foster, G. B., The Function of Rehgion in Man's Struggle for Exist- ence. J'razer, Sir J. G., The Golden Bough, 3d ed. Guyau, J. M., L'irrehgion de I'avenir. Hartmann, F. von, The Religion of the Future. Hertzka, T., Das sociale Problem, ch. vi. .Hoffding, H., The Philosophy of Religion. Hoffmann, F. S., The Sphere of Religion: a Consideration of its ^ Nature and of its Influence upon the Progress of Civilization. James, W., The Varieties of Religious Experience. Jastrow, M., Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia '^ and Assyria. ^XJevons, F. B., An Introduction to the History of Rehgion. •Kidd, B., Social Evolution, ch. v. Kimball, J. C, The Romance of Evolution and its Relation to Reli- gion. King, I., The Development of Religion. 568 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Lang, A., Magic and Religion, ^ea, H. C, Sacerdotal Celibacy. Lecky, W. E. H., A History of European Morals. Leroy-Beaulieu, A., The Empire of the Tsars, vol. ii. ^ Leuba, J., The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion; ^ A Psychological Study of Religion, its Origin, Function and Future. ^^ ^ Lippert, J., Geschichte des Priesterthums. f^ <-'vjca/m^ Lombroso, C, Crime, its Causes, etc., ch. x. Marett, R. R., Anthropology, ch. viii. -.-— ■ The Threshold of Religion. ^,„^ Martineau, Jas., A Study of Religion. Miiller, Max, Introduction to the Science of Religion. Nietzsche, F., Antichrist. Parsons, E. C, Religious Chastity. Reichardt, E. N., The Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development. Reid, W. A., Laws of Heredity, pp. 487-96, etc. Robertson, J. M., Pagan Christs, pt. i. Romanes, G. J., Thoughts on Religion.- Ross, E. A., Social Control, ch. xii, xvi. Schmidt, C, Social Results of Early Christianity, pp. 409-43.^ Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology, pt. vi. Starbuck, E. D., Psychology of Religion. »- Stratton, G. M., The Psychology of the Religious Life. — Sumner, W. G., Folkways, pp. 224, 605-27, etc. ^ Tiele, C. P., Science of Religion. Webster, D. H., Rest Days. /White, A. D., A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. Periodicals Alexander, H. B., "Religion and progress," Hibbcrt Jour., 9: 169- 87. Boutroux, E., "The essence of religion," Coniemp. Rev., Dec. 1914, pp. 787-805. Drake, D., "Natural selection in religious evolution," Biblical World, 47: 231-6. Elwood, C. A., "The social function of religion," Am. Jour. SocioL, 19: 289-307. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 569 Gladden, W., "Religion and the schools," All. Mo., 115: 57-68. Hull, E. R., "The church and civilization," Calholic Miiui, 14; 25-44- Mecklin, J. M., Inlernl. Jour. Ethics, 23 : 298-310. Meyer, E. C, "Creating social values in the tropics," Am. Jour. Social., 21 : 662-5. CHAPTER XXX Bax, Belfort, The Roots of Reality, ch. vii. Bossuct, J. B., Discours sur I'histoire universelle. Bridgewater Treatises. Bristol, L. M., Social Adaptation, pp. 298-312. Campbell, W. W., Science, n. s. 42 : 238, etc. Carver, T. N., Essays in Social Justice, pp. 232, etc. Comte, A., Positive Philosophy, bk. i, ch. i; bk. vi, ch. ii, iii, vi (Martineau transl.). Dewey, J., Intcrnatl. Jour. Ethics, Apr. 1916, pp. 311-322. Dickinson, G. L., Justice and Liberty, pp. 222-32. Edwards, Jonathan, Works, ist Amer. ed. Emerson, R. W., Essay on Illusions (in Conduct of Life). Ellwood, C. A., The Social Problem, Introduction. Eucken, R., The Meaning and \'alue of Life, pp. 79-147. Hegel, J. W., Philosophy of History (Sibree's transl.). Lessing, G. E., The Education of the Human Race (ed. by Haney). Lloyd, A. H., "The case of purpose against fate in history, Am. Jour. Socio!., 17 : 491-51 1. Mackintosh, R. C, Hegel, ch. xiv. McCabe, Jos., "The philosophy of revolt," English Rev., Nov. 1914, pp. 430 ff. Morris, G. S., Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of History, pp. 111-136. Kant, I., Principles of Politics, including his Essay on Perpetual Peace. Schaffle, A., Bau und Leben des socialen Korpers, 2e Aufl., vol. ii, pp. 65s ff. Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral Sentiments, part iv, ch. i ; part vi, ch. iii, etc. Sumner, W. G., Folkways (see the topic. Ideals, in index). Urwick, E., A Philosophy of Social Progress, pp. 286, etc. 570 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS White, F. E., Royce, J., and Baldwin, J. M., Discussions in Internatl. Jour. Ethics, 6 : 99, 93-7 ; 5 : 489-500. CHAPTER XXXI Bergson, H., Creative Evolution, ch. ii. Blair, T. S., Human Progress: What can Man do to Further It? pp. 168 ff. Buckle, H. T., Hist, of Civilization, etc., ch. iv. Bushee, F. A., " Science and social progress," Pop. Set. Mo., 79: 236- 251. Clifford, W. K., On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought (in his Lectures and Essays). Colvin, S. S., and Bagley, W. C, Human Behaviour, ch. x-xi. Comte, A., Positive Philosophy, bk. vi, ch. xvi. Crozier, J. B., Civilization and Progress, 3d ed., pp. 419-28. Draper, J. W., History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, ch. xi. Federici, R., Les Lois du Progres, vol. ii, pp. 44, 136, 223, etc. Gunton, Geo., Principles of Social Economics, ch. i-iii. Wealth and Progress, pp. 188 ff. Hecker, J., Russian Sociology, pp. 108, 199, etc., summarizing views of Lavrov and Kareyev. Huxley, T. H., Controverted Questions, Prologue. Izoulet, J., La Cite Moderne, bk. ii, ch. v-vi, etc. Jacks, L. P., "Our drifting civilization," All. Mo., 117: 298-308. McDougall, W., An Introduction to Social Psychology, 2d ed., ch. ii, iii, XV. Mill, J. S., Logic, bk. vi, ch. ix, sec. 7 ; ch. xi. Newcomb, S., Side Lights on Astronomy, ch. xx (Relation of scientific method to social progress). Novicow, J., Les Luttes entre les Societes Humaines, pp. 404, etc. Parmelee, M., The Science of Human Behaviour, ch. xi, xiii-xiv, xx. Trotter, W., Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, pp. 1-65, 112- 139- Wallas, G., The Great Society, ch. iii, x, xi, xii. CHAPTER XXXII Brunetiere, F., L'art et la Morale. Crane, Walter, Ideals in Art. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 57 1 Dcnikcr, J., Races of Man, pp. 197-212. Emerson, R. W., Essay on Beauty. Guyau, J. M., L'art au point de vue sociologique, 3d ed. Hunt, W. Holman, Obligations of the Universities toward Art (Romanes Lecture, 1895). Ruskin, J., The Political Economy of Art ; Lectures on Art. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, pp. 135, 604, 627, etc. Symonds, A., The Symbolist Movement, p. 152 and passim. Tolstoi, L., What is Art? Tylor, E. B., Anthropology, ch. xii. Brimmer, M., Jour. Social Science, 15: 148-56. Chase, W. M., Outlook, 95 : 441-5. The Craftsman, 17 : 515-27 ; 20 : 250-7. Godkin, E. L., The Dial, 51 : 133-5. Holley, H., The New Republic, Apr. 24, 191 5, pp. 301-2. Irving, L., "Drama as a factor in social progress," Fortn. Rev., 102 : 268-74. Lee, Vernon, Curr. Lit., 48 : 99-101. McFall, H., Forum, 44: 557-68. Odenwald-Unger, Ward, Sargent, and others, "The fine arts as a dynamic factor in society," Am. Jour. SocioL, 12 : 656-74. Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1908, pp. 515-23, 820-7; 191 1, PP- 778-83. CHAPTER XXXIIl Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics, ch. vi. The Spirit of Youth and City Streets. Twenty Years at Hull House. Newer Ideals of Peace, ch. iii. Appleton, L. E., A Comparative Study of the Play Activities of Adult Savages and Civilized Children. Ayres, L., Laggards in Our Schools. Bagley, W. C, Educational Values; "Fundamental distinctions be- tween vocational and liberal education," School and Home Edu- cation, Mar. 1914. Barth, P., Erziehung und Gesellschaft, in Rein's Encyclopadisches Handbuch der Padagogik, Bd. ii. Bauer, A., La culture morale aux diver degres de I'enseignement public. 572 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Betts, G. H., Social Principles of Education. Bloomfield, M., Vocational Guidance. Butterfield, K. L., Chapters in Rural Progress. Carlton, F. T., Education and Industrial Evolution, ch. ii-iv. Chapin, F. S., Education and the Mores. Congres International de I'education sociale (Proceedings). Cronson, B., Pupil Self-Government. ^Davidson, T., The Education of the Wage Earners. Davies, J. L., The Working Men's College. Davis, J. B., Vocational and Moral Guidance. Dean, A. D., The Worker and the State. Dewey, J., Democracy and Education. How We Think. Moral Principles in Education. Schools of To-morrow. The School and Society. Dopp, K. E., "A new factor in the elementary school curriculum," Am. Jour. Sociol., 8 : 145-57. ^y^ Dresslar, F. B., Superstition and Education: Univ. of Calif. Publ., vol. V, No. i, 1907. Dutton, S. T., Social Phases of Education in the School and the Home. EUwood, C. A., Sociology and Modern Social Problems, ch. xv. Eslander, J., Education au point de vue sociologique. Fouillee, A., Education from the National Standpoint, bk. i. Freie Wort, No. 13 (191 2-13), pp. 492-7, "Soziologie und Unter- richtsreform." Gill, W. L., The School Republic. A New Citizenship. Gillette, J. M., "An outline of social study for elementary schools," Am. Jour. Social., 19 : 491-509. Gould, F. J., Moral Instruction, its Theory and Practice. Greene, M. L., Among School Gardens. Groos, K., The Play of Man. Gulick, L. H., Popular Recreation and Public Morality. Harris, Geo., Civilization Considered as a Science, pp. 62-195. Henderson, C. H., Education and the Larger Life, ch. i-ii, x-xi. — — Pay Day. Howard, G. E., Am. Jour. Sociol., 16: 805-17. Jenks, J. W., Citizenship and the Schools, ch. i-ii. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPLExMENTARY READINGS 573 Johnson, G. E., Education by Plays and Games. Jones, A. J., The Conlinuation School in the United States, U. S. Bur. Educ. Bull. No. i, 1907. Kerschensteiner, G., Three Lectures on Vocational Training. King, Irving, Social Aspects of Education, ch. xi. Leavitt, F. M., "Some sociological phases of the movement for in- dustrial education," Am. Jour. Social., 18: 352-60. Mackaye, P., The Civic Theatre. Moore, E. C, What is Education? Moral Education League, Quarterly and other pamphlets. Morgan, Alex., Education and Social Progress, ch. vi, ix-xxi. Morison, G. S., The New Epoch as Developed by the Manufacture of Power. National Education Association : Journal of Proceedings. •Natorp, Paul, Sozialpadagogik, 2e Aufl., 1904. Nearing, S., Social Adjustment, ch. iii. O'Shea, M. V., Social Development and Education, pt. ii. Patrick, G. T. W., Psychology of Relaxation, ch. ii. Perry, C. A., Wider Use of the School Plant. Picht, W., Toynbee Hall and the English Settlement Movement. Pink, L. H., "Socializing the pubUc library," The Survey, Feb. 15, 1913, p. 675. (See also Survey, Oct. 21, 1911, pp. 1057 ff. ; World Today, 20 : 743-5 ; Library Journal, 38 : 566-8.) The Playground (and other publications of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, including Proceedings of annual Congresses.) Rayner, W. H., "Sociahzing our engineering