i 
 
Columiia Winibmit^ Hectures 
 
 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL 
 THEORY 
 
 JULIUS BEER FOUNDATION 
 1910-1911 
 
COLUMBIA 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
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 HENRY FROWDE 
 
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ci. 
 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LECTURES 
 
 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND 
 POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 BY 
 LEONARD T. HOBHOUSE 
 
 FBOFESSOR OP SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVEKSITT OF LONDON 
 
 WO. 
 
 THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1911 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

 ^<^<, 
 
 CJOPTBIGHT, 1911, 
 
 By the COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1911. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Nottnootr iPress 
 
 J. 8. CuBhing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
NOTE 
 
 The present volume contains the substance of eight 
 lectures given on the Beer Foundation under the Faculty 
 of Political Science of Columbia University during April, 
 1911. The lecture form is preserved, but with additions 
 which necessitate a division into nine chapters. A por- 
 tion of the argument of Chapter VI is set out in more 
 detail in the writer's "Morals in Evolution," and the 
 subject of Chapter IX is treated under a somewhat differ- 
 ent aspect in a recent volume on "Liberalism" in the 
 "Home and University Library." 
 
 241286 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/evolutionpsocialOOhobhrich 
 
TO THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE: 
 
 May I take this opportunity of expressing my grati- 
 tude to the members of the Faculty of Political Sci- 
 ence of Columbia University, and to the Trustees of 
 the Beer Foundation for an experience of deep and abid- 
 ing interest ? I cannot flatter myself that I could teach 
 your students very much in the brief course of lectures 
 here reprinted, but I am certain that I, on my side, learned 
 a great deal. The freshness, the vitality, the largeness 
 of conception, the intellectual as well as social hospitality 
 that characterize American academic life, have been to 
 me stimulating and invigorating beyond all expectation. 
 I can wish nothing better to those who follow me on the 
 Beer Foundation than that they should receive an im- 
 pression as fortunate and profound. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 L. T. HOBHOUSE. 
 Geindblwald, July 26, 1911. 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBB 
 
 I. The Meaning of Progress . ^ 
 
 II. Progress and the Struggle for Existence 
 
 III. The Value and Limitations of Eugenics 
 
 ^ IV. Social Harmony and the Social Mind . 
 
 V. Social Morphology 
 
 VI. The Growth of the State ^ , 
 
 VIL Evolution and Progress , ^ , 
 
 VIII. Social Philosophy and Modern Problems 
 
 V IX. The Individual and the State V^ . 
 
 PAOB 
 
 1 
 
 17 
 40 
 80 
 102 
 126 
 149 
 166 
 185 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND 
 POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Meaning of Progress 
 
 Like every age and every state of human society the 
 period in which we Hve has its merits and defects, its 
 elements of success and failure. Contemporary critics 
 assuming the part of candid friends are perhaps more 
 concerned with the failures, and the note of pessimism 
 sounds clearly enough in much of the literature of the 
 day. But depreciation of the present, gloomy views 
 of the future, and idealization of the past are common 
 characteristics of literary criticism. If literature is evi- 
 dence, we could construct a chain of testimony proving 
 the continuous deterioration of humanity from the time 
 of Hesiod to the present day. The past, when it is 
 seen at all, appears always in a halo of romance. Just 
 as in our own personal memory many things which we 
 should be exceedingly loath to experience anew become 
 positively enjoyable in the mellowness of retrospect, 
 as the contrast of some great hardship forms a pleasing 
 background for present comfort, so in the memory of the 
 race much that we should be sorry to live through again 
 in real earnest acquires the tinge of romance when 
 
 1 
 
2;/; :*^0t3i;^E EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 viewed at a safe distance. Whereas the discomforts, 
 the ughness, and the squalor of the present afflict us with 
 'all the insistence of grim reality, the corresponding ele- 
 ments in the past are either forgotten or are softened and 
 transfigured by the haze of time. Hence it is that our 
 view of historical change tends to be distorted in the 
 direction of pessimism, and in any attempt at a scientific 
 I measure of social progress we must be on our guard 
 f ,Vi against this bias of social memory. Those who are most 
 zealous for social improvement will indeed be the last 
 to minimize the evils that exist. But without yielding 
 to any such temptation there is, I would suggest, one 
 compensatory element of which the prevalence of a 
 somewhat pessimistic criticism is itself the proof. 
 ^There was probably never a time at which among civi- 
 Mized peoples there was so much diffused sensitiveness 
 to any form of social ailment. If we were briefed to 
 defend our own time, the line to take would surely be, 
 not that its evils are few or small, but rather that every 
 evil calls forth a strong and persistent effort to cure it._ 
 Such effort is not indeed new, but it may be fairly main- 
 tained that it persists and grows in volume and serious- 
 ness, that it enlists an increasing proportion of human 
 effort and ability, and that as it gathers strength and 
 substance it is less content to deal with symptoms and 
 effects, and becomes more intent on the discovery and 
 eradication of causes. In every civilized country there! 
 is an army of men and women at work, some trusting to 
 voluntary effort and mutual aid, others pinning their 
 faith to governments and agitating for legislative re- 
 forms, and yet others content for the time to investigate 
 facts, examine into causes, and pave the way for a more. 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 
 
 jEtssured progress in the future. The pessimistic writer 
 will not deny the existence or the sincerity of these 
 manifold forms of social effort, but it is open to him 
 to question their efficiency. On this point a good deal 
 might be said. I think it would be possible, so far at 
 least as my own country is concerned, to show by a series 
 of comparisons of the condition of the people in thei 
 earlier stages of the industrial revolution with their 1 
 condition at the present day that the efforts of the re-i 
 formers have not been wasted. I shall not, however, 
 attempt this task at present, for I am going instead 
 to make an admission. If my supposed critic were to 
 scrutinize the terms in which I described the efforts of 
 reformers, there is one word on which he might fasten 
 with some effect. I spoke of ^'an army of men and 
 women. ^' "What army?'^ he might reply. "I see 
 clearly enough, great numbers of men and women who 
 interest themselves in public questions. But an army 
 means a drilled and organized force, moving towards a 
 clear objective. This,'' he might say, "is precisely 
 what I do not find among the enthusiasts for social re- 
 form. What I find is something much more like a mob, 
 or, if we are to keep to military metaphors, something 
 like a miscellaneous assortment of guerilla bands, acting 
 without concert, often at cross purposes, sometimes com- 
 ing into violent conflict, and at best with no clear sense 
 of any common cause. There are individuals and or- 
 ganized bodies, if you will, who concentrate their ener- 
 gies on temperance, but who concentrate so completely 
 that they care for nothing else. There are those who 
 combat pauperism and preach thrift. There are en- 
 thusiasts who find land questions at the root of all good 
 
4 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 and all evil. There are the apostles of housing and sani- 
 tary reform. There are Tariff Reformers — an expres- 
 sion which has, so to say, opposite signs in England and 
 the United States. There are Trade Unionists, Cooper- 
 ators. Socialists, and again there is the insistent school 
 of Eugenists, who treat all social reforms as mere sub- 
 sidiary changes of the environment and insist that the 
 modification of the race by selection is the only matter 
 of vital moment. In a word there are thousands and 
 tens of thousands vaguely interested in social progress, 
 and keenly interested in some particular question which 
 has come within the field of their special experience or to 
 which they have been led to give personal attention. 
 Here and there is to be found a broader-minded person 
 who recognizes the wholeness of things, but his influence 
 is small. The driving force is all with the sectional 
 spirit, and that is why you get little or no general 
 progress.^' 
 
 With one part of this indictment I should agree. 
 Notwithstanding all narrowness and short-sightedness I 
 think that something has been done, but it has been 
 done at the expense of a vast and disproportionate waste 
 of effort. If this waste is to be avoided and the aggre- 
 gate of social effort is now to have the measure of success 
 which it deserves, it must be through the growth of a 
 common understanding, through the emergence of clearer 
 ideas of social progress as a whole, and by consequence 
 of the mutual relations of its constituent parts. People 
 are apt to turn from such questions as abstract and aca- 
 demic, but there are seemingly academic questions 
 which are charged with very real meaning, and the unity 
 of social organisms and the interrelation for good and for 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 6 
 
 evil of social changes is no mere form of words, but a way 
 of expressing a deep-seated truth which those who ig- 
 nore it will in practice strike on sooner or later. You 
 may remember a certain simile employed by Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer in his ^' Study on Sociology. '^ Give a man a 
 sheet of metal with a dint in it, he says, and ask him to 
 flatten.it out. What does he do ? If he knows nothing 
 of metal work, he takes a hammer and knocks the dint 
 fiat, only to find that it has reappeared elsewhere. He 
 applies the hammer again at the new point with the same 
 result, and so he goes on till he convinces himself that 
 dints are not to be levelled out by this direct and easy 
 method. So it is, urges Mr. Spencer, with society. We 
 find some evil or evils which we seek to prevent by direct 
 and forcible means, only to find, says this critic of social 
 effort, that a corresponding evil appears somewhere else. 
 We put down overt crime only to find that some form of 
 secret vice is increasing. A temperance crusade sup- 
 presses drunkenness, and it is discovered that those who 
 used to drink now find an outlet for excitement in gam- 
 bling. Compensation for accidents is secured by law to 
 workmen, and in consequence it is alleged that elderly 
 workmen are refused situations. Workmen form trade 
 unions to maintain and improve the conditions of their 
 work, and no sooner do they succeed than their em- 
 ployers imitate them and form federations by which the 
 unions are overpowered. Strikes are replaced by mu- 
 tual agreements which are to initiate an era of industrial 
 peace, and it is found that the wider the agreement the 
 less it meets the local difficulties of mine and workshop, 
 and we see workmen striking substantially against their 
 own leaders. I need not here inquire whether in all 
 
6 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 these instances the allegation is correct, nor whether 
 even if that be so there may not be some net gain. I 
 am concerned only with the simple and preliminary 
 point, to which Mr. Spencer did well to call attention, 
 ^that every change, however good in itself, provokes un- 
 foreseen reactions, and that if twe are to achieve per- 
 manent and assured good we must as far as possible keep 
 in view the life of society as a whole and seek not jeal- 
 ously to magnify our own little sectional interest at the 
 expense of the others, but rather to correlate it with the 
 work that others are doing and endeavor to induce 
 
 Vs^in them the same spirit} In sociology as in all sciences 
 specialism is a necessity and it is also a danger. It is a 
 necessity for the simple reason that human capacity is 
 limited and it is not given to man to ac |uire sound knowl- 
 edge and adequate skill in many departments at once. 
 
 y It is a danger because social life is no more divisible intoH 
 independent sections than the human body is divisible ! 
 into independent organisms. Now the belief thaf'^"' 
 ''there is nothing Hke leather" is mutato nomine uni- 
 versal. To exaggerate the importance of what one is 
 doing oneself is the necessary human illusion. It is 
 the stimulant which sustains. Unfortunately it is also 
 the stimulant which intoxicates, and in sober mood we 
 may well engage ourselves in the effort to find some 
 prophylactic. In the present case the prophylactic that 
 we need, if I am right, is an articulate social philosophy 
 We ought to inquire whether underlying the diffused 
 mass of social effort there is discoverable any coherent 
 scheme of social betterment or progress as a whole. If~^ 
 again we can find any such general conception, we have 
 to ask whether it will hold water, and this will divide 
 
 V 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 7 
 
 itself into two main questions. Before we can decide 
 whether any purpose which men may propound to them- 
 selves is valid and reasonable we must determine, first, 
 pwhether it is self-consistent, or whether if thought out 
 I it would evolve any contradictions which would reduce , 
 i it to meaningless confusion ; and secondly, whether it lies || 
 / within the limits of practical possibility. The first oiU. . 
 ' these questions is the subject-matter of social philoso-ll|^^^» , 
 [_j)hy, the second belongs to the theory of social evolution.^'^^' ^***^ 
 I shall not be able within the compass of these lectures to 
 deal with either question with the fullness which it de- 
 serves, but for reasons which will appear as we proceed 
 I cannot limit myself to one alone. I shall therefore 
 (1) attempt a summary definition of the nature and ; 
 conditions of progress, and shall proceed (2) to consider ^ 
 how far progress as defined has actually been realized in 
 history, and how far it is capable of further and future } 
 realization. In place of an attempt to cover the whole 
 ground in a summary which would necessarily be vague 
 and thin, I shall, both in dealing with past and present, 
 confine myself in the main to one side of social life, 
 merely glancing at others when the progress of the argu- 
 ment makes it necessary to do so. 
 
 There are, however, certain difficulties which the con- 
 ception of progress meets at the outset, and it will be 
 better to deal with these before proceeding to our con- 
 *structive argument. 
 
 For this purpose I will ask you to be content with a 
 rough preliminary definition of progress, and let me do 
 what I can within my Hmits to make it a little more pre- 
 cise at a later stage. Now you will have noticed that I 
 have used the term ^^ evolution'' in regard to human sbci- 
 
8 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 ety and also the term ' ^ progress. ' ' This should imply that 
 there is some difference between them, and in point of 
 fact, to grasp this difference is in my view the beginning^^ 
 of understanding in these matters. By evolution Hj 
 mean any sort of growth ; by social progress, the growth 
 of social life in respect of those qualities to which human 
 beings attach or can rationally attach value. Social 
 progress, then, is only one among many possibilities of 
 social evolution. At least it is not to be assumed that 
 any and every form of social evolution is also a form or a /^ 
 stage in social progress. For example, a caste system J 
 is a product of social evolution, and the more rigid and 
 narrow the caste, the more complex the hierarchy, the 
 more completely has tEre caste system evolved. In 
 proportion, that is, as a loose and incipient caste system 
 hardens into an extreme and rigid caste system, there is 
 a distinct process of social evolution going forward ; 
 but most of us would question very strongly whether it 
 could be considered in any sense as a phase of social prog-, 
 ress. Judged from the standpoint of human values, 
 it looks more like retrogression, or perhaps still more 
 like divergence into a side track, from which there is no 
 exit save by going back over a good deal of the ground 
 travelled. So again there is at the present day a vig- 
 orous evolution of cartels, monopolies, rings, and trusts ; 
 there is an evolution of imperialism, of socialism, of 
 nationalism, of militarism, in a word, of a hundred 
 tendencies as to the good or evil of which people differ. 
 The fact that a thing is evolving is no proof that it is 
 good, the fact that society has evolved is no proof that 
 it has progressed. The point is important because 
 under the influence of biological conceptions the two 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 9 
 
 ideas are often confused, and the fact that human beings 
 j^have evolved under certain conditions is treated as evi- 
 dence of the value of those conditions, or perhaps as 
 proving the futility of ethical ideas which run counter to 
 evolutionary processes. Thus in an article by a clever 
 exponent of eugenic principles I find a contemptuous 
 reference to ^Hhe childlike desire to make things 'fair,' 
 which is so clearly contrary to the order of a universe 
 which progresses by natural selection." ^ In this brief 
 remark you will observe two immense assumptions, and 
 one stark contradiction. The first assumption is that 
 the universe progresses ■ — not humanity, observe, nor 
 the mass of organic beings, nor even the earth, but the 
 universe. The second assumption is that it progresses\\ 
 by natural selection, a hypothesis which has not yet ade- j 
 quately explained the bare fact of the variation of or- 1 
 ganic forms on the surface of this earth. The contradic-// 
 tion is that progress is incompatible with fairness, the 
 basic element in all judgments of value, so that we are 
 called upon to recognize as valuable that by which our 
 fundamental notions of value are set at naught. It may \ I 
 be replied that the process of things has nothing to do 
 with human ideas of value. That of course is perfectly / 
 possible, and is the point we shall have to examine. But 
 in that case no one has a right to speak of progress, a 
 term which connotes value, in relation to the process 
 of things. If there exist laws of mechanical necessity 
 which involve the defeat of human, effort based on 
 human judgments of value, then it is true that hu- 
 man effort must be forever frustrate, but it is untrue 
 that human effort must seek to ally itself with its en- 
 iMr. W. C. D. Whetham in the Eugenic Review, Nov. 1910. 
 
 
10 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 emy. If the process of the universe is inherently 
 opposed to the ethical order, it follows that the ethical 
 order is inherently opposed to the process of the uni- 
 verse. In this state of things the position of human- 
 ity would be very unfortunate. It could not hope to 
 achieve any permanent good. But it would still be the 
 height of unreason for humanity to throw its efforts for 
 whatever they may be worth on the side of those forces 
 which by hypothesis are working against the best ele- 
 ments in its life. The only rational course in so bad a 
 situation would be first to see what could be saved from 
 the wreck, or, if nothing could be done, then to remain 
 passive and endure with what patience we could com- 
 mand. Why we should take active pains to forward a 
 process which conflicts with our fundamental concep- 
 tions of what is valuable is a question which answers 
 itself. 
 
 Of course this is not the way in which the question or- 
 dinarily presents itself. By studying certain sides of 
 organic evolution people arrive at a particular hypothe- 
 sis of the nature of the process. They erect this hy- 
 pothesis into an universal and necessary law, and 
 straightway call upon every one else to acknowledge the 
 law and conform to it in action. Unaccustomed to 
 philosophical analysis, and contemptuous of that to 
 which they are unaccustomed, they do not see that they 
 have passed from one sense of law to another, that they 
 have confused a generalization with a command, and a 
 statement of facts with a principle of action. They 
 accordingly miss the starting-point from which a distinct 
 conception of progress and its relation to human effort 
 becomes possible. But for any useful theory of the 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 11 
 
 bearing of evolution on social effort this conception is 
 vital. We can get no light upon the subject unless we 
 l^l^egin with the clear perception that the object of social 
 ! effort is the realization of ends to which human beings 
 can reasonably attach value, that is to say, the realiza- 
 tion of ethical ends ; and this being understood, we may 
 suitably use the term '^progress'' of any steps leading 
 ^towards such * realization. Now it may be said that 
 human valuations are themselves often obscure, con- 
 
 ( fused, and contradictory. That is, in fact, the reason 
 why we need a social philosophy to reduce them to a 
 rational order. But we are not asking for the moment 
 what the rational judgment of man would approve. We 
 are contending for the preliminary point, that without 
 its approval there can be no talk of progress, that to 
 hold up a process to admiration, to praise it as good, 
 to accept and forward it, is, in fact, to pass on it a judg- 
 ment of approval, and that to do these things and in the 
 same breath to scorn the principle which is the pivot of 
 any ethical approval is a contradiction. If this and 
 allied principles are false and meaningless, that requires 
 independent proof. If justice, fairness, mutual aid, 
 benevolence, pity, are inherently confused and contra- 
 dictory ideas, they cannot serve as bases of rational ap- 
 proval or disapproval. But this has to be demon- 
 strated, and there is no beginning of demonstration in 
 the mere fact that such qualities as these are opposed to 
 the naked struggle for existence. __ 
 
 Our conclusion so far is that the nature of social 
 progress cannot be determined by barely examining 
 the actual conditions of social evolution. Evolution 
 and progress are not the same thing. They may be . 
 
 h 
 
12 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 opposed. They might even be so fundamentally op- 
 posed that progress would be impossible, and whether 
 this is so is one of the two questions which we distin- 
 guished above, and which I shall proceed to discuss. I 
 take occasion only to remind you that the other ques- 
 tion was — In what does progress consist ? and to this 
 we have given the preliminary answer that it means"] 
 the realization of an ethical order; and we have now ' 
 further seen That the nature of this order is not to be 
 determined by asking wh ether it co nforms to natural 
 processes, but by asldng whethsrj;tj^ieldsj;a^^ 
 co hereii t_guidance to hupoan effort. To This question 
 we shall come in~due course. We have now to deal 
 with the preliminary question whether in the light of the 
 facts of life the idea of progress as an advancing realiza- 
 tion of an ethical order can be regarded as a valid idea. 
 That is to say, is progress possible ? If so, social effort 
 has an intelligible and self consistent goal. If not, it is 
 doomed to self-defeat. 
 
 The optimistic view encounters many objections. 
 One is founded on history, or more widely on a com- 
 parative survey of human society, which suggests the 
 doubt whether for the mass of mankind any substantial 
 progress has as yet been realized. Comparing the life 
 of the savage with that of the civilized man, it maintains 
 that the advantages are by no means all on one side, 
 and, to put the view moderately, it urges that if all the 
 centuries of effort that part the civilized man from his 
 rude ancestors have produced such dubious results, we 
 can hope very little from continuance on the same path. 
 Unless we have some new fact to produce which is to 
 initiate some wonder-working change, the lower we fix 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 13 
 
 our expectations the less disappointed we shall be. A 
 variant of this view founds itself more particularly on 2. 
 the history of civilization. It calls attention to the ups 
 and downs of humanity. It points to the flower of 
 Greek, of Roman, of medieval civilization, and to their 
 subsequent decay. It questions whether we have ad- 
 vanced beyond them, or have built on firmer founda- 
 tions, and it bids us prepare for a similar dissolution. 
 These are questions of social evolution which require 
 very careful examination. I shall endeavor in a later 
 lecture to indicate the lines upon which I think they 
 may be profitably discussed. But there is another and 
 more fundamental objection to which I will first call 
 your attention. This is derived from the biological con- 
 ditions of human society. : 
 2^The biological argument has taken more than one 
 shape and may best be treated here by a brief historical 
 retrospect. Its appearance in the arena of controversy 
 was announced by the terrible douche of cold water 
 thrown by Malthus on the speculative optimism of the 
 eighteenth century. The generation preceding the 
 French Revolution was a time of buoyant and sanguine 
 outlook. There floated before men the idea of an Age 
 of Reason that was near at hand, when mankind should 
 throw off the incubus of the past and resume a life in 
 accordance with nature in a social order founded on a 
 rational consideration of natural rights. Nature both 
 in the politics and the economics of the time assumes a 
 half personal and wholly benevolent character, while 
 human restrictions, human conventions, play the part of , 
 the villain in the piece. At this point Malthus inter-i 
 vened by calling attention to a ^'natural" law of great 
 
14 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 significance. This was the law that human beings mul- 
 tiplied in a geometrical ratio ; that it was only by the 
 checks of famine, pestilence, and war that they were pre- 
 vented from overspreading the earth, and that, to cut 
 the matter short, whatever the available means of sub- 
 sistence mankind would always, in the absence of pru- 
 dential checks, multiply up to the limit at which those 
 means became inadequate. True, the means of sub- 
 sistence might be extended. New countries might be 
 opened up. New industrial processes might be in- 
 vented, new sources of food supply discovered. Every 
 such extension of the means of living, the Malthusian 
 argued, would only redouble the rate of multiplication. 
 The checks would cease, infants would cease to die. 
 Men and women would marry earlier, and soon after 
 each extension of the food supply we should find the 
 population pressing as hard as ever upon the barriers. 
 The advance of civilization told in the same direction. 
 The suppression of violent deaths, the progress of sani- 
 tation — fortunately for their peace of mind the early 
 Malthusians lived before the sanitary era — the decline 
 of war, the improvement of public order, all tended to 
 sm-vival. Population was increasing, must increase, 
 and could not be diminished. It could only be held in 
 check by the one great barrier of the subsistence limit 
 against which the fringe of advancing population must 
 forever beat in misery. There could be no solution of 
 the social question. For in the nature of things there 
 must be a line where the surf of the advancing tide breaks 
 upon the shore, and that shore was death from insuffi- 
 ciency of nourishment. You observe that in summa- 
 rizing the argument I speak partly of Malthus, partly of 
 
THE MEANING OF PROGRESS 15 
 
 the Malthusians. Malthus himself, particularly in his 
 second edition, laid stress on the prudential checks, and 
 he cannot fairly be accused of fostering the pessimistic 
 views often fastened upon him. But for many a long 
 year after he wrote, the efficacy of the prudential checks 
 appeared to be very slight. It was his first edition that 
 was generally absorbed and that profoundly affected so- 
 cial thought for nearly a century. Down to my own 
 time the Malthusian theory, as interpreted above, ap- 
 peared to be the principal crux of social progress. It 
 was not till the seventies that there came into operation 
 that general fall in the birth-rate, which has justified 
 Malthus against the Malthusians, has put the calcula- 
 tions of the future growth of population on a radically 
 different basis, and has brought about among other 
 things a complete reconstruction of the biological argu- 
 ment against progress. With this argument I shall deal 
 in due order, but I venture to think in the meantime 
 that we may learn a lesson from the fate of Malthusian- 
 ism. Mathematical arguments drawn from the assump- 
 tion that human actions proceed with the statistical 
 regularity that might be found in a flock of sheep are 
 often exceedingly difficult to refute in detail, and yet 
 they rest on an insecure foundation. Man is not merely 
 an animal. He is also a rational being, and accordingly 
 he reacts to new circumstances in a way that can only 
 be determined by taking the possibility of rational pur- 
 pose into account. The Malthusian theory was one 
 cause of the defeat of its own prophecies. It was the 
 belief that the population was growing too fast that 
 operated indirectly to check its growth. Those who 
 fear that the population is now growing too slowly 
 
16 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 may take some comfort from the reflection. We are not 
 hastily to assume inevitable tendencies in human socie- 
 ties, because the moment that society is aware of its 
 tendencies a new fact is introduced. Man, unlike other 
 animals, is moved by the knowledge of ends, and can 
 and does correct the tendencies whose results he sees to 
 be disastrous. The alarmist talk of race suicide may 
 serve its purpose if only by admonishing us of the fate 
 of a social theory based on what appeared to be a most 
 convincing biological calculation. 
 
 But long before the decline of the birth-rate set in, the 
 biological argument had taken a completely new form. 
 The conception of evolution had arisen, and had begun 
 to exert a profound influence on thought in general and 
 on social theory in particular. The conception of prog- 
 ress encountered new difficulties, and to them we must 
 now turn. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Progress and the Struggle for Existence 
 
 The conception of evolution is inseparably, and not 
 unjustly, associated in our minds with the work of Dar- 
 win and the impulse given by him in the middle of the 
 nineteenth century to biological investigation. Yet, 
 as we all know, the conception of evolution is not con- 
 fined to biology, nor in biology did it originate with 
 Darwin. Systematic attempts to treat social evolution ' 
 in particular, and to treat it moreover by distinctly 
 sociological methods, were familiar to the generation 
 preceding the publication of the ^'Origin of Species." 
 Under the title of the '' Philosophy of History" attempts 
 were made in Germany, in France, and in England to 
 arrive at an interpretation of the record which should 
 exhibit the succession of social phenomena as the work- 
 ing out in human society of permanent laws or tenden- 
 cies. Premature as these efforts may have been, they 
 have at least the merit of seeking the explanation of so- 
 cial phenomena in the nature of society itself. Comte 
 and Buckle in particular, whatever may be said in criti- 
 cism of the use which they made of their data, were at 
 any rate convinced that those data lay within the rec- 
 ords of humanity and were not to be provided for the 
 sociologist by some more general science. In this 
 respect the work of Darwin may be said to have cut 
 across the normal and natural development of socio- 
 
 17 
 
18 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 logical investigation. When a great impulse is given to 
 one science by some epoch-making experiment or some 
 new and fruitful generalization, that science is apt to ac- 
 quire a certain prestige in the minds of contemporaries, 
 which gives it an influence over thought in every depart- 
 ment, particularly in those departments where inquiry 
 is still a novelty and where there is no fixed tradition to 
 regulate the methods of approach. 
 
 Though Darwin was by no means the founder of the 
 theory of biological evolution, he does occupy in the 
 genesis of this theory a position not incomparable to 
 that of Newton in the theory of the solar system. For 
 if he did not invent the evolutionary hypothesis nor yet 
 prove that hypothesis to be a demonstrable truth, he 
 first, by amassing a vast store of material and by illumi- 
 nating it with clear and simple conceptions drawn di- 
 rectly from experience, brought the hypothesis into con- 
 tact with the facts and consolidated it as a basis for 
 future investigation. He brought down evolution, as itl 
 were, from the clouds of speculation and established 
 between it and the data of observation that kind of con- ; 
 tact which alone can make an hypothesis a serious work- ' 
 ing force in the growth of science. 
 
 This is not the place for a discussion of the Darwinian 
 theory, but one point which has an important bearing 
 on the subsequent development of sociological method 
 must be noted. Cautiously as Darwin expressed the 
 principle of Natural Selection and fully as he recognized 
 the possibility that other factors might have influence 
 upon organic development, the main effect of his work 
 in the world of science was to generate the conception of 
 the progress of organic forms by means of a continuous 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 19 
 
 struggle for existence wherein those best fitted by natu- 
 ral endowment to cope with their surroundings would 
 tend, upon the whole, to survive. The persistence of 
 this process and the consequent accumulation of the 
 small variations that occur in every generation were 
 the considerations on which he principally relied in 
 explaining the vast differences which separate species 
 from species, genus from genus, order from order, and_ 
 class from class. Now if such a process could, in the 
 course of ages, span the gulf that separates the rhizopod 
 from the man, what need was there, it might be urged, of 
 further factors in human progress. Man after all, in 
 spite of his philosophy, was still an animal, still subject 
 to the same laws of reproduction and variation, still 
 modifiable in the same manner by the indirect selection 
 of the individuals best fitted to their environment. 
 Here, it was held, was a cause at work underlying all the 
 relatively superficial factors which loom so large in his- 
 tory; here was a principle which would at last make 
 sociology a science by connecting it with the established 
 and acknowledged sciences of the physical world; 
 here was an eminently modern conception which would 
 take the treatment of social facts out of the hands of the 
 literary historian or the rhetorical publicist, and estab- 
 lish the investigation of social progress upon the firm 
 foundation of physical science. The true method of 
 approaching the social questions for the future was to be 
 — not the study of history, not the analysis of the funda- 
 mental social conceptions, not the examination of social 
 institutions, not the comparative sciences of law, or 
 religion, or ethics — but rather the investigation by bio- 
 logical methods of the nature and variation of human 
 
20 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 * faculty, the exact ascertainment of the laws of heredity, 
 \ and the statistical determination of the way in which 
 /variations propagated by heredity would affect the 
 I social stock. If it could be shown that height and chest- 
 capacity and length of limb were hereditary qualities, so 
 also it might be shown that cranial capacity, and with it 
 mental and moral equipment, were equally handed on 
 \ from parent to child. The true problem of social better- 
 ment was to determine the conditions under which the 
 better qualities are propagated and the worse repressed. 
 . ' As to the general nature of these conditions, indeed, 
 there could be no doubt for the biologist. He came to 
 the science of society with this fundamental question 
 already settled. He had not, like the philosopher, to 
 trouble himself about what was best ; nor, like the social 
 investigator, to remain in doubt as to the broadest prin- 
 ciples regulating the life of society. On both these 
 questions his doubts were already solved by what he 
 had learned in biology itself. The best was that which 
 survived, and the persistent elimination of the least fit 
 was the one method generally necessary to assure the 
 survival of the best. Armed with this generalization the 
 biologist found himself able to view the world at large — 
 what Mr. Whetham calls, as we saw, the process of the 
 fjuniverse — with much complacency. Life was con-' 
 /stantly and necessarily growing better. In every spe- 
 cies the least fit were always being destroyed and the 
 standard of the survivors proportionately raised. No 
 doubt there remained even in human society many fea- 
 tures which are at first sight objectionable. But here 
 again the evolutionist was in the happy position of being 
 able to verify the existence of a soul of goodness in 
 
^ 
 
 PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 21 
 
 things evil. Was there acute industrial competition? 
 It was the process by which the fittest came to the top. 
 Were the losers in the struggle left to welter in dire 
 poverty ? They would the sooner die out. Were hous- 
 ing conditions a disgrace to civilization ? They were the 
 natural environment of an unfit class, and the means 
 whereby such a class prepared the way for its own extinc- 
 tion. Was infant mortality excessive? It weeded 
 out the sickly and the weaklings. Was there pestilence 
 or famine? So many more of the unfit would perish. 
 Did tuberculosis claim a heavy toll? The tubercular 
 germs are great selectors, skilled at probing the weak 
 spots of living tissue. Were there wars and rumors of 
 wars? War alone would give to the conquering race 
 its due, the inheritance of the earth. It would maintain 
 the efficiency of the stronger and erase the less fit from 
 the roll of nations. In a word the only blot that the evo- 
 lutionist could see upon the picture was the misguided 
 enthusiasm, the '^maudlin sentiment," to use a favorite 
 expression, which seeks to hold out a hand to those who 
 are down, and to prolong the life of those who are proved 
 unfit to exist by the fact of their ill success in the struggle. 
 The one sinner against progress is the man who tries to 
 save the lamb from the wolf. Could we abolish this 
 unscientific individual, the prospects of the world would 
 be unclouded. 
 
 I am putting this theory in language of my own, and it 
 may seem a little harsh. The most scientifically minded 
 among us retain traces of the '^maudlin sentiment" 
 in which we are bred, and which makes us hesitate to 
 draw out our arguments to their logical conclusion. 
 It is the more necessary that the legitimate inferences 
 
22 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 to be drawn from these hints and half -statements should 
 be quite nakedly set forth, so that we may see precisely 
 whither we are being led. And I think that the view 
 which I have stated is clearly implied, if only half ex- 
 pressed, in much of the biological criticism of society 
 from the time of Mr. Herbert Spencer to the present day. 
 Not only so, but it is the logically inevitable consequence 
 of the principles on which that criticism is founded. If 
 by the '^fit'^ we mean those who are best adapted by 
 their own personal qualities to survive unaided in the 
 struggle for life — and this is the sense in which the 
 term is actually taken — then the consequences which 
 have been indicated follow as does night the day. 
 But they carry with them a very curious result. 
 Every sort of aid given by one person to another 
 will clearly tend, so far as it goes, to neutralize the 
 inherent weakness of the person who is helped. Those 
 who might perish if left to themselves may clearly 
 through the aid of others be preserved through youth 
 to maturity, and so be enabled in their turn to bring 
 children into the world. Thus it would seem that 
 through mutual aid the weaker stocks, which without 
 it would be extinguished, may be enabled to propagate 
 themselves, and the action of natural selection, which, 
 eliminating the weaker stock, keeps the race strong, 
 is in so far defeated. But if natural selection is the 
 foundation of all progress, it follows that mutual aid is 
 the persistent enemy of progress ; and we arrive at the 
 result that the more highly organized the common life 
 of society the more surely is it destined to decay. Not 
 only so — we must not suppose the process to set in 
 only when society has reached a high stage of organiza- 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 23 
 
 tion, for every successive step, which tends to substi- 
 tute peace for war, agreement for conflict, forbearance 
 for internecine struggle, has point by point involved a 
 further restriction in the operation of natural selection, 
 a weakening of the one force that makes for progress. 
 Indeed, this process begins before human society is 
 reached. Far down in the animal world we see — to go 
 no farther — the operation of parental love keeping 
 alive the callow young which could not exist for a day 
 without maternal care. And stage by stage, as we as- 
 cend the animal kingdom and reach the level of human- 
 ity, we find this care developed so that from the first 
 days of immaturity it extends throughout months and 
 years of childhood. Yet, stage by stage as these and 
 other forms of mutual aid extend, the resulting form of 
 life is that which we ordinarily call ' ' higher. ' ' Before we\ 
 apply biological conceptions to social_afibirs, we gener- \ 
 ally suppose that the higTiest ethics is that which ex- 
 V presses the completest mutual sympathy and the most 
 highly evolved society, that in which the efforts of its 
 members are most completely coordinated to common 
 ends, in which discord is most fully subdued to har- 
 mony. Accordingly we are driven to one of two alter- 
 natives. Either our valuations are completely false, 
 our notions of higher and lower unmeaning, or progress, 
 the process of betterment, doesjiatdepend on menaE^d 
 struggle Jar existence. Tli^ biologist wouM cheerfully 
 accept the first alternative. As we have already seen, 
 he is disposed to tell us that we vainly seek to distort 
 truth by importing our ethical standards. He is quite 
 ready to insist that we must subordinate our judgments 
 of value to the survival test. We must judge good 
 
24 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 that which succeeds. Unfortunately for him, at that 
 stage his whole theory becomes a barren tautology. 
 Progress now in his view results from the survival ofthe 
 fittest, because progress is the process wherein the fittest 
 survive. Again it is always the fittest who survive," 
 because the fact of their survival proves their fitness. , 
 This purely verbal argument underlies a good deal of^^ 
 biological reasoning and often comes very near to the * 
 surface. ^ 
 
 But in point of fact we have very sufficient reason to 
 'decline the biological alternative. The conceptions of'^ 
 human happiness, of mental development, of social co- I 
 operation, which lie at the root of the idea of progress I 
 are not meaningless. They require, no doubt, any 
 amount of examination and criticism, and to work out all 
 their implications is the standing task of social philoso- / 
 phy. Just as much may be said of any of the current 
 terms of our common knowledge. But the first step 
 in such an examination is to put the problem in its right 
 shape, and the present problem is hopelessly misstated 
 when a term like ''fit," which suggests adaptation to 
 some desirable end, is employed without so much as an 
 effort to determine what is desirable and what is not. 
 Once again we are brought back to the conclusion that 
 we can carry on no useful discussion of the relation of 
 evolution to progress unless we have a clearly formed 
 conception of the standard of value by which we jud^e 
 what progress is. 
 
 But, the biologist may rejoin, you may have your 
 standard, but it is nugatory. Your conception of the 
 goal of human endeavor may be clear enough, but in 
 practice it may be futile. You desire a society based on 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 25 
 
 mutual forbearance and mutual aid. But you cannot 
 get it. The law of life is internecine struggle, and against 
 that law you beat in vain. Well, let us accept this test 
 and ask what we actually find. What we find is that 
 the species which are from our point of view the higher, 
 that is, those which exhibit the greater degree of indi- 
 vidual development and social cooperation, come rela- 
 tively late into existence in the course of evolution and 
 tend to dominate the lower. Man, in whose develop^ 
 ment those characteristics are the most marked, is also 
 the dominant animal and civilized societies which carry 
 them farthest are dominant among mankind. The? 
 ^social type inherits the earth. It does not defeat it-j. 
 self. It succeeds. ^ 
 
 These considerations necessarily have had their effect 
 upon the biological view, and the conception of the 
 struggle for existence has been modified accordingly. 
 It is seen that, in dealing with social affairs, we cannotV 
 take the individual as an isolated unit, and the concep- 
 tion of competition is transferred accordingly from the 
 ' individual human being to the social group of which he 
 - is a member. For this social group it is recognized that 
 affection and sympathy, and all the forces that make 
 for order and cooperation, will have what biologists 
 term ^^ survival value." Though inferior individuals 
 may be preserved, for example, by the higher develop- 
 ment of parental care, yet, upon the whole, the family 
 in which parental love is strongest will have an advan- 
 tage in competition with other families. It may contain; 
 a larger number of weak units, but, as a whole, it wilh 
 have more solidarity and it will be better organized for\ 
 the achievement of its ends. 
 
26 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 As with the family, so with society. Each com- 
 munity will lose something by preservation of mem- 
 bers who are ill-equipped, physically or morally, but 
 it will gain more by its acceptance of those higher 
 rules of social order and justice which prevent the 
 stronger members from exercising their powers to the 
 full. 
 
 But the gain in this method of treating the facts is 
 still looked on as essentially a gain in competition. The 
 struggle for existence is now conceived as a struggle be- 
 tween communities, and while it is admitted that in the 
 community there is a certain suspension or mitigation 
 of the war of all against all, it is insisted none the less 
 that it is still through struggle, still through elimination, 
 that progress takes place, only the elimination is now 
 applied to communities as a whole; the weaker com- 
 munity goes under, and it is still well that it should go 
 under. 
 
 So reconstituted, the theory affords justification for 
 what is known in ethics as ^^group-morality." We are 
 all famiUar with the fact that a certain code may be 
 generally recognized as applicable to all the members of 
 a group, while outside that group quite another code 
 comes into operation. The distinction of Greek and 
 Barbarian, of Jew and Gentile, of white man and 
 colored, are familiar illustrations. Here, again, it will 
 be seen that the very modification of sentiment which 
 before the days of biology was deemed to be the highest 
 development of ethics, the change effected by overcom- 
 ing these distinctions and forming a code of universalism 
 in which there was to be neither Jew nor Gentile, bond 
 nor free, is regarded by the theory of natural selection as 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 27 
 
 a step to deterioration. Let our social principles be 
 developed as highly as possible within the group, says 
 the theory in its present form, but only on condition that 
 between the groups themselves no terms of peace be 
 made. Yet here, again, at bottom, our previous argu- 
 ment is once more applicable. For once again, if we 
 look at history, if we consult the ethical consciousness 
 to tell us what is higher, and if we verify its deliverance 
 by tracing the results in the actual work of civilization, 
 we find that the lowest stages of society are those in 
 which men are organized in small, comparatively iso- 
 lated groups ; and as civilization advances we find pro- 
 cesses of fusion at work whereby larger and better organ- 
 ized communities are formed and whereth the caste and 
 class distinctions, which at first preserved the group or- 
 ganization, are more and more broken down. Just as 
 in the ethics which we deem highest we find the barriers 
 between man and man surmounted in principle, so in 
 societies which we conceive as most highly civilized we 
 find them in greater degree actually broken down by law 
 and custom and practice of life. 
 
 Furthermore, the ideal of group-morality, as an ideal, 
 is self-contradictory. We cannot deliberately and with 
 our eyes open mutilate ethical principles and preserve 
 the portion of them which we wish to cherish, unaffected 
 by that operation. We cannot, for example, refuse the 
 / "elementary rights of humanity to those who are not of 
 our nation or race, and yet retain the conception of 
 these rights in all their full, living vigor for use amongst 
 ourselves. The obligations recognized under group- 
 morality are never so complete as those which are 
 founded on the conception of common morality. Nor 
 
28 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 lastly, can we justify aggressive war and conquest as 
 methods of securing race-domination, without thereby 
 laying our own social structure open to serious re- 
 actions. If we are to wage war, we must be organized 
 as a military society. And this remark is general. 
 Our own internal constitution is essentially correlated 
 with our behavior to other communities. We cannot 
 here escape the reaction of what we may, if we like, 
 call moral laws or, if we prefer it, sociological effects. 
 We cannot maintain one Hfe, as it were, within, and 
 another without. 
 
 The conclusion which these reflections suggest is 
 that the uncritical application of biological principles 
 to social progress results in an insuperable contradic- 
 tion. The factors which determine the survival of phys- 
 ical organisms, if applied as rules for the furtherance of 
 social progress, appear to conflict with all that social 
 progress means. A sense of this conflict is no doubt 
 responsible for the further reconstruction which the 
 biological view has in recent years undergone. Biolo- 
 gists now begin to inquire seriously whether /^natural" 
 selection may not be replaced by a rational selection in 
 which ''fitness for survival" would at length achieve its 
 legitimate meaning, and the development of the race 
 might be guided by reasoned conceptions of social value. 
 This is a fundamental change of attitude, and the new 
 doctrine of eugenics to which it has given rise requires 
 careful examination. Before proceeding to this exami- 
 nation, however, it will be well to inquire into the 
 causes of the contrast on which we have insisted be- 
 tween biological evolution and social progress. ^ Faced 
 by this contradiction, we ask ourselves whether social 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 29 
 
 development may not be something quite distinct from ^ 
 the organic changes known to biology, and whether the • 
 life of society may not depend upon forces which never y\\ 
 appear in the individual when he is examined merely 1 
 as an individual or merely as a member of a race. '^ 
 
 Take the latter point first. It is easily seen in the 
 arguments of. biologists that they conceive social prog- 
 ress as consisting essentially in an improvement of the 
 stock to which individuals belong. This is a way of 
 looking at the matter intelligible enough in itself. So- 
 ciety consists of so many thousand or so many million 
 individuals, and if, comparing any given generation with 
 its ancestors, we could establish an average improve- 
 ment in physical, mental, or moral faculty, we should 
 certainly have cause to rejoice. There is progress so far. 
 But there is another point of view which we may take up. 
 Society consists of individual persons and nothing but \ 
 individual persons, just as the body consists of cells and 
 the product of cells. But though the body may consist 
 pexclusively of cells, we should never understand its life 
 by examining the lives of each of its cells as a separate ^ 
 unit. We must equally take into account that organic 
 interconnection whereby the living processes of each 
 separate cell cooperate together to maintain the health 
 of the organism which contains them all. So, again, to 
 understand the social order we have to take into account, 
 not only the individuals with their capabilities and 
 achievements, but the social organization in virtue of ■ 
 which these individuals act upon one another and jointly 
 produce what we call social results ; and whatever may 
 be true of the physical organism, we can see that in 
 society it is possible that individuals of the very same 
 
30 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 potentialities may, with good organization, produce 
 good results, and, with bad organization, results which 
 are greatly inferior.^ 
 
 The social phenomenon, in short, is not something 
 which occurs in one individual, or 'even in several indi- 
 viduals taken severally. It is essentially an interaction 
 of individuals, and as the capabilities of any givenTfidP 
 vidua! are extraordinarily various and are only called 
 out, each by appropriate circumstances, it will be readily 
 seen that the nature of the interaction may itself bring 
 forth new and perhaps unexpected capacities, and elicit 
 from the individuals contributing to it forces which, 
 but for this particular opportunity, might possibly re- 
 main forever dormant. If this is so, sociology, as a' 
 science, is not the same thing as either biology or psy- 
 chology. It deals neither with the physical capacities 
 of individuals as such nor with their psychological capac- 
 ities as such. It deals rather with results produced by 
 the play of these forces upon one another, by the inter- 
 action of individuals under the conditions imposed by 
 their physical environment. The nature of the forces' 
 and the point of these distinctions may be made clear 
 by a very simple instance. 
 
 Let us picture to ourselves a crowd of persons trying 
 to get through a narrow doorway. Here are a number 
 of individuals, each animated by a common purpose. 
 Let us consider the forces at work. Obviously, the first 
 that we shall take into account is psychological — there 
 
 1 It may be said that an improved organization must itself imply 
 improvement of average individual quality. But this is not so. 
 It may depend, e.g., on contact with a higher civilization or on the 
 successive efforts of generations of a stock which remains unmodi- 
 fied in its hereditary racial characteristics. 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 31 
 
 is the common motive to get out of the room animating 
 every single component member of the crowd. Next 
 come under consideration the biological elements — 
 the strength of muscle, the soundness of wind and limb 
 which enable each man to hold his place and push along. 
 Then there are the physical conditions to be taken into 
 account — the shape of the room, the width of the 
 door. If the door were wide enough there would be no 
 pushing; in other words, certain material limitations 
 of the environment give form to the forces at work. 
 Observe further that, under the general conditions laid 
 down, the differences of individuals would have full play. 
 One person goes intelligently in the Une of least resist- 
 ance ; another makes his way through the crowd by the 
 ^ infallible process'' known to Mr. Alfred Jingle of el- 
 bowing the countenances of its component members; 
 a third follows in the wake of some one stronger than 
 himself ; a fourth slips adroitly into every interstice that 
 presents itself. Where in all this is the social phenome- 
 non ? It presents in this case no very dignified spectacle. 
 It is just the boiling, seething, surging crowd and the 
 process of its emergence as a whole, draggletailed and 
 crushed it may be, from the scene of struggle. I ask you 
 to note only that what has happened is something to be 
 described neither in terms of the physical characteristics 
 of the room, nor of the muscular strength of the individ- 
 uals, nor of their psychological peculiarities, but in terms 
 of the play of all these forces upon one another. The 
 movement of the crowd is the result, not of a number 
 of personal forces taken separately, but of a number 
 of personal forces in interaction, and the interaction 
 modifies the personal forces, bringing into play efforts 
 
32 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 which would not be made but for the situation which 
 it creates. 
 
 Now, in this scene we had the social phenomenon at 
 its lowest, as we know well from descriptions of what 
 occurs when such a crash as I am picturing takes place 
 under the influence of panic. But let us consider how 
 the social phenomenon involved may be modified. Let 
 us substitute a slightly different image. Instead of the 
 crowd all animated by one purpose, anxious to pass in 
 one direction, let us think of a busy London crossing. 
 Here we have the same general conditions, with one 
 modification to begin with, which makes the instance 
 more appropriate as an example of social life at large. 
 The people are not all going one way ; they are not all 
 animated by one motive; all want to get along, but 
 they are going in different directions, and the crowds 
 pass and repass. But what is still more important for 
 our purpose, a new element has been introduced. The 
 vehicles all keep on their side of the road, and at the 
 crossing there stands a man in blue to show who may 
 pass and who may not. By this simple means the 
 multitudinous tumult of individual forces is reduced to a 
 certain sufficiency of order, and this, on the one hand, 
 by the unquestioning observance of a certain very simple 
 custom and, on the other hand, by the presence of a 
 representative of the majesty of the law — two methods 
 by which in the course of ages society has solved for it- 
 self the problem of walking or driving along the street 
 with the minimum of mutual hindrance. The two 
 methods are those of custom on the one hand, and of the 
 positive institution armed with authority upon the 
 other. The orderly passage of the street is thus effected 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE "IsS 
 
 by people who, if placed under the conditions of panic 
 or, for that matter, in a room from which they have to 
 make their egress on the lines of our first demonstration, 
 would have behaved very much in the way described. 
 But if in the struggle of the crowd to get out of the room, 
 some one man, with sufficient strength of voice or im- 
 pressiveness of manner, should set himself to impose a 
 little orderliness, we know how quickly a queue would be 
 formed, and how the anarchic struggle of one minute 
 would give way to a far more rapid and orderly egress in 
 the next. We know too, how, if the conditions were re- 
 peated, the problem of maintaining order would in each 
 successive instance become easier to solve. 
 
 Now, these instances, simple as they are, are typical 
 of the life of society. They illustrate what is meant 
 by the social fact as distinct from the biological and the 
 psychological. They show that in sociology what we^^ 
 have to deal with is the results that come about from the j 
 interplay of motives, the behavior of men in the mass as 
 they act and react upon one another. They show, sec- 
 ondly, how the very nature of this interaction will call 
 forth new forces previously latent in the individuals 
 concerned in the affair, and they show how the results so 
 arrived at are incorporated in institutions. The inter- 
 play of human motives and the interaction of human 
 "beings is the fundamental fact of social life, and the per- 
 manent results which this interaction achieves and the 
 influence which it exercises upon the individuals who 
 take part in it, constitute^ the fundamental fact of social 
 evolution. These results are embodied in what may be ^ 
 called, generically, tradition. So understood, tradition, i^ 
 its growth and estabUshment, its reaction upon the very 
 
34 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 individuals who contribute to building it up, and its 
 modifications by subsequent interactions, constitutes 
 the main subject of sociological inquiij. Tradition is, 
 in the development of society, whafft^edjfey is in the 
 physical growth of the stock. It is the link between 
 past and future, it is that in which the effects of the past 
 are consolidated and on the basis of which subsequent 
 modifications are built up. We might push the analogy 
 a little further, for the ideas and customs which it main- 
 tains and furnishes to each new generation as guides for 
 their behavior in life are analogous to the determinate 
 methods of reaction, the inherited impulses, reflexes, 
 and instincts with which heredity furnishes the indi- 
 vidual. The tradition of the elders is, as it were, the 
 instinct of society. It furnishes the prescribed rule for 
 dealing with the ordinary occasions of life, which is for 
 the most part accepted without inquiry and applied 
 without reflection. It furnishes the appropriate insti- 
 tution for providing for each class of social needs, for 
 meeting common dangers, for satisfying social wants, 
 for regulating social relations. It constitutes, in short, 
 the framework of society's life which to each new genera- 
 tion is a part of its hereditary outfit. But of course in 
 speaking of tradition as a kind of inheritance we conceive 
 of it as propagated by quite other than biological 
 methods. In a sense its propagation isj^^^fchs^logical, 
 it is handed on from mind to mind, and even though so- 
 cial institutions may in a sense be actually incorporated 
 in material things, in buildings, in books, in coronation 
 robes, or in flags, still it need riot be said that these things 
 are nothing but for the continuity of thought which 
 maintains and develops their significance. Yet the 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 35 
 
 forces at work in tradition are not purely psychological ; 
 at least, they are not to be understood in terms of indi- 
 vidual psychology alone. What is handed on is not 
 merely a set of ideas, but the whole social environment ; 
 not merely certain ways of thinking or of acting, but the 
 conditions which prescribe to individuals the necessity 
 for thinking or acting in certain specific ways if they are 
 to achieve their own desires. The point is worth dwell- 
 ing on, because some writers have thought to simplify 
 the working of tradition by reducing it to some ap- 
 parently simple psychological phenomenon like that of 
 imitation. In this there is more than one element of 
 fallacy. To begin with, imitation itself is by no means 
 a simple or unambiguous term. When we repeat what 
 another does, we are not always imitating; when we 
 learn from another, we are not always imitating. If the 
 term is to be used strictly, it appears to be applicable 
 to two main cases of repetition. In the simplest case, 
 imitation appears as a kind of mechanical suggestion. 
 Such, for example, is the case of contagious laughter or 
 yawning ; such is the case quoted by some psychologists 
 of the smile of the mother mirrored almost automati- 
 cally, as it would seem, on the face of the baby. Psy- 
 chological contagion of this kind has its own sphere and 
 its own importance in the life of society. It has its 
 effect in the psychology of crowds and it has much to do 
 with the more superficial movements of fashion. At a 
 higher remove it becomes the desire to be as others are 
 and do as others do, — a factor of course to be reckoned 
 with, — along with which may be ranked the comple- 
 mentary impulse;, to be what others are not, to differen- 
 tiate oneself from the crowd. 
 
36 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 These are the two types of imitation proper, the con- 
 scious and the unconscious, and both of them have an 
 influence with which sociology has to reckon, but they 
 are very far from exhausting the sphere of tradition. 
 From any such imitative propagation of an idea or 
 habit we must distinguish, as resting upon quite differ- 
 ent psychological conditions, the propagation of ideas 
 by teaching, by demonstration, and even by the appeal 
 to the feelings and passions. The ultimate result may 
 still in a sense be the same, — that is to say, the idea 
 which is possessed by A passes into the mind of B, — 
 but the method by which it is imparted and therefore 
 the conditions under which it will spread from mind to 
 mind are as different as need be. A much more com- 
 plex psychology comes into play. No longer the simple 
 desire of B to be like A, but the whole mental, and per- 
 haps the whole social and physical, situation will have 
 to be taken into account. B will accept the idea in 
 so far as it will fit in with his mental predisposition, 
 it may be with his feelings, it may be with his concep- 
 tions of logic, it may be with the requirements of the 
 environment in which he finds himself. And finally, 
 from all cases of the multiplication of an idea or a 
 mode of action by passage from mind to mind, we must 
 distinguish the multitudinous cases in which the same 
 idea or the same mode of action is repeated over and 
 over again, not because it is propagated from mind 
 to mind, but because each individual mind finds itself 
 similarly circumstanced. All the farmers in a country- 
 side may be plowing their fields in the same week, not 
 because they are imitating one another or are persuad- 
 ing one another, but because the requirements of their 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 37 
 
 land are alike and the season is the same for all. And 
 here, in the case of social institutions, we touch upon 
 a factor which takes us outside the region of pure 
 psychology, for what persists in social life is not 
 merely the ideas which pass from mind to mind, but 
 the whole fabric of society into which each man finds 
 himself born and which in large measure determines 
 the circumstances of his life, and the methods by which 
 alone he can make his way in the world. To pursue 
 the case of the farmer, for example, he plows his land, 
 not merely in imitation of his father, but because by 
 certain laws of inheritance the land has become his in 
 virtue of his sonship, and to work it is just the method 
 which the social fabric provides for him to obtain his 
 living. In other words, tradition not merely supplies 
 him with certain ideas of what he may do, but fixes 
 him in a position in which it is open to him to do certain 
 things and not others. ~ 
 
 Now, the growth of tradition will in a sense gravely 
 modify the individual members of the society which 
 maintains it. To any given set of institutions a cer- 
 tain assemblage of qualities, mental and physical, will 
 be most appropriate, and these may differ as much as 
 the qualities necessary for war differ from those of 
 peaceful industry. Any tradition will obviously call 
 forth from human beings the qualities appropriate to 
 it, and it will in a sense select the individuals in which 
 those qualities are the best developed and will tend to 
 bring them to the top of the social fabric, but this is 
 not to say that it will assert the same modification upon 
 the stock that would be accomplished by the working 
 of heredity. The hereditary qualities of the race may 
 
38 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 remain the same, though the traditions have changed 
 and though by them one set of quahties are kept per- 
 manently in abeyance, while the other are continually 
 brought by exercise to the highest point of efficiency. 
 According to the prevailing views of heredity, no amount 
 of such exercise, however long repeated, would affect 
 those innate characteristics of the stock which are 
 handed on from parent to child, and thus it is conceiv- 
 able that we might find very great social advances in 
 any given direction without any modification of the in- 
 herited characteristics of the race. We are not to con- 
 clude that physical heredity is of no importance to the 
 social order; it must be obvious that the better the 
 qualities of the individuals constituting a race, the 
 more easily they will fit themselves into good social 
 traditions, the more readily they will advance those 
 jiraditions to a still higher point of excellence, and 
 ^the more stoutly they would resist deterioration. The 
 qualities upon which the social fabric calls must be 
 there, and the more readily they are forthcoming the 
 more easily the social machine will work. Hence so- 
 cial progress necessarily implies a certain level of racial 
 development, and its advance may always be checked 
 by the limitations of the racial type. Nevertheless, if| 
 we look at human history as a whole, we are impressed! 
 with the stability of the great fundamental character- f 
 istics of human nature and the relatively sweepingj 
 character and often rapid development of social change^] 
 In view of this contrast we must hesitate to attribute 
 any substantial share in human development to biologi- 
 cal factors, and our hesitation is increased when we 
 consider the factors on which social change depends. 
 
PROGRESS AND STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 39 
 
 It is in the department of knowledge and industry that 
 advance is most rapid and certain, and the reason is 
 perfectly clear. It is that on this side each generation 
 can build on the work of its predecessors. A man of 
 very moderate mathematical capacity to-day can solve 
 problems which puzzled Newton, because he has avail- 
 able the work of Newton and of many another 
 since Newton's time. In the department of ethics 
 the case is different. Each man's character has to be 
 formed anew, and though teaching goes for much, it 
 is not everything. The individual in the end works 
 out his own salvation.^^, where there is true ethical 
 progress is in the advance of ethical conceptions and 
 principles which can be handed on ; of Ig^s and institu- 
 tions which can be built up, maintained, arid improved. 
 That is to say, there is progress just where the factor 
 of social tradition comes into play and just so far as its 
 influence extends. If the tradition is broken, the race' 
 begins again where it stood before the tradition was 
 formed. We' may infer that while the race has been 
 relatively^ stagnant,, society has rapidly developed, 
 and we must conclude that, whether for good or for 
 evil, social chapges are mainly determined, not by alter- 
 ations of racial type, but by modifications of tradition I 
 due to the interactions of social causes. Progress is ) 
 not racial, but social. • ^ 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Value and Limitations of Eugenics 
 
 We have seen that social Ufe consists in the inter- 
 action of human beings, and social evolution — whether 
 progressive or the reverse — in the consequent forma- 
 tion and modification of what, for lack of a better 
 single word, we may call the social tradition. Social 
 improvement therefore is not the same as racial improve- 
 ment. It is quite conceivable that with no change 
 in the average level of racial capacity, the cumulative 
 efforts of generations to better their life might produce 
 a very great change in the social structure, and in point 
 of fact it appears to be mainly by such a process of the 
 summation of effort that the actual achievements of 
 mankind have been effected. But at this point the 
 biological critic may very fairly break in with a new 
 criticism. ^^ Granted,'^ he may say, ^^all that you urge 
 on behalf of the social tradition. It still remains 
 the incontestable truth that society is composed of 
 individuals whose qualities determine the nature of 
 their interactions. No doubt these qualities are very 
 complex. Man is a being of mixed disposition. There 
 is a mingling of gold and brass in every soul, and circum- 
 stances may decide which is to show on the surface. 
 We grant then that there are wide limits of variation 
 within which, without modification of the racial type, 
 society may advance or retrograde. None the less we 
 
 40 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 41 
 
 come back to the qualities of individuals as the ultimate 
 determinants. Their average merit must affect the 
 standard of social action. Conceive the racial level — 
 by which we mean the average level of hereditary en- 
 dowment — raised, and to that extent you facilitate 
 social progress. Conceive it lowered, and to that ex- 
 tent you arrest progress and favor deterioration." 
 The contention thus modestly put cannot be denied. 
 The very efforts that men make to improve their in- 
 dividual condition and the social order are themselves 
 of course the outcome of their qualities ; and if these 
 qualities take shape and find expression in the medium 
 of the social tradition, it is equally true that they form 
 the ultimate reserve of energy underlying the social 
 changes by which that tradition is maintained, im- 
 proved, or destroyed ^^Very well then," the Eugenist 
 proceeds, ^4t is admitted that the quality of the stock 
 is of high importance. It is admitted also that natural 
 selection is no longer capable of performing its function 
 in weeding out inferior stocks. It is admitted that we 
 cannot revert to the use of natural selection without 
 destroying the characteristic work of civilization. We 
 cannot undo the structure of mutual aid and mutual 
 forbearance which civilized progress has painfully built 
 up. What we can do is to si i bpt i f 1 1 f .p for natura l ai 
 .rational selection^^ We may discourage and even pre- 
 vent the perpetuation of inferior stocks, and for this 
 purpose a rational conception of fitness and a knowl- 
 edge of the laws of heredity is all that we require. All 
 that has been urged above against the conception of the 
 struggle for existence may be true. It holds true none 
 the less that selection is necessary to racial progress and 
 
42 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 to the avoidance of racial deterioration, and even if 
 the social reformer could ignore the need of improve- 
 ment in the race, he must take a very serious view of 
 the possibihties involved in deterioration. He must 
 look very carefully at the reforms which he is proposing, 
 for fear any such vital injury to the life-blood of society 
 should be entailed by them/^ 
 
 Without examining all the details of this argument, 
 we may admit the main contention to be theoretically 
 sound. The improvement of the stock by rational se- 
 lection is in the abstract a clearly legitimate object. 
 It involves no such contradiction with the inherent 
 trend of progress as is contained in the principle of 
 leaving society to the operation of the unchecked 
 struggle for existence. The child once born has a claim 
 upon society which can only be ignored at the cost of 
 abandoning the basic principles of the himaanized social 
 order. But the claim to bring children into the world 
 is quite another matter. It is no novel point of ethics 
 ^^ ^ to forbid parentage to a person of deeply vitiated stock, 
 and Eugenists who draw a distinction between the right 
 to live and the right to bring to life are within their 
 rightsS*^ So far then we admit that the eugenic con- 
 clusion follows from its premises. But what are the 
 premises ? We are to assume, first, that we have a true 
 conception of social worth, of the nature of human 
 progress and of the qualities making for it. We are 
 to assume, secondly, that we have competent knowledge 
 of the laws of inheritance whereby we can so play upon 
 the race as to engender the qualities that we desire. 
 This is, to succeed in eugenics we need a competent 
 understanding both of the eu and of the genics. We 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 43 
 
 must know what we want to breed for and how we'"* 
 propose to breed for it. Have we the clearness of con- 
 ception as to the first point and the fullness of knowl- 
 edge as to the second which are necessary to the 
 useful development of eugenics ? 
 
 As to the first question, the nature and criterion of 
 social worth, I think we may trace two lines of thought 
 among eugenic writers which it is highly important to 
 distinguish. The more careful admit that for a 
 thoroughgoing application of their principle we should 
 need a well-grounded social philosophy. They admit 
 that little is known as to the causation of many of 
 the. higher human qualities and fully grant that we 
 should be very careful in, so as to say, passing sentence 
 of execution on a stock which may after all contain 
 serviceable elements mixed with its blemishes. But 
 they say there are many qualities about which there 
 can be no doubt. We do not want insanity: we do 
 not want f eeble-mindedness ; we do not want alcoholism ; 
 we do not want syphilis j_^ we do not want the stocks 
 which are infected with such taint. We want to ex- 
 tinguish them as evil in themselves and as liable to 
 infect sound stocks. We want to isolate those definitely 
 infected much as we isolate an infectious disease. We 
 want to prevent them from bringing into the world 
 children in their own image. When the principle is 
 admitted and the experiment has been made in these 
 cases that are clear, it will be time enough to consider 
 those that are more doubtful. We shall in the mean- 
 time have gained some knowledge of what can be 
 done by these means and how it can be done with the 
 least possible infliction of suffering. 
 
44 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 On this side we see the eugenic case at its strongest. 
 But even here we must put in one caveat. There may 
 be blemishes which are very serious in themselves, but 
 which nevertheless do not afford adequate grounds for 
 pronouncing capital sentence upon a stock. As an 
 illustration, I will take the case of tuberculosis. The 
 heredity of this disease is still a matter of some question. 
 For the sake of argument I will assume the diathesis 
 to be hereditary. No one can deny that it is in that 
 case a serious blemish. But before we proceeded to 
 pass sentence of exclusion from the rights of parenthood 
 on any individual of tubercular stock, I think we should 
 have very carefully to weigh two questions. The first 
 is, what are the other qualities of the individual? 
 Liability to tubercular infection involves no mental 
 or moral turpitude. It may coexist with the highest 
 qualities on this side. I am not aware that it even 
 involves any other form of physical weakness, though 
 some other forms of physical weakness may no doubt 
 increase the liability to tubercular infection. Now, 
 if we stamp out the tubercular tendency, what other 
 qualities are we stamping out along with it? If an 
 otherwise gifted stock has this blemish, will there be 
 net loss or net gain in its disappearance ? I do not think 
 that this question can be answered offhand. But 
 if our general view of progress is correct, society has 
 on the whole gone forward by the development of those 
 arts which assist to keep alive many who without 
 such aid would have perished; and considering the 
 very wide prevalence which is now believed to obtain 
 of some form or another of the tubercular condition, it 
 may be doubted, whether if the tubercle had been left to 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 45 
 
 do its work unchecked, there would have been any social 
 progress at all. Secondly, it is well within the bounds 
 of possibiUty that, by the development of scientific 
 hygiene, instead of eliminating the tubercular stock 
 we may succeed in eliminating the tubercle. In that 
 case this particular tendency — unless provably corre- 
 lated with some other form of irremediable weakness — 
 will no longer rank as a defect. If in the meantime we 
 had prohibited the marriage of members of such stocks, 
 we should have lost all that they might have contrib- 
 uted to the population and its well-being for the sake 
 of no permanent gain. 
 
 These two points may be stated generally. We 
 must be certain that the stock which we seek to elimi- 
 nate is so vicious that its removal is a net gain. We 
 must be sure that the vice is irremovable and not de- 
 pendent upon conditions which it is within our power 
 to modify. This latter condition implies a certainty 
 as to the operation of heredity, of which more will 
 be said. But meanwhile, assuming those two conditions 
 fulfilled, there is a case for forbidding parentage — al- 
 ways upon this further provision that in so doing we 
 do not allow ourselves to^e driven to methods which by 
 violating the painfully acquired traditions of civilization 
 will aid the ever present tendencies to re-barbarizatiom] 
 On these grounds the case of the feeble-minded be- 
 comes perhaps the strongest for the application of 
 eugenic methods. We have here a type which it is 
 becoming possible to identify with fair precision. It 
 is found in men and women who are not capable of 
 independent existence, but who continually drift to 
 the gaol or the workhouse, who are fertile, and whose 
 
46 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 condition is asserted to be hereditary in a marked 
 degree. On grounds of humanity we have good reason 
 to undertake the care of this class, and we have a 
 right to demand in return the separation of the sexes. 
 We are deaUng with people who are not capable of 
 guiding their own Uves and who should for their own 
 sake be under tutelage, and we are entitled to impose 
 our own conditions of this tutelage, having the general 
 welfare of society in view. Lastly, there is no reason 
 to think that this condition is an isolated and, as it 
 were, accidental defect in a nature that is otherwise 
 healthy and sound. The evidence, I understand, is. 
 rather that it is a form of general deterioration not 
 correlated with any gpeqially gaod qualities by way oi 
 compensation.^ Such a case is, I think, one of the 
 strongest that Eugenists can press in the present state 
 of our knowledge. 
 
 On such lines as these, physiological or medical 
 lines as we may call them, eugenics may have a part to 
 play in relation to the social problem. But meanwhile 
 there is a second line of thought discernible among 
 Eugenists and larger claims put forward bearing on 
 poUtical thought as a whole which must be very care- 
 fully scrutinized. By no means all eugenic writers are 
 so careful in their application of the tests of unfitness as 
 those to whom I have referred. To read a good deal 
 of what is written on this subject one might suppose 
 that the whole question is as simple as daylight. Often 
 it would seem as if the actual position of classes in 
 society was taken as a measure of their worth. Thus 
 we hear a great deal of the relative sterility of the richer 
 classes and the fertility of the poorer, as if this were in 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 47 
 
 itself sufficient evidence of the multiplication of the 
 unfit. Now, the actual forces which determine a man's 
 position in modern society are, first, the inheritance of 
 property and other social privileges, and secondly, his 
 capacity for making and keeping money. The first 
 of these, far from affording a test of personal merit, 
 tends to mask the actual inequalities of endowment. 
 One knows people of the essential pauper character in 
 all classes. But whereas if they are born among the 
 well-to-do they exist on means of their own or find re- 
 lations on whom they succeed in fastening, among the 
 poor they drift to the street corner, the casual ward, 
 the workhouse, and the gaol. One would suppose it 
 axiomatic that without perfect equality of opportunity 
 actual position in the social scale would be no criterion 
 of relative merit ; and yet we find at least one able 
 writer so enamoured of the qualities of the British upper 
 and middle class that he manages on eugenic grounds to 
 find reasons for the maintenance of class distinctions. 
 But further, given a genuine freedom of competition 
 and full equality of opportunity, the qualities which 
 bring men to the top are not necessarily social qualities. 
 Some qualities by which men get on are good, some in- 
 different, and some bad. Which of these will predomi- 
 nate depends on the character of the social organization. 
 The financial abilities which bring men to the top to-day 
 may come to be regarded by our descendants much as 
 we regard the qualities of a robber baron who prospered 
 under mediaeval conditions. Upon the whole it is 
 probable that the harder and more self-regarding qual- 
 ities still play a larger part than the gentler and more 
 social in determining success, and we are not surprised 
 
48 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 when we find writers of the type to which I refer tell- 
 ing us plainly that self-reliance and endurance are the 
 qualities which they wish to breed. Now, self-reliance 
 and endurance are very good qualities, and we must 
 not depreciate them, but a view of human nature which 
 centers on these to the omission of the other side of 
 character is a view which has got out of focus. The 
 possibility of such a view indicates the absolute neces- 
 sity of a social philosophy as a basis of eugenics the 
 moment that eugenic considerations are used to deter- 
 mine the main lines of social reform. 
 
 In fact, when they begin to criticize social reform, some 
 Eugenists of the class to which I am referring, political 
 Eugenists as we may call them, come perilously near 
 to the old arguments from the theory of natural selec- 
 tion. They make reservations, it is true, which must 
 stand to their credit. They admit that the social con- 
 science is an indispensable factor in progress, and that 
 what has been done in the way of ameliorative legisla- 
 tion cannot be undone. But, they argue, as long as 
 natural selection reigned the standard of the stock 
 was kept up. The weakling was eliminated ; the 
 strong survived. Now natural selection is superseded. 
 The weakling is preserved. He is allowed to breed. 
 Relatively he is more fertile than the fit. The birth- 
 rate diminishes most among the higher ranks of society. 
 More and more the nation of the future will be recruited 
 from the unfit stocks. Meanwhile the burden of main- 
 taining the unfit falls in the shape of poor rates and 
 state taxes on the shoulders of their betters, who are 
 thus positively handicapped in the struggle and dis- 
 inclined to rear famiUes. All social legislation is directed 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 49 
 
 to the improvement of the environment, but the im- 
 provement of the environment has no effect on the stock. 
 It may in some degree — Professor Pearson's school 
 argues that it is in a very sUght degree — improve the 
 quaUties of the individual, but the quahties so acquired 
 will not be handed on. Unless we so alter our institu- 
 tions as to encourage the propagation of the fit and dis- 
 courage the unfit, our race is doomed. 
 
 (1) If these jeremiads were well founded, we should^ 
 expect to see the signs of deterioration already mani- 
 fest. After all, the suspension of natural selection is no 
 new phenomenon. It has, as we have shown, been in 
 progress ever since civilization began and even before 
 civilization began. True, with the decline of the in- 
 fantile death rate it has been carried much farther, but 
 this is only the continuance of a very old process, and 
 that this process can ever go so far as entirely to elimi- 
 nate natural selection is unlikely. Variations which are 
 sufficiently extreme are likely always to carry early 
 death or infertility as their effect. In our own times 
 what proof is there of actual deterioration? As it 
 happens a committee was instituted in my own country 
 to investigate this question some six years ago. There 
 was at that time a widespread uneasiness arising from 
 the increasing number of recruits who were rejected 
 on medical grounds. Physical deterioration was the 
 thing most feared, and it was reasonable to suppose 
 that under modern considerations it would be on this 
 side if anywhere that deterioration would be apparent. 
 The committee was not biased in favor of any op- 
 timistic view, and all available evidence in favor of 
 deterioration came before them. The result was 
 
50 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 that while they found that there was no sufficient ma- 
 terial as at present available to warrant any definite con- 
 clusions on the question of the physique of the people by 
 comparison with data obtained in past times, yet 'Hhe 
 impressions gathered from the great majority of the wit- 
 nesses examined do not support the belief that there is 
 any general progressive physical deterioration." Famil- 
 iar social statistics support the negative view. The 
 heavy decline of the death-rate during the last forty 
 years is undoubtedly due to improved sanitary and social 
 conditions, but it also indicates an improvement of 
 general health, and if there were any strong tendency 
 to the deterioration of the stock at work, we should ex- 
 pect it to appear as at least a counterpoise. The decline 
 of pauperism from about 50 per thousand of the popula- 
 tion in 1850 to 21 per thousand in the present year is 
 also due to general social progress ; but it has gone on 
 long enough to be seriously counteracted by the growth 
 of a class of hereditary paupers, supposing that such 
 a class were in fact increasing. Of the diminution 
 of crime in proportion to the population — which, 
 notwithstanding a recent rise, marks the period as 
 a whole — the same may be said. Lastly, the rise in 
 real wages, which is slow but general in England and 
 is spread over a century, tells the same tale. Wages 
 have risen owing to a variety of social efforts, but the 
 higher wage could hardly in the competition of the 
 world's market be earned by a continuously deteriorat- 
 ing population of workers. The only unfavorable com- 
 parison of any weight that can be instituted with the 
 past is in the matter of insanity, and here the inter- 
 pretation of the figures is subject to serious doubt. 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 51 
 
 There is, says the committee, in the report which I 
 have quoted, no doubt as to the great increase of insane 
 persons under treatment, but the question is, first, how- 
 far these figures indicate true increase of insanity, and 
 secondly, if this is true, as to the causes of the increase. 
 J3n the first point they rely chiefly on the evidence of 
 Dr. Wiglesworth, who, they say, admitted that the sta- 
 tistical information was incomplete, and that the con- 
 clusions to be drawn from it varied according as it was 
 read and looked at, but on the whole, though he would 
 like to express himself with reserve, was inclined to 
 think that the incidence was increasing. You see how 
 cautiously the opinion as to the last fact is expressed. 
 When we come to the interpretation, we find Dr. Wig- 
 lesworth equally cautious as to the argument that the 
 increase of lunacy can be taken as evidence of physi- 
 cal deterioration. So far as England is concerned it 
 appears to be connected with density of population, 
 and therefore, if it is real, to be rather an effect of the 
 worst side of the social environment — the crush and 
 the strain of industrial life — than of deterioration of '^ 
 stock.^ Upon the whole we are justified in the con- 
 clusion that whatever the future has in store the process 
 of deterioration has not begun. 
 
 (2) In the absence of inductive evidence of race 
 deterioration, we may usefully go on to inquire whether 
 there is any reason in the nature of the case why the 
 suspension of natural selection within the limits up 
 to which such suspension is possible should lower 
 
 1 There is in fact more evidence of the increase of lunacy in Ire- 
 land, which has for historical reasons failed in large measure to share 
 in such social progress as the larger island has achieved. 
 
52 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 the racial standard. To many biologists the question 
 refutes itself. The race is forever varying, but its varia- 
 tions for the worse are nipped in the bud. Once allow 
 them to grow and they must infect the sounder stocks. 
 At a minimum they must lower the racial average, 
 and this process of deterioration will go on indefinitely. 
 It is by means of the selection of small variations for 
 the better that the racial standard is improved and that 
 new varieties and new species are formed. Similarly, 
 by the indefinitely continued propagation of variations 
 for the worse, the whole standard of a race will be 
 lowered. This large way of looking at the facts, how- 
 ever, implies a biological theory which is by no means 
 universally accepted. How far a race is actually 
 capable of being modified by the accumulation of small 
 variations has become in recent years a matter of acute 
 controversy, and it seems to be the better opinion that 
 a distinction must be drawn between the less important 
 variations known as fluctuations and the more deep- 
 seated changes to which the name of mutations has been 
 given. It is probable that in the case of smaller fluc- 
 tuations there is a constant tendency to return to the 
 mean or standard of the race, and if we can imagine a 
 race wholly immune from natural selection and not 
 striking out any new line by a definite mutation, the 
 mean standard of the racial type would be roughly 
 maintained for an indefinite period. But be that as 
 it may, we have to point out once more that the view 
 taken of the effect of natural selection is one-sided, 
 for once again it is assumed that it is only the unfit 
 /who are eliminated. Now if once for all we get rid of 
 the phrase '^ selection of the fit" and substitute for it 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 53 
 
 *' elimination of the unsuccessful/^ which is what is really 
 meant, we shall see the facts in a different light. In a 
 race subject to a severe struggle for existence, the types 
 which are unsuccessful under the prevailing conditions 
 will constantly be eliminated ; but it is possible and more 
 than possible that these types should include among 
 them the most valuable stocks for the purposes of 
 society. Where the conditions of life are hard, where 
 there is little regard for justice and mercy, and in a word 
 for all the higher ethical qualities, those who possess 
 these qualities have less chance of prospering and 
 leaving descendants behind them. In point of fact 
 in earlier forms of human society there is good reason 
 to think that social progress was seriously interfered 
 with by the actual elimination of the best types. 
 From this point of view political and civil liberty, 
 social and economic justice, are the most eugenic of 
 agencies. Much is said by Eugenists of the decay of 
 nations in the past by the failure of the best types to 
 perpetuate themselves. I know of no case, not even 
 that of the Roman Empire, in which this suggestion 
 is susceptible of any clear historical proof, for the 
 lamentations over the decay of the Roman population 
 date from the first century before Christ, a period which 
 history has shown to have been, not one of retrogression, 
 but of progress, — a progress which was well maintained 
 for two centuries after the time when these jeremiads 
 had become familar. It is also forgotten by those who 
 make use of the half-told tale of Roman decadence 
 that, as the Roman Empire consolidated itself, it 
 drew for its support, not on the old aristocracy of Rome, 
 but on the newer population of the Mediterranean 
 
54 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 basin, and that this population was decadent or was 
 seriously affected by the relatively fast multiplication 
 of inferior stocks is a suggestion for which I have 
 never seen any evidence. On the other hand, if we look 
 at the artificial elimination of the best stocks by political 
 and religious despotism, we get much more definite evi- 
 dence of national deterioration. Take, for example, the 
 case of Spain in the sixteenth century. We need not 
 assume that the Protestant reformers were man for man 
 better than the old believers ; but we may fairly suppose 
 that a large proportion of the more independent minds 
 and more active thinkers would be attracted by the new 
 creed, and when we find that these were eliminated by 
 the process of auto da fe to the number of tens of 
 thousands, we can well understand that in Spain the 
 selection effected by poUtical circumstances may have 
 been such as to denude the country of an undue pro- 
 portion of its most vigorous stocks. Speaking broadly, 
 if the more social qualities are to have their chance, 
 it is on political and social institutions that that chance 
 must depend. Freedom of thought and action, freedom 
 of choice by women, the repression of violence and 
 fraud, these are all eugenic agencies which tend to 
 diminish the contrast between the successful and the 
 fit. So regarded, the improvement of social conditions 
 is seen to tell both ways in its effect on the stock. 
 If it admits of variations for the bad, it also allows 
 for variations for the good. So far the two tendencies 
 cancel one another. But we may go a step farther. 
 The aciu.^..j^gress of humanity depends far more 
 pn the survival of the best than on the elimination of 
 the worst ; provided that the highest tjrpes can always 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 55 
 
 have breathing space, we may be assured that social, 
 as distinct from racial, progress will continue. Eugeni- 
 cally considered then, the broad duty of society is so ^ 
 to arrange its institutions that success is to the socially 
 fit, and this is only possible in proportion as the social 
 order is based on principles of a just and equitable organ- 
 ization. 
 
 (3) In this account of the matter I have assumed, 
 in accordance with the preponderance of biological 
 opinion, that environment as such has no direct effect 
 upon the development of the stock. This is a point 
 on which some schools of biologists speak with an assur- 
 ance which almost amounts to dogmatism, and they em- 
 ploy this principle as an argument to prove the futility 
 of contemporary efforts at social improvement. In 
 so doing it may be remarked in passing that very fre- 
 quently they fail to draw the necessary distinction 
 between racial and social progress. Thus in one of 
 the Eugenics Laboratory Lectures ^ we read : — 
 
 "Practically all social legislation has been based on the assumption 
 that better environment meant race progress." 
 
 I beg leave to doubt whether for the most part persons 
 interested in social legislation have given any profound 
 consideration to the question of race progress. What 
 they have been concerned with is social progress, that 
 is to say, they have aimed at improving the actual life 
 of the people and the building up of a better social 
 structure, and I may add that the biological terms of 
 race and environment, nature and nurture, are not cate- 
 
 ^ ** The Relative Strength of Nurture and Nature,'! by Ethel M. 
 Elderton. 
 
56 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 gories to satisfy sociologists. They do not exhaust the 
 field. From one point of view, no doubt, social in- 
 stitutions may be regarded as an environment within 
 which the individual is formed and to which he has to 
 accommodate himself. But the actual effect of social 
 institutions upon life is not to be understood in biological 
 terms. The relation, as Professor Henry Jones has well 
 pointed out, between the individual and society is far 
 more intimate. It is much more like an organic union. 
 V One and the same set of qualities will take a totally 
 different expression according as the social environment 
 differs. The very same motives, the same original 
 characteristics, which will in the one set of circumstances 
 lead a man to unsocial practices, will, if suitably directed, 
 render him an efficient and useful citizen. The same 
 motives of pride and self-assertion which in a land 
 where the blood feud reigns would lead a man to 
 decorate his home with the skulls of his enemies and 
 their wives and children, will in a civilized society 
 urge him on to commercial or professional success, and 
 will compel him to serve society for the gratification 
 of his own ambition. The necessity of earning a living 
 will impel a man to robbery and fraud or to honest 
 and useful labor in accordance with the opportunities 
 which the social system holds out to him. The driving 
 power which under unrestrained competition will make 
 a man a hard master may under suitable social control 
 be directed to the equally efficient and humane conduct 
 of business. It is not human quality, whether original 
 or acquired, that differs profoundly from period to 
 period. It is the turn given to human quality by the 
 social structure. As with the self-regarding, so with 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 57 
 
 the more generous impulses. The unreasoned philan- 
 thropy of an earlier time might do harm by indiscrimi- 
 nate giving; when it finds rational channels for its 
 activity it will prompt a man to throw in his weight 
 with the best civic movements of the day. Nor, again, 
 is the effect of social institutions to be measured by 
 modifications in the qualities of individuals as that 
 expression would be generally understood. Take, for 
 example, the effect of education. It is certainly desir- 
 able that education should develop the intelligence, 
 but how much net addition is made to intellectual 
 capacity by educational processes is exceedingly diffi- 
 cult to measure. Acquired knowledge or skill, on the 
 other hand, are tangible achievements in which the 
 response of the individual on the one side and the 
 teaching provided on the other are two inseparable 
 conditions. It is acquirement or achievement, e.g, 
 knowledge, skill, discipline, that training confers, and 
 the modifications thus effected in a man's life and his 
 functions as a member of society are so great as to 
 amount in many cases to a change of kind rather than 
 of degree. The distinction is ignored by certain writers 
 of the eugenic school, who seek to depreciate the effect 
 of nurture as compared with nature, even in its bearing 
 on the individual. But apart from this some of the 
 methods used to measiu-e the effect of the environment 
 are of very doubtful value. Thus, in the lecture 
 already quoted, Miss Elderton seeks to measure the 
 effect of the environment by utilizing the Report of 
 the Charity Organization Society on certain school 
 children in Edinburgh. The home environment of 
 the children is considered under the following heads : — • 
 
58 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 The number of people per room ; 
 
 Good economic conditions ; 
 
 Good physical condition of parents ; 
 
 Good moral condition of parents. 
 With regard to the last point, Miss Elderton admits 
 there is room for variation of judgment, and one would 
 say that even the three former would require very close 
 investigation in order to form an accurate classifica- 
 tion. However, having made this classification. Miss 
 Elderton proceeds to take the reports on certain quali- 
 ties of the children, on their vision, hearing, glandular 
 condition, and intelligence; on some of these points 
 I confess I should not expect the environment to pro- 
 duce any very marked effect, but the question of intelli- 
 gence is interesting from our point of view, and here 
 Miss Elderton is able tt) produce results indicating in 
 her opinion a very small, if not a negligible, effect. 
 Good economic conditions alone show a small influence 
 upon the intelligence alike of boys and girls. ^ On 
 these figures it must be remarked that they include 
 
 * The actual correlations are as follows : — 
 
 Boys Girls 
 Number of people per room (intelli- 
 gence) .02 .04 
 
 Good economic conditions (intelligence) . .01 .16 
 Good physical condition of parents (intel- 
 ligence) -.04 .06 
 
 Good moral condition of parents (intelli- 
 gence) -.07 .03 
 
 The negative signs indicate that the better conditions are associated 
 with lower intelligence. The insignificance of the figures is to be 
 measured by the fact that the general figure of correlation for hered- 
 ity is taken by the writer to be about .49 in the case of intelligence. 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 59 
 
 several doubtful and even unknown quantities. How- 
 is the intelligence of boys and girls measured? On 
 this vital point we have no information. At best it 
 represents some impression of somebody, presumably 
 of teachers, and what sort of standard is applied by 
 which the fractions are determined we are not told. 
 But if we take the figures at their face value, we find an 
 exceedingly paradoxical result. It is constantly as- 
 sumed that better economic and social conditions are 
 generally indicative of superiority of stock. In that 
 case the parents conforming to the better conditions 
 are, it is to be inferred, men and women of better 
 stock; and according to this, apart altogether from 
 environmental influences, we should expect their chil- 
 dren to show better results. We should expect the 
 full correlation worked out for us in other cases of 
 heredity. How is it that this fails when the present 
 test is applied? We seem driven to the conclusion 
 either that this particular method of calculation is 
 misleading or that the general assumption upon which 
 many of the sociological arguments of Eugenists are 
 based, that the socially more fortunate classes are of 
 the best hereditary strain, is unfounded. It must be 
 added that when the home conditions are used as a 
 test of the general effect of the environment, some 
 very serious omissions are made. It appears to be for- 
 gotten that in a great measure the environment of all 
 the children attending the same school, or even schools 
 of the same class in a single town, is identical, par- 
 ticularly as regards the effect on intelligence. The 
 school teaching is identical for all, and beyond that, 
 all the children are born in the same area, in the same 
 
60 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 town, under the same law, and have to conform to the 
 
 same standard of civiUzation ; they learn the same 
 
 things and are accessible to the same ideas. We get 
 
 nothing but a fractional measure of the environment 
 
 when we merely differentiate home surroundings. 
 
