An introduction to sociology

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

An Introduction to
Sociology

\

BY

ARTHUR M. LEWIS

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1913

Copyright. 1912
By CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

PRINTER AND BINDER
• 80

376-382 MONROE STREET
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

PREFACE

This book is precisely what its title calls it — "An In-
troduction to Sociology." It makes no claim to add
anything new to sociological theory. It is intended for
a class of readers who have not yet been reached by the
sociologists of the university chairs. Technical terms
are studiously avoided, so that it may be comprehended
by men and women who have never passed through the
universities or had any special training in this or any
other science. While it contains some criticism and
much appreciation, its chief function is explanation. It
does not for a moment presume to tell the readers all
they should know about the science of society. The
purpose is to give a condensed history of its origin and
development and a general idea of its present position.
It is the result of a pains-taking reading of the chief
masters of the science, and the author hopes that its
effect will be to create or to stimulate an appetite for
reading the works which it expounds and from which
it freely quotes.

The contents of the book were first presented in the
form of twelve lectures from the stage of the Garrick
Theater, Chicago, in the autumn of 1911, to an audience
composed chiefly of working men. Eleven hundred
members of the audience were sufficiently interested in
its publication to pay for their copies at the close of the
course and before a line of the book itself was written.
It will be observed that the lecture form is not followed
in the book ; there is no attempt at a verbatim reproduc-
tion of the lectures themselves. The amplifications of

-6

ANTHRO-SOC.

PREFACE

the platform are neither necessary nor desirable in a
book.

The reader who has no previous acquaintance with
the literature of sociology will probably be considerably
surprised at the immense strides made in the scientific
analysis of social phenomena during the last half cen-
tury. He will also be gratified to learn, that while this
country is backward in almost every other science, and
in scientific research generally, especially as compared
with Germany, in sociology, thanks to the labors of
Lester F. Ward, America holds a foremost place.

Our social problems grow ever more acute and attract,
in scientific research generally, especially as compared
ing world. If these problems are ever to be solved, the
solution must be found in the scientific study of their
causes and the scientific application of the knowledge
derived from that study. For this reason, sociology
makes a direct appeal to all who are interested in mak-
ing the sad world better for our children than it has
ever been for us. It is in the hope that this modest
volume will make some small contribution in this di-
rection, that the author sends it forth.

ARTHUR M. LEWIS.
Chicago, Sept. 28, 1912.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY . . 10

II. THE FREE WILL DIFFICULTY . . 21

III. THE GREAT MAN DIFFICULTY . . .26

IV. AUGUST COMTE — THE LAW OF HUMAN

DEVELOPMENT 33

V. COMTE'S CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 45
VI. HERBERT SPENCER — STRUCTURAL SOCIOL-
OGY 56

VII. HERBERT SPENCER — DATA OF SOCIOLOGY 66
VIII. HERBERT SPENCER — ANALOGICAL SOCIOL-
OGY 73

IX. TRANSITION FROM SPENCER TO RATZEN-

HOFER 88

X. THE PLACE OF KARL MARX IN SOCIOLOGY 96

XI. SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX . . . 106

XII. SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES . 116

XIII. SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 125

XIV. THE SOCIAL FORCES 144

XV. FACTORS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS . . . 155

XIV. WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS:

HAPPINESS 161

PROGRESS 164

ACTION 169

OPINION 171

KNOWLEDGE 176

EDUCATION 185

SUMMARY 191

XVII. INDIRECT ACTION vs. DIRECT ACTION . 194
XVIII. THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY . 204

An Introduction to Sociology

CHAPTER I

THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY

The first half of the nineteenth century enriched our
modern languages with two great words — Biology and
Sociology. The honors in both cases fall to France
which still held, as it had held throughout the seven-
teenth century, the foremost place in philosophy and
science. John Fiske attributes the origin of the word
"Biology" to De Blainville, but Professor Huxley,
with his usual thoroughness, has shown that it was
first used in a book published in 1801 by Jean
Lamarck, the real father of the modern evolution
theory. As to the origin of the word "Sociology,"
there is no disagreement. The undisputed honor
falls to August Comte who first used it in a book
written in 1838. Biology was the great science
of the nineteenth century, with Lamarck as its Coper-
nicus and Darwin as its Newton. In this century,
the foremost place will fall to the "science of society"
which is, as Ward well says: "the last and highest
landing on the great staircase of education."

The chief root out of which sociology has grown is
the ever-increasing conviction of the universality of
causation. Science has no existence apart from the
idea of law. Wherever we have penetrated the secrets

9

10 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of the universe thus far we have found "cause and
effect" regnant. As Starcke well maintains : "all science
is founded on faith in the universality of causation."

Whatever difficulties may have existed as to the ap-
plication of this concept to the older sciences, they
exist no longer. Astronomy, Physics and Chemistry
have been given over completely to what the Duke of
Argyle called "The Reign of Law." The sciences
dealing with living things — the sub-sciences of biology
— are rapidly moving in the same direction, and the
steadily increasing perception that the same fate awaits
the phenomena of social activity has brought society
within scientific reach.

This wholly desirable attitude has not been achieved
without overcoming obstacles similar to those which
long blocked the progress of the earlier sciences. We
shall better understand the process if we consider these
difficulties at some length.

The barriers which opposed themselves to the found-
ing and developing of sociology were chiefly three. The
first was purely theological. It may be stated as "belief
in Divine Providence." There was a time when Divine
Providence directed the stars and determined the
weather, but astronomy has banished it from the one
and meteorology is driving it from the other. It has,
in fact, been expelled from field after field of human
thought and is making its final and hopeless stand in the
field of social phenomena. If society were ruled by
"divine will" there could be no direct science of society.
If the divine will were limited by law, which theolo-
gians would hardly concede, there might be a science

THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY 11

of the divine will, and this might serve indirectly as a
sort of social science in the second remove.

This would mean, however, the abolition of mys-
teries which are sacred to the religious mind, and
which will only disappear with the disappearance of
religion. The poet Cowper observed that "God moves
in a mysterious way" and the greater and earlier poet
who wrote the Book of Job presented God as an in-
scrutable mystery: "Canst thou by searching find out
God?" In the scientific world belief in divine provi-
dence has lost its foot-hold. It is worn only, when worn
at all, as a Sunday coat to insure respectability. It is ex-
pressed merely as a pious opinion to keep the theologi-
cal fraternity from snapping at one's heels.

In the ranks of the working class Divine Providence
long held sway. In the minds of many it still rules,
thanks to their utter lack of scientific education. What
with long hours of labor and meager access to real
books it seemed as if the laborers could never be eman-
cipated from their superstitions.

Fortunately for them a new educating force has arisen
which serves them largely in the place of a scientific
training. It is in fact a scientific training in itself. This
new emancipating force has been brilliantly expounded
by two writers — Paul Lafargue and Professor Veblen.
The latter has given it a happy name. He calls it:
"The cultural incidence of the machine process."

The working mechanic has indeed outstripped his
bourgeois brother in the shedding of outworn beliefs.
The scientific education of the bourgeois is of the slen-
derest, while the machine process has wrought long and
well on the mind of the proletariat.

12 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

"How comes it," asks Lafargue, "that the bourgeois,
who receive a scientific education of greater or less ex-
tent, are still trammeled by religious ideas, from which
the workers, without education, have freed themselves?"
And here, in part, is his answer given in "Social and
Philosophical Studies," a book of immense value to
the student, and published by Charles H. Kerr &*Co.,
at the easily accessible price of 50 cents:

"The labor of the mechanical factory puts the wage-
worker in touch with terrible natural forces unknown
to the peasant, but instead of being mastered by them,
he controls them. The gigantic mechanism of iron and
steel which fills the factory, which makes him move like
an automaton, which sometimes clutches him, mutilates
him, bruises him, does not engender in him a supersti-
tious terror as the thunder does in the peasant, but
leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the limbs of the
mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his
comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it
in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its mirac-
ulous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him.
The laborer in the electric works, who has but to turn
a crank on a dial to send miles, of motive power to tram-
ways or light to the lamps of a city, has but to say, like
the God of Genesis, "Let there be light," and there is
light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet
for him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He
would be greatly surprised if one were to come and tell
him that a certain God might if he chose stop the ma-
chine and extinguish the lights when the electricity had
been turned on ; he would reply that this anarchistic God
would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken wire,
and that it would be easy for him to seek and to find
this disturbing God. The practice of the modern work-
shop teaches the wage-worker scientific determinism,

THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY 13

without his needing to pass through the theoretical
study of the sciences."

This also explains why and how the industrial work-
ers of the cities have distanced the laborers of the
country.

One of the most hopeful things in the sociological
outlook is this unconsciously scientific attitude of the
great mass of industrial workers. It is of great import-
ance that the student of the science should have a clear
grasp of its causes. It is a clear case of the spread of
the idea of the universality of causation in a large and
increasingly important division of the community. It,
of course, takes the form of a general break down of
what Spencer calls the "theological bias." We shall now
consider Veblen's exposition of this intellectual result
of the mechanical process.

The following passages are chosen — not occurring
successively — from Chapter IX of his book, "The
Theory of Business Enterprise." The chapter gives
the name of the theory in its title: "The Cultural Inci-
dence of the Machine Process":

"The machine process pervades the modern life and
dominates it in a mechanical sense. Its dominance is
seen in the enforcement of precise mechanical measure-
ments and adjustment and the reduction of all manner
of things, purposes and acts, necessities, conveniences,
and amenities of life, to standard units. The bearing of
this sweeping mechanical standardization upon business
traffic is a large part of the subject-matter of the fore-
going chapters. The point of immediate interest here
is the further bearing of the machine process upon the
growth of culture — the disciplinary effect which this
movement for standardization and mechanical equiva-

14 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

lence has upon the human material. This discipline falls
more immediately on the workmen engaged in the me-
chanical industries, and only less immediately on the
rest of the community which lives in contact with this

sweeping machine process.

*** *****

"Mechanically speaking, the machine is not his (the
workman's) to do with as his fancy may suggest. His
place is to take thought of the machine and its work
in the terms given him by the process that is going for-
ward. His thinking in the premises is reduced to stand-
ard units of gauge and grade. If he fails of the precise
measure, by more or less, the exigencies of the process
check the aberration and drive home the absolute need

of conformity.

*** *****

"If he takes to myth-making and personifies the ma-
chine, or the process, and imputes purpose and benevo-
lence to the mechanical appliances, after the manner of
current nursery tales and gulpit oratory, he is sure to

go wrong.

*** *****

"The machine process throws out anthropomorphic
habits of thought. * * * The machine
technology rests on a knowledge of impersonal, material
cause and effect, not on the dexterity, diligence or per-
sonal force of the workman, still less on the habits and
propensities of the workman's superiors. * * *
It inculcates thinking in terms of opaque, impersonal
cause and effect, to the neglect of those norms of validity
that rest on usage and on conventional standards handed

down by usage.

*** *****

"Its scheme of knowledge and of inference is based
on the laws of material causation, not on those of im-
memorial custom, authenticity, or authoritative enact-
ment. Its metaphysical basis is the law of cause and
effect, which in the thinking of its adepts has displaced

THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY 15

even the law of sufficient reason. * * * Anthro-
pomorphism, under whatever disguise, is of no use and
of no force here.

*** *****

"The intellectual and spiritual training of the machine
in modern life, therefore, is very far-reaching. It leaves
but a small proportion of the community untouched ; but
while its constraint is ramified throughout the body of
the population, and constrains virtually all classes at
some points in their daily life, it falls with the most di-
rect, intimate, and unmitigated impact upon the skilled
mechanical classes, for these have no respite from its
mastery whether they are at work or at play."

Professor Veblen continues the development of his
argument with great skill. He contends that the school-
ing of the machine has led the trades unions into a
mental attitude which has no reverence for the common
law. And this because the common law is founded on
the metaphysical doctrine of natural rights and the sa-
cred theories of personal status and private property, all
of which ideas are alien to the logic of the machine pro-
cess. The machine technology produces this result not so
much by contradicting conventional ideas as by ignor-
ing them to the point of causing them to lose their
force.

Our author next shows that the machine process is
back of the "Socialistic disaffection." His writing on
this part of his theme reminds one of the peculiar style
used by Galileo and Descartes and others who in the
middle ages tried to advocate certain theories without
appearing to the vigilant watch dogs of the inquisition
to do so. The Professor's subsequent career is evi-
dence enough that it is still hazardous to hold Socialistic

16 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ideas in universities, though, through the sheer in-
crease in numbers, it is becoming less and less conspicu-
ous and therefore less disastrous. This seems to be
the only explanation of Veblen's use of such terms as
"socialistic vagaries" when his main argument is quite
favorable to the socialist idea.

Again, while there is an undercurrent of sympathy
for the "Socialist disaffection" there is an open flouting
of the pettifogging measures of those whose insight
or courage falls short of the program of Socialism. This
comes out in the following passage from a footnote,
which deserves to be printed in letters of gold.

Speaking of "the unpropertied classes employed in
business" and therefore outside the direct impact of the
machine process Veblen says :

"This pecuniarily disfranchised business population, in
its revulsion against unassimilated facts, turns rather
[instead of to Socialism] to some excursion into prag-
matic romance, such as Social Settlements, Prohibition,
Clean Politics, Single Tax, Arts and Crafts, Neighbor-
hood Guilds, Institutional Church, Christian Science,
New Thought, or some such cultural thimblerig."

"Pragmatic romance" and "cultural thimblerig" stir
in one a joy such as Keats tells us he experienced when
he came across such descriptive phrases as "sea-shoulder-
ing whale."

Veblen is considered at length here because he re-
veals with great clearness one of the master forces mak-
ing in the direction of Sociology. The book from
which the above quotations are made, published by
Scribners, and his "The Theory of the Leisure Class,"
published by MacMillan, have met with no reception at

THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY 17

all consonant with their importance for sociology. "The
Theory of the Leisure Class" is a much more valuable
contribution to American sociological literature than
many more pretentious volumes and for the question
under discussion here, the student will be well repaid
by a careful reading. The following is from the latter
part of the chapter on "Devout Observances":

"The workman's office is becoming more and more
exclusively that of discretion and supervision in a pro-
cess of mechanical, dispassionate sequences. So long as
the individual is the chief and typical prime mover in
the process ; so long as the obtrusive feature of the in-
dustrial process is the dexterity and force of the indi-
vidual handicraftsman ; so long as the habit of interpret-
ing phenomena in terms of personal motive and propen-
sity [which is the essence of theology] suffers no such
considerable and consistent derangement through facts as
to lead to its elimination. But under the later developed
industrial processes, when the prime movers and the
contrivances through which they work are of an im-
personal, non-individual character, the grounds of gen-
eralization habitually present in the workman's mind and
the point of view from which he habitually apprehends
phenomena is an enforced cognizance of matter of fact
sequence. The result, so far as concerns the workman's
life of faith, is a proclivity to undevout scepticism."

This whole theory of the effect of machinery on
thought explains, as Veblen points out, why the So-
cialists of Germany, while capturing the industrial cen-
ters make small headway in the rural districts. In
America this is not so pronounced because our fanners
have not been steeped for centuries in what Marx called
"the idiocy of country life."

Professor Henderson of the University of Chicago, is

18 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

reported as saying in a lecture of a few days ago that
religion is losing its hold on the business world because
business men "associate religion with miracle" and mir-
acle is foreign to the business habit of thought. And
this is much more true of the machine worker.

The anti-theological effect of the machine process on
the mind of the worker is paralleled by the same effect
of the natural sciences on the workers in that field. As
Veblen says: "As regards the educated classes, social-
istic views are particularly likely to crop out among the
men in the material sciences." We refer to Socialism in
this connection because it is a conspicuous instance of
the steady drift toward a science of society.

The machine process and what might be called the
scientific trend work well together toward a common
sociological result. Veblen, indeed, makes the machine
process the cause of the scientific trend, though there is
much to be said for their mutual interaction.

With the exception of a few theological phrases such
as "creator" which Darwin used and which, McCabe
tells us, he afterward repented, as so much unfortunate
truckling to public opinion, the great English biologist
is an eminent example of the modern scientific spirit.
And Veblen has no hesitation in making Darwin's scien-
tific method the consequence of the intellectual atmos-
phere generated by the early English machine industry.
This is a daring application of "economic determinism"
and worth reproducing here in full:

"This early technological advance, of course, took
place in the British community, where the machine pro-
cess first gained headway and where the discipline of
a prevalent machine industry inculcated thinking in terms

THE THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTY 19

of the machine process. So also it was in the British
community that modern science fell in the lines marked
out by technological thinking and began to formulate its
theories in terms of process rather than in terms of
prime causes and the like. While something of this
kind is noticeable relatively early in some of the inor-
ganic sciences, as, e. g., Geology, the striking and de-
cisive move in this direction was taken toward the mid-
dle of the century by Darwin and his contemporaries.
Without much preliminary exposition and without feel-
ing himself to be out of touch with his contemporaries,
Darwin set to work to explain species in terms of the
process out of which they have arisen, rather than out
of the prime causes to which the distinction between
them may be due. Denying nothing as to the substan-
tial services of the Great Artificer in the development of
species, he simply and naively left Him out of the
scheme, because, as being a personal factor, He could
not be stated and handled in terms of process. * * *
His results, as well as his specific determination of fac-
tors at work in this process of cumulative change (in
organic evolution) have been questioned; perhaps they
are open to all the criticisms leveled against them as
well as to a few more not yet thought of ; but the scope
and method given to scientific inquiry by Darwin and
the generation whose spokesman he is, has substantially
not been questioned, except by that diminishing contin-
gent of the faithful who by force of special training or
by native gift are not amenable to the discipline of the
machine process."

The student who approaches sociology through this
book — and this will probably be its function to most of
its readers — may as well be told the plain truth here
at the outset. Theological ideas, in this, as in any other
scientific field, are as so many heavy weights hung to
the waist-belt of a foot-racer — rapid progress will be

20 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

impossible until they are thrown aside. The immense
superiority of the sociological works of Lester F. Ward
to those of, say Giddings, for example, is largely due
to Ward's rigid adherence to the scientific spirit when
theology is in question. As we shall see presently, the
acknowledged founder of the science, August Comte, saw
clearly that the laying of the theological ghost must be
the initial step in the scientific interpretation of social
activity.

Happily, in this respect, Sociology is heir to the labors
of the giants who toiled in the fields of physical and
biological science. All that is necessary for her is to
adopt the method and weapons which crowned with suc-
cess the epoch-making labors of Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, Newton, Kant and Laplace, in astronomy and
physics, and Darwin and his colleagues in organic sci-
ences.

Theology, driven from one field after another, makes
its final stand in the science of society. Here it is in
its last trench, and while it is discouraging to note that
the oft-tought battle must be waged again and again,
there is some compensation in the reflection that when
it is vanquished here it can never again rear its hoary
head to mock the upward struggles of the marching
hosts of men.

CHAPTER II

THE FREE WILL DIFFICULTY

Following after and growing out of theological con-
cepts is another belief in violent conflict with the idea
of a science of society. This is the much-discussed
doctrine of the freedom of the will. If the free will
theory, in its ordinary and generally accepted meaning
is true, sociology is impossible. That theory, if true,
presents a difficulty wholly insurmountable.

This objection was clearly stated by the English His-
torian, Anthony Froude, who held to both the doctrine
and its — for sociology — disastrous consequences.
Froude says:

"When natural causes are liable to be set aside and
neutralized by what is called volition, the word science
is out of place. If it is free to a man to choose what he
will do or not do, there is no adequate science of him.
It is in this marvelous power in men to do
wrong . . . that the impossibility stands of forming
scientific calculations of what men will do before the
fact, or scientific explanations of what men have done
after the fact."

The free will doctrine has never gone unchallenged
since the days when Democritus held that all things
in the universe, including human actions, were governed
by rigid unescapable necessity. The general mass of
mankind have always felt that many if not all their acts
were impelled by forces beyond their control, and words
and phrases were formed to express this feeling. Such

21

22 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

are fate, destiny, fortune, the finger, or the will, of God.
The Calvinistic faith, with its doctrine of predestination,
is a total denial of free will.

In our day there is a greater and growing general
sentiment which echoes the position of John Stuart
Mill: "Given the motives which are present to an indi-
vidual's mind, and given likewise the character and dis-
position of the individual, the manner in which the in-
dividual will act might unerringly be inferred."

This conception, as it presents itself to the general
mind, is admirably set forth by Archbishop Whately in
his "Elements of Logic" :

"Everyone is accustomed to anticipate future events,
in human affairs, as well as in the material world, in
proportion to his knowledge of the several circumstances
connected with each; however different in amount that
knowledge may be, in reference to different occurrences.
And in both cases alike, we always attribute the failure
of any anticipation to our ignorance or mistake respect-
ing some of the circumstances. When we fully expect,
from our supposed knowledge of some person's char-
acter, and of circumstances he is placed in, that
he will do something which, eventually, he does
not do, we at once and without hesitation con-
clude that we were mistaken either as to his char-
acter, or as to his situation, or as to our acquaint-
ance with human nature, generally ; and we are
accustomed to adduce any such failure as a proof of
such mistake; saying 'It is plain you were mistaken in
your estimate of that man's character; for he has done
so and so;' and this as unhesitatingly as we should at-
tribute the non-occurrence of an eclipse we had pre-
dicted, not to ^any change in the Laws of Nature, but
to some error in our calculations."

THE FREE WILL DIFFICULTY 23

Among philosophers Emanuel Kant is generally sup-
posed to be a free will adherent. That this is a mis-
taken assumption his statement as follows clearly
proves :

"Whatsoever difference there may be in our notions
of the freedom of the will metaphysically considered, —
it is evident that the manifestations of this will, viz.:
human actions, are as much under the control of nature
as any physical phenomena. It is the province of his-
tory to narrate these manifestations ; and let their causes
be ever so secret, we know that history, simply by taking
its station at a distance and contemplating the agency
of the human will upon a large scale, aims at unfolding
to our view a regular stream of tendency in the great
succession of events ; so that the very course of inci-
dents, which taken separately and individually would
have seemed perplexed, incoherent, and lawless, yet
viewed in their connection and as the actions of the
human species and not of independent beings, never fail
to discover a steady and continuous though slow develop-
ment of certain great predispositions of our nature. Thus
for instance, deaths, births, and marriages, considering
how much they are separately dependent on the free-
dom of the human will, should seem to be subject to no
law according to which any calculation could be made
beforehand of their amount : and yet the yearly registers
of these events in great countries prove that they go on
with as much conformation to the laws of nature as the
oscillations of the weather."

While the free will doctrine has still some following
in the general, and especially the cloudy-minded relig-
ious world, it has been definitely and totally abandoned
by scientific men. "There can, of course," says Pro-
fessor Guenther, "be no question of free will to the
scientifically-minded man." "Human actions are," he

24 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

elsewhere says, "determined by causes that lie behind,
not before them." Says Ernest Haeckel: "The great
struggle between the determinist and the indeterminist,
between the opponent and the sustainer of the freedom
of the will, has ended today, after more than two thou-
sand years, completely in favor of the determinist."

This culmination of the free-will controversy was a
necessary fore-runner of the founding of the science of
sociology. Among the sociologists this is clearly recog-
nized. The sociologists are determinists by the first
demands of' their science. They cannot go forward a
single step on any other basis. This necessary attitude
of the sociologists is well exemplified by one of the
greatest among them, Lester F. Ward, who writes as
follows :

"The will, that highest power of the mind of which
we boast so much, is, if not a chimera, at least a far
different thing from what it appears to be. The real
paradox here is the truth that it is an effect as well as
a cause. Like the universe, like life, like man himself,
like the other faculties of the mind, the will is a genetic
product of cosmical law. The illusion consists in sup-
posing that our will is subject to our orders, that it is
in any sense free. Yet here in the dependence of the
will we have a paradox which clings with the utmost
tenacity, even to the most enlightened of mankind. They
have been compelled to admit the monistic principle in
the celestial bodies, in the inorganic world, perhaps in
the organic world. They may be even willing to agree
that man is himself a genetic product, that brain has
been mechanically evolved, that sensation and even
thought are the effects of antecedent causes, but, when
the great demi-god will is sought to be rolled in, they
take fright and resist this last encroachment. These

THE FREE WILL DIFFICULTY 25

several classes of mind only show the degrees of causal
power with which they are endowed. A full comple-
ment, of causality never allows itself to be arrested by
the consideration of consequences. ' If the universe is
the theater of law, freedom is a delusion."

The method of this book is to allow the authorities
to speak for themselves and, as far as possible, in their
own language. The reader, by this time, has probably
heard enough to be convinced that our ancient friend
"free will" has had his day and ceased to be. His pain-
less anaesthetic death at the hands of science adds one
more milestone on the road to scientific interpretation
of social phenomena.

CHAPTER III

THE GREAT MAN DIFFICULTY

The writer recalls reading in his theological youth
a lecture by an eminent preacher of the English Church
on "Old Testament History." If memory fails not it
was one of Cannon Liddon's Bampton Lectures, though
for our purpose the precise authorship is of small im-
portance. The whole body of this "divinity" literature
has steadily lost its value with the passing years and
the rising tide of natural science. The only value for
us of the lecture in question is that it is representative
of a common theological attitude toward history. The
lecturer had a very simple and easy explanation of He-
brew history of the period of Elisha. It consisted of
a comfortable and well-assured explanation of Elisha
himself. God foresaw that the Hebrew race was ap-
proaching a crisis in its career and that a strong man
would be needed to shape its destinies. Therefore, in
his creative laboratory he constructed Elisha, equipped
him for his task, and sent him forth at the proper mo-
ment to fulfill his historic mission.

For the type of thinker who accepts this as an ex-
planation of the human drama, the perplexities of his-
tory vanish. All he needs to do is to study the great
men and perceive in their acts the will of the great
God who shapes them for the occasion. In some quar-
ters, where the insistent demands of the scientific spirit
have caused the Deity's share in the proceedings to be

THE GREAT MAN DIFFICULTY 27

dropped, the "great man*' is still held to be the only
explanation of the annals of mankind.

For Sociology, however, the "Great Man Theory,"
as commonly understood, is "a lion in the path," and its
removal is an imperative necessity. This does not mean
that great men are not great. Nor does it imply any
detraction from their fame and credit. What stands in
the way is not the Great Man but the "Great Man
Theory." In the case of "free will" there is no denial
of the existence of the will but only repudiation of the
notion that it is free and its decisions uncaused. The
science-impeding character of the great man theory lies
in its assumption that the great man is a sort of un-
caused first cause.

The standard text-book of the theory is Thomas Car-
lyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship." Like most of Car-
lyle's books it is a combination of first class writing and
second rate thinking. The essential nature of the
theory is that it regards history as dependent upon the
appearance of some one man at a certain critical mo-
ment. Fortunately these human stars usually blazed
forth when their light was most needed. Had they
failed the tide of history would have set in some other
unknown direction. Carlyle's treatment of Luther is a
case in point. Without Luther, the Reformation which
bears his name had been impossible. For Carlyle, this
is not enough. Without this one man, the whole of
subsequent history would have been otherwise, including
the history of the Western Continent. Carlyle goes the
length of making all this hinge not merely on Luther
but on one of his acts. Speaking of Luther's behavior
at the Diet of Worms, Carlyle says:

28 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

"It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the modern
history of men. English Puritanism, England and its
parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two cen-
turies; French revolution, Europe and its work every-
where at present; the germ of it all lay there: had
Luther in that moment done other, it had all been other-
wise."

What shines forth most clearly in this extravagant
language is not the importance of Luther, but the pov-
erty of Carlyle's sense of historical causation. Modern
Sociology has, and must have, an entirely different view.
For it the Reformation would have been achieved, Lu-
ther or no Luther. The secular powers of Germany
and some other countries were ripe "for a revolt against
the tremendous monetary drain of Rome, and they were
ready to form in a solid, phalanx behind the first man
who should raise the standard of revolt. Without that
backing, Luther would have been trampled like a reed.
With those forces lying in wait it was only a question
of who should be first to strike. To change the simile,
the air was full of sparks and had not Luther's fallen
in the powder magazine some other would. It was only
a question of days or weeks or at the most months.
The times had reached a pitch where the explosion was
inevitable. In civil history the actual demonstration of
this truth is, in the nature of things impossible. Once
the deed is done there is no chance for another to prove
that he would have done it had the first champion failed.

There is another field, however, where these condi-
tions do not obtain and the proof of the independence
of development of any one man is abundant. This is
the equally if not more important history of science.

THE GREAT MAN DIFFICULTY 29

The history of science is replete with instances of dual
and sometimes treble and even quadruple independent
discoveries of epoch-making things and truths. When
the development of ideas reaches a certain stage and the
thought of the time is ripe for the next step forward,
it is made — and its making clearly depends on no one
"great man."

As I have treated this question at length in my chap-
ter on Carlyle in "Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind,"
the evidence will be condensed here.

The telescope has played an important role in modern
thought and if it had not been invented by either of the
Dutch spectacle makers, Jansen and Lippershey, in 1609,
it is certain Galileo would have made one a little later.

While Priestley was busy in England with a new gas
he had discovered, and which Lavoisier in France pro-
nounced to be oxygen, an essential and combustible ele-
ment in air — and the nemesis of phogiston — the same
discovery was being independently made by a poor apoth-
ecary, Scheele, in Kj oping, Sweden.

The famous "Nebular Hypothesis" usually attributed,
by most American writers, solely to Laplace, was clearly
expounded by Kant half a century earlier in his "Theory
of the Heavens," and then apparently lost to sight, and,
independently, rediscovered by the Frenchman. In
Europe, however, Kant's claim is fully recognized and
the theory is often referred to as the Kantian Hypoth-
esis.

After Herschel had discovered the new, and then far-
thest known, planet Uranus in 1781, its movements were
seen to be perturbed at a certain point in its immense
orbit, a perturbation which could only be explained, by

30 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Newton's gravitation, by the presence of some other
large and unknown body in that neighborhood. The
dual and independent discoveries of this body (Nep-
tune) by the Frenchman Leverrier and the Englishman
Adams is not only celebrated but notorious, it having
furnished one of the most unpleasant international con-
troversies as to priorit}', in the annals of science.

In the history of the mathematics which led to Nep-
tune's discovery, it will be remembered that when the
ordinary calculus had ceased to meet the expanding
needs of astronomers the "Differential Calculus" had
three independent births, in three different countries,
through the respective labors of Newton, Leibnetz and
Lagrange.

The twin birth of Darwin's theory of "Natural Selec-
tion" is probably better known than the nature of the
theory itself. Wallace was ready for publication be-
fore Darwin and would undoubtedly have been first
in print had he been at home to attend to its print-
ing himself. Fortunately Darwin's priority was easily
established to the full and generous acknowledgment
of Wallace, and science was saved the humiliation of hav-
ing one of its greatest conquests lashed to the name of
a victim of the fantastic vagaries of spiritualism.

These evidences of the independence of scientific
progress of any one great man are inexhaustible, and
we will close this brief list with one of great importance
to Sociology. The "Materialist Conception of History"
came before the world under joint authorship. The
Communist Manifesto in which it was first announced
bore the names of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
From its interesting preface we learn that, while Engels

THE GREAT MAN DIFFICULTY 31

awards the laurels to Marx, we should have had this
brilliant and revolutionary generalization from Engels,
though Marx had never lived.

Despite the steady growth of the evidence against
the great man theory it still lingers as a sort of rudi-
mentary idea. There are still living, people who imagine
that Rousseau created the French Revolution, that
Washington conjured forth the struggle for independ-
ence, and that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" abolished American
chattel slavery. But the real social forces responsible
for these civil transformations are steadily rising into
view, and the poetic and romantic interpretation of his-
tory is receding in a corresponding degree. With the
decay of theological and metaphysical modes of thought,
there is an ever-increasing conviction that the great man
is more the creature than the creator of the signal ad-
vances of his time.

The eloquent advocacy of the theory by Carlyle has
been more than counterbalanced by the merciless analy-
sis of Herbert Spencer. Spencer, in his "Study of So-
ciology,"' rang the death knell of the great man theory:

"Even were we to grant the absurd supposition that
the genesis of the great men does not depend on the
antecedents furnished by the society he is born in, there
would still be the quite sufficient facts that he is power-
less in the absence of the material and mental accumu-
lations which his society inherits from the past, and
that he is powerless in the absence of the co-existing
population, character, intelligence, and social arrange-
ments. Given a Shakespeare, and what dramas could
he have written without the multitudinous traditions of
civilized life — without the various experiences which,
descending to him from the past, gave wealth to his

32 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

thought, and without the language which a hundred
generations had developed and enriched by use? Sup-
pose a Watt, with all his inventive power, living in a
tribe ignorant of iron, or in a tribe that could get only
as much iron as a fire blown by hand-bellows will smelt,
or suppose him born among ourselves before lathes ex-
isted ; what chance would there have been of the steam
engine? Imagine a Laplace unaided by that slowly de-
veloped system of mathematics which we trace back to
its beginnings among the Egyptians ; how far would he
have got with the Mecanique Celeste? Nay, the like
questions may be put and have like answers, even if we
limit ourselves to those classes of great men on whose
doings hero-worshippers more particularly dwell — the
rulers and generals. Xenophon could not have achieved
his celebrated feat had his Ten Thousand been feeble or
cowardly, or insubordinate. Caesar would never have
made his conquests without disciplined troops, inherit-
ing their prestige and tactics and organization from the
Romans who lived before them. And, to take a recent
instance, the strategical genius of Moltke would have
triumphed in no great campaigns had there not been a
nation of some forty millions to supply soldiers, and had
not those soldiers been men of strong bodies, sturdy
characters, obedient natures, and capable of carrying out
orders intelligently."

Thus, Spencer, reviewing dramatic events in Euro-
pean history, concludes:

"If you should wish to understand these phenomena
of social evolution, you will not do so though you should
read yourself blind over the biographies of all the great
rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Na-
poleon the Treacherous."

CHAPTER IV

AUGUST COMTE THE LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

The science of sociology, by common consent, begins
with August Comte. Like all other departments of
thought it had its more or less distinct foreshadowings
— as Spencer would say, its adumbrations — in the an-
cient world, but its birth as a science, properly so-called,
is largely the result of the labors of the French Posi-
tivist and founder of "Positivism."

A system of social science is the last thing to be looked
for in the works of Comte. Such a system must be the
ripe result and not the beginning of the science, and we
have no right to expect one in the writings of its great
pioneer.

Comte did indeed put forth considerable effort in this
field and even went so far as to give the chief outlines
of the society of the future. In all this he failed piti-
fully. Those who know only of his ideas in this field can
form no opinion of his tremendous contribution to
modern intellectual advancement.

Comte did two things. He did them so well, they will
forever remain as monuments of his genius. They were
great things and will rank always as among the notable
achievements of the mind of man.
' These two things are : The law of human develop-
ment, and the classification of the sciences. They will
form the respective subjects of this and the following
chapter.

Thanks to the labors of Harriet Martineau, English

34 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

readers have an advantage over the readers of the French
original. In her translation she has condensed the six
French volumes into one English one and sacrificed lit-
tle but the repetition incidental to work done in the form
of lectures, and extending over a period of twenty
years.

Comte's "Law of Human Development" is funda-
mental to his whole philosophy and it throws a flood of
thought on the phenomena of social and scientific pro-
gress.

As to the nature of this law we will allow its dis-
coverer, through the medium of Miss Martineau, to
speak for himself. The third paragraph of the first
chapter reads as follows:

"From the study of the development of human intel-
ligence, in all directions, and through all times, the dis-
covery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is
necessarily subject, and which has a solid foundation of
proof, both in the facts of our organization and in our
historical experience. The law is this: That each of our
leading conceptions — each branch of our knowledge —
passes successively through three different theoretical
conditions : the Theological, or fictitious ; the Metaphysi-
cal, or abstract ; and the Scientific, or positive. In other
words, the human mind, by its nature, employs in its
progress three methods of philosophizing, the character
of which is essentially different, and even radically op-
posed; viz., the theological method, the metaphysical
and the positive. Hence arises three philosophies, or
general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of Phe-
nomena, each of which excludes the others. The first
is the necessary point of departure of the human under-
standing; the third is its fixed and definite state. The
second is merely a state of transition."

COMTE'S LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 35

The insight displayed in the above passage is all the
more amazing when one remembers it was written in the
pre-Danvinian days. Here is convincingly stated, what
has since become universally admitted among scientific
men, that theology belongs to the infancy of the human
race. Thus has theology, which was described by Mr.
Gladstone, as "the crown and flower of human knowl-
edge," become the pariah of the scientific world.

No writer, with the possible exception of Karl Marx
or Lester F. Ward, recognized more clearly the es-
sentially reactionary character of theological thinking.
When Comte spoke of it as "theological, or fictitious,"
he dealt it a terrific blow. Only such an iconoclast could
have founded modern sociology.

