Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

to each other cosmopolitan sympathies which could never have been evoked but for some such intercourse. All this may be granted. But as civilization advances, the organized experience of past generations becomes to a greater and greater extent the all-important factor of progress. As Comte expresses it, in one of his profoundest aphorisms, the empire of the dead over the living increases from age to age. If we contemplate, from a lofty historical point of view, the relative importance of the factors in the environment of our United States, I believe we shall be forced to conclude that the victory of the Greeks at Marathon, the conquest of Gaul by Cæsar, the founding of Christianity, the defeat of Attila at Châlons and of the Arabs at Tours, the advent of the Normans in England, the ecclesiastic reforms of Hildebrand, the Crusades, the revolt of Luther, the overthrow of the Spanish Armada, and the achievements of scientific inquirers from Archimedes to Faraday have influenced and are influencing our social condition to a far greater extent than the direction of the Rocky Mountains, or the position of the Great Lakes, or the course of the Gulf Stream. Or if we inquire why the Spaniards are still so superstitious and bigoted, I believe we shall find little enlightenment in the fact that Spain is peculiarly subject to earthquakes, but much enlightenment in the fact that for eight centuries Spain was the arena of a life-and-death struggle between orthodox Christians and Moorish unbelievers.

The environment in our problem must, therefore, not only include psychical as well as physical factors, but the former are immeasurably the more important factors, and as civilization advances their relative importance steadily increases. Bearing in mind these preliminary explanations, let us now address ourselves to the problem of social evolution, applying to the solution of it sundry biological principles established in previous chapters. We have first to observe that it is a corollary from the law of use and disuse, and the kindred biologic laws which sum up the processes of direct and indirect equilibration, that the fundamental characteristic of social progress is the continuous weakening of selfishness and the continuous strengthening of sympathy. Or to use more convenient and somewhat

a

more accurate expression suggested by Comte—it is a gradual supplanting of egoism by altruism. .

1In the first place, the evolution of society, no less than the evolution of life, conforms to that universal law of evolution discovered by Mr. Spencer, and illustrated at length in earlier chapters. The brief survey just taken shows us that social progress consists primarily in the integration of small and simple communities into larger communities that are of higher and higher orders of composition, and in the more and more complete subordination of the psychical forces which tend to maintain isolation to the psychical forces which tend to maintain aggregation. In these respects the prime features of social progress are the prime features of evolution in general.

In the second place, the progress of society exhibits those secondary features of differentiation and integration which evolution universally exhibits. The advance from indefinite homogeneity to definite heterogeneity in structure and function is a leading characteristic of social progress. On considering primitive societies we find them affected by no causes of heterogeneity except those resulting from the establishment of the various family relationships. As Sir Henry Maine has shown, in early times the family and not the individual was the social unit. In the absence of anything like national or even civic organization, each family chief was a monarch in miniature, uniting in his own person the functions of king, priest, judge, and parliament; yet he was scarcely less a digger and hewer than his subject children, wives, and brethren. Commercially, it is needless to say, all primitive communities are homogeneous. In any barbarous tribe the number of different employments is very limited, and such as there are may be undertaken indiscriminately by every one. Every man is his own butcher and baker, his own tailor and carpenter, his own smith, and his own weapon maker. Now the progress of such a society toward a civilized condition begins with the differentiation and integration of productive occupations. That each specialization of labor entails increased efficiency of