 Lastly, it will be seen that the writer does not even 
 
 I take in home surroundings as a whole. She divides 
 
 < them into heads and under each head finds a correlation 
 
 , which is very small compared with that of physical 
 
 heredity. Now, if the comparison were to denote 
 
 ' anything at all, it must begin by attempting to set the 
 
 whole of the environmental conditions on the one side 
 
 against the whole of hereditary conditions on the other. 
 
 *\To take one environmental condition among many and 
 
 . to compare its effect with the total effect of physical 
 
 heredity is a method of argument which can throw no 
 
 • light on the question at issue, and to take several 
 
 ^ environmental conditions in series without attempting 
 
 '^o sum their effect is to produce an illusion of proof 
 
 without reality. 
 
 An illustration equally remarkable in its own way of 
 the mental processes by which some eugenic writers ar- 
 rive at conclusions which go out to the public as the or- 
 dinances of the scientific world may be found in another 
 publication of the same laboratory on ^^The Inheritance 
 of Vision." The writers. Miss Amy Harrington and 
 Professor Pearson, in sununarizing their conclusion be- 
 gin by remarking that it is '^admittedly only a first 
 study." ''No one can recognize its defects more fully 
 than the authors themselves do." With this becomnig 
 modesty they go on to speak of the difficulties of obtain- 
 ing evidence and then remark that as far as "the ad- 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 61 
 
 mittedly slender data of this first study '^ allow certain 
 specific conclusions may be formulated which they 
 then state in a manner to which no objection can be 
 taken. Having stated them, they proceed to speak in 
 more general terms. 
 
 "As far as the material developed in this memoir goes, it 
 points, if not overwhelmingly, at least strongly, to the moral: 
 Pay attention to breeding, and the environmental element will 
 not affect your projects. Improve to the utmost your environ- 
 ment, breeding will lay low your schemes. 
 
 " The first thing is good stock, and the second thing is good 
 stock, and the third thing is good stock, and when you have paid 
 attention to these three things, fit environment will keep your 
 material in good condition. No environmental or educational 
 grindstone is of service, unless the tool to be ground is of genuine 
 steel — • of tough race and tempered stock. 
 
 " To brmg home this fact in each department of human phy- 
 sique and mentality seems to be the urgent social problem of 
 to-day." 
 
 This is a somewhat rapid transition from the cautious 
 and scientific to the dogmatizing mood. The conclu- 
 sions from '^ admittedly slender data'' are first made 
 to suggest a general conclusion which goes far beyond 
 the particular case investigated. In the next para- 
 graph the conclusion is dogmatically asserted without 
 the least reference to the slenderness of the evidence, 
 and in the third it has become the basis of practical 
 statesmanship and to drive it home the most urgent so- 
 cial problem of the day. And this goes forth to the 
 world as the decisive word of true science with its cau- 
 tion, its detachment, its objectivity, its reasonableness. 
 
 We may lay down with some confidence, first, that, 
 as to the relative effect of nature and nurture upon the 
 
62 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 individual, no adequate means of measurement have 
 yet been suggested; and secondly, that it is not the 
 modification of the inherent quaUties of the individual 
 that is alone to be regarded, but the actual life to be 
 lived by the individual in society, and that means, when 
 all individuals are considered, the total character of the 
 social fabric. Lastly, we must ask whether, in a sober 
 review of our biological knowledge, the effect of the 
 environment can be so completely dismissed as some 
 biologists suppose. The more cautious adherents of 
 the school of Weismann are careful to distinguish two 
 separate questions. The first is whether any distinct 
 quality impressed upon the individual is likely to be 
 perpetuated in the stock. This they answer with a 
 negative, not strictly upon the ground that such per- 
 petuation has in all cases been actually disproved, but 
 rather because no positive evidence is forthcoming of 
 any such effect, nor has any method been shown by 
 which it could be brought about; but they point out 
 that this is not to settle the further question whether 
 the environment may so influence the organism as a 
 whole /as to produce some effect upon the germ. Thus 
 Professor Thomson writes ^ of the possibility that the 
 germ-plasm should be '' affected along with the body by 
 a deeply saturating influence, which nobody has ever 
 denied. The influence of toxins, for example, on the 
 germ-plasm is in certain cases definitely admitted. '^ 
 Again 2 ''it is generally admitted that when parents 
 have healthy occupations their offspring are likely to be 
 more vigorous. The matter is complicated by the diffi- 
 culty of estimating how much is due to good nurture 
 1 p. 187. 2 lud., p. 190. 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 63 
 
 before and after birth. It is not unlikely, too, that 
 some profound parental modifications may influence 
 the general constitution, may even affect the germ-cells 
 and may thus have results in the offspring, but unless 
 the offspring show peculiarities in the same direction as 
 the original modifications, we have no data bearing pre- 
 cisely on the question at issue. '^ The question at issue 
 is how the rise of specific qualities in the individual cor- 
 responds to impressed qualities in the parents. The 
 passage indicates that there may be a broad and general 
 effect where there is no specific effect. 
 
 Now when we are considering the purely biological 
 problem of the way in which new species are formed, the 
 question whether specific acquired characteristics are 
 hereditary is of the first importance. But when, as 
 sociologists, we are considering whether on the whole 
 a healthy environment is likely to affect the germ- 
 plasms favorably and an unhealthy environment unfa- 
 vorably, we are dealing with a matter of equal practical 
 importance, which is not to be determined by a nega- 
 tive answer to the previous question. We should cer- 
 tainly be risking a good deal if, in the present stage of 
 our biological knowledge, we were to proceed on the as- 
 sumption that no degree of unhealthiness in the condi- 
 tions of life would have any permanent tendency to 
 deterioration, and here, from the sociological point of 
 view, the effect upon the mother would be just as im- 
 portant as the effect upon the germ-plasm. The biolo- 
 gist tends to rule out this consideration because from 
 the moment the embryo is formed the effect upon the 
 germ-plasm is no longer in question, but on the practical 
 side the indirect influences upon the unborn child are 
 
64 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 just as important as the influences on the germinal 
 cells which go to constitute the child. It must be 
 added that all careful students of heredity admit the 
 plenitude of oiu* ignorance as to variation and that there 
 are not wanting indications that the environment has 
 indirect and subtle effects which have yet to be measm-ed. 
 We shall have to know more of the response of racial 
 types to new surroundings and of the mechanism by 
 which this response is effected before we can be sure 
 that, not indeed by the direct transmission of acquired 
 characters, but by some far more subtle series of spon- 
 taneous responses to new stimuli, the race does not adapt 
 itself, as a race, to changed conditions, whether for good 
 or ill. 
 
 (4) Nevertheless, we are told that the multiplication 
 of inferior stocks and the relative infertility of the best 
 is a serious feature of the social life of our day. What 
 are the facts upon which this warning is based? In 
 Professor Pearson's lecture on ''The Problem of Prac- 
 tical Eugenics'' we find a table comparing the fertihty 
 in pathological and in normal stocks. The patholog- 
 ical stock consists of deaf-mutes, English and Ameri- 
 can, tuberculous, albinotic, insane stocks, Edinburgh 
 degenerates, London and Manchester mentally defec- 
 tive, and criminals. The mean size of the family for all 
 these stocks is 6.2. With these are compared a series 
 composed as follows : the English middle class ; family 
 records (presumably English) ; English intellectual 
 class; working class. New South Wales; Danish pro- 
 fessional class ; Danish working class ; Edinburgh nor- 
 mal artisan, and London normal artisan ; and the mean 
 of these is 5.5. The difference as it stands is not so 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 65 
 
 very alarming. We have to remark that the working 
 classes of New South Wales and the professional and 
 working classes of Denmark are not properly to be com- 
 pared with classes of the British population, and that 
 these tend to pull down the average. More serious, 
 perhaps, are the figures which indicate a very low fer- 
 tility in the two classes which Professor Pearson adds 
 of English intellectuals, for which the normal size of the 
 family, as given by Mr. Sidney Webb's results, is stated 
 to be only 1.5, and of Harvard graduates, for which the 
 corresponding figure is 2.0. Putting aside altogether 
 the question of the test of fitness and assuming that, for 
 the sake of argument, we have here some proof that the 
 class that we should wish to see multiphed is relatively 
 infertile, we must ask how far this result is due to so- 
 cial causes, and to what sort of social causes it is to be 
 attributed. Biologists are famiUar with the general law, 
 first formulated by Herbert Spencer, that individual 
 development and fertility vary inversely ; right through ' 
 the scale of creation the higher type reproduces itself 
 in smaller numbers, and it seems to remain true among 
 human beings that the race is upon the whole recruited 
 in larger numbers from the normal and perhaps even 
 from the lower types than from the higher. Is there any 
 reason to think that this is a new phenomenon in the 
 history of human development? If not, we can say 
 that, though it is a regrettable fact, humanity has pro- 
 gressed in spite of it and that this would be only one sign 
 among others of the general truth of the view that hu- 
 man progress is social and not racial. But are there not 
 new facts to be taken into account ? One there cer- 
 tainly is. It is the new opportunities opened by modern 
 
66 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 society to women for other careers than that of the wife 
 and mother. There is the increased consideration of the 
 more thoughtful men for the health of their wives and 
 of the more thoughtful men and women for the up- 
 bringing of their children. These considerations, rather 
 than the selfishness to which it is commonly imputed, 
 ai-e the principal causes of the limitation of the family 
 among more civilized peoples. It is reasonable that 
 these considerations, just as they are in themselves, 
 should be balanced by a longer and larger view of the 
 necessities of the race, and it is probable that, so far as 
 the restrictive tendency has gone beyond what is ac- 
 tually necessary for healthy conditions, the general rec- 
 ognition of this fact would tend to correct it. Just as 
 we saw in an earlier lecture that the Malthusian teach- 
 ing had tended to lower the general rate of reproduction, 
 so, in response to a widely diffused belief that the qual- 
 ity of the race might be injuriously affected by the re- 
 fusal of the best individuals to contribute to it, what is 
 excessive in the tendency would correct itself. So far 
 the Eugenist is within his rights in calling attention to 
 the dwindUng of the family among the more educated 
 classes. He is wrong only if he insists on quantitative 
 reproduction at the expense of qualitative life, if he re- 
 turns to the conception of woman as limited in her 
 function to the bearing and rearing of children, and 
 omits from consideration the fact that the production 
 of a capable stock at the expense of the permanent 
 sacrifice of all that is most desirable in the life of one 
 half of it, is not an intelligible or self-consistent ideal. 
 He is wrong again when he overlooks the increased 
 sense of parental responsibility which, gradually spread- 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 67 
 
 ing through all classes of the population, expresses itself 
 in the view that it is wrong to bring children into the 
 world for whom no adequate provision can be made. 
 He is wrong, in short, if he does not seek to bring his 
 biological requirement into conformity with sociological 
 conditions. It must be added that, so far as economic 
 conditions affect the birth-rate in different classes, a 
 very careful analysis is necessary to determine what 
 precisely these economic conditions are. The limitation 
 of the family among the more educated classes has no 
 connection with the social legislation designed to amelio- 
 rate the social conditions of the poor. On this point 
 those who have made no first-hand study of economics 
 are apt too readily to take up the cry of the burden of 
 the rates, and to accept the view that the middle classes 
 are staggering under the load imposed on them by pro- 
 vision for the poor. This view of the incidence of taxa- 
 tion will not bear criticism. I must not here attempt a 
 detailed investigation, but it may be shown in the first 
 place that the total provision for the poorer classes in 
 my own country in the matter of education, poor rate, 
 old age pensions, and all the rest combined is but a 
 fraction of the total national expenditure, and bears a 
 quite insignificant relation to the actual income of the 
 middle and upper classes. It may be shown, moreover, 
 that of the burden of the rates a great part, even under 
 our present system, falls not upon the occupier, who 
 makes the direct payment, but upon owners who in 
 the main are much too wealthy to be affected in their 
 capacity of fathers of families thereby. And it may be 
 shown, lastly, that by revised forms of rating and taxa- 
 tion no burden need be thrown upon any producer, nor 
 
68 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 need any single human being be discouraged thereby 
 from bringing children into the world or hindered in 
 rearing them. As an argument against ameliorative 
 legislation the diminished fertility of the better stocks 
 is an entire ignoratio elenchi. 
 
 But even if the inferior stocks are breeding more 
 rapidly than the better ones, we have still to ask whether 
 the effect on the race is as serious as it seems. Observe 
 I speak here of the race. I am not thinking of the social 
 structure, but of the average of congenital endowment 
 in the race, and I am asking how far this will be affected 
 by the greater fertility of inferior stocks. To the older 
 biological theory the question answered itself. The 
 race progressed by the constant cutting off of the tail, 
 and the consequent shifting forward of the mean point of 
 capacity. The newer discoveries of Bateson and De 
 Vries have shown that the problem is not so simple. It 
 becomes more and more probable that racial progress 
 depends not on the summation of small fluctuations that 
 are constantly arising and dying away again, but on more 
 definite mutations which, once arising, give birth to a 
 new stock with a new mean point of its own. The indi- 
 vidual descendants of the new stock will exhibit quali- 
 ties which fluctuate about the new mean, but which tend 
 always to return to it. The fluctuations, even if they 
 persist for a generation or two, are not permanently 
 transmitted. They arise and die away again. The 
 mutations, on the other hand, are of permanent signifi- 
 cance. Now any large fluctuation may have the same 
 outward appearance as a true mutation, but its effect as 
 seen in subsequent generations will be quite different. 
 There is in considerations of heredity no adequate 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 69 
 
 ground for eliminating the one, and every ground for 
 eliminating the other ; and to apply biological concep- 
 tions scientifically in practice we ought to be able to 
 make sure to which class any particular stock evincing 
 some bad quality is to be referred. Now it is not 
 probable that a large population like that of a modern 
 nation is all of one fundamental type, and that all the 
 individual differences are mere fluctuations. But it is 
 probable that the many fundamental strains that con- 
 stitute it are intricately blended, and that the variations 
 of individuals arise partly from the conditions of breed- 
 ing and partly from fluctuations of germinal quality. 
 If this is so, it may well be that the same fundamental 
 strains are permeating the whole of society and are per- 
 petuated without alteration, although one part of society 
 may be more fertile than another. Furthermore, many 
 peculiarities of quahty are traceable to laws of blending. 
 A black and a splashed-white Andalusian fowl when 
 mated give rise to a blue, but the black and white ger- 
 minal elements are permanent, and reappear in known 
 proportions in subsequent generations. Now there is 
 much in what we know of psychological conditions to 
 suggest that the laws of blending may be of even greater 
 importance in psychological than in physical genetics. 
 For we rarely find that individuals differ by the distinct 
 presence or absence of some specific quality. On an- 
 alysis mental or moral differences are apt to resolve 
 themselves into differences in proportion and in the 
 combination of elements. It is quite possible then that 
 two strains, each sound in itself, should when united pro- 
 duce a bad result, and it may turn out that the true 
 problem of eugenics is not one of selective breeding but 
 
70 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 of selective mating. Stocks a and h which when mated 
 give rise to idiots or deaf-mutes, may quite conceivably 
 mate with stocks c and d to engender normal children. 
 I do not say that this is so. I suggest only that it is 
 one of the possibilities to be taken into account. And 
 there is a further point. It may be that some stocks 
 undesirable in themselves contain strains that suitably 
 blended with others are of value to the rational character 
 as a whole. It may be that a roving and undisciplined 
 disposition, which so often makes a vagrant, sometimes 
 carries the strain from which originality and even genius 
 arise. It may be that some of the milder and gentler 
 strains give rise to weaklings, but yet are necessar}^ in the 
 general constitution of the stock to temper the harder 
 material. We might easily disturb the balance of the 
 stock on a whole by practising unwarily upon some of its 
 component parts. At least such possibilities indicate the 
 mass of work that has to be done in the field of heredity 
 before we can safely apply its conceptions to the practi- 
 cal work of advancing social progress. 
 
 But, however this may be, I would emphasize this dis- 
 tinction in the biological outlook. The older Galtonian 
 view working with small variations leads to the sugges- 
 tion that natural selection is a permanent necessity of 
 racial progress ; it desires to subordinate the social struc- 
 ture in general to that end, and would, if consistently 
 pushed through, lead to the permanent suppression, 
 generation after generation, of the weaker stocks. The 
 newer view points in quite another direction. It finds 
 the basis of racial progress in definite mutations, which, 
 if not destroyed by an unfavorable environment, estab- 
 lish themselves^ and are not impaired by the preservation 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 71 
 
 of individual descendants which manifest the new qual- 
 ity less perfectly than others. On this view it may be 
 said that the most fundamental necessity from the point 
 of view of racial progress is to maintain an environment 
 in which any new mutation of promise socially consid- 
 ered may thrive and grow, and by this line of argument 
 we arrive once more at the conclusion that liberty, equal- 
 ity of opportunity, and the social atmosphere of justice 
 and considerateness are the most eugenic of agencies. 
 On the other hand, there may in this view exist not only 
 bad fluctuations, but some bad strains, and if these can 
 be isolated out and- definitely ascertained, to eliminate 
 them would be work that, if it is to be done at all, would 
 have to be done once and would not need to be done 
 again. The general problem of eugenics, then, would be 
 to produce an environment of welcome to socially use- 
 ful mutations; its specific task to determine whether 
 certain strains of bad tendency could be isolated out, 
 and, if so, to consider whether their perpetuation could 
 be arrested by means compatible with civilized ethics. 
 On these lines eugenic ideas will, I can quite believe, be 
 found to have a function in the work of social regenera- 
 tion, though their application must for the most part 
 await the progress of biological knowledge. On the other 
 hand, there is no shadow of justification for the wild 
 words in which eugenic writers frequently condemn the 
 whole trend of what they call social legislation. I find, 
 for example, in an early number of the Eugenics Review 
 prominence given to a letter to the Times of May 26, 
 1909, from which I take the following passages : — 
 
 " Not only does Parliament in its so-called wisdom fail to apply 
 science to the production of hereditary legislators, but in all recent 
 
72 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 social legislation it has actually penalized the fitter classes of so- 
 ciety in the interests of the less fit. . . , The least fit class in 
 the country is the old people who have failed to provide any sav- 
 ings against their old age, and that large class of cheats who man- 
 age to pretend that they are in that case. Such so-called social 
 legislation tends to act in the same way. The birth-rate of the 
 fitter is diminishing year by year, and we calmly sit by and watch 
 the consequent degeneration of our race with idle hands. We take 
 the human rubbish that emerges and give it compulsory education, 
 Housing Acts, inspection of all sorts and at all seasons, at the ex- 
 pense of the fitter class, and imagine that better results will ensue 
 than if we left the whole business alone. Are we right ? or are the 
 horse breeders right ? They have demonstrably improved the race 
 horses and with great rapidity. The old system of "let alone" 
 also improved, though more slowly, the race of men. It is only 
 the modern system of penalizing the fit for the sake of the unfit that 
 seems to be put in action simultaneously with, if it does not cause, 
 an observed race degeneration." ^ 
 
 This might pass as an individual opinion, but it is 
 adopted very cordially by the Eugenics Review, the 
 recognized and authoritative exponent of the eugenics 
 movement in England. 
 
 "The views he expresses coinciding, as they do, so remarkably 
 with our own, are those of an outsider who has wandered far and 
 wide keeping his eyes open. Like Monsieur Jourdain with his prose, 
 he talks our eugenic language without knowing it. This is why 
 we gladly reproduce in full what he has so well said." 
 
 A recent number of the Review ^ is wholly dedicated 
 to the criticism of the Poor Law Reports from the eu- 
 genic point of view, and though this is upon the whole 
 far more discriminating, and the crudities above quoted 
 are by implication rejected as the ignorant prejudices of 
 
 1 Eugenics Review, July, 1909, pp. 66, 67. ^ November, 1910. 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 73 
 
 outsiders, yet the line of criticism taken illustrates, to 
 say the least, a tendency which has to be very carefully 
 watched. Both branches of the commission, we are 
 told (p. 172), started with the assumption that the 
 pauper was a normal person made necessitous by cir- 
 cumstances. Such round generalization will surprise 
 any one who has carefully studied the two reports. 
 The majority report, in particular, is the work of persons 
 who are well known to have carried their emphasis on 
 character almost to what seemed to some of their critics 
 to be the breaking point ; and, broadly speaking, having 
 studied the two reports with care, I may say roundly 
 that in both, though in different ways, the aim is 
 precisely not to overlook individual character, but to 
 achieve a just demarcation of the legitimate spheres of 
 social and individual responsibility. Take, for example, 
 the treatment of unemployment. It is perfectly true 
 that some of those who are in this condition suffer from 
 defect of their own, whether congenital or acquired, 
 but no one looking at the question as a whole, no one 
 even acquainted with the elementary figures published 
 month by month in the English Labor Gazette, can over- 
 look the part played by social changes for which the 
 individual is not responsible. Now, what is the recom- 
 mendation of the commissioners ? In both cases alike, 
 though with differences of detail, the object is to save 
 from hardship the man who is suffering from social 
 changes which he cannot control, and thereby to make 
 it possible for the first time to deal, with due disciplinary 
 rigor, with him whose idleness is voluntary, and to apply 
 curative and reformatory measures to those whose mis- 
 fortunes are due to incapacity. The thesis of the mi- 
 
7 
 
 74 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 nority report, in particular, is that the wastrel cannot be 
 dealt with satisfactorily until he is parted, by a clear line 
 of demarcation, from the man whose troubles are due to 
 circumstance, and from the eugenic point of view what 
 better beginning could be made ? If we are to discover 
 whether wastrels are men of degenerate stock, and if we 
 are ultimately to take measures to prevent the degener- 
 ate stock from breeding, there is one preliminary con- 
 dition that we must realize ; we must first know that the 
 stocks that we are dealing with are in reality hopeless, 
 and for this purpose we must first have our social con- 
 ditions so adjusted that all men who are in reality 
 capable of adapting themselves to a well-ordered social 
 organization shall have the opportunity of proving what 
 is in them. The social environment must be established 
 jupon ethical lines before we can say that the successful 
 I are the fit, or that the unsuccessful deserve elimination. 
 In support of its opinion that pauperism is in the main 
 a hereditary taint, the Eugenics Review proceeds in all 
 solemnity to narrate the lamentable history of a num- 
 ber of pauper families, as though hereditary pauperism 
 were a new phenomenon or one of which Poor Law ad- 
 ministrators had not long since learned to take account. 
 We know there are hereditary paupers, but to begin with 
 we have to ask what is the nature of the heredity, and I 
 find no attempt to make this discrimination in the pages 
 of the Review} A is a pauper, and his children, B, C, 
 and D, are paupers, and D marries another pauper, and 
 
 * See p. 187, where the fact that successive generations of the same 
 family contains an undue proportion of paupers is made to point 
 to the conclusion that pauperism is due to inherent defects which 
 are hereditarily transmitted I 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 75 
 
 of their children again three out of four are paupers. No 
 doubt. But the Eugenist seems to forget that all classes 
 are in the main hereditary. The average individual is 
 he who neither rises much above nor sinks below the 
 position in which he is born ; and as an individual of 
 average endowments born in the landlord or the profes- 
 sional or the artisan class will become a landlord, profes- 
 sional man, or an artisan ; so the individual of average 
 endowments born in pauperism may be expected to 
 remain in the confines of pauperism. If we would know 
 generally how much of the heritage of pauperism is due 
 to the conditions under which the children make their 
 start in life, and how much to hereditary taint, there is 
 one method of determination. It is that of securing equal 
 opportunity to the least and to the most fortunate, and 
 to secure this equal opportunity is a problem of reorgan- 
 izing institutions. Against any such reorganization, pro- 
 ceeding open-eyed with a clear view of individual dif- 
 ferences, the eugenic criticism is wholly beside the mark. 
 The whole of the argument admits of being summed 
 up in a few sentences. So far as the eugenic principle 
 advocates the substitution of rational for natural selec- 
 tion, it is, in the abstract, upon firm ground. Where it 
 can be clearly estabUshed that a stock is tainted with a 
 hereditary blemish so great as to outweigh its merits, 
 it is desirable that that stock should not be perpetuated. 
 That is already recognized ethically as a duty and is 
 acted on by many individuals, in cases where there is 
 such a taint as that of insanity. There is every reason 
 why our knowledge on these matters should be carried 
 further and systematized, and it is possible that in cer- 
 tain cases it may be found desirable to crystallize ethical 
 
76 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 sentiment in positive law; for example, in the case of 
 such a class as the feeble-minded, where permanent 
 care is desirable for the benefit of the individual, it may 
 be right that, Es a condition of such care, restriction 
 from marriage should be insisted on by society in the 
 future interest of the rac6^> On the other hand, the use 
 of eugenic arguments against legislation designed to re- 
 place the struggle for existence by ordered social co- 
 operation is at bottom a misapplication of the principle. 
 It rests on the survival of the older ideas of natural selec- 
 tion under a new form, in new terminology. The method 
 of social legislation should not be to accommodate in- 
 stitutions to the survival of the stronger ; it should be 
 to bring the social structure into accordance with sound 
 principles of social cooperation. In such a system 
 those who are fit in the true sense of the term, those, 
 that is to say, who are capable of becoming useful mem- 
 bers of the social organization, can find their place ; and 
 it is only when all such persons are endowed with full 
 opportunities to adapt themselves to social requirements 
 that the failures of society can be legitimately regarded 
 as the unfit. Those who so prove their unfitness are 
 then legitimate objects for institutional tutelage, and it 
 will then for the first time become possible to enter into 
 the question of their right to propagate their like. That 
 question would then be determined by the light that our 
 knowledge of heredity could throw upon the future of 
 their descendants. These views do not appear to me to 
 be out of accord with the sounder teaching of the more 
 cautious biologists. They conflict only with those en- 
 thusiasts who make rash applications based on confusion 
 of the new teaching with the old. To illustrate this 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 77 
 
 contrast I cannot do better than set side by side the 
 sociological applications which Professor Bateson would 
 make of Mendelian principles with the deductions 
 drawn from his remarks by an enthusiastic reviewer in 
 the pages of the Eugenics Review. Let us hear first the 
 reviewer, Mr. G. P. Mudge, in the Eugenics Review for 
 July, 1909, p. 137: — 
 
 "With regard to man, it is now clear that what social reform, 
 legislation, and philanthropy have failed to accomplish, can be 
 achieved by biology. Tell the student of genetics what type of 
 nation we desire, within the limits of the characters which the 
 nation already possesses, and confer upon him adequate powers, 
 and he will evolve it. It is not too much to say that, if he were 
 instructed to evolve a "fit" nation, i.e. one of self-rehant and self- 
 supporting individuals, in the course of a few generations there 
 would be neither workhouses, hospitals, unemployables, congenital 
 criminals, or drunkards. 
 
 "Students of eugenics will turn with interest to the concluding 
 pages of Professor Bateson's book ; there he deals with the sociologi- 
 cal appHcation of the science of genetics. We commend every 
 advocate of social panaceas and of legislative interference with 
 natural processes to read this part of the book. In a few well- 
 chosen sentences he gives expression to the judgment of every 
 biologist, alike of the present and the past, who has given to social 
 problems adequate and unbiassed thought. For nothing is more 
 evident to the naturalist than that we cannot convert inherent vice 
 into innate virtue, nor change "leaden instincts into golden conduct," 
 nor "transform a sow's ear into a silken purse" by any known social 
 process. Our vast and costly schemes of free, compulsory, element- 
 ary education, of County Council scholarships and evening classes, 
 which are among these social processes supposed to possess the 
 magic virtue of transforming the world into a fairyland, may be a 
 delusion and a danger. And so, too, may be all the other well-in- 
 tentioned but costly panaceas that harass and tax and eventually 
 destroy the fit in order to attempt, for they can never achieve, the 
 salvation of the unfit. " 
 
78 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 Let us turn from these sweeping condemnations, these 
 triumphant prophecies, these large assertions of the 
 powers of the biologist, to Professor Bateson's own 
 words, the very words to which we are referred in justifi- 
 cation of Mr. Mudge's statement. They are, unfortu- 
 nately, too long to quote as a whole, but I will take the 
 leading points. 
 
 "To the naturalist it is evident that, while the elimination of the 
 hopelessly unfit is a reasonable and prudent policy for society to 
 adopt, any attempt to distinguish certain strains as superior and 
 to give special encouragement to them would probably fail to ac- 
 complish the object proposed and most certainly be unsafe." 
 
 Contrast this with the proclamation, "Tell the student 
 of genetics what type of nation we require ... he 
 will evolve it.^' Let us turn back again to Professor 
 Bateson : — 
 
 "Some serious physical and mental defects, almost certainly also 
 some morbid diatheses and some of the forms of vice and criminal- 
 ity, could be eradicated if society so determined. That, however, 
 is the utmost length to which the authority of physiological science 
 can, in the present state of knowledge, be claimed for interference. 
 More extensive schemes are already being advocated by writers 
 who are neither Utopians nor visionaries. Their proposals are 
 directed in the belief that society is more likely to accept a positive 
 plan for the encouragement of the fit than negative interference for 
 the restraint of the unfit. Genetic science, as I have said, gives no 
 clear sanction to these proposals. It may also be doubted whether 
 the guiding estimate of popular sentiment is well founded. Society 
 has never shown itself averse to adopt measures of the most strin- 
 gent and even brutal kind for the control of those whom it regards 
 as its enemies. 
 
 "Genetic knowledge must certainly lead to new conceptions 
 of justice, and it is by no means impossible that, in the light of 
 such knowledge, public opinion will welcome measures likely to do 
 
VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF EUGENICS 79 
 
 more for the extinction of the criminal and degenerate than has been 
 accomplished by ages of penal enactment." 
 
 With so cautious and reasoned a statement social 
 philosophy can in principle have no ground of quarrel. 
 It can only desire that the data may be as fully as pos- 
 sible ascertained and, in proportion as civic effort suc- 
 ceeds in reorganizing the social structure on the basis 
 of justice and equity, it will be prepared to deal with 
 the strains, if they exist, with which a life in accord- 
 ance with equity is incompatible. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Social Harmony and the Social Mind 
 
 Our conclusions so far are two. First, the biological 
 conditions of human development are not such as to 
 present any insuperable barrier to progress. Second, 
 we may expect to find progress, if anywhere, rather in 
 social than in racial modifications. But before we in- 
 quire further whether progress is a fact to be discovered 
 in this direction, we must consider more carefully what 
 progress is. Hitherto we have been content with de- 
 scribing it as a process of the reahzation of ends of 
 human value, ethical ends. We must seek to define this 
 conception, not indeed with the fullness which it de- 
 serves, but sufficiently for our purpose, that is, for the 
 purpose of estimating the trend of evolution. We must 
 form a closer definition of progress, and then compare 
 it with the actual course of evolution, if we are to obtain 
 a plain answer to the question whether the movement 
 of social evolution in general or the evolution of any 
 given society in particular is or has been a movement of 
 progress. 
 
 There is a tendency, calling itself scientific, to dispense 
 with one side of this question and to educe the concep- 
 tion of value from the trend of evolution itself. I need 
 hardly before this audience spend time in combating this 
 confusion or argue at length that history is not phi- 
 losophy. Rn. describing the process by which things 
 
 80 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 81 
 
 have come to be what they are^e are not justifying 
 their existence. We may incidentally bring to light 
 facts which serve for their justification, or possibly for 
 their excuse, if to understand all is to pardon all. But 
 this is not of the essence of the matter. Rational justi- 
 fication and historical narrative belong to two different 
 orders of investigation. Nor, again, if we prove the ex- 
 istence of a tendency, do we thereby prove that that tend-i* 
 ency is desirable. Few would afiirm the contrary in 
 black and white. Yet if we look at the kind of argu- 
 ment that is popular in the press or on the platform, we 
 must admit that very many people slide with the great- 
 est apparent ease from the one point of view to the other. 
 To show that a certain line of pohcy accords with the 
 tendencies of the day, that it is a part of our manifest 
 destiny as a nation, that it is inevitable, and so forth, 
 are highly popular rhetorical devices for recommending 
 it to the desires, and even to the consciences of mankind. 
 As a social creature man does not like to be left out in 
 the cold. He loves to be in the swim, and when he is 
 told that his side is winning, that its success is so certain 
 that his own vote is little more than a formality, he makes 
 all the more haste to record that vote, and add his unit 
 to the swelling maj ority . In this way and by such means 
 as these do prophecies become the causes of their own 
 fulfilment. It requires some detachment, not indeed to 
 admit in the abstract, but to hold fast in the concrete 
 the simple truth that of existing tendencies some may 
 be good, some bad, and some indifferent, and that 
 it is the function of a reasoning creature to choose 
 among them and throw in his weight with the best. 
 There is indeed one theory on which a rational choice 
 
82 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 becomes impossible. If society moves by a mechanical 
 necessity in which the will of human beings plays no 
 part, there is no need to discuss what is desirable or the 
 reverse. The only question of interest is what will be, 
 and whether it ought to be is an academic point of no 
 practical concern. Whether this theory is tenable is a 
 question on which our discussion as it advances will, I 
 hope, throw some light. But I may for the sake of clear- 
 ness say this much in advance. We shall have to recog- 
 nize not merely the existence, but the constant extension 
 of mind, of will, and therefore of human choice as an; 
 actual force in the evolution of society, and if we arei 
 right in this, it follows that the general belief that some 
 tendency is desirable is a factor to be seriously taken into 
 account in estimating its future. This conclusion is 
 not necessarily inconsistent with a certain form of 
 rational determinism, but it is inconsistent with any 
 mechanical or materialist theory which renders rational 
 conceptions of value practically insignificant. But if 
 we reject any such theory, and admit the influence of 
 rational choice on social tendencies, there is good reason 
 for a systematic inquiry which shall enable us to decide 
 what tendencies are upon the whole desirable or other- 
 wise. 
 
 In thus admitting the necessity of a social philosophy 
 I am aware that I have given hostages to fortune. You 
 may reasonably call upon me to stand and deliver the 
 said philosophy, and unless I am prepared to do so, you 
 may decline to listen to anything further that I have 
 to say on social progress. But on my side I may be 
 allowed to put in a plea of mitigation, and it is one which 
 I am sure will appeal to you. A complete exposition 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 83 
 
 of a social philosophy would involve a searching inquiry 
 into the first principles of value, that is to say into 
 ethics, and even, I fear, into metaphysics as well. You 
 would not thank me if, at this stage and with the amount 
 of time at our disposal, I were to call on you to follow me 
 into an inquiry of this magnitude. But if I dispense 
 you from the labor of listening to such a disquisition, 
 you on your part must allow me to make certain initial 
 assumptions. I will be as modest as possible. I will noj 
 assume that Ufe is something intrinsically good, but[j \j 
 must assume that the good for man is to be found in 
 some kind of life, not in the negation of lifeT]^ I will not 
 assume that fullness of vitality is as'such desirable, but-. 
 I must assume that, other things equal, the fuller life is ' 
 on the whole the more desirable. I will not assume that 
 happiness, however attained, is good, but I must assume 
 that there is some form of happiness which is good, or, at*^ 
 lowest, that misery is an evil. I will not assume that the 
 full realization of the capacities of mind defines the end 
 of life, but I must assume that some form of such reali- 
 zation is an integral element in a desirable life. Finally, 
 I will not assume that all social life is good, still less 
 that social growth is necessarily a change for the better, 
 but I must assume that a life which is completely social 
 — which fully realizes the social capacities of man — 
 is good, and that if we use the phrase ^^ social develop- 
 ment" in a precise sense as a short expression for the ac- 
 complishment of such a life, social development is good. 
 All these assumptions can, of course, be made the subject 
 of philosophic criticism. It is held by many that the 
 good for man, or the least evil, consists really in nega- 
 tion, not in greater fullness of life, but in the restriction 
 
84 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 of effort and the eventual overcoming of the will to live. 
 It is held by many that the good is not to be sought in 
 this life at all, but in preparation for another. It is held 
 that the general all-round development of mind is a 
 secondary matter, that the beginning of true wisdom is 
 just the submission of the soul to the Guiding Will. It 
 is held that social life is of secondary tnoment, and that 
 what matters for each man is to discipline his own heart 
 and to save his own soul. Thus I am aware that in set- 
 ting out my position I am making assumptions, and I 
 ndo not claim for these assumptions the character of axio- 
 matic truths. On the contrary, I think them capable 
 of proof, and on another occasion I should be willing to 
 submit them to the test. For the present I set them up 
 merely as assumptions, to show you the basis on which I 
 am proceeding, and the only test to which I shall sub- 
 ject them is the indirect one of drawing out some of 
 their results and showing you whither they lead us. 
 
 I may begin with the conception of social develop- 
 ment, and I will endeavor to define it a little further and 
 to see how it stands related to our other assumptions. 
 Now the full meaning of a term like development is to be 
 approached rather through concrete experience than 
 by the road of abstract definition. Yet here and there 
 an abstract definition may help us, and no help is to be 
 despised. As to this particular term, I shall not attempt 
 any new definition. I shall content myself for the 
 present with the familiar conception of maturation of that 
 which previously existed in germ, the active realization 
 of something which is at first a mere potentiality. These 
 are terms which in the end will require a far closer ex- 
 amination, but that examination I must ask you on this 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 85 
 
 occasion to forego, I remind you only that in general 
 the process of development involves quantitative 
 growth and increase, so that, for example, if we speak 
 of the development of mind, we mean that there is more 
 mind, that it becomes a larger factor in life, that it covers 
 a wider sphere. To this it must be added that all 
 organic growth involves a correlated series of changes 
 among parts that operate in concert. It is never mere 
 quantitative extension. It is a process by which many 
 elements emerge into definite characteristic distinctness, 
 while maintaining unimpaired unity. So much it is well 
 to bear in mind as to development in general. But as 
 to social development a little more must be said : — 
 
 (1) Society exists in individuals. When all the gen- 
 erations through which its unity subsists are counted 
 in, its life is their life, and nothing outside their hfe. 
 The individuals themselves, indeed, are profoundly mod- 
 ified by the fact that they form a society, for it is 
 through the social relation that they realize the greater 
 part of their own achievements. Each man is, so to say, 
 the meeting point of a great number of social relations. 
 Each such relation depends on him, on his qualities, on 
 his actions, and also affects him and modifies his quali- 
 ties and his actions. The whole complex of such rela- 
 tions constitutes the life of society. It follows that 
 social development is also in the end personal or indi- 
 vidual development. If society develops in any given 
 direction, the persons constituting it develop accord- 
 ingly, and if development as such means a movement 
 towards a fuller and more complete life, then social de-l 
 velopment means a movement towards a fuller and more 
 complete life for the persons of whom society consists. 
 
V 
 
 86 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 It will not escape your notice that this conclusion makes 
 a tacit postulate of no small moment. It postulates a 
 possible harmony between the claims of different per- 
 sons, and that such a harmony can be found is, I think, 
 the fundamental postulate of social ethics. It is not an 
 unproven or unprovable postulate. On the contrary, I 
 think that proof of it can be adduced. But to offer 
 that proof would take me into the region of ethical first 
 principles, into which, as I have said, I can hardly ask 
 ^ you now to follow me. In default you must let me 
 assume such a harmony to be possible ; and to find the 
 way and means thereto then becomes the problem of 
 social ethics. It was the mistake of some earlier writers, 
 especially of a certain school of economists, to assume 
 that the lines of harmony were so clearly prescribed by 
 the very nature of mankind that each man had only to 
 follow his own apparent interest, and the best possible 
 social results would ensue. Life unfortunately is not so 
 shnple. The operation of enlightened self-interest lead- 
 ing each man along the path of least resistance to the 
 goal of greatest desire does not produce social peace or 
 social progress. The line of harmony is rather the nar- 
 row path, every divergence from which involves collision 
 and more or less of frustration and misery to some one. 
 It is not any and every development of the individual 
 which is socially desirable, or even socially possible. 
 For if one man's personality gains till he bestrides the 
 narrow world like a Colossus, then it remains for the rest 
 to peep in and out and find themselves dishonored 
 graves. His overgrown development means for the 
 mass not development, but extinction ; and in lesser 
 degree a similar discord results from every development 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 87 
 
 of the individual which is not in accordance with the con- 
 ditions of social harmony. Social development, then, 
 involves the harmonious development of the constituent 
 members of society. This is one of the elements of 
 truth contained in what is called the organic conception 
 of society. To speak of society as if it were a physical 
 organism is a piece of mysticism, if indeed it is not quite 
 meaningless. But the life of society and the life of an 
 individual do resemble one another in certain respects, 
 and the term '^organic'' is as justly applicable to the 
 one as to the other. For an organism is a whole con- 
 sisting of interdependent parts. Each part lives and 
 fimctions and grows by subserving the life of the whole. 
 It sustains the rest and is sustained by them, and 
 through their mutual support comes a common devel- 
 opment. And this is how we would conceive the life of 
 man in society in so far as it is harmonious.^ 
 
 1 This explanation may serve to meet an objection which may 
 have occurred to you when I laid down that social development 
 implied the development of the persons constituting society. You 
 might ask, does the phrase "persons" mean all of those constituting 
 the given society, or some only ? May it not be shown that there are 
 developments, e.g. the rise of aristocracy, which involve a develop- 
 ment of one class and one kind of social activity, but a suppression 
 of others ? The reply is that such developments are only partial, 
 that they imply arrest, that what there is of social progress in them 
 does involve a development of individuals, while, on the other hand, 
 in so far as the life of any member of society is cramped and muti- 
 lated by them, there is social stagnation and decay. Any such 
 development is not fully harmonious. Gain on one side is set off 
 by loss on another. The problem of true social progress is to find 
 the lines on which development on one side does not retard de- 
 velopment on another, but assists it. 
 