Comte's "law of human development" is a radical
rupture with the general mental attitude of his day, and
in this lies its chief virtue. Men who trod mincingly,
and timidly avoided the impact of the prejudices of their
time, have done useful work, but they could never be
great pioneers in the world of thought. The judicious
time-server is swallowed in the maze of his own apolo-
getics. Only the fearless man becomes a milestone in
the march of mind.

We might now proceed to the further statement of
Comte's "law" in language of our own which would
avoid the grievous blunders into which the brilliant
Frenchman fell, but again we will quote his painstaking
translator :

"In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the
essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the
origin and purpose) of all effects — in short absolute

36 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

knowledge — supposes all phenomena to be produced by
the immediate action of supernatural beings.

"In the metaphysical state, which is only a modifica-
tion of the first, the mind supposes, instead of super-
natural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities (that
is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and
capable of producing all phenomena. What is called
the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a mere
reference of each to its proper entity.

"In the final, the positive state, the mind has given
over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin
and destination of the universe, and the causes of phe-
nomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws —
that is, their invariable relations of succession and re-
semblance. Reasoning and observation duly combined,
are the means of this knowledge. What is now under-
stood when we speak of an explanation of facts is sim-
ply the establishment of a connection between single
phenomena and some general facts the number of which
continually diminishes with the progress of science."

In the above passage the fundamental error into
which Comte fell and which stamps and vitiates all his
writings, stands plainly forth. In this glaring and per-
sistent blunder is the explanation of the tardy recogni-
tion of the real merit of his labors. But for this error
Comte might have had almost as rapid and signal a
triumph as Darwin himself.

Darwin's errors were incidental and advanced with
small enthusiasm. His hopeless theory of Pangenisis,
for example, is presented as a "provisional" theory, and
its relegation to the scrap heap in no way affected the
bulk of Darwin's work.

Comte's errors, on the contrary, crop out everywhere
and are defended by him with an emphasis often lack-
ing when he is advancing his really great truths.

COMTE'S LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 37

Comte's grand error lies in his failure to differentiate
between "efficient causes" and "final causes" — causa
finales and causes efficientes. Final causes belong to
theology and are properly denounced and discarded, but
efficient causes are essentially a part of the scientific
method, and should have been explained and defended.
In his violent reaction against the former, Comte al-
lowed himself to be drawn into a sweeping inclusion of
the latter. The unfortunate but inevitable result has
been that many scientific men have cursorily read his
work, and regarded him with suspicion, when, had they
looked beyond his error they would have hailed him as
a brother. With the lapse of time this mistaken esti-
mate is being corrected and Comte is coming to his own.

The limits of this work do not allow an extensive
treatment of this question and the reader is now re-
ferred for its further development to the earlier part of
the first chapter of Lester F. Ward's two-volume mas-
terpiece: "Dynamic Sociology," a work about which we
shall have much to say later and from which we now
quote :

"While, to the mind of all other philosophers, the ar-
bitrary, original, and the final cause stand in plainest con-
trast with the necessary, efficient, or mechanical cause,
the former being, as Comte justly asserts, the basis of
all theological reasoning, while the latter seems the al-
most indispensible postulate of science itself, he fails
utterly to perceive any difference between them, and is
found attacking with equal vehemence conclusions flow-
ing f/om the one and the other class."

And again :

"As a further and necessary consequence of this ob-

38 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

stinate blindness, we find Comte multiplying the number
of what he calls 'primordial' problems beyond the lim-
its of finite powers, impossible for man ever to solve,
and fit subjects only for the labors of theologians and
metaphysicians. Among these it is amusing to notice
quite a number which were actually solved during
Comte's own life-time. For example, he repeatedly as-
serts that the chemical constitutions of the heavenly
bodies belong to this class of insoluble problems; yet,
even while he wrote, Kirchhoff and Fraunhofer were
collecting from the sun and the stars the evidence of
their composition."

Thus did Comte join together things which are, and
should be kept, separate.

For illustration of their essential difference let us take
the origin of the earth. According to the theologian
who explains the origin of the earth in terms of its
purpose — its final cause, the earth was created by the
Almighty to be the. dwelling place of man, while the
scientist smiles at so childish an explanation, and seeks
the efficient mechanical cause of its origin in the nebu-
lar hypothesis of Kant and Laplace.

All this, however, does not affect the validity or value
of Comte's "law of development" to which we now re-
turn.

There are two interesting and important features of
this law which are presented by Comte as its grounds
and evidences. The first we shall mention briefly here
as it will come up for further consideration in the en-
suing chapter. This is that every science, in the course
of its progress, passes through the three stages or pe-
riods to which the human race itself is subject. Every

COMTE'S LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 39

science is, at its birth, theological in character. Later
it throws off the swaddling clothes of its babyhood and
appears in the metaphysical garb of its youth. Ulti-
mately it emerges into the full dress of its scientific ma-
turity. Says Comte:

"There is no science which, having attained the
positive stage, does not bear the marks of having
passed through the others. Some time since it
was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can
now perceive, of metaphysical abstractions : and, further
back in the course of time, it took its form from theo-
logical conceptions. We shall have only too much oc-
casion to see, as we proceed, that our most advanced
sciences still bear very evident marks of the two earlier
periods through which they passed."

Before we proceed to the second evidence we will
consider Comte's usage of the word "positive." This is
important inasmuch as it is Comte's most frequently used
term and indeed appears in a title role, Comte naming
his system "The Positive Philosophy."

Fortunately Comte's use of the term and its popular
usage are practically identical. In popular usage "posi-
tive" is chiefly an expression of emphasis. We say a
thing is positively so when we feel sure of the fact or
facts. We are positive of a thing when it can be demon-
strated, as in the case of the majority of universally
accepted scientific truths, especially in the experimental
sciences. Fitting examples are, the functions of the
bodily organs as demonstrated in physiology, and the
composition of bodies and gases as shown by chemical
analysis and synthesis. Thus positive and scientific, as
adjectives, are practically synonymous, and are fre-
quently so used by Comte. There is not the least excuse

40 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

for any attempt to cloud with mystery, the word posi-
tive, as it is used by the founder of modern sociology.

The second ground of the "law of human develop-
ment" has to do with the individual. Comte holds that
the three periods of race development are re-enacted in
the life of the individual. He states it as follows:

"The progress of the individual mind is not only an
illustration, but an indirect evidence of that of the gen-
eral mind. The point of departure of the individual
and the race being the same, the phases of the mind of
man correspond to the epochs of the mind of the race.
Now each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own
history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a
metaphysician in his youth and a natural philosopher
in his manhood. All men who are up to their age can
verify this for themselves."

Of course, it is obvious that a person still in the thrall
of theological beliefs would present no evidence of the
operation of this law. Such would only constitute ex-
amples of mental development arrested at the sucking
bottle stage.

It is well worth noting that this is not the only "re-
capitulation theory" in modern thought. Comte's theory
that the experience of the individual recapitulates the
experience of the race applies to the mental world.
Modern biology gives a similar theory in explanation of
certain evolutionary phenomena in the organic world.

The biological recapitulation theory broached by Wal-
ther and Meckel, and still more cogently advocated by
Ernest Von Baer early in the nineteenth century, found
its chief exponent in Ernest Haeckel. This theory be-
longs to the science of embryology in which Haeckel

COMTE'S LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 41

is one of the highest authorities. The theory, briefly
stated, is, that the chief stages of organic evolutionary
development which mark the rise from moneron to man
are repeated or recapitulated in the nine months' life his-
tory of the human embryo before the infant comes forth
into the world. This "biogenetic law" as Haeckel calls
it, is well stated and illustrated by his fellow countryman
and fellow scientist, William Boelsche, in "The Evolution
of Man." "The biogenetic law," says Boelsche, "recog-
nizes in the embryo the portrait of the ancestor."

Bolsche also shows that the "biogenetic law" is not
limited in its operation to the human family but is ac-
tive throughout the animal kingdom. He says :

"No matter what embryo we may study, whether it
is that of a lizard, a snake, a crocodile, a turtle, ostrich,
stork, chicken, canary, duckbill, marsupial, whale, rab-
bit, horse, or finally a long-tailed American monkey or
anthropoid (man-like) gibbon — the embryo at a certain
stage of its development always shows a perceptible tad-
pole or fish stage. Its neck shows the mark of the gills.
Furthermore, the limbs which the embryos are just
forming at this stage have likewise the plain outlines
of fins."

This theory has also been clearly and forcefully stated
by an American who has laid the people of his country
under heavy and lasting obligations by his brilliant and
thoroughly human contributions toward a higher and
nobler standard of education — Professor J. Howard
Moore, instructor in biology at the Crane High school.
Says Professor Moore, in his "Universal Kinship":

"The embryonic development of a human being is
not different in kind from the embryonic development

42 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of any other animal. Every human being at the begin-
ning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about
1/125 inch in diameter ; at another stage of development
he is a tiny sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or
nerves, the gastrula ; at another stage he is a worm, with
a pulsating tube instead of a heart, and without head,
neck, spinal column, or limbs; at another stage he has
as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending along the
back, and a faint nerve cord, as in amphioxus, the lowest
of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a
two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits,
with gill arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at
another stage he is a reptile with a three-chambered
heart, and voiding his excreta through a cloaca like
other reptiles; and finally, when he enters upon post-
natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling,
unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the
fifth to the seventh month of development is covered
with a thick growth of hair and has a true caudal ap-
pendage, like the monkey. At this stage the embryo
has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which are cau-
dal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the
other toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but
shorter, as in the ape."

This biological theory is given at length here not only
because it supports Comte's theory by analogy but be-
cause it seems highly probable that the two principles
are not mere analogies but have a much closer relation-
ship.

In these materialistic days we have learned that
thought is a function of the -brain and that the charac-
ter and quality of the thinking is very largely, probably
entirely, dependent on brain organization.

If it be true, as the biogenetic law holds, that the
human creature comes into the world with the brain de-

COMTE'S LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 43

velopment and therefore the mental equipment of a
rather remote savage ancestor, we may cease to wonder
that theological beliefs had a peculiar attraction for us
in our early years.

CHAPTER V
COMTE'S CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES

In Comte's system, the thing which stands second,
if indeed, it is not equal, in importance to the "law of
human development" is his classification of the sciences.
As will appear, it is important for sociology because it
reveals the character of the science of society and places
it in its proper relation to other sciences. Thus we get
an estimate of its scope and importance as a branch or
department of knowledge.

In this field of classification Comte did an immense
service, not only to sociology but to all the sciences.
Especially did he serve the cause of education by organ-
izing scientific knowledge in a comprehensive order, lift-
ing it forever out of the confused, scattering and dis-
jointed maze in which he found it.

In classifying and arranging the sciences in their re-
spective positions, Comtc did not place them side by
side as so many co-equal brothers. Rather he placed them
in position of sequence or succession, comparing closely
with the relation of parent and offspring. One science is
placed at the head. The next is derived from it, and
is dependent upon it. In this way Comte traces the
main line of descent throughout the entire range of hu-
man knowledge. This achievement alone will assure the
great Frenchman a permanent niche in the Pantheon of
the immortals.

The main principle of the classification is the evolu-
tionary principle later made familiar by Spencer. The

44

CO.MTE'S CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 45

A

list begins with the most general and therefore the most
inclusive of all sciences. It then proceeds step by step
to the less and less general, but more and more complex
sciences. It thus conforms to Spencer's formula of pro-
gress from the simple to the complex.

As Lester F. Ward states it: "Each new science, as
we descend the scale, is less general, and therefore is
embraced within the limits of the preceding, to which
it stands in the true logical relation of species to genus,
while at the same time possessing special characteristics
of its own which distinguish it from all above it."

Here is the order as it appears in the Positive Philos-
ophy:

(1) Astronomy.

(2) Physics.

(3) Chemistry.

(4) Biology.

(5) (Cerebral Biology; i. e. : psychology.)

(6) Sociology.

It will be easily seen how thoroughly this arrange-
ment complies with the idea of a decreasing generality
and increasing complexity. It also, and for this very
reason, realizes the notion of each succeeding science
being "embraced," as Ward uses the term in the above
quotation, in its predecessor. Astronomy deals with
celestial bodies and the laws relating to them. Physics
deals with molar and molecular processes. Chemistry
deals with atomic processes. In the natural order of
things all these come before life which is the subject of
biology. Biology dealing with organic processes precedes
and is the parent of psychology which deals with psychic
processes. Out of these mental processes come social

46 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

relations and social processes which are the subject-mat-
ter of sociology.

It may well be that Comte's chief claim to fame may
finally rest on his having been the first man to recog-
nizj the grand unity of all things, from the whirling
nebulae to systems of taxation. In this respect Comte
has had but one successor, Mr. Herbert Spencer, the
author of the "Synthetic Philosophy." When two men,
whose genius is of the highest order, labor upon^ the
same problems, dealing with the same subject-matter, it
would be somewhat surprising if the results did not
bear some general resemblance. This is precisely what
happened in the case of Comte and Spencer. This gen-
eral resemblance has led some to the mistaken conclu-
sion that Spencer was merely a disciple of his French
predecessor, and this conclusion has been warmly and
justly repudiated by Mr. Spencer himself.

Spencer, in his efforts to disconnect himself from
Comte, has undoubtedly gone to the opposite extreme.
He denied flatly even a general resemblance between his
own classification of the sciences and the classification
of Comte. The documents which throw the greatest
light on this subject are two letters which passed be-
tween Mr. Spencer and Lester F. Ward, which letters
are reproduced as a very extensive foot note on page 65
of Ward's "Pure Sociology."

In the year 1895 Mr. Spencer received and glanced
ever the essay by Ward on "The Place of Sociology
Among the Sciences." Mr. Spencer wrote to the author
saying that in glancing through it he was "startled by
some of its statements. Spencer declares himself
amazed by Ward's statement that, "Spencer himself,

CO:.ITE'S CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 47

notwithstanding all his efforts to overthrow it, actually
adopted it (Comte's classification) in the arrangement
of the sciences in his Synthetic Philosophy." Against
this statement Mr. Spencer argues at some length. He
explains that he omitted dealing with inorganic nature
in his "Synthetic Philosophy'' simply because the scheme,
even as it stood, was too extensive.

"Two volumes were thus omitted — a volume on as-
tronomy and a volume on geology. Had it been possi-
ble to write these in addition to those undertaken, the
series would have run — astronomy, geology, biology,
psychology, sociology, ethics. Now in this series, those
marked in italics do not appear in the Comtean classi-
fication at all. In the part of the Synthetic Philosophy as
it now stands, the only correspondence with the Com-
tean classification is that biology comes before sociology ;
and surely any one would see that in rational order the
phenomena presented by a living individual must come
before that presented by an assemblage of such living
individuals. It requires no leading of Comte for any
one to see this."

Notwithstanding this sweeping disclaimer on the pan
of Mr. Spencer the position taken by Mr. Ward in the
first place remains unshaken. This will appear when we
follow Mr. Ward's example and reproduce side by side
the order of the classification adopted by each:

SYSTEM OF AUGUSTE COMTE. SYSTEM OF HERBERT SPENCER

1. Astronomy. 1. Astronomy.

2. Physics. 2. Geology.

3. Chemistry. 3. Biology.

4. Biology, including 4. Psychology.

5. Cerebral Biology. 5. Sociology.

6. Sociology. 6. Ethics.

7. Ethics.

48 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Both Comte and Spencer begin with astronomy. The
first difference appears with the second choice. Comte
follows astronomy with physics and chemistry; Mr.
Spencer chooses to occupy this space with the science
of geology. In thus diverging the advantage is un-
doubtedly on the side of the Frenchman. This classi-
fication of the sciences is not intended to include the
name of every science, but only of those which make
the trunk of the tree; the branches and twigs fall into
their proper places and are included by implication. All
Comte's terms in the series are sections of the trunk,
with the exception of the last. Mr. Spencer on the con-
trary, after beginning with the primary section of the
trunk, introduces a branch, as geology has no proper
place in such general categories. As Ward very prop-
erly maintains, in such a general classification geology
would be a subdivision of astronomy, just as zoology
is a branch of biology and not entitled to a place
in this list. After this departure there comes a reunion
at biology. Mr. Spencer charges that the division is re-
opened immediately following biology, inasmuch as he
places psychology as next in succession, whereas Comte
does not include psychology at all. In this Mr. Spencer
is mistaken. His mistake would have been spared had
he read his French predecessor more closely.

Psychology is fully treated by Comte under the head
of Cerebral Biology. It would have been better had
Comte given cerebral biology a line to itself in his list,
but his not doing so does not justify the assertion that
he omitted it from his scheme. On the contrary, his
reason given for the omission stamps him as one of the
most daring thinkers of his time. Comte explains that

COMTB'S CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 49

his refusal to separate biology and psychology is due
to his belief that they are inseparable. He takes the
essentially materialistic position that the mental pro-
cesses are based in the organization of the brain, and
that all mental phenomena are dependent on physiologi-
cal organization and function. In this proclamation
Comte clearly anticipated the science of our time. The
rest of the categories are identical. Spencer concludes
with ethics and Comte added ethics as the final term
of his series in his later work "Polytique Positive." In
this the two philosophers fell into a common error — an
error of precisely the same nature as that which led
Spencer to place geology in his category. Ethics, as
we are coming to see more clearly every day, is merely
a division of sociology and has no more right to fol-
low sociology in this main classification than botany
would have to follow biology.

Comte has several methods by which the consistency
of his classification is tested. The first has already been
given — consisting of procession from general to special,
or from the simple to the complex.

Another test which Comte regards as important and
for which he claims complete originality is as follows:
The three principal methods of science are observation,
experiment and comparison. As we proceed in Comte's
hierarchy from Astronomy at the beginning to Ethics
at the end there is, as Comte argues, a progressive ap-
plication of these methods of research. In Astronomy,
the most general and simple of the sciences, observation
alone is available; in Physics, which comes next, experi-
mentation is possible as well as observation. When we

50 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

reach chemistry, experiment is the chief weapon, while
in biology, sociology and ethics we depend mainly on
comparison.

We now come to one of the most valuable of Comte's
theories. He insists that another test of the validity
of his scientific categories is to be found in the state
of positiveness at which any science has arrived. Each
science, like each individual and like the race itself,
passes through the three successive stages, theological,
metaphysical and positive.

Astronomy, the most general of all, has passed
through the theological and metaphysical stages and has
now reached the positive or scientific stage. This is
undoubtedly the case though the uninformed often make
their first appeal in behalf of religious beliefs to the
majesty and grandeur of the heavens. There is in
reality no department of human thought where the su-
pernatural has been so completely abolished and natural
law recognized as supreme, as in astronomy. It is a
long time since any scientist of repute tried to find in
astronomy a niche in which to hide his gods. Lester
F. Ward well says: "About the last instance of this
kind was that of Newton, who brought in the divine
agency to account for so much of observation as his
theory failed to explain, and this is now set down as
one of the unfortunate weak points in his biography to
be forgotten as fast as possible/'

Physics, which comes next in generality and next in
the classification, although next most positive, is still
in the grip of metaphysical conceptions. In biology,
metaphysics and theology still have a hold, but every day

COMTE'S CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 51

sees the biological sciences become more positive and
less theological and metaphysical.

Now we come to that science of which Comte is
generally conceded to be the founder, the science of
society — sociology. Comte justly declares this late-born
and highly complex science to be still in the theological
and metaphysical stage, with theological ideas dominat-
ing. This is in itself proof that the science is in its
infancy, just as a theological type of mind was insep-
arable from the infancy of the race, and seems to be
inseparable from the infancy of the individual. In ethics
the case is even worse.

The whole development of society is popularly sup-
posed to be subject to providence ; to control of a divine
will which is independent of law and the fiats of which
cannot be prevised or even understood. This means
death to science wherever it may be found and the his-
tory of science is the story of the overthrow of this
theological position in one field after another. This
was accomplished by the discovery of those laws of na-
ture— or "methods of nature" as Lewes, Comte's great
disciple, called them — which really prevail everywhere
in the universe.

Newton, Kant and Laplace drove theology out of as-
tronomy by discovering gravity and nebulae. Mayer,
Helmholtz and Lavoisier emancipated chemistry from
superstition with the conservation of energy and the
indestructibility of matter. Lamarck, Darwin and a
great army of their colleagues and disciples have since
Comte's day driven the shadowy spectres of theology
out of biology with evolution and natural selection.
Comte struggled to do as much for Sociology and failed

52 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

completely. His great merit is that he saw the need
of such a science and foresaw the nature of its task.

Later in this book we shall deal at considerable length
with the sociology of Lester F. Ward. While we are
considering, however, the classifications of Comte and
Spencer, it seems fitting to present the classification
which Mr. Ward makes the basis of the first volume of
"Dynamic Sociology." Ward's improvement over Comte
and Spencer lies in his reduction of the number of
basic concepts to three — primary, secondary and ter-
tiary. These three divisions cover the evolution of the
universe and its contents. These are called by Ward
"aggregations" and are as follows:

Primary aggregation — inorganic — chemical relations.

Secondary aggregation — organic — vital relations (in-
cluding psychic relations).

Tertiary aggregation — social — social relations.

It will be observed that Ward's primary aggregation,
dealing with inorganic phenomena, covers the field oc-
cupied by Comte's astronomy, physics, and chemistry
and by Spencer's astronomy and geology. The second-
ary aggregation covers Comte's and Spencer's biology
and psychology while the tertiary aggregation covers
their sociology and their ill-considered final term, ethics.
This classification by Ward has the evolutionary charac-
ter and the great simplicity which mark all his work,
and which constitutes Mr. Ward the greatest living so-
ciologist.

The great merit of Comte and Spencer lies in the
fact mentioned early in this chapter. They alone in all

COMTE'S CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 53

hiftory have attempted to, and in great part succeeded
in, co-ordinating the field of universal knowledge. We
are beginning to understand that science does not con-
sist of a great mass of facts, but rather in the ascertain-
ment of the laws which lie behind the facts and which
constitute their relationship to each other. The supreme
thing in science, therefore, is not the facts themselves
but rather their relationships, and as the universe is un-
doubtedly one grand unity all its phenomena must be re-
lated. A real investigation of the universe consists in
the discovery of these relationships of facts, which give
their meaning.

Ward, in Dynamic Sociology, says:

"From the array of great names which philosophy
and science have given to the world, I have singled out
those of August Comte and Herbert Spencer as the
subjects of these brief sketches, not so much in conse-
quence of any assumed pre-eminence in these two men
above others, as because they alone, of all thinkers of
the world, have the merit of having carried their gen-
eralizations from the phenomena of inorganic nature up
to those of human action and social life. Of all the
philosophers that humanity has brought forth, these two
alone have conceived and built upon the broad princi-
ple of the absolute unity of Nature and her laws
throughout all their manifestations, from the revolu-
tions of celestial orbs to the rise and fall of empires
and the vicissitudes of social customs and laws. This
grand monistic conception is the final crown of human
thought, and was required to round out philosophy into
a form of symmetry, whose outlines, at least, admit of
no further improvement."

It is hardly necessary here to go at great length into
the absurd Utopian social scheme which Comte advanced.

54 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

It has been abandoned everywhere except by here and
there a belated follower.

He was opposed to the use of that powerful weapon
which the working men of his day were already look-
ing toward — political action. His condemnation of this
method was aimed at the precursors of the present So-
cial Democrats. He naively explains that he expects
the rich to support him in this attitude — as they did, of
course, so long as it only meant political action by their
opponents.

In Comte's positivist society there were to be four so-
cial orders. Capitalists to supply the direction of indus-
try; workers to give their labor for production; women
who were to provide social feeling; and a new priest-
hood of philosophers who were to provide education
and arbitrate all difficulties between capital and labor,
and persuade labor not to resort to force or political
action but always give heed to the moral suasion of
their superiors.

Comte wrote a great deal of extravagant and sense-
less flattery of women in general, and his own wife in
particular, but he nevertheless proposes to leave about
their wrists that old and cankering chain — economic de-
pendence. Women are to be supported like all the
other orders, by the labor of the workers, who are to
be men only. Capitalists are to have an honored place
as direcctors of industry, and there is some considerable
space and effort devoted to the folly of Socialists who
propose to abolish them. The evolution of the capital-
ist from a useful director to a useless parasitic owner,
although it had begun, was, as yet, invisible to Comte.

OOHTES CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 5u

All this was to be brought about by positivist clubs,
which were to be established in all the cities of the
civilized world and have for their object the propaganda
of this philosophy with its new-old social order.

It is another case of the irony of fate that such clubs
and groups have been established in almost every town
and city in the civilized world — but alas they are not
composed, as Comte dreamed, of the advocates of a
four-class society ; they are made up of the Social Dem-
ocrats he so fluently condemned. And these Social
Democrats advocate a society that will be classless, where
women will be economically independent of men or each
other, where the capitalist will be transformed into a
worker, no matter how much he may protest against
the metamorphosis, and the workers will direct their
own affairs without requiring hierarchies of alleged su-
periors to do it for them.

CHAPTER VI

HERBERT SPENCER — STRUCTURAL SOCIOLOGY

Of Herbert Spencer, Ward says, "he probably de-
served the title of England's greatest philosopher," and
he adds, "when we have reached England's greatest
in any achievement of mind, we have usually also
reached the world's greatest."

Whatever criticism may be made of the sociologists,
they cannot be justly charged with having neglected
the subject of religion. The part played by religion and
theology in the social process, receives very serious
and extensive treatment at the hands of Comte, Spen-
cer, and Ward.

For a time Spencer was hailed with enthusiasm by
many religionists because he presented what seemed
to be a satisfactory solution of the age-long war be-
tween religion and science. Spencer did undoubtedly
solve this problem. He pointed out that the struggle
between the two forces was due to a misunderstanding
as to their proper and legitimate territories. In order
to remove this misapprehension forever he divided the
universe into two parts — the knowable and the un-
knowable. The first, he held, belonged to science ; the
second must be reserved for religion.

Religion had been so roughly handled by science, it
had been driven from pillar to post, until the promise
to religionists of a field which was to be left to their
undisputed sway was a welcome relief. Their cheer-
fulness, however, was short-lived, for it turned out

56

SPENCER'S STRUCTURAL SOCIOLOGY 57

to be based on a misunderstanding of Spencer's idea.
To them the "unknowable" was identical with the
"unknown."

It will be freely admitted, notwithstanding our
tremendous advances in knowledge, that what we
know is infinitesimal as compared with what we do
not know. It was the realization of this which led to
Newton's famous simile of gathering a few pebbles
on the shores of the great ocean of knowledge. If
then, according to Spencer, this vast area of the un-
known was to be left to the unchallenged possession
of religion while science must needs be content with
the relatively small tract of the known, religion might
congratulate itself on the division.

The error lay in the very material difference between
"the unknown" and Mr. Spencer's "unknowable." It
is quite perceivable, for example, that the population
of a town may be unknown, and yet be "knowable"
by means of an effective census. A thousand illustra-
tions might be given to show that vast domains of
"the unknown" belong to science because they are
"knowable." While science does not occupy these
domains now, they will surely be the subjects of its
future conquests.

It has been the efforts of religion in the past to
prevent science from conquering parts of the unknown
and adding them to the known that has resulted in
what White calls "The Warfare Between Science and
Theology," and which Draper describes as "The Con
flict Between Science and Religion." It might be
remarked in passing that the recent description of
so profound a scholar and historian as Dr. Draper as

58 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

"a chatterer" by a prominent Catholic has done noth-
ing1 to inspire public confidence in some of Dr. Dra-
per's critics. Draper's monumental labors can hardly
be swept aside by a silly remark.

It might be argued that the religious apologists did
not attempt to hold for themselves certain territory
as belonging to "the unknown," inasmuch as they
claim to have a knowledge of it even to minute de-
tails. It cannot be admited, however, that the origin
of the human race belonged to the known, in the
middle ages, on the strength of the Babylonian legend
of the Garden of Eden. If, therefore, the religious
world persists in refusing to be limited to Spencer's
"unknowable," and in clinging to the knowable un-
known, there can be no Cessation of "The Conflict
Between Science and Religion" until science has added
victory to victory and religion, reaping defeat upon
defeat, is finally driven from the field.

Spencer's two great categories really mean that the
claim of religion is limited to such of the unknown
as cannot be known — the unknowable, while to science
belongs all the known and all of the unknown which
is knowable. This division of the universe is pre-
sented with a certain under-current of grim irony as
a "reconciliation" between science and religion. It
is really a polite way of saying that science means
knowledge, while religion is a synonym for ignorance.
It is cleverly compared by Ward to the man who
offered to divide the house with his wife — taking the
inside for himself and giving the outside to her.

One of the difficulties which sociologists had to

SPENCER'S STRUCTURAL SOCIOLOGY 59

overcome was due to the notions which almost all
historians entertained as to what constituted history.
In order to understand the societies of the present it
was essential to know the societies of the past from
which they came. This led directly to a searching of
the pages of history. The search was fraught with
disappointment. The various histories teemed with
matters of small importance, while things of vast
importance were hardly mentioned or completely
ignored.

Out of all proportion to their real importance was
the space given to kings and courts, with their pelty
intrigues and incessant scandals. Their pages reeked
of the carnage of bloody and useless wars of succes-
sion. Armies -camped on every page and battles
were fought in every paragraph. Almost every sen-
tence was stained with the blood of a soldier or the
amour of a king. Back and forth the chapters swung
like a pendulum — from court to camp and from camp
to court. This type of history, now happily obsolete,
or nearly so, has been well styled "drum and trumpet
history." Among the pioneers who wrought the
change Herbert Spencer holds a foremost place. We
will now quote a paragraph from Spencer which in
Professor Small's opinion "marks an era in social
consciousness."

"That which constitutes History, properly so called,
is in great part omitted from works on this subject. Only
of late years have historians commenced giving us, in
any considerable quantity, the truly valuable informa-
tion. As in past ages the king was everything and the
people nothing, so in past histories, the doings of the
king fill the entire picture, to which the national life

60 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

forms but an obscure background. While only now,
when the welfare of nations rather than of rulers is be-
coming the dominant idea, are historians beginning to
ocupy themselves with the phenomena of social progress.
The thing it really concerns us to know is the Natural
History of society. We want all facts which help us
to understand how a nation has grown and organized
itself. Among these, let us of course have an account
of its government; with as little as may be of gossip
about the men who officered it, and as much as possible
about the structure, principles, methods, prejudices, cor-
ruptions, etc., which it exhibited ; and let this account
include not only the nature and actions of the central
government, but also those of local governments, down
to their minutest ramifications. Let us of course have
a parallel description of the ecclesiastical government —
it1- oiganization, its conduct, its power, its relations to
the state ; and, accompanying this, the ceremonial,
creed, and religious ideas — not only those nominally be-
lieved, but those really believed and acted upon. Let
us at the same time be informed of the control exercised
by class over class, as displayed in social observances —
in titles, salutations, and forms of address. Let us
know, too, what were all the customs which regulated
the popular life out-of-doors and indoors, including those
concerning the relations of the sexes, and the relations
of parents to children. The superstitions, also, from
the more important myths down to the charms in com-
mon use, should be indicated. Next should come a de-
lineation of the industrial system; showing to what ex-
tent the division of labor was carried; what was the
connection between employers and employed ; what were
the agencies for distributing commodities; what were
the means of communication ; what was the circulating
medium. Accompanying all which, should be given an
account of the industrial arts technically considered;
stating the processes in use, and the quality of the pro-
ducts. Further, the intellectual condition of the nation

SPENCER'S STRUCTURAL SOCIOLOGY 61

in its various grades should be depicted ; not only with
respect to the kind and amount of education, but with
respect to the progress made in science, and the pre-
vailing manner of thinking. The degree of aesthetic
culture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture, paint-
ing, dress, music, poetry, and fiction, should be de-
scribed. Nor should there be omitted a sketch of the
daily lives of the people — their food, their homes, and
their amusements. And, lastly, to connect the whole,
should be exhibited the morals, theoretical and practical,
of all classes, as indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs,
deeds. These facts, given with as much brevity as con-
sists with clearness and accuracy, should be so grouped
and arranged that they may be comprehended in their
ensemble, and contemplated as mutually dependent parts
of one great whole. The aim should be so to present
them that men may readily trace the consensus subsist-
ing among them, with the view of learning what social
phenomena coexist with what others. And then the
corresponding delineations of succeeding ages should be
so managed, as to show how each belief, institution, cus-
tom and arrangement was modified, and how the con-
sensus of preceding structures and functions was devel-
oped into the consensus of succeeding ones. Such alone
is the kind of information, respecting past times, which
can be of service to the citizen for the regulation of his
conduct. The only History that is of practical value is
what may be called Descriptive Sociology. And the
highest office which the historian can discharge is that
of so narrating the lives of nations as to furnish ma-
terials for a Comparative Sociology, and for the subse-
quent determination of the ultimate laws to which so-
cial phenomena conform."

The above passage is of especial value for two
reasons. First, it marks a distinct advance in historical
theory. Second, it indicates Spencer's place in the
history of Sociology.

62 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

The one adjective which better than any other de-
scribes Spencer's philosophy as a whole, is "evolution-
ary."

Spencer was pre-eminently the "Evolutionary
Philosopher." In this respect his "Principles of
Biology" is unsurpassed. This cannot be said, how-
ever, of his "Principles of Sociology." There are
two methods of regarding the phenomena of any
science — the static and the dynamic. A crude illus-
tration of the difference between the two is the differ-
ence between a photograph and a moving picture. The
static method views things at rest, the dynamic method
considers them in motion. In sociology the statist
is mainly occupied with social structure; the dyna-
mist gives his chief attention to the social process.

In Spencer's concept of real history, given above, the
catalogue of things is more conspicuous than the idea
of the process of things and the operation of social
forces, which mark the latest and highest development
of historical theory.

The ultimate test of the relative values of the two
is to be found in the nature of the universe itself.
By this time we know that the universe, including
its contents, is not static but dynamic. In the lan-
guage of the ancient Greek philosopher : "Nothing is,
everything is becoming." This is why the universe
is comprehensible to the evolutionist alone. The dif-
ference between the descriptive, static, structural
sociology of Spencer and the dynamic sociology of
the later sociologists, such as Ratzenhofer, Ward and
Small, is, to borrow an excellent simile from Small, the

SPENCER'S STRUCTURAL SOCIOLOGY 63

difference between a department store and an economic
system. It is the difference between an exhibit of a
collection of concrete articles and a body of inter-relat-
ing- social forces.

In biology Spencer's method was dynamic; in
sociology he was static. In biology he dealt mainly
with process; in sociology he dealt chiefly with
structure. This does not mean that either method is
absent in either case. The structural concept is present
in his biology, and the dynamic method is present in
his sociology. This was unavoidable in the nature of
the case. Structure implies function and process;
function and process -necessarily imply and involve
the idea of structure. The point is that, while in his
biology the structural concept is subordinated to the
dynamic concept, as it should be, in his sociology the
structural concept is predominant. This is a curious
confirmation of the notion of Comte — that each science
must pass through successive stages. Here we see
in the mind of Spencer two sciences in different stages
of their development.

The student who .wishes to thoroughly grasp
Spencer's place in the science of sociology would do
well to read closely the earlier chapters of Professor
Small's "General Sociology." A careful study of
Small's keen and penetrating analysis and criticism
of Spencer's method (yet friendly withal), will go far
to enable the student to understand more recent de-
velopments in sociological theory. As a preliminary
to such a study we will quote the following passages :

"The forms of expression that Spencer uses indicate
that, when he planned his sociological studies, the proper

\

64 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

material of history — or, as he would phrase it, "de-
scriptive sociology" — seemed to him to be a species of
details to be ranged side by side or in series in a regu-
larly classified exhibit. He spoke of connections between
them, and of laws governing them; yet he had not ad-
justed his views of society to the most significent ele-
ments in his own philosophy. Social facts were to him
as the plants which they classified were to the herbarium-
making botanists of his generation. To him the mor-
phological features of social facts, their arrangement
into orders and genera and species, their side-by-side-
ness, rather than their interworkings, seemed decisive.
Of course, certain perceptions of interrelations between
the groups of social facts are in evidence in everything
that he wrote. These perceptions, however, played at
first a quite subordinate role in his program as a col-
lector and classifier of social material. Indeed, the
place assigned in this syllabus to Spencer's work as a
sociologist is determined by the judgment that he never
entirely outgrew the habit ot treating social facts in
statical categories imposed by the mind, instead of press-
ing on to view them in the dynamic relations in which
they actually occur. This judgment was reached after
study of Spencer's system during a quarter-century."

Again he says:

"His method was to compare exhibits that societies
display; not to detect the process through which they
develop. It is a method which might permit a botanist
to compare the parts of plants without thinking to en-
quire about their vital connection with the soil. It is
a method which would permit the zoologist to be content
with descriptions of species, without bothering himself
about the origin of species. It is a method essentially
descriptive, rather than explanatory."