education," Bull, of Soc. for Promotion of Eng. Educ, 4 : 39-50. Riis, J. A., Battle With the Slum, ch. xiii-xv. Sadler, M. E., Continuation Schools in England and Elsewhere. Scott, Colin, Social Education. SmaD, A. W., "Some demands of sociology upon pedagogy," Am. Jour. Social., 2 : 839-51. Spencer, H., Education, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. Todd, A. J., "Socializing the engineer," Technagraph, 27 : 132-9. Urwick, E. J., and Woods, R. A., "The settlement movement in England and America," Quarterly Rev., 440: 216-32. Vincent, G. E., The Social Mind and Education. Ward, E. J., The Social Center. Ward, L. F., Pure Sociology, pp. 20-1, 255, etc. 574 THEORIES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS Ward, L. F., Dynamic Sociology, vol. ii, pp. 598, 602, 632, etc. Ward, W. R., Student Participation in School Government. Ware, F., Educational Foundations of Trade and Industry. Woods, R. A., The City Wilderness. Woods, R. A., and Kennedy, A. J., Handbook of Settlements. INDEX Adaptation, g6-7, 242, 417, 421-2. Altruism. 41, 59, 62, 131, 416, 424, 457. Altruistic motives, 6. Amalgamation of races, 314 ff. Ancestor worship, 434. Aristocracy, 380, 3Q1-2. 3QS. 403-5- Aristotle cited, 62, 157, 346, 381, 465. Art and progress, 494 £E. B Baldwin, J. M., cited, 33, 45, 49. Balfour, A. J., cited, 93, 104, 483. Beliefs, function of, 469. Bergson, H., cited, 6, 19, 46, 94, loi, 181, 476. Birth control, 244, 266, 531. Birth rate, 120, 255, 266, 431-2. Bossuet and philosophy of history, 442-4. Buckle, H., cited, 160 ff., 170, 172, 429, 46sflf.,482. Burke, E., cited, 100, 337, 517. Cake of custom, 311. Capital, 88, 174, Chap. XII. Celibacy and eugenics, 432-3. Chance vs. control in progress, 544-6. Christianity and progress, 94 ; the family, 429 ; social selection, 433 ; race sui- cide, 425. Church not the moral leader, 428. Civilization, defined, 113 ff. ; as a disease, 134-6; two views of, 505; two types, 506. Classes and castes, 201, 396, 524; vs. masses, 384 ; ruling, 395 ; inevitable, 395, 404-5 ; dangers of, 396-7 ; broken down by education, 397-9 ; opposi- tion of to popular education, 399-402 ; struggle of, 230, 250. CommensaUty, 72. Communion of the saints, 78. Communism, 326, 330. Competition as a social principle, 41. Comte, A., cited, 41, 100, 115, 129, 231, 381, 387, 421, 455 ff-, 482. Continuation schools, 198. Cooley, C. H., cited, 35, 47, 230, 367, 397 Cooperation as a humanizing force, 41 88. Courts as hindrances to progress, 361-2 Craniometry and race mentaUty, 279-80 Criticism, function of, 484, 544. Cross-fertilization of cultures, 309, 312 318. Crozier, J. B., cited, 206, 396, 422, 457 Custom, 177, 231, 232. D Dancing, in sexual selection, 244 ; and social solidarity, 296-8. Darwin, C. R., cited, 40, 99, 243, 275. Decadence, 132, 143 ff., 536. Degeneration, 95, 100, 262-3. Democracy, 133, 345, 384, 412, 524. Desire as a social force, 228, 474 ff. Dewey, J., cited, 98, 99, 234, 356, 510. Dialectic of Mental Development, 33. Dickinson, G. L., cited, 77, 415, 458-60. Discontent as a social force, 480. Discussion as a social art, 305, 345. Division of labor. Chap. XIII, 420. Domestication of animals, 176, 178. Drama, social function of, 493-4. E Economic interpretation of history. Chap. XIV-XV; reconciled with ideologists, 228. Economic man, 226. Education, definitions of, 5x9-20; as discipline, 530-1 ; as a selective agency, 254, 513; evidences of inefficiency, 575 576 INDEX 522 ff; as solvent of class barriers, 397-9; as chief progressive agency, 510-11, 548 ; as conservative influence, 513 ff; and industrialism, 211-13, 220, 235; and superstition, 516; hindered by religion, 