 Two other possible misunderstandings may be noted here. The 
 term " social development " might be used to cover mere quantitative 
 growth in territory or population, which would not imply personal 
 
88 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 (2) Society, and particularly civilized society, is a 
 very complex structure. We have not to do with 
 one society, — the political community standing over 
 against a number of individuals who are its component 
 members. Each individual is a member of many socie- 
 ties. He is one of a family ; he belongs to a church, to 
 a corporation, to a trade union, to a political party. 
 He is also a citizen of his state, and his state has a place 
 in the commonwealth of states. In so far as the world 
 becomes one, that is to say, as social relations arise 
 which interconnect human beings all the world over, 
 Humanity becomes the supreme society, and all smaller 
 social groupings may be conceived as constituent ele- 
 ments of this supreme whole. Now what has been 
 said of individuals applies mutatis mutandis to every 
 social group. Such a group, for example the family, 
 realizes some of the characteristic qualities and capaci- 
 ties of human beings, occupies a certain share of their 
 affections, their energies, their intelligence. Every such 
 group accordingly has its claim to share in social 
 development, just as the individual has his claim. Its 
 development, so far as it can be harmonized with the 
 other claims of social life, is for the good. Accordingly, 
 the problem of the social order is not to realize the kind 
 of abstract unity which has sometimes been put forward 
 by the makers of Utopias from Plato downwards. The 
 
 development. But that is not the sense in which the phrase is here 
 used. Secondly, social development is crystallized in institutions, 
 and even jn material capital ; and it might be suggested that such 
 growth does not imply corresponding enlargement of the individual 
 life. It may be replied that so far as this is true there is misdirection 
 of energy, and the social achievement of the past is not making for 
 social development in the present. 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 89 
 
 ideal development of society is not the fashioning of a 
 self-contained political state which should supersede! 
 the necessity for all the spontaneous associations of hu- 
 man beings which fill so large a part of actual life. It | 
 consists rather in the discovery of the lines upon which ^ 
 these manifold forms of human association can be 
 brought each to its fullest pitch of efficiency as a part i 
 of a wider organization. Thus that form of family 
 organization is the best which gives the most complete 
 expression to the love of husband and wife, parent and 
 child, without cramping the development of personality 
 on the one side or impeding the development of col- 
 lective responsibility on the other. I may best illus- 
 trate what I mean by referring to certain arguments 
 based on a quite legitimate regard for the institution of . 
 the family with which we are familiar in the contro- ^ 
 versies of the day. Thus, on the one hand, measures for 
 securing equitable treatment of the wife and child have 
 .been, if they are no longer, resisted on the ground that 
 they undermine the authority of the husband and father, 
 and therewith the solidity of the family life. This was 
 to push the ideal of the family unity without regard to 
 the claims of personaUty. On the other hand, pubhc 
 education and public care for children generally have 
 been, and still are, frequently criticized on the ground 
 that they are undermining parental responsibility. This 
 again is to push the ideal of the family to the prejudice 
 of a legitimate development of a wider public responsi- 
 bility. The method which our principle suggests is 
 that the precise limits of the sphere of parental responsi- 
 bility are to be determined by our experience of the re- 
 sults. We by no means deny that responsibility. We 
 
90 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 regard it as a necessary consequence of an institution of 
 the highest value to man. But if we find that it is actu- 
 ally failing in any given direction, as for example it 
 failed in the matter of education, to perform a necessary 
 social function, we must not ignore the claims of that 
 function. We must look to other means of fulfilling it, 
 and must accordingly draw the line between the respon- 
 sibility of the parent and that of the state at a new point, 
 so that as far as possible the claims of the parental tie, 
 the claims of the child, and the claims of the public con- 
 science may cooperate and not antagonize. I do not 
 say that the point is easy to find, or that all problems 
 are solved merely by being stated in this form. I say 
 that they cannot be solved until they are conceived on 
 these lines ; that as long as any one duty, any one right, 
 or generally the claims of any one social relation are 
 regarded as absolute or are maintained without regard to 
 the similar claims of other rights, other social relations, 
 nothing but a lop-sided and in the end self-destructive 
 form of social development is possible. 
 
 We can once again help ourselves with the organic 
 metaphor without allowing it to dominate us. The 
 developed organism contains minor organisms within it. 
 The living body is made up of organs and the organs of 
 cells, and the cell itself is a living organism. Now the 
 life of the body is not perfected by suppressing the life 
 of the cells, but by maintaining it at its highest point of 
 efficiency. Nor is the organism developed by reducing 
 the cells to a uniform type, but rather by allowing each 
 type to vary on its own lines, provided always that the 
 several variations are in the end mutually compatible. 
 These things are applicable to society, from the widest 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 91 
 
 to the narrowest form thereof. If there is ever to be a 
 world state, and if such a state is to be reconciled to per- 
 manent progress, it is to be achieved not by the sup- 
 pression of nationality, but by the development of na- 
 tional differentiation ; not by the suppression of political 
 freedom, but through the spontaneous movement of self- 
 governing communities. Similarly, if the sphere of ac- 
 tion of the state within its own borders is to expand as it 
 is doing daily in my own country, it must be, and in fact 
 it is, not by the suppression of other forms of social co- 
 operation nor by the destruction of individual life, but 
 in such wise and on such lines as upon the whole liber- 
 ates activity and provides lines of harmonious develop- 
 ment for the constituent parts. In a word, the concep- 
 tion of harmonious development applies not only to 
 individuals, but to the various possible forms of human 
 association. 
 
 At this stage it will appear that starting from one of 
 our assumptions and seeking to define it we have been 
 led to include our other assumptions along with it. We 
 have conceived social development as a development of ^ 
 individuals in harmony. In so doing we have covered 
 the conceptions (a) of a fuller vitality and (6) of the reali- 
 zation of mental or spiritual capacity, which were two of 
 the remaining elements which we postulated as going to 
 constitute the end or good of man. It will be remem- 
 bered that we carefully refrained from assuming that 
 any sort of individual development was good. We 
 assumed only that the good must admit of some kind of 
 development, and we are now able to say what kind. 
 It is that kind in which all members of a society can 
 share. It is such that its pursuit by one, far from hinder- 
 
92 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 ing, positively promotes its pursuit by another. It is i 
 the kind of development, that is, which can be pursued] 
 by many in harmony. This does not mean that there 
 is only one typ^ of good citizen. The kind of develop- 
 ment which is social is a very wide genus, admitting of 
 numerous and highly contrasted specific differences, and, 
 as we know, many of the most important functions of a 
 man depend not on his Ukeness to others, but on his indi- 
 viduality. Conversely it is an important part of the » 
 development of social harmony that it comes to make 
 use of wider and more complex divergencies of individ- 
 uals. Of these we need not speak further for the mo- 
 ment. We remark only that the idea of social develop- 
 ment covers that of individual development in the only 
 sense in which this idea can be applied to a plurality of 
 individuals whose lives affect one another. Lastly, 
 with the development of the individual conceived as a ^ 
 center of social relations, the idea of happiness is, I 
 imagine, involved. The full discussion of this question 
 would take us far afield. I must leave it to you to con- 
 sider whether either happiness or misery is to be found 
 elsewhere in those things which make or mar the develop- 
 ment of personality, in itself, in its relations to others, 
 or in its capacity as a part which has a function to 
 perform in a life infinitely greater than its own. 
 
 Our assumptions it will be seen tend to come down 
 to one. In other words approaching the problem of 
 the good or the desirable from several sides and 
 roughly formulating several elements that appear to 
 express a part of its meaning we find on analysis that 
 these several conceptions lead up to a center^ This 
 central conception is the idea of a harmony in the 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 93 
 
 manifold developments of life. Our assumption then 
 is that the good lies in this direction, and progress 
 will consist accordingly in the movement by which 
 such harmony may be realized. 
 
 Now this principle of harmony has many applica- 
 tions which cannot be drawn out here. There is a 
 harmony within the life of the individual, and a 
 harmony of man with his physical environment as 
 well as the harmony of man in society. All these are 
 parts of a whole, and all are elements in the life that 
 may be called good or desirable. But in all its mean- 
 ings harmony, as already hinted, is something which 
 does not come of itself, but is achieved in greater or 
 less degree by effort, that is to say, by intelligence 
 and will. Hence the conditions of harmony rest on 
 the nature of mind, and to understand the growth of 
 harmony we must follow up the growth of mind. The 
 study of this growth belongs in a sense to psychology, 
 but it must not be forgotten that the highest forms of 
 mental activity, from the most elementary general ideas 
 upward, are not merely individual, but social products. 
 
 All higher psychology is in a sense social psychology. 
 Thus our ideas from a very early stage clothe themselves 
 in language, and language is a social product. Now our 
 ideas may be suggested in the first instance by personal 
 experience, and I do not deny that they may precede 
 and do continually outstrip the means of expression. 
 None the less, the form which they take is largely deter- 
 mined by the means of expression which enable us to 
 fix, utilize, and build with one while another remains 
 a vague suggestion, of which perhaps we finally lose 
 hold. It is the common experience wherein we find 
 
94 SOCIAL EVOLUTION, AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 the thoughts of others responduxg to our own that most 
 readily acquires substantive shape and form. More- 
 over, the greater part of each man's personal experience 
 is made up out of his interaction with others in the mul- 
 tifarious relations of Ufe, and these relations, from the 
 earliest known phases of human society, are controlled 
 by customs which arise out of the needs of social life 
 and are maintained by the social tradition. Through 
 this tradition society exerts a continuous control over 
 the individual, of which avowed and obvious coercion is 
 the least important element. The vital factor is that 
 from infancy upwards the social milieu into which he is 
 born interpenetrates his thought and will, and turns his 
 individuality into a creation of the time and place of his 
 life. Even the strongest individualities do not, strictly 
 speaking, resist this process. They react to it more 
 powerfully than others, so as to produce some marked 
 divergence from the ordinary type. Very often the di- 
 vergence consists in this, that the strong individual is 
 just the typical man of his time carried to a higher power. 
 Otherwise he may be in various degrees original, pecul- 
 iar, perhaps eccentric, but even in his eccentricity 
 he will still exhibit the joint resultant of social and 
 individual forces. 
 / It is thus easy to understand that though there is no 
 thought except in the mind of an individual thinker, yet 
 the thought of any generation, and indeed of each indi- 
 vidual in the generation, is a social product. But we 
 must go further than this. The sum of thought in exist- 
 ence at any time is something more than any thought 
 that exists in the head of any individual; it is some- 
 thing to which many minds contribute, and which yet 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 95 
 
 may be for many purposes a real unity. Consider an 
 advanced complex science. No one thinks the whole of 
 such a science at any moment. Perhaps no one lives 
 who is master of it all. Yet the whole range of truth 
 that the science has elaborated is available for social 
 or individual uses. It is recorded in books. It is, so to 
 say, incorporated in instruments and laboratories, where- 
 by the results worked out by one man for one purpose 
 are available by another man for another purpose. The 
 , science is more than the living knowledge of any indi- 
 \ vidual. It is social knowledge or social thought, not in 
 the sense that it exists in the mind of a mystical social 
 unit, nor in the sense that it is the common property of 
 all men, which it certainly is not, but in the sense that it 
 is the product of many minds working in conscious or J 
 unconscious cooperation, that it forms a part of the per- * 
 manent social tradition going constantly to shape the 
 thought and direct the efforts of fresh generations of 
 learners, — that, in a word, it has all the permanency and 
 (potency which the individual has not. We might easily 
 apply the same reasoning to other departments of 
 thought, to philosophy, to religion, to the literary and 
 imaginative representation of life, and to the common 
 sense knowledge that at once expresses and helps to 
 form the experience of ordinary men in ordinary rela- 
 tions. The thought of any society at any time is a social 
 thought. This social thought forms the point of depar- 
 ture for individuals who are brought up in it, perhaps 
 go beyond it and contribute something fresh of their 
 own, perhaps fail fully to assimilate and fall short of it. 
 As there is a social thought, so there is a social will. 
 Again, that does not necessarily mean that there exist 
 
96 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 objects common to all or to the great majority of the 
 members of any community. There may be such ob- 
 jects, — for example, the successful pursuit of a war in 
 which the pride of a nation is involved, — and in that 
 case the social will has a very easily intelligible meaning 
 and a simple definable object. But the social will is 
 more permanent and pervasive than this. It covers all 
 those modes of action that the existing constitution of 
 society dictates, all the institutions that it maintains, 
 all the customs that it prescribes. Many of these, par- 
 ticularly in the lower forms of society, may never be 
 thought out, may never be so much as examined or con- 
 sidered by any thinking individual in their bearing on 
 the actual hfe of society. But to say this is merely to 
 emphasize their social as opposed to their personal gen- 
 esis. Customs may and do arise, for example, purely 
 from the action of individuals, each seeking ends of his 
 own, and as they are imitated and pass with the approval 
 or at least without the disapproval of others, they rapidly 
 crystallize and become recognized modes in which a man 
 may and should comport himself under given circum- 
 stances. Thus the forces governing action are social, not 
 necessarily in the sense that they are governed by a 
 broad conception of social ends, but in the sense that they 
 are the products of the social connection between man 
 and man. 
 
 What has been said may suffice to show that when we 
 speak of social thought, social will, or more generally 
 of social mind, we neither imply a mystical psychic unity 
 nor a fully achieved consciousness of the social life on 
 the part of the component members of society. Such a 
 consciousness is in fact a developed product of the social 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 97 
 
 mind, but its presence is not to be assumed wherever 
 the term ^'social mind " is used. This term is simply an 
 expression for the mass of ideas operative in a society, 
 communicable from man to man, and serving to direct 
 the thoughts and actions of individuals. The kind of 
 unity which attaches to the social mind is not definable 
 in general terms. It varies from case to case. In the 
 more complex societies there are for example many in- 
 stitutions, each with its distinct ethos, and the existence 
 of this ethos means that the institution lays a plastic 
 hand on all who enter it, and with greater or less thor- 
 oughness moulds their life and actions. As an individual 
 may and probably does belong to more than one institu- 
 tion, he is subject to influences of this kind from more 
 than one quarter. There is thus in a sense more than 
 one social mind that claims him, and this alone will 
 suffice to warn us against the supposition that the social 
 mind is necessarily something common, for example, 
 to all members of the same poUtical community.^ Such 
 a community may indeed, if highly developed, possess a 
 very clear unity of its own, and enjoy a very distinct 
 order of ideas, marking out the behavior of its members 
 in no uncertain fashion. But if highly developed it 
 probably is the seat of many constituent institutions, 
 each with a corresponding ethos, tradition, or mind of 
 its own, operating on its own members in similar fashion. 
 By the social mind, then, we mean not necessarily a unity 
 pervading any given society as a whole, but a tissue of 
 
 ^ It is for this reason that I prefer the term " social " to the term 
 ."general." The "general will" is an entity not always to be dis- 
 covered, and the use of the term leads to the most inhuman 
 torture of evidence to prove that there is a generality of will where 
 there is none. 
 
98 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 operative psychological forces which in their higher de- 
 velopments crystallize into unity within unity, and into 
 organism operating upon organism. We mean some- 
 thing essentially of psychological character that arises 
 from the operations of masses of men, and molds and is 
 in turn remolded by the operation of masses of men ; 
 s^^ which has no existence except in the minds of men, and 
 yet is never fully realized in the mind of any one man ; 
 which depends on the social relations between man and 
 man, but takes full cognizance of the relation only in the 
 higher stages of its development. 
 
 As the function of the individual mind is to organize 
 the life of the individual, so the function of the social 
 mind is to organize the life of society, to control the 
 physical environment, and to regulate the relations of 
 members of the community to one another and of the 
 community as a whole to other communities. This 
 function is of course more adequately performed in 
 proportion as the social mind develops. Now the de- 
 velopment of mind in general consists partly in increase 
 of width or scope. The developed mind has a wider 
 reach. Its grasp extends further over the future and the 
 past. Its insight into reality probes deeper, and in con- 
 sequence its practical control of life is greater. Secondly, 
 the development of mind lies in increased clearness, 
 articulateness, connectedness of perception and of 
 thought. It takes a more penetrating and concrete, and 
 at the same time a more rational and connected view. 
 Lastly, and this has special application to the social 
 mind, the more developed mind is more completely and 
 consciously a unity. In the case of the individual, indeed, 
 a unity may always be predicated by another person, 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE SOCIAL MIND 99 
 
 even if it be not conscious. An animal or a child may, 
 for all we know, have no thought of yesterday or to- 
 morrow, but we onlookers are aware that it is one and 
 the same being throughout. In the case of the social 
 mind, on the other hand, the consciousness of unity 
 profoundly affects the unity itself. One is tempted to 
 say that it actually brings it to birth. This, however, 
 would not be true in all cases, for the minds of men who 
 are brought into contact affect one another, and may 
 give to any society a certain oneness, marking it out 
 from others, without perhaps any consciousness of the 
 relation. Moreover, when a new and wider unity 
 is recognized, it is recognized as something already 
 existing, as a relation which was present and was opera- 
 tive somehow while yet unknown. But however this 
 be, any developed unity in the social mind rests on a 
 consciousness, first of some special relation of each indi- 
 vidual constituting it to his fellow members, and sec- 
 ondly of the group, society, institution itself as a whole. 
 In its more concrete deivelopments then the social mind 
 has a certain measure of conscious unity as its basis, and 
 both the solidity and the extent of this conscious unity 
 are of importance in determining its power; solidity 
 because this determines the effectiveness of social co- 
 operation within its limits; extent because this deter- 
 mines the limits themselves. A rude society, a clan of 
 warlike mountaineers, for instance, may be a very well- 
 knit unity, conscious and proud of its clan life, but 
 making little progress because it is at war with all its 
 neighbors. An aggregation of such clans presents no 
 unity, but only a scene of anarchy. Supposing them 
 reduced to order by the strong hand of some pax 
 
100 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 Romana or pax Britannica, there will be both loss and 
 gain — gain in the widening of the social unit, loss in the 
 vigor of social life. There will be some elements of a 
 social relation over the whole aggregation, but it will 
 be at least in the beginning a less lively union, an exter- 
 nal order rather than the old hearty cooperation. Such 
 compensating movements of gain and loss run right 
 through the history of social development. 
 
 Now if we were to go at all closely into the nature of 
 the unities which the social mind builds up, if in particu- 
 lar we should inquire how they are to be reconciled with 
 the independent existence of the individual mind, and 
 how one unity can overlap another, we should find our- 
 selves repeating in essentials what has already been said 
 of the conception of harmony. We should find that the 
 development of the individual conditions and is condi- 
 tioned by every social group to which he belongs, and 
 we should find that of the groups in turn the same thing 
 holds. The many groups are necessarily related, and 
 their relations, though giving rise at first sight to diver- 
 gent impulses, need not lead to conflict. They may be 
 subordinate to a higher unity, and this in fact is the line 
 of progress. Thus the development of the social mind is 
 the development of social harmony expressed in psycho- 
 logical terms. But the psychological conception takes 
 us further. It covers not only the harmonious develop- 
 ment, which is the end, but the control of conditions, 
 which is the means to that end. Harmonious develop- 
 ment is not reached by instinct, nor does it proceed of 
 itself. For stable and assured progress it requires all 
 the powers of the human mind, and more powers than 
 have yet been brought to bear. The harmony of life 
 
SOCIAL HARMONY AND THE S06lAL MINi)'"' 'I'Ol ' 
 
 rests on the control of conditions by the social mind. 
 This control is in part self-control — the control which 
 by means of ethical conceptions the members of society 
 exercise over themselves and one another — over social 
 relations. It is in part the control of other things, 
 such, for example, as the physical" conditions of health. 
 The one may be regarded as itself a part of the harmony 
 which we take as the end, the other as a necessary con- 
 dition or means to that end. 
 
 Thus the growth of the social mind is a more complete 
 measure of progress than the conception of harmony 
 itself. It takes us nearer to the essence of the forces at 
 work, which are psychological, and it enables us to view 
 not only results, but conditions, which are results in the 
 making. We may therefore take the growth of social 
 mind and its control over the conditions of life as 
 the measure of progress, and we shall have to ask how 
 far progress so conceived is reaUzed in the history of 
 humanity. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Social Morphology 
 
 We have now arrived at a rough definition of the 
 nature and general conditions of progress, and our next 
 step is to compare it with the ascertained facts of social 
 evolution itself. Conceiving social evolution as the 
 growth, maintenance, or decay of a fabric of human 
 achievement accomplishing itself through the medium 
 of what we call cumulative tradition, we have to ask 
 what the general tendency of these changes is, and 
 whether they conform to our conception of progress. 
 Is there any truth in the common optimistic saying that 
 progress is the law of social life, or is there more to be 
 said for the pessimistic view that in all the whirl of 
 change there are many ups and downs, but no net gain as 
 judged by those human values in terms of which genuine 
 progress is to be defined ? Or is there discernible among 
 the devious movements of social evolution some one 
 tendency which may be regarded as progressive, and is 
 this tendency marked with sufficient emphasis and dis- 
 tinctness to justify the hope of success for further social 
 effort ? If so, have any new conditions come into play 
 which render the prospect before such effort more 
 hopeful or the reverse? Before we can answer these 
 questions adequately, we must cast a glance at the 
 methods which the study of social life has at its disposal, 
 and the objects which it can reasonably expect to attain. 
 
 102 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 103 
 
 In ordinary phrase, its aim is supposed to be the discov- 
 ery of the laws of social evolution. But this expression 
 contains several ambiguities. The term '4aw," always 
 a somewhat unfortunate metaphor in the philosophy of 
 science, is perhaps nowhere so replete with pitfalls as 
 in its application to sociology*. Without seeking to ex- 
 haust its ambiguities, I must lay stress on one distinc- 
 tion. A ^4aw" in science seems properly to imply a 
 connection which is necessary and universal. It states 
 the conditions from which certain consequences uni- 
 formly flow. It is, in a word, a generalization. So if 
 there is any general law of evolution, it should be one 
 which should tell us the conditions under which evolu- 
 tion occurs, and enable us to infer that when these 
 conditions are given one phase of growth will be followed 
 by another and another in a determinate order. It 
 should help us to generalize or to predict. Now I do 
 not wish to raise here the difficult question how far 
 generalization and prediction are attainable in sociology. 
 I would remark only that very often when a law of evo- 
 lution is spoken of, particularly in sociology, it would 
 seem that what is actually ascertained is something of a 
 different order. It is not a question of generalization, 
 but of descriptive synthesis. A series of changes is 
 passed in review and considered as a whole. So con- 
 sidered it presents a certain character, exhibits a certain 
 trend. This trend is formulated, and the formula is 
 described as the law of the series. But the conditions 
 of the process are not ascertained, nor is it proved that 
 the same series of changes would, if at once begun some- 
 where else, recur in the same order. There is no basis of 
 generalization or of prediction. 
 
104 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 Now it is important to recognize that such description 
 is a legitimate, and may be a very important and a very 
 difficult, object of investigation. Only it is quite dis- 
 tinct from the generalization with which it is often 
 loosely confounded. It has its application not only in 
 sociology, but in the field of organic life. In biological 
 science we may find an example in the life history of an 
 animal or plant from the first germ of life to adult 
 growth, and thence to decay and death. When we 
 learn, for example, that a given animal at a certain stage 
 has gills and a tail and lives under the water, while later 
 on it sheds its tail and gills, develops lungs and four legs 
 and hops about on the ground, we have a rough sketch 
 of the development of the common frog, which the natu- 
 ral history of that species will fill in as fully as may be 
 V desired. This, as it stands, is the history of a process 
 Tather than the establishment of a law. It is true that 
 this particular history can be generalized, — what is 
 true of one animal being true of a whole species under 
 normal circumstances, — but the method is equally ap- 
 plicable if only one individual process be in question. 
 Thus we might describe, so far as the geological record 
 allows us, the life history of a whole species considered 
 as a single totality. We might remark its rare appear- 
 ance at one epoch, its growth in subsequent times, and 
 its gradual extinction, and we might perhaps find certain 
 varieties of form accompanying this growth and decay. 
 So again in human history we can sketch an outline of 
 the rise and fall of an ancient state, and here again we 
 are giving a descriptive account of the broad character 
 of a certain evolution, of a process which has a certain 
 unity of its own and which appears only in a single 
 instance. 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 105 
 
 In none of these cases is it accurate to speak of a law 
 of evolution as being the end and object of our inquiry. 
 Our purpose is rather to grasp a certain development 
 as a whole ; to measure the distance traversed from the 
 first phase to the last ; to bring, the facts together in a 
 synthesis ; to be able, if we may so put it, to say what the 
 whole amounts to. Such a synthesis yields not the law 
 of evolution in general, but rather the trend or orbit of 
 some particular evolution. We may make the point 
 clear by [considering the method of determining an orbit 
 in the most literal sense of that term. We wish to as- 
 certain the path along which a body moves. We may 
 begin empirically by determining a number of positions 
 which the body occupies in succession. The curve 
 which it describes may then be ascertained by joining 
 up these points. The result is to coordinate the data 
 and enable us to judge the direction and extent of the 
 movement. But so far the term ^' law "is inappropri- 
 ate, since no universal and necessary relation of terms 
 Jias been ascertained. We cannot be sure that the body 
 will continue, beyond the points observed, to move in the 
 same curve. What we have is just an accurate record 
 of the magnitude and direction of the course which it 
 has actually taken. But the motion of a body may also 
 be determined in another way. It may be deduced from 
 certain conditions to which it is known to be subject. 
 Its curve will then be determined, as the mathematician 
 will tell us, by a certain relation expressible in an equa- 
 tion between an ordinate and an abscissa, two governing 
 conditions applying to every successive point along the 
 length of the curve and by the fixed proportion between 
 them governing its shape. The equation which ex- 
 
106 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 presses this proportion, then, is, in strictness, the law of 
 the curve, and knowing this equation we can predict the 
 movement of the body and the position which it will 
 occupy at any moment. The curve as determined 
 by the first method is a descriptive synthesis ; as deter- 
 mined by the second, it is a true law. I need hardly 
 add that in the order of discovery the first method may 
 lead up to the second, the synthesis of empirical data 
 preparing the way for analysis of underlying conditions. 
 The first of these cases corresponds in our inquiry to the 
 synthesis which enables us to formulate the historic 
 movement of society ; the second to the generalization 
 which should assign the forces determining this move- 
 ment, and therefore enable us to predict the future 
 or infer the character of the unrecorded past. And it is 
 again possible that from one result we might proceed to 
 the other. For if we could resolve the life history of a 
 frog or of an organic species, or the history of a state or 
 of a civilization, into certain permanent factors corre- 
 lated permanently in a definite manner, and could show 
 that the result of this correlation was to produce the 
 process which we find, we should then have not only the 
 actual development as an historical fact, but a law of 
 development. And it is the law of evolution in this 
 sense, a general law, that is to say, dominating the 
 whole evolutionary process, which constitutes the strict 
 meaning of the term. To discover such a law or 
 laws, we should have not only to know where the evo- 
 lutionary process begins and in what it ends, but we 
 should have to ascertain the factors underlying it 
 throughout and by their interaction producing the 
 concrete result. 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 107 
 
 The distinction may be illustrated once again from the 
 theory of biological evolution. When Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer conceives of evolution as a process at once 
 towards higher integration and greater differentiation, 
 he is giving a descriptive formula applicable to the evo- 
 lutionary process as a whole. When, in relation to the 
 organic world, Darwin arrives at the conception of the 
 struggle for existence, the laws of heredity and natural 
 selection, as causes determining the growth of species, 
 he is giving us a theory of the permanent conditions un- 
 derlying this development. Mr. Spencer's formula is, 
 descriptive; Darwin's is causational. Both formulae 
 have their value. To describe the whole in the sense of 
 forming a synthesis in which all its parts should be seen 
 in their various places would be a worthy object of scien- 
 tific investigation, even if we should fail to ascertain the 
 conditions upon which development depends, while to 
 discover these conditions would be a further step. 
 
 Thus there are two distinct objects which the student 
 of social evolution may set before himself. First of all he 
 may endeavor to grasp the broad trend of social evolu- 
 tioja ; that is to say, he may attempt a synthesis of its 
 successive phases, and here he might conceivably take 
 the evolution of a single society, or of a type of civiliza^ 
 tion, or finally, of the whole of humanity for his subject.,' 
 Provided that the process be grasped as a connected 
 whole and that any illuminating description can be given 
 of its trend and tendency, provided that he can find in it, 
 as it were, any clear hint of definiteness of direction, the 
 object will be a perfectly legitimate one for scientific 
 endeavor. Secondly, he may seek to do what Darwin 
 did with biology, and to discover not only the actual 
 
108 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 movement of society, but the permanent conditions 
 upon which such movement depends. The first in- 
 quiry may, of course, throw fight on the second. From 
 our knowledge of the path on which evolution has moved 
 we may naturally hope to obtain light on the forces 
 which have moved it. But this, we shall find, will raise 
 further and more difficult questions, and the first object 
 in comparative sociology must be to effect the synthesis 
 which will give us not the law but the path or trend. 
 Even this we shall find to be a problem of great com- 
 plexity and only to be approached by severely limiting 
 the scope of inquiry. 
 
 It may be asked in what respect a descriptive formula 
 \of social evolution would differ from a sufficiently com- 
 prehensive social history. Suppose that we could take 
 all sides of a nation's life, its politics and religion, its 
 literature and art, its science and philosophy, its indus- 
 try and commerce, and write their history in full, should 
 we not have a final account of the actual facts of its so- 
 cial evolution, and would anything remain but to pass 
 at once if we could to the causes connecting the differ- 
 ent phases of the process ? Would any formula of syn- 
 thesis be necessary as an intermediate step ? Well, in 
 the first place it will readily be seen that the attempt 
 to grasp this many-sided development as a whole, as 
 forming one social evolution, carries us outside the con- 
 ception of history as a narrative. We find ourselves 
 at once dealing not with one history but with many. 
 The history of science is one thing, that of literature an- 
 other, and in a time like ours either of these is so rich 
 and diversified in material that it would naturally break 
 up into many component parts, each of which as a nar- 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 109 
 
 rative would be separately pursued. Now if these dif- f^ 
 ferent strands are somehow to be woven together so 
 that we may form some conception of the rope which 
 they constitute, quite another kind of intellectual effort 
 is needed. We shall have to find, as it were, some com-^ 
 mon denominator for our different results. We shall 
 have to analyze our data, to find the points at which the 
 different lines of development impinge on one another, 
 and so discover in the end how far they form a com- 
 bined movement. The statement of this combined 
 movement is the formula of synthesis which we require. ^ 
 
 A brief illustration may make my meaning clear. 
 The history of science in the last century and a half has 
 been of vast importance in the general evolution of 
 society. But the student of society does not need to 
 know, say, the history of the successive analyses and 
 syntheses by which organic chemistry has been built up. 
 What he does want to know is, for example, the way in 
 which the progress of science has affected our view of the 
 world, how it has recast the forms of industry, how it 
 has reacted on literature and art, how it has affected 
 religion and social theory. Again he is interested in the 
 causes affecting the growth of science itself, the effects 
 of political and social liberty, the influence of theological 
 prepossessions, or of the prevailing system of education. 
 In a word, he concerns himself with the place of science 
 in social life, whether as affected by other agencies or 
 affecting them. So regarded, of course, some of the 
 actual achievements of science will interest him. Not 
 only must he recognize the important social bearing of 
 theories like those of organic evolution and therefore 
 take some account of the preliminary scientific work 
 
110 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 which makes them possible, but he must also note as of 
 transcendent interest the light which scientific progress 
 throws, both by its success and by its limitations, on the 
 power of man over nature. He must, as it were, assess 
 the work of science as one form of human achievement, 
 and one product of the social mind. 
 
 As with science, so with other developments of social 
 activity. The detailed history of each affords the data 
 \ for the sociologist. His special work is to correlate the 
 results. 
 
 Again, the formula of synthesis is only applicable 
 when the process which it is to describe forms a unitj^ 
 But to find this unity in social evolution is no simple 
 matter. In the life of society we are dealing prima Jade 
 not with one evolution but with many. If, to begin 
 with, we confine ourselves to one nation and try to write 
 its social history, we find two things. First, as already 
 seen, the history tends to break itself up into separate 
 narratives. The religious history of England, say, is 
 something distinct from its scientific, or political, or 
 industrial history. The different evolutions affect and 
 interfere with one another, but yet they have a certain 
 independence. On the other hand, the religious evolu- 
 tion of England could not be understood without refer- 
 ence to that of other countries. Its relation to conti- 
 nental movements of thought is not a whit less intimate 
 than its relation to the remaining phases of social evolu- 
 tion in the country itself. Thus, the social evolution of 
 a country is not an independent unity standing by itself, 
 — it is a part of the wider evolution of civilization. 
 
 But here a formidable difficulty arises. When social 
 evolution is taken in this wider sense we may well ask 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 111 
 
 whether any single formula can be applicable to it. 
 When we think of the divergence, I do not say between 
 different European nations, but between the whole trend 
 of Eastern and Western civilization, when we consider 
 the rise and fall of earlier civilizations, when we consider 
 that the existing structure of savage and barbaric society 
 is itself the product of an evolution that if slower in its 
 rate of change has been at work as many centuries as our 
 own, can we say that there is any one single direction 
 which social evolution must take ? Must we not rather 
 admit many possible lines of deviation from the primi- f 
 tive center, and speak not of one evolution but of many ? 
 Must we not also recognize dissolution as a very serious 
 factor in history, and if so, are we to conceive the evolu- 
 tionary process as renewing itself, so to say, in an indefi- 
 nite number of successive attempts, following in a vari- 
 ety of directions where the line of least resistance leads, 
 rather than as a single continuous process advancing in 
 a constant direction ? These are among the questions 
 that press for a solution, and their presence gravely 
 complicates our problem. They mean that we cannot 
 start from the conception of social evolution as a unitary A^' 
 process. We must admit divergent lines of evolution. 
 It follows that we cannot reduce the study of social 
 evolution to a simple narrative. Our method must be 
 not so much historical as comparative. It must consist 
 in a review of the multifarious fprms of human achieve- 
 ment, with a view to scientific classification. 
 
 In this, after all, we are merely following precedent. 
 It would seem that the foundation of any sound evolu- 
 tionary theory is always a morphology ; that is to say, it 
 is a systematic arrangement of the types that we find in i^ 
 
112 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 accordance with their affinities. Such an arrangement is 
 that which is most Ukely to throw hght upon the actual 
 genesis of successive types, and to prepare us, therefore, 
 both for our descriptive and for our causational con- 
 ceptions of evolution. In the case of biological evolu- 
 tion, such a morphology underlies the work of Darwin 
 and forms, in fact, the chief strength of his argument. 
 In the famous fourteenth chapter of the ^'Origin of 
 Species, '^ Darwin points out that though naturalists 
 had not as a rule accepted the theory of descent and had 
 certainly made their classification without regard to any 
 theory of the way in which forms originated, they had, 
 nevertheless, guided by the inherent logic of the facts, 
 arrived at principles of arrangement corresponding ac- 
 curately to the laws of growth. In their search for 
 deeper affinities, for real resemblances as against superfi- 
 cial analogies, they had come to grouping things together 
 by a kind of logical genealogy which could only be ex- 
 plained when interpreted as a real or physical genealogy. 
 Thus Darwin found the whole fabric of organic evolu- 
 tion standing, as it were, ready waiting for him in the 
 great natural classifications of botany and zoology. All 
 he had to do was to supply the connecting link which 
 would show how the species thus arranged into genera, 
 the genera grouped into families, the families into orders, 
 the orders into classes, and the classes into sub-king- 
 doms, might be conceived as really originating from a 
 common stock in such a way as to generate by intelli- 
 gible causes those peculiar forms of identity in diversity 
 which constitute the organic world as thus classified. 
 Thus, to link up the organic creation and to transform 
 the dead, crystallized classification into a living move- 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 113 
 
 ment, Darwin had to do two things. First, he had to 
 show by means of the geological record that the clas- 
 sification corresponded to a real time series, that the 
 simpler forms came first, and that the more highly de- 
 veloped ones succeeded them in due order. To estab- 
 lish this point, so far as it has been established, was the 
 work of paleontology; he ha3 to show, secondly, a 
 means by which the more generic forms would become 
 differentiated into specific types, and this was the spe- 
 cial work of Darwin. His method is a classical example 
 of the legitimate as opposed to the illegitimate use of 
 hypothesis. He started from known facts ; he began 
 by asking, that is to say, how changes of type are ac- 
 tually produced under our observation, and he found, 
 as he considered, that it was done habitually by human 
 breeders through the accumulation of small variations 
 by selective breeding. He then asked how far the same 
 conditions operate apart from human agency, and he 
 found that the higher rate of elimination of individuals 
 less suited to the conditions of their existence would, 
 for the purposes of his inquiry, have effects analogous 
 to that of the intelligent breeding by human beings. 
 He inferred accordingly that there were conditions per- 
 manently at work, which he summed up in the some- 
 what unfortunately chosen metaphor of Natural Selec- 
 tion, making for the modification of organic types, and 
 he gave reasons for thinking that this agency would, 
 in the main, account for that arrangement of organic 
 forms which was the starting-point of his inquiry. 
 
 Now this is a classical example of a good evolutionary 
 hjrpothesis, but it is easy to see the difficulty of raising 
 such a hypothesis to the rank of a demonstrative truth. 
 
114 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 In the first place, it is exceedingly difficult to be sure that 
 the conditions specified in the hypothesis are the only 
 ones at work. That such variations occur was known. 
 That larger variations might occur in the order of nature 
 and be perpetuated by heredity was scarcely suspected. 
 Again, that Natural Selection operates may be taken as 
 an established truth, but that it is the only factor in op- 
 eration is a very different proposition. Darwin himself 
 thought that it was not, and whether his successors have 
 proved the contrary is still an open question. The 
 problem might be more easily resolved if we could as- 
 certain the second point ; that is to say, if we could ac- 
 curately measure the effect of Natural Selection. Could 
 we determine the limits within which it works, the veloc- 
 ity of the changes produced, and so forth, we could then 
 measure its calculated operation against the observed 
 facts just as Newton measured the calculated effect of 
 gravitation against the observed motions of the planets. 
 But in biology we have as yet no such quantitative laws. 
 Until we can quantify we can hardly demonstrate. 
 /All this merely indicates once again that a theory of the 
 "1 conditions of evolution is less easily demonstrated than ^ 
 * a theory of the process of evolution. ^ 
 
 Now biologists from Darwin's day to our own have 
 been almost exclusively occupied with the theory of 
 conditions. As to what evolution does, whither it 
 tends, what progress it effects, and whether indeed the 
 term "progress" has any application to its works at all, 
 are questions with which they have had little concern. 
 They have been generally content to follow Mr. Spencer 
 in conceiving evolution as a process from the simple 
 to the complex, or they have regarded it simply as a 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 115 
 
 progressive adaptation of the organism to the environ- 
 ment. Only when they have descended into the socio- 
 logical arena have some of the less cautious among them 
 assumed dogmatically that whatever its direction, 
 evolution is a movement that makes for good and is 
 not to be thwarted by the pun^jT moral consciousness of 
 man. This position, however, we have seen to be not 
 that of scientific biology but of unscientific sociological 
 dogmatism. Of biology as a science it may be said 
 that beyond the generalities mentioned it has not inter- 
 ested itself very greatly in the question what evolves^x 
 but almost entirely in the question how things evolve. 
 If indeed we were to put the former question to the 
 biologist, he would reply by referring us to the table 
 of Fauna and Flora with a simple ^^circumspice." 
 Yet there is a sense in which the question becomes of 
 very real importance, though as we shall see it is quite 
 easy to understand why in this sense it does not interest 
 the biologist itself. If we take any living species and 
 trace its ancestry with the aid of the biologist back to 
 the earliest forms of life, it is clearly open to us to ask, 
 what is the nature of the change that it has undergone ? 
 It is also easy to understand that from the biological 
 point of view the inquiry may lead to no very interesting 
 result, and with a few words about differentiation, 
 articulation, and adaptation to environment the matter 
 will be closed. But suppose that the species that we 
 choose is Man, and that we put the question in this 
 way : as compared with the lowest organisms from 
 which we assume him to have originated, what is Man ? 
 What distance has he traveled? What powers has 
 he acquired? What is the nature of the changes 
 
116 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 which have brought this species to the birth? Are 
 they changes of degree or changes which though con- 
 tinuous may yet be called changes of kind ? What do 
 they portend? Can we infer from the phases that 
 have been passed through anything as to the future ? 
 Can we gain any insight into human potentialities ? 
 Can we learn anything of man's ultimate place in 
 nature? It is clear that whatever else may be said 
 of these questions they cannot be dismissed as lacking 
 in interest. But for reasons of which we have seen 
 something the biologist as such cannot answer them, 
 and if he is wise does not meddle with them. But 
 they suggest a way of treating evolutionary problems 
 of which much more will be heard in the future than 
 has been heard hitherto. They suggest the necessity 
 of what I have called a formula of descriptive synthesis, 
 the object of which is to measure the direction and the 
 distance traversed in the evolution of man. By such a 
 measure we arrive at an answer to the question, to 
 put it in a common phrase, of what evolution amounts to. 
 We assess its value. We are able to take a comprehen- 
 sive and accurate view of what it has done, and we get 
 a firm basis for measuring its further possibilities. 
 
 Now the sciences which deal with man from this point 
 of view are two. The first is Comparative Psychology, 
 the second is Sociology. The first is especially con- 
 cerned with the genesis of the human mind as such. 
 It seeks to determine the stages of development which 
 lead from the first beginnings of psychic life to the emer- 
 gence of the human reason-. It seeks for links to connect 
 what at first sight may appear severed and even dis- 
 parate, but if it is genuinely scientific, it proceeds 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 117 
 
 without any attempt to slur over differences. In this 
 manner it arrives at a true sense of the distance traveled 
 in the evolution of mind. It has a morphology, too, 
 of its own. The forms in which it is interested are 
 the forms of mental operation, and it seeks to arrange 
 them in such a way as to show, how the most elaborate 
 are joined by a series of intermediaries with the most 
 simple. These intermediate phases it finds both in the 
 mind of man itself, where higher and lower operate 
 together, and in various species of the animal world 
 where as it descends the scale it finds the higher func- 
 tions disappearing one after another. 
 