Speaking in the name of present-day sociology, Pro-
fessor Small says:

SPENCER'S STRUCTURAL SOCIOLOGY 65

"The problem that presents itself to sociologists to-
day cannot be expressed in terms that sufficed a gen-
eration ago. Our present demand is for a way of ex-
plaining what is taking place among people, with lit-
eral values for the different terms which we find con-
cerned in human experience. We want an explanation,
not of men's crystalline formations, not of their ma-
chineries, not of their institutional remains. We want
an account of the intimate process of their lives, in
terms that will assign their actual meaning and value
to the chief and subordinate factors concerned in the
process."

Lest all this should lead the student to an under-
estimate of Spencer, we give the following apprecia-
tion by Small:

"Yet for a quarter-century the Spencerian program
of sociology has probably appealed to more people than
any other. As we have intimated above, this is proba-
bly not altogether an accident. On the contrary, we
may say not only that the Spencerian sociology has done
good service as a medium between two historical stages
in the development of the science, but that the method
which it employs will prove to be a necessary medium
between stages of development in the power of gener-
alization in the individual mind. It is certain that we
cannot think society as it is, without using structural
forms as one factor in the composite picture. It may
be that there are periods in our mental history when
the best thinking which we can do about society will
attach excessive importance to these structural concep-
tions. At all events, some use of the Spencerian ver-
sion of society is unavoidable at present. We treat
it, therefore, not as a passing phase of social theory,
but as a partial view which must be assimilated in our
final rendering of the social process."

HERBERT SPENCER — SDA^A OF SOCIOLOGY

Of the ten volumes of M<". Spencer's "Synthetic Phil-
osophy," three are devoted to the principles of soci-
ology. This is the greatest rmmber of volumes de-
voted to any one science. Mr. Spencer's attitude, criti-
cised in the preceding chapter, of regarding sociology
as a collection of sociological exhibits; a sort of in-
ventory of society's assets, determines the character
of the second and third of these volumes.

Volume II is devoted to ceremonial institutions and
political institutions; Volume III has for its contents
the treatment of ecclesiastical institutions ; professional
institutions; industrial institutions. The descriptive
method reaches back into the latter part of Volume I,
which treats of domestic institutions. The most inter-
esting and important part of the entire three volumes
is the divisions in the first volume which are devoted
respectively to "The Data of Sociology" and "The In-
ductions of Sociology." All readers of Mr. Spencer
who open the first volume for the first time, with no
previous warning, and begin to read the first division —
"The Data of Sociology" — are considerably surprised
and not a little disappointed. It is by no means what
the title would lead one to expect. What the reader
does naturally expect is a treatment of the phenomena
of modern societies and modern civilization. What
Mr. Spencer gives, however, is a history of the genesis
of religion. The bulk of this division says nothing of

66

SPENCER'S DATA OF SOCIOLOGY 67

modern societies, not even anything of ancient socie-
ties; it goes back of all historical documents to a con-
sideration of the ideas of primitive man. This is an
echo of the method of those French philosophers of
the eighteenth century who were constantly harking
back to the state of nature and who illustrated their
discussion of the problems of our own time by revert-
ing to the notions of primitive ancestors.

This method has survived in Mr. Spencer, and the
advocates of the single tax, who delight in illustrating
their theories about the land by introducing the naked
savage who catches fish by plunging his bare hand
into the stream.

Disappointing as the first volume is in this respect,
it is nevertheless a very brilliant achievement and a
work of permanent value. Here, for the first time,
we have a real history of the origin and development
of religion ; a history which traces religious pheno*mena
back to its source in the character of the universe and
the laws of thought. It entitles Mr. Spencer to be
ranked with those great specialists in this field, Sir
John Lubbock and Edward Tylor.

Mr. Spencer proceeds upon the assumption, for
which there is much to be said, that sociological phe-
nomena should first be studied in its earliest forms.
According to Mr. Spencer, institutions are the result
of ideas, and it is therefore necessary to understand
primitive ideas.

As all primitive man's ideas are religious, there is
no difficulty in understanding how Mr. Spencer's an-
alysis of primitive ideas led him to the production of
a treatise on religion.

68 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Mr. Spencer's conclusions as to the origin of religion
are of course in general agreement with those of
Lubbock, Tylor, Grant Allen, and all the scientific
men who have thoroughly probed the subject. Proba-
bly the best definition of religion is that of Mr. Tylor,
who holds that the one thing that is indispensable to
the conception of religion is "the belief in spiritual
beings." The problem of explaining religion there-
fore becomes a question of why men believed in spirit-
ual beings. This question, Mr. Spencer undertakes to
answer. According to Mr. Spencer primitive man
came to believe that he was the possessor of a spirit
which had the power to separate itself from the body
because he was incapable of understanding such
natural phenomena about him as appeared to prove
the existence of spirits.

One of these phenomena is that presented by shad-
ows. Mr. Spencer says:

"The primitive man, left to himself, necessarily
concludes a shadow to be an actual existence, which
belongs to the person casting it. He simply accepts
the facts. Whenever the sun or moon is visible, he
sees this attendant thing which rudely resembles him
in shape, which moves when he moves, which nov,r
goes before him, now keeps by his side, now follows
him, which lengthens and shortens as the ground in-
clines this way or that, and which distorts itself in
strange ways as he passes by irregular surfaces. True,
he cannot see it in cloudy weather; but, in the absence
of a physical interpretation, this simply proves that his
attendant comes out only on bright days and bright
nights."

Again, the savage was deceived by echoes:

"No physical explanation of an echo can be framed

SPENCER'S DATA OF SOCIOLOGY 69

by the uncivilized man. What does he know about
the reflection of sound waves? What, indeed, is known
about the reflection of sound waves by the mass of
our own people? Were it not that the spread of
knowledge has modified the mode of thought through-
out all classes, producing everywhere a readiness to
accept what we call natural interpretations, and to
assume that there are natural interpretations to occur-
rences not comprehended; there would even now be
an explanation of echoes as caused by unseen beings."

Probably the chief source of our primitive beliefs
in spiritual existences is to be found in the inability
of the savage to understand his dreams. Under this
head Mr. Spencer accumulated a fund of information,
of which the following is typical :

"Schoolcraft tells us that the North American
Indians in general, think 'there are duplicate souls,
one which remains with the body, while the other is
free to depart on excursions during sleep,' and, accord-
ing to Crantz, the Greenlanders hold 'that the soul can
forsake the body during the interval of sleep.' The
theory in New Zealand is 'that during sleep the mind
left the body, and that dreams are the objects seen
during its wanderings ;' and in Fiji 'it is believed that
the spirit of a man who still lives will leave the body
to trouble other people when asleep.' Similarly in
Borneo. It is the conviction of the Dyaks that the
soul during sleep goes on expeditions of its own, and
'sees, hears and talks.' Among Hill-tribes of India,
such as the Karens, the same doctrine is held, their
statement being that 'in sleep it (the La, spirit or
ghost), wanders away to the ends of the earth, and our
dreams are what the La sees and experiences in his
perambulations."

There is no lack, of course, of superficial persons of

70 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

the orthodox type who never have given so much as
ten minutes to the investigation of these questions,
but who are willing to sweep aside with a jibe the monu-
mental labors of anthropologists who have reached
practically unanimous conclusions about the origin
of religions. It is ridiculous and absurd, say these
shallow pated gentlemen, to say that the savage knew
so little and was deceived so easily. To this objection,
Mr. Spencer had the following reply:

"That the primitive man's conception of dream-
ing is natural, will now be obvious. As said at the
outset, his notions may seem strange because, in think-
ing about them, we carry with us the theory of Mind
which civilization has slowly established. Mind, how-
ever, a's we conceive it, is unknown to the savage;
being neither disclosed by the senses, nor directly
revealed as an internal entity."

Belief in the existence of gods is only one special
form of belief in the existence of spirits, inasmuch as
all gods are spirits. As to the origin of gods, Mr.
Spencer propounds the theory which is steadily coming
to be generally accepted as the scientific explanation.
This theory is that the worship of the gods was in
reality in the beginning the worship of the mighty
dead. One of the things leading to this result was the
inability of primitive men to distinguish between sleep
and death. To vast numbers of them death was simply
an unusually long sleep, and it was expected that at
any time the corpse might be come reanimated by
the return of the spirit which had probably undertaken
a long journey. From the mass of evidence accumu-
lated on this head by Mr. Spencer, we select the fol-
lowing:

SPENCER'S DATA OF SOCIOLOGY 71

"That this confusion, naturally to be inferred, ac-
tually exists, we have proof. Arbousset and Daumas
quote the proverb of the Bushmen — 'Death is only a
sleep.' Concerning the Tasmanians, Bonwick writes:
'When one was asked the reason of the spear being
stuck in the tomb, he replied, quietly, 'To fight with
when he sleep.' Even so superior a race as the
Dyaks have great difficulty in distinguishing sleep
from death."

Mr. Spencer proceeds to relate how various tribes
attempted by a variety of methods, including whip-
ping, to cause the dead to wake from their sleep. Mr.
Spencer believes, as the result of his researches, that
the custom of setting food before the corpses, or bring-
ing it to the bodies, was due to the belief that death
was a long suspended animation. As to how lon^
this suspension might continue, primitive man had
no idea. He, therefore, took the safe course of con-
tinually replenishing the supplies of food. "Resuscita-
tion," says Mr. Spencer, "as originally conceived,
could not take place unless there remained a body to
be resuscitated. Expectation of a revival is often ac-
companied by recognition of the need of preserving
the corpse from injury." For this reason, the Abys-
sinians seldom buried their criminals, but left the
bodies in the fields, probably believing that when the
bodies were devoured by beasts of prey, it would be
impossible for the criminals ever to repeat their crimes.
The Egyptian knew no more terrible punishment than
the destruction of his corpse. The Demaras hold that
if dead men are thrown away and the wolves eat them,
they will never again bother anybody. This led to
the most ingenious contrivances for the concealment

72 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of corpses from destruction by their enemies. Tahi-
tians would deposit prized bodies on the tops of the
most inaccessible mountains. A Bechuana is buried
in his cattle pen and all the cattle are driven for an
hour or two around and over the grave, to destroy all
traces of its location. We are told that when Alaric
was buried, the river was diverted, and the body
buried in the river bed, after which the stream was
allowed to return to its natural course.

To those who wish to know the mountains of evi-
dence that have been piled up on this and kindred
subjects, all going to show the real origin of religious
beliefs still current in our day, we commend the read-
ing of the first part of Spencer's first volume of "Prin-
ciples of Sociology," Edward Tylor's "Primitive Cul-
ture," and Grant Allen's "Evolution of the Idea of
God." Other phenomena which led to spiritual
notions, not mentioned so far, are reflections in pools,
insomnia, swoons, catelepsy, etc., all of which were
explained by primitive men by the assumption of be-
lief in spirits. If it is argued that this does not explain
why religious ideas have persisted so far into modern
times, it might well be answered that the human race
lived in this condition of ignorance as to natural
causes of natural phenomena for a vast period of time,
while, comparatively speaking, science and its expla-
nations are things of yesterday.

CHAPTER VIII

HERBERT SPEXCER ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY

As we have already seen, Mr. Spencer earned his
place among the very foremost of the world's philoso-
phers by a number of achievements any one of which
would have secured his fame.

He settled the territorial dispute between science and
religion, and if the struggle between them still contin-
ues it is only because his award has not been universally
accepted. This award, it is practically certain, will ulti-
mately prevail, not, of course, because he made it, but
because the facts of the case render it inevitable.

Another lasting triumph, already referred to, is his
welding together in a grand unity all the phenomena
of the universe. This makes him a monist, and monism
is the highest expression of philosophy, as monotheism
is the highest reach of religion. Spencer finds the
basis of his monism in the supremacy of force and while
this may be regarded as a questionable position, it is a
distinct advance on Comte's denial of the existence of
force as a necessary relation of nature. It seems to me
however that force is not the proper occupant of the
throne of the universe but that matter is the true sover-
eign. In the controversy now proceeding, in my opin-
ion, the final victory will fall, not to the dynamist up-
holders of force, but to the scientific materialist monists
of the type of Ernest Haeckel and Lester F. Ward.

Air. Spencer's two volumes, "The Principles of Biol-
ogy," are a landmark of that science, his "Principles of

73

74 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Psychology" are a monument that will never crumble,
though it will undoubtedly be surpassed as the science
advances.

We now come to Spencer's most valuable service to
the science of sociology. We have already noted sev-
eral of his contributions in this field — his complete over-
throw of the great man theory, and his origin and gen-
esis of religion as revealed by the study of the ideas of
primitive man.

His crowning contribution to sociology however lies
in his analysis of society, in which analysis he contends
that society is an organism.

This theory of Spencer's deserves the closest atten-
tion of the student of sociology. Whatever may be its
ultimate value there is no doubting its merit and its
desirability at the time it was written. It supplied so-
ciology's most urgent need. In harmony with Comte's
theory of the progress of the sciences, biology had al-
ready reached the positive or scientific stage, attained
still earlier by the inorganic sciences. The emancipa-
tion of sociology from the trammels of theology and
metaphysics still lay in the future. The one thing which
freed the organic sciences and confirmed forever the
emancipation of the inorganic sciences, was the dis-
covery and application of the theory of evolution.

The clearness of Mr. Spencer's thinking shines forth
in his naming of things. The inanimate is, of course,
the inorganic; the living, is the organic, while social
life is super-organic. Inasmuch, therefore, as inorganic
evolution had banished theology and metaphysics forever
from the field of the inorganic, and organic evolution

SPFNCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 75

had done the same for the organic sciences, the science
of society needed only for its release the establishment
of super-organic evolution. And this is precisely what
Mr. Spencer did with his theory of : "The Social Organ-
ism."

What is meant by super-organic evolution, Mr. Spen-
cer makes quite clear in the opening pages of the first
volume of "Principles of Sociology":

"Of the three broadly-distinguished kinds of Evolu-
tion outlined in First Principles, we come now to the
third. The first kind, Inorganic Evolution, which, had
it been dealt with, would have occupied two volumes,
one dealing with Astrogeny and the other with
Geogeny, was passed over because it seemed undesir-
able to postpone the more important applications of
the doctrine for the purpose of elaborating those less
important applications which logically precede them.
The four volumes succeeding First Principles, have
dealt with Organic Evolution : two of them with those
physical phenomena presented by living aggregates,
vegetal and animal, of all classes; and the other two
with those more special phenomena distinguished as
psychical, which the most evolved organic aggregates
display. We now enter on the remaining division —
Super-organic Evolution.""

Astrogeny and Geogeny in the above paragraph are,
of course, the equivalents of Astronomy and Geology.
Mr. Spencer proceeds to show what super-organic evo-
lution is by showing what it is not:

"While we are occupied with the facts displayed by
an individual organism during its growth, maturity
and decay, we are studying Organic Evolution. If
we take into account, as we must, the actions and re-
actions going on between this organism and organisms

76 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of other kinds which its life puts it in relations with,
we still do not go beyond the limits of Organic Evo-
lution. Nor need we consider that we exceed these
limits on passing to the phenomena that accompany
the rearing of offspring; though here, we see the germ
of a new order of phenomena. While recognizing the
fact that parental co-operation foreshadows processes
.of a class beyond the simply organic; and while recog-
nizing the fact that some of the products of parental
co-operation, such as nests, foreshadow products of
the super-organic class; we may fitly regard Super-
organic Evolution as commencing only when there
arises something more than the combined efforts of
parents."

Mr. Spencer's something more is those various acts
generally described as social activities, and the line be
tween the organic and the super-organic is drawn be-
tween the family and society.

He illustrates his theory by citing various insect so-
cieties— bees, wasps, ants — and certain birds and gre-
garious animals.

In dealing with these sub-human social groups, it is
well worth noting that Mr. Spencer annihilates the ar-
gument against socialism employed by Haeckel at the
Munich Congress of Naturalists in 1877. The great
German pathologist, Virchow, a bitter opponent of the
entire evolution theory, sought to alarm the Darwinians
with the taunt: "Darwinism leads directly to socialism."
Haeckel, as the recognized chief of the Darwinians pres-
ent, delivered a reply of which the following is a part:

"As a matter of fact, there is no scientific doctrine
which proclaims more openly than the theory of
descent, that the equality of individuals, toward which
Socialism tends, is an impossibility, that this chimeri-

SPENCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 77

cal equality is in absolute contradiction with the neces-
sary and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.

"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights,
equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments;
the theory of descent establishes, on the contrary, that
the realization of these hopes is purely and simply
impossible ; that in human societies, as in animal socie-
ties, neither the rights, nor the duties, nor the posses-
sions, nor the enjoyments of all the members of a
society are or ever can be equal."

Haeckel's introduction of animal societies in the above
passage as an evidence of the impossibility of abolishing
class divisions in human society is almost if not alto-
gether unpardonable in a skilled naturalist. The im-
plied parallel between animal societies and human so-
ciety exists only in Haeckel's extremely careless and
groundless assumption.

When Haeckel here says animal, he of course uses
the word in its widest sense as equivalent to zoological,
and he immediately conjures up in the minds of his
hearers pictures of bees and ants who furnish the most
notorious instances of sub-human social organization
and practically the only examples of anything that can
be compared to human class divisions.

We shall now see how Spencer completely overthrows
Haeckel :

"Though social insects exhibit a kind of evolution
much higher than the merely organic — though the
aggregates they form simulate social aggregates in
sundry ways ; yet they are not true social aggregates.
For each of them is in reality a large family. It is not
a union among like individuals independent of one
another in parentage, and approximately equal in the
capacities; but it is a union among the offspring of

78 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

one mother, carried on, in some cases for a single
generation, and in some cases for more ; and from this
community of parentage arises the possibility of
classes having unlike structures and consequent unlike
functions. Instead of being allied to the specializa-
tion which arises in a society, properly so called, the
specialization which arises in one of these large and
complicated insect-families, is allied to that which
arises between the sexes."

The italics are Mr. Spencer's. The "like structures"
of men and women subject to social inequality and the
"unlike structures" of bees and ants who are divided
into classes by divisions that are not "social" in any
sense, but purely biological, are altogether fatal to
Haeckel's argument. For a full reply to Haeckel I
must now refer the reader to the seventh chapter of
my "Evolution, Social and Organic,'1' from which I
quote the following:

"'Bee' society may be said to have class divisions,
and it must be conceded that these classes cannot be
abolished by anything that could, by any stretch of
the imagination, be called 'bee socialism.' But the
reason for this is not far to seek and, when found, it
makes any argument by analogy, against Socialism,
impossible. Bee workers are 'physiologically' inca-
pable of discharging any other function in bee society.
They are females, incapable of maternity. As a result
of this the queen bee is obliged to shoulder the whole
burden of the reproduction of the species, and she is
specialized in this direction to such an extent, that
she could not possibly be a worker. The drone, as the
male breeder, is in the same fix, and the popular notion
that they are useless loafers, has its origin in the bee
custom of applying the boot, or something worse, to
all superfluous members of the drone class."

SPENCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 79

And again:

"Class divisions in bee society are therefore 'biologi-
cal' and not economic. But Haeckel's comparison
ignores this vital distinction. Before this argument
can be used against the Socialist advocacy of class
abolition, it must be shown that a queen cannot wash
clothes with starvation as an alternative, and that
a pleb woman could not wear a coronet, should her
father invest in a busted duke."

In the last citation from Spencer, he plainly compares
the divisions among "social insects to division between
the sexes." As well might Haeckel have argued against
what he calls "the absurd, equalitarian, Utopian notions
of the socialists" on the ground that men can never bear
children and women cannot grow beards.

We now come to Mr. Spencer's analysis of human
society, which he holds, in common with present-day so-
ciologists, is the only real form of society.

Says Spencer:

"We may henceforth restrict ourselves to that form
of Super-organic Evolution which so immensely tran-
scends all others in extent, in complication, in im-
portance, as to make them relatively insignificant. I
refer to the form of it which human societies exhibit
in their growths, structures, functions, products. To
the phenomena comprised in these, and grouped under
the general title of Sociology, we now pass."

Spencer has two treatments of this subject. One is
his essay on "The Social Organism ;" the seventh essay
in the first volume of his "Essays, Scientific, Political
and Speculative." This is best suited for popular read-

80 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ing as the author probably intended. My own analy-
sis of and comments upon this essay will be found in
the eighth chapter of "Evolution, Social and Organic,"
which is devoted entirely to that purpose.

The second treatment of the subject by Spencer
occupies the second book of the first volume of his
Principles of Sociology, which is entitled, as before
mentioned: "The Inductions of Sociology." For an ex-
cellent condensation of this the reader is referred to the
eighth chapter of Professor Small's "General Sociol-
ogy." The student, however, will be well advised to
read for himself "The Inductions of Sociology/'

The title of the opening chapter consists of the ques-
tion : "What is Society ?" Spencer insists that this ques-
tion must be asked and answered at the outset. Is it
a thing — an entity? or, is it like a lecturer's audience
which, by dispersing, proves itself not to be a thing but
merely "a certain arrangement of persons?*' Our au-
thor decides that inasmuch as the members of a society
do not disperse, but remain in permanent social rela-
tions, society is a thing.

Having decided that society is a thing, Spencer con-
tinues :

"But now, regarding a society as a thing, what kind
of thing must we call it? It seems totally unlike every
object with which our senses acquaint us. Any like-
ness it may possibly have to other objects, cannot be
manifest to perception, but can be discerned only by
reason. If the constant relations among its parts
make it an entity; the question arises whether these
constant relations among its parts are akin to the
constant relations among the parts of other entities.
Between a society and anything else, the only con-

SPENCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 81

ceivable resemblance must be one due to parallelism
of principle in the arrangement of components.

"There are two great classes of aggregates with-
which the social aggregate may be compared — the
inorganic and the organic. Are the attributes of a
society in any way like those of a not-living body?
or are they in any way like those of a living body? or
are they unlike those of both?

The first of these questions needs only to be asked
to be answered in the negative. A whole of which
the parts are alive, cannot, in its general characters,
be like lifeless wholes. The second question, not to
be thus promptly answered, is to be answered in the
affirmative. The reasons for asserting that the perma-
nent relations among the parts of a society, are analo-
gous to the permanent relations among the parts of
a living body, we have now to consider."

Spencer is now ready to answer the question in the
title of his first chapter, — "What is a Society?" — in the
title of his second : "A Society is an Organism." A so-
ciety is a "social aggregate," as an animal is an "organic
aggregate." The question now is, what have these aggre-
gates in common which justifies the analogy?

The first thing- they have in common is growth.
Growth "is the first trait by which societies ally them-
selves with the organic world and substantially distin-
guish themselves from the inorganic world."

"It is also a character of social bodies, as of living
bodies, that while they increase in size they also in-
crease in structure." Progress from a low animal to
a high one is a multiplication and a differentiation
of parts. A low animal is all stomach, all respiratory
surface, all limb. Only by the evolutionary multiplica-
tion of parts and functions come lungs, legs, teeth, a

82 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

separate stomach nourishing all and saving the rest the
necessity of performing the stomach function for them-
selves. The added parts are not like the original ones,
but different. They do not do the same things, but dif-
ferent things. Progress is by division of labor; by spe-
cialization, each part of the community of parts per-
forming its own task, which is a different task from the
others — in scientific terminology, differentiation of parts
and functions. Spencer proceeds to show, in language
that needs no simplifying, that all this is equally true of
society :

"While rudimentary, a society is all warrior, all
hunter, all hut-builder, all tool-maker: every part
fulfills for itself all needs. Progress to a stage char-
acterized by a permanent army, can go on only as
there arise arrangements for supplying that army
with food, clothes, and munitions of war by the rest.
If here the population occupies itself solely with agri-
culture and there with mining — if these manufacture
goods while those distribute them, it must be on condi-
tion that in exchange for a special kind of service
rendered by each part to other parts, these other parts
severally give due proportions of their services.

"This division of labor, first dwelt on by political
economists as a social phenomenon, and thereupon
recognized by biologists as a phenomenon of living
bodies, which they called the 'physiological division
of labor/ is that which in the society, as in the animal,
makes it a living whole. Scarcely can I emphasize
enough the truth that in respect of this fundamental
trait, a social organism and an individual organism
are entirely alike. When we see that in a mammal,
arresting the lungs quickly brings the heart to a stand ;
that if the stomach fails absolutely in its office all
other parts by-and-by cease to act; that paralysis

SPENCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 83

of its limbs entails on the body at large death from
want of food, or inability to escape; that loss of even
such small organs as the eyes, deprives the rest of a
service essential to their preservation ; we cannot but
admit that mutual dependence of parts is an essential
characteristic. And when, in a society, we see that
the workers in iron stop if the miners do not supply
materials; that makers of clothes cannot carry on
their business in the absence of those who spin and
weave textile fabrics; that the manufacturing com-
munity will cease to act unless the food-producing
and food-distributing agencies are acting; that the
controlling powers, governments, bureau, judicial
officers, police, must fail to keep order when the neces-
saries of life are not supplied to them by the parts
kept in order; we are obliged to say that this mutual
dependence of parts is similarly rigorous. Unlike as
the two kinds of aggregates otherwise are, they are
unlike in respect of this fundamental character, and
the characters implied by it."

But a society is a mass of individuals who have a good
deal of independence and despite their dependence on
society as a whole, yet live their individual lives. To
those unacquainted with the revelations of biology the
analogy here breaks down. But this is by no means the
case. In fact, the opposite is the case. Every animal
is composed of millions of cells, each cell having its own
history and its own individual life. The blood cells, for
example, move around freely, selecting their own food.
The white corpuscles "may be fed with colored food
which will then be seen to have accumulated in the in-
terior,"1 "and in some cases the colorless blood-corpus-
cles have actually been seen to devour their more dimin-
utive companions, the red ones." Spencer quotes Hux-

84 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ley: "The sponge represents a kind of sub-aqueous city,
where the people are arranged about the streets and
roads, in such a manner, that each can easily appro-
priate his food from the water as it passes along." From
these and many other facts and illustrations Spencer
concludes: "On thus seeing that an ordinary living or-
ganism may be regarded as a nation of units which live
individually, and have many of them considerable de-
grees of independence, we shall have the less difficulty
in regarding a nation of human beings as an organism."

Another clear parallel is that "the life of the aggre-
gate is far longer than the lives of the units." "The
minute living elements composing a developed animal,
severally evolve, play their parts, decay, and are re-
placed, while the animal as a whole continues."

"Thus it is also with a society and its units. In-
tegrity of the whole as of each large division is peren-
nially maintained, notwithstanding the deaths of com-
ponent citizens. The fabric of living persons which,
in a manufacturing town, produces some commodity
for national use, remains after a century as large a
fabric, though all the masters and workers who a
century ago composed it have long since disappeared.
Even with minor parts of this industrial structure the
like holds. A firm that dates from past generations,
still carrying on business in the name of its founder,
has had all its members and employes changed one
by one, perhaps several times over ; while the firm has
continued to occupy the same place and to maintain
like relations with buyers and sellers. Throughout
we find this. Governing bodies, general and local,
ecclesiastical corporations, armies, institutions of all
orders down to guilds, clubs, philanthropic associa-

SPENCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 85

tions, etc., show us a continuity of life exceeding that
of the persons constituting them. Nay, more. As
part of the same law, we see that the existence of the
society at large exceeds in duration that of some of
these compound parts. Private unions, local public
bodies, secondary national institutions, towns carry-
ing on special industries, may decay; while the nation,
maintaining its integrity, evolves in mass and struc-
ture."

It is impossible in a work of this size to follow Spen-
cer through all the details of his analogy between so-
ciety and a biological organism, and the reader who
desires to do so must turn to the pages of the author.
The essay on "The Social Organism" contains some re-
markably ingenious comparisons. Railways, carrying
food to points of consumption, are compared to the
blood carrying nutriment to the various parts of the body.
Even the double track railroad is paralleled by arteries
and veins carrying the blood in opposite directions.
Blood, the grand essential of organic life, is compared
to money in social life, and the comparison is carried
to the point of recognizing a likeness between blood
discs and coins. The nerves, carrying their instantan-
eous messages to the brain, are likened to the telegraph.
Even parliaments have their organic counterpart, though
it is with evident reluctance that he is obliged to admit
that the comparison of the despised legislative bodies
must be compared to so important an organ as the
brain. Only in government and governmental bodies
could he find anything that served as a sort of social
sensorium. As Huxley pointed out, this was a sad com-
mentary on Spencer's rabid individualistic attacks on all
things legislative.

86 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

We will now present Spencer's own summary of the
general reasons "for regarding a society as an organism."

"It undergoes continuous growth. As it grows, its
parts become unlike: it exhibits increase of structure.
The unlike parts simultaneously assume activities of
unlike kinds. These activities are not simply different,
but their differences are so related as to make one an-
other possible. The reciprocal aid thus given causes
mutual dependence of the parts. And the mutually-
dependent parts, living by and for one another, form
an aggregate constituted on the same general principle
as is an individual organism. The analogy of a society
to an organism becomes still clearer on learning that
every organism of appreciable size is a society; and
on further learning that in both, the lives of the units
continue for some time if the life of the aggregate
is suddenly arrested, while if the aggregate is not de-
stroyed by violence, its life greatly exceeds in dura-
tion the lives of its units. Though the two are con-
trasted as respectively discrete and concrete and
though there results a difference in the ends subserved
by the organization, there does not result a difference
in the laws of the organization : the required mutual
influences of the parts, not transmissible in a direct
way, being, in a society, transmitted in an indirect
way."

Spencer's analogical method has met with much criti-
cism at the hands of his successors. Professor Giddings,
in his "Principles of Sociology," while holding that
Spencer's analogy is "not fanciful" but "real," contends
that it has "limited scientific value." Giddings main-
tains that while a society has much in common with an
organism, it is in reality .something more, viz.: an or-
ganization.

SPENCER'S ANALOGICAL SOCIOLOGY 87

Probably the best estimate is that of Lester F. Ward,
in the first volume of "Dynamic Sociology" (page 209) :

"The chief service that has been done in pointing
out these analogies so minutely has been that of
demonstrating by means of them that society is an
evolving aggregate. This was the truth that most
needed demonstration, being the one commonly called
in question. The denial of this proposition is fatal
to all attempts to study sociology as a branch of
science. No one doubts now that organisms may be
legitimately so studied. When, therefore, it is shown
that nearly all the phenomena which a living creature
presents are directly comparable to exactly corres-
ponding phenomena in society, the strongest proof
that can be presented of the scientific character of
social processes has been furnished. And when it is
shown that society has passed through all the stages
of evolution that living creatures have, and has been
subject to all the laws, principles, and processes of
evolution in general, the case seems to be pretty
thoroughly made out. From a confused, chaotic, homo-
geneous state, still represented by many low tribes,
there have gone on both differentiation and integra-
tion. From the several degrees of social differentia-
tion shown by different races, a classification of socie-
ties is made possible."

CHAPTER IX

TRANSITION FROM SPENCER TO RATZENHOFER

In philosophy Herbert Spencer was a great master ; in
biology, a great organizer ; in psychology, a great founder
and in sociology, a great pioneer. It is all very well to
say that Spencer's sociology is out of date. That is
only true in a little larger degree than would be the as-
sertion that the astronomy of Copernicus, or the phys-
ics of Galileo, are out of date. Spencer's sociology is
one of the rungs of the ladder by which his successors
have been able to climb. As no science can be com-
pletely mastered apart from its history, the student of
sociology must thoroughly study the works of its two
greatest fore-runners — Comte and Spencer.

Nothing more than a hint has been given as yet of
Spencer's individualism and his adherence to the vicious
and happily discarded doctrine of laissez faire — (let
things go).

This policy of no policy is the most unfortunate ele-
ment in Spencer's thinking and will militate against his
fame all the more, as men realize its utter futility and
move, as they are ever moving and have always really
moved, toward the doctrine of faire marcher — (make
things go). I have devoted a chapter to this aspect of
Spencer's teaching in "Evolution, Social and Organic,"
and one to Max Stirner's allied theories, in "Ten Blind
Leaders of the Blind." We shall pass it here and treat
it later when we deal with the purpose of sociology.

With the passage from Spencer to Ratzenhofer the

TRANSITION FROM SPENCER TO RATZENHOFER 89

whole concept of Sociology changes. For a clear ex-
position of the nature of the change, the student is in-
debted to Professor Small's invaluable book, before
mentioned and quoted, "General Sociology." It is in-
deed this transition which constitutes Small's chief
theme, and its able and brilliant treatment gives Small's
book a permanent place in the great books of the sci-
ence. "Our thesis," says Small, in his preface, "is that
the central line in the path of methodological progress,
front Spencer to Ratzenhofcr, is marked by gradual
shifting of effort from analogical representation of so-
cial structures to real analysis of social processes.'*

The italics are Small's. Small approaches this change
through the avenue of definitions. From a wide variety
of definitions by a host of sociological writers, he selects
the definition by Ward as "the most compact statement
which can be made of the whole subject-matter which
sociology finds it necessary to treat." That definition is :
"Sociology is the science of society, or the science of
social phenomena."

Small insists that ; variety of definitions do not
imply any essential antagonism between the sociologists
who give them, but rather are due to each writer focusing
his attention on some different aspect of the science. It
will have been observed by this time that in this expo-
sition of modern sociology the method is, as far as pos-
sible, to let the great thinkers speak for themselves.
Small explains his idea in the following interesting and
illuminating passage:'

"In presence of the same body of facts about human
experience, intellectual interest in organizing and inter-
preting the facts concentrates in several distinct ways.

90 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

For instance, one variety of thinkers look out over hu-
man associations, and they are moved to ask: 'How did
men come to associate as they do now?' This is the
typical question of those whose primary curiosity is
about the genetic aspect of human experience. Think-
ers of another variety survey the same facts, and they
ask: 'How do men manage to preserve the statu quo?'
This question voices the peculiar interest of the men
who care more for insight into the present social situa-
tion, for analysis of present social arrangements and the
way they work, than for knowledge of how they came
into existence. A third variety of thinkers are relatively
indifferent to both these questions, and they ask rather:
'What are the visible indications about the ways in
which men will associate in the future?' This is the
question that rallies the men who are trying to make
the things which are seen disclose those that are unseen.
It is the question of the seer, the idealist, the construct-
ive philosopher. To him past and present are nothing
except as they contain and reveal the future. Still an-
other variety of men take for granted all the answers
to these questions that seem to them worth considering,
and their question is : 'What is the thing to do here and
now, in order to make the better future that is to be?'
This is the query of the men who want to be more than
mere scholars. They want to accomplish something.
They want to organize rational movements for making
life yield increasing proportions of its possibilities."1

After discussing at length four typical definitions,
Small arrives at a fifth — "a still more accurate descrip-
tion of sociology . . . more accurate and inclusive
than any other single formula."

This definition has the merit of expressing the dom-
inant note in Ratzenhofer's concept and with it Small
closes his discussion of definitions — "Sociology is the
science of the social process.1'

TRANSITION FROM SPENCER TO RATZENHOFER 91

Between Spencer and Ratzenhofer, Small places
Schaffle. Schaffle is given one chapter in Small's book,
which is probably more than he deserves. About all
that Small claims for him is that he places rather less
emphasis on structure and a little more on function,
than Spencer, thus breaking the gap between Spencer
and Ratzenhofer. This paragraph will be the only ref-
erence to Schaffle in this book. I have analyzed the
deluge of rubbish which floods the pages of his "Im-
possibility of Social Democracy" and those who care to
know my opinions of Schaffle are referred to my chap-
ter on that book in "Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind."

We cannot, of course, give Ratzenhofer's system in
detail. His own epitome of it is given by Small as the
thirteenth chapter of "General Sociology." We shall
note certain important elements.

Ratzenhofer recognizes that all social organizations
have at their base two great biological necessities. The
first, is the instinct of self-preservation which produces
rivalry for food. The second, is the sexual instinct
which perpetuates the species and results in the blood-
bond. This blood-bond is the origin of all social inter-
relation and, therefore, all primitive social structures are
based on community of origin. The increase in num-
bers among primitive groups leads some to feel the
overcrowding and, wander forth to new lands, or if the
stronger wish to remain, war breaks out and the weaker
are driven forth. This spreads the human race over
the planet, and the action of new physical environments
leads to race differentiation. These differentiated races
coming into contact leads to flight or battle. The con-

92 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

quered are robbed of food supply and abodes. They
themselves are at first killed ; later the method is to make
them prisoners of war. After being subjugated, they
are enslaved. Thus rulers and ruled appear, and the
rulers, in order to maintain their rule, create the state.

This account of the origin of the state is in essential
harmony with the socialist philosophy which declares
the state to be a class weapon from the beginning until
now.

The rulers, having compelled the ruled to labor for
the supplying of the wants of both, now have leisure,
and culture arises. Culture promotes commerce, and
"commerce tends to spread differentiation without limit
over all social structures." "The differentiation and the
blending of social structures is the practical content of
the social process."