517; for democracy, 546; moral, 5292; social, 518 ff., 546; state, 349-50 ; vocational, 518. Ego, 19, 28, 35. Elites, 118, 124, 219, 541, Chap. XXVI. Ennui theory of progress, 476, 536. Ethical forces denied, 206. Eugenics, 120, 146, 539, Chap. XVII. Evolution, distinguished from progress, 94-5 ; biological factors in, 239. Family, and social selves, 64 ff ; changes in, 177; economic basis of, 210; edu- cation for, 531-2; primitive, 90; serv- ices of to progress, 332-3, 335, 540; social utiUty of, 66; disservices, 333; ceding to the state, 335; and Chris- tian church, 429, 436. Fatalism, 105. Feebleminded, 53. Fittest, survival of, 243, 245 ff. Food-quest, 89, 206. Foreign missions, 62, 222, 321, 430. Freedom, 52-3, 451, 537. Free will, 51 ff. G Galton, F., cited, 54, 66, 239, 257-8, 264, 433- Genius, extent of, 268 ff., 273, 385-6, 391 ; nature of, 47, 179; and race mix- ture, 315; services of, 381-2; Umi- tations of, 402; production of, 391, 401, 542. Geographic factor in progress. Chap. IX. God, evolving?, .4; in human progress, 442-52, 543; used for practical pur- poses, 419. Government, function of, 337; services of, 337-8, 340, 540; origin of, 339; trend of, 351; cost of, 340-1; ad- ministrative aspect of, 342-3 ; expert service in, 344-5 ; and education, 346 ff. Great-man theory of progress, 380 ff; criticized, 387 flE. ; Hegel's concept of, 453- Guilds, 198-9. Gumplowicz, L., cited, 133, 276 ff. H Habits, unstable, 225. Heaven, primitive, 208. Hegel, cited, 441, 451 ff., 460. Herder, cited, 174, 446-7. Heredity, physical, 53 ff., 263 ff. Hero, analyzed, 389-go. History Clock, 84-5. Hobhouse, L. T., cited, 41, 117, 355. Human character, improvements in, 129 ff. Human nature, 3 ff., 79, 508. Huxley, T. H., cited, 83, 243, 337, 481. Ideals, power of in history, 233, Chap. XXX; fostered by religion, 422 ff. Ideas, role of in social progress. Chap. XXXI. Imaginary environment, 415, 417, 425- Imagination, 60 ff., 68, 130, 162, 403, 438, 483-4, 486. Imitation, 64, 68. Immigrants, 56. Immortality, 22, 425. Individual and group, 11, 45 5-, 347. 417, 419, 547- Instincts, theory of criticized, 473, 546; social, 41, 44, 75. Institutions, defined, 325 ; hinder human development, 458-9 ; and human prog- ress. Chaps. XXI-XXIX. Intelligence in progress, 246, Chap. XXXI. Inter-group selection, Chap. XVIII; barriers through religion, 430. InternationaUsm, 284-6, 320, 351. ] Intolerance a duty?, 430-1- Invention, Chap. X, 231. Isolation, social effects of, 309-10. James, W., cited, 382, 422, 427. Jordan, D. S., cited, 20, 54, 125, 300. Kant, cited, 93, 447-8. Kidd, B., cited, 73, 250-1, 417, 44i- Language, primitive, 89; effect of bor- rowing, 317 ; social services of, 407 2- J INDEX 577 assimilative power of, 410; archaic may hinder progress, 412-3; and moral progress, 408; world, 408. Law, contributions of to progress, 354 fl. ; economic basis of, 230-1; not a pro- gressive force, 352-3; sources of, 354-5; new concepts of, 363-4. 54i- Leaders, necessary, '3g2-3, 405 ; when serviceable to progress, 405, 541 ; breeding of, 3g4. Le Bon, G., cited, 50, 281-3, 365, 382, 388, 414- Leisure, 187, 225. Lessing, cited, 446, 465. Library, socializing the, 528. Literature and progress, 488 fif. Longevity increasing, 121-2. Love as the social bond, 41, 62. Loyalty, 41. M Magic, 89, 298, 427. Mallock, W. H., 327-8, 381, 39i. 40i- Man, a geographic agent, 17 1-4; do- mesticated by religion, 417- Marx, K., cited, 134, 203, 225, 453, 461- Masses, service of the, 386-7; dis- paraged, 401. MateriaUstic conception of history. 202. Mental, defectives, 249; progress, 535. Metamorphosis, 13 2., 26. Metaphysics, 20, loi. Migration, 309 S. Militarism, 286, 301, 307, 321, 347. S40- Mill, J. S., cited, 98, 259, 396, 399. 