 Now when comparative psychology reaches the 
 mind of man its work is by no means at an end. On 
 the contrary, mental development proceeds even more 
 rapidly than before. But it is now as we have seen a 
 social rather than a mental development, and the 
 psychological becomes a part of the general sociological 
 investigation. Here again the same method is open 
 to us. We can take any phase of civilization, and going 
 back over its ancestry — so far as we know or can 
 reasonably infer it — we can ask what the growth 
 "amounts to." We can inquire into the direction and 
 distance of the social movement which we find. In 
 particular we may do this with our own civilization, 
 necessarily the latest, and actually in many ways a 
 most distinctive and peculiar type. We can go back to 
 what history tells us with certainty, and to what anthro- 
 pology enables us to infer with reasonable probability 
 of the earlier forms of society, and we can then ask 
 whether, reviewing the Ufe-history of humanity as a 
 whole, we can discover in it under all its wild irregu- 
 
118 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 larities, its waves and troughs, its periods of apparent 
 expansion and contraction, any definite and measurable 
 current that has on the whole made a certain assign- 
 able distance in a certain assignable direction. When 
 we have discovered this movement we can go on to ask 
 whether it is a movement of progress or not, i.e, 
 whether it is one which tends to the realization of 
 ends on which we can reasonably set a value. But 
 first of all we want to know what the movement 
 actually has been. We want to determine the orbit, 
 if orbit there be, of human social evolution. This 
 I take to be the prime object of sociology, and the 
 method by which it is to be approached is a social 
 morphology. Now a social morphology involves not _ 
 merely a collection of sociological data, but a syste- 
 matic arrangement of social types, and by social types 
 we mean examples of all the leading forms of human 
 achievement which result from the interaction of in- 
 dividuals, — types of social institution, forms of govern- 
 ment, principles of law, types of the family, and, again, 
 intellectual, moral, and artistic traditions, religions, 
 ethical systems, sciences, arts. We need not merely to 
 collect and enumerate the successive achievements of 
 mankind in these various directions, but to arrange 
 them in some way that will exhibit their affinities and 
 interactions, that will help us to appreciate the lines 
 of social development. We need a classification leading 
 up to a social morphology. 
 
 Our first business then is to classify, and in its first 
 stage such a classification presents no great logical 
 difficulty. It is comparatively easy, for example, to 
 take an institution like that of human marriage, to 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 119 
 
 run through the data afforded by anthropologists, 
 and by the law books of civilizations, to distinguish 
 certain principal types, and to exhibit other forms as 
 gradations between them. Such a classification is at 
 least more likely to yield positive results than a specu- ^^ 
 lative inquiry into the original form of marriage, which 
 is and must be outside the sj^here of possible verifica- 
 tion and which can only yield the results which we 
 find by observation, through some more or less ingenious 
 form of historical torture. As against the speculative-^ 
 method which assumes an original type and deduces ^ 
 existing forms therefrom, the evolutionary methods- 
 regards every type alike as an adaptation of social 
 life to meet certain conditions. Its object is to discover 
 the genetic affinities of these types whereby they pass 
 into one another in response to changes of conditions. 
 The important thing here to discover is what is funda- 
 mental and what accidental, and again what is perma- 
 nent and what modifiable. If this can be done, we may 
 perhaps have a basis for inferring the type which would 
 be found under conditions more primitive than any 
 of which we have a record. But we should not use our 
 suppositions on this point as starting-points for a theory 
 which is to explain the facts. They are rather con- 
 clusions, and are likely to be amongst the most doubt- 
 ful conclusions of the theory already formed. 
 
 But this explanation brings to light a real difficulty. 
 We are seeking not merely to classify, but to classify in 
 such a way as to throw light on genesis. That is to say, 
 we want to exhibit institutions in an order in which 
 they might be conceived as growing up. This is what 
 is meant by saying that we want our classification to 
 
^120 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 be a morphology. But it is precisely at this point that 
 logical difficulties arise. For example, we may legiti- 
 mately classify types of marriage, not upon one basis 
 only, but upon several; each of these will be equally 
 legitimate and the divisions that result will not coincide, 
 but run across one another. Thus we may go by the 
 number of parties to the union, and so distinguish 
 monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, and, if we are satis- 
 fied of their existence, group marriage and promiscuity, 
 and between each of these types we may find intervening 
 gradations. But we might equally well group mar- 
 riages in accordance with the permanence of the relation 
 and distinguish cases in which marriage is indissoluble 
 from those in which divorce is allowed, and divide up 
 the latter again into multitudinous varieties according 
 as the conditions of divorce differ. Equally well we 
 might distinguish marriages by the methods whereby 
 a partner is obtained, as, for example, by capture, by pur- 
 chase, by service rendered by the husband to the wife's 
 relations, by mutual consent, and so forth. Or, lastly, 
 we might take the relation of husband and wife within 
 the family and exhibit the gradations between the 
 system which gives almost absolute power to the husband 
 and that which leaves husband and wife members of 
 two distinct families and, in the main, independent of 
 each other. How are we to decide which of these 
 possible methods of classification will best bring out 
 the fundamental nature of the institution and of the 
 causes which modify it ? There is not — at least 
 there is not yet accepted by sociologists, so far as I 
 am aware — any comprehensive account of the evolu- 
 tion of the family which would explain the rise of all 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 121 
 
 these different forms and bring them systematically 
 into correlation with one another. Here and there, 
 doubtless, we can see certain points of connection. For 
 example, it is easily understood that where a husband 
 purchases a wife from her relations as a quasi chattel, he 
 will have extensive powers over what he has bought. 
 The probability is that his rights will be at a maximum 
 and hers at a minimum, and so we are quite prepared to 
 find wife-purchase associated with a high extension of 
 marital power, with one form or other of polygamy, 
 and with a one-sided system of divorce. But even in 
 such a generalization as this, comparative ethics compels 
 us to be very careful, and this is only a partial and lim- 
 ited generalization covering but a fraction of the facts. 
 It is probable that partial and limited truths of this 
 kind are all that we can attain by studying marriage 
 by itself. Now it is true that we are at present dealing 
 not with explanation but with classification. But 
 we are faced by the fact that we can classify in more 
 than one way, and we want to know which way of 
 classifying will give us most insight, that is to say, which 
 will best express the real affinities of the different types. 
 Now even a cursory study of the facts suggests the 
 truth — and this is the root of the difficulty — that 
 an institution like marriage does not stand alone ; its 
 evolution is not an independent evolution. We cannot 
 write its life-history as we can that of an individual 
 physical organism. It is affected by a complex mass of 
 social factors which do not take their origin from the 
 life of the family as such but which impinge upon, and 
 may gradually modify, that Hfe. It is affected, for 
 example, by religious conceptions, by economic con- 
 
122 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 ditions, by class or caste distinctions. It is affected, 
 probably, by physiological causes, of the nature of 
 which we are in ignorance, which determine the rela- 
 tive number of the sexes. What is true of marriage is 
 true of any other social institution that we like to take. 
 No one of them stands alone ; they impinge, in a de- 
 gree and manner which can only be learned from ex- 
 perience, upon one another ; and modifications in any 
 one of them may thus proceed from without. 
 
 It follows that resemblances between different 
 societies may often be what biologists would call 
 analogical rather than morphological. That is to 
 say, though we may find certain features of similarity 
 in institutional forms, this similarity may point to no 
 close relationship, to no filiation, to no real affinity 
 between two societies compared. It is merely what 
 we call — by way of expressing our ignorance — the 
 casual result of a combination of circumstances. The 
 case of marriage itself presents some curious analogi- 
 cal similarities. For example, monogamy is, on the 
 whole, a characteristic of the higher civilizations, 
 but we find sporadic cases of it amongst the lowest 
 savages, and that even in its most extreme form. 
 Indissoluble monogamous marriage is the common 
 property of the Veddahs of Ceylon, one of the rudest 
 races known to anthropology, and of all communities 
 which conform to the law of the Roman Church. 
 It occurs, scattered here and there, among a few 
 other savage tribes, and appears to be contemplated 
 in at least one form of the Brahminic religious code. 
 What real affinity can there be in these cases ? There 
 is nothing to suggest mutual influence. There is every 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 123 
 
 reason to deny a fundamental identity of social struc- 
 ture such as would produce a corresponding result. 
 The resemblance is analogical. Conditions, which 
 in some of the instances mentioned are known and in 
 others are not known, have produced a result which 
 is in one respect the same, and that is all that we can 
 say. We cannot use this "sameness to draw infer- 
 ences as to any deeper identity. It is analogical, not 
 morphological. 
 
 The same may be said of countless institutions that 
 recur in comparative jurisprudence, or comparative 
 ethics. The equality of a primitive community, for ex- 
 ample, has very little beyond the surface fact in com- 
 mon with the equality for which modern democracies 
 strive. The self-government of a village community 
 has perhaps more in common with the representative 
 institutions of a modern state, but yet the differences 
 are probably more important than the resemblances. 
 There is respect for property which is dependent upon 
 a taboo, that is to say, on the belief in certain magical 
 forces which will bring evil upon him who violates it ; 
 and there is respect for property which depends upon 
 an ethical appreciation of human rights. In both cases 
 the result is that the property of another is left un- 
 touched, but excepting in the result, how little they 
 have in common ! These deeper distinctions appear, 
 it will be seen, when we take into consideration not 
 merely the outward form of an institution, but its 
 meaning and value for the society which maintains it. 
 Where outward forms are the same, but the psycho- 
 logical forces that underlie them are different, there 
 is no real kinship. Conversely, where the psychological 
 
124 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 forces are nearly alike, where the motives or concep- 
 tions operating in them are of the same order, there 
 may be considerable differences of external form due 
 to variation of circumstances, but implying no deep- 
 seated divergence of type. If that is so, it is the 
 psychological groundwork that determines the true 
 affinities in a sociological classification. Such, at least, 
 is the hypothesis on which ^we shall proceed, and it 
 will be at least worth while to see whither it leads us. 
 In practice it will mean only that we must look not 
 merely to the outer form of the institution, but to its 
 principle or spirit. Keeping this caution in view, then, 
 our primary object in the study of social evolution is 
 to distinguish the various phases or forms of social life, 
 whether in the direction of thought or action, of ideas 
 or Tristltutions, in such a way as to obtain a compara- 
 tive view of the stages or phases of human develop- 
 ment, and in particular of that development which has 
 brought a large portion of humanity to the present 
 j stage of civilization. When these successive forms or 
 phases are compared, it will become possible to review 
 the movement as a whole and to ask our question — 
 \ what does it amount to ? First, How far and in what 
 \ direction has it taken us ? Second, Does it or does it 
 Inot conform to our conception of progress ? 
 
 In a complete survey it is clear that every depart- 
 ment of social development would have to be con- 
 sidered — knowledge, imagination, religion, ethics, law, 
 industry, and so forth. Any such treatment within 
 our limits would be out of the question. I can only 
 attempt to illustrate certain aspects of development 
 with the object of showing you how the method may 
 
SOCIAL MORPHOLOGY 125 
 
 be applied. There are many aspects that attract. I 
 might follow the development of knowledge and the 
 control of life by science, but on this side the con- 
 ception of progress is familiar and needs little argument 
 to establish its validity. I might deal with the in- 
 finitely subtler question of the formation in ethics 
 and religion of principles for the guidance of life, and 
 the emergence of the belief tliat the well-being of society ' 
 is itself the ultimate standard to which such concep- 
 tions should be referred. But on this side I should be 
 dealing with first principles and with matters that lie 
 beyond our present scope. I shall glance at one point 
 in this development at a later stage, but shall attempt 
 no regular discussion of it. The aspect of development 
 which I propose to take is the elaboration of the prin- 
 ciples necessary to social cooperation, and in particular 
 The growth of government and its relation to liberty. 
 These are ideas which lie at the foundation of the 
 social harmony. They belong to the basis of the whole 
 TSatter, and for this very reason they are at the center 
 of the problems of the present, as of the past. I shall 
 briefly review the main forms of social institution in 
 which these principles are embodied. I shall endeavor 
 to determine in what sense or to what extent progress 
 is to be discovered on this side of social life, and this 
 in turn will lead us to inquire as to the possibilities of 
 progress in the future and the means whereby it may 
 be accomplished. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Growth of the State 
 
 To answer the questions proposed at the end of the 
 last lecture would be to write a book in many volumes. 
 The task of measuring the actual movement of civili- 
 zation becomes manageable only by a division of labor. 
 I have attempted elsewhere to deal- with it from the 
 point of view of ethics, — a point of view which 
 necessarily involves something of the development of 
 religion and something of the development of juris- 
 prudence within its scope. Recently Dr. Miiller Lyer, 
 in his ^^Phasen der Kultur," has applied a similar treat- 
 ment to the development of industry. Enough has 
 been done to indicate some of the difficulties that beset 
 this method of treatment, and also to suggest certain 
 results. These I will endeavor to indicate to you by 
 taking one side of social life, and tracing development 
 on this side as we pass from the simplest to the most 
 advanced modern societies. As some compensation for 
 the limitations of the inquiry, I will take one of the 
 fundamental problems. I will ask you to consider the 
 nature of the social bond, to examine what is common 
 to all societies and what is distinctive, and I shall try 
 to show that what is distinctive in the nature of the 
 sociaj. bond forms a fundamental principle of classifica- 
 tion in any social morphology, and serves as one of the 
 measuring rods which helps us to determine the nature 
 
 126 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 127 
 
 'of the movement which has made modern civilization 
 ^.what it is. From one point of view, as has been seen, 
 / social progress may be regarded as development of the 
 ' principle of union, order, cooperation, harmony among 
 ., human beings. This development may be traced in the 
 first instance by means of a classification of the main 
 types of social organization in accordance with the dis- 
 tinctive nature of the sociqj bond. ^ 
 Now there are, as has been hinted, some forces mak- 
 ing for union which are common to the life of all society 
 from the lowest to the highest. There is, for example,^ 
 a certain mutual interest of a complex kind, which, 
 from the lowest group of savages to the most highly 
 developed civilized structure, tends to keep men to- 
 gether and maintain a certain kind of cooperation. 
 This mutual interest,^ moreover, is not entirely of a 
 selfish character. It is not only that men have need 
 of one another for mutual defense, or, at a higher stage, j 
 for cooperation in industry or in science ; there is j 
 also the interest in another sense which we take in' 
 one another as human beings, and which is a wider! 
 thing than sympathy and a less purely moral thing! 
 ^than altruism or unselfishness. The solitary life is, for 
 all but the most exceptional of individuals, the least 
 tolerable of all. We choose — like Alexander Selkirk 
 — 'Ho dwell in the midst of alarms'' rather than to 
 reign in a horrible place of sohtude. Those we hate 
 are preferable as companions to the desert and the seas. 
 pThis mutuality of interests, so to speak, is something 
 \ underlying all human, perhaps even all animal, associa- 
 
 1 Which corresponds, I take it, broadly to what Professor Gid- 
 dings called the Consciousness of Kind. 
 
128 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 tion. It does not therefore serve as a distinguishing 
 principle in social classifications. Doubtless it under- 
 goes changes of degree and even of kind; as society 
 progresses, the interest widens and deepens. On the 
 whole, in the higher societies its more benevolent as- 
 pects tend to predominate ; but we could not, I think, 
 from these changes of degree make a universal basis of 
 classification. - 
 
 What we need for our purposes is to find certain 
 principles of union, which serve as bonds for human 
 society, and each of which may at successive stages 
 be regarded as the leading force which gives its charac- 
 ter to the social union. It is not necessary at a higher 
 stage that the bond operating at a lower should dis- 
 appear. On the contrary, we shall see that it is still 
 maintained in its own place. But the different forces 
 . which I shall distinguish may, I think, be regarded as 
 --^he dominant forces, each in certain great classes of 
 human society. These forces may be grouped under 
 three main heads, which may be called the leading prin^ 
 ^^iples of social union. They are the principles, first, 
 - Nof kinship ; secondly, of authority ; and thirdly, of 
 _^ citizenship. It should, of course, at once be explained^ 
 that a most important bond, distinguished in a way 
 from all these three, is that of a common religion ; but 
 it will be seen, as our examination advances, that the 
 element of religion is common to all forms of society, 
 and is to be regarded not so much as a distinct basis 
 of social union, but rather from this point of view 
 as an element involved in the social consciousness 
 itself and as a factor strengthening its hold upon the 
 minds of men. 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 129 
 
 What, then, are the different forms of society that 
 we find based upon these three main principles? To 
 begin with kinship. The lower forms of society ap-^ 
 pear to rest in a special way upon the tie of blood, 
 and the way in which this tie is conceived, the extent 
 to which it is recognized, and the manner in which it 
 is extended, whether by fictitious forms or in other 
 ways, gives the key to the social order of the greater 
 part of the uncivilized w^rld. In all the varieties 
 that we find, the one permanent element — as it is, 
 in the order of nature, the most indestructible element 
 — is the relation of mother and children. When some 
 thinkers conceived primitive man as possibly living, 
 isolated, in a state of nature, they forgot one simple 
 and well-established generalization — that all men have 
 mothers; and whatever may be said of the inferior 
 parent, it is at least the universal property of mothers 
 to tend their children, feed, protect, and shelter them 
 as they grow up. This primitive group, which is 
 constituted by the mother and children, runs aUke 
 through all forms of primitive and advanced society. 
 It gives rise in the uncivilized world to two main forms 
 of the social structure, which differ in accordance with 
 the position of the husband and father. The husband 
 may form a permanent union with the mother of 
 such a kind that upon marriage a new family group is 
 formed, which will consist not of mother and children 
 alone, but of parents and children. In this case — speak- 
 ing generally — the position of the father dominates 
 the life of the family; the father remains in his own 
 clan and the wife joins him, and the new group is added 
 to the paternal clan. If we conceive such a family 
 
130 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 growing up and the sons taking to themselves fresh 
 wives, we can imagine each new family forming a 
 part of the larger household, a family within a family, 
 a part within a whole. We can conceive the grand- 
 father continuing to bear rule, and on his death hand- 
 ing over his authority, perhaps to his eldest son, perhaps 
 to the son pointed out by natural gifts and attainments 
 for the post of honor. If such a stock is fruitful and 
 multiplies, we have a model of the patriarchate, the 
 form of early society familiar to the first anthro- 
 pological inquirers from the Book of Genesis, from the 
 Roman law, and from what was known of our own Teu- 
 tonic ancestors. It was a very natural inference to 
 be drawn in the early stage of anthropology that this 
 was in fact the primeval form of human society, but a 
 little further investigation shows that there is another 
 possibility, which has actually been realized over a 
 large part of the earth. The primitive group of mother 
 and children might be formed into a larger society upon 
 a different principle. The connection of husband and 
 wife might be of a less intimate kind. A husband 
 might remain a member of his own clan or of his own 
 group, while the mother and her children remained 
 associated with the group in which she was born; 
 and descent, upon this principle, would continue in 
 the female line, the daughters in their turn obtaining 
 husbands from without, the sons remaining attached 
 to the group, but finding themselves wives in another 
 family. This is the system of maternal kinship in 
 which descent goes, as it is termed, by mother-right. 
 Whether this is the primitive system or not, the evidence | 
 is not sufficient to decide, but it is widely diffused in 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 131 
 
 the uncivilized world, and traces of it are to be found 
 in forms, both of civilized and uncivilized society, 
 which have adopted the patriarchate. 
 
 The two forms of grouping are permeated by two 
 different conceptions of kinship. In the one, kinship ;./ 
 through the female is all-important, and in extreme 
 cases is the only kind of kinship that counts. In the 
 other, kinship through the^ male is the predominant 
 factor, and kinship through the mother is secondary, 
 is not as a rule reckoned so far and does not carry the 
 same legal consequences. These differences are particu- 
 larly important in relation to a further development 
 of kinship which is now to be mentioned. It is to be 
 observed that direct descent is not the only form of kin- 
 ship known either to primitive or to advanced societies. 
 It is certainly conceivable that a single patriarchal 
 family, such as we have first described, might, if it 
 be fruitful and multiply with exceptional success, 
 develop into a clan and even into a large society ; but 
 such multiplication could only be very exceptional. 
 In point of fact, another cause of growth has always to 
 be taken into account. Whether kinship be reckoned 
 through one parent alone or through both, it is the 
 almost universal rule that the son or daughter should 
 find a mate from outside the kin, as the kin are reckoned. 
 This is an application of what is known as the princi- 
 ple of exogamy — a principle common to the Chinese, 
 who forbid marriage between all persons of the same 
 name, to the Red Indian, who forbids it to all of the same 
 totem, and to ourselves, who do not allow it within 
 what are known as the ^'forbidden degrees." Enor- 
 mously as rules of exogamy differ, the total failure of 
 
132 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 any prohibition is exceedingly rare, if it is to be found 
 at all, in human society, and the general result of exog- 
 amy is clear. It compels a union of distinct families, 
 and in so far as kinship is a basis of cooperation, mutual 
 defense, and so forth, it tends to connect certain families 
 for these purposes. Thus when we speak of kinship 
 as a basis of society we must bear in mind that kinship 
 involves two distinct lines of interconnection — the 
 line of descent and the line of intermarriage. Hence 
 such a society is not limited to one family, but rather 
 implies some association between several stocks. 
 
 But limiting, and in a sense counteracting, the rule 
 of exogamy is the hardly less general rule of endogamy, 
 which enjoins marriage within a certain group, and it 
 can easily be seen that while this principle would tend 
 to isolate the group to which it applies, it would equally 
 strengthen the bonds of connection within that group. 
 Endogamy within the clan, for example, would tend to 
 intensify clan life and at the same time tend to separate 
 the clan from the rest of the world. So when the clan 
 develops into a wider society, or when different clans 
 come into association and begin to form a state, the 
 process is frequently marked by a break-down of endoga- 
 mous rules. In Rome, for example, marriage seems 
 to have been originally limited to the gens. Then the 
 patrician gentes came together and formed a circle of 
 intermarrying clans, from which the plehs was excluded. 
 The plehs obtained the jus connuhii in B.C. 445, and the 
 same right was at an early period extended to the Latins. 
 With the extension of Latin rights, and subsequently of 
 full Roman rights, the possible circle of legal marriage was 
 widened until it included the whole vast Roman world. 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 133 
 
 So much may be said in common of the principle of 
 kinship, whether it be based on the blood of the father, 
 or of the mother, or of both parents. But there is one 
 important sociological difference between the two cases. 
 Where mother-right prevails, the natural family, that 
 is to say, the union of father, mother, and children, 
 is never complete. The tie between the children and 
 the mother's relations is one thing, and the tie between 
 them and the father and his kin is another thing. 
 The two cut across one another, so that normally under 
 this system the child looks to his maternal relatives 
 for support and protection rather than to his father. 
 So too — as in the case of the Iroquois — the totemic 
 bond cuts across the tribal, and each man is subject, 
 as it w^re, to two allegiances. It can readily be seen 
 that this^does not form so firm a basis for a solid social 
 structure as the paternal family, which makes direct 
 descent always the closest and most substantial relation- 
 ship and constitutes the natural family a unit, which 
 cannot be dissolved by its relation to other families, 
 though it may count upon these relations for mutual 
 support. Hence it came about that the paternal family 
 yielded the more solid basis for the larger social order of 
 the civihzed peoples. But whichever the principle 
 adopted — and there are many gradations between 
 the two, many cases in which elements of father-right 
 and mother-right are blended and which may be re- 
 garded as transitional from one system to another — 
 these forms of society resting upon kinship may be 
 regarded as in a sense natural and primitive. They 
 come about in the ordinary course of nature from the 
 family instinct and the successive results which it en- 
 
134 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 genders. We may conceive early society as consti-^ 
 tuted by ramifications of direct descent and intermarriage 
 from the primordial group of mother and children, 
 the relation of husband and wife being the variable 
 factor giving rise where it is relatively loose to the mater- i 
 nal, where it is closer to the patriarchal system. ^ 
 
 The growth of society brings new principles into play. 
 In a primitive group there are, as a rule, few social 
 distinctions. There is generally a leading member or 
 head-man, but the powers of the chief are often but 
 little developed, and are mainly dependent upon his 
 \ personal prowess. It is true that when the patriarchal 
 clan is highly developed and has grown into a body of 
 many families, acknowledging a common descent from an 
 ancestor who has already become mythical, his eldest 
 male representative begins to wield despotic powers, — 
 as, for example, in a Highland clan, — and his immedi- 
 ate relations, or perhaps his favorites and followers, be- 
 gin to form a kind of aristocracy. But supposing such 
 a clan, well-organized and disciplined under an ambitious 
 j chieftain, to betake itself to a military life, a new order 
 of things comes into play. It will soon find occasion] 
 of quarrel with its neighbors — neighbors have a 1 
 wonderful facility of giving " just " causes of offense to I 
 those who are powerful — and the stronger clan starts j 
 upon a warlike career. A double series of results 
 ensues. On the one hand, the weaker surrounding 
 peoples are probably reduced to a dependent position. 
 At the lowest stage perhaps their stronger neighbors 
 may merely raid them for their cattle, but as soon as 
 there is some progress in the arts of life their subjection 
 takes a more permanent form. They may become 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 135 
 
 tributary to the conquering people, who continue to 
 live at a distance, or the conquerors may themselves 
 enter into possession of their territory and reduce 
 them either to a feudal vassalage or to slavery, and the 
 distinction of conqueror and conquered will turn into that 
 between lord and slave, or into that of upper and lower 
 caste. Within the conquering people themselves, again, 
 changes occur which affect Jbhe whole social order. For 
 successful war discipline is needed, for discipline more 
 powers must be given to the chief. Sometimes in 
 barbaric societies this is pushed so far that the chief 
 becomes absolute master of the persons and property 
 of his subjects. In some of the West African States, 
 like Dahomey and Ashanti, for example, he was the 
 master of the person and property of every man and 
 woman in his dominions. Any man might be made 
 his slave, any woman be taken into his harem. Usually 
 this exaltation of the chief is accompanied and fostered 
 by religious or magical conceptions. The chief is a man- 
 god ; his person is sacred ; it is even dangerous to his 
 subjects to approach and look upon him. As in Ancient 
 Egypt and in Babylon, his sanctity is carried to such a 
 point that he has to be hedged round by minute ceremo- 
 nial, his doings intimately affect the fortunes of the 
 people, he becomes responsible for the weather and the 
 crops, and finally, he is hedged in with so many taboos 
 that from being absolute master he becomes a slave — 
 the slave of his own courtiers and the priests ; and if he 
 does not manage the weather and the crops aright, it 
 may be the worse for him, not, of course, for his royal 
 spirit — that is sacred and immortal — but for the mere 
 body in which it is housed it is another question. 
 
136 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 But turning from the religious to the political side of 
 the process, the actual power of a king, it may be 
 observed, is limited by the narrowness of human capac- 
 ity. The remark is attributed — upon what authority 
 I do not know — to Nicholas I, the most autocratic 
 of the czars, that '^Russia was governed by ten thousand 
 clerks." The remark, at any rate, was true, as subse- 
 quent czars have probably realized. One man cannot 
 ever govern a great empire. The exceptions of Julius 
 Caesar and Napoleon exist only to prove the rule, 
 and the greater the empire, the wider the authority, 
 the more it must be delegated. The followers and de- 
 pendents of the king are naturally favored in the dis- 
 tribution of territory when land is conquered, and they 
 rise to the position of feudal lords, to aspire to some 
 independence where distance tends in their favor. You 
 may remember the story given by Tacitus of the 
 provincial governor who explained to the Emperor 
 Tiberius that it would be better not to raise the question 
 of his removal. He had a large army under his imme- 
 diate command, and they might (this nominal dependent 
 went on) form a kind of treaty by which the one should 
 be thoroughly loyal and % most obedient subject, 
 but the other should entertain no question of removing 
 him from his command. True or not, this story, 
 dating from the beginnings of the Empire, gives a sig- 
 nificant hint of the troubles that recurred throughout 
 the imperial history whenever the hand at the center 
 weakened in its grasp, and which finally led to disrup- 
 tion and decay. 
 \ Conquest is originally based on force, but unadulter- 
 
 ated force is never a permanent basis of social life. 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 137 
 
 The ruler must at least clothe himself with the garb 
 of justice or utility. He finds possibly a religious 
 title, whether in the sanctity of his line or in the ordinance 
 of God. In the lower order of such societies, as we have 
 seen, he is himself God, or of the lineage of God, like the 
 Pharaohs. At a higher remove, as with the absolute 
 monarchs of western civilization, he is God's Anointed, 
 he rules by Divine Rights It is rarely the case, as in 
 India, that a priestly caste maintains the supremacy 
 and guarantees the authority of the king, as it were, 
 from above and not from below. But under whatever 
 form, the tendency of this kind of social order is to 
 transmute force into authority. The king governs, 
 it may be, — as in the Chinese theory, — for the good 
 of his subjects, but it is he who knows what is for their 
 good. He is the fountain of justice, the pillar of the 
 social order, the source of every law and ordinance. 
 
 The ideas underlying the social fabric are modified 
 in correspondence with this conception. In the primi- 
 tive community custom was sacred because it was cus- 
 tom, and because of certain sanctions, religious and magi- 
 cal, attending on its violation. In the more elaborate 
 and advanced societies the rule of primitive custom 
 is in some measure broken up. Law is no longer the 
 direct, naive expression of the popular life. It is in" 
 
 '^truth at this stage, what some jurists have mistakenly 
 supposed it to be in its essential nature, a conamand 
 imposed by a superior upon an inferior and enforced 
 
 _by him through the medium of punishment. And 
 it should be understood that the principle of subordi- 
 nation is not confined to the relation of governing and 
 governed; it may run through th^ whole social life. 
 
138 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 We may have a feudal hierarchy of lord and vassal, 
 descending from the king to the lowest subject. We 
 may have a hierarchy of castes, as in India, or we may 
 have an industrial system based on the relation of 
 master and slave, or in the more mitigated form of 
 that of lord and serf, and we may have this principle of 
 subordination maintaining itself in the midst of higher 
 social life in the more or less modified forms familiar 
 to ourselves, in distinctions of class and in conceptions 
 of social, political, or economic inferiority. 
 
 At the same time it should be noted that the trans- 
 mutation of force into authority may have its good 
 side. The absolute monarch may be in fact as well as 
 in name the father of his people. He can often secure 
 a better social order, and even a higher degree of justice, 
 than can be achieved in the primitive society of the kin- 
 dred. The very fact that he is raised above the body 
 of his subjects may enable him to deal with them im- 
 partially ; while by the same supremacy he may over- 
 come the discords of nobles, suppress feudal strife, and 
 weld a great people into a single nation. In such a 
 nation there is a sense of solidarity which allows a 
 higher principle to come into being, of which we shall 
 speak a Httle later on. 
 
 But observe first that the authoritarian order has 
 its own moral code, a code which is not perfect, but by 
 no means to be despised. If the superior has privileges, 
 he has also duties. According to the Chinese teachers, 
 the emperor is the last person in the state to be con- 
 sidered. In Ancient Babylon a nobleman, who was 
 tormented by evil spirits, was asked by the exorciser 
 among other things, whether he had done his duty to 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 139 
 
 his dependents, whether he had bound men who should 
 have been free, or left those in prison whom he should 
 have liberated. In Ancient Egypt kings and governors 
 never fail to take credit to themselves in funeral in- 
 scriptions for their beneficence and kindness of heart 
 to those whom they had ruled. Of the duties that are 
 inculcated under this head by the higher religions it is 
 needless to speak. All that must be said is that, excel- 
 lent as these qualities are, they are relative to a social 
 system which creates the necessity for them by its 
 own inherent defects. Benevolence is beautiful, but it 
 is not based on justice, nor is the ''Lady Bountiful" 
 the last word of progress in ethics and civiUzation. 
 Religion and ethics, like government, have their ''au- 
 thoritarian" phase — the phase in which they are con- 
 ceived as imposed from above and embodied in a 
 hierarchy, and in which their most characteristic teach- 
 ing is to inculcate the virtues of meekness and obedi- 
 ence on the one side, and on the other gentleness and 
 forbearance in the use of that power which they con- 
 secrate with lawful authority. 
 
 The Principle of Citizenship 
 
 The authority of the superior is not the only method 
 of organizing a large territory and maintaining order 
 and harmony among a large population. There is an 
 alternative known to the civilized, though hardly to 
 the savage and barbarian world, in which the relation 
 of government and governed are in a manner inverted. 
 (The people, or at any rate the citizens, are the state. 
 The government is their servant rather than their mas- 
 
\ 
 
 140 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 f ter, and its members are as much bound by law as the 
 
 humblest subject of the state. The social bond in this 
 case may often be reinforced by a somewhat vague and 
 extended sense of relationship, by a common language, 
 and by all the complex relations, so difficult to define 
 and analyze, that constitute a common nationality. 
 But the civic bond as such is not the same thing as 
 the link of language or nationality. It consists essen- 
 tially in a certain reciprocity of obligation as between 
 the individual members of the state, and also as be- 
 tween the state and its members; In some respects 
 the state — to give that name to the social union based 
 on citizenship — resembles the earlier commune. Its 
 government, its laws and customs, come again into close 
 relation with the actual life and character of the people. 
 Law is no longer a command imposed by a superior, but 
 an expression of the will of those who will obey it. So 
 far as the principle of citizenship is carried through, there 
 is a return to a certain equality among members of 
 the state, replacing the hierarchical order of the authori- 
 tarian society, and recalling the equality of primitive 
 times. But the resemblances are analogical rather 
 than morphological. There is all the difference in 
 the world between an equality which rests on a 
 recognition of reciprocal obligations overriding pre- 
 eminence of power, and one which subsists merely be- 
 cause no power has risen to an eminence which could 
 disturb it. There is no less difference between a body 
 of custom which expresses the life and character of a so- 
 ciety, — in the sense that it forms the framework sub- 
 sisting unchanged through ages into which each new gen- 
 eration fits itself automatically, accepting what it finds 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 141 
 
 without question, — and the laws which a changing and") 
 developing society makes and remakes with a conscious J 
 sense of its needs. There is no less difference between 
 the member of a clan whose rights and responsibilities 
 are fixed by his place in the clan and the individual 
 who can shape his own life and whose rights and respon- 
 sibilities are determined principally by his own actions 
 and agreements. The fully responsible individual, on 
 ^he one side, and the legislative government expressing 
 the will of the majority, on the other, are the charac- 
 teristics of the state. 
 
 Now the principle of citizenship may be carried out 
 with very varying degrees of thoroughness. It is com- 
 plicated by questions of kinship, race, and nationality, 
 and it is in practice blended in greater or lesser degree 
 with the principle of authority. Further, the life of 
 the state depends a good deal on the area which it 
 covers, and is gravely affected by its external relations. 
 These considerations go far to determine the actual 
 character, the forms, and the life of the state as we see 
 them in history. The earliest form of the state known 
 /to us is the city state of ancient Greece. Here the 
 ! typical state was a fortified town of moderate and often 
 , of very small dimensions according to our standards, oc- 
 cupying a strong position in a strip of territory belonging 
 to and cultivated by its citizens. But even in this small 
 community the principle of citizenship was not pushed 
 through. In most states a considerable part of the pop- 
 ulation were either slaves, as at Athens, or formed a ser- 
 ^vile caste like the Helots at Sparta, and whatever rights 
 were secured to the slaves by law, custom, or religion, 
 they were certainly in no sense citizens. 
 
142 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 So far the despotic principle remained vigorous and 
 living within the system of the free community. But 
 in many states there were further gradations among 
 the free men themselves. There were close oligarchies, 
 like those of Thebes and Sparta, to whose members 
 alone the privileges of government were confined, while 
 the rest of the population, though personally free, 
 like the Spartan Perioeci, or the Roman plebs, were 
 citizens only in the passive sense. Yet we should 
 not deny the name of state to these oligarchical repub- 
 lics. The difference that separated them from the 
 slave-holding democracy of Athens was more one of 
 degree than of principle. The circle of the aristocracy 
 formed internally a true state, but a state which had 
 dependents which it governed despotically. The break^ 
 ing down of class barriers and the extension of political I 
 and civic rights which makes up a large part of the 
 history of Athens, of Rome, and of modern European 
 -nations is simply a development of the principle of 
 citizenship at the expense of the principle of authority, 
 until ideally it is extended to all permanent residents^ 
 in the territory. 
 
 The city state of the ancients proved incapable of 
 expansion. Democratic Athens governed her short- 
 lived empire with reckless despotism, and the jealousies 
 and resentments which she excited ruined the noblest 
 city of Greece. The extension of the Roman suffrage 
 as Rome consolidated her conquest was a beneficent 
 admission of a wide circle to civic rights, but reduced 
 the constitutional machinery of Rome to a farce. 
 Citizens from all parts of Italy could not meet in the 
 forum to elect consuls or pass a law, and the representa- 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STAJE 143 
 
 tive method was not thought of till the Republic was 
 already dead. I will not speak here of the medi£eval 
 city states, with their checkered but often glorious 
 history, but will pass at once to the country states of 
 the modern world, and will confine myself to noting two 
 points of difference. Through the principle of repre-j/^ 
 "sentation, and often aided by the consolidation pre- 
 viously effected by an absolute monarchy, the modern 
 state has largely solved the problem of uniting large 
 areas and great populations on the basis of common 
 citizenship ; and owing to the disappearance of slavery 
 "and serfdom among white peoples has had no such sharp 
 demarcations of free and unfree to overcome. Hence 
 within its borders the principle of citizenship is in a 
 fair way to be carried to its conclusion. Yet the old 
 problems revive /^it in a new form. On the one hand, 
 "modern economic conditions engender inequalities of 
 wealth and foster forms of industrial organization which 
 constantly threaten to reduce political and civic equality 
 .to a meaningless form of words. On the other hand,' 
 within its borders the state through its very size finds 
 itself frequently confronted with problems of race 
 and nationality, which sometimes threaten its funda- 
 'mental principles, while without it is usually encumbered 
 with dependencies, to which it seldom scruples to add 
 when occasion serves. Of the economic problems I 
 shall speak later, but on the question of dependencies 
 and of nationality a word must be said as bearing 
 directly on the principles of government. 
 
 The conquest of a territory by force and its retention 
 without regard to the wishes of the inhabitants is of 
 course in flat contradiction with all the principles of 
 
144 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 citizenship. The democratic state which sends an 
 autocratic governor to rule a great dependency is 
 employing two distinct methods of rule, one for use at 
 home, the other for use abroad. My own country mayl 
 / be regarded internally as a qualified democracy. The 
 / British Empire as a whole is as much an oligarchy I 
 { as Sparta. The Indians are its Perioeci, and perhaps | 
 \ the Kaffirs its Helots. The government of white J 
 people by this method has, however, been abandoned. 
 I It was virtually destroyed by the American Revolution, 
 and the renewed experiment in this direction may be 
 said to have been brought to a conclusion when au- 
 tonomy was extended to the Transvaal and the Orange 
 ^ Colony. The despotic principle tends now to coincide 
 / with the color line, and much of the future of the 
 modem state, particularly of my own country, must 
 depend on the relation of the white to the colored and 
 non-European races. Until the rise of Japan as a mod- 
 ern power, it was almost universally believed that the 
 characteristics of European civilization were a monop- 
 oly of race, and that whether we liked it or not, non- 
 European peoples were forever destined to a type of 
 civilization and a form of government totally dif- 
 ferent from ours. Probably the greatest social change 
 now in progress in the world is the rise of a new 
 spirit in the East which altogether repudiates this view, 
 and the reaction of these changes upon the West 
 will, I am convinced, if met in a statesmanlike spirit, 
 be bracing and beneficial. We are not, however, con- 
 cerned with speculation as to the future. We have only 
 to note the fact that as it stands the principle of citizen- 
 ship is crossed in the empire states of our own time with 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 145 
 
 that of the authoritative government of dependencies/^ 
 and that this fact has important reaction on our owi 
 _domestic constitution. We cannot deny principles 
 of Uberty to Orientals, or for that matter to Zulus, and 
 yet maintain them with the same fervor and conviction 
 for the benefit of any one who may be oppressed among 
 ourselves. We cannot foster a great bureaucratic 
 class without being impregnated at home by its views 
 of government. We cannot protect a great dependency 
 from without except b^ remaining a great military 
 and naval power ; and to all these necessities our own 
 body social must accommodate itself. 
 
 Mutatis mutandis, the same remarks apply to the 
 foreign relations of the modern state. More and more, 
 as means of communication multiply, the fate of each 
 state is bound up with that of others, and the attitude 
 of hostility still characteristic of the modern world 
 threatens the healthy internal development of each 
 member of the community of nations. If a nation may 
 sometimes be consolidated by fear of an aggressor, it 
 is consolidated as an armed camp, and its military 
 organization tends to bring it back to the authoritarian 
 form ; the taxable resources of the community are ex- 
 pended on the means of defense or aggression ; and the 
 interests of the public are diverted from the improve- 
 ment of social relations, not by wars, but by ever- 
 renewed rumors of war. On this side, then, the 
 development of the civic principle seems bound up 
 with internationalism, and with a readjustment in the 
 great empires of the relation of governing state and 
 dependencies. 
 
 Within the state is apt to arise the even more dif- 
 
146 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 ficult problem of nationality. It is in this form that 
 the principle of kinship is mainly to be reckoned with 
 as a poUtical force in the modern world. Nationality^I 
 indeed, is not properly a matter of race. Most of 
 the bodies of people which feel themselves to be nations 
 are of highly complex racial origin. Yet the sentiment 
 of nationality is confessedly analogous to that of 
 kinship : it is a natural unity stronger in the fact 
 than in the logical analysis, a composite effect of lan- 
 guage, tradition, religion, and manners which makes 
 certain people feel themselves at one with each other 
 \ and apart from the rest of the world. Pride and self- 
 respect are closely bound up with it) and to destroy a 
 nationality is in a degree to wound the pride and lower 
 the manhood of those who adhere to it. Analyze^ 
 it away as we may, it remains a great force, and those 
 states which are rooted in national unity have in them 
 a great living power which will carry them through much 
 adversity. But few states are fortunate enough to be 
 one in nationality, and the problem of dealing with the 
 minority nation is the hardest that statesmen have 
 to solve. Clearly it is not achieved by equality of fran- 
 chise. The smaller nationality does not merely want 
 equal rights with others. It stands out for a certain 
 life of its own. The endeavor to suppress it ends 
 invariably in the withholding of some of the general 
 civic rights which are fundamental to the state system, 
 and in this sense unreconciled nationalities are a standing 
 danger to the civic principle. To find the place for 
 national rights within the unity of the state, to give 
 scope to national differences without destroying the 
 organization of a life which has somehow to be lived 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE STATE 147 
 
 in common, is therefore the problem which the modern 
 state has to solve if it is to maintain itself. It hasr 
 not only to generalize the common rights of citizenship 
 as applied to individuals, but to make room for diversity 
 and give scope for collective sentiments which in a 
 measure conflict with one another. How far it will 
 succeed is again matter of speculation, and as such 
 beyond the subject of our immediate inquiry, the object 
 of which is merely to indicate to what extent the prin- 
 ciple of citizenship has" in fact been carried in the 
 modern world and what are its principal limitations. 
 
 If we put together the heads of this necessarily rough C\. , 
 sketch, we can, I think, trace the lines of a significant ' — - 
 development. At the basis we have the ties of kinship 
 engendering the close association of the small local group / 
 and at a higher stage of the firmly knit clan, within the JU 
 somewhat larger but looser unity of the tribe. Such 
 associations may have much vital force, compactness, 
 and endurance, but they are narrow and in proportion 
 to their strength tend to be hard, self-contained, and 
 mutually hostile. They are, moreover, adapted only to 
 rude economic conditions and a rudimentary condition 
 of the arts of life. Hence, they yield with advancing 
 civilization to the rule of force by which, in the guise of 3 
 kingly authority, far larger aggregations of men can be 
 held together and a more regular order can be main- 
 tained. In this change there is loss and gain, gain in the 
 development of order, loss in the suppression of much 
 that is essential to humanity. On the other hand, the 
 principle of citizenship renders possible a form of union 
 as vital, as organic, as the clan and as wide as the em- ^ 
 pire, while it adds a measure of freedom to the constitu- 
 

 
 148 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 ent parts and an elasticity to the whole which are pe- 
 culiarly its own. Further, when pushed to its conclusion, 
 it reveals the possibility of a world state in which the 
 constituent groups, as well as the constituent individuals, 
 would have legitimate scope for self-development. To 
 
 ''^say that such a state is actually in the making would 
 be rather to give utterance to a sanguine view than to 
 rehearse the indubitable facts which are the subject 
 
 ^matter of science. But to say that the modern world as 
 it stands affords the conditions rendering such a state 
 possible, and that there are important factors in the 
 social mind working towards it is to keep within the 
 
 '^limit of fact. Now we cannot say of humanity as a 
 whole that it began with the system of kinship, passed 
 into that of authority, and ended with that of citizen- 
 ship. At most this might be said of certain societies, 
 and of these the civic societies of antiquity lost their 
 
 ^^preeminence and fell into decay. What we can say is 
 that the system of kinship is dominant in the lower and 
 earlier stages o# culture, that the system of authority is 
 characteristic of the advance towards civilization, and 
 that of citizenship of the higher civilization. It is, of 
 
 ^course, possible that the civic systems of the present day 
 may decay like those of antiquity, but taking it as it 
 stands, the characteristic modern state, with all its im- 
 perfections, exhibits the most complete reconciliation 
 yet achieved on. the large scale of social cooperation 
 with the freedom and spontaneity of the component 
 individuals, localities, and nationalities. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Evolution and Progress 
 
 The evolution of the state sufficiently illustrates the 
 general character of the movement with which we have 
 to deal, and the difficulties which it presents to the 
 inquirer who seeks to determine its direction and extent. 
 On the one hand, the movement is not direct, but emi- 
 nently tortuous. This in two ways. Even if it were 
 true that humanity as a whole, or every distinct human 
 society, passed through the three phases that have been 
 distinguished, it would be impossible to conceive the 
 development as the working out of a single principle. 
 On the contrary, the order and the extension introduced 
 by the principles of force and authority tend to cancel 
 and obliterate much that is distinctive and vital in the 
 simpler life of clan and commune, while the principle of 
 citizenship is opposed in fundamentals to that of force. 
 The utmost that can be said is that the civic state can in 
 its fullest and widest development make a synthesis of, 
 the elements contributed to social life by the earlier f ormsj 
 of organization, and can make use of them for its own 
 ends and subject to the control of the ethical conceptions 
 on which it rests. So far, we might conceive the modern^ 
 fstate as emerging out of earlier forms by a union of ' 
 1 elements which in them were divided and therefore one- 
 ; sided. But we could not possibly ascribe such a syn- 
 ^ thesis to any inherent historic tendency in the nature of 
 
 149 
 
150 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 society as such. For we find no regularity in the matter. 
 Many societies have never advanced beyond the prin- 
 ciple of kinship ; many others remain organized on an au- 
 thoritarian basis. The state has come into existence 
 several times, and in very different forms, and has sel- 
 dom if ever been based on the pure principle of citizenship 
 consistently applied. There is not, in fact, one move- 
 ment, but many movements, and these impinge on one 
 another, sometimes perhaps to reinforce one another, 
 but more often to deflect or even to cancel. The ut- 
 most we can say of the whole is that when all is summed 
 up there has been a resultant movement which has in 
 /fact given us the modern state as the dominant type of 
 society in the dominant peoples of the modern world. 
 
 But this does not end the matter. The modern state 
 is not a fixed and crystallized type, exhibiting a single 
 principle of construction consistently carried through. 
 On the contrary, our account of it could not be carried 
 beyond the most elementary abstractions without refer- 
 ence to a host of unsettled questions. The state as we 
 know it is not a solution, but a problem, not a fixed point 
 that has been attained, but a movement. Its history 
 ends for us in a question. This question, moreover, in- 
 volves a philosophy, and that alone would explain why 
 the study of the facts in sociology forces us, even against 
 our will, into philosophical inquiries. 
 
 Now if we were to take other departments of social 
 evolution, we should find very similar results. Sup- 
 pose, for example, we were to take the idea of justice, 
 and consider it first on the side of the treatment of the 
 offender. We should find the idea of suppression operat- 
 ing in a few exceptional cases from a very early stage, 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 151 
 
 and extending itself in close connection with the growth 
 of the principle of authority into a theory of punishment, 
 tending to become more severe and even more brutal 
 as the social order consoUdates itself, but finally beginning 
 to yield to principles of prevention and cure as the au- 
 thoritarian conception gives way to that of common 
 citizenship. Side by side with this line of development, 
 we should find the idea of retaliation, at first distinct 
 from that of suppression^ and then blending with it to 
 sharpen the point of vindictiveness in punishment, and 
 then again confined within the limits of compensation or 
 restitution. Once again the history, by no means simple 
 or straightforward in itself, would end in the imperfectly 
 solved problems of criminology. Or we might take jus- 
 tice in its other and milder aspect, as the means of main- 
 taining right and redressing wrong ; and here we should 
 note how redress from being a matter for the injured in- 
 dividual, becomes a concern of the kindred and the clan, 
 and finally of the impartial authority of law and govern- 
 ment. So far the element of progress is sufficiently 
 clear. But if we turn to the question what rights so- 
 ciety acknowledges and enforces, we should come once 
 again on great irregularities of development. The 
 equality of primitive society gives place to a hierarchi- 
 cal subordination as the authoritarian principle devel- 
 ops, while this again yields to a reestablishment of equal 
 rights in correlation with the principle of citizenship. 
 But, once again, we should end in a series of questions. 
 What does equality mean ? Is it a logically coherent, 
 practically workable conception ? How is it to be de- 
 fined, and is it in effect realized under modern conditions? 
 Thus the actual movement of society is both irregular 
 
152 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 and incomplete. It yields no assured social harmony. 
 The question is whether it does, upon the whole, tend to 
 realize the conditions out of which when complete a 
 harmony would emerge. Is there among the changes 
 that we note a gradual evolution of these conditions, 
 or is an advance in one respect, at one period or in 
 one society, balanced by losses in other respects, at other 
 periods or in other societies ? The answer is not simple, 
 but upon the whole it is in one respect negative and in 
 another positive. Progress so conceived is not continu- 
 ous, but within the area covered by our investigation it 
 is real, and in fact fundamental. 
 
 Thus, if we compare the first and last terms of the 
 series, we recognize a series of changes of fundamental 
 importance for the advancement of true social coopera- 
 tion. We note first the extension of order, the widening 
 of the social unit from the primitive local group outwards, 
 until for certain purposes it begins to extend itself to 
 the whole of mankind. We note next the increased 
 firmness and solidity of this order, the evolution of im- 
 partial justice, which is the basis of all healthy social 
 union, and its extension till it grasps the whole of the 
 community under a common rule. We find the concep- 
 tion of a comjnon life advanced by the destruction of the 
 manifold forms of group morality, giving place to the 
 principle of full membership of the extended community 
 for all who dwell within its borders. We find at the same 
 time a more hberal provision for the free movement 
 and spontaneous effort of the constituent parts of the 
 community, giving concrete reality to the principle that 
 the most stable order is that which is based upon free- 
 dom. We find a more general enforcement of mutual 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 153 
 
 forbearance, combined with a wider and richer develop- 
 ment of mutual aid. Such are some of the results 
 which strike us when we compare the highest with 
 the lowest terms of our series. When we look at the 
 intermediate terms, we see that the process of advance is 
 not simple and continuous. We have repeatedly seen 
 that development in one direction has entailed arrest in 
 another. We have seen, for example, that the familiar 
 antithesis between order and liberty is not wholly desti- 
 tute of historical justification. We have seen that the 
 rise and extension of authority might destroy much of 
 the rude vigor of a simple community, or at a later 
 stage extinguish the Ught of civic freedom. Similarly 
 we can see how the maintenance of order may be 
 secured by harshness of procedure and cruelty in pun- 
 ishment. We can see how the growth of society may 
 foster inequaUty and depress the position of those who 
 do its manual work ; at the same time we can see how 
 with the growth of the social mind there comes a con- 
 scious effort to rectify these evils. We see in a word, 
 that, while certain essential conditions of harmony have 
 been realized, the problem as a whole has not been 
 solved. The work of progress is on every side un- 
 finished. It is not a crystallized product, but some- 
 thing left in solution. 
 
 By extending our investigations very similar results 
 could be shown to obtain over a wide range of human 
 activity in thought, in religion, in law, in ethics, in poli- 
 tics, and in industry. We cannot say that each institu- 
 tion passes continuously from lower to higher phases. 
 We can say that at each point in the range of survey we 
 find forms implying a germinal condition of the social 
 
154 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 mind, and forms implying the relative maturity of the 
 social mind ; we can say that the low forms coexist in 
 the societies which appear nearest to the primitive type 
 of human life, and that in the characteristic modern 
 societies, notwithstanding all imperfections, the highest 
 types coexist, some in maturity, others in process of for- 
 mation. We can show that, while at certain stages there 
 is opposition between one condition of development 
 and another, — which is a chief cause of the irregularity 
 which we find, — in the long run and at a greater depth 
 there is harmony, and this harmony asserts itself the 
 more as the development of the social mind proceeds. 
 We are thus able at once to understand the slowness and 
 uncertainty of social progress and to establish the con- 
 ception of its ultimate reality, on the level, at any rate 
 of a hypothesis which conforms to a wide range of fact. 
 I must not now attempt to cover this range in detail. 
 Our time will be better occupied with the further con- 
 sideration of the problems that have already emerged. 
 But I must glance for a moment at the development of] 
 knowledge and thought. This development, observe, 
 is essentially a social phenomenon, depending as it does * 
 on the power of each generation to make use of the ac- 
 cumulated results of its predecessors. And as its causes 
 are social, so also are its effects. It is from our present 
 point of view simply the effective and essential psycho- 
 logical basis of the intelligent direction of life. This 
 result is most obvious in its bearing on industrial devel- 
 opment, where we readily trace the steps, becoming larger 
 and more rapid as they proceed, towards the subdual of 
 external and physical conditions to human needs. But 
 in the deeper regions of thought and philosophy and in 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 155 
 
 religion we can point to a corresponding development 
 less easy to formulate in terms which will avoid all con- 
 troversy, but not on that account less significant. The 
 comparative study of ethico-religious thought reveals 
 an inner movement that corresponds in the main with 
 the more outward changes and institutions which have 
 been sketched, and justifies us in referring them not to 
 changes of outward circumstance, but to the genuine 
 growth of social mind. It shows how the vital impulse 
 of human thought on this side becomes at once more 
 personal and more social, more personal in that it is 
 recognized that both religion and ethics must be spon- 
 taneous and self-chosen if they are to be sincere, more 
 social in that the ideal of life and duty which they uphold 
 comes to be more and more consciously dominated by 
 the conception of the individual as a member and a ser- 
 vant of the single society of mankind. On this side, in 
 fact, comparative investigation bears witness to a grad- 
 ual revaluation by which the social import of action and 
 of character, from being an unrecognized and indirect 
 condition, emerges into the position of the acknowledged 
 ultimate standard of our judgments of what is good or 
 bad, right or wrong. The full discussion of this develop- 
 ment would lead us into fundamental questions which lie 
 beyond our limits. I will only say this much. The 
 turning-point in the evolution of thought, as I conceive 
 it, is reached when the conception of the development of 
 humanity enters into explicit consciousness as the direct- 
 ing principle of human endeavor, and, in proportion as 
 the phrase is adequately understood, is seen to include 
 within it the sum of human purpose in all its manifold 
 variety. In particular, it can be seen to be the concep- 
 
156 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 tion necessary to give consistency and unity of aim to the 
 vastly increased power of controlling the conditions, ex- 
 ternal and internal, of life, which the advance of knowl- 
 edge is constantly yielding to mankind. 
 
 With regard to the interpretation of historic progressT^ 
 then, our case stands thus. On the one hand, we have 
 traced in the history of institutions the gradual realiza- 
 tion of the conditions fundamental to true and full 
 social cooperation. On the other hand, in the history of 
 thought we can trace the extension of the rational control 
 of life leading up to the conception of the social develop- 
 ment of humanity as the guiding principle of effort. 
 But if this is so, we have arrived at a point where the 
 devious lines of social progress converge, and that is the 
 point at which they become united by entering into 
 the consciousness of mankind. If we put the question, i 
 ''What is the actual result of historic progress?" the 
 answer is in outline sufficiently clear. Progress has ; 
 consisted in the realization of the conditions of full 
 social cooperation and in the extension of the rational ■ 
 control of life. But the whole of the advance actually ; 
 realized now assumes the aspect of a merely preparatory ^ 
 stage. For it culminates, as its lines converge, not in a 
 sense of completeness, but in the formation of a purpose 
 — the purpose of carrying forward consciously and un- 
 swervingly that which has gone on in unconscious, broken, 
 and halting fashion, the harmonious development of the; 
 social life of mankind. 
 
 This result enables us to deal with a problem of the 
 first importance to sociological method, and that is why 
 I have been obliged to refer to it here in a fashion so 
 cursory as to do little justice to its value. To under- 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 157 
 
 stand the problem, we may suppose a critic to argue in 
 this way. " I will grant you," he may say, " for the sake 
 of argument, that you have established a certain meas- 
 ure of social progress as a realized fact. But what 
 does it prove? You have by no means shown that 
 progress is the law of Ufe. On the contrary, by your 
 own admission, it is not even continuous within the area 
 that you have examined. It comes in occasional spurts, 
 succeeded by epochs of stagnation and decay, and if, on 
 the whole, the successive spurts have carried modern 
 society a little further than earlier societies, what is this 
 to teach us as to the future? You yourself draw a 
 clear distinction between the trend of evolution as an 
 observable fact and a law of evolution resting on the 
 permanent conditions of social life. The results of your 
 comparative investigation may have given us the former, 
 but they cannot yield the latter, which is what we 
 really want to know. You also yourself distinguished 
 the question of fact from the question of value. You 
 showed that to prove that society has moved or is mov- 
 ing on certain lines is nothing to the point if we would 
 wish to know whether it is desirable that society should 
 move on certain lines. How, then, does the comparative 
 method serve us ? If it neither teaches us what ought 
 to be nor what will be, is it of any use beyond the justifi- 
 cation of a speculative curiosit}^ ? " It is very important 
 to come to an understanding on this point. It affects 
 our whole attitude to the teaching of history, to the study 
 of contemporary movements, and to the method of so- 
 ciological investigation. It will determine whether our 
 method is to be inductive or deductive, whether it is to 
 be analytical or historical, whether it is to be guided pri- 
 
158 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 marily by ethical conceptions or a study of empirical 
 facts, or whether it is to combine these various methods, 
 and if so in what way. 
 
 Now the most succinct form of answer that can be pro- 
 pounded may be put in this way. The study of actual 
 evolution in the past does not suffice to tell us with cer- 
 tainty either what ought to be or what will be, but it 
 tells us what may be. The reply emerges from the 
 results of the investigation itself. For if our account is 
 
 ' correct, it exhibits the social mind as gradually arriving 
 at the point of self-determination, that is to say, at the 
 point at which it becomes master of the conditions in- 
 ternal and external of its own movement. But if this is 
 
 [ so, two results follow. On the one hand, if conditions 
 
 f which in the past have dominated the development of 
 mankind can be intelligently controlled, they will no 
 longer dominate it in the same way. A new and revo- 
 lutionary factor has been introduced, and the course of 
 events in the future will be pro tanto unlike the course 
 of events in the past. On the other hand, the general 
 conditions of progress, though controllable, are still opera- 
 tive. Man is not free to make of himself whatever he_ 
 pleases. The artist who works on a given material 
 may have perfect mastery of his material, but it is a part 
 of his mastery to know what can and what cannot be done 
 with it. Similarly, if we suppose the most perfect insight 
 \ into social conditions and the most complete control over 
 them, the result will be simply the most perfect under- 
 standing of what we can and of what we cannot do. 
 
 ^In particular we want to know whether the social mind 
 can so operate upon the conditions of its existence as 
 to secure a more complete harmony. On this point our 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 159 
 
 comparative inquiry gives us the best materials for a I 
 decision. It shows us, if we are right in our conclusions, j 
 that when all is said and done, the progress made in 
 realizing the conditions of such harmony is real and sub- j 
 stantial. It shows also that the conditions of further ? 
 progress are present. That is to say, it removes the 
 preliminary doubt whether permanent social progress is 
 a genuine possibility in the nature of things. Such a 
 doubt is only too forcibly suggested by many of the un- 
 deniable facts of human history, and of the contempo- ■ 
 
 rary world. It is impossible to shut our eyes to the long > ^ 
 periods of stagnation and retrogression that make up a 
 great part of recorded history. The optimism which 
 sees in the declining ages of the Lower Empire and amid 
 the barbaric anarchy of the Merovingian period nothing 
 but the birth of a higher order does not represent the 
 balanced mood of science. Real loss, deep-seated injury 
 long in the repairing was involved in the break-up of the 
 Roman state, as earlier in the destruction of Greek free- 
 dom and later in the decay of the mediaeval city. No 
 doubt each of these forms of social organization perished 
 through inherent defects, and the order which followed 
 upon them had virtues of its own. By laying stress only ; 
 on the faults of the perishing and the good side of the 
 new, we can nurse an optimistic belief in continuous and 
 inevitable progress. But it is equally open to another, 
 who prefers to nourish a more melancholy mood, to make 
 a reverse selection and contemplate the tendencies to 
 corruption and failure inherent in human affairs. But 
 in sociology more than anywhere else the difference 
 between the scientific and the rhetorical, sentimental, 
 or popular mode of treatment consists precisely in the 
 
I 
 
 160 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 endeavor to look at things as a whole and therefore to give 
 due thought to all sides, to gain as well as to loss, to loss 
 as well as to gain. From such a view, — applied as dispas- 
 sionately as possible throughout the field of human so- 
 ciety as revealed by anthropological inquiry into the 
 condition of uncivilized people, — and by the historical 
 
 V record of civilization, two results appear to me to stand 
 out with sufficient clearness. The first is negative. 
 The theory of continuous automatic inevitable progress 
 is impossible. Assuming that progress means an ad- 
 vance towards an ideal that would. commend itself to a 
 rational judgment of value, it is impossible to maintain 
 that the successive steps which lead from savagery to 
 the civilization of our own day involve point by point a 
 corresponding betterment in the actual life of the people 
 as a whole. The slave or the serf of the middle civiliza- 
 tion compares unfavorably with the free savage, and 
 even the low-grade worker of our own days does not in 
 all respects come happily out of the comparison. With- 
 out any trace of rhetorical exaggeration or of sentimen- 
 tal idealization of so-called natural conditions, we must 
 admit a real and grave loss in certain elements of value 
 when we compare the relative concreteness and human 
 interest of the primitive hunter's life with the mechanical 
 drudgery of the routine of unskilled modern labor. 
 Moreover, even if it were true that every onward step 
 in civilization taken by itself were net gain, it would 
 still be untrue to suppose that humanity as a whole 
 had always gone forward in civilization. The ad- 
 vance has been greater than the retrogression, but 
 there has been true retrogression as well. Free Athens 
 did not perish without leaving the world the poorer. 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 161 
 
 Much was saved from the wreck, but the loss was real, 
 not to be ignored. 
 
 So far the negative view. The positive result that 
 emerges is that once again, when we take the same com- 
 prehensive survey and give full weight to all the con- 
 siderations that have just been glanced at, the advance ' 
 is real, and what is more, it is of a kind to prove the pos- y 
 sibility of a far more substantial and unchallengeable; ^ 
 advance in the future. For the substance of the ad- 
 vance consists precisely in the evolution of a higher and ^f 
 more comprehensive social mind, and when this is taken 
 as the central fact of human progress, all history appears, 
 in Comte^^ p hrasg^ as a preparatory period. It is the 
 record of the growth of mind to the stage of unity and 
 self-consciousness necessary to give it the mastery in its 
 own house. So regarded, the history of the social mind 
 takes its place as the latest, but not by any means the ! 
 last chapter in the still larger history of mental evolu- 
 tion in general, the process by which mind emerged from 
 rudimentary beginnings in the lower organisms to the 
 central position which it occupies in the life of the hu- 
 man individual. As comparative morphology traces the 
 growth of the eye from a pigment fleck sensitive to 
 photo-chemical stimulation to the complex organic 
 structure which ranges earth and heaven, so the com-\\ 
 parative psychologist traces mind from the first stir-' 
 rings of uneasy feeling prompting physical readjust- 
 ments to unpleasant stimulus to the mind that ranges 
 the circle of reality ; and the social psychologist com- 
 pletes the work by tracing the building up of that far 
 larger unity to which the mind of the individual is 
 related as a cell to the brain. 
 
162 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 Now in this view of development the halting, broken, 
 and uneven nature of progress becomes readily intelli- 
 gible. The control of mind is at first very limited. 
 The animal and the primitive human being are for the 
 most part the sport of natural conditions. It is a priori 
 probable that the more advanced type should be swept 
 away over and over again by physical cataclysms, by 
 the superior brute strength of lower animals, or by the 
 mere fecundity of noxious micro-organisms of the lowest 
 type, in a word, by natural selection. Such catastrophes 
 would be most common at the lowest stages ; and in fact, 
 long geological periods passed before the higher types 
 of animal made good their footing upon the earth. 
 Primitive man was subject to fundamentally similar 
 conditions, and we may well believe that the slow ad- 
 vances which we trace through the vast extent of the 
 Paleolithic period were constantly frustrated by the sur- 
 vival of the unfit. If the men of the reindeer period, 
 who drew the mammoth, and with roughly pointed flints 
 carved the horse on bone to the admiration of our eth- 
 nologists, disappeared entirely from Europe, they only 
 met the fate which has over and over again befallen the 
 C^gher type. The victory is not to the best, but to the 
 y'' strongest, and it is not till the best becomes the strongest 
 that it can secure the permanence of its type. But in 
 proportion as the social mind grows, the sphere of its 
 control expands. One by one it becomes master of 
 conditions which previously held it in thraldom. It is 
 progressively less liable to destruction, and the epochs of 
 history grow shorter. In the uncertainty of geological 
 measurements it is useless to speak in terms of thou- 
 sands or tens of thousands of years, but the NeoUthic 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 163 
 
 period is admittedly of short duration compared with the 
 successive stages of the PaleoUthic epoch, and the an- 
 cient Oriental civilizations are again short-lived in com- 
 parison. Yet they too were subject to successive del- 
 uges of barbarism. The Hellenic civilization, with all 
 its wonderful achievement, was nothing but a tiny islet 
 in a world of far lower culture ; and the greatest gift of 
 the ruder but more robust Roman to the world lay in 
 this, that he was civilized enough to recognize Hellenic 
 superiority. Against the massive influences of barbari- 
 zation both within and without the imperial frontiers 
 the best elements of the Greco-Roman culture main- 
 tained a long but losing fight, and the modern history of 
 the West represents a new movement which had the 
 advantage of starting with many vital elements of the 
 old culture preserved through the wreck. The distin- 
 guishing characteristics of our time are that civilization 
 for the first time has the upper hand, that the physical 
 conditions of life have come and are rapidly coming 
 more and more within human control, and that at least 
 the foundations have been laid of a social order which 
 would render possible a permanent and unbroken devel- 
 opment. 
 
 The progress of mind in its lower stages is not arrested 
 by external enemies alone. On the contrary, its own 
 limitations engender diseases which entail arrest, decay, 
 and possible dissolution. The very growth of control 
 over external nature is the root of social inequality. 
 If not its first, it is its sustaining cause. The individual, 
 the caste, the race of higher powers will hold the weaker 
 enslaved to their immediate profit, to the gain of indus- 
 trial civilization, but to the immeasurable loss of much 
 
164 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 beside. The mechanical developments of the eighteenth 
 and nineteenth centuries afford the basis, as I would con- 
 tend, for a wholly new type of civilization, but this 
 possibility is not to close our eyes to the lowering of the 
 standard of life and the mechanizing of great masses of 
 human beings which they have entailed. We may go 
 still further, and maintain with Plato that in the civilized 
 world every form of society perishes by its inherent vices 
 as much as by external assault. Thus, the states of 
 Plato's own time decayed through internal faction, and 
 the narrowness of the spirit of autonomy which forever 
 nipped the shoots of Pan-Hellenic sentiment. The Ro- 
 man state, enjoying a far higher level of political capac- 
 ity, could not reconcile liberty with empire, nor even the 
 stability of automatic rule with the power of the soldier 
 and the vast physical extent of the frontiers. For the 
 modern world there remain problems of reconciliation 
 no less grave, and the question which, must be answered 
 before our view of the comparative security of modern 
 civilization can be finally established is just whether 
 the social thought of our day is sufficiently advanced to 
 solve them. At this point once more the theory of social 
 evolution ends, in the demand for a social philosophy. 
 
 If you have followed me so far, you will readily appre- 
 hend my general answer to the criticisms which I sug- 
 gested. The aim of comparative sociology is to meas- 
 ure the actual achievement of social progress, and its 
 result is to indicate the attainment of certain funda- 
 mental conditions of harmonious development by the 
 maturing of the social mind on many different sides and 
 through numerous assignable phases. This result (1) 
 does not enable us to infer a mechanically inevitable 
 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 165 
 
 continuance of the social movement in any particular 
 department on the lines of the past or of the present, 
 because, if its version of the facts is correct, new factors 
 are coming into existence whereby social history becomes 
 less and less a matter of mechanical necessity and more 
 and more controlled by purposive intelligence. Nor 
 (2) does the history of social progress as such afford a 
 sufficient basis for the social philosophy which it 
 postulates, for such a philosophy consists not in the 
 record of past movements, but in the effort to form a 
 rational and comprehendve purpose to guide the future. 
 None the less the inductive theory of evolution lies at 
 the back of any sound social philosophy, for it is to this 
 theory that we must look for proof that in philosophizing 
 we are not merely beating the air. It is this theory 
 which goes to show that the development of the social 
 mind is a reality; that its growth is the condition of 
 progressive harmony ; that it is where its control of the 
 conditions fails that progress halts ; that the sphere of 
 its control is upon the whole greater in our own day 
 than at any previous time ; and that it has in fine ad- 
 vanced far enough to show that the possibility of a har- 
 monious development of human life is no dream dis- 
 solved by the cold touch of physical science, but a 
 reality to which the entire story of evolution, physical, 
 biological, mental, and social leads up. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Social Philosophy and Modern Problems 
 
 We have said that the history of social evolution ends 
 on every side not in a solution, but in a problem, or if we 
 prefer so to put it, that the solutions so far attained only 
 give rise to fresh problems. This being so, the case for 
 progress rests at bottom on the belief, justified as we 
 suggest by a comprehensive view of a wide range of fact, 
 that we have reached a point at which it is becoming 
 possible to solve the problems of social life by the 
 deliberate application of rational methods of control. 
 But this statement suggests conclusions which will not 
 pass unchallenged. It suggests, for example, an exten- 
 sion of collective action which some will regard as inimi- 
 cal to the liberty, the individual enterprise, the personal 
 initiative which they have been accustomed to regard 
 as the mainspring of whatever progress the world may 
 have seen. And going back to our account of the state, 
 they may bring some of our own arguments to aid their 
 case. For our account tended to show among other 
 things that what differentiated the modern state from 
 earlier forms of society was the increased regard for per- 
 sonal right, for equal justice, for all that is summed up in 
 the conception of Liberty. Here, then, in the relation 
 of the individual to the state we come upon one of the 
 greatest of the unsolved problems and we may fairly be 
 asked to put our social philosophy to the test by in- 
 quiring whether it has any help to give in the solution, 
 
 166 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 167 
 
 Let us first see how the problem has shaped itself to 
 modern thought. It is no novel difficulty. Ever since I 
 have known anything of political controversy in my own 
 jcountry the questi'on of the just limits of the action of the' 
 Istate on the one side and the liberty of the individual, 
 on the other has been matter of lively controversy. 
 It is a point on which the movement of democratic 
 opinion in particular has been irregular, and has been 
 and still is a cause of perplexity to many persons of 
 strong humanitarian sympathies. The older school of 
 English Liberals and Radicals were in general for re- 
 stricting the sphere of the state. This is true not only 
 of the Manchester School, to whom national liberty was 
 the center of all things social and political, but, on the 
 whole, of the Benthamites also, whose utilitarian creed 
 was capable of a quite opposed interpretation. Nor 
 was the tendency to restriction peculiar to the Radicals. 
 In its degree it affected men of all parties. It was the 
 temper of the period from 1832 to 1886. In our own 
 time the position is reversed. It is the democratic 
 element in politics that urges the development of state 
 activity. If we hear protests on behalf of the liberty of 
 the individual, it is generally from the lips of some one 
 who is resisting change. Nevertheless this modification 
 of view is not peculiar to a single party. There is a gen- 
 eral shifting of the balance. The democratic elements 
 have gone furthest, but the whole of society has gone a 
 long way with them. It is generally recognized that the 
 sphere of public responsibility has been enlarged and has 
 to be still further enlarged. The reluctance to assign 
 new functions to the state is a diminishing quantity. 
 
 The extension of the sphere of common responsibility 
 
168 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 may be seen first in the remarkable growth of public 
 control over industrial contracts, arising in the first 
 instance out of actual experience of the working of 
 imrestrained competition. The material prosperity- 
 brought about by the industrial revolution which be- 
 gan to take effect towards the close of the eighteenth 
 century was soon seen to bring a host of new problems 
 in its train. Of these the empjoy ment of young ch il- 
 dren was most pressing, and, notwithstanding the pre- 
 dominance of the laissez-faire principle, an exception 
 had to be made in the case of juvenile labor at an early 
 date. But in the case of children all but the most 
 rigid adherents of laissez-faire were ready to make 
 exceptions. It was clear that children of six or seven 
 could not be regarded as self -determining agents ; they 
 could make no bargain on their own account ; and to 
 regulate the conditions of their work was not to inter- 
 fere with the contract made by the worker, but at 
 worst with the contract made by the parent or the 
 guardian of the worker, and as, in the case of child 
 labor, the guardian was very often no one more nearly 
 connected with the child than a Poor Law official, the 
 case for natural liberty was not a very strong one. 
 The question of women's labor was more difficult, and 
 there have been those, from Mill to some of the cham- 
 pions of feminine equality at the present day, who have 
 stoutly maintained that no restrictions should be im- 
 posed upon women that were not equally binding upon 
 men. This, however, has not been the generally ac- 
 cepted view. It has been more commonly held that 
 women workers were economically in too weak a posi- 
 tion to protect themselves, and that in safeguarding them 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 169 
 
 the state was not to be regarded as interfering with the 
 natural Uberty of the fully responsible individual, but 
 rather as exercising a duty of tutelage over a class of 
 persons unable adequately to protect their own interests. 
 Be this as it may, the employment of women and children 
 in factories gave rise in my own country to a series of acts 
 of continually increasing stringency for the regulation of 
 the conditions of their employment. As long, however, 
 as the ideas of laissez-faire prevailed, such regulations 
 were regarded as exceptional. They were justified only by 
 the economic dependence of the person for whose benefit 
 they were instituted ; they dealt only with certain con- 
 ditions of labor considered to be necessary for health. 
 They did not profess to regulate the whole of the bargain, 
 for they never touched wages ; and though indirectly 
 they did restrict the employment of the male worker, 
 they did not do so professedly or of deliberate intention. 
 In our own time we have seen a great extension of the 
 principle in these two respects. The hours of the adult 
 male worker-have been brought under the regulation of 
 a government department in the case of the railways, 
 and, after a prolonged controversy, the hou rs of miners 
 have been closely Hmited by law. The Miners' Act has 
 special significance in this respect, as it was the point 
 upon which the battle of trade-union versus political 
 action was fought out, both among the trade-unionists 
 themselves and in the wider arena of pubhc controversy. 
 But in recent years the British government has even 
 gone further. It has followed the example of the 
 Australian and New Zealand legislation, and has under- 
 taken to deal not only with the regulation of hours and 
 sanitary conditions, but, in the case of certain selected 
 
170 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 sweated industries, with the rateofjwages itself. That 
 is to say, a legally recogDized authority undertakes to 
 control the entire bargain made by the worker with his 
 or her employer in the industries concerned. Once again 
 the special ground taken on behalf of the trades in ques- 
 tion is the economic helplessness of the worker. But once 
 again we have a principle laid down clearly capable of 
 very wide extension. Though the action of the wages 
 boards is confined to a very small number of selected 
 trades, there are tendencies at work which make indi- 
 rectly for a very much wider extension of public super- 
 vision. The great organized industries have come more 
 and more to trust to collective bargains between em- 
 ployers and employed, arrived at by conciliation boards 
 consisting of equal representatives of both sides, meeting 
 as a rule under the presidency of an impartial chairman ; 
 and where these boards fail there is a growing tendency 
 on the part of the public to demand the intervention of 
 the Board of Trade. Though neither capital nor labor 
 would at present desire or agree to compulsory arbitra- 
 tion, it becomes year by year more difficult for either 
 party to refuse on demand to submit its case to an im- 
 partial tribunal. 
 
 In such ways as these the ground is being prepared 
 for a far wider extension of public responsibility in the 
 matter of industrial regulation. If from the regulation 
 of industry we turn to the provision for poverty , we see 
 an analogous change in public opinion. The Poor Law 
 Commission of 1834 was dominated by the desire to 
 restrict public assistance within the narrowest possible 
 limits. Unwise and irregular forms of pecuniary aid had 
 done much to pauperize the poorer classes, particularly 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 171 
 
 in the rural districts, and experience in this instance told 
 heavily on the side of theory as against public interven- 
 tion. The Poor Law Commissioners clearly conceived 
 that the problem of the pauper was in essentials a prob- 
 lem of idleness, and that to cure pauperism the prime 
 necessity was to stimulate industry and thrift. There 
 seems to have been little question at that time but that a 
 man who would work could find work and work sufficient 
 to support him and a normal family in normal circum- 
 stances. Provision for the poor should on this view be 
 required only in cases (5f disablement, childhood, sick- 
 ness, or overwhelming misfortune. Such cases could in 
 large measure be left to private charity, and where this 
 failed the state should come in, it was thought, only 
 where there was complete destitution, and the test of 
 real destitution was willingness to submit to the re- 
 strictions of the workhouse as a condition of the receipt 
 of relief. Now the actual history of industry since 1834 
 has shown that some of these assumptions can no longer 
 be maintained. With regard to the fundamental ques- 
 tion of employment, for example, the facts have clearly 
 shown that the case is far more complex. Unemploy- 
 ment is due to very various causes; the character, 
 ability, and physique of the worker together undoubt- 
 edly constitute one of them, but as undoubtedly this 
 is not the only one. The actual volume of employ- 
 ment is subject to seasonal and to longer periodical 
 fluctuations, and in times of depression the statistical 
 evidence is clear that large numbers of respectable and 
 hard-working men are thrown out of work through no 
 fault of their own. 
 More accurate information on these and on many 
 
172 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 other causes and incidents of poverty are no doubt 
 largely responsible for the change of opinion. The 
 sweeping character of this change is illustrated by the 
 present movement for the break-up of the Poor Law. 
 The Commission, which issued its report in 1909 was, 
 unfortunately, not unanimous. The majority adhered 
 in the main to the older view, though with a liberal and 
 progressive interpretation ; but an important minority, 
 whose work has met with a very wide response from 
 public opinion, took up an entirely different line. Their 
 object is to eliminate the test of destitution altogether as 
 a condition of relief. They urge that to watch a family 
 sinking by degrees into the depths and to wait until it 
 touches bottom before a hand is held out to help it is 
 neither humane nor economical. They say that the 
 process is most easily arrested at the beginning, and in- 
 stead of public relief to be resorted to as a painful and 
 most undesirable form of cure when the evil is done, what 
 is required is rather public assistance to act as a preven- 
 tive. Instead of seeking to restrict public aid, therefore, 
 within the narrowest possible limits by imposing a more 
 rigid test of destitution, they would rather encourage 
 the cooperation of the individual with the public au- 
 thority. They look on public assistance rather as a good 
 than as an evil, of which men should be encouraged to 
 avail themselves rather than dissuaded from resorting to 
 it. They are not unaware that such a principle might be 
 so misapplied as to weaken the necessary stimulus to 
 personal effort, and they seek to overcome this diffi- 
 culty by suggesting more efficient arrangements for the 
 recovery of the cost of public assistance from those 
 individuals who benefit by it and are in a position to pay 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 173 
 
 for it. Whether this machinery is or is not adequate is a 
 practical question of great difficulty which will have to 
 be very seriously discussed ; but for the moment I am 
 concerned merely to illustrate the evolution of opinion, 
 and I could hardly take anything more significant than 
 the change from the conception of relief as a necessity 
 to be kept within the narrowest possible limits by impos- 
 ing the test of destitution, to the conception of public 
 assistance as a normal incident of life, from which society 
 and the individual may alike be the gainers, and which 
 rests at bottom not on principles of regulated charity, but 
 rather on those of a reciprocal right and duty. Nor 
 is the new principle merely the watchword of a 
 party. It has in substance gained legislative recog- 
 nition. From our present point of view perhaps 
 the most startling departure from old traditions taken 
 by the British legislature in recent times is to be found 
 in the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 ; and what is most 
 remarkable about this act, when considered as an evi- 
 dence of the movement of opinion, is that it was in sub- 
 stance a non-party measure ; both sides freely claimed 
 credit for the initiation of the idea and for the support 
 given to the concrete proposals of the Liberal Govern- 
 ment. Criticism and opposition were indeed heard, but 
 they proceeded from a resolute few who gathered to- 
 gether as a forlorn hope around the standard of older 
 economic convictions, but who, so far as their effect upon 
 public opinion was concerned, were voices crying in the 
 wilderness. The act of 1908 completely threw over the 
 principle of destitution as the basis of a claim to public 
 assistance. It awarded a pension of 5s. a week to all 
 men and women of seventy and upwards in .the enjoy- 
 
174 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 mentof an income of less than £21 a year each/ provided 
 that they were British subjects and that they fulfilled 
 certain elementary conditions of industry and respect- 
 ability. There was, indeed, one provision reminiscent 
 of the older views : persons who should have received 
 poor relief subsequently to the 1st of January, 1908, 
 were to be disqualified from the receipt of a pension ; 
 but this pauper disqualification, as it was called, at once 
 encountered severe criticism, and it was only maintained 
 in the original act on the plea that financial considera- 
 tions made it impossible further to increase the number 
 of pensioners at the outset, and by the incorporation in 
 the act of words providing for the surcease of the dis- 
 qualification on January 1, 1911. The disqualification 
 has accordingly lapsed with time, and from the begin- 
 ning of this year the pension has in fact been available 
 for all persons of respectable standing of the age of 
 seventy within the income limit, unless they are actually 
 compelled to resort to a Poor Law institution by failing 
 to find friends who can take care of them outside. The 
 fundamental character of this change in our system for 
 the relief of the aged has hardly yet received all the em- 
 phasis which it deserves. The tendency of people who in- 
 troduce a great change in a conservative country like 
 England is to minimize the departure from precedent ; 
 but in reality the breach with the past is great, and prob- 
 ably irreparable. The test of destitution disappears ; 
 nor in reality is any other substantial test, as of charac- 
 ter, industry, or thrift, substituted for it. All proposals 
 of such a tendency encountered strong opposition, and 
 
 * Above this income the pension diminishes on a sliding scale till 
 at the limit of £31. 10s. it is extinguished. 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 175 
 
 were in time whittled away to a bare minimum. The 
 principle implied by the new law is at bottom no other 
 than this : that the bulk of the people are so circum- 
 stanced that they cannot be expected to make adequate 
 provision for their old age unaided, and that it is accord- 
 ingly the duty, as it is within the power, of the commu- 
 nity to provide the bare minimum necessary to an inde- 
 pendent life. It is very instructive to consider the argu- 
 ments used against and in favor of this contention. As 
 against the pension system, it is urged, in accordance 
 with the older view, that it is the business of the individ- 
 ual to provide for himself, and that, where the parent 
 has failed to do so, it becomes the duty of the child to 
 support him or her. To this it is replied, as already 
 hinted, that the burden upon the individual was too 
 great to be borne ; that the children would, by the time 
 their parents attained the age of seventy, be themselves 
 as a rule responsible for a family or for other dependents ; 
 that in practice it was found impossible to obtain from 
 them the support that was desired ; that they would in 
 reality do more for their parents if the pension were there 
 as a basis to go upon ; that the old folks, instead of be- 
 ing left to drift into the workhouse, would be honored 
 and welcome guests by the fireside, and that for the in- 
 dividual the motives to thrift would not be weakened 
 nor the springs of industrial activity broken by the pro- 
 vision of a bare minimum, to which every one would find it 
 highly desirable to add what he could by his own efforts. 
 It was contended that men did not save for old age be- 
 cause they could not hope to lay by enough to secure for 
 them independence, nor even means of subsistence as 
 comfortable as was provided in the workhouse; but 
 
176 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 that, if they could count on so small a sum as 5s. a 
 week, they would try to add to it another Is. or 2s. or 
 half-a-crown. It was urged, therefore, that, so far from 
 paralyzing, it would tend to stimulate thrift, so far from 
 superseding, it would tend to rekindle the dying embers 
 of filial responsibility. When it was urged that men 
 should at least contribute to the provision for their old 
 age, it was replied that the scanty earnings of a work- 
 man were better devoted to the objects of immediate 
 necessity for the health and efficiency of his family and 
 himself ; and that, if the contributions were to be any- 
 thing more than a sham, the requirement would, in fact, 
 wreck the value of a universal scheme which would relieve 
 the Poor Law of its greatest burden. 
 