The two contending forces at work in the social pro-
cess are differentiation, the result of the impulse to in-
dividualism, and socialization, or "the impulse to form
communities." "Differentiation has its boundaries in the
number of individuals, that is to say, differentiation can
go on up to the atomization of society, because each in-
dividual may regard his own interest as the content of
a social structure. Socialization is bounded only by
humanity, that is to say, 'humanity' may become a so-
cial structure, if throughout that most inclusive range
a unifying interest comes to be felt as a need."

Ratzenhofer undoubtedly penetrates to the real nature
of social order when he describes it as an "organizing
of the struggle for existence." This reason for the ex-
istence of societies is purely Darwinian. Those men
who formed themselves into societies had an advantage

TRANSITION FROM SPENCER TO RATZENHOFER 93

in the struggle for existence over others who remained
isolated or in small groups. We now know that the his-
tory of the human race is the history of a long struggle.
The struggle has been against other species of living
creatures and the difficult living conditions presented by
the universe itself. In this struggle against the uni-
verse, man has employed a variety of weapons, but
none that have proved nearly so successful as social or-
ganization. For this reason, Lester F. Ward looks upon
society as a human invention, somewhat similar to the
invention of agriculture or the art of making a fire.
The idea that the members of primitive societies con-
sciously perceived the advantage of social organization
is probably somewhat overdrawn. Darwin has shown
that this conscious perception of advantage is not neces-
sary to adoption. Birds, for example, build their nests
and are great gainers thereby, but it is hardly likely
that they themselves are conscious of the process and
its resulting advantages. The reason all birds build
nests is that such birds as once might have existed and
did not build nests were weeded out in the struggle for
existence, because they were at a disadvantage as
against the nest builders.

The early struggles of men were not only against
other creatures and against the universe, but also against
other men. Those men who, beginning with the blood-
bond, expanded their social organization thereby reaped
advantages which enabled them to survive, while others,
failing to follow their example or not following it ef-
fectively, perished or were exterminated. The Gypsies
of Europe and the Indians of North America are dis-
appearing because they cannot adapt themselves to, or

94 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

hold their own with, modern social organization. It is
highly probable that many primitive races of men be-
came extinct because — for various reasons — they did
not form societies.

We now come to another luminous concept of Rat-
zenhofer's. This consists of what Ratzenhofer regarded
as the political principles. These are two in number
and are in contrast with each other; one is called the
stereotyping principle, the other, the innovating princi-
ple. The first tends to preserve the statu quo; the sec-
ond, to introduce changes. Professor Small manifests
an equal admiration for both principles and holds that
"In a given society, the stereotyping factor might turn
out to represent the program that in the end would be
the best for society." This is all very well, of course,
but it is none the less easy to see that there could be no
social progress apart from the innovating principle. The
chief argument against innovation — in fact the only ar-
gument— is that changes might be made prematurely.
For example, the exploited workers might try to seize
and hold the tools of production before they had taken
the precaution of capturing, or at least hopelessly cor-
rupting, the armed forces of the State. Again, the same
workers might seek to abolish the capitalist class before
it has quite finished its historic task.

Another idea of Ratzenhofer's that well deserves to
be noticed here is expressed as follows: "The social
process is a perpetual readjustment of equilibrium be-
tween forces that tend backward toward more struggle
and those that tend forward toward more socialization."

TRANSITION FROM SPENCER TO RATZENHOFER 95

Thus in Ratzenhofer's estimation the struggle between
man and man is not the most desirable condition, and
the abolishing of all struggle in favor of fraternal co-
operation is the chief element in social advance. This
is a sad comment on those leading American politi-
cians who would like to be regarded as statesmen, with-
out ever having deserved the name, who seem to think
that the elimination of competition is the chief disaster
of modern times. The various plans of men of the
Bryan, Cummins, La Follette type for a return to com-
petition is, in the language of Ratzenhofer, "an effort to
go backward toward more struggle" while all real states-
men, understanding something of the social process,
would seek to go forward toward more co-operation
and socialization.

CHAPTER X

THE PLACE OF KARL MARX IN SOCIOLOGY

The reader who has traveled thus far will now realize
that the greatest single achievement of the science of
sociology is the concept of society, not as a collection of
institutions, and sociology as an explanatory catalogue or
inventory — after the fashion of Spencer, but as a process
of development, and the science of sociology as the
analysis and explanation of the process. This concept
is identical with the "Pure Sociology" of Lester F.
Ward. The only advance, to date, on this concept is
the "Applied Sociology"1 of Ward. And be it clearly
understood that the concept of applied sociology does
not displace pure sociology in any sense, as for exam-
ple, the sociology of process does, in a measure, displace
the Spencerian sociology of structure.

The reader of Spencer will probably find in his work
enough reference to the functions of social structures
to raise a doubt as to the justice of speaking of struc-
tural sociology as typical of Spencer. For the benefit
lof such readers, let us once more call attention to
the arrangement of his three volumes of "The Princi-
ples of Sociology." That the inventory of society's assets
in the form of social institutions was Spencer's domi-
nant idea, will then stand clearly forth.

FIRST VOLUME

I. The Data of Sociology.
II. The Inductions of Sociology.
III. Domestic Institutions.

96

THE PLACE OF KARL MARX IN SOCIOLOGY 97

SECOND VOLUME

IV. Ceremonial Institutions.

V. Political Institutions.

THIRD VOLUME

VI. Ecclesiastical Institutions.
VII. Professional Institutions.
VIII. Industrial Institutions.

The above is the complete contents tables of Spencer's
three volumes, except that it does not give the subdi-
visions. Professor Small justly cites Spencer's use of
the definite article "The" in "The Data of Sociology"
as indicating the limitation of Spencer in assuming, his
own hints to the contrary notwithstanding, that all the
essentials of social phenomena could be found in the
social structures and ideas of primitive men.

The progress of sociology from the limitations of
Spencer to its present status, is due to the gen-
eral consensus of the labors of a number of pro-
found and brilliant thinkers. The histories of so-
ciology, such as have been written, seek to allot
to each of these a proper place in accordance with
the value of his work. There is one name, how-
ever, which should loom large in such records,
which is usually passed over entirely or treated only
to a passing reference. This is the name of Karl
Marx. The two chapters on "The History of Sociology"
in Small's "General Sociology"" are a case in point.
This altogether unjust treatment of the great German-
Jew is about what might be expected from the sociolo-
gists of the chair. These reasons have no weight with

98 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

us, and we shall endeavor to give Marx his place with-
out going to the opposite extreme of an over-empha-
sizing partisanship.

Rash and ill-judged statements have no proper place
in a book of this kind, and I believe I am guiltless under
either charge when I assert that Marx has been ignored
or jeered at chiefly because of the moral cowardice of
the men who have been his detractors. As we shall see
in the next chapter, I hold this view in common with
a leading university professor of sociology, except that
the professor, whom we shall shortly quote at length,
would not be so explicit in his choice of terms. All
history is evidence that only the most courageous men
have dared to fly in the face of conventionality. Most
men not only lack the courage to do this but they are
too pusillanimous to applaud their superiors who do.
Marx not only had the genius of a Galileo or a Bruno,
he also had their sublime courage and daring. While
he lived late enough to escape the faggot and the stake,
he endured long exiles from his country and lived dur-
ing these periods of exile in the direst poverty. Some
day history will do proper justice to his pigmy-minded,
hare-hearted maligners, who sneered at a man whose
shoes they were unfit to polish, and whose ideas were
beyond their intellectual range.

Among the less discreditable reasons for ignoring the
work of Marx in the field of sociology, are first, that
Marx did not call himself a sociologist, and second, that
he is popularly supposed to have worked only in a nar-
row subdivision of the science.

Small tells of an eminent professor who began a course

THE PLACE OF KARL MARX IN SOCIOLOGY 99

of lectures on sociology with the definition: "Sociology
is the science that deals with the labor problem." He
very justly condemns this definition as comparing with
a definition of physics as "the science that deals with
water wheels" or of chemistry as "the science that deals
with sterilizing milk." Small very properly holds that
while each proposition tells the truth, it "tells such a
minute fraction of the truth that it is ridiculous." The
only comment that suggests itself is that the "fraction"
in the first case is not so "tiny" as in the two latter ones.

None of these three definitions are more ridiculous
than the assumption (of which Small himself is not
guilty) that the sociology of Marx is merely a sociology
of the labor problem. It is equally ridiculous to
assume such a limitation in Marx on the ground that
certain of his conclusions have a great deal to do with
the labor problem. If a sociologist is to be judged by
his grasp of the social process and its laws, we have
no hesitation in saying that as a sociologist, Marx has no
superior in the entire range of the science. In one im-
portant respect he vastly transcended Spencer. Instead
of seeking his "data" among primitive savages, he ana-
lyzed the social forms and process of the most highly
developed country of his day — England. And this was
no accident. Engels explains that Marx selected Eng-
land because it presented the most complete development
of that machine process which is the latest product of
social progress.

Speaking for myself, I share Small's admiration of
Ratzenhofer; I regard Lester F. Ward as the greatest
living sociologist; I consider "The Positive Philosophy"

100 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

an epoch-making book, despite its remarkable blunders ; I
regard Spenoer as one of the greatest geniuses of his
own or any age, notwithstanding his characterizing of
the form of society for which I most fervently hope as
"The Coming Slavery;" I think that Small has ren-
dered to sociology service of the highest order ; I recog-
nize valuable ideas in the works of Professor Giddings,
though I am astounded at his extremely high rating of
Christian philanthropy and Christian missionaries as
great social factors; I can appreciate Gumplowicz, while
rejecting totally his main idea of the uselessness of ef-
fort; I read with pleasure the keenly analytical pages
of Professor Ross; and this list of brilliant laborers in
the sociological field might flow on like a river, but I
wish to say plainly that nowhere in the output of so-
ciologists have I found a more keenly penetrating analy-
sis of the social process, or a more philosophical and
comprehensive grasp of the immanent laws of that pro-
cess, than in the luminous and closely reasoned pages
of the founder of scientific socialism.

In pursuance of this contention we shall now read
two passages from the writings of Marx which are ex-
amples of his penetration to the very core of the social
process. The first is from the preface of his earliest
book "The Critique of Political Economy," and gives
the substance of his conception of the social process as
it unfolds itself in history:

"The general conclusion at which I arrived and which,
once reached, continued to serve as the leading thread
in my studies, may be briefly summed up as follows:
In the social production which men carry on they enter
into definite relations that are indispensable and inde-

THE PLACE OF KARL MARX IN SOCIOLOGY 101

pendent of their will; these relations of production cor-
respond to a definite stage of development of their ma-
terial powers of production. The sum total of these re-
lations of production constitutes the economic structure
of society — the real foundation, on which rise legal and
political superstructures and to which correspond defi-
nite forms of social consciousness. The mode of pro-
duction in material life determines the general charac-
ter of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence de-
termines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their
development, the material forces of production in so-
ciety come in conflict with the existing relations of pro-
duction, or — what is but a legal expression for the same
thing — with the property relations within which they
have been at work before. From forms of development
of the forces of production these relations turn into their
fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution.
With the change of the economic foundation the entire
immense superstructure is more or less rapidly trans-
formed. In considering such transformations the dis-
tinction should always be made between the material
transformation of the economic conditions of production
which can be determined with the precision of natural
science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or
philosophic — in short ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just
as our opinion of an individual is not based on what
he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a
period of transformation by its own consciousness; on
the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained
from the contradictions of material life, from the exist-
ing conflict between the social forces of production and
the relations of production. No social order ever dis-
appears before all the productive forces for which
there is room in it, have been developed ; and new higher
relations of production never appear before the material

102 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

conditions of their existence have matured in the womb
of the old society. Therefore, mankind always takes
up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at
the matter more closely, we will always find that the
problem itself arises only when the material conditions
necessary for its solution already exist or are at least
in the process of formation. In broad outlines we can
designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the
modern 'bourgeois methods of production as so many
epochs in the progress of the economic formation of so-
ciety. The bourgeois relations of production are the
last antagonistic form of the social process of production
— antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagon-
ism, but of one arising from conditions surrounding the
life of individuals in society; at the same time the pro-
ductive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois so-
ciety create the material conditions for the solution of
that antagonism. This social formation constitutes,
therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage
of human society."

The second passage is of later date and deals with
society as it is and is, like the first, prophetic of a so-
ciety to come:

"As soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians,
their means of production into capital, as soon as the
capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet,
then the further socialization of labor and the further
transformation of the land and other means of production
into socially exploited and, therefore, common means
of production, as well as the further expropriation of
private properties, takes a new form. That which is
now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working
for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers.
This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the
immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the

THE PLACE OF KARL MARX IN SOCIOLOGY 103

centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills
many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this
expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an
ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor
process, the conscious technical application of science,
the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation
of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only
usable in common, the economizing of all means of pro-
duction by their use as the means of production of' com-
bined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples
in the net of the world-market, and with this, the inter-
national character of the capitalistic regime. Along with
the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of
capital, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages
of this process of transformation, grows the mass of
misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploita-
tion; but with this too grows the revolt of the
working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of
the process of capitalist production itself. The monop-
oly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of pro-
duction, which has sprung up and flourished along with,
and under it. Centralization of the means of production
and socialization of labor at last reach a point where
they become incompatible with their capitalist integu-
ment. This integument is burst asunder. The knell
of capitalist private property sounds. The expropria-
tors are expropriated."

The current year has given us an example of plain
speaking on an hitherto tabooed subject which may well
be, in university circles, the beginning of better things.
Professor Small's lecture on "Socialism in the Light of
Social Science," delivered before the Chicago Woman's
Club, and published in the May, 1012, number of The
American Journal of Sociology, is so frank and refresh-

104 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ing as to well deserve the widest possible circle of
readers. As a contribution in this direction, we shall
devote the next chapter to the reproduction of such parts
of the lecture as ibear most directly on the subject
raised in this.

CHAPTER XI
SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX

The introduction to this chapter will be found on the
closing page of the preceding one. It is needless to
say there is much in the following to which I do not
subscribe, but where so many excellent things are said
one does not feel disposed to "answer" the rest. We
are not quoting the entire lecture but the quotation is
continuous ; from the point of beginning to its close
nothing is omitted. Not the least of its merits is the
high source from whence it comes. Professor Small
is Dean of the Sociology Department of the University
of Chicago and Editor-in-Chief of "The American Jour-
nal of Sociology" :

"Socialism has been the most wholesome ferment in
modern society. If we have no socialism in either of
the senses just eliminated, what have we? Well, to
begin with, we have merely a greater mass and more
specific expressions of something that is as old as the
human race. There have always been men who looked
upon mooted questions from the standpoint of those
who had arrived. There have always been other men
who looked upon mooted questions from the standpoint
of the larger number made up partly of those who had
not arrived, partly of those who were arriving, and, most
important of all, partly of those who hoped to arrive.
The question of arrival has not necessarily determined
choice between these standpoints. Something in occu-
pation or in tone of feeling may have inverted manifest
destiny in this regard, but if we boil down the ideas of
men the world over and the ages through we find thai;

105

106 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

there has always been a more or less evident division of
men into those who looked upon life with the eyes of
those who had reached secure standing ground, and
those who regarded things from the situation of those
who were struggling for place. The former have al-
ways been the minority. Their presumption has always
been that things were about as well settled as they could
be, and that all good citizens should be content with the
established order. The latter have always been the vast
majority, and as a rule the social influence of the two
strata at a given moment has been, let us say it at a
venture, something like the inverse of the cube of their
numbers. Roughly speaking, the ability of the majority
to voice its feelings has steadily increased throughout
historic times. There have always been men who called
themselves by some equivalent of the term democrat
They have had in common some variation of the pre-
supposition that the world belongs to the many, not to
the few. Beyond that they resembled each other chiefly
in bringing each some peculiar charge or charges against
the existing order, in pressing the claim that human af-
fairs are not as they should be. So far as I can learn,
none of these spokesmen of the majority thought to call
themselves socialists until after 1845, when Leroux coined
the word. Since 1776, however, the number of these
men who thought and spoke for the many has increased.
The conclusiveness of the things they had to say in be-
half of the many may not have increased in equal pro-
portion. The confidence of the prophets of the many in
the force of their message has certainly gained assur-
ance, and the aggregate of these popular utterances has
gathered volume. We have had then, since the close of
the eighteenth century, a rising tide of popular power
and of corresponding popular self-assertion. Every-
where social institutions which have been aristocratically
social institutions which have been aristocratically
evolved encounter a unique challenge of democratic crit-

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 107

icism. The majority is taking a larger hand in its own
affairs. To a great extent the participation of the ma-
jority is vague, incoherent, jangling, unorganized, but
it has on the whole a lift and a thrust which is inevitable
and irresistible.

"The most efficient theoretical factor in promoting the
flow, of this popular tide has been Marxian socialism.
When I say that I am disposed to analyze the proposi-
tion into the component parts, 90 per cent Karl Marx
and 10 per cent his followers.

"Marx was one of the few really great thinkers in
the history of social science. His repute thus far has
been that of every challenger of tradition. All the con-
ventional, the world over, from the multitude of intel-
lectual nonenties to thinkers whose failure to acknowl-
edge in him more than a peer has seriously impeached
their candor, have implicitly conspired to smother his
influence by all the means known to obscuration. From
outlawry to averted glances, every device of repression
and misrepresentation has been employed against him.
Up to the present time the appellate court of the world's
sober second thought has not given him as fair a hear-
ing as it has granted to Judas Iscariot. The little book
entitled The Economic Interpretation of History, pub-
lished by Professor Seligman of Columbia in 1902, re-
mains conspicuous in its loneliness as an exception to
the general rule. Men in dignified academic positions
still refrain in public from giving Marx his due. He is
worthy of the most respectful treatment which thinkers
can pay to another thinker whose argument has never
been successfully answered. It is a Herculean task to
analyze a conventionalized world with unconventional
results and to make out such a measure of probability
for the results that the exhibit puzzles, if it does not
convince, the conventional-minded. Marx certainly did
this. No man has done more than he to strengthen the
democratic suspicion that the presuppositions of our pres-
ent social system are superficial and provisional. I do

108 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

not think that Marx added to social science a single for-
mula which will be final in the terms in which he ex-
pressed it. In spite of that, I confidently predict that
in the ultimate judgment of history Marx will have a
place in social science analogous with that of Galileo in
physical science. He found a world organized, in its
practice and its theory, around capital. He declared that
the world will remain impossibly arbitrary until its the-
ory and its practice center around labor. This was in
substance by ho means a novel utterance. Adam Smith
had said it, but he was appalled by his own irreverence
and promptly retracted it. Marx said it with the force,
the detail, and the corroborating evidence of a revelation.
He is still a voice in the wilderness, but for one I have
no more doubt that he was essentially right, and that
conventionality was essentially wrong, than I have that
Galileo will hold his place to the end of time as one of
the world's great discoverers.

"After what I have said, I shall not be expected to
undertake a defense or even an interpretation of specific
Marxian doctrines. As I have hinted, the precise con-
tent of his theory, or the degree of its approach to cor-
rectness, is of less permanent importance than, first, the
negative fact that he impeached the entire theoretical
basis of our capitalistic system, and second, the positive
fact that he designated factors in the capitalistic system
which were working badly in practice or were wrongly
rated in theory or both. Accordingly he was a con-
structive agent in the same sense in which the engineers
were who bored into the floor of Hell Gate to prepare
the way for the dynamite and the dredges. Many lead-
ing thinkers, especially in Germany, were already pur-
suing aims closely related to those of Marx, along lines
which might be likened to attempts to develop more
skilful pilots. Marx's program was to deepen and widen
and straighten the channel.

"In other words, nobody since Martin Luther has done
as much as Karl Marx to make the conventional-minded

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 109

fear that our theories of life may need a thorough over-
hauling-. The longer that overhauling is postponed the
greater will be the repute of Marx after the crisis is
passed, and the more fatuous will the interests appear
that are meanwhile repressing the inevitable.

"I will speak of five particulars in which Marx chal-
lenged prevailing ideas. In the first place he alleged that
the world must set itself right about the economic inter-
pretation of history. What is this "economic interpreta-
tion of history"? The books and essays that have been
written to prove that Marx did not say precisely, and
that so far as he did say he was not correct, amount to
a considerable library. And the writers of conventional
books and essays and editorials have jeered and gloated
and denounced, as though it were something immensely
to Marx's discredit that he did not give society an in-
fallibly complete new analysis of itself, and something
immensely to their credit that they were glad of it. Good
form in this connection has been very much like meet-
ing the child that rushes into the parlor to report that
the house is on fire with directions to retire and rehearse
his company manners. Not to break into the contro-
versy as to what Marx did or did not say about the
economic interpretation of history, or how much more
remains to be said, the gist of the whole matter is the
homely fact that if there is anything insecure about a
man's chances of getting tomorrow's dinner, or anything
unjust about the ways in which he is forced to use the
chances, there will be nothing quite right about the rest
of his mental or emotional or moral life. Or, to express
it in the social instead of the individual form, if there
are crudities or injustices in our economic system, to
that extent those of us who gain by the anomalies will
be getting something for nothing, while those who lose
by them will be deprived of a square deal. Marx said
in substance that there is not a private business on earth
that could exhibit inconsistencies as glaring as the in-

110 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

dustrial system of every modern nation presents, without
being due for reorganization or the receiver. The only
remarkable thing about this proposition it that there are
still intelligent human beings of adult age who have not
discovered that it is a commonplace.

"Second, Marx called attention to class conflict, as a
primary factor in human history, and he tried to rouse
the classes that have no resource but their labor to open
their eyes to their own interests in the situation, to be-
come 'class conscious/ and to pursue their own inter-
ests as intelligently as the competing classes pursue
theirs. Truly this is a most impertinent and inhuman per-
versity ! What would the world come to if everyone should
be as keen as we are for the main chance? What would
happen to that smug old fiction of the 'industrial harmon-
ies,' that Magna Charta of vested interest, that notice
to the labor class that it must be content with what is
left to it after privilege has been supplied? What social
order would be left if the man who is down should ever
become as class conscious in trying to get up as the
classes who have arrived are in clinging to what they
have got?

"Accordingly, more crocodile's tears have been shed
over Marx's recourse to class conflict than over any
other mooted conception in the whole field of social sci-
ence. The first type of deprecation has already been in-
dicated. It is grieved and indignant denial that such a
thing as class conflict exists in the world. We need not
stop to parley with this inanity. No one gets through a
primer of social science today without learning that class
conflict is to the social process what friction is to me-
chanics. It is one of the elemental reactions between
human beings. Its accidents only have changed and are
changing. Its essentials are apparently permanent. The
original lineup on 'Schedule K' was between farmer
Cain and shepherd Abel. There is not a philosopher or
artist or poet or scientist who does not get his leverage

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 111

on life by struggle \vith men in his own and other
classes who furnish reaction to his action. The fact of
class struggle is as axiomatic today as the fact of gravi-
tation.

"But both ingenuous and disingenuous men have de-
cried Marx as a foment er of class struggle, and they
have tried to distract attention from irrepressible issues
between present classes by exposing the wickedness of
stirring up industrial strife. There is truth on this side,
too, but modern capitalists and their attorneys have no
right to plead it. Who has taught our generation, by
word and deed, that competition is war? The human
process is at best no Quaker meeting. The struggle of
interest with interest, which is merely an alternative way
of saying 'human process,' has not yet reached the
stage in which turning the other cheek is a frequent oc-
currence. The only people who are generally under-
stood or respected today are those who think they have
rights and accordingly fight for them. The classes that
have fought their way into the security of our property
system show themselves either hypocritical or stupid
when they blame the backward classes for declaring war
for the same kind of conquest. No matter how firmly
we believe in the ideals and methods of peace, we can
have nothing but contempt for the self-righteousness of
classes already armed and entrenched when they try to
dodge the issue by pointing to the sinfulness of their
rivals' call to arms. The conventionalists have no better
case against Marx and his followers on this score than
Charles I had against John Hampden, or George III
against John Adams, or Jefferson Davis against Wendell
Phillips.

"Third, Marx put a new emphasis on the rudimentary
economic fact of surplus value. Again I purposely avoid
attempting to give Marx's particular version of the fact.
The main thing is that he called for new attention to
this vital element in the industrial situation. My own

112 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

judgment is that Marx was as one-sided in his ideas
about 'surplus value' as capitalistic orthodoxy was. This
is merely another way of saying that both were intellec-
tually wrong. In human affairs, however, that party is
always morally right which demands further investiga-
tion of debatable questions. That party is always mor-
ally wrong which demands that debatable questions shall
be treated as res judicata. According to the traditional
economic theory, land, labor, and capital are the factors
in production. According to that same theory, the law
of supply and demand assigns to each factor its fair
share in the product. In fact, when a business is pros-
perous, these three factors in the enterprise receive each
its market rate of compensation, and yet there remains
a surplus. What follows? Does the system presume
that the three factors concerned in creating this surplus
must be recognized in its distribution? By no means.
The copartnership of land, labor, and capital was all
well enough in production, and in the preliminary dis-
tribution of the market rate of rent, wages, and interest.
By some right which capitalism assumes, but does not
account for, the partnership ceases and determines in
the presence of the surplus. An unprejudiced observer
would suppose that the three parties necessary to the
production of that surplus would have equally valid
claims to a share in distribution of the surplus. In what
proportion they ought to share is a question by itself,
and it should not confuse the fundamental issue. All
the partners in production should presumably be part-
ners, not merely in the preliminary rough-and-ready dis-
tribution, but in the final distribution. Conventional
theory repudiated this reasoning and claimed the whole
of the surplus for capital, under the title profits or divi-
dends. The precedents of business are mostly against
Marx. The logic that appeals to the dispassionate ob-
server is strongly on his side. The theory that accounts
for three partners in the producing process, but loses

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 113

sight of all but one of them in the middle of the distrib-
uting- process may satisfy the one beautifully, but it will
never permanently satisfy the other two nor their re-
flecting- neighbors. It fails to convince as ignominiously
as the technique of the boy who took the clock apart and
put it together again with one -wheel left out!

"These three ideas, the economic interpretation of his-
tory, class conflict, and surplus value, are the chief points
of departure in Marx's attempt at a scientific survey of
the modern social situation. If it were a pure topograph-
ical problem, it is hardly conceivable that any compe-
tent engineer would question the necessity of replotting
the old survey. So many human passions and interests
are stimulated by challenge of tradition, however, that
thus far it has been possible to keep the Marxian im-
pulse from the degree of social influence which it de-
serves.

"Two other points in the Marxian outlook must be
mentioned, viz., fourth, his assumption that the laboring
class and the capitalistic class may be sharply distin-
guished and precisely divided. For Marx the social
campaigner this assumption was convenient and in a
large degree correct. For Marx the scientific investi-
gator it was the most fatal mistake. We had no sooner
formulated the primary sociological generalization of
the universality of social conflict than we made out the
equally primary parallel generalization of the universal-
ity of co-operation. For certain immediate purposes,
human beings may and do form themselves into groups
of friends for better or worse, to fight against other
groups regarded as absolute enemies. In doing this the
other processes of the group life are partially arrested
in order that in certain particulars the antagonistic in-
terests of the respective groups may measure strength.
These differences having been adjusted, it soon appears
that the groups cannot be permanently as exclusive and
hostile as they made themselves provisionally. Amen-

114 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

cans and Spanish, Boers and British, Russians and Jap-
anese, employers and employees, presently discover that
in the long run it is the best policy for co-operation to
control conflict. Thus it comes about that our last ren-
dering of the social process today expresses it in terms
of one stage farther along in its evolution than that
which most impressed Marx. We assert the universal
fact of class conflict as strongly as he did. We assert
the universal fact of co-operation more strongly than he
did. Then we find the center of the conflict which is the
life of society, not in perpetual trial of strength between
permanently defined classes, but we see the merging of
these earlier alignments into incessant reassortment of
classes in perpetual conflict for moral control of the
terms of co-operation. Marx was right, as a social tac-
tician, in believing that the class consciousness of wage-
earners must be mobilized for a life-and-death struggle
against the impersonal force of capital. As a philoso-
pher, even through the smoke of battle, he could see
victory perching on a prouder banner than either party
carried into the fray. After all, however, it was to his
view only a bigger labor-class banner, rather than the
standard of a more splendid humanity. I do not feel
like quarreling with Marx over this limitation. He
fought gallantly for neglected phases of truth. We do
ourselves no credit in blaming him for not seeing the
whole of the truth. We shall do well if we see as far
into the truth as he did, and if while avoiding some of
his errors we add even a little to his wisdom.

"The fifth cardinal point in Marx's system was, so to
speak, the keel of his proposed ship of state, viz., the
socialisation of capital. In brief, all his visions of re-
organized society centered about a state which should be
the owner of all productive wealth, while the citizens
should be the consumers each of his own share of the
output of production.

"From the standpoint of social science it is extremely

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 115

naive to suppose that the form in which any construct-
tive principle will be assimilated in a national economic
system can be foreseen very far in advance. I must
confess that Marx's ideal of economic society has never
appealed to me as plausible, probable, desirable, or pos-
sible. In essentials Marx was nearer to a correct diag-
nosis of the evils of our present property system than
the wisdom of this world has yet been willing to admit,
but his plan for correcting the evils is neither the only
conceivable alternative nor the most convincing one.
Indeed, from the standpoint of social science any plan
at all for correcting the evils of capitalism is premature
until the world has probed down much deeper into the
evils themselves. Not until we thoroughly understand
that our social order now rests on the basis of property,
and that it will not be a thoroughly moral order until
it is transferred to the basis of function, shall we be in
a position intelligently to reflect on social reconstruc-
tion. Therewithal I become esoteric, and it is a sign
that I should stop."'

CHAPTER XII

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

One of the most interesting and instructive chapters
in the history of sociology is the controversy which nat-
urally arose as to the relation of sociology to the special
group of social sciences — economics, politics, jurispru-
dence, etc. In the study of sociology, as in any other
study, a safe rule is that we best understand what a
thing is by learning how it became so. The student
who comes to this aspect of the science of society, al-
ready knowing the story of the development of biology,
finds the task considerably simplified because the two
developments have so much in common that they serve
to explain and illustrate each other. At the risk, there-
fore, of a seeming discursion from our proper theme,
we shall first trace, briefly, the rise of "biology" as a sci-
entific name. This will have the additional value of
introducing the reader, if not already acquainted, to
Professor Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley's "Collected
Essays" occupy a place in the world of books parallel to
the place of the "Kohinoor" in the world's collection of
precious stones. The man who goes to the grave with-
out having read them has missed one of the most en-
during pleasures within the gift of modern civilization.

In the volume entitled "Science and Education" there
is a chapter, which was first delivered as a lecture, en-
titled "On the Study of Biology." Here Huxley ex-
plains how the term biology came into use and finally
displaced the term "natural history" which had previ-
ously served.

116

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 117

Huxley begins by quoting the following passage from
"The Leviathan" of Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher of
Malmesbury :

"The register of knowledge of fact is called history.
Whereof there be two sorts, one called natural history ;
which is the history of such facts or effects of nature
as have no dependence on man's will; such as are the
histories of metals, plants, animals, regions, and the
like. The other is civil history; which is the history of
the voluntary actions of men in commonwealths."

After explaining certain changes of meaning which
the term "Natural History" underwent, Huxley proceeds
to give a piece of very valuable science history:

"But as science made the marvellous progress which
it did make at the latter end of the last and the begin-
ning of the present century, thinking men began to dis-
cern that under this title of "Natural History" there
were included very heterogeneous constituents — that, for
example, geology and mineralogy were, in many re-
spects, widely different from botany and zoology; that
a man might obtain an extensive knowledge of the struc-
ture and functions of plants and animals without hav-
ing need to enter upon the study of geology or miner-
alogy, and vice versa ; and, further, as knowledge ad-
vanced, it became clearer that there was a great anal-
ogy, a very close alliance, between those two sciences,
of botany and zoology which deal with living beings,
while they are much more widely separated from all
other studies. Therefore, it is not wonderful that, at
the beginning of the present century, in two different
countries, and so far as I know, without any intercom-
munication, two famous men clearly conceived the no-
tion of uniting the sciences which deal with living mat-
ter into one whole, and of dealing with them as one dis-
cipline. In fact, I may say there were three men to

118 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

whom this idea occurred contemporaneously, although
there were but two who carried it into effect, and only
one who worked it out completely. The persons to
whom I refer were the eminent physiologist Bichat, and
the great naturalist Lamarck in France; and a distin-
guished German, Treviranus. Bichat assumed the ex-
istence of a spcial group of 'physiological' sciences.
Lamarck, in a work published in 1801, for the first time
made use of the name 'Biologic,' from the two Greek
words which signify a discourse upon life and living
things. About the same time it occurred to Treviranus,
that all those sciences which deal with living matter are
essentially and fundamentally one, and ought to be
treated as a whole; and, in the year 1802, he published
the first volume of what he also called 'Biologic.' Tre-
viranus's great merit lies in this, that he worked out his
idea and wrote the very remarkable book to which I
refer. It consists of six volumes, and occupied its au-
thor for twenty years — from 1802 to 1822."

We shall now pass to the consideration of the rise of
sociology. The problem as to what position sociology
should occupy in relation to the already established
group of social sciences reached an .acute stage when it
was sought to introduce sociology into the universities
and give it a chair of its own. Many professors, hold-
ing chairs in the social sciences, promptly rebelled. To
them the new comer was a usurper and a pretender.
They objected that the new professors would simply
do the work they themselves were already engaged in,
the only difference being that it would be done under
a new name. Thus the discussion generated much ri-
valry. There are universities we could name where this
feeling of trespass still exists between the professors of
economics and the teachers of sociology. The claims of

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 119

the sociologists to occupy larger, more general, and
therefore more important ground has done nothing to
allay the feeling. While this division has in some places
amounted to a mild feud, it lias never produced petty
and disgraceful wrangles such as have divided the
Christian church into some hundreds of narrow sects.
There is something in the atmosphere of scientific re-
search which raises its controversies to much higher
planes than are possible to the shallow bigotry of the
theological world. The shameful treatment of Lamarck
by Cuvier, and the contemptible attitude of Owen to
Huxley and Darwin, are the only exceptions we can re-
call in the history of science for a hundred years.

"The sociologists," says Professor Small, "have
broken into the goodly fellowship of the social scientists,
and have thus far found themselves frankly unwelcome
guests." • Small begins the discussion of the right of
sociology to a place among the sciences on the very
first page of his "General Sociology:"

"Ever since Comte proposed the name 'sociology,'
and parallel with all subsequent attempts to give the term
a definite content, one mode of attack upon the proposed
science has been denial that it could have a subject-mat-
ter not already pre-empted by other sciences. This sort
of attack has been encouraged by the seemingly hope-
less disagreement among sociologists about the scien-
tific task that they were trying to perform. If sociol-
ogy has had anything to say about primitive peoples,
for instance, it has been accused of violating the terri-
tory of anthropology and ethnology. If it has dealt
with evidence recorded by civilized races, it has been
charged with invading the province of the historian. If

120 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

it has touched upon the relations of social classes in
modern times, the political scientist or the economist has
warned it to cease infringing- upon his monoply. Thus
sociology has seemed to workers in other sciences either
a pseudo-science, attempting to get prestige in their own
fields by exploiting quack methods, or a mere collector
of the waste thrown aside by the more important sci-
ences. Sociologists themselves have unintentionally
done not a little to confirm this impression. As has been
hinted above, their failure to agree upon a definition of
their science, or upon precise description of their task,
has seemed to afford ocular proof that their alleged sci-
ence was merely a name with no corresponding content."

This dilemma has found its solution in the steady pro-
gress of sociology until it has achieved a secure place
in the scientific hierarchy. For the student, it is not
now a question of, shall sociology be admitted as a sci-
ence? It is rather a question of understanding why it
has been admitted and what are its functions. The so-
ciologists, in dealing with this question, invariably turn
to the example of biology for illustration and justifica-
tion of their position. It is pointed out that, as the vari-
ous sciences and sub-sciences dealing with separate de-
partments of organic life are united under the term biol-
ogy, it is proper and desirable that the various sciences
and sub-sciences dealing with the different forms of
human activity should be united in sociology. It is also
shown that biology is not merely a collection of sciences,
but is a science in itself, separate and distinct from its
subdivisions, having for its subject-matter the great
general laws which unite all organic phenomena and
which, in the nature of things, could not be properly
treated by any science of a sectional character. Human

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 121

society also is held to be a great whole, having general
laws demanding the creation of a general science, which
should have for its subject not any division of human
activity, nor yet merely a collection of such divisions,
but the study of the social process as a whole. The best
development of this parallel is probably that of Pro-
fessor Giddings where the professor is dealing with
"The Province of Sociology" in his book entitled "The
Principles of Sociology."