465. 468. Mob mind, 50. Money, Chap. XL Montesquieu, cited, 157, 1605., 346, 348- Moral, element in progress, 98, 126 ff., 455, 462, 470, 477 ; evolution, 60-1 ; imagination, 483. Morals, social origin of, 36; economic basis of, 200-1. Morley, J., cited, 105, 507-8. Multiple origin of man, 274, 276. N Nationalism, 228. Nietzsche, F., cited, 247, 381, 426, 433, 470. O Organic theory of society, 43, 229-30, 457- Over-population, no, 120, 251-2. Ownership, significance of, 177- 2P Pacifism, 293, 306. Pan-Germanism, 274. Peace, 194, 278; League to Enforce, 306, 308. Peaceful group contacts. Chap. XX, 431- Perfectionism, 102, 134. Personality, 5, 11, 19, 24, 64; contribu- tive type of, 79, 487, 522. Plato, cited, 3, 43. 76, 254, 405, 465, 497- Play, social function of, 527-8. Political advance and economic progress, 219. Poverty, 480; as a cost of progress, 251 ; abolition of, 235, 251, 306. Prehistoric man, 86-7. Priesthood, 396, 398, 399. 419-20, 43S, 438. Primitive culture, 86 ff. Progress, ancient ideas of, 93-4; tests of. Chap. VII ; denials of, 135 ff-, 536 ; three opinions on, 83-4; automatic?, 103, 507, 548; necessary?, 100, 102, 535; universal?, 103-4, 536; costs of, 106-7, 124, 544; law of, 108, no; rate of, 105, 109-12; based on human ef- fort, 105, n2, 151,507,544; economic interpretation of. Chap. XIV-XV, 538 ; through weakness, 247 ; planless, 7; scientific, 106; verifiable, 123; conscious vs. haphazard, 506, 536; intentional vs. unintentional, 544-5 ; contrasted with change, 92, 94, 96; contrasted with evolution, 94-5 ; con- trasted with race progress, 99-100, 506; as achievement, 97, 191; as adaptation, 96-7, i45; as civilization, 114 S.; as cosmic evolution, loi ; as elimination of error, 482 ; as elimina- tion of fear, 486 ; as ethical order, 148, 453 ; as growth in population, iig ff. ; as increase of happiness, 98, 148; as health and longevity, 12 1-3; as hu- man will, 458, 508; as increase of wealth, 123-4, 191. Chap. XII; as identification of personal and social interest, 547; as morahty, 98, 126 ff., 455, 462; as opportunity, 125; as a superstition, 105 ; and art. Chap. XXXII; and capital. Chap. XII; and cUmate, 157 ff-; and division of labor, Chap. XIII; and education. 578 INDEX Sioff. ; and the elite, 403; and eu- genics, Chap. XVII ; and government, Chap. XXIII ; and ideals. Chap. XXX; 9.nd intelligence, 246; and invention. Chap. X; and law, Chap. XXIV; and money, Chap. XI, igi; and property. Chap. XXI; and pub- lic opinion. Chap. XXV ; and race conflict. Chap. XVIII; and religion, 4175.; and selection. Chap. XVI; and sentimentalism, 104 ; and sound thinking. Chap. XXXI, 488; and top3graphy, 169 fi.; and war, Chap. XIX. Property, igo, 226, 229, 232; and family forms, 334; destruction of, 231, 232, 423, 429; function of. Chap. XXI; need for private ownership of, 330; origin of, 226; responsibilities of, 330; unequal distribution of, 147, 330. Providence and progress, 93, 441-9. Public opinion, defined, 365-70; edu- cation and, 377-8 ; functions of, 370-2 ; limitations upon, 3726.; newspapers and, 375-7; organizing of, 374-S ; service of, 371, 541. Purposive human breeding, 264; ob- stacles to, 265-6. R Race, antagonism and economic in- terest, 223-4; conflict. Chap. XVIII, 539; contact, results of, 312 S., 318; egotism, 275-6; and geography, 1592.; mixture, 313 ff.; prejudice, 279 ; psychological meaning of, 280 ff. ; sentiment, 283-4; superior and in- ferior, 27s, 276, 279, 315-16; suicide, 270, 424-5; vitality, 279. Religion, 70, 73-4, 543 ; and climate, 164-5; and economics, 231-2, 4195., 429; and education, 