 As between these two lines of argument, the facts must 
 decide ; experience must show whether in point of fact 
 the springs of industry are weakened, whether thrift 
 diminishes, whether the family tie is loosened, whether 
 self-respect is undermined. Hitherto none of these evils 
 have been apparent, and though, in the length of time 
 that has elapsed, there has not been sufficient evidence 
 for the formation of any decided opinion, there can 
 be no doubt that public opinion as a whole has ac- 
 quiesced in the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908. 
 ^- One of the arguments in favor of old age pensions is 
 based on the consideration that they give help at a time 
 when the recipient has become helpless ; but old age is, 
 of course, not the only period of helplessness. There are 
 for the poor, and indeed for all of us, properly considered, 
 the years of childhood, when we are wholly dependent 
 on others ; there are the risks of sickness and mutilation 
 by accident; there is the period of incipient old age, 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 177 
 
 when sickness passes into permanent invalidity; and 
 finally, for the working people, there is the recurrent risk 
 of unemployment. Now for all these risks pubUc rem- 
 edies have either been provided or are being actively 
 canvassed and urged upon government by important 
 sections of public opinion. By the act of 1906 the ap- 
 plication of the money of ratepayers to the feeding of 
 necessitous children in schools was permitted, though the 
 adoption of the act was left to the decision of the local 
 authority. With regard to sickness and invalidity, 
 a scheme of insurance is now before Parliament follow- 
 ing upon the lines of the German model and involving 
 at least a substantial provision on the part of the state. 
 With regard to unemployment, the question is one of 
 infinite complexity, and no solution can as yet be re- 
 garded as anything but experimental. But the respon- 
 sibility of the state is more and more clearly recognized. 
 As soon as the figures of unemployment begin to mount 
 up, whether from seasonal causes or owing to periodical 
 depression, there is at once a demand for the public 
 provision of work, and, experience having shown the 
 exceedingly unsatisfactory character of regular relief 
 works, this has tended of late years to take the form 
 of the pushing forward of the ordinary municipal works 
 that are actually required on public grounds in the 
 locality, and the endeavor so to arrange them as to 
 make the period of greatest municipal activity coincide 
 with the times of industrial depression. One of the 
 recommendations of the minority of the Poor Law 
 Commissioners is that this method should be extended 
 so as to form a regular scheme. As the waves of ex- 
 pansion and depression extend roughly over a period of 
 
178 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 about ten years it is proposed, so far as possible, that 
 public works should be laid out in advance upon a ten- 
 years' scheme with a view to dovetailing the expansion 
 of municipal and governmental employment into the 
 depressions of ordinary industry. It is suggested that a 
 figure of about £4,000,000 a year represents the differ- 
 ence between the wages paid in good and those paid in 
 bad years, and that an expenditure of about that amount 
 will go far towards equalizing the fluctuation of the labor 
 market and saving the workman from the anxieties and 
 disasters attendant upon failure to obtain employment. 
 This proposal in itself constitutes a considerable advance 
 in the direction of the public organization and control 
 of the labor market, but it does not stand alone. It is 
 recognized that no such effort would cover all cases, and 
 it is proposed in addition that there should be an assisted 
 scheme of insurance against unemployment, whether 
 working upon the model which Continental experience 
 has made familiar, of subventions to trade-unions or 
 other friendly societies which already give benefit to 
 their unemployed members, or by a new state system, 
 which would be universal and compulsory.^ 
 
 I need not now discuss the rival merits of these two 
 proposals ; I only note both alike involve the princi- 
 ple of largely increased pubHc subvention to the needs 
 of poverty, — involve, in other words, the acceptance by 
 the state of responsibility for a large measure of the 
 risks which the workman has hitherto borne unaided. 
 Beyond this we have the proposal, also urged by the 
 Minority Commissioners, that the labor exchanges, 
 
 * Both schemes are in fact incorporated in the Bill now before 
 Parliament. 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 179 
 
 themselves constituting a new state agency for the pro- 
 vision of employment, should be constituted the center 
 of a machine by which no adult healthy working man 
 or woman would be left without means of support in 
 periods of industrial crises. The machinery of the labor 
 exchange, it is suggested, will when sufficiently per- 
 fected suffice to determine whether there is or whether 
 there is not a real shortage of labor. It will become 
 possible to say of any individual whether he is out of 
 work through his own fault or not, whether he has de- 
 clined reasonable offers, whether he has lost employment 
 through some defect of his own, or whether he is there 
 in attendance at the exchange ready and able to give 
 efficient service but unable to find the man he is to 
 serve. When thus the sheep are parted from the goats, 
 it is said, it will be possible to deal with both classes. 
 The determined idler must not be allowed to prey upon 
 society, he must not go cadging about for odds and ends 
 of useless jobs or for bits of charity; he must not be 
 allowed to keep his wife and children in rags, ill-housed 
 and underfed. The children must be cared for; the 
 mother, if she is doing her duty by them, is doing one 
 woman's work and may fairly claim public maintenance 
 with no possible question of a return. As to the man, 
 he is a fit subject for discipline and restraint. For 
 him a labor colony must be provided, where he must 
 learn to work and gain his discharge as soon as he 
 can prove himself efficient enough in mind and body 
 to stand the stress of industrial competition. On the 
 other hand, for the willing worker who can find no 
 means of maintenance, there must in justice be a 
 different order of treatment. He will have to be main- 
 
180 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 tained, occupation will have to be found for him. 
 It is suggested that if no directly productive occupation 
 can be found, a system of industrial training would 
 be possible, and in this way, among other objects, the 
 means would be provided of bridging over the trade 
 transitions, which are another cause of economic 
 distress. Up to middle life, at any rate, men who 
 are being ousted by a new process might either learn 
 that process or acquire some skill in an alternative 
 occupation. Now, I cannot do justice to these pro- 
 posals on their practical side within the limits of this 
 bare sketch, and I must ask you not to judge of their 
 practicality from the brief references which I have made. 
 I do not suggest that they are all of equal value, or that 
 they need be adopted or rejected wholesale. I mention 
 them to illustrate the trend of opinion, to show you 
 the forces which are at work in England, to enable you 
 to understand the direction in which they are taking us, 
 and to measure the rapidity with which the sphere 
 of collective responsiblity for the welfare of the indi- 
 vidual is being extended from year to year. 
 
 The period under review has witnessed an equally 
 remarkable extension of the functions of the state 
 as the organizer of certain great departments of life. 
 The most conspicuous of these is public education. 
 Within the lifetime of men who still survive the function 
 of the state in education was conceived as being ade- 
 quately discharged by the grant of a few thousands a 
 year in support of voluntary societies for the better 
 education of the poor. Within my own lifetime the 
 state has made itself responsible for the elementary 
 education of three fourths of the community, and from 
 
 V 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 181 
 
 elementary education it has advanced to secondary- 
 education and at least to an active interest in and a 
 modest financial support of education of a University 
 type. Here again the older liberty of the family is 
 impaired by the principle of compulsion, while what 
 earlier thinkers would have regarded as a necessary 
 incident of parental responsibility is taken on to the 
 shoulders of the public by the remission of fees. No 
 more striking illustration of the extension of state func- 
 tions could be given ttian a comparison of the budget 
 of an Education Minister of the present day with that 
 of 1850 or 1860. 
 
 But it is not to be supposed that the extension of state 
 control is indiscriminate, nor is it to be inferred that 
 the essentials of personal liberty have undergone such 
 restrictions as might appear from a bare recital of 
 the facts to which I have referred. If we look to other 
 sides of the national life we see no such movement. 
 There is in England an Established Church and, though 
 it would be true to say that the movement for Dises- 
 tablishment in England has made comparatively little 
 headway during the last generation, it would be impos- 
 sible to find any counter movement that is seriously 
 to be reckoned with. On the contrary, the period 
 which I have had under review has witnessed the 
 Disestablishment of the Irish Church and a lively 
 and determined agitation for the Disestablishment of 
 the English Church in Wales ; while if we look again to 
 the case of education, we see that whereas in all secular 
 matters the increased authority of the state is welcomed 
 on all sides, the smallest attempt to impose anything 
 that can be regarded as a state religion arouses the 
 
182 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 quickest suspicions and is combated with the fiercest 
 resentment. The contrast may suggest that the true 
 interpretation of the modern movement is not to be 
 reached by setting up an abstract opposition between 
 state interference on the one hand and the hberty of 
 the individual on the other ; the question at stake is as" 
 to the kind of Uberty which shall be left to the individ- 
 ual and the kind of responsibility that falls to the com- 
 munity. On this question the thinkers of our timeT' 
 and particularly the great democratic thinkers, take a 
 view very different from that which prevailed in the 
 days of Cobden and Bright. It does not follow that, 
 they value liberty less, though it may perhaps be true 
 that they trust to government more. We may carry! 
 the discussion further by looking a little into the causes 
 of the change of attitude which I have endeavored 
 briefly to describe. 
 
 The intervention of the state in the sphere of eco- 
 nomics may be ascribed in the first plac e very largely to 
 the sheer teaching of experience. Palpable evils resulted 
 from the regime of free contract, and humane men took 
 the only apparent means at hand for combating them. 
 This cause by itself, however, though it might suffice 
 to explain the Factory and Mines Acts, would not cover 
 the whole of the field.-' "^ Looking a little deeper we see 
 an intelligible reason for a far-reaching change of 
 attitude on the part of democratic thinkers toward 
 the state in the series of political changes which have 
 converted the government from an oligarchic consti- 
 tution to one in which the will of the majority can, 
 at least when it is sufficiently resolute and united, 
 obtain its way. The government which the men of 
 
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN PROBLEMS 183 
 
 Bentham's day criticized was something too nearly re- 
 sembling a close and corrupt corporation; it was not 
 distinguished for competence, it was not remarkable 
 for an enlightened and disinterested view of public 
 questions. The prejudice had sunk deep in the minds of 
 reflecting men that the government conducted no busi- 
 ness efficiently, and was seldom to be trusted to attempt 
 such conduct with a single eye to the common weal. 
 The reform of the Civil Service, which has given us 
 probity and efficiency of administration, and the 
 extension of the suffrage, which has given to the mass 
 of the male population the last word on public issues, 
 has necessarily altered the position. The modern 
 writer, if he sjmipathizes with democratic aims, looks 
 at government as a machine which may be used to 
 embody his views and give them legal effect. He has 
 overcome his distrust, he has found that efficiency is 
 possible, and he has come to assume honesty and in- 
 tegrity almost as a matter of course. 
 
 Political changes, then, which have given us constitu- 
 tional democracy, have paved the way for what, if 
 the term were not limited to a rather narrow theory, 
 we might call a social democracy, what we may at 
 any rate call a democracy seeking, by the organized 
 
 expression of the collective will, to remodel society in ac- 
 
 cordance with humanitarian sentiment. Here we touch 
 a third and still deeper cause which must be brought 
 into the account. The period which we have reviewed 
 has witnessed a progressive deepening of humanitarian 
 feeling and of the sense of collective responsibility. 
 The public mind will no longer acquiesce in the sweater's 
 den any more than it would acquiesce in this country 
 
 i4 
 
 :- f 
 
^ 
 
 184 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 sixty years ago in negro slavery. Here we touch a 
 feeling which is not the peculiar privilege of any party, 
 but which is, in its degree, common to all classes, which 
 inspires voluntary effort no less than political agitation, 
 and which underlies not merely the Liberal and Radical 
 legislation of the last five years, but also in its degree 
 the Tariff Reform movement, which is the leading pro- 
 posal of the Conservative or Unionist party. On all 
 
 ^sides men are agreed that problems of poverty, prob- 
 lems of education, problems of physical, mental, and 
 moral efficiency, are matters not merely of individual 
 and private but equally of public and governmental 
 concern. They do not deny the duty or depreciate the 
 responsibility of the individual for himself or of the 
 parent for his family, but they superinlpose upon these 
 a duty of the citizen to the state and a responsibility 
 of the state for the individual. 
 
 f^' Upon the whole, then, we find that if the change of 
 
 i attitude has been sufficiently sweeping it is not alto- 
 gether indiscriminate. There is a great extension of 
 
 \ collective activity, but it does not seem to be attended 
 by a vital loss in the sense of personal freedom. It 
 remains, however, to inquire further whether the two 
 things are at bottom compatible, or whether by 
 advancing farther on the one line we must in the end 
 retreat upon the other. This is the question pro- 
 pounded by the actual movement of opinion to our 
 social philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Individual and the State 
 
 Our task to-day is to examine the movement of opin- 
 ion which has been outUned, in the Hght of social theory. 
 I We held that social progress consists in a harmonious 
 ; development, and we further defined this conception 
 I as including a harmony in the development of the 
 I personal life of the members of society, and in the work- I/' 
 jing out and fulfilment of the various and at first sight 
 divergent elements of value which constitute the well- 
 -being of the social order. In the movement of opinion 
 we have seen a certain conflict of ideals and our question 
 is whether, if we probe deeper, a basis of reconstruction 
 can be found. To find an answer let us take up the 
 question afresh. Let us start with the conception of 
 the social order which the principle of harmonious 
 development would suggest. Let us consider to what 
 view of the functions of the state and the rights of 
 the individual it would lead and let us, in order to ob- 
 serve the limitations of time, deal with the question 
 with special reference to the problem of liberty. 
 
 To begin with, the general theory of society indicated 
 by the ideal of harmonious development is clearly 
 one of cooperation. We may say, with Aristotle, that 
 society is an association of human beings with a view 
 to the good life. The social life is essentially a co- ty 
 operation in the working out of common objects, 
 and the best organized society will be that in which 
 
 185 
 
186 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 the cooperation is most perfect and complete; but 
 in saying this, two distinctions have to be kept in view. 
 In the first place cooperation has its negative as well 
 as its positive side. Mutual aid is essential to social 
 life ; mutual forbearance is equally necessary ; indeed, 
 as a condition of living together, at least of living a 
 harmonious life together, it is even the more funda- 
 mental of the two, and also perhaps the more difficult 
 to secure. In thinking, then, of social life as a forni 
 of cooperation we must lay stress not only upon the 
 activities which it cultivates in common, but on the 
 idiosyncrasies which it tolerates, the privacy which 
 it allows, the divergent developments of personality 
 which it fosters. 
 
 V Secondly, in speaking of the ideal of society, we must 
 remember that social life and the life of the state are 
 not one and the same thing. From the principle that 
 social life is a mode of cooperation we cannot infer 
 offhand that the function of the state is to foster 
 cooperation of the same kind and in the same degree. 
 To determine what functions the state itself has to 
 perform within the cooperative social life, we have to 
 ask ourselves, first, what are the special characteristics 
 of the state as a form of society, and how these spe- 
 cial characteristics affect its function. Two character- 
 istics which affect all state action occur to us at once 
 as bearing upon the question of its legitimate sphere. 
 These are, in the first place, that the life of the state is \ 
 crystallized into the form of definite institutions, that 
 its ordinances have to be incorporated in lai^s and, 
 lilies of universal application, that it must deal with! 
 men in masses and with problems in accordance* 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 187 
 
 iwith what is general and not with what is particular. 
 Hence it is with difficulty adapted to the individuality 
 of life ; it is a clumsy instrument, as it were, for handling 
 human variation. It is inadequate, to adapt Bacon's 
 phrase, to the subtlety of human nature. Its sphere 
 is the normal, the prosaic, the commonplace ; its busi- 
 ness is to solidify the substructure of society rather 
 than to pursue it^ adornment. It can handle the 
 matters upon which ordinary people usually agree bet- 
 ter than those upon which there is variety of opinion. 
 
 In the second place, the state is a compulsory form 
 of association. Its laws have force behind them, and 
 not only so, but the state does not leave it open to 
 the inhabitants of its territory to decide whether they 
 will remain members of the association or not. In a 
 voluntary association there are rules compulsory upon 
 all those who remain members, but the ultimate liberty 
 is reserved to individuals to part from the association 
 if they please. In the case of the state, this ultimate 
 liberty can only be exercised by quitting the state 
 territory altogether, and even that privilege has been at 
 various times denied to the subjects of the community, 
 and is to-day not unhampered with difficulties for the 
 poor. Now it is true that there are important functions 
 which the state can perform without the direct use 
 of compulsion. When government conducts a business 
 enterprise it does not necessarily compel any one to 
 avail himself of its services, nor does it necessarily 
 suppress competition. On this side the question as 
 between the state and the individual is not one of the 
 limits of liberty, but of responsibility.^ But ordinarily 
 
 iSee page 201. 
 
188 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 the intervention of the state action does involve some 
 sort of compulsion upon the individual and in what 
 follows we will confine our attention to cases of this 
 kind. It is not difficult to see that functions may be 
 useful and salutary when freely performed which would 
 be useless and even injurious when imposed on reluctant 
 people. In a sense this may be said to be true of aff 
 moral and spiritual functions in so far as they are moral 
 and spiritual, because when performed under compulsion 
 they lose their moral and spiritual value. It is not to 
 be inferred from this that the state has no moral or 
 spiritual functions. Indeed, its action in certain ca- 
 pacities may be one way, and possibly the best way, 
 of expressing the moral and spiritual interests of its 
 members. It does suggest that its action as a spiritual 
 body can only have value in as far as it is expressing the 
 will of its members, and not imposing a law upon them 
 which they do not freely and voluntarily accept. 
 \, It follows further that the legitimate functions of 
 *^he state must depend upon the whole circumstances 
 of the society which is under consideration. The kind 
 of compulsion that is necessary, the degree of success 
 with which compulsion can be applied, and the reflex 
 consequences of its employment upon the general 
 life of society will depend essentially upon the com- 
 position of the community and the relation of the 
 government to its subjects. For example, in a very 
 homogeneous society, where all the people are of one 
 race, one allegiance, and one religion, there will be a 
 general adherence to the same customs, a general sym- 
 pathy with the same ideals of life, and there will be little 
 difficulty in maintaining laws which could only be im- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 189 
 
 posed upon an alien race by means of extreme severity. 
 
 In such a society, then, the sphere of the state can quite 
 
 usefully be extended to functions which, in a complex 
 
 empire governing men of different nationalities and rival 
 
 religions, will produce confusion and the breaking-up 
 
 of laws. One cannot, then, lay down general rules as 
 
 pto the functions of the state which will apply to all times 
 
 » and places. Our only general rule will be that, seeing 
 
 j that the state is a form of association and is limited by 
 
 the fact that its functions have to be crystallized in 
 
 1 definite institutions, expressed in universal laws and in 
 
 j large measure carried out by the use of compulsion, 
 
 I their sphere must be determined by considering how 
 
 j far the objects of social cooperation can be furthered by 
 
 methods of this kind, or how far, on the other hand, 
 
 the nature of the methods necessary will itself conflict 
 
 l^ith the ends desired. 
 
 In this discussion we have said nothing as yet of the 
 rights of the individual as such, or of the ideal of liberty 
 as itself a fundamental barrier to certain kinds of state 
 action. In fact, this antithesis between the rights of the 
 individual and the welfare of the state, between liberty as 
 such and restraint as such, appears to be a false antithesis. 
 To begin with, if liberty is a social conception, there 
 can be no liberty without social restraint. For any one 
 person, indeed, there might be a maximum of liberty 
 if all social restraints were removed. Where physical 
 strength alone prevails the strongest man has unlimited 
 liberty to do what he likes with the weaker ; but clearly, 
 the greater the freedom of the strong man the less the 
 freedom of the weaker. What we mean by liberty as 
 la social conception is a right to be shared by all members 
 
190 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 of society, and very little consideration suffices to show 
 that, in the absence of restraints enforced on and ac- 
 cepted by all members of a society, the liberty of some 
 must involve the oppression of others. Just as the 
 liberty of the strong man to assail the weak destroys 
 the liberty of the weak man to call his body his own, 
 so — to take an instance from our own contemporary 
 experience — the liberty of the motor-car to use the 
 roads may, and often does, go so far as to impair the lib- 
 erty of any other class of vehicle or the liberty of pedes- 
 trians to use the same road for their purposes. Excess 
 of liberty contradicts itself. In short, there is no such 
 thing; there is only liberty for one and restraint 
 for another. If liberty then be regarded as a social 
 ideal, the problem of establishing liberty must be a 
 problem of organizing restraints ; and thuB-iihe coircep- 
 tion of a liberty which is to set an entire people free 
 from its government appears to be a self-contradictory 
 ideal. Like other contradictory ideals, it has in fact an 
 historical explanation. A community as a whole 
 may cherish the ideal of freedom, and by freedom may 
 mean escape from the whole system of government 
 under which it lives, when that system of government 
 is imposed by an alien power. Thus a subject national- 
 ity or a subject class may claim freedom in a quite gen- 
 eral sense, but it is freedom, if properly understood, not 
 from government altogether but from alien government, 
 not from law as such, but from the particular laws 
 alien to the good of the subject people, which are im- 
 posed upon them from without. In a self-governing 
 people, unless the machinery of democracy is very 
 sadly out of gear, so complete a want of touch between 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 191 
 
 governing and governed can hardly be apprehended. 
 Law and government in such a case must in the main 
 express the character, on the whole forward the collect- 
 ive purpose of at least the majority of the individuals 
 constituting the community. And here arises an 
 important corollary to what has been said above of 
 the ethical basis of state functions. So far as self- 
 government is genuinely realized, state action expresses 
 the combined will of individuals. The desires of the 
 individual citizen may effectuate themselves most 
 fully through state machinery, and in so far as the law 
 and the administration are carrying out the moral 
 will of the majority, so far their action has just as much 
 moral value as though it were performed by the in- 
 dividuals themselves through the agency of a voluntary 
 association. Hence when we trace the growing confi- 
 dence in state action to the advance of democratic 
 institutions we touch a deeper principle than that of 
 the mere political control of the legislative and adminis- 
 trative machine. As long as law could be fairly re- 
 garded as a rule imposed by a superior there was a 
 serious meaning in the antithesis between that 
 which the law did for people and that which people 
 did for themselves. There was point in the demand 
 for self help and the voluntary organization of mutual 
 aid as something intrinsically superior to the parental 
 interference of a superior authority. There was a 
 ground for saying that the former method fostered a 
 manly independence and a ''living^' sense of social 
 responsibility, while the latter was a species of charity 
 which might sap these qualities. But when the reform 
 of the law depends on the deliberate resolve of the people 
 
y 
 
 n 
 
 192 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 themselves, when it is won at the cost of a hard-fought 
 poUtical struggle, by the appeal to reason, by a contest 
 involving widespread earnestness, some self-sacrifice, 
 much serious attention to some social problem and the 
 means of solving it, then the law is no magician's wand 
 helping people out of trouble with no effort of their own. 
 It is the reward of effort. It is the expression of a gen- 
 eral resolve.~it embodies a collective sense of respon- 
 sibility. It is, in a word, something that a mass of 
 people have achieved by their combined efforts for their 
 common ends, just as a well-organized trade-union or a 
 friendly society is an achievement won by combined 
 effort lor common ends. Now this, it may be objected, 
 is an idealized picture of the working of democracy, and 
 I am far from ignoring the seamier side. Nevertheless 
 in so far as popular government succeeds, it does real- 
 ize some elements of this ideal, and just so far the 
 older objection to the extension of the sphere of the 
 law which rests on the danger of weakening the moral 
 fiber loses its strength. 
 
 But we can carry the argument a step further. If 
 liberty is among other things the right of self-expres- 
 sion, this is a right which masses of men may claim 
 When they want the same thing. Majorities will 
 'claim it as well as minorities, and they will seek to use 
 the means that lie to hand for effectuating their claim. 
 Now it may be that legal machinery is the only efficient 
 means for the purpose, and if the members of a majority 
 are debarred from the use of such machinery, their will 
 is to that extent frustrated and their right so far denied. 
 Now there may be good grounds for this denial. It may 
 be better that a majority should be prevented in any 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 193 
 
 given instance from exercising its will. The objections 
 to the use of coercion in somedirfictions may be, and for 
 my part I should agree that they are, so great that it is/^ 
 better that the majority^should fail_to__getJts way. 
 But do not let us shut our'eyesTo'ffiefactthat to insist 
 on this in any case, whether for good and sufficient or 
 for bad and insufficient reasons, is alike to put a re^^- 
 straint on self-expression, and to that extent upon lib- 
 ertyT The liberty of the minority in such a case 
 is (as always) a restraint upon the niajority. 
 
 Two questions, it will be seen, arise from this discus- 
 sion. The first is, what are those matters in which the 
 majority can only find self-expression through the ma- 
 chinery of law? The second is, what are those con- 
 siderations which may legitimately restrain the majority 
 from exercising their power even when as a result 
 their 'prima facie right of self-expression is defeated. 
 
 The reply to the first question is in principle simple 
 enough. Experience shows us that there, jare many 
 things that can be done by individual initiative and by 
 voluntary association, but that there are also many 
 things in which these two agencies fail. A man may 
 worship God as his own feelings dictate without com- 
 pelling others to worship with him. He may associate 
 himself with those who are like-minded. He may form 
 a church where all may worship together after the 
 fashion upon which they are agreed ; and their worship, 
 if it is a worship in spirit and in truth, is none the less 
 hearty, none the less spiritually effective because of the 
 existence of others who frequent different churches or 
 who frequent no church at all. The effective formation 
 of religious organization then does not depend upon 
 
194 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 universal adhesion, and in carrying out their common 
 will, the members of a church have not to depend on 
 securing the cooperation of those who differ from them. 
 Hence, for this reason if for no other, the religious life 
 of a community may be pursued with vigor without 
 calling on the state for support. 
 
 On the other hand, there are many cases in which 
 cooperation, if not universal, is altogether ineffective. 
 Take, as an instance, the question of the early closing 
 of shops. The great majority of employers in a given 
 district may desire to close early, both for their own sake 
 and for the good of those in their employment; but, 
 as every one knows, in the world of competition the 
 refusal of a handful of men, and perhaps even of a single 
 tradesman, to agree to the common desire may wreck 
 the whole intention. U nless the mi nority^can be 
 c omp elled to come in, the majority cannot get their 
 way. In such case it would seem that an end, which the 
 community holds valuable and which the majority of 
 those affected by it desire, is a fair subject for enforce- 
 ment by the common law with its compulsory powers. 
 
 Again, paradoxical as it seems at first sight, it is never- 
 theless profoundly true that there are cases in which 
 the interest not of one man only or of some men, but of 
 all considered individually and temporarily, is opposed 
 to the interest of all considered collectively and per- 
 manently. Thus it is the interest of any individual 
 at any moment to buy what he wants as cheaply as he 
 can. But it is quite possible that a system of free 
 competition catering for the temporary needs of each 
 individual purchaser should have the effect of gradually 
 and imperceptibly lowering the standard of production 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 195 
 
 by substituting cheapness for quality. If so, the pro- 
 cess set up by eachman tollowing his immediateint^Bst 
 may result in a general deterioration of standard 
 whereby in the end the interest of each is less eff ectTvely 
 served. Nor can the i ndividua l stand alone against 
 this process by exercising^ a more far-sighted view. 
 He cannot res ,ist the tendency set in motion and con- 
 stantly propelled by the pressure of immediate interests. 
 It is only concerted action that is effective against the 
 pressure of the mass, and if by such action a higher 
 staniiard_of_g.uanty can be permanently maintained, 
 all are in the end the gainers. To take a slightly 
 different illustration : any man driving a motor-car 
 wants to get on as quickly as he can. The same man 
 when walking may be annoyed or endangered by the 
 speed of other peoples^ cars, but by driving carefully 
 himself he cannot force others to do the same. He 
 can secure his safety only by supporting legislative and 
 general control. Once again : it may be the interest 
 of any particular employer to buy labor as cheaply as 
 possible. He cannot, unless he has exceptional organiz- 
 ing capacity, pay more than others. But i t isjaot to ^ ^ 
 the i nterest o f employer.a^s_ a whol e that the classes 
 from whom their work-people are drawn should de- 
 teriorate in efficiency and lose in purchasing power 
 through low wages and bad industrial conditions. 
 Hence collectively they may be ready to accept reg- ^^ 
 ulations which individually they would be powerless 
 to put in force. 
 
 - The principal sphere of the state then appears to \ 
 be in securing those common ends in which uniformity ^ 
 generally, concerted action, is necessary. 
 
\ 
 
 196 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 On the other hand, purposes which can be secured 
 without compelling the adhesion of those who do not 
 accept them fall naturally within the sphere of in- 
 dividual enterprise and voluntary cooperation. The 
 \ function of the state then is to se£]u:eJhfi_£Qmaion_ends 
 which recommend themselves to the general will and 
 ; which cannot be secured without compulsion. Eut at 
 this point our second question emerges : Is the general 
 ^ill, s upposing that its ends cannot be secured without 
 compulsion, to be entirely unfettered, or are there 
 . some g eneral considerations which might still exercise 
 a restraint in favor of the liberty of the individual? 
 i This brings us to the question on what that liberty 
 I is based. We have seen that each'Tnan's liberty in- 
 volves a restraint upon others, and we are asked to 
 nvo conceive it now as a restraint_ugon society as jijiiQle. 
 v^' y On what grounds is this restraint to be justified ? In 
 . pr ordinary phraseology, it would depend upon the rights of 
 j^/ . the individual, and we have here to ask what is meant by 
 Sy .a right. A right is generally said to be the correlative of *^ 
 *^Ji^^^\ a duty. If I have a right against you, you have some 
 > J^^ duty towards me. The duty may be quite general 
 ^ /'*\ and purely negative in its character. For instance, I 
 have a right to walk along the street without being 
 pushed off the pavement into the mud, and your duty 
 is merely to give me reasonable room. But, whether 
 general or special, we may agree that the rights and 
 duties of citizens form together a system making up 
 as a whole the moral order recognized by society. In 
 this order each duty is, broadly speaking, that which: 
 is expected of the individual ; and each right is that | 
 which the individual expects of some other person or 
 
'^'•-^rri^^' 
 
 Jle^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 197 
 
 of society at large. Generically, therefore, a right is a 
 kind of expectation ; but it is not only an expectation, 
 but an exgectation_iield J:o be justified ; and the im- 
 port^-nt question is, on what^munds^tjiis jjustific^^ 
 is based. In the first place, it may be a legal right, 
 and the justification then lies in an appeal to law. But, 
 in addition, there are, or there may be, rights which 
 the law does not recognize and which the moral con- 
 sciousness holds ought to be recognized. These are 
 the moral or ethical rights of men. The older thinkers 
 /spoke of them as '' natural rights," but to this phrase]* 
 if uncritically used, there is the grave objection that_ 
 it suggests that such rights are independent of society, 
 whereas, if our arguments hold, the re is no mo ral order 
 indeperident_of_-Soaiety and therefore no rights which, 
 apart from the social consciousness, would be recog-^- 
 ^nized at all. Our analysis of the term ''right'' goes to 
 S show that a right is nothing but an expectation which 
 [jv^ill appeal to an impartial person. A may make a 
 claim on B, and B may refuse the claim. The claim 
 only becomes recognized as a right if some impartial 
 third person (C) upholds A in making it, and on what 
 ground can C as an impartial being base his judgment ? 
 As impartial, he is looking at A and B just as two 
 persons equally members of the community with him- 
 self. If there exists a rule recognized by the community 
 which covers the case, no question arises. But we are 
 looking at the case in which no rule exists, and C has 
 to frame his decision on first principles. To what in 
 such a case can he look except the common good? 
 If he maintains as a right a general principle of action 
 incompatible with the good of the community, he must 
 
198 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 hold that what is right is one thing and what is good 
 another, and that not merely by the accidental circum- 
 stances of a peculiar case but as a matter of principle. 
 Unless then we are to suppose such deep-seated con- 
 flict in the ethical order we must regard the common 
 good as the foundation of all personal rights. If that) 
 is so, the rights of man are those expectations which 
 the common good justify him in entertaining, and we 
 may even admit that there are natural rights of man if 
 we conceive the common good as resting upon certain 
 elementary conditions affecting the life of society, 
 which hold good whether people recognize them or not. 
 Natural rights, in that case, are those expectations which 
 it would be well for a society to guarantee to its mem- 
 bers, whether it does or does not actually guarantee 
 them. If this view is accorded, the more developed 
 the conception of the common good the more completely 
 will a society guarantee the natural rights of its individ- 
 ual members. To extend the conception of the rights 
 of the individual will be one of the objects of states- 
 manship ; to define and maintain the rights of its! 
 members will be the ever extending function of govern-J 
 ment. 
 
 Any genuine right then is one of the conditions of 
 social welfare, and the conception of harmonious 
 development suggests that there will be many such 
 conditions governing the various sides of social life. 
 If so the general conception of harmony implies that 
 these conditions, properly understood, must mutually 
 define and limit one another ; not only so, it implies that 
 in proportion as they are properly understood they will 
 be found not to conflict with one another but to support 1 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 199 
 
 Land in the end even necessitate one another. Now 
 it is conceivable that all individual rights, e.g. of person 
 and property, might be brought under the general 
 conception of liberty. But we need not press this point. 
 We may assume that there will be various rights of the 
 individual, of the family, and so forth, which owe their 
 validity to the functions they perform in the harmonious 
 development of society. It is clear too that the 
 effective exercise of the common will is also for some 
 purposes — though for what purpose in particular may- 
 be a matter on which opinion differs — a condition of 
 the same object. Now in general the problem of jsocial 
 philosophy is to define in principle, and of statesman- 
 ship to adjust in practice the bearing of these several 
 .conditions. This bearing is to be understood by con-' 
 sidering their social value, and thus it remains to 
 state in quite general terms the basis of the value of 
 personal liberty on the one hand and of social control 
 on the other. As to liberty in general, since society is 
 made up of persons, we prove its necessity sufficiently 
 if we show that a measure of liberty is essential to the 
 development of personality. And since personality 
 consists in rational determination by clear-sighted 
 purpose as against the rule of impulse on the one side 
 or external compulsion on the other, it follows that 
 liberty of choice is the condition of its development. 
 The central condition of such development is self- 
 <^uidance. We should not oppose self-guidance to 
 guidance by others for the contact with other minds 
 is an integral part of the growth, intellectual or moral, 
 of each mind. But we must oppose it to coercion 
 
 jby external sanctions, which ousts all genuinely ethical 
 
f\ 
 
 200 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 LiJonsiderations and closes the door on rational choice. ] 
 '^Liberty then is the condition of mental and moral/ 
 expansion, and of all forms of associated as well as per- 1 
 sonal life that rest for their value on spontaneous! 
 feeling and the sincere response of the intellect and of! 
 the will. It is therefore the foundation not only oil 
 all that part of life which rests on personal affection, 
 but also of science and philosophy, of religion, art, . 
 and morals. "^ 
 
 To recognize liberty on this side is the duty of the 
 state, but to recognize liberty is by no means to abolish 
 / restraint. On the contrary, it is only by an organized^ 
 system of restraints that such liberty is made availablej 
 for all members of society, for the unpopular opinions 
 as well as the popular ones, for those whose views 
 of life are eccentric as well as for the normal and the 
 commonplace. Even in regard to matters of conscience 
 it is only opinion and persuasion that can be absolutely 
 free, and even here it must be admitted that there are^ 
 forms of persuasion that are in fact coercive, and it is 
 fair for the state to consider how far the liberty of the' 
 * younger or weaker must be protected against forms of 
 h^ temptation which overcome the will. Apart from this 
 
 r 
 
 when opinion leads, however conscientiously, to action, 
 f\ \ • such action may coerce others, and this would bring 
 the state into play in the name of liberty itself. It 
 may, more generally, infringe any right and it is the 
 business of social control to adjust one right to another. 
 This adjustment is simply one part, though one of 
 the most important parts, of the general function of ^ 
 social control. This function may now be defined in 
 general terms as that of securing the best conditions 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 201 
 
 for the common life (a) so far as these are best ob- 
 tained by the use of public resources and governmental 
 machinery, (6) so far as such conditions are only ob- 
 tainable by the use of compulsion; that is to say, 
 jvhere action is frustrated if it is not universal, and again 
 where in the absence of regulation one man can directly 
 or indirectly constrain another, infringe his rights, 
 obstruct his rational choice, or take advantage of his 
 # weakness or ignorance. The first object includes the 
 organization of public services by the state ^ and the 
 provision for all its members of the external conditions 
 of a h ealth y and efficient civic life. To build on this 
 foundation is the work of the individual, and the scope 
 of personality is increased in proportion as the conditions 
 j)f its effective development are made universal. The 
 f extension of the functions of the state in this direction, 
 ■ accordingly, is due not to a diminished sense of personal 
 I responsibility but to a heightened sense of collective 
 esponsibility. The second case includes the laying 
 down of c er^in rule s, as in the adoption of general 
 holidays, where in the absence of legal control a general 
 desire might be thwarted by individual and perhaps 
 quite selfish objections. It covers, again, the regulation 
 of contract where experience has shown that the weaker 
 party to a bargain may be forced to consent to that 
 which, if he stood on equal terms, he would never accept. 
 In both cases as has been shown but particularly in 
 the latter the purpose of control is rather to define 
 
 1 This, as remarked above (p. 187), does not necessarily involve 
 compulsion, and so far does not affect the question of the limits of 
 liberty. It does, however, intimately concern the cognate question 
 of the limits of personal and collective responsibility. 
 
202 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 and enlarge the sphere of liberty than to restrict it. 
 There remains the question of those who are incapable 
 
 fof rational choice, — the feeble-minded or the habitual 
 drunkard, — for whom the value of liberty does not 
 exist. To them society owes the duties of a guardian," 
 and in their case the policy of constraining a man for 
 his own good is no self-contradiction, for the *^ good " of 
 which they are capable is not that of personal develop- 
 ment through the spontaneous action of thought and 
 feeling and will, but the negative one of immunity 
 from the dangers into which their helplessness might 
 lead them. This is the exception proving the rule that"! 
 a normal human being is not to be coerced for his own 
 good, because as a rational being his good depends on 
 self-determination, and is impaired or destroyed by 
 coercion. 
 
 Thus liberty and control are not as such opposed. ^ 
 
 There are bordgrloijid^ases where honest thinkers must 
 
 allow conflict to be possible, e.g. the conscientious re- 
 
 V fusal of a Friend to render military service judged to be 
 
 necessary for the safety of the community. But the 
 
 ' value of liberty is to build up the liieo f tt^Q , mind, while 
 
 \the value of state control lies in securing the external 
 conditions, including the mutual restraint, whereby the, 
 life of the mind is rendered secure. In the former 
 sphere compulsion only defeats itself. In the latter 
 Hberty defeats itself. Hence in the main the extension 
 of control does not impair liberty, but on the contrary 
 is itself the means of extending liberty and may and 
 should be conceived with that very object in view. 
 Thus it is that upon the whole we see a tendency to the 
 removal of restraints in the sphere in which whatever 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 203 
 
 there is of value to mankind depends on spontaneity 
 of impulse, free interchange of ideas, and voluntary co- 
 operation going along with the tendency to draw tighter 
 the bonds which restrain men from acting directly or 
 indirectly to the injury of their fellows and to enlarge 
 the borders of the action of the state in response to a 
 developing sense of collective responsibility. We are 
 dealing with two conditions of harmonious develop- 
 ment apparently opposed and requiring themselves to 
 be rendered harmonious ^by careful appreciation of 
 their respective functions^ and the general direction in 
 which harmony is to be sought may be expressed by 
 saying that the further development of the state lies[ 
 in such an extension of public control as makes for the 
 fuller liberty of the life of the mind. 
 
 The problem of liberty is not the only one raised by 
 the movement of opinion which has been traced. There 
 are far-reaching questions of economics involved, to dis- 
 cuss which would take us to the foundation of the right 
 of property. Having, for reasons of time, to confine 
 myself to one aspect of the question, I choose that of the 
 rrelation of liberty to collective control because it lies at 
 Lthe root of the harmonic conception of society. If we 
 ^are right in thinking that social evolution has brought , 
 us to a point at which the future movement of society ■ 
 may be subjected to rational control, it becomes at once 
 vital to determine how far that control is to be reconciled 
 with the old ideal of freedom. 
 