"General biology affords the most helpful analogy.
The word 'biology,' first used by Lamarck, was adopted
by Comte, who proposed 'sociology,' and he used both
the one and the other for like reasons. He believed in
a science of life as a whole, as in a science of society
as a whole. But 'biology,' like 'sociology,' had no
vogue until Mr. Spencer took it up. All but the young-
est of our scientific men can remember when it began
to creep into college and university catalogues. Neither
the word nor the idea obtained recognition without
a struggle. What was there in general biology, the ob-
jectors said, that was not already taught as 'natural his-
tory,' or as botany and zoology or as anatomy and
physiology? The reply of the biologists was, that the
essential phenomena of life — cellular structure, nutri-
tions and waste, growth and reproduction, adaptation
to environment, and natural selection — are common to
animal and plant ; that structure and function are unin-
telligible apart from each other; and that the student
will therefore get a false or distorted view of his sub-
ject unless he is made to see the phenomena of life in
their unity as well as in their special phases. He should
study botany and zoology, of course, but he should first
be grounded in general biology, the science of the essen-
tial and universal phenomena of life under all its
varied forms. This view of the matter won its

122 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

way by mere inherent truthfulness and good sense.
General biology became a working laboratory science,
conceived and pursued as a ground work of more spe-
cial biological sciences.

The question about sociology is precisely similar and
must be answered in the same way. What aspect of
social life is not already brought under scrutiny in one
or more of the economic, political, or historical courses
already provided in well organized universities? Per-
haps none; yet, as the sociologist sees it, this is not the
real question. Is society after all a whole? Is social
activity continuous? Are there certain essential facts,
causes, or laws in society, which are common to com-
munities of all kinds, at all times, and which underlie
and explain the more special social forms? If we must
answer 'yes/ then these universal truths should be
taught. To teach ethnology, the philosphy of history,
political economy, and the theory of the state, to men
who have not learned these first principles of sociology,
is like teaching astronomy or thermodynamics to men
who have not learned the Newtonian laws of motion.
An analysis, then, of the general characteristics of social
phenomena and a formulation of the general laws of
social evolution should be made the basis of special
study in all departments of social science."

Any struggle on the part of the social scientists against
the admission of sociology to a place among them was
destined to failure from the beginning. This failure
was assured by the epoch-making labors of Comte and
Spencer. The place of sociology was really established
and made secure before this secondary dispute arose.
When Comte and Spencer cast their comprehensive
minds over the entire field of human knowledge, they
saw that some great general science must of necessity
deal with the origin and structure of human society, as

SMALL'S ESTIMATE OF MARX 123

other great general sciences must deal with the origin
and processes of the universe and the phenomena of
living matter. Thus, before sociology was born, the
necessity for its existence was realized and thoroughly
understood. Professor Small's classification of the
great divisions of human knowledge makes this per-
fectly clear:

"All the concrete and special knowledge that goes to
make up our present sciences has been unified at last
around some central conception of subject-matter and
appropriate method. We may express the fact for our
present purposes in the formula: Physics is the science
of matter in its molar and molecular processes ; chem-
istry is the science of matter in its atomic processes ;
biology is the science of matter in its organic processes.
In each case the comprehensive science has the task of
organizing details which may already have been studied
separately by several varities of scholars.

"The same logical methods which have arrived at
these generalizations make irresistably toward the con-
viction that coherence and unity of knowledge about hu-
man experience demand a science of men in their asso-
ciational processes."

The theory of evolution has done more than any other
theory, not only to point out the place which sociology
should occupy, but to establish it impregnably in that
position. If evolutionary science had not appeared it
is difficult to see how sociology could ever have been
born. It was undoubtedly the realization of the neces-
sity of applying to social phenomena the same scientific
methods and theories that had produced such brilliant
results in other fields that led to its creation. This is
well and forcefully expressed by Professor Giddings:

"Since Comte, sociology has been developed mainly

124 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

by men who have felt the full force of an impulse that
has revolutionized scientific thinking for all time to
come. The evolutionist explanation of the natural
world has made its way into every department of knowl-
edge. The law of natural selection and the conception
of life as a process of adjustment of the organism to its
environment have become the core of the biology and the
psychology of today. It was inevitable that the evolu-
tionary philosophy should be extended to embrace the
social phenomena of human life. The science that had
traced life from protoplasm to man could not stop with
explanations of his internal constitution. It must take
cognizance of his manifold external relations, of the
ethnical groups, of the natural societies of men, and of
all the phenomena that they exhibit, and inquire whether
these things also are not products of universal evolu-
tion. Therefore, we find not only in the earlier writ-
ings of Mr. Herbert Spencer, but also in those of Dar-
win and Professor Haeckel, suggestions of an evolu-
tionist account of social relations. These 'hints were
not of themselves a sociology. For this, other factors,
derived directly by induction from social phenomena,
were needed. But such hints sufficed to show where
some of the ground lines of the new science must lie;
to reveal some of its fundamental conceptions ; and to
demonstrate that the sociologist must be not only his-
torian, economist, and statistician, but biologist and
psychologist as well. On evolutional lines then, and
through the labors of evolutionist thinkers, modern so-
ciology has taken shape. It is an intepretation of hu-
man society in terms of natural causation. It refuses
to look upon humanity as outside the cosmic process,
and as a law unto itself. Sociology is an attempt to ac-
count for the origin, growth, structure, and activities
of society by the operation of physical, vital, and psy-
chical causes, working together in a process of evolu-
tion."

CHAPTER XIII

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

It is related that a farmer called at a certain univer-
sity and asked a group of students for a professor by
name. One of the students, volunteering the informa-
tion, addressed the farmer thus:

"Crucify the quadrangle, ascend the scalae, execute a
dextral vert, and you will find the professor perambulat-
ing in his laboratory, or sitting near the fenestrum."

"What," gasped the open-mouthed farmer, "is the
fenestrum?"

"The fenestrum," replied his willing informant, "is
the aperture through which the dome of the building
is illuminated."

This story may or may not be true, but it illustrates
one of the barriers between the masses of mankind and
the great body of scientific truth wherein lies their only
hope of social salvation.

A friend of mine, recently returned from Paris, in-
forms me that one of his greatest surprises came when
he attended the lecture halls of the universities and
heard the foremost professors and scholars of Europe
deliver great lectures upon great questions, open and free
to the public, to audiences which in many cases, could
have been easily accommodated in a small class-room.
One of the reasons for this condition is that scientific
men and philosophers tend to develop a world of their
own, in which they speak a language which they alone
understand. The mass of scientific books are written

125

126 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

in that language, and to the average man, be he a wage-
worker or engaged in business pursuits, they convey
little or no meaning. Such a man will accidentally pick
up a scientific book and discovering by a glance at its
pages that such is its character, he lays it down, imme-
diately realizing that it was never intended for his per-
usal.

We are not overlooking the difficulty of expressing
the great mass of scientific ideas and theories in com-
mon language ; we are fully aware that writers of scien-
tific books would be well able to present an excellent
case in behalf of their usage of scientific terms, but the
resulting inability of the general public to become ac-
quainted with modern scientific knowledge is none the
less deplorable.

There is every ground for believing that if the scien-
tific knowledge already achieved could be made the com-
mon property of the mass of men, it would amply suffice
for the solution of the great majority of our social prob-
lems and launch the human race in a society which
would in some measure correspond to the millenial
dreams of poets and prophets, who have had visions of
the golden age and the brotherhood of man.

Scientific knowledge, however, is of comparatively
small value until it is put into operation, and our socie-
ties are so constituted that this cannot be done except
in response to a general and intelligent demand. The
first requisite to this achievement is that scientific ideas
shall find a lodgement in the general mind. The mass
of men cannot move or be moved by ideas that are the
exclusive property of a select few any more than one

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

boiler could generate steam by a fire located under an-
other boiler. We therefore believe that Lester F. Ward
has given expression to the greatest need of our time
in making the socialization of knowledge the supreme
goal of his system of sociology.

On its practical side this program is met by a very
serious dilemma. The moving force for social change
must be looked for among those members of society who
are the chief sufferers from the injustices and anomalies
of our social system. These are undoubtedly the great
mass of men and women who work for wages, and it is
precisely these men and women to whom scientific knowl-
edge is the least accessible. The only chance for even
the next generation lies in the public schools. But, un-
fortunately, the class in society, which reaps where it
has not sown, and is enriched by the labor of others,
dominates our political system through a multitude of
agencies and, among other things, dictates the policy
of our school system. The result is that those particular
scientific ideas and tendencies which would disturb their
status to the advantage of the wage working class are
rigorously suppressed, so that, on the one hand, there is
practically no opportunity for the working class to be-
come possessed of knowledge it most imperatively needs,
and on the other the public school system cannot be
transformed so as to make it effectively communicate
the desired knowledge to its pupils until there is a suf-
ficient demand on the part of the working class itself
to carry the threat of a violent and successful revolution
as the only alternative. And this demand cannot arise
until the workers themselves realize the nature and im-

128 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

portance of such knowledge, and, as we have already
remarked, their only chance of acquiring this is through
the medium of their children in the public schools.
Thus we find ourselves in a vicious circle, from which
there is no apparent escape.

The situation, however, is not so hopeless as this
would indicate; there are a variety of forces in opera-
tion which tend to break the circle at a number of
points. In this place we shall deal with only one of
these. A number of scientific men, and their number
is steadily increasing, have realized the desirability of
reaching the general public with their teachings. Not
only this, but there has arisen another body of men, and
these also are increasing, who, while they are not scien-
tific men themselves in the precise meaning of that term,
have taken upon themselves the task of interpreters.
These men are generally referred to as popularizers of
science. In certain dignified quarters, occupied by men
who, being extremely comfortable themselves, have no
disposition to descend into the dust and struggle of the
masses, it is fashionable to decry the popularizers of
science as the "vulgarizers" of science.

Wherever scientific men have labored to produce sci-
entific books within the intellectual grasp of the com-
mon people, the results 'have more than justified their
efforts. One of the most notable cases of this kind is
to be found in the "Lectures for Working Men," deliv-
ered in England by Professor Huxley to immense audi-
ences of eager working men, and many workers who
never had the pleasure of listening to Huxley's voice
have nevertheless found access to the world of scientific

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 129

knowledge through the reading of those lectures in Hux-
ley's "Collected Essays." The course of lectures on evo-
lution, specially delivered for working men, have prob-
ably done more for the advancement of evolutionary
ideas in the English-speaking world than any other sin-
gle publication, with the exception, of course, of Dar-
win's 'Origin of Species."

No man realized more clearly the tremendous value
of scientific knowledge for the oppressed working class
than Karl Marx. Wilhelm Liebknecht, in "Memoirs of
Marx," tells us that during the period of their mutual
exile in London, they religiously attended Huxley's
"Lectures to Working Men." If the mass of scientific
men had followed Huxley's method and possessed Hux-
ley's ability to make it effective, the public school sys-
tem would by this time be a vastly different institution,
and there is no means of measuring the effect it would
have had on the entire social process.

One of the most lamentable results of the almost im-
passable barrier between the sciences and the people is
that to the mass of men the methods of science are
enshrouded in mystery. The clearing away of this de-
lusion is the first step in the direction of better things,
and no man has exposed it more completely than Hux-
ley. The passage in which he does this deserves to be
read with the closest attention. It is a demonstration of
how difficult things can be rendered extremely simple:

"The method of scientific investigation is nothing but
the expression of the necessary mode of working of tbe
human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phe-
nomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact.
There is no more difference, but there is just the same

130 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

kind of difference, between the mental operations of a
man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there
is between the operations and methods of a baker or
of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales,
and the operations of a chemist in performing a diffi-
cult and complex analysis by means of his balance and
finely-graduated weights. It is not that the action of
the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other,
differ in the principles of their construction or manner
of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely
finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the ad-
dition of a much smaller weight.

"You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give
you some familiar example. You have all heard it re-
peated, I dare say, that men of science work by means
of Induction and Deduction, and that by the help of
these operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from
Nature certain other things, which are called Natural
Laws, and Causes, and that out of these, by some cun-
ning skill of their own, they build up Hypothesis and
Theories. And it is imagined by many, that the opera-
tions of the common mind can be by no means com-
pared with these processes, and that they have to be ac-
quired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft.
To hear all these large words, you would think that the
mind of a man of science must be constituted differently
from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be
frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite
wrong, and r.hat all these terrible apparatus are being
used by yourselves every day and every hour of your
lives.

"There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's
plays, where the author makes the hero express un-
bounded delight on being told that he had been talking
prose during the whole of his life. In the same way,
I trust, that you will take comfort, and be delighted
with yourselves on the discovery that you have been

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 131

acting on the principles of inductive and deductive phil-
osophy during the same period. Probably there is not
one here who has not in the course of the day had occa-
sion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning of
the very same kind, though differing of course in de-
gree, as that which a scientific man goes through in
tracing the causes of natural phenomena.

"A trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this.
Suppose you go into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an
apple, — you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is
sour; you look at it and see that it is hard and green.
You take up another, and that too is hard, green, and
sour. The s'hopman offers you a third ; but, before bit-
ing it, you examine it, and find that it is hard and green,
and you immediately say that you will not have it, as
it must be sour, like those that you have already tried.

"Nothing can be more simple than that, you think;
but if you will take the trouble to analyze and trace
out into its logical elements what has been done by the
mind, you will be greatly surprised. In the first place,
you have performed the operation of Induction. You
found that, in two experiences, hardness and greenness
in apples go together with sourness. It was so in the
first case, and it was confirmed by the second. True,
it is a very small basis, but still it is enough to make an
induction from ; you generalize the facts, and you expect
to find sourness in apples where you get hardness and
greenness. You found upon that a general law, that all
hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it
goes, is a perfect induction. Well, having got your nat-
ural law in this way, when you are offered another apple
which you find is hard and green, you say, 'All hard an.-l
green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green,
therefore this apple is sour.' That train of reasoning is
what logicians call a syllogism, and has all its various
parts and terms, — its major premiss, its minor premiss,
and its conclusion. And, by the help of further reason-

132 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ing, which, if drawn out, would have to be exhibited
in two or three other syllogisms, you arrive at your final
determination. 'I will not have that apple.' So that,
you see, you have, in the first place, established a law
by Induction, and upon that you have founded a De-
duction, and reasoned out the special conclusion of the
particular case. Well now, suppose, having got your
law, that at some time afterwards, you are discussing
the qualities of apples with a friend: you will say to
him, 'It is a very curious thing, — but I find that all hard
and green apples are sour!' Your friend says to you,
'But how do you know that?' You at once reply, 'Oh,
because I have tried it over and over again, and have
always found them to be so.' Well, if we were talking
science instead of common sense, we should call that an
Experimental Verification. And, if still opposed, you
go further, and say, 'I have heard from the people in
Somersetshire and Devonshire, where large number of
apples are grown, that they have observed the same
thing. It is also found to be the case in Normandy, and
in North America. In short, I find it to be the universal
experience of mankind wherever attention has been di-
rected to the subject.' Whereupon, your friend, unless
he is a very unreasonable man, agrees with you, and is
convinced that you are quite right in the conclusion you
have drawn. He believes, although perhaps he does not
know he believes it, that the more extensive Verifica-
tions are, — that the more frequently experiments have
been made, and results of the same kind arrived at, —
that the more varied the conditions under which the
same results have been 'attained, the more certain is the
ultimate conclusion, and he disputes the question no
further. He sees that the experiment has been tried
under all sorts of conditions, as to time, place, and peo-
ple, with the same result; and he says with you, there-
fore, that the law you have laid down must be a good
one, and he must believe it.

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 133

"In science we do the same thing; — the philosopher
exercises precisely the same faculties, though in a much
more delicate manner. In scientific inquiry it becomes
a matter of duty to expose a supposed law to every pos-
sible kind of verification, and to take care, moreover,
that this is done intentionally, and not left to a mere ac-
cident, as in the case of the apples. And in science, as
in common life, our confidence in a law is in exact pro-
portion to the absence of variation in the result of our
experimental verifications. For instance, if you let go
your grasp of an article you may have in your hand, it
will immediately fall to the ground. That is a very com-
mon verification of one of the best established laws of
nature — that of gravitation. The method by which men
of science establish the existence of that law is exactly
the same as that by which we have established the triv-
ial proposition about the sourness of hard and green ap-
ples. But we believe it in such an extensive, thorough,
and unhesitating manner because the universal experi-
ence of mankind verifies it, and we can verify it our-
selves at any time ; and that is the strongest possible
foundation on which any natural law can rest. So much
by way of proof that the method of establishing laws
in science is exactly the same as that pursued in com-
mon life."

One of the most important things about the scientific
method is that it demands constant contact with real
things as the only process by which truth can be ob-
tained. The nature of truth itself is another of the
subjects which has always been wrapped in mystery and
is, indeed, supposed to be beyond the comprehension of
even the philosophers themselves. The truth about
truth, however, is comparatively simple. We cannot
speak about things themselves as being true or false.
There is no such thing as a true tree or a false tree, or

134 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

a true river or a false river. Truth does not apply to
the things themselves, but relates only to our ideas of
things. We may have a true idea about trees and rivers
or we may have a false idea about them; or we may
have true or false ideas about a certain tree or
a certain river. For example, our idea of a river
may be that it is shallow; the question as to
whether this idea is true or false depends upon
whether the river is shallow or deep. If the river
is shallow our idea is true, and we are the pos-
sessors of the truth upon that question; if the river
is deep, we are the victims of error. Truth in this
case, and in every other case, depends upon there being
a correspondence between the thought and the thing; if
the thought and the thing are identical, we 'have the
truth. This is what George H. Lewes meant by saying
"Truth is identity." Herbert Spencer expressed it more
clearly and simply in his "Principles of Psychology,"
"Truth is the actual correspondence of the subjective
and objective relations," which being translated into
common language would read, Truth is the actual cor-
respondence between thoughts and things.

The reason sociology is even yet in its infancy is that
we have only recently applied the scientific method to
social phenomena. Yet, although this application is a
thing of yesterday, the results already obtained are ex-
tremely gratifying and big with hope and promise for
the future. We have every reason to expect that the
tremendous revolution wrought by the scientific method
in our thought about the inorganic and the organic
world will also be accomplished in our thinking about

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 135

society. Social conservatism is already discredited and
social radicalism is on the threshold of victory.

There are two fields of research to which we may
look for these developments ; one is the science of so-
ciology and the other is, what we now see to be one of
its sub-sciences, political economy. Political economy is
much the older science and, on this ground, we might
be disposed to expect the greater achievement at its
hands. This, however, is by no means the case. For
some reason or reasons, political economy is conserva-
tive and stagnant, while sociology has already reached
the point where it' is radical and progressive. After
long deliberation upon this enigma, I have myself con-
cluded that the reason for this difference is mainly as
follows: Sociology is a much wider science than politi-
cal economy ; it requires for its understanding some con-
siderable knowledge of the sciences in which the scien-
tific method is in constant use. Herbert Spencer treat-
ing of society as an organism, comparing it to a biologi-
cal organism, has driven the sociologists, who must
needs of course study Spencer's "Sociology," to form a
close acquaintance with biological science. This is only
one particular instance of the general truth that sociol-
ogy, searching for its foundation and its correlations,
reaches forth into a number of scientific fields where the
theological, metaphysical, and conventional methods
generally, have long been abandoned. This has given
the sociologists a training which makes them conscious
of the indispensability of the scientific method with its
constant verification of ideas by direct contact with the
world of reality. The economists, on the other hand,

136 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

are isolated in the study of the phenomena of wealth
production and distribution, and have no vital connection
with biology or physics. Especially on their philosophi-
cal side, have they failed to receive the scientific impress
which has fallen to the lot of their brothers in the larger
science. If one wishes to realize how hopelessly sterile
political economy has become, it is only necessary to
pick up any standard work on the subject and observe
the maze of fantastic, metaphysical, and incoherent no-
tions with which it is filled. On the other hand, there
is nothing in literature, scientific or otherwise, superior
in profundity or clarity to the sociological works of
Lester F. Ward, and this is true of other sociologists in
a less degree.

The idea of progress is so thoroughly vindicated by
the evolutionary philosophy, which is now everywhere
triumphant, that the test of a sociologist's work may b2
found in his progressive or conservative attitude and
tendencies. The sociologist who is reactionary on social
questions must be judged by severer standards than those
applied to the social ideas of men whose life labor lie%s
in other fields. Herbert Spencer, for example, was prob-
ably the most utterly reactionary thinker of the 19th cen-
tury on sociological questions, and if Herbert Spencer
had been a sociologist only, or a sociologist chiefly, we
should be entitled to judge him and determine his place
in history by these backward social opinions-. But Her-
bert Spencer was, first of all, an evolutionary philoso-
pher, and in this field he was thoroughly radical and
progressive, and history will judge him, not by his Man-
chester school politics, but by the great part he played in

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 137

the dislodgement of theological superstitions about the
history and nature of the universe.

Professor Huxley wrote essays on political and eco-
nomic questions, whose value was about equal to the
paper they were written upon, and had Professor Hux-
ley been a sociologist, he would have outlived his fame.
But Huxley was a biologist and must be judged, not
by his idea that capital is the mother of labor, but by
his labors in organic science. Alfred Russell Wallace
was in one respect at least the equal of Darwin. He
discovered independently of Danvin the great theory of
natural selection, and, although Wallace allowed him-
self to be deceived by charlatan mediums of the type of
Eusapia Paladino and gave solemn and public credit and
sanction to frauds which would have been detected by
an average newsboy, his position in the scientific world
is secure because of the immense value of his labors in
the field then known as "natural history." The social
conservatism of a biologist or a physicist, is one thing;
the social conservatism of a sociologist is another.

The difference is fully realized by the authorities of
most of the universities. A friend of mine, who is a
professor of sociology in one of the foremost universi-
ties of America, told me that in his university a social-
ist society had been established, and that he himself did
not dare to join it, much as he desired to do so. The
reason given was that the authorities did not mind pro-
fessors of biology or chemistry, or teachers of civil en-
gineering, etc., belonging to a socialist club, but that
they did very strenuously protest against the professors
of sociology or political economy following that course.

138 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

This protest, of course, is because of the fact that so-
cialist opinions or any other radical opinions would be
directly and vitally related to such a professor's teach-
ing-. Such is the influence of sociology, however, upon
the minds of its teachers that there is probably a greater
percentage of socialists and socialistically inclined
among sociologists than the professors of any other sci-
ence. To take a concrete illustration: in the University
of Chicago, Professor Small is the Dean of the Sociol-
ogy Department. His writings show that by natural
inclination and temperamental predisposition, he is a
conservative of the conservatives; on the other hand,
Professor Foster, who as an authority on the phil-
osophy of religion of which he is professor, has
probably no equal in this country, clearly evidences
by the tone of his work that he is by natural
bent a radical of the radicals. His labors for a
wider toleration in the religious world, entitle him to
the respect and admiration of all who recognize tolera-
tion as a fundamental necessity of social progress. Yet.
so thoroughly is the mind affected by the material in
which and with which it works, that, on sociological
questions Sociologist Small, with all his natural con-
servatism, easily distances divinity Professor Foster, not-
withstanding his natural endowment of progressive ten-
dencies. I A fair test of the validity of this conclusion
may be found by comparing Chapter XI of this book
with Professor Foster's recent pronouncement that "So-
cialism would suck up all human life into the great
question of the stomach and would like to bend all the
higher human powers, science, art, all love and all faith
under the yoke of economic necessity, etc., etc." Let

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 139

us compare this condemnation with Professor Small's
statement on precisely the same point, which has already
been quoted in Chapter XI : "Not to break into the con-
troversy as to what Marx did or did not say about the
economic interpretation of history, or 'how much more
remains to said, the gist of the whole matter is
the homely fact that if there is anything insecure about
a man's chances of getting tomorrow's dinner, or any-
thing unjust about the ways in which he is forced to
use the chances, there will be nothing quite right about
the rest of his mental or emotional or moral life." And
Small adds: "The only remarkable thing about this
proposition is that there are still intelligent human be-
ings of adult age who have not discovered that it is a
commonplace."

The truth of the matter is that the study of a great
and widely laid science, allied with sciences which have
taught it the imperative need of the scientific method,
has enabled Professor Small to rid himself of the fool-
ish, prattling nonsense about socialism which exercises
itself in the editorial columns of subsidized newspapers.
While the study of divinity, which has wrecked greater
intellects than that of Professor Foster, has left him the
victim of misrepresentations of socialism which would
disgrace the mental acumen of the average dock laborer.

If we were looking for an example of how reaction-
ary opinions may take root even among sociologists
whose training and intellectual environment are so favor-
able, we might find it in Professor Giddings. We have
already quoted Professor Giddings where we found him
at his best and his best is indeed good, but we confess
to having read almost three or four pages at a time

140 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of his book and then turning back again and reading
them over in an effort to find out if they really had any
ideological content.

The history of sociology and the history of philosophy
have one thing in common; all the great philosophers
labored to establish their philosophies on some founda-
tion different from the foundation employed by their
predecessors. A very good reason for this was that the
previous foundation had proved thoroughly inadequate
to the support of the superstructure erected upon it. A
reading of the literature of sociology reveals something
which suggests the comparison. Each sociologist en-
deavors to find a foundation of his own upon which to
build his interpretation of social process as a whole.
Professor Giddings selects as his basis the "conscious-
ness of kind." In our opinion the criticism of this theory
offered by Professor Small, that it is the result of too
much admixture of subjective interpretation with too
small a quantity of objective reality, is entirely justifia-
ble. This lack of a proper ground work and this dis-
position to depart from the necessity of verification with
reality demanded by the scientific method, comes out
very startlingly when Professor Giddings reaches his
climax.

There is a great deal to be said for the value of "con-
sciousness of kind" as a social principle or social force.
It might be said that much more of it is desirable, and
as Professor Small points out, what we have seen chiefly
in the past has been societies rent by class struggles due
to the "consciousness of unlikeness," which at bottom is
the consciousness of unlike interests, and which, in the
language of Marx, really is a consciousness of difference

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 141

of class interests. If consciousness of kind should ulti-
mately triumph we should naturally expect that it would
wipe out differences of class, social differences and in-
equalities growing out of differences of color and na-
tionality, and we should surely be justified in believing
that it would operate to abolish antagonisms which have
grown out of differences of creed. What is our sur-
prise and amazement then to discover that Professor
Giddings finds the highest expression of consciousness
of kind in the Christian religion, and especially in that
particular manifestation which takes the form of phi-
lanthropy and missionary enterprise. Lest the reader
find this incredible, we shall allow Professor Giddings
to speak for himself. The closing paragraph of Chapter
IV, Book III, of "Principles of Sociology," in which
chapter Professor Giddings is dealing with progress as
an expansion of consciousness of kind, is as follows:

"The successive world-empires of Persia, Macedonia,
and Rome prepared the way for the Christian concep-
tion of universal brotherhood. So long as this concep-
tion was nothing more than an esoteric affirmation that
all men are brothers, because they are the children of
one Father, it made but little impression on the social
mind ; but when by the genius of St. Paul it was con-
verted into an ideal, into the doctrine that all men
through a spiritual renewing may become brothers, the
new faith underwent a transformation like that which
converted the ethnic into the civic conception of the
state, and Christianity became the most tremendous
power in history. Gradually it has been realizing its
ideal, until, today, a Christian philanthropy and a Chris-
tian missionary enterprise, rapidly outgrowing the eso-
teric sentimentalism of their youth, and devoting them-
selves to the diffusion of knowledge, to the improvement

142 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of conditions, and to the upbuilding of character, are
uniting the classes and the races of men in a spiritual
humanity.

The idea that St. Paul was a great champion of so-
cial advancement would come properly enough from
the Methodist pulpit, but it has an odd look in the pages
of a treatise on modern sociology. Christian philan-
thropy, even as a provisional crutch, has proved a dis-
mal failure and it is altogether past our comprehension
how any sociologist, however favorably he may be dis-
posed toward the faith named, could regard it as any-
thing more than the merest makeshift, pending the reali-
zation of something which might be called social jus-
tice. As for Christian missionary enterprise; all impar-
tial investigations have gone to show that the best thing
that could be done in the interests of the Christian mis-
sionary societies would be the total abolishment of all
records of fact concerning it. The idea that Christianity
is the great motor force of social development might
obtain some recognition in a theological seminary, but
if Professor Giddings imagines that it will ever excite
more than a head-shake among the sociologists of the
future, 'he is a victim of the same blindness which has
prevented him from learning anything from the actual
history of the Christian faith. The professor has prob-
ably read the histories already referred to, by White
and Draper, and we might suggest that he read them
again and this time pay some attention to the indisputa-
ble facts which those books contain.

The history of thought and thinkers presents some
strange anomalies, such as the case of Wallace, already
referred to, writing great books on biology and talking

SOCIOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 143

twaddle about what happened in a pitch dark room when
his hands were held to prevent him from even feeling
about him, and a number of similar instances might be
cited, to which we may now add Professor Giddings,
writing splendidly on the subject of cosmic and biolog-
ical and social evolution and landing in the closed alley
of Christian missionary enterprise.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SOCIAL FORCES

The remainder of this book will be devoted to a pre-
sentation of the principal social theories of Lester F.
Ward. These pages make no pretense of adding any-
thing new to existing sociological theories. Only a few
specially favored mortals are permitted to explode the
ancient proverb that there is nothing new under the
sun. I am content to perform the humbler task of in-
terpreting the great ideas born of the research of others
to working men and women who might not otherwise
become acquainted with them. The two thousand such
working men and women who have composed my weekly
lecture audience in the Garrick Theatre for the last six
years, eleven hundred of whom purchased this book
before a single word of it was written, have kept me
busy with requests for advice as to what books they
should read in order to obtain the best possible educa-
tional results. For quite some time, it has been my cus-
tom to answer that question by recommending the ques-
tioners to get any or, if they could afford, all of the
works of Lester F. Ward.

For many centuries, philosophers and scientists, es-
pecially the former, have labored to discover the ulti-
mate reality of the universe. The result has been a gen-
eral division of modern thinkers into two camps, one
maintaining that the reality consists of force ; the other
that the underivable ultimate is to be found in matter.

144

THE SOCIAL FORCES 145

Among those who believe in the supremacy of force
probably the greatest is Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer
disposes of the claims of matter by describing it as sim-
ply "centers of force." To Spencer and those who hold
his views, Ward gives the name "dynamists."

Ward himself maintains that matter is entitled to the
throne, and he and those who agree with him are prop-
erly called materialists. During recent years it has been
quite the fashion to assert that in the scientific world
materialism has been, or is being, abandoned. No state-
ment could be further from the truth. Some ideas which
have been represented as materialism have been given
up, but scientific materialism, in our estimation, holds an
impregnable position and the trend of scientific research
is destined to make this evident. We are now dealing
with the first volume of Ward's "Dynamic Sociology."
Here Ward asks and answers the question, What is mat-
ter?

"But still the question will be asked, What is matter?
A definition of matter is impossible. Matter is the final
limit in the definition of everything else. Any defini-
tion would involve the use of terms requiring the no-
tion of matter to define them. When we have said that
matter is what it appears to be, we have defined it as
far as it admits of definition. But, while the term mat-
ter can not be defined, something may, perhaps, be said
with regard to the ultimate constitution of matter. Al-
though the vulgar impression respecting it is substan-
tially correct, and the speculations of the metaphysicians
are incorrect, it must still be admitted that the former
are as crude as the latter are false. The vulgar intel-
lect, while its practical intuitions concerning material ob-
jects are in the main just, practical, and reliable, never-
theless has no adequate conception of the subtilty of

146 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

matter. It has no idea of the minuteness of its ultimate
divisions. It looks upon matter wholly from a molar
point of view, and knows nothing- of molecular phe-
nomena. If molecular phenomena are presented to such
an intellect, they are not referred to the material category
at all. The phenomena of light, heat, electricity, and
even of gases, as in the atmosphere, are not considered
as material agencies. But this only proves that the man-
ifestations of matter are governed by uniform laws,
whatever the magnitude of the aggregates which operate
to produce those manifestations. I do not mean that
there is anything in molar phenomena which precisely
corresponds with some of the manifestations of molecu-
lar phenomena, but simply that there is nothing in
molecular phenomena which indicates that matter in the
molecular state is controlled by any different laws from
those Which control it in the mass. The most successful
experiments in molecular physics have been those that
have proceeded on the assumption that the so-called
molecular forces were simply the manifestations of or-
dinary matter in extremely minute particles acting rela-
tively to each other and to other objects precisely as
larger particles would act under analogous conditions."

It will be seen from the above that Ward's matter is
identical with Haeckel's "substance/' Having dealt
with matter, he proceeds to consider force. Force is
held to be simply a relation of matter. Ward, therefore,
considers that the universe is composed of aggregations
of matter. The material aggregations composing the
universe are three in number — the inorganic aggre-
tion; the organic aggregation; and the social aggrega-
tion. These aggregations are formed by a system of
compounding the aggregates previously formed. The
organic aggregation is formed by the compounding and
recompounding of the inorganic. The organic aggre-

THE SOCIAL FORCES 1 1".

gates — men — are in turn compounded and re-compounded
in the production of the social aggregate. The first liv-
ing result of the compounding and re-compounding of
non-living matter is protoplasm :

"This complex stage of aggregation is no longer an
hypothetical one. The molar aggregate resulting from
such a re-compounding of the albuminoids has been dis-
covered. It exists under diverse conditions, and mani-
fests properties fully in keeping with its exalted molecu-
lar character. This substance, discovered by Oken in
1809 and denominated Urschleim, recognized by Du-
jardin in 1835 and called sarcode, and thoroughly stud-
ied by Mohl in 1846, who named it protoplasm, has now
passed unchallenged into the nomenclature of modern
organic chemistry under the last-mentioned title.

"Protoplasm is a real substance, found in considerable
abundance in nature, not only within the tissues of or-
ganized beings, but, as we might almost say, in a min-
eral state, wholly disconnected from such beings. There
is no more doubt that it is elaborated out of the inorganic
elements than there is that ammonia or common salt is
thus elaborated. It is a true chemical compound, in
which the proportions of each element are known. It
contains approximately 54 parts of carbon, 21 parts of
oxygen, 10 parts of nitrogen, 7 parts of hydrogen, and
2 parts of sulphur, in 100 parts."

Ward then traces the development of organic life from
protoplasm at the base, to man at the top. The organic
aggregation includes man, not only as to the develop-
ment and structure of his body, but also as to the origin
and processes of his mind. This brings Ward to the
third great aggregation — society. Tn the opening para-
graph of this division, he gives the following summary :

"The phenomena of sociology, unlike those of an-

148 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

thropology, but equally with those of biology and psy-
chology, present us with an additional instance of the
great cosmic process of aggregation which we have
sought to trace out. Just as the highest chemical aggre-
gates forming the chemical substance protoplasm are
compounded and re-compounded in the formation of
physiological and then of morphological units, and just
as these are further re-compounded to form organic ag-
gregates of the first, second, third, etc., orders, so are
the highest of these organic aggregates, or men, com-
pounded anew, on precisely the same principle, to form
society. And this is the last and highest step with
which we are acquainted of this long, unbroken series
of cosmical aggregations leading from the ultimate ma-
terial atom up to social aggregate."

In the history of society Ward recognizes four stages :
The first stage belongs to prehistoric time, when man
emerged from what Ward believes to have been the con-
dition of solitude into the formation of small groups.
The second stage arrived when several of these small
groups were obliged to unite as the only alternative to
being destroyed by the unfavorable elements in their en-
vironment. In this secondary stage of social develop-
ment the natural antagonism between the groups now
united into one body was not abolished, but simply held
in restraint in the interests of the safety of the group-
federation. In order to make this restraint permanent,
thus insuring the continued existence of the social struc-
ture, government was established. The establishment
of government marks the third stage of social progress.
Just as the first stage is purely theoretical and belongs
to the remote past, the fourth stage is almost purely
specujative and belongs to the future. The fourth stage
will be reached by "a triumph of practical interests, that

THE SOCIAL FORCES 149

shall sweep away the present barriers of languages, na-
tional pride, and natural uncongeniality and unite all
nations in one vast social aggregate with a single politi-
cal organization."

The three great aggregations, inorganic, organic and
social, are theaters for the operation of their own par-
ticular forces. The forces acting in the inorganic world
are chemical ; the forces of the organic world are vital ;
the forces of the social world are social forces. The
forces differ in these different worlds, because each
world is composed of matter organized in a different way.