435-6, 513, 517; and health, 437; and selection, 253, 431-2; as social discipline, 417, 424; conserves social values, 424 ; contrib- utes to speculation, 421 ff.; biologi- cal services of, 418, 426; disservices of, 427-36; effect of on law, 360-1, 433~4I evokes fine arts, 425; fosters idealism, 422 fi.; hindrance to prog- ress, 421, 436; types of, 421; primi- tive, 88; conservative, 434. Religious conversion, 15. Ribot, cited, 20, 23, 26, 28, 69. Right-sized population, 121. Ross, E. A., cited, 96, 180, 343, 396, 474, 476. Rousseau, cited, 184. Samurai, 77, 403. 533- SchmoUer, G., cited, 218, 344, 451. Science, progressive function of, 484-5. .Scientific management, 184. Selection, biological. Chap. XVI ; inter- group. Chap. XVIII; "natural" vs. "social," 242 ff; sexual, 243-5 ; social, 98, 253 ; religion and, 253 ; slavery and, 299. Self, as an abstraction, 19; as a coali- tion, 23 ; as a contributing personality, 79; as dream-double, 11; as hobby, 69; as name, 10; as property, 11, 69; as shadow, 11; as social product, Chaps. IV-V ; as social service, 70 ff. ; as soul, 16; children's ideas of, 37-9; multiple, 27-8; pathologic, 26-7; psychology of. Chap. Ill ; somatic basis of, 20-1 ; subconscious, 24 ; variations in, 22 ff. Selfishness, 6, 61, 74. Sentiment, role of in evolution, 248 ff. Sentimentalism, 120, 142. Settlements, 59, 527. Sexual selection, 142, 243-5. Shaw, G. B., cited, 6, 135-9, 4Q4- Sin, 12, 74, 428. Social causation, 109; control, 48; Darwinism, 40-1, 275, 293 ; deter- minism, 51 ff.; education, 8, 68, 75, 78, 406, 518 ff., 546; forces, loi ; heredity, 31, 54 ff., 92, 239. Social, inequality defended, 327-8; jus- tice, 60, 68, 235, 464, 52s, 540; policy, elements in, 235, 396, 406, 538 ; reform, 3, 516; solidarity, 44, 52 2. Socialism, 5, 138-9, 142, 329, 351, 403. Socialists, 3, 202, 388. Socializing opportunity, 4, 125, 272. Sociological jurisprudence, 363-4. Soul, II, 16. Spencer, H., cited, loi, 193, 250, 266, 354, 388, 418, 474, S19. Spiritual interpretation of history, 459, 461. Sterilization of the unfit, 260, 261. Struggle for life, 41-2; religion in, 420; for others, 72 ; instinct of, 305. INDEX 579 Sumner, W. G., cited, 206, 20Q, 246, 200, 2y4. sH, 500. Superman, 137, 381. Superstition, 8g, 105, 516. Survival, of the fittest, 243, 245 S. ; of the liest, 250. Sympathy, 60, 248-9. Syndicalism, 199. Taboo, 12, 231, 232, 349, 355, 418-19, 427, 429. Theological views of progress, 442 ff. ; criticized, 450. Theology, hinders science, 436. Thinking, natural, 402; feared, 403. Tolerance, in racial contacts, 319; in religion, 430-1, 438. Tools, 181, 185. Totemism, 12, 231. U Universal Races Congress, 63, 284, 286. Universal service, 307. Universities, teaching in German, 347. Utopia, 74, 146, 461, 489. V Value, social, as index of progress, 477, 537- Variation essential to progress, 239. Vocational education, 518, 525-7; guid- ance, 223, 271. W Wallace, A. R., cited, 139, 243-5, 248, 267, 271-2. Wallas, G., cited, 141, 225, 485. War, and economic progress, 219; and invention, 290; and magic, 298-9; and race health, 292 ; and social co- herence, 277, 289 flf.; as a selective agency, 288, 299, 539 ; as a socializing principle, 41; as unintelligence, 467; disgenic effects of, 299 ff. ; Nietzsche on, 234; substitutes for, 306-7, 540; wastes through, 299 ff., 539. Ward, L. F., cited, 97, 113, 228, 268, 289, 342, 367, 482, 505, 511, 516. Wells, H. G., cited, 5, 61, 67, 199- 461. Woman, as progressive agent, 196; as selective agent, 244, 267.^ Printed in the United States of America. T HE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 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