 If the above argument is just, we may conclude that 
 the development of the common life, the collectiye effort, 
 which has already been in progress in my country for a 
 generation or more, is not adverse to the freedom, the 
 
204 SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 responsibility, or the dignity of the individual. On the 
 contrary it has in the past assisted and may in the future 
 be expected to further the development of these essential 
 features of a good social order. A more real freedom, 
 a more general and more complete personal indepen- 
 dence, a more stable because a more free family life are 
 among the prime objects of the extension of social con- 
 trol. It is here that we realise the concrete meaning of 
 the idea of harniony as the touchstone of social develop- 
 menit. All one-sided progress cramps as much in one * 
 direction as it liberates in another. True development 
 is not in metaphor but in essentials comparable to or- 1 ' 
 ganic growth — the opening out of each element f urther-m 
 ing instead of retarding that of others. Such a devel6|T^ 
 ment, lastly, it has been my endeavor to show is not in 
 conflict with immovable laws of evolution but is continu- 
 ous with the line of advance which educed the higher 
 from the lower animal forms, which evolved the human 
 out of the animal species and civilized from barbaric 
 society. The essential condition of this change was no? 
 the struggle for existence but the rise and growth of 
 a principle of organic harmony or cooperation which 
 from the first rise of parental care begins to mitigate, 
 and finally to restrict the field of struggle. Merely to 
 point to the existence of this tendency was not, we 
 admitted, sufficient to justify it, but we urged that its 
 existence and success suffice to prove the feasibility of 
 the conscious effort to carry through the harmonic prin^ 
 ciple in social life, and that this is in fact the guiding! 
 principle of a rational social philosophy. To apply such 
 a principle, we admitted, is a matter of infinite practical 
 difficulty, but it nowhere founders on any theoretic ob- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 205 
 
 jections, for no essential element of social value has to be 
 purchased at the expense of the fundamental and irrevo- 
 cable loss of any other element of essential value. Its t 
 emergence constitutes a turning-point to which all pre- 
 vious progress leads up, and from which further progress 
 will proceed with a new directness of aim and steadiness 
 of tread. The keenest critics of the feasibility of social 
 progress we saw rest their case on the tendency of the 
 higher social ethics to preserve inferior types and so lead 
 to racial deterioration. But on this point we saw that 
 if it is true, which is not yet proved, that selection re- 
 mains essential to social progress, the solution of the , 
 difficulty is to be found in the replacement of natural 
 by social selection. At many points in the argument 
 limitations of time have forced me to confine myself to 
 mere illustrations of method in place of the full and 
 lengthy statement of evidence which is requisite for 
 proof. Those methods I would hope that some of you 
 would follow out for yourselves, so as to verify or correct 
 the conclusion to which I have sought to lead you. That 
 conclusion I may be allowed to state provisionally and it, 
 y is simply this : that the conception of social progress \ 
 as a deliberate movement towards the reorganization of 
 society in accordance with ethical ideas is not vitiated by 
 ' any contradiction. It is free from any internal dishar- 
 . mony. Its possibility rests on the facts of evolution, 
 j of the higher tendencies of which it is indeed the outcome, 
 j It embodies a rational philosophy, it gives scope and 
 ' meaning to the best impulses of human nature, and a 
 i new hope to the suffering among mankind. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Action, collective, Extension of, 166 
 
 Age of Reason, The, 13 
 
 Alternatives, Choice of, 23 
 
 Arbitration, Compulsory, 170; con- 
 ciliation boards of, 170 
 
 Army of men and women at work, 
 2-3 ; criticized as guerilla bands, 
 3-4 
 
 Ashanti, Power of the chief in, 135 
 
 Assumptions, Certain initial, 83-84 
 
 Athens, Slave-holding democracy of, 
 141, 142; despotism in, 142 
 
 Authority, Transmutation of force 
 into, 137-39; the duties of, 138- 
 39 ; development of citizenship at 
 expense of, 142 ; power of, 147 ; 
 the system of, 148 
 
 Babylon, Sanctity of the ruler in, 
 135 ; duty of the superior in, 138 
 
 Barrington, Miss Amy, and Prof. 
 Pearson, Dogmatic conclusions of, 
 60-61 
 
 Bateson, The newer discoveries of, 
 68 ; on genetic knowledge, 78-79 
 
 Benthamites, Utilitarian creed of the, 
 167 
 
 Bias of social memory, The, 2 
 
 Biological alternative. Sufficient rea- 
 son for declining the, 24 
 
 Biological conditions of human so- 
 ciety, 13-16 ; not a barrier to 
 progress, 80 
 
 Biological criticism of society. The, 
 22 
 
 Biological elements in a crowd, 31 
 
 Biological evolution and social prog- 
 ress, causes of contrast between, 
 28-33 
 
 Biological investigation, Darwin's 
 impulse to, 17 
 
 Biological principles. The uncritical 
 application of, to social progress 
 results in contradiction, 28 
 
 Biologist, The, and the problem of 
 social betterment, 20-25 ; his 
 theory a barren tautology, 24 ; 
 and the standard of value, 24-25 ; 
 and sociological conditions, 67 
 
 Birth-rate, General fall in the, 15; 
 and economic conditions, 67-68 
 
 Blending, Peculiarities of quality 
 traceable to laws of, 69-70 
 
 Blood, The tie of, 129 
 
 Board of Trade, Demand for inter- 
 vention of, in industrial disputes, 
 170 
 
 Bonds for human society, 128 
 
 British Empire, The, an oligarchy, 
 144 ; and its dependencies, 145 
 
 Buckle and the records of humanity, 
 17 
 
 Caesar, Julius, an exceptional ruler, 
 
 136 
 Capacity, Mental or spiritual, 91 
 Caste and class distinctions broken 
 
 down by civilization, 27 
 Caste system, The, a product of social 
 
 evolution, 8 
 Change, Every, provokes reactions, 6 
 Chief, Development of the powers of 
 
 the, 134-35 
 Child, unborn. Effect of influences on 
 
 mother upon the, 63-64 
 Childhood, a period of helplessness, 
 
 176 
 Child-labor, Restriction of, 168-69 
 Children, The home environment of, 
 
 57-60 ; intelligence of, 58-59 
 Children of infected stocks. Preven- 
 tion of, 42, 43 
 
 207 
 
208 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chinese theory of government, The, 
 137. 138 
 
 Choice, Human, an actual force in 
 
 • the evolution of society, 82 
 
 Citizen, Duty of the, to the state, 184 
 
 Citizenship, The principle of, 139-48 ; 
 the citizens are the state, 139-40 ; 
 earliest form of state, 141 ; the 
 city state incapable of expansion, 
 142-43 ; conquest incompatible 
 •with, 143-44 ; the problem of 
 nationality, 146-47; union ren- 
 dered possible by, 147-48; the 
 system of, 148; opposed to force, 
 149 
 
 City state, The, of ancient Greece, 
 141-43 
 
 Civilization, The history of, 13 ; meas- 
 uring the movement of, 126: for 
 the first time has the upper hand in 
 our own day, 163 ; a new type of, 
 164 
 
 Civil Service, Result of reform of the, 
 183 
 
 Clan and commune, The simple life 
 of, cancelled by force and authority, 
 149 
 
 Class distinctions defended on 
 eugenic grounds, 47 
 
 Classification, of a social morphology, 
 118-20; true affinities in a, 124 
 
 Collective activity, Great extension 
 of, 184 
 
 Common life. The conception of a, 
 extended to the community, 152- 
 63 ; securing the best conditions 
 for the, the function of social con- 
 trol, 200-2 ; development of the, 
 not adverse to the freedom of the 
 individual, 203-4 
 
 Compulsion of the state on the indi- 
 vidual, 187-88 ; kind of, necessary, 
 188-89, 201 
 
 Comte and the records of humanity, 
 17 
 
 Contract, Evils from the regime of 
 free, 182 ; regulation of, 201-2 
 
 Control over nature the root of social 
 inequality, 163 
 
 Cooperation, the ideal of harmonious 
 development, 185 ; how far social, 
 
 can be furthered by the state, 189 ; 
 ineffective, 194 ; rise and growth of 
 principle of, 204 
 
 Cooperators, 4 
 
 Crime, Diminution of, 50 
 
 Criminology, The imperfectly solved 
 problems of, 151 
 
 Criticism, Common characteristics 
 of literary, 1 
 
 Crowd, The social phenomenon of a, 
 30-32 ; interaction of personal 
 forces in a, 31 ; at a London cross- 
 ing, 32 
 
 Custom, Sacredness of, in the primi- 
 tive community, 137 
 
 Custom and authority, Order pro- 
 duced by, 32-33 
 
 Customs maintained^"by the social 
 tradition control the individual, 94 ; 
 difference between laws and, 140- 
 41 
 
 Dahomey, Power of the chief in, 135 
 
 Darwin, Relation of, to evolution, 17- 
 18; and Newton, 18; main effect 
 of work of, 18-19; his conception 
 of the struggle for existence, 107 ; 
 and social evolution, 112-13 
 
 DeVries, The newer discoveries of, 68 
 
 Death-rate, Decline of the, 50 
 
 Decay of nations, The, lacks his- 
 torical proof, 53 
 
 Dependencies, The government of, 
 144-45 
 
 Despotic principle, The, in a free com- 
 munity, 142 
 
 Destitution, The test of, eliminated, 
 172, 174 
 
 Deterioration, physical. Committee 
 on, 49-50 ; process of, not begun, 
 51 
 
 Development, Meaning of, 84-85 ; 
 involves quantitative growth and 
 increase, 85 ; how harmonious, 
 applies, 91 ; lines of a significant, 
 147 
 
 Development, harmonious, Ideal of, 
 is cooperation, 185 ; many condi- 
 tions of social welfare under, 198- 
 99 ; two conditions of, 203 ; com- 
 parable to organic growth, 204 
 
INDEX 
 
 209 
 
 Disestablishment, Little headway for, 
 
 in England, 181 
 Disestablishment of the English 
 
 Church in Wales, Agitation for the, 
 
 181 
 
 East, Rise of a new spirit in the, 144 
 
 Education, Effect of, 57 
 
 Education, public, The State and, 
 180-82 
 
 Egypt, Ancient, Sanctity of the ruler 
 in, 135 ; credit for beneficence 
 claimed by rulers in, 139 
 
 Elderton, Ethel M., "The Relative 
 Strength of Nurture and Nature," 
 55 u. ; on measuring the effect of 
 environment, 57-60. 
 
 Elimination of the unsuccessful, 53- 
 55 
 
 Empire, One man cannot govern a 
 great, 136 
 
 Endogamy, The principle of, 132 
 
 Environment, Improvement of, has 
 no effect on the stock, 49, 55 ; as- 
 sumption that, meant race prog- 
 ress, 55; effect of, 56-60; the 
 social, must be established upon 
 ethical lines, 74 
 
 Equality, Question of meaning of, 
 151-52 
 
 Ethical ideas and evolutionary pro- 
 cesses, 9-10 ; advance of, 39 
 
 Ethical principles cannot be muti- 
 lated, 27 ; advance of, 39 
 
 Ethics, The highest, 23 
 
 Eugenics, The new doctrine of, 28 ; 
 value and limitations of, 40-79 ; 
 needs for success in, 42-43 ; the 
 case of, at its strongest, 43-44 ; 
 application of, to the feeble- 
 minded, 45-46 ; on physiological 
 or medical lines, 46 ; class distinc- 
 tions a basis for, 46-48; political 
 eugenists, 48 ; possible true prob- 
 lem of, 69-70 ; the general problem 
 of, 71 
 
 Eugenists, The insistent school of, 4 
 
 Evils, Persistent efforts to discover 
 and eradicate causes of, 2-4 
 
 Evolution defined as any sort of 
 growth, 8 ; no proof of goodness, 8 ; 
 
 and progress, not the same thing, 
 11; the conception of, 16; not 
 confined to biology, 17; progress 
 to be compared with the actual 
 course of, 80; Darwin and, 112- 
 14; a process from the simple to 
 the complex, 114 
 
 Evolution and progress, 149-65; the 
 study of, tells us what may be, 158; 
 the inductive theory of, lies at the 
 back of any sound social philosophy, 
 165 
 
 Exogamy, The principle of, 131-32 
 
 Family, The mean size of the, 64-65; 
 causes of the limitation of the, 66; 
 has no connection with social legis- 
 lation, 67; best form of organiza- 
 tion of, 89; in lower forms of 
 society, 129-31; the paternal, af- 
 fords a more solid basis for social 
 order, 133 
 
 Family unity. The ideal of, 89 
 
 Father, The pqsition of the, domi- 
 nates the family, 129-30 
 
 Father-right, and mother-right, 
 Blending of, 133-34 
 
 Feeble-minded, Application of eu- 
 genics to the, 45-46, 76 ; society 
 owes the duties of a guardian to the, 
 202 
 
 Fertility, of the poorer classes, 46, 48 ; 
 table of comparative, 64 ; and indi- 
 vidual development vary inversely, 
 65 ; diminished, no argument 
 against ameliorative legislation, 68 
 
 Fit, Who are the, 22 ; a hopeless 
 missfit term, 24, 52-53 ; sterility 
 of the, 48 ; propagation of the, 
 should be encouraged, 49 ; birth- 
 rate of the, diminishing, 72 ; can 
 find their place, 76. 
 
 "Fit" nation. The eugenic would 
 evolve a, 77 
 
 Fluctuations not permanently trans- 
 mitted, 68 
 
 Force, not a basis of social life, 136; 
 transmuted into authority, 137, 
 147 
 
 Freedom, from alien government, 
 190-91 
 
210 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Functions, Moral and spiritual, of the 
 state, 188 ; the legitimate, 188-89 ; 
 sphere of, how determined, 189 ; 
 corollary to ethical basis of, 191 
 
 Generic forms and specific types, 113 
 
 Genetics, Sociological application of 
 the science of, 77 ; Professor Bate- 
 son on, 78-79 
 
 Germ-plasm, Possible effects of influ- 
 ences on the, 62-64 
 
 Good for man. The, how found, 83-84 
 
 Government, The growth of, and its 
 relation to liberty, 125 ; of Ben- 
 tham's day, a close and corrupt 
 corporation, 183 
 
 Greco-Roman culture maintained a 
 losing fight against barbarization, 
 163 
 
 Greek freedom, Real loss in the 
 destruction of, 159, 160 
 
 Group-morality, 26-28 ; the ideal of, 
 self-contradictory, 27 ; obligations 
 of, less than those of common 
 morality, 27 
 
 Growth of the state, The, 126-48 
 
 Guerilla bands of inefficient workers, 
 3-4 
 
 Happiness, Some form of, good, 83 ; 
 the idea of, 92 
 
 Harmonic principle. The, in social 
 life, 204 ; its emergence a turning- 
 point, 205 
 
 Harmony, between the claims of 
 different persons, 86-87 ; in the 
 manifold developments of life, 92- 
 93 ; conditions of, 93 ; essential 
 conditions of, realized, 153 ; in the 
 development of personal life, 185 ; 
 the touchstone of social develop- 
 ment, 204 
 
 Harvard graduates. Low fertility of, 
 65 
 
 Health, Improvement of general, 50 
 
 Hellenic civilization, a tiny islet in a 
 world of far lower culture, 163 
 
 Heredity remains though traditions 
 change, 37-38 
 
 Hierarchies, Variety of, 138 
 
 Highland clan, Powers of the chief in 
 the, 134 
 
 Historic progress, Interpretation of, 
 156 
 
 Hours oi labor limited by law, 169 
 
 Housing and sanitary reform, Apos- 
 tles of, 4 
 
 Human beings, Malthus' law of in- 
 crease of, 14 
 
 Human nature, The state inadequate 
 to the subtlety of, 187 
 
 Humanitarian feeling, A deepening 
 of, 183-84 
 
 Humanity, Continuous deterioration 
 of, may be proved from literature, 
 1 ; ups and downs of, 13 ; the 
 supreme society, 88 ; development 
 of, th.e directing principle of 
 human endeavor, 155 
 
 Hunter, The primitive, and the 
 modern laborer, 160 
 
 Hypothesis, A good evolutionary, 
 1 13 ; legitimate vs. illegitimate use 
 of, 113 
 
 Ideals, Conflict of, 185 
 
 Ideas, Propagation of, in three ways, 
 36 ; precede the means of expres- 
 sion, 93 
 
 Idler, Provision for the determined, 
 179-80 
 
 Imitation not a simple term, 35 ; two 
 types of, 36-37 
 
 Incidence of taxation, 67 
 
 Individual, Not the inherent qualities 
 but the actual life of the, to be 
 regarded, 62 ; the average, 75 ; 
 manifold relations of each, 88 ; 
 controlled by the customs of social 
 tradition, 94 ; a member and ser- 
 vant of the society of mankind, 
 155 ; relation of the, to the state, 
 an unsolved problem, 166-70 ; 
 sphere of collective responsibility 
 for welfare of, extended, 180 ; and 
 the state, 185-205 ; ultimate lib- 
 erty of an, in the state, 187; 
 rights of the, 189, 196-98 ; interest 
 of the, opposed to that of all, 
 194-95 ; basis of liberty of the, 
 196-98 
 
 Individual, Relation between the, and 
 society, 56 
 
INDEX 
 
 211 
 
 Individual development and fertility 
 vary inversely, 65 
 
 Individual enterprise, Sphere of, 196 
 
 Individuals, Qualities of, determined 
 the nature of their interactions, 40, 
 41 ; society composed of, 29, 40 ; 
 variations of, 69 ; society exists in, 
 85 ; social relations of, 85 
 
 Industrial contracts. Growth of 
 public control over, 168-70 
 
 Industrial development, Steps of, 
 readily traced, 154 
 
 Industrial regulation. Extension of 
 public responsibility in, 168-70 
 
 Industrial training, A system of, for 
 the unemployed, 180 
 
 Infantile death-rate, Decline of the, 
 49 
 
 Infertility of the best stocks, 64 
 
 Inheritance, Competent knowledge of 
 laws of, 42 
 
 "Inheritance of Vision, The," by 
 Miss Barrington and Prof. Pear- 
 son, 60-62 
 
 Insanity, Increase of, 51 
 
 Institutions, Analogical resemblances 
 between, 122-23 ; the principle or 
 spirit of, to be examined, 124 ; con- 
 ditions traced in the history of, 
 156 ; definite, the life of the state, 
 186-87 
 
 Insurance against unemployment. 
 Scheme of, 178 
 
 Intellectuals, English, Low fertility 
 of, 65 
 
 Intelligence of children measured, 58- 
 59 
 
 Interaction of human beings the 
 fundamental fact of social life, 30, 
 31, 33, 40 
 
 Interest, Individual, opposed to 
 collective, 194-95 
 
 Interests, Mutuality of, 127-28 
 
 Internationalism, Development of the 
 civic principle bound up with, 145 
 
 Interplay of human motives, 33 
 
 Ireland, Increase of lunacy in, 51 n. 
 
 Irish Church, Disestablishment of 
 the, 181 
 
 Iroquois, The totemic and tribal 
 bonds of the, 133 
 
 Japan, Rise of, 144 
 
 Jones, Henry, on relation between the 
 individual and society, 56 
 
 Judgment, No progress without the 
 approval of rational, 11 
 
 Jus connuhii, 132 
 
 Justice, Social and economic, as 
 eugenic agencies, 53 ; evolution of 
 the idea of, 150-51 ; a means of 
 maintaining right and redressing 
 wrong, 151 ; of impartial, 152 
 
 King, The actual power of a, limited, 
 136 ; the fountain of justice, 137 
 
 Kinship, in lower forms of society, 
 129 ; relation of mother and chil- 
 dren, 129 ; the patriarchate, 129- 
 30; mother-right, 130-31; ex- 
 ogamy, 131-32; endogamy, 132; 
 the paternal family the stronger 
 basis of, 133 ; the ties of, 147, 148 ; 
 the system of, 148 
 
 Knowledge, The development of, 154 
 
 Knowledge and industry, Rapid and 
 certain advance in, 39 
 
 Labor, State control over, 167-70 
 
 Labor colony for idlers, 179 
 
 Labor exchanges. The, and the un- 
 employed, 179-80 
 
 Laissez-faire principle. Predominance 
 of the, 168 
 
 Land questions. Enthusiasts find, at 
 the root of all good and evil, 3-4 
 
 Language a social product, 93 
 
 Law, A, in science, and in social evo- 
 lution, 103-6 ; the true, of evolu- 
 tion, 106 
 
 Law as a rule imposed by a superior, 
 191 ; as the expression of a general 
 resolve, 191-92 
 
 Laws, State, 186 ; have force behind 
 them, 187 
 
 Liberals and Radicals, The older 
 school of English, advocated re- 
 stricting the sphere of the state, 
 167 
 
 Liberty, The ultimate, of individuals 
 in a voluntary association and in 
 a state, 187 ; no social, without 
 social restraint, 189; as a social 
 
212 
 
 INDEX 
 
 conception, 189-90; a problem of 
 organizing restraints, 190; as the 
 right of self-expression, a right 
 masses may claim, 192 ; of the 
 individual, 196-98; as a restraint 
 upon society, 196; necessity of, 
 199; final definition of, 200; 
 recognition of, does not abolish 
 restraints, 200; and control not 
 opposed, 202-3 
 
 Liberty, personal, Basis of the value 
 of, 199-200 
 
 Liberty, Political and civil, as eugenic 
 agencies, 53 ; conception of, 166 ; 
 of the individual, 166-67; ques- 
 tion of kind of, 182 
 
 Life, human, Possibility of a har- 
 monious development of, no dream, 
 165 
 
 Life, Some kind of, good for man, 83 ; 
 the fuller, the more desirable, 83, 
 91 
 
 Life, The higher, a result of mutual 
 aid, 23 
 
 London crossing. Crowd handled at a, 
 32 
 
 Lower Empire, Declining ages of the, 
 159 
 
 Lyer, Dr. Muller, "Phasen der 
 Kultur," 126 
 
 Majorities, The rights of, 192 ; may 
 be denied, 192-94 ; self-expression 
 for, through machinery of law, 193 ; 
 right of, defeated, 194 
 
 Malthus' law of population, 13-14 
 
 Malthusians, The, 14-15 
 
 Man reacts to new circumstances, 15 ; 
 moved by the knowledge of ends, 
 16 ; the dominant animal, 25 ; 
 questions about, 115-16; sciences 
 which deal with, 116 
 
 Manchester School, National liberty 
 the center of all things to the, 
 167 
 
 Marriage, Types of, 120-23 ; in an- 
 cient Rome, 132 ; extension of 
 rights of, 132 
 
 Mating, Selective, the possible true 
 problem of eugenics, 69-70 
 
 Maudlin sentiment, 21 . 
 
 Medieval city, Real loss in the decay 
 of the, 159 
 
 Men of the reindeer period. Disap- 
 pearance of the, 162 
 
 Merovingian period, Barbaric anar- 
 chy of the, 159 
 
 Metal, sheet of, with a dint in, 
 Spencer's illustration of the, 5-6 
 
 Miner's Act, The English. 169 
 
 Misery an evil, 83 
 
 Mother, Effect of influences on the, 
 upon the unborn child, 63-64 
 
 Mother and children, The relation of, 
 129-31 
 
 Mother-right, Descent by, 130-31; 
 the natural family never complete 
 under, 133 
 
 Mothers, The universal property of, 
 129 
 
 Mudge, G. P., reviewing Bateson in 
 the Eugenic Review, 77 
 
 Mutations, of permanent significance, 
 68 ; definite, the basis of racial 
 progress, 70-71 
 
 Mutual aid, the persistent enemy of 
 progress, 22-23 ; voluntary organ- 
 ization of, 191 
 
 Napoleon an exceptional ruler, 136 
 
 Nationality, A common, 140 ; the 
 problem of, in the state, 146-47 ; 
 the sentiment of, 146 
 
 Natural rights, A social order 
 founded on, 13 
 
 Natural selection. Assumption that 
 the universe progresses by, 9 ; Dar- 
 win's principle of, 18-19 ; the 
 foundation of all progress, 22 ; 
 restricted by mutual aid, 23 ; 
 replaced by rational, 28, 41 ; 
 defended by the political eugenists, 
 48-49 ; suspension of, 49 ; does 
 suspension of, lower the racial 
 standard, 51-55 ; a permanent 
 necessity of racial progress, 70 ; 
 Darwin's theory of, 113-14 ; prob- 
 able triumphs of, 162 ; replaced by 
 social selection, 205 
 
 Nature and nurture, 55-56, 57 ; no 
 adequate means of measurement of, 
 61-62 
 
INDEX 
 
 213 
 
 Neolithic and Paleolithic epochs, 162- 
 
 63 
 Nicholas I and Russia governed by 
 
 clerks, 136 
 
 Old age not the only period of help- 
 iPssriPss I/O 
 
 Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, 173- 
 74; principle of the, 175; argu- 
 ments against and for, 175-76 
 
 Opinion, The actual movement of, 
 184 ; in the light of social theory, 
 185 
 
 Optimism, Speculative, of the eight- 
 eenth century, 13 
 
 Orange Colony, Autonomy extended 
 to the, 144 
 
 Orbit, Determining an, 105 
 
 Order, Extension and solidity of, 152 ; 
 the most stable, based on freedom, 
 152-53 ; antithesis between, and 
 liberty, 183 
 
 Organism, An, is a whole consisting of 
 interdependent parts, 87 
 
 Organization, Improved, does not 
 imply improved individuals, 30 n. 
 
 Oriental civilizations subject to del- 
 uges of barbarism, 163 
 
 Orientals, Principles of liberty cannot 
 be denied to the, 145 
 
 Pan-Hellenic sentiment and the 
 spirit of autonomy, 164 
 
 Parentage, The claim to, 42 ; a case 
 for forbidding, 45 
 
 Parental love. The operation of, 23 
 
 Parental responsibility, Increased 
 sense of, 66-67 ; undermined, 89 ; 
 limits of sphere of, 89 ; failure of, 
 in education, 90 ; and the state, 
 90 
 
 Past, The, appears in a halo of 
 romance, 1-2 
 
 Patriarchate, The, 130 
 
 Pauper, The problem of the, 171-72 
 
 Pauperism, Decline of, 50 ; a heredi- 
 tary taint, 74-75 
 
 Pearson, Professor, "The Problem of 
 Practical Eugenics," 64 ; see also 
 Barrington, Miss Amy and 
 
 Pensions, Old Age, 173-76 ; for other 
 
 periods of helplessness proposed, 
 176-78 
 
 Personal experience, how made up, 
 94 
 
 Personal liberty, Restrictions of, 181 ; 
 basis of the value of, 199-200 
 
 Personality defined, 199-200 
 
 Pessimism, Note of, in literature of 
 the day, 1-3 
 
 Philosophy of history, 17 
 
 Physical conditions influencing action 
 of a crowd, 31 
 
 Poor Law Commission of 1834, Views 
 of the, 170-71 
 
 Poor Law Commission, Report of, in 
 1909, 172 ; views of the minority, 
 172 
 
 Poor Law Reports criticized by the 
 eugenics, 72-73 
 
 Position in society, Forces which 
 determine a man's, 47-48 
 
 Poverty, provision for. Change in 
 public opinion on, 170-72 
 
 Prestige, A scientific, 18 
 
 Prevention and cure, Principles of, 
 151 
 
 Primitive man the victim of natural 
 selection, 162 
 
 Process of things has nothing to do 
 with value, 9 
 
 Progress, Meaning of, 1-16 ; pre- 
 liminary definition of, 7-9 ; differ- 
 ence between evolution and, 7-8, 
 11-12; a possibility of evolution, 
 8 ; connotes value, 9 ; the realiza- 
 tion of an ethical order, 12 ; objec- 
 tion to, founded on history, 12- 
 13 ; the biological argument, 13 ; 
 Malthus' natural law, 13-15; new, 
 difficulties, 16 ; and the struggle 
 for existence, 17-39 ; standard of 
 value of, 24 ; not racial but social, 
 39 ; depends on survival of the 
 best, 54-55 ; human, social not 
 racial, 65, 80; a definition of, re- 
 quired, 80 ; the movement by 
 which harmony is realized, 93 ; 
 real and fundamental, 152 ; the 
 work of, unfinished, 153 ; the reali- 
 zation of the conditions of full 
 social cooperation, 156 ; a genuine 
 
214 
 
 INDEX 
 
 possibility, 159 ; an optimistic 
 belief in, may be nursed, 159 ; 
 theory of continuous automatic 
 inevitable, impossible, 160 ; the 
 positive view of, 161 ; uneven 
 nature of, intelligible, 162 
 
 Progress of organic forms by a con- 
 tinuous struggle for existence, 18- 
 19 
 
 Property, Respect for, 123 
 
 Prophecies the causes of their own 
 fulfilment, 81 
 
 Psychology, Comparative, 116-17; 
 the of, 117 
 
 Psychology of a crowd, 30-31, 35; 
 all higher, social, 93 
 
 Public assistance as a preventive, 
 172-73 
 
 Public works should be laid out for 
 the unemployed, 178 
 
 Qualities, Social order the outcome of 
 individual, 41 ; that should be 
 extinguished, 43 ; that bring men 
 to the top, 47-48 
 
 Quality, Is a distinct, impressed on 
 the individual, perpetuated in the 
 stock ? 62-64 
 
 Race, The, has been relatively stag- 
 nant, 39 ; doomed, 49 ; effect on, 
 of breeding inferior stocks, 68 
 
 Race, The, of higher powers, en- 
 slaves the weaker, 163 
 
 Race and environment, 55, 64 
 
 Race deterioration, Absence of induc- 
 tive evidence of, 51 
 
 Race suicide, Alarmist talk of, 16 
 
 Racial and social progress. Distinc- 
 tion between, 55-57 
 
 Racial level, The, 41 
 
 Racial progress dependent on definite 
 mutations, 68-69 
 
 Racial standard. Variations of the, 
 52-53 
 
 Rates, Burden of the, 67-68 
 
 Rational selection, to replace natural 
 selection, 28, 41, 75; a legitimate 
 object, 41 
 
 Redress for the individual becomes 
 the concern of government, 151 
 
 Reformers, Efforts of, not wasted, 3 ; 
 the sectional spirit among, 3-4; 
 work of, accomplished at vast 
 expense and waste, 4 
 
 Religion, Bond of a common, 128 
 
 Representation, The principle of, in 
 the modern state, 143 
 
 Reproduction, Qualitative vs. quan- 
 titative, 66 
 
 Resemblances, Analogical, 122-23 
 
 Responsibility, Deepening sense of 
 collective, 183-84, 201, 203 
 
 Retaliation, The idea of, limited to 
 compensation or restitution, 151 
 
 Right, Meaning of a, 196-98 ; correl- 
 ative of a duty, 196 ; legal, moral, 
 or ethical, 197 ; any genuine, a 
 condition of social welfare, 198 
 
 Rights enforced by society. Question 
 of what, 151 ; the common good 
 the foundation of all personal, 198 ; 
 natural, 197-98 ; all individual, 
 included in liberty, 199 
 
 Roman, The, civilized enough to 
 recognize Hellenic superiority, 163 
 
 Roman decadence, Half-told tale of, 
 53-54 
 
 Roman population. Lamentations 
 over decay of, unfounded, 53 
 
 Roman state, Deep-seated injury in 
 the breakup of the, 159 ; could not 
 reconcile liberty with empire, 164 
 
 Ruler, Divine right of the, 137 
 
 Russia governed by ten thousand 
 clerks, 136 
 
 Savage and civilized man. Life of, 
 compared, 12-13 
 
 Science is social knowledge and has 
 permanency, 95 
 
 Secondary education provided, 181 
 
 Sectional spirit, The driving force of 
 all with the, 4 
 
 Selection necessary to racial progress, 
 41-42 
 
 Self-guidance, 199-200 
 
 Sensitiveness to social ailments 
 widely diffused, 2-3 
 
 Shops, Early closing of, 194 
 
 Sickness and invalidity. Scheme of in- 
 surance for, before Parliament, 177 
 
INDEX 
 
 215 
 
 Slave or serf, The, compares un- 
 favorably with the free savage, 160 
 
 Social betterment. The true problem 
 of, to the biologist, 20-25 
 
 Social bond. Nature of the, 126; 
 mutual interest, 127-28 ; principles 
 of social union, 128 
 
 Social changes. Interrelation of, 3-4 ; 
 character and rapid development 
 of, 38 ; determined by modifications 
 of traditions, 39 
 
 Social conscience a factor in progress, 
 48 
 
 Social control, Basis of the value of, 
 199 ; business of, to adjust one 
 right to another, 200 ; the func- 
 tion of, defined, 200-2 ; of those 
 incapable of rational choice, 202 ; 
 liberty and, not opposed, 202-3 ; 
 prime objects of extension of, 204 
 
 Social cooperation. Ordered, 76, 148 ; 
 changes for advancement of, 152 
 
 Social development distinct from the 
 organic changes known to biology, 
 29 ; biological factors have little 
 share in, 38 ; is good, 83 ; is indi- 
 vidual development, 85 ; a move- 
 ment towards a fuller life, 85 ; in- 
 volves the harmonious develop- 
 ment of the constituent members of 
 society, 87, 91-92; a very wide 
 genus, 92 ; not in conflict with the 
 laws of evolution, 204 
 
 Social effort, Object of, the realiza- 
 tion of ethical ends, 11 
 
 Social evolution. The subject-matter 
 of, 7 ; defined, 8 ; a caste system 
 a product of , 8 ; a process in, not 
 a phase of, social progress, 8-10 ; 
 treated by sbciological methods, 
 17 ; the fundamental fact of, 33, 
 40; tendency of the changes in, 
 102 ; ambiguity of the term law of, 
 103 ; two objects for the student 
 of, 107; the broad trend of, 107; 
 the permanent conditions of the 
 actual movement of society, 108 ; 
 a formula of synthesis, 108-9 ; 
 relation of the history of science to, 
 109-10 ; to find unity in, no simple 
 matter, 110; of a country, a part 
 
 of the evolution of civilization, 110 ; 
 we must admit divergent lines of, 
 111 ; a morphology the foundation 
 of, 111-12; Darwin and, 112-13; 
 eminently tortuous, 149 ; irregular 
 and incomplete, 151-52 ; ultimate 
 reality of, 154 ; ends in a demand 
 for a social philosophy, 164 ; history 
 of, ends in a problem, 166; point 
 reached by, 203 
 
 Social fact, The, distinct from the 
 biological and the psychological, 33 
 
 ■Social group. Survival value of the, 
 25-26 ; each, has its claim to share 
 in social development, 88 
 
 Social harmony and the social mind, 
 80-101 
 
 Social history controlled by intelli- 
 gence, 165 
 
 Social improvement not the same as 
 racial improvement, 40 
 
 Social institutions. Effect of, not to 
 be understood in biological terms, 
 56 
 
 Social legislation, Eugenic writers on, 
 71-72 ; should aim at social co- 
 operation, 76 
 
 Social life. The fundamental fact of, 
 33, 40 ; the whole fabric of society 
 persists in, 37 ; good, 83 ; of sec- 
 ondary moment, 84 
 
 Social life of mankind, Harmonious 
 development of the, 156 ; problems 
 of, solved by rational methods of 
 control, 166 ; essentially a coopera- 
 tion, 185 ; mutual aid and mutual 
 harmony essential to, 186 ; func- 
 tions of the state within the, 186 
 
 Social mind. Definition of the term, 
 97; function of the, 98; a con- 
 sciousness of unity, 99 ; develop- 
 ment of the, a measure of progress, 
 100-1 ; germinal condition and 
 relative maturity of the, 153-54 ; 
 development of the, increases har- 
 mony, 154 ; genuine growth of, 
 155 ; arriving at the point of self- 
 determination, 158 ; evolution of a 
 higher, 161 ; progressively less 
 liable to destruction, 162 ; har- 
 monious development by the ma- 
 
216 
 
 INDEX 
 
 turing of the, 164; sphere of the 
 control of, greater, 165 
 
 Social morphology, 102-25; a "law" 
 in science, 103 ; a descriptive syn- 
 thesis, 103-6; the law of evolu- 
 tion, 106 ; Spencer on evolution, 
 107 ; Darwin on growth of species, 
 107 ; two objects for the student of 
 evolution, 107-8 ; the formula of 
 synthesis, 109-10 ; divergent lines 
 of evolution. 111 ; Darwin and 
 Natural Selection, 112-14; ques- 
 tions about Man, 115-16; Com- 
 parative Psychology and Sociology, 
 ; 116-18; classification, 118-20; 
 
 i types of marriage, 120-23 ; the 
 
 \ true affinities in classification, 124 ; 
 
 V the growth of government and its 
 
 relation to liberty, 125 
 
 Social organisms, The unity of, 4-5 
 
 Social organization must be taken 
 into account, 29-30 ; must be just 
 and equitable, 55; total character 
 of the, 62 
 
 Social phenomenon. The, an inter- 
 action of individuals, 30; of a 
 crowd, 30-32 
 
 Social philosophy, An articulate, 
 needed, 6; the subject-matter of, 
 7 ; a well-grounded, needed, 43, 
 82 ; what a complete exposition of, 
 would involve, 83 ; demand for a, 
 164 ; an effort to form a purpose to 
 guide the future, 165 ; the induc- 
 tive theory of evolution at the back 
 of any sound, 165 ; and moral 
 problems, 166-84 ; and the relation 
 of the individual to the state, 166 ; 
 industrial regulation, 168-71 ; Old 
 Age Pensions, 173-77 ; public edu- 
 cation, 180-81 ; political changes, 
 182-83 ; question propounded to, 
 184 ; the general problem of, 199 
 
 Social progress. Clearer ideas of, 
 needed, 4 ; defined, 8 ; not a pro- 
 
 ' cess in evolution, 8-10 ; to be in- 
 vestigated by biological methods, 
 19-21 ; essentially an improvement 
 of the stock, 29 ; implies racial 
 development, 38 ; interfered with, 
 by elimination of best types, 53-55 ; 
 
 a certain measure of, established, 
 157 ; aim of comparative sociology 
 to measure, 164; consists in har- 
 monious development, 185 ; con- 
 ception of, not vitiated by any 
 contradiction, 205 ; embodies a 
 rational philosophy, 205 
 
 Social relations, Proper adjustment 
 of, 90 
 
 Social theory. Movement of opinion 
 in the light of, 185 
 
 Social tradition, 33, 40 
 
 Social union, Leading principles of, 
 128; kinship, 129-34; authority, 
 134-39; citizenship, 139-48 
 
 Social, welfare. Conditions of, 198-99 
 
 Social will. Existence of a, 95-96 
 
 Social worth, A true conception of, 
 42 ; two lines of thought on, 43 
 
 Socialists, 4 
 
 Society, Herbert Spencer on, 5-6 ; 
 evolution of, no proof of progress, 
 8-9 ; consists of individuals, 29 ; 
 has rapidly developed, 39; the 
 broad duty of, eugenically, 55 ; the 
 organic conception of, 87 ; a very 
 complex structure, 88-90 ; the 
 ideal development of, 89 ; Plato on, 
 164 ; as a guardian, 202 ; the 
 reorganization of, according to 
 ethical ideas, 205 
 
 Society, modern. Forces which deter- 
 mine a man's position in, 47 
 
 Sociological effects. The reaction of, 
 unescapable, 28 
 
 Sociology, Specialism a necessity and a 
 danger in, 6 ; made a science by the 
 principle of survival of the fittest, 
 19 ; not the same as either biology '* 
 or psychology, 30; deals with 
 results of interplay of motives, 33 ; 
 deals with man, 116;' the prime 
 object of, 118-' 
 
 Sociology, comparative. The aim of, 
 164 
 
 Spain, Political and religious denuda- 
 tion of best stocks in, 54 
 
 Sparta, a close oligarchy, 141, 142 
 
 Specialism, Danger of, in sociology, 6 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on society as a 
 sheet of metal with a dint in, 5-6 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 217 
 
 general law of fertility and devel- 
 opment, 65 ; his conception of evo- 
 lution, 107 
 
 Stagnation and retrogression, Long 
 periods of, in history, 159 
 
 State action, the combined will of 
 individuals, 191 
 
 State activity urged by the demo- 
 cratic element in politics, 167 
 
 State control, Extension of, not indis- 
 criminate, 181 
 
 State, Growth of the, 126-48 ; mutu- 
 ality of interests, 127-28; prin- 
 ciples of social union, 128 ; kinship, 
 129-34 ; authority, 134-39 ; citizen- 
 ship, 139-48 ; the citizens are the, 
 139-40 ; resembles the commune 
 140; characteristics of the, 141 
 the city, of ancient Greece, 141-43 
 problems of the modern, 143 ; 
 government of dependencies, 144- 
 45 ; problem of nationality, 146- 
 47 ; evolution of the, illustrates the 
 social movement, 149 ; various 
 forms of, 150 ; a problem, 150 ; re- 
 lation of the, to the individual, 
 166-70 ; restriction of sphere of the, 
 ^167; extension of responsibility 
 of the, 167-70; provision for the 
 poor, 170-73 ; Old Age Pensions, 
 173-76 ; and the unemployed, 177- 
 80 ; and public education, 180-81 ; 
 political changes in the, 182-84 ; 
 responsibility of, for the individual, 
 184 ; definite institutions the life 
 of the, 186-87 ; a compulsory form 
 of association, 187 ; legitimate 
 functions of the, 188-89 ; how far 
 cooperation can be furthered by 
 the, 189 ; principal sphere of the, 
 195-96 ; duty of the, to recognize 
 personal liberty, 200 ; organization 
 of public services by the, 201 ; and 
 provision for efficient civic life, 
 201 
 
 State, modern, Foreign relations of 
 the, 145 ; the dominant type of 
 society, 150 ; how differentiated 
 from earlier forms of society, 166 
 
 Statesmanship, The general problem 
 of. 199 
 
 Sterility of the richer classes, 46; 
 
 of the fit, 48, 64 
 Stock, Good, 61 ; the pathological, 
 
 64-65 
 Stocks, Infected, not wanted, 43 ; we 
 
 must be certain of irremovable 
 
 viciousness of, 45, 75 
 Stocks, inferior. Multiplication of, 64 ; 
 
 possibilities of, 70 
 Strains, Many fundamental, intri- 
 cately blended, 69 
 Struggle for existence, A continuous, 
 
 18-19 ; the biologist and the, 19- 
 
 25 ; conception of, modified, 25 ; 
 
 between communities, 26; elimi- 
 nation of best types in severe, 
 
 53-55 
 Subordination, The principle of, 137- 
 
 38 
 Subvention, Public, to the needs of 
 
 poverty, 178 
 Suffrage, Benefits of extension of the, 
 
 183 
 Suffrage, Roman, Extension of, 142 
 Superior, The, has duties as well as 
 
 privileges, 138-39 
 Suppression, The idea of, extended to 
 
 that of punishment and retaliation, 
 
 150-51 
 Survival value of the social group, 
 
 25-26 
 Synthesis, Descriptive, in evolution, 
 
 103-5; and true law, 106; the 
 
 formula of, 108-10, 116 
 
 Tariff reformers, 4 
 
 Temperance specialists care for noth- 
 ing else, 3 
 
 Tendency, Existence of a, does not 
 make it desirable, 81 ; some, 
 desirable, 82 
 
 Thebes a close oligarchy, 142 
 
 Thought, The, of any generation, a 
 social product, 94-95 ; develop- 
 ment of, 154-55: comparative 
 study of ethico-religious, 155 ; 
 extension of the rational control of 
 life traced in the history of, 156 
 
 Thrift, Enthusiasts for, 3 
 
 Tiberius, Emperor, and the pro- 
 vincial governor, 136 
 
218 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Trade Unionists, 4 
 
 Tradition the main subject of socio- 
 logical inquiry, 33-35, 40; anal- 
 ogous to heredity in the individual, 
 34; hands on the whole social 
 environment, 35 ; growth of, modi- 
 fies individuals, 37 
 
 Transvaal, Autonomy extended to 
 the, 144 
 
 Tubercle, The, not tubercular stock, 
 should be eliminated, 44-45, 
 
 Tuberculosis involves no mental or 
 moral turpitude, 44 
 
 Unemployment, Treatment of, in the 
 Poor Law Reports, 73-74 ; due 
 to various causes, 171 ; public 
 provision for, 177-78 ; scheme of 
 insurance against, 178 ; the labor 
 exchanges and, 179-80 
 
 Unfit, Elimination of the hopelessly, 
 78; survival of the, 162 
 
 Unfitness, how proven, 76 
 
 Universalism, A code of, a step to 
 deterioration, 26-27 
 
 Universe, Assumptions of progress of 
 the, 9, 20 
 
 Variation, Wide limits of, for society, 
 40 
 
 Wages, Rise in real, 50 ; government 
 regulation of, 169-70 ; difference 
 of, in good and bad years, 178 
 Wages boards, Action of, limited, 170 
 Waste of effort. How to avoid, 4-5 
 Wastrels, 74 
 Webb, Sidney, on low fertility of 
 
 English intellectuals, 65 
 Whetham, W. C. D., quoted, 9 
 Wigglesworth, Dr., on increase of 
 
 insanity, 51 
 Will, the general. Restraint of, 196- 
 97 ; the effective exercise of the, a 
 condition of harmonious develop- 
 ment, 199 
 Wisdom, true. The beginning of, 84 
 Women, New opportunities opened to, 
 
 65-66 
 Women's labor, question of, 168-69 
 World state, How a, is to be achieved, 
 91 ; possibility of a, 148 
 
 Zulus, Principles of liberty cannot be 
 denied to the, 145 
 
 C. A. NELSON. 
 
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