1 From Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, pp. 209–211.

production, which reacting brings out still greater specialization, is known to every tyro in political economy. Nor is it less obvious that, with the advance of civilization, labor has been steadily increasing in coherent heterogeneity, not only with regard to its division among different sets of mutually dependent laborers but also with regard to its processes and even its instruments. The distinguishing characteristic of modern machinery, as compared with the rude tools of the Middle Ages or the clumsy apparatus of the ancients, is its definite heterogeneity. The contrast between the steam engine of to-day and the pulleys, screws, and levers of a thousand years ago assures us that the growing complexity of the objects which labor aims at is paralleled by the growing complexity of the modes of attaining them. Turning to government, we see that by differentiation in the primeval community some families acquired supreme power, while others sank, though in different degrees, to the rank of subjects. The integration of allied families into tribes, and of adjacent tribes into nations, as well as that kind of integration exhibited at a later date in the closely knit diplomatic interrelations of different countries, are marked steps in social progress. Next may be mentioned the differentiation of the governing power into the civil and the ecclesiastical, while by the side. of these ceremonial government grows up insensibly as a third power, regulating the minor details of social intercourse none the less potently because not embodied in statutes and edicts. Comparing the priests and augurs of antiquity with the dignitaries of the medieval Church, the much greater heterogeneity of the latter system becomes manifest. Civil government likewise has become differentiated into executive, legislative, and judicial. Executive government has been divided into many branches, and diversely in different nations. A comparison of the Athenian popular government with the representative systems of the present day shows that the legislative function has no more than any of the others preserved its original homogeneity; while the contrast between the Aula Regis of the Norman kings and the courts of common law, equity, and admiralty, -county courts, queen's courts, state courts, and federal courts, - which are

lineally descended from it, tells us the same story concerning the judicial power. Nor should it be forgotten that the steady expansion of legal systems, to meet the exigencies which civilization renders daily more complex, is an advance from relatively indefinite homogeneity to relatively definite heterogeneity. .

1 Now the historic survey into which we were led a moment ago, while inquiring into the progress of moral feelings, showed us that, in this respect also, the evolution of society agrees with the evolution of life in general. The progress of a community, as of an organism, is a process of adaptation, -a continuous establishment of inner relations in conformity to outer relations. If we contemplate material civilization under its widest aspect, we discover its legitimate aim to be the attainment and maintenance of an equilibrium between the wants of men and the outward means of satisfying them. And while approaching this goal society is ever acquiring in its economic structure both greater heterogeneity and greater specialization. It is not only that agriculture, manufactures, commerce, legislation, the acts of the ruler, the judge, and the physician, have since ancient times grown immeasurably multiform, both in their processes and in their appliances; but it is also that this specialization has resulted in the greatly increased ability of society to adapt itself to the emergencies by which it is ever beset. The history of scientific progress is in like manner the history of an advance from a less complete toward a more complete correspondence between the order of our conceptions and the order of phenomena. Truth the end of all honest and successful research - is attained when subjective relations are adjusted to objective relations. And what is the consummation of moral progress but the thorough adaptation of the desires of each individual to the requirements arising from the coexistent desires of all neighboring individuals? Thus the phenomena of social and of organic progress are seen to correspond to a degree not contemplated by those thinkers who, from Plato to Hobbes, have instituted a comparison between them. The dominant characteristics of all life are those in which social and individual life agree.

[ocr errors]

1 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, pp. 212-213.

VIII

THE TRANSITION FROM A PAIN ECONOMY TO A PLEASURE ECONOMY1

Before proceeding further in the discussion of the social forces the distinction between a pain and a pleasure economy must again be emphasized. Beings in a pain economy have vigorous motor powers but a low development of the sensory powers. As they pass from one environment to another the requisites for survival are determined by the enemies and pains to be avoided. Food and pleasure are of course necessary, but they are not the main objects of conscious thought. When such beings have developed their sensory powers far enough so that forms of thought and ideals are created which aid them in their activities, there is formed for them a pain society, the end of which is protection from enemies. There is a pain morality, the purpose of which is to keep persons from committing acts and putting themselves in situations which lead to destruction. There is also a pain religion, the purpose of which is to invoke the aid of higher beings in the ever-recurring contests with enemies and pain.

In describing the leading features of a pain economy, I do not mean to imply that men in such an economy are constantly thinking of pain and never of pleasure, but that all their institutions have as their basis the fear of enemies and pain. The primitive state is formed, as Hobbes tells us, to secure protection from enemies. The primitive morality is some form of asceticism. When enemies abound the conscious pursuit of pleasure exposes a being to the attacks of these enemies and the consequent evils. The choosing of smaller instead of greater pleasures and the postponement of pleasures until the ends demanded for

1 From The Theory of Social Forces, by Simon N. Patten, chap. iv (copyright, 1896, by American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia).

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »