and take on historical importance. An enthusiast, eaten up with an impotent desire for conquest, or immortality, or human regeneration, chances upon some idea which opens an unhopedfor door to his aspirations. The idea may be that of the Resurrection or the Millennium, the dogma of popular sovereignty or some other formula of the Social Contract. He embraces the idea, it exalts him, and behold, a new apostle! In this way a political or religious contagion is spread abroad. In this way a whole people may be converted to Christianity, to Islam, and, to-morrow, perhaps, to socialism.

In the preceding paragraphs we have discussed only interference-combinations, interferences which result in discovery and gain and add to the two psychological quantities of desire and belief. But that long sequence of operations in moral arithmetic, which we call history, ushers in at least as many interferenceconflicts. When these subjective antagonisms arise between the desires and beliefs of a single individual, and only in this case, there is an absolute diminution in the sum of those quantities. When they occur obscurely, here and there, in isolated individuals, they pass by unnoticed except by psychologists. Then we have (1) on the one side, the deceptions and gradual doubts of bold theorists and political prophets as they come to see facts giving the lie to their speculations and ridiculing their predictions, and the intellectual weakening of sincere and well-informed believers who perceive the contradiction between their science and their religion or philosophic systems; and, on the other side, the private and juristic and parliamentary discussions in which belief is rekindled instead of smothered. Again, we have (2) on the one side, the enforced and bitter inaction, the slow suicide of a man struggling between two incompatible aptitudes or inclinations, between scientific ardor and literary aspirations, between love and ambition, between pride and indolence, and, on the other side, those various rivalries and competitions which put every spring into action, what we call in these days the struggle for existence. Finally, we have (3) on the one side, the malady of despair, a state of intense longing and intense self-doubt, the abyss of lovers and of those weary with

waiting, or the anguish of scruple and remorse, the feeling of a soul which thinks ill of the object of its desire, or well of the object of its aversion; and, on the other side, the irritating resistance which is made to the undertakings and eager passions of children and innovators by parents who are convinced of their danger and impracticability and by people of prudence and experience.

When these same phenomena (at bottom they are always the same) are enacted upon a large scale and multiplied by a large and powerful social current of imitation, they attain historical importance. Under other names, they become (1), on the one hand, the enervating skepticism of a people caught between two hostile churches or religions or between the contradictions of its priests and its scientists; on the other, the religious wars which are waged by one people against another merely because of differences in religious belief; (2) on the one hand, the failure and inertia of a people or class which has created for itself artificial passions contrary to its natural instincts (i.e. at bottom, to passions which also began by being artificial, by being adopted from foreign sources, but which are much older than the former passions), or desires inconsistent with its permanent interests, the desire for peace and comfort, for example, when a redoubling of military spirit was indispensable; on the other hand, the majority of external political wars; (3) on the one hand, civil warfare and oppositions, strictly speaking struggles between conservatives and revolutionists; on the other, the despair of a people or class which is gradually sinking back into the historical oblivion whence it had been drawn by some outburst of faith and enthusiasm, or the irritation and oppression of a society distressed by a conflict between its ancient maxims and traditions and its new aspirations, between Christianity and chivalry, for example, and industrialism and utilitarianism.

Now in the case of both individuals and societies, the doleful states of skepticism, inertia, and despair, and, still more, the violent and more painful states of dispute, combat, and opposition, are quick to push man on to their own undoing. Nevertheless, although man often succeeds in delivering himself for long

periods from the former, which imply the immediate weakening of his two master forces, he never overcomes the latter, or if he does free himself from them it is merely to fall into them again, since up to a certain point they bring with them momentary gains of belief and desire. Whence the interminable dissensions, rivalries, and contradictions which befall mankind and which each one can settle for himself only by adopting some logical system of thought and conduct. Whence the impossibility, or the seeming impossibility, of extirpating the wars and litigations from which everybody suffers, although the subjective strife of desires and opinions which afflicts some people generally ends for them in definite treaties of peace. Whence the endless rebirth of the eternal hydra-headed social question, a question which is not peculiar to our own time, but which belongs to all time, for it does not investigate into the outcome of the debilitating, but into that of the violent, states of desire and belief. In other words, it does not ask whether science or religion will, or should, ultimately prevail in the great majority of minds; whether desire for social order or rebellious outbursts of social envy, pride, and hatred will, or should, ultimately prove the stronger in human hearts; whether a positive and courageous resignation of old pretensions or, on the contrary, a new outburst of hope and self-confidence will help our sometime ruling classes to rid themselves to their honor of their present torpor; whether the old morality will have the right and the power to influence society again, or whether the society of the future will legitimately establish a code of honor and morality in its own likeness. The solution of these problems will not be long delayed, and it is not difficult, even at present, to foresee its nature. Whereas the problems which really constitute the social question are arduous and difficult. The problems are these: Is it a good or a bad thing for a complete intellectual unanimity to be established through the expulsion or the more or less tyrannical conversion of a dissenting minority, and will this ever come about? Is it a good or a bad thing for commercial or professional or personal competition between individuals, as well as political and military competition between societies, to come to be suppressed,

the one through the much-dreamed-of organization of labor, or, at least, through state socialism, and the other through a vast, universal confederation, or, at least, through a new European equilibrium, the first step towards the United States of Europe? Does the future hold this in store for us? Is it a good or a bad thing for a strong and free social authority, an absolutely sovereign authority, capable of grandiose things, as philanthropic and intelligent as possible, to arise, untrammeled by outside control or resistance, as a supreme imperial or constitutional power in the hands of a single party or a single people? Have we any such prospect in view?

This is the question, and stated thus it is a truly redoubtable one. Mankind, as well as the individual man, always moves in the direction of the greatest truth and power, of the greatest sum of conviction and confidence, in a word, of the greatest attainable belief; and we may question whether this maximum can be reached through the development of discussion, competition, and criticism, or, inversely, through their suppression and through the boundless opening out through imitation of a single expanding and, at the same time, compact thought or volition.

Additional References:

Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chaps. i and ii. Lester F. Ward, The Psychic Factors of Civilization. G. Tarde, Social Laws. G. Tarde, La Logique Sociale. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd. Gustav Le Bon, The Psychology of Peoples. J. Mark Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations. J. Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race. John Fiske, The Destiny of Man. E. A. Ross, Social Control.

C. THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS

XXII

INQUIRY INTO THE INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND GOVERNMENT1

By applying to the history of man those methods of investigation which have been found successful in other branches. of knowledge, and by rejecting all preconceived notions which would not bear the test of those methods, we have arrived at certain results, the heads of which it may now be convenient to recapitulate. We have seen that our actions, being solely the result of internal and external agencies, must be explicable by the laws of those agencies, that is to say, by mental laws and by physical laws. We have also seen that mental laws are, in Europe, more powerful than physical laws; and that, in the progress of civilization, their superiority is constantly increasing, because advancing knowledge multiplies the resources of the mind, but leaves the old resources of nature stationary. On this account we have treated the mental laws as being the great regulators of progress; and we have looked at the physical laws as occupying a subordinate place, and as merely displaying themselves in occasional disturbances, the force and frequency of which have been long declining, and are now, on a large average, almost inoperative. Having by this means resolved the study of what may be called the dynamics of society into the study of the laws of the mind, we have subjected these last to a similar analysis; and we have found that they consist of two parts, namely, moral laws and intellectual laws. By comparing these two parts, we have clearly ascertained the vast superiority of the intellectual laws; and we have seen that as the progress

1 From Buckle's History of Civilization in England, chap. v.