We now come to Ward's treatment of "The Social
Forces." At the outset the social forces separate into
two main divisions — the essential forces and the non-
essential forces. The essential forces are again divided
into two orders — the preservative forces and the repro-
ductive forces. The preservative forces and the repro-
ductive forces are each again divided. The preservative
forces are positive and negative. The positive preser-
vative forces are such as drive us to seek pleasure; the
negative preservative forces are such as compel us to
avoid pain. The preservative forces deal with the main-
tenance of the existing generation. They are the forces
which drive us on the positive side to seek a food supply
and on the negative side to seek protection from cli-
mate, etc., by means of clothing and dwellings. The
reproductive forces deal of course, not with the preser-
vation of the present generation, but with the perpetua-
tion of the race by means of sex. Just as the preserva-
tive forces are positive and negative, the reproductive
forces are direct and indirect. As the positive preser-
vative forces are seeking pleasure by means of satisfy-

150 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ing the hunger for food, the direct reproductive forces
seek pleasure by the satisfaction of the sexual and ama-
tive desires. And as the negative preservative forces
seek to avoid pain by protection from the weather, the
indirect reproductive forces seek protection of offspring
by means of parental and consanguineal affections. This
completes the catalogue of the essential forces. These
are the forces, as their name implies, without which so-
ciety cannot exist.

We now come to the non-essential forces. These are
three in number : first, the esthetic force ; second, the
emotional or moral force; third, the intellectual force.
In order to assist his readers in the comprehension of
this scheme of social forces. Ward presents in "Dy-
namic Sociology" the following table, which re-appears
at a later date without modification in his book "Out-
lines of Sociology."

H

u

PC

2,

Preservative ( Positive' gustatory (seeking pleasure).
p| ' " ( Negative, protective (avoiding pain).

Reproductive

Direct' The sexual and amative desires'

( Indirect. Parental & consanguineal affections

f ./Esthetic Forces.

8 I

^ }• Emotional (moral) Forces.
H Izl I Intellectual Forces.

In his further analysis of these social forces, Ward
emphasizes the difference between feeling and function.
The preservative forces of nutrition operate, not through
their function, but through the feeling of hunger. The

THE SOCIAL FORCES 151

seats of the feelings of pleasure which accompany eat-
ing are different from those of the functions which oper-
ate in digestion. Men eat, not because they understand
that they must eat in order to live, but because they feel
hungry. It is quite conceivable that a race of creatures
might exist, who would require food as much as we do,
but who would have no feeling of hunger. It is clear,
however, that it could not continue to exist long, because
in the absence of the feeling of hunger eating would
be suspended and extinction would follow. The same
principle applies to the operation of the reproductive
forces. From the point of view of feeling, the physical
organs of reproduction may be considered as the seat
of a special class of desires ; from the point of view of
function, they are nature's means of continuing the race.
These two qualities are distinct and independent in the
case of reproduction, as in the case of nutrition. In
nutrition the taste is pleasurable and conscious, while
digestion is an unconscious process. Nature has placed
powerful guardians of feeling at the gateways of both
these functions. If it were not for the feelings con-
cerned in the reproductive process, it is practically cer-
tain that race suicide would be the consequence.

Ward proceeds to unite the two essential social forces
under one title. This single title is "Desire/' His best
statement of this principle is to be found in his chapter
on the "Philosophy of Desire," in "Psychic Factors of
Civilization" :

"This much, at least, has been learned, that desire is
the all-pervading, world-animating principle, the univer-
sal nisus and pulse of nature, the mainspring of all ac-
tion, and the life-power of the world. It is organic

152 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

force. Its multiple forms, like the many forces of the
physical world, are the varied expressions of one uni-
versal force. They are transmutable into one another.
Their sum is unchanged thereby, and all -vital energy is
conserved. It is the basis of psychic physics and the
only foundation for a science of mind.

"It should, however, be added that the parallel be-
tween physics and psychics, as thus defined, fails at one
point. While, so far as is known, there has never been
any loss of psychic energy, it is certain that there has
been an immense increase of it. Indeed, time was
when none existed. It has developed or been evolved
with all organic nature and has increased pari passu
with the increase of mind and the development of brain.
Complete analogy between the organic and inorganic
forces is not reached until it is recognized that the
former are derived from the latter, and that vital and
psydhic forces are simply additional forms of the uni-
versal force. The soul of man has come from the soul
of the atom after passing through the great alembic of
organic life."

The non-essential forces are of three classes; first,
those of the senses of sight and hearing — the esthetic
forces. .These include sculpture, painting, landscape
gardening, architecture, etc., which appeal to the eye;
and music, which appeals to the ear.

The second class of the non-essential forces, are the
moral forces. These are made up in Ward's classifica-
tion of the love forces and the fear forces. The love
forces are bound up in sex, from which they undoubt-
edly derive their origin. The fear forces are of two
kinds— the physical fear forces and the psychical fear
forces. The physical fear forces are fear of violence,
fear of man, fear of animals, fear of inanimate nature,

THE SOCIAL FORCES 153

and the fear of disease. The psychical fear forces are
described as "those fears and hopes, which men exped-
ience of harm or good to their supposed immaterial part,
the soul." All the psychic fear forces are of a religious
nature. The chief of these fears is due to the belief in
punishment in a future life.

Ward, in his treatment of this question, and of all
phases of the religious question, writes with a breadth
and a scientific and philosophical grasp which entitle
him to a place with Comte and Spencer, and is in marked
contrast to the feeble puerility of Professor Giddings'
laudations of Christian missionary enterprise.

As we shall lack space for a contemplated chapter
dealing with Ward's views of religion as a social factor,
we shall quote at length in this place what Ward has
to say on the subject, under the head of "Psychical Fear-
Forces/' Ward is discussing two great religions which
include a future life in their tenets — Christianity and
Mohammedanism. He is discussing the effect upon mod-
ern civilization of the appearance in history of these
two faiths.

"Without speculating upon the influence of Christian-
ity, and later, of Mohammedanism, in Asia, where the
people were less enlightened, and where the form of
religion, probably, did little either to elevate or degrade
them, we will turn our attention to Europe, where, es-
pecially in Greece and Italy, literature and the arts were
in a high state of cultivation. The question then is, In
what respect would the civilization of Europe be differ-
ent from what it is today had the Grecian polytheism
remained unmolested by Christianity and all other forms
of faith?

"Greece and Rome maintained toward the national re-

154 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ligion an attitude quite analogous to that which Ger-
many, France, Great Britain, and America present now
toward Christianity. The masses believed and went
through the ceremonies, while the philosophers and
school-men stood aloof and remained indifferent to re-
ligion, appearing to consider it beneath their notice, just
as now the rank and file observe the forms of the
Church, while the most cultivated, and notably those
engaged in scientific investigation, are for the most part
indifferent to religion, and do not feel called upon to
devote any time from their pursuits to its consideration.
"There were indications, then, that the bonds of re-
ligious restraint were about to fall from the people, and
the light of knowledge be admitted to all, just as now
we see the forms of religion more and more ignored,
and education further and further extended. But Chris-
tianity rekindled the religious zeal, proscribed philoso-
phy, abolished the schools, and plunged the world into
an abyss of darkness from which it only emerged after
twelve hundred years. Ignorant of what would have
happened if this had not happened, nothing is left but
to regard the advent of Christianity as a calamity. And,
if we look at the history of Christianity, we find that its
activities have been so intense and its deeds so violent
that it has been almost impossible for thought to obtain
a foot-hold. Mohammedanism was no better, but its
field of operations has been less unfortunate."

Finally Ward reaches the last of the non-essential
forces — the intellectual forces. The question of the role
enacted by the intellect in the social process is too great
to be disposed of in these closing sentences, and it will
form the theme of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XV

FACTORS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

In studying the works of Lester F. Ward, there is one
question of deep interest and paramount importance
brought forward again and again, — the part played by
the intellect in the social process. In Ward's plotting
of social development the intellect is not catalogued as
a motor force. As we have already seen, a grand so-
cial force, which is in the social world what gravitation
is in the physical, is "desire." By desire is meant those
imperative appetites which are common to all mankind
and equally common to all the higher animals, the ap-
petites of hunger and sex. It is true there is an in-
tellectual appetite, but this, unfortunately, is far from
being universal and this lack of universality, and its
general existence in a low state of intensity, prevents it
from being a social force except in a secondary sense.

A clear statement of this occurs in the first volume
of "Dynamic Sociology:"

"The mind-force, as popularly understood, is no force,
but only a condition. It does not propel, it only directs.
It is not mind, except within the narrow limits of this
definition, that achieves the vast results which civiliza-
tion presents, and which, it must be admitted, could not
be achieved without it. It is the great social forces
which we have been passing in review that have accom-
plished all this. Mind simply guides them in their
course. The office of mind is to direct society into un-
obstructed channels, to enable these forces to continue
in free play, to prevent them from being neutralized by

155

156 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

collision with obstacles in their path. In a word, mind
has for its function in civilization to preserve the dy-
namic and prevent the statical condition of the social
forces, to prevent the restoration of equilibrium be-
tween the social forces and the natural forces operating
outside of them. Just as it is not psychological force
which propels the water-wheel or the piston — which
could not, nevertheless, be made to operate without it —
but merely the forces of gravity and gaseous expansion
compelled by mechanical power under the guidance of
intelligence to operate for the benefit of man, so it is not
mind which moves the civilization of the world, but only
the great and never-ceasing forces of society, which but
for the guidance of mind would rush blindly on into
a thousand entanglements with rival forces, and assume
that position of statical e]uilibrium which represents
social stagnation. The only proper intellectual propel-
ling force in society is the desire which the mental organ
experiences in common with all the rest to act, and the
immediate results which flow from its activity."

The above passage, though stripping the mind of any
claim to be considered a social force, nevertheless pre-
sents it in a role of great importance. While the mind
is not essential to social existence, it is the sole cause
of social progress. This conception is somewhat baffling
and difficult to grasp, but it is none the less true, and
certainly is the position taken by Ward. The introduc-
tion to the volume above named presents a very inter-
esting study of this whole problem. This shows that,
throughout history, it is feeling and not intellect which
has influenced human action. The great and successful
religious systems of Menu, Zoroaster, Confucius, Jesus,
and Mohammed make their appeal not to the intellect,
but to the feelings. The consequence was that, while

FACTORS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 157

they were great successes in extending their influence
over the actions of men, they were utter failures so far
as the amelioration of the conditions of society is con-
cerned. It is generally said that social energy with no
progressive result is due to these great religious sys-
tems having stimulated only the non-progressive factors,
the feelings, and not the intellectual factor, without the
operation of which social progress is impossible. We
now see the difference between social existence and so-
cial progress. The Orient is an illustration of the fact
that social existence may continue indefinitely without
anything that could properly be called progress. In the
Occidental world we are so accustomed to the idea of
progress'that we imagine it to be universal, but the East-
ern world is non-progressive, and so far from desiring
progress, it hates and despises it.

Ward's theory is that while action proceeds from the
feelings, the question as to whether the action thus gen-
erated will be static — leaving society where it is — or
dynamic — driving society forward — depends upon
whether the action is or is not guided by the intellect.
That there may be no doubt as to Ward's conceding
the intellect to be the sole source of progress, we quote
the following:

"And when I assert that all the control that can ever
be exerted over mankind must, in the future as in the
past, emanate from the side of feeling and not of in-
tellect, and promise a mitigation of the hardships of
existence, at the same time I unqualifiedly maintain that
all the true progress which has in fact taken place in
the world has come from the side of intellect and not
of feeling."

158 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

The terms civilization and social progress mean prac-
tically the same thing. Civilization is artificial ; in this
it differs from organic phenomena, which is natural.
This difference between the natural world of biology
and the artificial world of sociology finds expression as
follows: In the animal world a change is produced by
the action of environment upon the animal. The an-
imal being devoid of the intellectual faculty, at least in
any degree sufficient to make progress possible, must
adapt itself to its environment or perish. In the human
social world this process is to a considerable extent re-
versed. Man, by means of his intellect, is able to act
effectively upon his environment. This is expressed by
Ward in the following formula: "The environment
transforms the animal while man transforms the en-
vironment." Civilization, according to Ward, consists
in achievement. Achievement is purely human; the an-
imal achieves nothing; the organic world is passive.
The achievement which constitutes civilization is in a
certain given direction; it comprises all efforts which
have succeeded in utilizing the materials and forces of
nature to human advantage. This is accomplished by
means of inventions. Therefore, civilization may be
said to consist of inventions, as it is said to consist of
achievements. There can be no question that inventions
are due to the operations of the intellect ; the feelings, or
emotions, invent nothing.

The struggle for existence is universal, as Darwin has
shown. The history of the human race is the record of
man's struggle against the universe ; a struggle of the
microcosm against the macrocosm. Man has succeeded

FACTORS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 159

where the animal failed, because he was armed with a
superior weapon — the intellect. The difference between
the savage and the civilized man is not a difference of
feelings or appetites, it is a difference of intellect. The
difference between the feelings and appetites of civil-
ized man, and animals far below the savage, is not very
considerable. The love of a human mother for her
child is not, so far as can be seen, any greater or more
sincere than that of a lioness for her cubs; nor is there
any difference of food hunger. The difference of con-
dition between the animal in the jungle and men enjoy-
ing the pleasures and refinements of civilized life, is
due solely to a difference of intellectual faculties.

The first great victory of man over the cosmos was
his mastery of fire. It is probable that long before he
knew how to kindle a fire he learned to keep one alive
after it had been kindled by lightning or the sun ; but
even this has never been achieved by any animal below
man. Travelers relate that monkeys will hover about
a camp and when it is deserted will gather with keen
enjoyment about the camp-fire. Although they are next
to man in psychic equipment, and although they have
observed men piling fuel upon the fire and are them-
selves adapted to the handling of twigs and boughs, they
are utterly incapable of keeping the fire alive. They
have much the same emotional equipment, but they are
wholly lacking in intellectual capacity. It is because
animals are the slaves of their environment that they
can only live in such parts of the globe as possess a
suitable climate. If the climate changes, they must mi-
grate. Even the change from summer to winter pro-

160 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

duces vast migrations in the animal world, but because
man pessesses an intellect which enables him to invent
clothes and houses he can live where he pleases, within
certain limits, and this is how he comes to be so gener-
ally distributed over the surface of the planet.

After the savage had invented the art of making fire
by rubbing two sticks together, the value of his achieve-
ment did not consist of the fires that were actually burn-
ing, but of his knowledge of how to make other fires
should these go out. In the same way, in the modern
world, the value of the machine process of wealth pro-
duction does not consist of the machines in actual ex-
istence and operation but in the knowledge of how to
make machinery and how, by the use of machinery, to
produce great varieties of useful articles. The achieve-
ment which constitutes civilization consists, therefore,
of a great mass of items of knowledge, steadily accumu-
lated throughout history. Every age has inherited the
achievements of the preceding age and has stood upon
them as upon a platform, and that age, by means of its
own achievements, built a new platform a little higher.
Thus, in the language of Ward, "the platforms of the
previous ages become the steps in the great stairway of
civilization and these steps remain unmoved and are
perpetuated by human history."

CHAPTER XVI

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS

In this chapter, we shall present the reader with a
summary of the most complete scheme of the social
process which we have met with in the entire range of
the literature of sociology. It is the scheme presented
by Lester F. Ward in the second volume of "Dynamic
Sociology."

HAPPINESS

Ward begins by asking what it is that constitutes the
ultimate goal of all human endeavor. What is it that
all the sons of men are forever pursuing, as the me-
dieval knights pursued the Holy Grail and the Golden
Fleece? Ward finds the answer in a single word —
"happiness." "At the basis of every philosophical sys-
tem involving the interests of men lie the phenomena of
feeling. These phenomena constitute the substratum
of sociology." Society rests upon feeling as the city
stands upon the ground. The importance and signifi-
cance of the phenomena of feeling are not limited to
sociology, but reach back into biology. The world of
life has two main divisions — vegetable and animal. Be-
tween these two there is no dear dividing line, and
probably the safest principle of classification is to de-
termine the plant from the animal by the presence of
feeling in the one and the absence of feeling in the
other. In other words, it is the difference between the
sentient and insentient. The evolution of life from the

161

162 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

insentient to the sentient is one of the great strides in
the cosmic process. The origin and development of feel-
ing is one of the grand problems of biology. Its ex-
planation is to be found in the natural selection theory
of Darwin. Capacity for feeling gave the creature pos-
sessing it an advantage in the struggle for existence.
Creatures of keen feeling were quick to avoid pain,
which is the highway to death, and eager for pleasure,
which is the path to life. Feeling has two sides, a
positive and a negative. The positive side is the love
of pleasure, the negative is the fear of pain. Without
feeling there would be no intimation of danger, and
frequent exposures to dangers would result in time in
the utter extinction of every form of life. The pleasures
of eating and the pleasures of sex are the two influ-
ences which, on the positive side, preserve and perpetu-
ate all the higher forms of life. The forces which pro-
tect life are not the love of life or the desire to live nor
yet the dread of death. They are the love of pleasure and
the dread of pain. If the hare flees from the hound
it is not because of the fear of death or the love of life.
The hare knows nothing about the phenomena of death.
Its flight is urged by the dread of pain which it knows
would be inflicted by the teeth of the dog. In the same
way the child avoids the fire or the hot stove, not out
of fear for its life, but in fear of the pain that accom-
panies burning. We have seen in a prior chapter that
men eat because hunger is a pain which they seek to re-
move, and the process of eating produces a distinct
pleasure from the gustatory nerves. If there were
neither pleasure nor pain connected with eating, living
forms would vanish through starvation. The same is

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 163

true of the functions of sex, and any attempt to per-
suade men and women to increase the population from
any such abstract motive as the good of the state could
only issue from the uninformed mind of a Roosevelt.

The only reason acts that are performed to avoid pain
have the effect of preserving life is to be found in the
close relation of death and pain. We all recognize that
intense and prolonged pain must result in death. This
recognition is not based on logic. It is quite conceiva-
ble so far as our laws of thought are concerned that a
creature might be in pain indefinitely and still escape
death, but experience tells a different story. All our-
experience shows that wherever pain is intense and un-
remitting, death is the result. Religionists who depict
future states of eternal tortures and never-ending hells
have a conception that is purely logical, but that is in
direct contradiction to all experience.

All animal life has two great necessities, nutrition and
reproduction. Human social life marks the appear-
ance of a third, development or improvement. The first
two are absolutely necessary, and we are beginning to
recognize more and more the importance of the third.
The principle of development has occupied a high place
since the establishing of the theory of evolution. The
development process is now recognized as universal —
nothing stands still. China may seem to stand still for.
a thousand centuries, but a closer examination will re-
veal some movement. A nebular mass may show little
change in a million years, but it is changing neverthe-
less. Change is the law of all things. This law was
formulated by Spencer as "the instability of the homo-

164 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

geneous." Development is especially important for hu-
man society, because, as we shall presently see, devel-
opment is the chief means by which we are able to in-
crease the sum of human pleasure. In seeking to in-
crease pleasurable feelings and avoid painful feelings,
we are seeking by a double road the one end, happi-
ness. Happiness is defined by Ward as "excess of pleas-
ure, or enjoyment, over pain, or discomfort." This
brings us to what Ward calls the first theorem of dy-
namic sociology, which theorem is expressed in the fol-
lowing formula : "Happiness is the ultimate end of cona-
tion."

The word conation may be new to the reader. It is
from the Latin conari, which means "to endeavor."
Ward's first theorem then means that happiness is the
ultimate end and aim of all human effort or endeavor.
This passage places Ward among the utilitarians, to
whom the end of action is the greatest good of the great-
est number. When social class divisions are abolished
and antagonistic interests have disappeared, the utili-
tarian formula may be enlarged to "the greatest good
of all." Having found the aim and goal of all human
effort, our next task is to find how the existing sum of
happiness may be increased.

PROGRESS

The answer to the above question as to how happi-
ness may be increased is given by Ward in the word
"progress." Progress is defined as "success in harmon-
izing natural phenomena with human advantage." So
closely are happiness and progress lashed together, in
the estimation of Ward, that he is willing to accept as

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 165

a definition of social progress whatever increases the
sum total of human happiness. The grand difference
between happiness and progress is that happiness is the
end, while progress is the means. If we ask, What is
progress good for? we may answer, Progress is good
because it is a means to increase human happiness ; but,
if we ask, What is happiness good for? there is no an-
swer. Happiness is good, not as a means to something
else, but for what it is in itself.

Progress has its origin in the fact that throughout
the living world possibility is always in excess of op-
portunity. Among animals reproduction encroaches
upon nutrition ; population intrenches upon the means
of subsistence. Creatures bring forth a million eggs
but the population does not increase a million times, it
remains stationary, because of a fixed food supply. The
desire for expansion and the infinite possibilities for ex-
pansion which are bound up in the life substance itself
are constantly meeting with checks and limitations. As
brain power develops and powers of perception increase,
there also grows a steady dissatisfaction with these
checks and limitations and an ever increasing desire to
remove them. It is the removal of these barriers of
environment which constitutes progress. One of the
first steps in progress is to remove the barrier of a lim-
ited food supply. In fact there is no progress until this
is done, and, as no animal below man has been equal
to this task, progress is strictly limited fo the human
family. All the barriers in the way of human advance-
ment have been removed by exertion of the intellect.
The barrier of a limited food supply was abolished by

166 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

the invention of agriculture. Another barrier to ad-
vancement from the animal stage consisted of the pres-
ence of powerful enemies. This barrier man abolished
by the invention of weapons. The great results arising
from these two causes alone may be seen in the domes-
tic animals. When the animal is taken from its native
wilds, it is removed from scarcity of food and a pleni-
tude of enemies and placed in a condition where the
food supply is unlimited and its enemies are absent. In
other words, under domestication it reaps the advantage
which progress has obtained by breaking down the bar-
riers of the natural environment. The effects upon ani-
mals are immediate and pronounced. Forces of devel-
opment which exist in all animals in excess of their lim-
ited opportunities are immediately given free play. They
become sleek and large and heavy. The savage vicjous-
ness which was developed by the struggle for food dis-
appears and gentleness and affection take its place.
When domesticated animals are returned to the state
of nature they rapidly revert to their former condition.
They become lean and gaunt and savage. This is be-
cause they are no longer able to reap the advantages of
human progress. They are once more the slaves of an
environment which limits their food supply, surrounds
them with destructive enemies, and thereby restricts the
development of which they are eminently capable. What
is true of animals in this way is true in a very much
larger degree of mankind.

Human progress has moved along two chief lines:
first, the increase of power to extract from nature addi-
tional supplies of the necessaries of life. This Ward

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 167

sums up under the general head "subsistence." The
other development grows out of the necessity of men
who are interdependent upon each other being able to
communicate with each other, and is summed up by
Ward in the word "communication." Under the head
of "communication" Ward discusses the origin and de-
velopment of language. In the direction of increased
possibilities of subsistence, progress has been achieved
by invention. Invention led to the arts. Very early
came the arts of hunting and fishing; later the art of
agriculture, and finally the highest art bearing on sub-
sistence, the art of manufacture. Progressive factors
were those sciences out of which sprang arts — as navi-
gation, which is the basis of commerce, sprang from the
science of astronomy. All civilization is artificial: — based
on arts. Ward finds his non-progressive factors in gov-
ernment and religion. The sciences are sources of pro-
gress because they are correct interpretations of our
natural environment, and, as they enable us to under-
stand our natural environment, they are the necessary
preliminaries to the arts which enable us to go further
and transform the environment; but the transformation
of art could not be wrought without the understanding
furnished by science. Religion is condemned as a non-
progressive factor, because it is a collection of errors
about our environment. In his consideration of religion
Ward has the following interesting illustration:

"If a convention of all the religions on the globe were
to be called, each sect being represented by one delegate,
and the question were to be voted upon in the case of
each religion separately, Is this religion true? or. Is
this religion beneficial to man? the result would inevita-

1G8 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

bly be that only one affirmative vote would be cast in
each case, and that would be the vote of the delegate of
the particular religion upon which the vote was taken;
and, if the action of this convention with regard to the
feasibility of preserving or abolishing religions could
be conclusive, it would be found that all the religions
of the world would be overwhelmingly voted down and
abolished, and this by the action of avowed religionists
alone."

The whole question of religion is extensively dis-
cussed by Ward under the head of "progress." The
object of the discussion is to discover whether religion
should be considered as a progressive or a non-progress-
ive influence in the social process. Ward arrives at the
following conclusion:

"Upon the whole, therefore, we must conclude that
there is no direction in which the belief in spiritual be-
ings has advanced the temporal interests of mankind,
and that therefore such belief, if it is of any advantage
to the race, must be so in virtue of gains which it is
to bring in a future state of existence — a field of dis-
cussion which, of course, lies outside of the province
of this work and of all scientific investigation. It fur-
ther appears that the real advantages which seem to
flow from some of the modern forms of such belief are
really due to the action of other and quite distinct agen-
cies which have been so adroitly affiliated upon it as to
create the impression that they have grown out of it.
In the case of morality, we have seen how far this im-
pression is from being true. The affiliation has been
accomplished as a protection to systems of belief which
would otherwise have lost their hold upon mankind."

And speaking still more positively:

"Whatever may be the benefits which supernatural be-

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 169

liefs have conferred and are to confer upon man in a
future state of existence, they have not only conferred
none upon him in the present state, but have demonstra-
bly impeded his upward course throughout his entire
career."

It must be admitted that there is an evident contra-
diction between this positively asserted position and
Ward's contention, advanced in "Pure Sociology," that
"religion must have been primarily an advantageous so-
cial structure, otherwise it could not have come into
existence."

Progress consists in breaking down the limits of en-
vironment by inventions of improved means of commu-
nication and subsistence, or, as Marx would state it, in
the improvement of the means of production and ex-
change.

ACTION

We now come to another question : If progress is the
source of increasing happiness, what is the source of
progress? To this question Ward answers, "action."
It is obvious, however, that not all action leads to pro-
gress. The particular kind of action that leads to pro-
gress is dynamical action; statical actions are not pro-
ductive of progress. The difference between dynamical
actions and statical actions is that statical actions are
natural, while dynamical actions are artificial. The ac-
tion of eating to satisfy hunger is natural, but it has no
tendency to progress. Artificial actions, such as the de-
velopment of wild grasses into cereals and producing
these in crops to increase the food supply, are pro-
gressive or dynamical. The greater part of Ward's study

170 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

of this question is devoted to showing that dynamic ac-
tions are all based on the indirect or intellectual method
of effort. "Dynamical actions are distinguished from
statical actions in proceeding according to the indirect or
intellectual method of conation (effort) instead of the
direct, or physical method." The exposition of what
Ward calls "the indirect method" occupies a large and
prominent place in all of his work. It is much too im-
portant a question to be disposed of in this section and
will, therefore, be made the subject of the next chapter.
"Dynamic actions may be subdivided into two groups,
according as they are performed by individuals or small
groups, or by society at large." Ward explains that
thus far nearly all dynamic actions have been performed
either by individuals or small groups of individuals.
This is because the inventive factulty which operates to
produce dynamic action requires a considerable develop-
ment of independence in its exercise, whereas when
many men get together in bodies of any size to decide
upon any action, there frequently results a degree of
confusion incompatible with the adoption of any ra-
tional scheme. This leads Ward to make the following
criticism of deliberative bodies:

"Deliberative bodies rarely enact any measures which
involve the application of the indirect method. If indi-
vidual members who have worked such schemes out by
themselves propose them in such bodies, the confusion
of discordant minds, coupled with the usual preponder-
ance of inferior ones, almost always defeats their adop-
tion."

This is followed by several suggestions as to how
"true" deliberative bodies may act dynamically in the

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 171

future. The most potent of these suggestions is, that
inasmuch as in all democratic societies the actions of
legislative bodies are controlled by constituencies, and
can only move as the constituencies allow them to move,
the only method of making scientific legislation possible
is the dissemination of scientific knowledge throughout
the constituencies.

The previous absence of scientific knowledge, espe-
cially scientific knowledge of the nature of the social
forces, is responsible for the fact that almost all acts
performed so far by the social organism have belonged
to the static class. The hope of the future lies in the
scientific education of the mass of men and the con-
ducting of legislative bodies on a basis similar to that
which obtains in scientific bodies and with the complete
absence of the partisan spirit which is typical of party
politics.

OPINION

We now see that happiness is the child of progress;
progress the child of action, and the query arises, Where
shall we look for the parent of action? Ward finds the
answer in "opinion." The chapter in which opinion
is considered as a link in this chain is especially luminous
and we recommend the reader to make himself ac-
quainted with it at the earliest opportunity. "The value
of human action," says Ward, "will chiefly depend upon
two qualities residing in human opinions. First, their
correctness ; second, the importance of their subject-mat-
ter." Ward argues with great force that what is needed
is not unity of opinion but correctness of opinion. The
important thing about an opinion is not whether it is

172 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

generally accepted, but whether it is true. A generally
accepted error has more than once in human history re-
sulted in incalculable disaster. The hundreds of thou-
sands of women who were burned or drowned because
of the general belief in witchcraft and the general ac-
ceptance of the biblical injunction "thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live" is a case in point. Equally fallacious
is the opposite idea that there is something to be dreaded
in complete harmony of opinion and that mere "differ-
ence of opinion exerts a wholesome influence upon intel-
lectual and social progress and that unity of views upon
the chief topics of any age would result in mental stag-
nation and social degeneration." Many instances of set-
tled unity of opinion are cited:

"The heliocentric theory was long the battlefield of
opinions even by astronomers themselves. Opinion re-
specting it has now become so far settled that there is
no educated person, not even in orders, who honestly
questions it; and a modern work, claiming seriously to
challenge its truth, was simply an object of general ridi-
cule. There is little more chance for the truth which
Galileo recanted before a grave consistory of learned
prelates ever to be again seriously questioned than there
is that it will some time be denied that a right line join-
ing two points is the shortest distance between them."

And in geology:

"There remains no one to gainsay the assertion that
stratified deposits found upon high mountains were once
at the bottom of the sea, where they were formed. No
one any longer disputes that the fossils found in such
positions were once living creatures inhabiting the sea.
And, while no one can say with any degree of definite-
ness how long ago these fossils lived, scarcely a culti-

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 173

vated man can be found who honestly doubts that it
must have been, in most cases, very much more than the
long-claimed six thousand years."

* * * * * *

"We might go in like manner through all the estab-
lished sciences : physics, with its law of gravitation ;
chemistry, with its laws of proportions and elective af-
finities ; biology, with its law of deterioration through
interbreeding — all now settled, though once disputed."

Ward asks if any of these settled propositions in sci-
ence can be shown to have any tendency to produce "in-
telkctual stagnation or social degeneracy?"

He remarks that it is an obvious fact that most actual
differences of opinion are wholly unnecessary, the data
for their complete settlement being in existence. Men
hold incorrect opinions all through life, opinions which
influence their actions against the interests of progress
when the correct opinions have been in existence and
easily accessible for years and, in some cases, for centur-
ies. The individual is not to blame ; it is a defect of the
social organism which should have prevented it by the
process of education and which would have been a great
gainer thereby. It is indeed pitiful that men and women
should still be born into the world and in their infancy
inoculated with ideas which scientific men have known
for a certainty for decades or centuries to be nothing
better than so many absolute lies. In view of this Ward
writes a brief paragraph which deserves close attention:

"In the present state of society, a small class of ad-
vanced minds simply look on and smile at the mad surge
of bitter polemic that engrosses the great mass. To them
the truth has been long patent, and may have become
trite. Powerless to extend it to the rest of the world

174 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

they are tempted to regard the 'common herd' as they
would regard a drove of cattle on their way to the
slaughter-house."

Following this is an exceedingly valuable discussion
of the nature of truth, the origin of opinion, etc. It
is clearly shown, as is of course now understood by all
the well informed, that opinions are not produced by the
will, that men cannot believe things because they wish
or will to do so; nor can they recant opinions they hold,
in obedience to their own wills or the imposed wills of
others. Yet, this idea generally prevailed in the Middle
Ages. "Imagine," says Ward, "a Roman Catholic zealot
philosophizing with himself whether he could, by an
act of his will, accept the heresies of Martin Luther!
!And yet nothing was more clearly established in his
mind than that those heretics could return to the doc-
trines of the Universal Church the moment they should
will to do so."

We shall now pass directly to Ward's treatment of
such ideas or opinions as lead to dynamic or progressive
action. These are called dynamic ideas or dynamic opin-
ions. They belong chiefly to four great classes, which
follow in their classification the order of the sciences pre-
sented by Comte and Spencer and given in the earlier
chapters of this book. These four classes of ideas are:

1. Cosmological ideas.

2. Biological ideas.

3. Anthropological ideas.

4. Sociological ideas.

For lack of space, we shall here confine ourselves to
the first order given in the above classification.

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 175

The effect of opinions about the material universe in
producing progressive or non-progressive actions in the
individuals who entertain them is argued by Ward as
follows :

"First, in order to live in the most advantageous way,
sound views of the material universe must prevail. So
long as man's conceptions of the universe are erroneous,
he will pursue a wayward if not a downward course. If
they are too narrow, and he believes that all existing
things are within the range of his vision, his conduct
will be correspondingly narrowed. If he believes the
world of short duration, both in the past and in the fu-
ture, this too will dwarf all his undertakings, and make
an end of progress. If he regards nature as consisting
of a multitude of animated powers impending over him,
he will waste all his energies in seeking to propitiate
these powers. If he deems them evil, terror will demor-
alize him and make life a burden. If he conceives the
universe to be watched over by beneficent powers, he
will be apt to resign all initiative effort to them, and
relapse into a condition of complete stagnation."

Those who hold that there is no relation between the
measurement of the sun, and the vast distances between
the planets, and human conduct in society are answered
thus:

"Proper conceptions of the relative magnitude of the
sun and earth help immensely to tone down human ar-
rogance and to make men behave properly. Some may
smile at such a statement, but they need only to remem-
ber that, down to the time when this and other kindred
truths were forced by science upon the world, the most
moral and enlightened men in the most advanced por-
tion of the earth were decreeing the torture and execu-
tion of their fellow-men for disbelief in certain doctrinal
tenets not possessing the least intrinsic merit ; and scarce-

176 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ly any one now doubts that the immense liberalization
of the world which has taken place during the last three
centuries has been chiefly due to the expansion of men's
views rendered possible by the discoveries of science."

Elsewhere in his work 'Ward develops at length, that
men's opinions as to the attitude of the universe toward
mankind are vital in social progress. In this regard
science has shown that the universe is not for us, and
that therefore we cannot depend upon its doing what
we must needs do for ourselves. Neither is it against
us, so that we need not despair that our efforts will be
thwarted. The truth is that the universe occupies a
purely neutral position. It neither knows nor cares any-
thing about the human race. It has no intelligence; it
constitutes simply a vast mass of raw material, so that
whether men grope in benighted savagery, or realize the
loftiest millenial dreams of civilization, depends entirely
upon their own efforts. This opinion, which is eminently
scientific, is a clear example of what constitutes a dynamic
opinion, inasmuch as its acceptance cannot but lead the
man accepting it to wage a fearless struggle with nature
in that increasing conquest of its forces and that cumu-
lative appropriation of its materials which constitute the
very essences of progress.

KNOWLEDGE

"In the four preceding chapters," Ward says, "we
have seen that human progress, measured by the degree
of happiness conferred, has been accomplished altogether
by appropriate human actions, dictated by rational
thoughts." The next problem is to find the basis of ra-
tional thoughts, or as they are called in the classification,
dynamic opinions. Ward's answer is "knowledge."

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 177

In the chapter devoted to this fifth link in the chain,
there is an exceedingly interesting and valuable discus-
sion of the nature of intellect and intelligence. We can
only give a bare outline here, and once more the reader
is urged to acquaint himself with the full treatment in
the original. The intellect is mental power; knowledge
is the material upon which this power is exerted, and
the compound result of the combination is intelligence.
The great need of society is an increase of intelligence
The problem is to find out how this can be accomplished.
Inasmuch as intelligence is a compound, resulting from
an admixture of intellect and knowledge, the question
arises as to which of these two things we stand most in
need in order to increase our supply of the derived pro-
duct. Have we sufficient intellectual capacity and a
lack of knowledge? or have we a surplus of knowledge
with a lack of intellectual power? According to the an-
swers we give to these questions, our energies will be
directed in the one or the other of these channels. In
deciding this question, we must find which is the ele-
ment lacking and what are the possibilities of supply-
ing the need. Ward decides that we do not lack on the
side of intellect; that the intellectual capacity of the
mass of men in the modern world is more than enough
for any demands of the present or the immediate fu-
ture. While this may not apply to the lower races still
in existence, it is certainly the case with the peoples of
Europe and America:

"The intellect of Western Europe is still capable of
easily digesting and thoroughly assimilating a vast
amount of natural truth in addition to that now pos-
sessed by it; and all the parts of it and of America, be-

178 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

tween which the greatest inequality in this respect now
exists, are capable of holding it all alike, and the pro-
posed increase besides. The chief differences in nations,
in local areas, in communities, and in individuals, is in
what they know, and not in what they are capable of
knowing. It is intelligence which .so greatly varies, and
not intellect; the deficiencies of backward regions are
deficiencies in knowledge; the chief errors of the world
as well as its chief evils, have a common origin in ig-
norance."

This explains the wide difference of intelligence by
holding, after the manner of Helvetius, that intellect
is equal and the difference in intelligence is due to some
intellects being supplied with larger amounts of knowl-
edge than others. The degree of intelligence in cities
"is well known to be greatly superior to that in the
rural districts. This is by no means due to the superior
capacity of city populations. If there is any difference
in this respect, it is probably the reverse of this. The
country boy removed to the city soon becomes a city
boy." The importance of cities to intelligence is due to
"the atmosphere of conversation, news, reading, and
thinking of a metropolis."

"From the plains of Nebraska, where the aspiring
youth can only with the greatest difficulty obtain the rudi-
ments of an education, to the great centers of life in
London, Berlin, or Paris, where every night large crowds
assemble to listen to technical lectures by the masters of
science, there exist all degrees of difference in the mere
opportunity which equal intellects enjoy for acquiring
knowledge and enhancing intelligence."

The conclusion from this is that all efforts in the
direction of increasing intellectual capacity are largely

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 179

superfluous. It is already present in sufficient generality
and in sufficient degree for all present practical pur-
poses. Ward therefore justly demands why energy
should be expended in the direction of increasing intel-
lect, of which we have sufficient, instead of in the di-
rection of increasing, and especially distributing, knowl-
edge, which is the only element lacking for the increase
of intelligence. This point is forcibly made and very
clearly illustrated in the following:

"Since intelligence is the real end in view, which con-
sists only in a proper combination of the two, all increase
in the one in excess of the other is without result. But
we have shown that the former is already largely in ex-
cess. Why, then, insist upon adding to this, to the
neglect of the other? If, in seeking to obtain a larger
amount of a compound chemical, composed of two in-
gredients which combine in definite proportions, an ex-
cess of either one be constantly added without adding
any of the other, the amount of the compound
desired will never be increased. The jar may be filled
with the uncombined and valueless mixture, but it repre-
sents nothing. Thus it is with the psychic progress of
mankind. The only increment which counts is the in-
crement of intelligence, represented by the maximum
condition of the lesser of its two components."

It is indeed fortunate that our problem turns out thus.
For, in this event, its solution is within reach and is,
in a sense, comparatively easy. Indeed, if it were not
that the economic interests of certain social classes
stand like lions in the path, it would be no task at all.
On the other hand, it is quite clear that if the thing
lacking in the combination were intellectual capacity,
any immediate solution of the problem would be out of

180 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

the question. As Ward points out intellectual capacity
can only be increased by changes in the mass and struc-
ture of the brain, and this is a biological problem and
a process requiring immense periods of time. The
change in this regard during all historic time is so
minute as to be practically imperceptible and a negligible
quantity.

"There is a certain heroism in the fearless manner in
which the human race attacks the most difficult prob-
lems. A typical instance of this kind is the attempt to
develop the human intellect. The zeal with which this
problem has been attacked by 'educationalists,' as well
as the results, reminds us strongly of Don Quixote's
war upon the windmills. Wholly ignorant of- the great
laws of heredity which suggest a real method, hostile
for the most part to the theory of natural development,
by whose contemplation alone the true difficulties of the
task can be duly appreciated, these zealous reformers
continue to beat the air and the sea, and fancy they are
really subduing the winds and the waves."

Ward shows that there are means by which intellect-
ual power can be increased, though this is not the im-
perative need. Man is far better able to improve the
breeds of stock or domestic animals than to improve
himself, inasmuch as any suggestion to conduct human
breeding on any such scientific principles as are applied
in stock breeding is immediately confronted with serious
difficulties. Apart from this, the supplying of the in-
tellect with the proper materials of knowledge to enable
it to work at its highest capacity, is bound, in the course
of time, to develop still higher powers. The lash is ap-
plied justly to our institutions of learning, where it is

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 181

imagined that intellectual power can be obtained by
mere intellectual gymnastics.

"The system hitherto chiefly relied upon for the de-
velopment of the mind may be appropriately called 'in-
tellectual gymnastic.' It consists in exercising- the intel-
lect on sham problems in the same manner that acro-
bats cultivate their bodily agility. Logical tournaments
and mock polemics are regularly conducted, and various
forms of heated 'wrangling' are made regular exercises
in the highest institutions of learning. Real objects are
avoided as unnecessary, and as only belonging to serious
life. It is supposed that in this way the plastic mind of
youth will be 'drawn out' and made something very dif-
ferent from what it would otherwise be. Too frequently
it is worn out instead, and thus unfitted entirely for the
active duties of later years. That some effect is thus
produced, not indeed appreciable (unless by the breaking
down of the mind), during the life of the individual,
but upon posterity after a series of generations, is prob-
ably true, though it is apt to show itself in the form of
degeneracy or effeminacy — a fondness for the forms and
shadows of things accompanied by a disregard of the
substance."'

The whole discussion is presented in the following
summary, which deserves to be very carefully pondered:

"1. That the degree of intellectual capacity, as al-
ready spontaneously developed, is amply sufficient, in
the present civilized races, to establish and conduct a
thoroughly organized social system.

"2. That all attempts artificially to accelerate this de-
velopment must be attended with great difficulties, and,
in so far as successful, must occupy prolonged if not
secular periods.

"3. That the only two methods by which this can be
accomplished are, first, artificial selection, or the scien-

182 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

tific propagation of human beings — a method confronted
by great practical obstacles; or, second, rational change
of environment, consisting in the supply of the intellect
with more and better legitimate materials to work upon,
i. e., increase of knowledge.

"4. That the amount of useful knowledge possessed
by the average mind is far below its intellectual capacity,
thus keeping the degree of intelligence correspondingly
below what it might be.

"5. That the actual amount of such knowledge orig-
inated by man, though doubtless still below his ability
to utilize it, is sufficient, if equally distributed, to elevate
him to a relatively high position, and to awaken society
to complete consciousness.

"6. That the origination of knowledge, though diffi-
cult and slow, is easier and more rapid than any possible
increase of intellect can be, and may be easily made to
keep pace with the latter in the future.

"7. That more immediately important than any of the
other desiderata named, as well as far more easy of ac-
complishment, is the thorough distribution of the great
body of valuable knowledge already extant."

We shall, for lack of space, pass Ward's theory of
ethical opinions and ethical knowledge and proceed di-
rectly to dynamic knowledge. As it is dynamic action
alone which makes for progress and dynamic opinion
alone which leads to progressive action, so it is dynamic
knowledge alone which leads to progressive opinion. All
dynamic knowledge is of the scientific order, though it
does not follow that all scientific knowledge is neces-
sarily dynamic. It is resolved into two categories; sci-
entific knowledge which is potentially dynamic, and sci-
entific knowledge which is actually dynamic. Inasmuch
as it is impossible to foresee whether a scientific dis-
covery may be dynamic in its results, it becomes neces-

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 183

sary to pursue scientific truth in the first place for its
own sake. This is why scientific pursuits attract only
the highest types of minds, offering as they do no cer-
tain immediate material results. Ward illustrates this
by Galvani's experiments with frog's legs, which seemed
at the time of no value, but which proved to be the fun-
damental principle underlying the invention of the elec-
tric telegraph.

Actual dynamic knowledge is all knowledge of this
character which led directly to social progress by en-
abling men to utilize the materials and forces of nature
to their own advantage. Such knowledge as the discov-
ery of coal and steam and electricity and the knowledge
which led to the various arts which constitute the chief
body of modern civilization. Knowledge that is po-
tentially dynamic, includes knowledge of the constitu-
tion of the sun, fixed stars and nebulae, the immense
distances of space in astronomy and physics; the
knowledge of the evolutionary origin of man in biology,
and all such knowledge as tends to enlarge the human
outlook, and instruct the human mind, thus raising it to
a higher plane of thought and action. While knowl-
edge of this order is regarded as chiefly potential, inas-
much as it has no immediate progressive results, it is
also largely dynamic.

Toward the close of this section Ward has an inter-
esting treatment of the distribution of knowledge, a
subject still further elaborated in the next section. "It
would be regarded as a truism," says Ward, "if not
actual tautology to say that knowledge, to exert its
power, must be possessed by the mind. And yet no be-

184 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

lief is more prevalent, tacit if not avowed, than that
knowledge in possession of a few individuals sufficiently
avails for all."' Ward points out the fallacy in this no-
tion and that "it is no more possible for one person to
do another's knowing, than it would be to do his eating
and drinking. A man's knowledge may make him a
philanthropist, but it cannot prevent another's ignorance
from making him a criminal. The knowledge which
makes one class moral and upright citizens, exerts no
influence to reduce the immorality of the class which is
without it." Then comes an argument which will spe-
cially interest the readers of this book; dealing with
the question of existing social inequalities, Ward says:

"Those who indulge the dream of a golden age of
altruistic morality, when all this shall be changed, and
men shall pursue the welfare of others instead of their
own, are destined to disappointment, and deserve to be
disappointed. Whatever improvement is made in the
present system must be brought about by the develop-
ment of the means of equal self-protection, and not to
any marked degree by the growth of altruism."

Ward argues that the advantage of the capitalist over
the laborer is due to superior intelligence, and that the
inequality in the distribution of knowledge which gives
the capitalist this superior intelligence works positive
injury in allowing "a grasping egotism to accomplish its
purpose at the expense of innocence and honesty." The
conclusion is that this disadvantage on the part of subject
classes can only be abolished by their acquisition of the
wider knowledge, which, united with their already suffi-
cient intellectual capacity, would produce a self-protect-
ing intelligence. It is the idea often expressed that

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 185

things will be different when "Jack *s as good as his
master."

EDUCATION

To recapitulate the steps in Ward's system: We have
seen that happiness is the result of progress; progress
the result of action ; action the result of opinion ; opinion
the result of knowledge. It now remains to ascertain
the direct means to knowledge. Ward answers this
with the word "education." This completes the series,
and brings us to what he calls the initial means to the
ultimate goal. We wish to say at this point, that if
any treatise on education has been written which is
comparable in value with this chapter by Ward, it has
never come within our notice. We wish also to guard
the reader against the assumption that the perusal of
these brief condensations conveys any adequate notion
of the immense amount of important information pre-
sented to the reader in the book from which they are
taken.

The word education is used in this connection, not
because it is adequate, but because it is the least objec-
tionable of the terms available. The word, none the less,
is eminently unsatisfactory, both on the ground of its
etymology and its popular meaning. The etymology
of the word shows that it means a "drawing out" of the
mind, and 'this notion, and some others equally value-
less, have been so widely associated with the term in
the popular mind that the word gives no sufficient in-
dication of the true function of education. The editor
of the "Popular Science Monthly" is quoted as saying
that "education is a leading out of the faculties." Dr.

186 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

T. Clifford Allbutt is quoted as defining education thus:
"The true purpose of education is, first of all, to teach
discipline — the discipline of the body and the higher dis-
cipline of the mind and heart."1 A learned article in the
London "Times" gave the following: "Education, which
might once have been defined as an endeavor to expand
the intellect by the introduction of mechanically com-
pressed facts should now be defined as an endeavor fa-
vorably to influence a vital process." These definitions
and others are given to show that all current definitions
fail to take note of the real function of education, as
conceived by Ward. From the variety of definitions in
existence, Ward compiles a catalogue, showing the dif-
ferent concepts of education, including his own, which
is given as the last of the list. They are as follows :

1. Education of experience.

2. Education of discipline.

3. Education of culture.

4. Education of research.

5. Education of information.

All these are reviewed at length. It is argued that
while the education of experience may be the only one
possible on some matters, there are others in which it
can be dispensed with. That at best it is an expensive
method and that other methods of much less cost should
take its place. Ward's criticism might be summed up
in the proverb: "Experience keeps a dear school but
fools will learn in no other."

Education of discipline is dismissed with the conten-
tion that it can be best secured by "the organized recep-
tion of the most important knowledge," and this is the
method of No. 5 — the "education of information."

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 187

The education of culture, relating as it does to ar-
tistic rather than practical knowledge, is admitted to have
its place after the essential kind of education — the edu-
cation of information — has been obtained.

The education of research has for its chief fallacy,
the groundless assumption that truth, once discovered,
will naturally diffuse itself. Its advocates, therefore,
miss the real point of education, which is the diffusion
of truth already ascertained. It is also shown elsewhere
in the chapter, that much time is lost and much energy
is uselessly expended in the field of research, because
truths that have already been discovered have not been
generally disseminated, and others, unacquainted with
their discovery, have expended time and energy in the
rediscovery of truths already known. This brings us
to the fifth conception, which is Ward's own.

Education of information is defined as "a system for
extending to all the members of society such of the ex-
tant knowledge of the world as may be deemed most
important."

Ward proceeds upon the principle of devoting all at-
tention to the contents of the mind and none whatever
to its capacity. This attitude flows from his belief,
which we consider extremely well founded, that ca-
pacity is about equal in all the normal members of civil-
ized countries. He anticipates the objection that this
may be regarded as a system of cramming. If by cram-
ming is meant the acquisition of large quantities of
knowledge, it is not to be condemned. That which is to bo
condemned is "the memorizing of long lists of meaning-
less names, and the taxing of the wits in the solution
of valueless puzzles."

188 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

"The object is to fill the mind with truth: not to
cram it, nor to force it, but to store it in such a system-
atic way with knowledge that it may make use of its
stores in the production of rational thought. The idea
that the mind breaks down because crammed beyond its
capacity with knowledge is a gross misconception of the
primary principles of psychology. It is based on some
such crude assumption as that the brain is a hollow
sphere and that thoughts are material gases introduced
into it. The fact is that the lowest town gossip has a
larger number of items of information stored away in
his brain than Humboldt ever had. It requires no
greater effort to know something important than some-
thing unimportant. It is not the quantity of knowledge
but the quality, not the number of truths but their value,
which should be chiefly considered, and the ability of the
mind to acquire them forms no part of the problem."

^ Ward is decidedly on the side of state education, as
against private education, as he is, indeed, favorably
disposed to all forms of what has been called state social-
ism, and he takes considerable pains to show that in
the matter of railroads, telegraphs, etc., state manage-
ment has been uniformly superior to private enterprise.
Of private education, he has the following trenchant
and ironical criticism:

"In private education there is truly 'no such word as
fail.' For a pupil to fail at an examination would be
for the teacher to lose a patron and a part of his income.
The great laws of business economics will regulate such
matters as that. This is the self-regulating system. If
a parent requires his son to complete his studies within
a prescribed period, the teacher, on pain of having him
removed to another school, will readily find means of
proving his superior capacity and bringing him through
with honors. Children of wealthy parents must of course

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 189

receive special favors, and those whose parents regard
them as precocious must be so marked as to sustain that
opinion. The variety of text-books will correspond to
the variety of notions which parents hold about them,
those which each used 'when he went to school,' however
antiquated, being usually the only ones allowed. Such
is, in brief, the general character of private education,
proceeding upon the economic principles of supply and
demand, the latter consisting in the desires of parents
and guardians."

State education is uniformly superior for a variety
of reasons, among these are the elimination of the whims
of parents, and the setting of the interests of society
as the goal in view. It also places "the lowest gamin of
the streets on an equal footing with the pampered son
of the opulent." Further, it secures in a much larger
measure than private education that distribution of
knowledge which is the supreme function of education.

Ward argues with great cogency in favor of educa-
tion being made universal. This would prevent "the en-
croachments of the ignorant upon the intelligent, and
also the encroachments of the intelligent upon the ig-
norant," and a doubt is expressed as to which of these
two is the greater evil. It is also considered highly de-
sirable, as noted in the last section, that education should
be equal for laborer and capitalist. It is shown that the
superior education of the capitalist enabks him to
avail himself of the highly developed processes of co-
operation, while the less educated and therefore less in-
telligent laborers fight single handed and often against
each other ; and not only this, but the capitalist, while
practicing co-operation himself, shrewdly condemns it

190 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

when practised by laborers. This point is well developed
as follows:

"But the consequence is that, while the intelligent
classes have co-operated and by means of co-operation
have become the capitalists and employers, the ignorant
classes have worked individually and independently, and
have been compelled to turn over to the capitalists with-
out any equivalent the greater part of the value they have
created. In modern times the latter are able to per-
petuate their hold upon the labor of the former by es-
tablishing influential organs and molding public opin-
ion. The laborers have few if any such avenues of
communication, and indeed could make little use of
them if they had them. Those who are able to read at
all, therefore, read the organs of the capitalists, and, un-
able to penetrate their sophisms, and hearing only one
side, they acquiesce in, and even defend, their views.
This genuine co-operation on the part of capitalists does
not go by that name. In fact, it is not called anything.
It is simply recognized as the tmly proper and success-
ful way to do business ; and such it really is. But any
attempt on the part of the laboring class to co-operate
on the same principle and for the same object is loudly
denounced as a sort of crime against society! The la-
borer is actually made to believe that it is so, and the
state frequently steps in to punish it as such."

In his discussion of compulsory education, Ward shows
that the objection is to the word rather than to what
it really means. That, since all children fail to realize
the value of education, because they know nothing about
it, compulsion is necessary to every form of education,
.whether conducted by the state or directed by parents.
Ward is, of course, wholly in favor of including women
on the same footing as men in the educational process;

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS. 191

especially is he concerned that education should be
adapted to the needs of the working class :

"It must not be forgotten that a system of education,
to be worthy the name, must be framed for the great
proletariat. Most systems of education seem designed
exclusively for the sons of wealthy gentry, who are sup-
posed to have nothing else to do in life but seek the high-
est culture in the most approved and fashionable ways.
But the great mass, too, need educating. They need the
real, solid meat of education in the most concentrated
form assimilable. They have strong mental stomachs,
and little time. They can not afford to take slow, wind-
ing paths; they must move directly through. Culture
they can get along without. Failures are dead losses.
For them every step should count."

Ward anticipates the questions of such as might ask
why, in the present social situation, he has so much to
say about the equal distribution of knowledge and so lit-
tle to advance about the equal distribution of wealth.
His answer to this is that, if knowledge were equally
distributed, inequality of wealth distribution would im-
mediately disappear. He ventures to criticise social-
ists for not taking this view and argues that they are
working upon the roof of their structure instead of lay-
ing its foundations. From this we judge that Ward
would probably be considerably surprised to know how
thoroughly socialists understand that the chief avenue to
the realization of their ideals must be through proper
education.

SUMMARY

We shall now present at the close what Ward presents
at the beginning, a summary and recapitulation of the

192 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

scheme outlined above. The terms of this chain and
their definitions are tabulated as follows:

"A. Happiness. Excess of pleasure, or enjoyment,
over pain, or discomfort.

"B. Progress. Success in harmonizing natural phe-
nomena with human advantage.

"C. Dynamic Action. Employment of the intellectual,
inventive, or indirect method of conation.

"D. Dynamic Opinion. Correct views of the relations
of man to the universe.

"E. Knowledge. Acquaintance with the environment.

"F. Education. Universal distribution of extant
knowledge."

These six terms and their definitions lead to six cor-
responding theorems of dynamic sociology which are
again tabulated thus:

"A. Happiness is the ultimate end of conation.

"B. Progress is the direct means, to Happiness; it is,
therefore, the first proximate end of conation, or pri-
mary means to the ultimate end.

"C. Dynamic Action is the direct means to Progress ;
it is, therefore, the second proximate end of conation, or
secondary means to the ultimate end.

"D. Dynamic Opinion is the direct means to Dynamic
Action ; it is, therefore, the third proximate end of cona-
tion, or tertiary means to the ultimate end.

"E. Knowledge is the direct means to Dynamic Opin-
ion ; it is, therefore, the fourth proximate end of conation,
or fourth means to the ultimate end.

"F. Education is the direct means to Knowledge; it
is, therefore, the fifth proximate end of conation, and is
the fifth and initial means to the ultimate end."

A third and last table is then given, which uses the
mathematical sign of equivalence only, in this table, in

WARD'S SCHEME OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 193

stead of reading- "equal to" the mathematical sign should
be read "will result in" — as, "A is the ultimate end,"
and "B will' result in A," etc.

A. The ultimate end.

B=A.

F=E=D=C=B=A.

Throughout this plotting of the social process, which
is one of the triumphs of modern sociological literature,
there is, as we have already intimated, considerable
treatment of what Ward calls the indirect method. What
Ward means by this, and the importance of the princi-
ple, we have purposely omitted from this chapter, re-
serving it for treatment in the next.

CHAPTER XVII

INDIRECT ACTION VS. DIRECT ACTION

As the reader travels through the invaluable books of
Lester F. Ward, he perceives a theory which steadily
rises in importance, until he realizes that it is one of the
most important contributions of America's foremost, if
not the world's foremost, sociologist. It is called the
"indirect method." The difference between the blind
forces of nature, the instincts of the lower animals, and
all the sub-human forces, on the one hand, and human
reason on the other, is that the former operate by direct
action, while human reason proceeds by the indirect
method. The indirect method, therefore, makes its ap-
pearance in the world of phenomena with the dawn of
reason. Its appearance marks an epoch in the history
of things, which, in the estimation of Ward, is of equal
importance to the appearance of life through the forma-
tion of protoplasm. The direct method is the method
of all animals, and it is the method of all such acts of
the lower human races as might properly be called ir-
rational or unreasoning acts. The moment reason ap-
pears and begins its operations, the direct method is
discarded and the indirect method takes its place.

All social progress is due to the action of the intel-
lect. The intellect secures progress by means of inven-
tions, and every inventor approaches the problem by the
indirect method, or what would be called in military
terms, a flank movement. A huge rock is to be moved
from one place to another. The savage method of mov-

194

INDIRECT ACTION VS. DIRECT ACTION 195

ing a thing is usually that of the lower animals. When
he wishes to move anything, he seizes it with his hands,
as they seize it with their jaws, and the limit of ability
in both cases is fixed by muscular strength. As a huge
rock cannot be moved by this direct method, if it is to
be moved at all, strategy must be resorted to. Strategy
is essentially intellectual in its character. The savage
goes directly at the end; the reasoning strategist brings
his intellect into play and seeks to invent means. The
nature of the indirect method is that it proceeds to its
ends indirectly, through means. When the intellect has
reviewed its means it begins to work, but its first opera-
tions appear to the unreasoning savage as having no
bearing on or relation to the end in view. In the case
of the rock of this illustration, the intellectual method,
first of all, manufactures a lever andk the fulcrum, or
it builds a derrick. This is a round about way, that is
to say, an indirect method, but it is the only one effect-
ive. In the beginning when the savage discovered the
value of fish as a food, his method of fishing was direct
and correspondingly ineffective. It was to plunge his
arm into the stream and seize the fish with his hand,
but the urgings of an appetite ill supplied led him to
ponder until finally his reason led him to use means to
the end. The means in question consisted of a fishing
net, which is an invention, the result of strategy, indi-
rect and effective.

When the wild grasses failed to meet the needs of an
increasing population, the pondering process of the in-
tellect was requisitioned, strategy became necessary, and
agriculture was invented. It was the intellect which

196 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

came to the rescue, and its method of rescue was al-
ways the same, the invention of means to an end in
place of a direct attack upon the end itself. When the
savage fought his battles, striking directly with his fists
he was often defeated by animals smaller than himself
and all the larger animals were a menace to his exist-
ence, but as his intellect developed, it led him to the in-
vention of means to an end, and he finally became mas-
ter of his most formidable enemies by attacking them
through the means of the bow and arrow, axe and spear.

The difftrence between the direct method and the
indirect method is the difference between nature and art.
It is illustrated by Ward, as the difference between an
iceberg drifting aimlessly across the ocean and an ocean
steamship plowing its way from port to port. It is the
difference between^ a river winding and returning upon
its course, and a canal following a comparatively straight
line to its appointed destination. Chiaparelli saw its
significance when he held, as most astronomers hold, that
the canals on Mars, if they are canals, are strong pre-
sumptive evidence of the population of the planet by in-
telligent beings. If only rivers had been observed upon
Mars, no such inference would have been justified. Riv-
ers may exist in the absence of intelligence and the in-
tellectual method, but canals are always means to ends;
they have always a purpose; they are always the pro-
duct of the intellect.

All actions, direct and indirect, have this in common,
they are intended to obtain ends. The difference be-
tween direct action, which is always static and contrib-
utes nothing to progress, and indirect action, which is

INDIRECT ACTION VS. DIRECT ACTION 197

always dynamic and progressive, is that in direct ac-
tion between the action and the end sought by the
action, nothing intervenes, while in indirect action, the
intellect introduces a third element, which comes be-
tween the action and its end, and which is properly
called means.

Inasmuch as direct action is the only method known
to nature, and is the method chiefly practiced by the
lowest savages, who depend almost entirely upon brute
force, Ward calls it the physical method, while indirect
action is called the intellectual method. Ward says:

"When a being, endowed with desires to be satisfied,
is made acquainted with the existence of a desirable ob-
ject, it is immediately prompted to move, or to put forth
efforts, in the direction of that object. To such a being,
another, desiring the same object, that should turn away
from it and commence making adjustments in other ob-
jects lying about, would, to use the language of fable,
appear extremely stupid. It would be an unnatural ac-
tion, i. e., it would be an artificial one. If successful in
securing the end, unattainable by direct effort, it would
be an exercise of true art, and would involve an ac-
quaintance with the principles of true science."

And again:

"The several elements which were shown in the last
chapter to make up human progress have all been begun
and continued by dynamical actions. The great succes-
sive arts which have rendered possible the system of
intercommunication which now exists, as well as the
varied practical inventive arts by which the material con-
dition of society has been perfected, have all resulted
from the recognition by the human intellect of the inter-
mediate steps necessary to be taken in order indirectly
to secure these great ends which presented themselves

198 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

as remote objects beyond the reach of direct effort. They
were all accomplished by the aid of means little if at all
resembling the ends sought."1

The scheme of the social process presented in the last
chapter, beginning with education and ending with hap-
piness, seems to excite against itself the objection that
the effort expended in education at the beginning of the
process and having to pass through all its terms before
acting upon the ultimate end, would seem to lose much
of its power in transmission. Ward, himself, says:
"The principal reason why education is suspected, and
its efficacy doubted, is because it is a means so remote
from the end sought, that human intelligence can only
with the greatest difficulty penetrate the casual relations
which unite them." Such a critic would therefore be
surprised to find that Ward holds precisely the oppo-
site view and argues that this very remoteness of educa-
tion from its ultimate goal, happiness, in the social pro-
cess is the cause of its great efficiency, and a reason
why our chief energies should be applied at that point.
In Ward's estimation the objection above noted is as far
from the truth, as it would be to say that the weight
thrown upon the longer end of a lever would lose its
power by transmission along the lever and across the
fulcrum. We know, of course, that it is in the trans-
mission that the power is multiplied. The lever stands
between the action and its object, but it does not absorb
the action, or if it does absorb it, it reproduces it a hun-
dred fold. By a parity of reasoning Ward maintains
that in the case of this chain of the social process, ef-
forts to produce human happiness will be more effect-

INDIRECT ACTION VS. DIRECT ACTION 199

ive as it is applied to the links nearer the beginning and
remoter from the end.

The earlier part of his chapter on education is
given to this question. The direct pursuit of hap-
piness is shown to be ineffective: "The direct pur-
suit of happiness, even by the individual, is pro-
verbially barren of results." "Imagine/"' says Ward,
"a positive majority enactment simply requiring all citi-
zens to be happy." He points out that society has often
sought to apply indirect means so as to control action in
such a way as to secure happiness, but these have failed,
because, while they were indirect, they were not suffi-
ciently so. History has shown that men cannot be
made to change their opinions by direct coercion; some-
thing must be used as a means and that something must
take the form of evidence showing the opinions to be
wrong. Several pages are devoted by Ward to giving
instances to show that the indirect method is the method
of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. Simple
as this principle may seem, and little as it may impress
at first consideration, Ward pronounces it "the corner
stone of dynamic sociology." The failure of legislation
intended to mitigate social conditions is almost invaria-
bly due to its proceeding directly instead of indirectly.
Herbert Spencer was an especially keen critic of all
legislative efforts at social amelioration. The basis of
his criticism was that society was too complex to be
directed by anything so crude as legal enactments. In
criticising the temperance legislation of his time, he
introduces an illustration to show that social evils can
not be remedied by striking them directly with a major-

200 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ity enactment. The comparison is so excellent an illus-
tration of the principle we are discussing that we shall
reproduce it here.

"You see that this wrought-iron plate is not quite flat ;
it sticks up a little here towards the left — 'cockles' — as
we say. How shall we flatten it? Obviously, you re-
ply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. Well,
here is a hammer, and I give the plate a blow as you
advise. Harder, you say. Still no effect. Another
stroke? Well, there is one, and another, and another.
The prominence remains, you see: the evil is as great
as ever — greater, indeed. But this is not all. Look at
the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge.
Where it was flat before it is now curved. A pretty
bungle we have made of it. Instead of curing the orig-
inal defect, we have produced a second. Had we asked
an artisan practiced in 'planishing,' as it is called, he
would have told us that no good was to be done, but
only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part.
He would have taught us how to give variously-directed
and specially-adjusted blows with a hammer elsewhere:
so attacking the evil not by direct but by indirect ac-
tions. The required process is less simple than you
thought. Even a sheet of metal is not to be successfully
dealt with after those common-sense methods in which
you have so much confidence. What, then, shall we say
about a society ? 'Do you think I am easier to be played
on than a pipe ?' asks Hamlet. Is humanity more readily
straightened than an iron plate?"

The Prohibition propapanda is an excellent example
of the utter futility of direct action. The problem is:
Men drink. The remedy proposed strikes directly at
the end sought, stop them from drinking. There is no
consideration of the causes which lead men to drink,
their miserable surroundings, over-worked bodies, and

INDIRECT ACTION VS. DIRECT ACTION 201

abused nervous systems, crying for stimulants, a dull,
dead monotony of life seeking variation in any way pos-
sible. These things enter not into the calculations of the
Prohibitionist. If they did, he would perceive that
drinking, in so far as it is dangerous, might be prevente:!
by the use of means, the means being improved economic
and social conditions, better and more prosperous homes,
easy accessibility to higher education, the best music,
literature, and drama, so that by comparison the saloon
with its mechanical piano would lose its power to draw.
But all this is too indirect and belongs too purely to the
intellectual method to come within the intellectual grasp
of the average Prohibitionist.

Social purity leagues, consisting largely of preachers
and prominent members of their flocks, are indignant
about segregated vice and organize societies for its abo-
lition. Their method of procedure is the direct method
of the savage and the lower animals. To close the
segregated district, even the police with their extremely
low order of intelligence have discovered, is a futile pro-
ceeding which scatters the vice, once limited to a dis-
trict, throughout the city. If the purity leagues would
seek for causes and begin by understanding the nature
of the problem, they would probably develop their in-
telligence sufficiently to be able to perceive that there
are means which might be employed for the abolition of
the white slave traffic. But the low wages paid in de-
partment stores and a capitalist regime which automati-
cally regulates the wages of the majority of women on the
principle that whatever may be lacking for their sub-
sistence in the pitiful pay envelopes, may be gained in

202 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

another way, do not enter into the calculations of purity
leagues. To suggest to the members of these organiza-
tions to establish the economic independence of women
would seem a remedy so remote from the problem in
view as to have no practical bearing upon it, but it is
precisely the remoteness, and the indirection of this
method, which is the guarantee of its success, when so-
ciety shall have the wisdom necessary for its adoption.

Direct action as a phrase has come into general use
during the last few years, as the program to be applied
to the solution of the labor problem. It is rather diffi-
cult to ascertain precisely what is meant by it in the
utterances of its advocates. We remember seeing in
a magazine, which speaks with some authority for this
propaganda, something to the effect that the direct ac-
tionist is a person who is not willing to wait for the
slow operation of the political process and proposes to
seize the means of production and hold them for the
working class. While this may be called a piece of
strategy, its real nature is the total absence of strategy.
The workers need the instruments of production; this
is freely conceded. The direct actionist says "Take
them ;" the socialist says "Agreed," but his method is
intellectual. To get possession of the means of produc-
tion is the end in view; but all science and all history
teach that in the securing of ends means must be used,
and his analysis of society shows him that as the titles
to the means of production are lodged with the political
state and defended by all the armed powers of that
state, the state is the strategical point of attack and po-
litical action is the essential means to the ultimate goal.

INDIRECT ACTION' VS. DIRECT ACTION 203

The more one studies the latest and highest develop-
ments of sociology, the more one is impressed with the
strength and genius of Karl Marx. Marx saw that so-
ciety was a process, quite clearly as Ratzenhofer. As
to the necessity of analyzing social structures, he is no
whit behind Spencer. He believes thoroughly, as Ward
holds (see next chapter), that all social action with a
view to modifying the social process and social struc-
tures must proceed from a careful objective analysis
of the social forces actually in operation. When he ana-
lyzes the social process and concludes that all revolu-
tions are fundamentally economic in their aim, but that
the end cannot be secured by direct action, but must be
secured by means to the end, and that, for a variety of
reasons, the only effective means are political and that,
therefore, the proletarian revolution, like every other
revolution, while economic in its aim, must be a politi-
cal revolution, he proclaims himself the greatest social
philosopher of this or any other time, and vindicates
Small's designation of him as the Galileo of the science
of society.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY

The superiority of the sociologists to the political econ-
omists finds its clearest expression in a keener apprecia-
tion of the paramount importance of the social problem.
There is nothing mysterious or elusive about this prob-
lem. It consists of the plain fact that the masses of
wage workers toil long hours, under miserable condi-
tions, and produce the wealth of the world, receiving in
return a comparatively insignificant part of the wealth
they have produced, while, on the other hand, the owners
of the process of wealth production and of the machin-
ery used in the process, perform practically no labor
and live in a luxury which is climbing to the proportions
of an eighth wonder of the world. It may be properly
argued that this luxury has an enervating effect upon
the class which enjoys it, but its most terrible signifi-
cance lies in the fact that it is ground from the faces
of the poor. It has been thus since private property in
the means of life began, and it will be thus until pri-
vate property in the means" of life ends. Perhaps the
most powerful illustration in modern literature of this
process, is that given by Oscar Wilde in "The House of
Pomegranates." The picture is composed of the three
dreams of the young king the night before his corona-
tion. While recommending the reader to the perusal
of them all, we have room here only for the first.

The author tells us that the mind of the young king,
on the evening before his ascent to the throne, was occu-

204

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY 205

pied in thinking of the gorgeous robe he was to wear at
the coronation. The story then proceeds:

"When midnight sounded from the clock-tower he
touched a bell, and his pages entered and disrobed him
with much ceremony, pouring rose-water over his hands,
and strewing flowers on his pillow. A few moments after
they had left the room, he fell asleep.

"And as he slept he dreamed a dream, and this was
his dream.

"He thought that he was standing in a long, low attic
amidst the whirr and clatter of many looms. The meagre
daylight peered in through the grated windows, and
showed him the gaunt figures of the weavers bending
over their cases. Pale, sickly-looking children were
crouched on the huge cross-beams. As the shuttles
dashed through the warp they lifted up the heavy bat-
tens, and when the shuttles stopped they let the battens
fall and pressed the threads together. Their faces were
pinched with famine, and their thin hands shook and
trembled. Some haggard women were seated at a table
sewing. A horrible odor filled the place. The air was
foul and heavy, and the walls dripped and streamed
with damp. The young King went over to one of the
weavers, and stood by him and watched him. And the
weaver looked at him angrily, and said, 'Why art thou
watching me? Art thou a spy set on us by our master?'

" 'Who is thy master ?' asked the young King.

"'Our master!' cried the weaver bitterly. 'He is a
man like myself. Indeed, there is but this difference be-
tween us — that he wears fine clothes while I go in rags,
and that while I am weak from hunger he suffers not
a little from overfeeding/

" 'The land is free,' said the young King, 'and thou
art no man's slave.'

" 'In war,' answered the weaver, 'the strong make
slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of

206 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such
mean wages that we die. W>e toil for them all day long,
and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children
fade away before their time, and the faces of those we
love become hard and evfl. We tread out the grapes, and
another drinks the wine. We sow the corn and our
own board is empty. We have chains though no eye
beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.'

" 'Is it so with all ?' he asked.

" 'It is so with all/ answered the weaver, 'with the
young as well as with the old, with the women as well
as with the men, with the little children as well as with
these who are stricken in years. The merchants grind
us down, and we must needs do their bidding. The
priest rides by and tells his beads, and no man has care
of us. Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with
her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows
close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning, and
Shame sits with us at night. But what are these things
to thee? Thou art not one of us. Thy face is too
happy.' And he turned away scowling, and threw the
shuttle across the loom, and the young King saw that
it was threaded with a thread of gold.

" 'And a great terror seized upon him, and he said to
the weaver, 'What robe is this that thou art weaving?'

" 'It is the robe for the coronation of the young King/
he answered ; 'what is that to thee ?'

"And the young King gave a loud cry and woke, and
lo! he was in his own chamber, and through the win-
dow he saw the great honey-coloured moon hanging in
the dusky air."

Whatever dissent there may be as to the solution of
the social problenij there is none as to its existence.
Nor is there any general disagreement as to its funda-
mental nature among those who have probed that prob-
lem at all. It is widely agreed that between the poverty
of the masses and the luxury of the few there is a

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY 207

causal relation. The problem itself is co-extensive and
co-eval with civilization and its insistent urging has been
felt and has found expression in every field of thought.
Among the poets none have spoken more clearly than
Keats in "Isabella":

"With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,
Enriched from ancestral merchandise,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torched mine and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quivered loins did melt
In blood from stinging whip — with hollow eyes

Many all day in dazzling river stood

To take the rich-or'd driftings of the flood.

"For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark ;

For them his ears gushed blood ; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts ; for them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark

Half ignorant they turned an easy wheel

That set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel."

Not only among poets and literary artists does this
basic idea of the utter wrongness of our social arrange-
ments find voice. Huxley, like many another scientist,
saw it and realized its seriousness for the race. He said :

"Even the best of modern civilization appears to me
to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither em-
bodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit
of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion
that if there is no hope of a large improvement of the
condition of the greater part of the human family : if
it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning
of a greater dominion over nature which is its conse-
quence, and the wealth which follows upon that domin-

208 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

ion are to make no difference in the extent and intensity
of want with its concomitant physical and moral degra-
dation among the masses of the people, I should hail
the advent of some kindly comet which would sweep
the whole affair away/'

And again:

"What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has
stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the
spirits of the earth and air obey him; if the vulture. of
Pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep
him on the brink of destruction?"

Among the sociologists we may listen to Mr. Benja-
min Kidd, author of "Social Evolution." Speaking of
the Socialists, Mr. Kidd says:

"The adherents of the new faith ask, What avails it
that the waste places of the earth have been turned into
the highways of commerce, if the many still work and
want and only the few have leisure and grow rich?
What does it profit the worker that knowledge grows if
all the appliances of science are not to lighten his labor?
Wealth may accumulate, and public and private mag-
nificence may have reached a point never before at-
tained in the history of the world ; but wherein is so-
ciety the better, it is asked, if the Nemesis of poverty
still sits like a hollow-eyed spectre at the feast?"

As might be expected, the poverty of the laborers has
entered largely into the calculations of the criminolo-
gists. Enrico Ferri, the Italian master of that science,
sees in poverty the chief source of crime. In "Positive
Criminology" Ferri draws a pathetic picture of how
poverty does its work:

"Want is the strongest poison for the human body
and soul. It is the fountain head of all inhuman and
antisocial feeling. Where want spreads out its wings,
there the sentiments of love, of affection, of brotherhood,
are impossible. Take a look at the figures of the peasant

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY 209

in the far-off arid Campagna, the little government em-
ploye, the laborer, the little shopkeeper. When work is
assured, when living is certain, though poor, then want,
cruel want, is in the distance, and every good sentiment
can germinate and develop in the human heart. The
family then lives in a favorable environment, the par-
ents agree, the children are affectionate. And when the
laborer, a bronzed statue of humanity, returns from his
smoky shop and meets his white-haired mother, the em-
bodiment of half a century of immaculate virtue and
heroic sacrifices, then he can, tired, but assured of his
daily bread, give room to feelings of affection, and he
will cordially invite his mother to share his frugal meal.
But let the same man, in the same environment, be
haunted by the spectre of want and lack of employment,
and you will see the moral atmosphere in his family
changing as from day into night. There is no work,
and the laborer comes home without any wages. The
wife, who does not know how to feed the children, re-
proaches her husband with the suffering of his family.
The man, having been turned away from the doors of
ten offices, feels his dignity as an honest laborer assailed
in the very bosom of his own family, because he has
vainly asked society for honest employment. And the
bonds of affection and union are loosened in that fam-
ily. Its members no longer agree. There are too many
children, and when the poor old mother approaches her
son, she reads in his dark and agitated m.ien the lack
of tenderness and feels in her mother heart that her
boy, poisoned by the spectre of want, is perhaps casting
evil looks at her and harboring the unfilial thought:
'Better an open grave in the cemetery than one mouth
more to feed at home!*"

The admiration for Lester F. Ward, which has al-
ready been displayed in this book, is based not only upon
his wonderful synthetic and analytic powers, but upon
his keen appreciation of the nature and seriousness of the
condition of the working class. There is nothing at all

210 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

comparing with it. in 'the standard literature of political
economy, and it is an exception even among the broader
thinkers of the science of sociology. Ward agrees with
Huxley that social conditions are so bad that if they can-
not be remedied, it would be better if some kindly comet
would pass by and sweep the ^entire phantasmagoria out
of existence. A just estimate of Ward's work in the
sociological field would probably conclude that his great-
est contribution is his "Applied Sociology." This de-
cision would detract nothing from his great book "Pure
Sociology." The difference between "Pure Sociology"
and "Applied Sociology" is similar to the difference be-
tween pure mechanics and applied mechanics; it is the
difference between theory and practice.

"Pure Sociology" relates to the science which seeks
the laws of the social process, while "Applied Sociology"
seeks the social arts by which the social process may be
modified for human betterment. Applied sociology must
build itself upon the knowledge obtained by pure so-
ciology, as applied mechanics proceeds upon the informa-
tion obtained from theoretical mechanics. We will al-
low Ward to explain for himself:

"Pure sociology is simply a scientific inquiry into the
actual condition of society. It alone can yield true so-
cial self-consciousness. It answers the questions What,
Why, and How, by furnishing the facts, the causes, and
the principles of sociology. It is a means of self-orienta-
tion. When men know what they are, what forces have
molded them into their present shape and character, and
according to what principles of nature the creative and
transforming processes have operated, they begin really
to understand themselves. Not only is a mantle of char-
ity thrown over everything that exists, such as virtually

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY 211

to preclude all blame, but a rational basis is now for the
first time furnished for considering to what extent and
in what manner things that are not in all respects what
they would like to have them may be put in the way of
such modification as will bring them more into harmony
with the desired state. At least it thus, and thus only,
becomes possible to distinguish between those social con-
ditions which are susceptible of modification through
human action and those that are practically unalterable
or are beyond the reach of human agency. In this way
an enormous amount of energy otherwise wasted can be
saved and concentrated upon the really feasible."
* * * * * * * *

"All this would mean a complete change in the whole
method of reform. With the idea of reform has always
thus far been associated that of heat rather than light.
Reforms are supposed to emanate from the red end of
the social spectrum and to be the product of its thermic
and not of its luminous rays. But the method of pas-
sion and vituperation produces no effect. It is character-
istic of the unscientific method to advocate and of
the scientific method to investigate. However ar-
dent the desire for reform may be, it can only be sat-
isfied by dispassionate inquiry, and the realization of the
warmest sentiments is only possible through the coldest
logic. There either is or has been good in everything.
No institution is an unmixed evil. Most of those (such
as slavery, for example) that many would gladly see
abolished entirely, are defended by some. But both the
defenders and the assailants of such institutions usually
neglect their history and the causes that created them.
The hortatory method deals with theses and antitheses
while the scientific method deals with syntheses. Only
by the latter method is it possible to arrive at the truth
common to both. Only thus can a rational basis be
reached for any effective action looking to the ameliora-
tion of social conditions."

212 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Ward is a consistent opponent of the doctrine of
laissez faire; in this he is in striking contrast to Her-
bert Spencer and on the side of August Comte. He sees
cbarly the difference between Spencer's Manchester
school politics of every man for himself, and the devil
take the weak, and the position implied in Spencer's
theory of the social organism, and while he naturally
balks at a society so thoroughly organized on the plan
of a biological organism that the members of the body
politic would have no function but to serve only the
interests of the whole, he perceives a point of differ-
ence between a social organism and a biological organ-
ism which breaks the analogy sufficiently to guarantee
all the individual liberty that the individual man needs
for his highest self-realization. In the biological or-
ganism, the sensorium or brain is centralized in a sep-
arate organ apart from the individual cells which com-
pose the rest of the structure, while in society there is
no such central sensorium, and the social consciousness
is simply a consensus of the consciousness of each in-
dividual. Thus in the biological organism the central-
ized sensorium operates to check the interests of the
parts to the advantage of the whole ; in the social organ-
ism the consciousness of the parts must always compel
the whole to act in the interests of the parts.

For this reason Ward has no fear of political legis-
lative action in social affairs. If mistakes have been
made, it is not because the method was wrong, but be-
cause the particular attempts were made upon insuffi-
cient data and the applied science lacked the proper
foundation in the pure science. Ward thoroughly be-
lieves, and we believe with him, that when the social

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY 213

forces are thoroughly understood and that understanding
is widely disseminated among the members of society,
it will be possible for the legislators of the future to ap-
ply the indirect method to the social forces for human
advancement, as the scientists and inventors of the past
have applied the indirect method to the physical forces
of the universe in the creation of modern civilization.
This is Professor Small's estimate of the significance
of Ward's appearance in the sociological field. We
quote from "General Sociology:"

"The primary meaning of Ward's appearance in the
sociological field was that a bold campaign of advance
was proclaimed. He virtually said: 'It is possible to
know enough about the conditions of the conduct of
life to guide society in a deliberate program of progress.
Let us proceed, then, to organize knowledge and re-
search, with the definite purpose of applying it to social
progress. Let us not be content longer merely to analyze
and describe what has taken place in the past without
the assistance of knowledge at its best. Let us get
familiar with the factors of human progress, and when
we have learned to understand them let us use them to
the utmost for human improvement.' "

Ward says that if sociology had no mission of human
improvement, he would never have taken it up. Here
again we shall allow Ward to speak for himself in a
passage which in our estimation is unparalleled in the
literature of the professional sociologists:

"I would never have taken any interest in sociology if
I had not conceived that it had this mission. Pure so-
ciology gives mankind the means of self-orientation. It
teaches man what he is and how he came to be so. With
this information to start with he is in position to con-
sider his future. With a clear comprehension of what
constitutes achievement he is able to see what will con-

214 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

stitute improvement. The purpose of applied sociology
is to harmonize achievement with improvement. If all
this achievement which constitutes civilization has really
been wrought without producing any improvement in the
condition of the human race, it is time that the reason
for this was investigated. Applied sociology includes
among its main purposes the investigation of this ques-
tion. The difficulty lies in the fact that achievement is
not socialized. The problem therefore is that of the
socialization of achievement

"We are told that no scheme for the equalization of
men can succeed : that at first it was physical strength
that determined the inequalities ; that this at length gave
way to the power of cunning, and that still later it be-
came intelligence in general that determined the place
of individuals in society. This last, it is maintained, is
now, in the long run, in the most civilized races and the
most enlightened communities, the true reason why some
occupy lower and others higher positions in the natural
strata of society. This, it is said, is the natural state,
and is as it should be. It is moreover affirmed that be-
ing natural there is no possibility of altering it. Of
course all this falls to the ground on the least analysis.
For example, starting from the standpoint of achieve-
ment, it would naturally be held that there would be
great injustice in robbing those who by their superior
wisdom had achieved the great results upon which civil-
ization rests and distributing the natural rewards among
inferior persons who had achieved nothing. All would
assent to this. And yet this is in fact practically what
has been done. The whole history of the world shows
that those who have achieved have received no reward.
The rewards for their achievement have fallen to per-
sons who have achieved nothing. They have simply
for the most part profited by some accident of position
in a complex, badly organized society, whereby, they have
been permitted to claim and appropriate the fruits of the
achievement of others. But no one would insist that

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY 215

these fruits should all go to those who had made them
possible. The fruits of achievement are incalculable in
amount and endure forever. Their authors are few in
number and soon pass away. They would be the last
to claim an undue share. They work for all mankind
and for all time, and all they ask is that all mankind
shall forever benefit by their work."

The readers of this book will recognize the identity
of these conclusions with the conclusion of Marx and
the millions of men and women who have adopted his
philosophy and who are working- for a social transfor-
mation which will abolish the poverty of the masses and
realize the highest hopes of the clearest thinkers among
the workers of the world. We shall close this chapter
and this book by once more quoting from Ward. The
quotation is from a speech made in February of this
year in New York at the anniversary dinner in honor of
Thomas Paine, who himself said that the race will never
be free so long as men work for wages :

"There is another struggle that is very intimately asso-
ciated with the economic one, and that is the great im-
portant struggle of today. I call it the social struggle.
When men were in the political struggle they imagined
that when their political rights should be attained the
millenium would be here. But they found it was nothing
of the kind ; that they had not reached any such state,
but that there was another great struggle to be gone
through, the economico-social struggle, the struggle of
today. The political struggle confined itself to the third
estate rising and overthrowing the first and second es-
tates (clergy and nobility). The struggle of today is in
the direction of a contest for the attainment of social
and economic equality, and is the effort on the part of the
fourth estate, which used to be called the proletariat —
the working classes, the mass of mankind, to secure so-
cial emancipation."

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

A.

Mrs. C. P. A.
W. Acker
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W. O. Alii mono
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Li. A. Alvord
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Miller Anderson
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Erlck W. Andreason
1j. Andruszkiewicz
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Arne Arnesen
B. AT. Arnesen
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Ben. Aron
Bcnj. Augustus
John A. Axberg

B.

Gustav Bader

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S. D. Bailey

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Wm. R. Baird

Greeley Eaker

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J. S. Baker

Lydia E. Baker

Olive Baker

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E. B. Bearer
Paul L. Becker
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Ernest Behm
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Frank B. Bennett
Henry O. Benson
S. B. Benson
John Berg
Nina Berger
Richard W. Bergstrom
Carl Bergquise
Morris Bernstein
Philip Bersch
Hy. F. Bertram
Fred. J. Betway
J. P. Beyeran
Will J. Biermann
Sam Bigleman
A. F. Bing
J. B. Binnle
Christopher Bittner
Oscar Blass

2)6

Cora Louise Bliss
Mrs. J. A. Bliss
Nathan Block
Samuel Block
N. M. Blumenberg
Max Blumert
Carl ^oejklin
W. O. Bockewitz
Robt. Bogner
Jas. G. Bohan
H. P. Sheridan Bohan
Geo. A. Bohringer
Edmund Bokor
Ben. J. Borgert
R. Borkenhagen
Fred. W. Bothen
Walter Bowen
Mrs. Grace Bowerman
Harry C. Brace
Mrs. Nellie Brassington
Adelaide Bramstead
Henry L. Bramstedt
Sigrid J. Bramstead
Otto Branntetter
Mrs. Winnie Branstette
Alex. Bremner
Frank J. Bretl
Timothy R. Brink
John Breedis
Bttie Brody
David Brov;man
L. B.

Dave Brotman
John Browne
Alfred Brown
A. T. Brown

C. O. Brown

D. *S. Brown
Joshua J. Brown

Mabel Brown
Miss May Brown
Robert Brown
J. Wesley Brown
Walter A. Brown

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

217

Philip Buhre S. E. Coffey

Hyman Brownstein M. Coffler

Henry Isaac BrownstelnMiss Mary Coffler

Sol. Brownstein

Isidore Cohen

Harry Brownstein

Glen Coleman

Gustave J. Bruns

Howard F. Colt

Mrs. John Bruns

Henry T. Collinct

Henry Brusch

John Comiskey

Frederick Buck

Wm. C. Conklin

C. C. Buck

Henry G. Conrad

Jos. Patrick Buckley

H. S. Conrad

Mathias Buckholz

Adolf Convert

Oscar Burklund

A. A. Cook

H. W. Burk

Elizabeth Cool

C. L. Burke

Richard J. Cooney

Miss L. Byman

Wm. C. Cormack

Bertha Gorman

C.

Wm. Crisp

C. J. Grouse

Mrs. Jennet Cameron

James K. Cruice

Neil Cameron

W. R. H. Crump

C. G. Camit
P. J. Campbell

Peter Cunningham
incuts Cyka

Geo. J. Cappels

Eugene F. Carey

D.

Geo. W. Carlisle

Adolf Carlson

R. Dahlgren

Fred. A. Carlson

Jacob Danhoff

Gus. Carlson

Mrs. Erika Danielson

Henry Carlson

John F. Danielson

John Carlson

John Danilloff

Martin Carlson

Simon Dansk

Otto Carlson

Carl Davidson

Vera Carlson

Daniel C. Davis

Miss B. Carmel

John C. Davis

Henry T. Carson

Sam Davis

Joe Castongay

Harry F. Dean

Mrs. Austrn Cherry

Eugene Defaut

Austin Cherry

N. J. De Gama

Marsh Chrlstenaen

August Deitz

Isidor Chrusel

Chas. C. Dehling

Frank A. Churan

Clarence A. Diehl

Alfred Cianl

A. Demcheniko

D. A. Clark

Mr. Frank Denges

W. D. Clark

Ben. E. Dettman

Chas. Claus, Jr.

Ernst Dipner

G. A. Clauson

G. W. Disher

John G. Clifford

F. M. Dixon

Mrs. Violet H. Dlxon
Fred. Dobrovolny
Harold M. Doering
G. P. Dogherty
Ernest J. Dohnal
ISmily Dohnal
H. R. Dohren
John R. Doolittle
Mrs. John R. Doolittle
Rival Doolittle
Thomas Doonan
Chas. Doussang
John Dorn
Esther Dresden
Lillian Drescher
Miss Nora Driscoll
John N. Dubach
James S. Duffy
Sidney R. Duffy
A. Duflne
Geo. du Moulin
Alfred Duplantier
F. R. Duval
Hyman Dvoretzky
Benj. I. Dvorman
Hyman L. Dworman

E.

R, P. Eckhart

H. Eestrin

Wm. C. Ehrler

Iseak Eidinoff

James Eisele

Daniel Eisen

James Elia

Otto Elle

T. Ellingson

John Ellis

Otto Ellison

Clarence C. Ellsworth

Mrs. V. Elner

N. Emerson

Philip Emery

Wm. Paul Engel

H. A. Enerelken

George Engelund

Philip R. Enzis

218

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

Anna Epstein

Joel B. Fox

Eva Epstein

Mary G. Frank

Alfred E. Ericksen

Elmer W. Frantz

H. Erickson

G. A. Free

William Erickson

David Freeman

C. H. Esdorn

C. Fredericksen

John B. Esplin

John J. Friborg

J. Essenberg

Daniel Freidkin

Fred. G. Evertson

Abe M. Friedman

Harry B. Friedman

F.

Max Friedman

John Fahey
Christ. L. Fahrbach

Morris K. Friedman
Paul Froidevaux

Oswald W. Fahrbach

Ernest E. Frost

Geo. N. Falconer

A. Furstenberg

Eddie Falvy

F. C. Futvoye

Benj. Farladawsky

G.

IA S. Farmer

C. F. Faupel

D. u.

Joseph Feeny

John Gabalka

Casper Fehr

Anthony F. Gagne

Julius Feinberg

John Gailunas

Morris Feldman

Joseph A. Gajeski

B. F.

August C. Gaihes

Rose M. Feldman

John M. Galland

Harry Fels

Althea Garner

Emil Feltes

Grace Garner

John A. Feltes

Minnie Garner

Wm. A. Feltes

M. J. Gamier

Harry Fieldberg

C. F. Geelsmark

David Fieldman

Joseph P. Geiger

Sam Finkel

L. F. George

Arthur W. Fischer

L. F. George

Harry Fischer

B. Gerber

Rinhold Fischer

Joseph Gerl, Jr.

Nathan Fish

Eva Gershenzwit

Adolph Fisher

J. Gershenzwit

Laura M. Fisher

Dr. M. P. Gethner

Oscar Fisher

Nathan Gethner

W. T. Fisher

Andrew J. Gibbos

J. L. Fitts

N. E. Gibson

Henry Flick

Stella Gillham

Richard O. Forrest

Lizzie Gillis

Sam. Forsberg

N. Gjorup

David Foultres

Arthur W. Gladwin

Isaac B. Fox

Paul P. Glaser

Pearle Glaser
J. Glickman
Sam Globerman
R. Gloak
Geo. H. Goebel
John P. Goebel
M. G.

Louis Goldspinner
G. uoldstein
Harry B. Goldstein
Sol Goldstein
Louis Golden
Joseph Gooder
F. Gonzalez
Sam Gordon
S. Gottwald
Peter Gow
Herbert E. Graham
Max Greenbaum
Harry Greenbaum
Harry E. Greenwood
Hattie C. Greer
Dr. J. H. Greer
Chas. E. Gregory
Henry F. Gross
I. Grossman
Frank Grote
Fritz Grote
Wm. R. Grote
Konrad I. Grundel
Angelo Guastaferri
E. S. Gunderson
Peter Gundrum
Samuel L. Gunther
Chas. Gutman
Emilia Gutman

H.

Wm. C. Hahne
Chas. H. Hair
Howard S. Hair
Heinrich i ager
John J. Hamilton. J;
Adrian Hammersmark
Miss Agnes Hammerst
Mrs. J. Hammerstad

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

219

O. M. Hance
Paul W. Hance

C. S. Haney
Cornelius M. Hanley
A. Hansen

Marius Hansen

Peter Hansen

Viggo M. Hansen

Fritz Hanson

Lars Hanson

A. C. Harms

Frank Harant. Jr.

James M. Harper

Edward Harris

Israel Harris

M. R. Harris

J. C. Hart

Jno. P. Hart

Louis Harvey

Henry D. Hatch

Jacob Havens

A. Hawist

John Heissinger

Alois Heitlinger

A. Helford

Isidor Heller

W. Helmanson

J. F. Henderson

E. Henrickson

U. P. A. Henriksen

Thomas J. Herlnk

Joseph M. Herrmann

George John Hermann

Louis J. Herzon

D. E. Hickey

Jas. Hickey

D. T. Hickey

Dr. J. L. Hlgble
Oscar Hlldebrand
Caddie E. Hill
Seth Hill
Geo. Hoeftman
Frederick Hoelzpl
Ernest A. Hoerlch
Mrs. Annie W. Hoffma.
Carl Hoffmann

C. B. Hoffman
Frank A. Hoffmann
H. G. Hoffmann
C. B. Ho] man
Miss Sophie Hirshfleld
Thomas Hothersall
H. A. Holzbauer
John Holing
M. F. Horine
William Hornung
Heymon Horwitz
Philip Horwitz
John Houlihan
R. G. Howell
Roy F. Hull
Frank Hunssinger
Sam R, Hurwitz
Anna S. Hussey
David Hutchlnson
Anthony J. Hutter
Thos. Hyslop
Mabel Hudson

I.

Adolf Isacson
Bernard Israel

J.

Claude D. Jackson
Dr. Ben Jacobstein
Sara Jacobstein
Mrs. B. Jacobson
J. R. Jacobson
Jes Jacobsen
A. Jacobus
Stephen Jakusch
Ewald Jameson
Frank Jannot
Fred. A. Jansen
Mrs. A. J.
John Jaunsem
Paul Javaras
Emil Jensen
H. Jensen
Mrs. Wm. Jensen

Wm. J. Jensen
R. D. Jessup
Miss Fredaborg Jepron
Herman Jergensen
G. W. Jewell
Anna Johansson
Max C. John
Aaron II. Johnson
Miss Clara M. Jon son
Erma V. Johnson
Gustav R. Johnson
Harold Johnson
John L. Johnson
L. M. Johnson
Nels Johnson
P. Johnson

K.

Theodore Kaiser
Anthony Kaltls
Morris Kane
Josephine C. Kaneko
G. H. Kann
H. Kaplan
Julius M. Kaplan
N. Kaplan
S. Kaplan
M. Kasak
John Kasik
J. E. Kastell
Max Kaufman
Josef Kekoska
Peter Kennedy
William Kent
Warren C. Kenyon
J. T. Kelly
John Kelter
J. Kernes
George Kettnlch
Louis Keshner
Don Kewley
Miss Bella Klescr
Miss Dorothy Kioser
Ernstlna Kieser
F. J. Kieser
F. Wm. Kieser

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

Win. Klewert
John A. King
W. D. King
Louis Kinne
David Kinnunen
H. Kissall
Abe A. Klapman
Harry Klein
J. Kleitman
F. Klotz
W. M. Knerr
Wm. J. Knies
Robert Knox
J. Konigswald
Geo. Koop
Valerian Korda
Barney Kortas
Peter Kossovan
Fred. W. Kraft
H. Krasnow
Joe Krasnowsky
Isidor Krechefsky
A. E. Kreuter
C. J. Kroening
R. Krongrade
Edward A. Krueger
L. Kruze
Louis H. Kuehl
Louis Kugler

David G. Kuhlin
Frank Kunz
David Kvarnstrom

Jaocb Laderer
Anna E. Lancaster
Miss Ida Landin
Christ Larsen
Edward Larsen
Tlarry S. Larson
L. E. Larsen
W. Larsen
A. G. Larson
Emme Larson
John E. Larson
J. N. Lasater

Johannes Lassen

W. Lasser

Chas. V. Lawler

Ja.a. L. Lawrence

C. M. Lawson

Geo. C. Lawson

Peter Lear

Cecil Foster Le Barre

P. van der Leek

Henry C. Lehans

Herman C. Lelivelt

Frank W. Leonard

Nathan Lettvin

F. A. L.

Chester H. Levere

Mrs Chester H. Levere

Michael Levin

Nathan Levin

Arthur Levin

Morris 1C. Levinson

Harry Levinthal

Fred. J. Levreau

Morris Levy

Morris Levy

A. M. Lewis

John B. Lewis

Paul Lieberhardt. Jr.

Arthur L. Liesemer

Miss Dora Light

Ernest E. W. Lill lander

Geo. N. Linday

I. W. Lindgren

Victor A. Lindgren

Alfons Lindner

Theo. F. Lippold

R. S. List

M. Livshis

Frances Lloyd

Robert H. Loan

J. Louis

E. S. Lovejoy

Caroline A. Lowe

Sidney Lowenstein

Edward Lowy

Mrs. E. Lowy

Morris Lubin

Fred. A. Luhnow

M. L. Lyon
Rose Lyon

M.

Richard McAuliffe
G. E. McClellan
A. McConochie
Jno. F. McDougall
George McFarlane
H. P. McFarland
John McGill
Winifred McTntosh
Arthur D. McKerchar
Joe McCuoid
Alexander MacMurtrle
M. Macevlch
James Mahoney
M. Maimon
John Malzeff
Z. Maistorovich
Z. Maistrovich
John Mann
Joseph Mansfield
Henri Marcq
Isadore Marcus
Solomon Marcus
A. J. Marke
D. Markman
Geo. Markstall
Thomas Marnock
Albert Martin
Mrs. Mary Martin
W. H. Martin
M. B. Mason
Albert E. Matt
John C. Matthews
G. Edw. Maxwe-
L. F. May
M. P. Meditcn
C. J. Melsinger
Jag. A. Meislnger
Felix V. Melim
Edward Melter
A. L. Mendelson
Charles Meriskey
August F. Meyer

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

221

Leo Meyerson
Jacob Mlchaelson
S. M. A. Michel
A. Miller
Arthur Miller
II. J. Miller
Paige Miller
Richard Miller
Joshua Milenky
G. Mirsky
M. A. Mitchell
Samuel Mittelpunkt
0. P. M •
Paul E. Moblzahn
Walter E. Molter
Scott Monteith
Geo. B. Morgan
James Morgenroth
Wm. J. Morton
Anna E. Monahan
Peter Motzfeldt
Chns. A. Mueller
John D. Mueller
MK-s Ruby Mulloy
Chas. H. Mnsgrove

N

Clarence Nealls
Charlie Nelsen
Carl Nelson
Charles Nelson
Engve E. Nelson
Leonora L.. Nelson
Paul P. Neubarth
Maurice Neuman
Mrs. Anne Newsham
Mrs. IT. Neuman
Alice Isabel Newsham
Miss Mary Nlcollnl
A. A. Nielsen
A. P. Nielson
C. Nlles
Carl A. Nllson
Emll Nilson
Daniel Nolan
Eugene Nolan

Benjamin Meyer
J. T. Meyer
Charles E. Meyers
Knut Nolan
Thos. Nolan
Edward Nolte
Erick N. Nordhem
Joe Notardonato
Jas. W. Nunn
Harry Nusbaum

J. Obei-s
Chas Oberlln
E. G. O'Conor
Hans C. Odegaard
August Oerke
Albert E. Oldham
Benjamin M. Olech
Marie G. Olesen
H. Olsen

Miss Christine Olsen
Fred C. Olsen
Mrs. Olshan
Ernest J. Olson
Alex Olson
August Olson
H. E. Olson
Pornard W. O'Reilly
Harriss Usterman
Leo A. Ostrowsky
Swen W. Ostrup
H. L. Overhulse

Otto Pagan
L. A. Paine
L. W. Palmer
Ijida Parce
Arnold F. Partie
A. A. Patterson
Paul Pause
Clarn Pause
Chns. Pearson
Austin I. Pease
N. L. Pedersen

P. Pedersen
B. Pehrson
Charles Perclval
Abe L. Perlman
George W. Perry
M. A. Perry

A. Peterson
Albert H. Peterson
F. P. Peterson
Frank G. E. Peterson
John Peterson

P. F. Petersen

Frank Petrlch

Esther R. Petterson

Alfred Plattl

Mrs. Bertha Pierce

"Buster" Pierce

J. Norman Pierce

D. P.

John Pilarskl

Abe Pollock

Jacob Pollock

Isaac S. Pomerance

Jacob Pope

Frar. v Poree

B. T. Poresh
Mary Posthoff
Louis Pravda
Mrs. A. J. Preodlt
Meyer Preno

S. J. Proschep
Edward J. Purcell

Edward Qnartullo
P. J. Quinn

Valentine Radka
Krtwnrd Radtka
Frank Raduenz
Harold Raduenz
F. J. Ragan
Louis A. Ralm
W. F. Ramsey
Chas. S. Rasmussen

222

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

Harry R. Reaslde
Geo. Regter

John Rehnberg

Carol Reihmer

Alex Relsberg

Mrs. Herman L. Reiwltch

Wm Reuter

J. It. Rhodes

L. Rohdes

Lloyd J. Rice

Sol Rltter

Edgar B. Roberts

Wm. Roberts

Jos. Robinson

William A. Robinson

Paul A. Roe

P. Rogan

Joseph F. Rogers

Louis Rohr

O. H. R.
Charles B. Rose
Miss Sara Rosen
Mallle Rosenberg
Herman Rosenblum
Maurice Rosenblum

Wm. A. Rosenblun
Israel Rosensteln

Louis Rosenthal
Chas. H. Roskam
Herman Rosmarln
Samuel Rosa

Miss Marguerite Rosseau
Emll Rosun
Charles Roux
Wilfred D. Roy
Andrew Rozeny

Jonas Rubenstein
Ben Rublnger
Miss Marie Rund
Nils Rundgvist

Charles T. Russell
Jos. Rybar
Gabriel Ryerson

8
Russell C. Sabin

Michael Rasmussen

S. Ratushny

Mrs. J. Ratzer

B. H. Sachs
John Sachs

Rissa Sachs
L. A. Sachs
A. M. Saether
Margaret C. Sager

D. F. Sager

M. Sahud, M. D.
d. Salant
H. O. Salisbury
S. O. Samuelson
Walter Sanche
C. W. Sanders
Charles Sbarsky

E. Schaaf
Luba Schachter
Wm. J. Schaefer
Frank Scheffler
Sellck Schein
Herbert Schiffer
Martha A. B. Schiffer
Rudolph Schleichert
Chas. Schmidt

Albert D. Schmidt
Chas. J. Schmidt
Millie Schmidt
Wm. Schmidt
W. F. S.
Victor Schneider
John Schneider
Philip Schneider
Carl W. Scholln
P. J. Scholl
Peter J. Schon
Joseph Schrelbung
Wm. O. Schroeder
Joseph A. Schroeder
L. Schroeder
Charles Schuler
William Schultz
Ernst R. Schulz
Henry Schulz
Karl Schumacher
James B. Scott

R. C. M. Searby
,t. C. Searer
A. Segal
Sam Segel
William F. Selle

A. P. M. Seiliger
Nick Semon
Rudolph Shaplra
W. G. Shatwell

D. E. Shaw

B. F. Shearer
M. C. Shearer
Marie H. Sheehan
James Sheridan
Miss I. Sherman
Vincent M. Sherwood
L. De Shetler

A. B. Shipman
Jeorge Shraud

B. Frank Shrimpton
Harry Shuman
Harry Sldur

B. H. Sieve
TOS. A. Sievers
S. Silverberg
Julius Silverman
Miss Jennie Silverman
Greorge Sim
John Sinko
Lillian Sinltzky
.Tno. R. Singer
Jameg Skelly
Thos. L. Slater
John A. Sloan
Sydney' Small
Joseph Smidt
Alexander Smith
.1. N. Smith
Hannah Kaiser Smith
Eugene L. Smith
P. B. Smith
Jack Snider
Verner Snook
J. F. Snow
John H. Soller
Samuel Solon
Paul Soly

LIST OF ADVANCE SUBSCRIBERS

223

Alfred Sorensen

Percy S. Spaulding

Harry Spears

E. A. Sporron

Edward Souter

J. H. Spillman

Sydi.ey A. Splaln

W. Spohr

John C. Sprong

Otto L. Spruth

Nathan Stacell

August Staebler

Joseph Staller

Carl Stanek

Eleanor M. Standley

M. A. Stanley

Stanislaus StanizzewskI

K. S.

C. W. Stapleton

Richard C. Starck

H. M. Stenn

Abraham Stein

Jacob Stein

Julius Stein

Isidor Stein

Harry Steinberg

Leonard Steinecker

Joseph Steinecker

Alfred Steinhaus

C. E. Steere

Otoo M. E. Sternberg

Robert A. Stewart

Jos. Stipek

Frank Stone

A. Stoneroad

Hilda Strachan

J. S. Strader

J. E. Stransky

Joe Striezheff

Albert Strimling

Geo. Stringer

Joe Striezheff

Albert Strickler

Christ M. Stoycoff

Dr. Chas. Sutterle

R. Sussmr.n

Walter D. Sullivan

Albert Suhr
Chas. E. Suiter
N. B. Svensen
William H. Swann
A. J. Swanson
W. E. Swartout
Michael Sweeney
D. F. Sweetland
Geo. Sype

Miss Fannie Tabachnik

Chas. T. Takahashi

Miss T. Taralinsky

Henry Tatarsky

Mrs. Carrie B. Taylor

Raymond R. Taylor

R. A. Taylor

May Taylor

John Tedesco

Gertrude J. Teevan

John C. Teevan

Selig Teplitz

Jack Themans

F. G. Theselius

J. B. Theiss

Joseph J. Thomas, Jr.

Karl F. Thomas

Christian M. Thompson

Alfred Thulin

Henry G. Tiegan

Harry Till

Rud. Toepper

Isaak Tolmage

Mrs. M. S. Tolman

Lou B. Torstein

Walter Townsend

H. C. Treichel

Walter H. Trinkler

Harry Trotsky

Ernest W. True

Felix Turecki

Nels G. Turnquist

H. C. Twining

Leo Undedowitz
Elfrida Ulbright
John H. Ulrich

Caroline Van Name
George Van Name
D. Vandeventer
Joseph J. Vanderwest
Salvatore Vella
Charles Velvel
Mignonette Vermillion
A. A. Victor
Adam Vidges
Ernest B. Vincey
Edna Vineburg
John Vogel
Anna Vollman
Chas. Von Hacht
Emil Vorpe
Wm. Voss
Emil Vrba

W

Robert Wahl
I. Wahlstedt
Louis Wald
Anthony H. Walick
James Wall
William Wall
H. Percy Ward
Mrs. H. P. Ward
H. Newell Ward
V. A. P. Ware
G. G. Ware
Max Wax
H. A. Weed
S. Welngrod
Miss C. Weinsteln
J. Weir
G. Weiss
R. Welsh
Otto Wendt
Herman Wendt
V. Wendzinski
Julius A. Wessel
Ed. Westorlund
Eugene Wetzel
F. T. Wheeler
Dan White
Albert Wick
William Wick

224

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOGY

C. A. Wicander
C. G. Wickens
Henry J. Wiegel
F. C. Wieland
S. Wigodsky
Leonard S. Wilkins
John W. Wilkinson
Jno. Will
Evan L. Williams
George A. Williams
Irby E. Williams
Edward Williger
Benj. Williger
Adalbert Wilson
Joseph S. Wilson
Seymour S. Winberc

Blanche Winn
Mrs. L. Witt
A. B. Wittmann
Roy Wold
Herman Wolf
Sam Wolf
Louis Wolf
Mrs. Mary A. Wood
Sophie Wool
Jacob Work
Julius S. Wurbert
Harry T. Wynn

Samuel Yates

J. Charles Young
Wm. Sanborn Young

Z

Leo Zeeck
Dr. J. Y/. Zeh
Nellie M. Zeh
J. J. Zelenka
Frank Zelenik
Frank Zidek
Frank Zeliznik
A. K. Ziskind
Norman Zolla

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