formidable competitors outside. _McClure's Magazine,_ the _American
Magazine, Collier's Weekly_, and, in its fashion, the _World's Work_,
constitute together a real popular university along this very line. It
would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words like
these: "By the middle of the twentieth century the higher institutions
of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in the United
States. But the mission of raising the tone of democracy, which they had
proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare
enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success by a new
educational power; and for the clarification of their human sympathies
and elevation of their human preferences, the people at large acquired
the habit of resorting exclusively to the guidance of certain private
literary adventures, commonly designated in the market by the
affectionate name of ten-cent magazines."
Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say
anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you
see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its
application, is there any other formula that describes so well the
result at which our institutions _ought_ to aim? If they do that, they
do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very
deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties and
graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great
underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less
obscurely groping, great clearness would be shed over many of their
problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social system,
it would embark upon a new career of strength.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 43: First published in 1908. Reprinted by permission from
_Memories and Studies_, 1911. (Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co.)]
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS[44]
HENRY GEORGE
What, then, is the law of human progress--the law under which
civilization advances?
It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by vague generalities or
superficial analogies, why, though mankind started presumably with the
same capacities and at the same time, there now exist such wide
differences in social development. It must account for the arrested
civilizations and for the decayed and destroyed civilizations; for the
general facts as to the rise of civilization, and for the petrifying or
enervating force which the progress of civilization has heretofore
always evolved. It must account for retrogression a well as for
progression; for the differences in general character between Asiatic
and European civilizations; for the difference between classical and
modern civilizations; for the different rates at which progress goes on;
and for those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress which are so
marked as minor phenomena. And, thus, it must show us what are the
essential conditions of progress, and what social adjustments advance
and what retard it.
It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but to look and we
may see it. I do not pretend to give it scientific precision, but merely
to point it out.
The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in human nature--the
desire to gratify the wants of the animal nature, the wants of the
intellectual nature, and the wants of the sympathetic nature; the desire
to be, to know, and to do--desires that short of infinity can never be
satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on.
Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and by which each advance
is secured and made the vantage ground for new advances. Though he may
not by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by taking
thought extend his knowledge of the universe and his power over it, in
what, so far as we can see, is an infinite degree. The narrow span of
human life allows the individual to go but a short distance, but though
each generation may do but little, yet generations, succeeding to the
gain of their predecessors, may gradually elevate the status of mankind,
as coral polyps, building one generation upon the work of the other,
gradually elevate themselves from the bottom of the sea.
Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and men tend to
advance in proportion to the mental power expended in progression--the
mental power which is devoted to the extension of knowledge, the
improvement of methods, and the betterment of social conditions.
Now mental power is a fixed quantity--that is to say, there is a limit
to the work a man can do with his mind, as there is to the work he can
do with his body; therefore, the mental power which can be devoted to
progress is only what is left after what is required for non-progressive
purposes.
These non-progressive purposes in which mental power is consumed may be
classified as maintenance and conflict. By maintenance I mean, not only
the support of existence, but the keeping up of the social condition and
the holding of advances already gained. By conflict I mean not merely
warfare and preparation for warfare, but all expenditure of mental power
in seeking the gratification of desire at the expense of others, and in
resistance to such aggression.
To compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not
depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted to
propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force
required for bailing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among
themselves, or in pulling in different directions.
Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man are required to
maintain existence, and mental power is set free for higher uses only by
the association of men in communities, which permits the division of
labor and all the economies which come with the co-operation of,
increased numbers, association is the first essential of progress.
Improvement becomes possible as men come together in peaceful
association, and the wider and closer the association, the greater the
possibilities of improvement. And as the wasteful expenditure of mental
power in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which accords
to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized, equality (or
justice) is the second essential of progress.
Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees
mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice,
or freedom--for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition
of the moral law--prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless
struggles.
Here is the law of progress, which will explain all diversities, all
advances, all halts, and retrogressions. Men tend to progress just as
they come closer together, and by co-operation with each other increase
the mental power that may be devoted to improvement; but just as
conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of condition
and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked, and
finally reversed.
Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that social
development will go on faster or slower, will stop or turn back,
according to the resistances it meets. In a general way these obstacles
to improvement may, in relation to the society itself, be classed as
external and internal--the first operating with greater force in the
earlier stages of civilization, the latter becoming more important in
the later stages.
Man is social in his nature. He does not require to be caught and tamed
in order to induce him to live with his fellows. The utter helplessness
with which he enters the world, and the long period required for the
maturity of his powers, necessitate the family relation; which, as we
may observe, is wider, and in its extensions stronger, among the ruder
than among the more cultivated peoples. The first societies are
families, expanding into tribes, still holding a mutual blood
relationship, and even when they have become great nations claiming a
common descent.
Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such diversified surface
and climate as this, and it is evident that, even with equal capacity,
and an equal start, social development must be very different. The first
limit or resistance to association will come from the conditions of
physical nature, and as these greatly vary with locality, corresponding
differences in social progress must show themselves. The net rapidity of
increase, and the closeness with which men, as they increase, can keep
together, will, in the rude state of knowledge in which reliance for
subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of
nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical
conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required;
where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of
tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where
mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men;
association, and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first
go but a little way. But on the rich plains of warm climates, where
human existence can be maintained with a smaller expenditure of force,
and from a much smaller area, men can keep closer together, and the
mental power which can at first be devoted to improvement is much
greater. Hence civilization naturally first arises in the great valleys
and table-lands where we find its earliest monuments.
But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely thus directly
produce diversities in social development, but, by producing diversities
in social development, bring out in man himself an obstacle, or rather
an active counterforce, to improvement. As families and tribes are
separated from each other, the social feeling ceases to operate between
them, and differences arise in language, custom, tradition, religion--in
short, in the whole social web which each community, however small or
large, constantly spins. With these differences, prejudices grow,
animosities spring up, contact easily produces quarrels, aggression
begets aggression, and wrong kindles revenge.[45] And so between these
separate social aggregates arises the feeling of Ishmael and the spirit
of Cain, warfare becomes the chronic and seemingly natural relation of
societies to each other, and the powers of men are expended in attack or
defense, in mutual slaughter and mutual destruction of wealth, or in
warlike preparations. How long this hostility persists, the protective
tariffs and the standing armies of the civilized world to-day bear
witness; how difficult it is to get over the idea that it is not theft
to steal from a foreigner, the difficulty in procuring an international
copyright act will show. Can we wonder at the perpetual hostilities of
tribes and clans? Can we wonder that when each community was isolated
from the others--when each, uninfluenced by the others, was spinning its
separate web of social environment, which no individual can escape, that
war should have been the rule and peace the exception? "They were even
as we are."
Now, warfare is the negation of association. The separation of men into
diverse tribes, by increasing warfare, thus checks improvement; while in
the localities where a large increase in numbers is possible without
much separation; civilization gains the advantage of exemption from
tribal war, even when the community as a whole is carrying on warfare
beyond its borders. Thus, where the resistance of nature to the close
association of men is slightest, the counterforce of warfare is likely
at first to be least felt; and in the rich plains where civilization
first begins, it may rise to a great height while scattered tribes are
yet barbarous. And thus, when small, separated communities exist in a
state of chronic warfare which forbids advance, the first step to their
civilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or nation that
unites these smaller communities into a larger one, in which internal
peace is preserved. Where this power of peaceable association is broken
up, either by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance
ceases and retrogression begins.
But it is not conquest alone that has operated to promote association,
and, by liberating mental power from the necessities of warfare, to
promote civilization. If the diversities of climate, soil, and
configuration of the earth's surface operate at first to separate
mankind, they also operate to encourage exchange. And commerce, which is
in itself a form of association or co-operation, operates to promote
civilization, not only directly, but by building up interests which are
opposed to warfare, and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile
mother of prejudices and animosities.
And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed and the animosities
it has aroused have often sundered men and produced warfare, yet it has
at other times been the means of promoting association. A common worship
has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and furnished the basis of
union, while it is from the triumph of Christianity over the barbarians
of Europe that modern civilization springs. Had not the Christian Church
existed when the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe, destitute of any
bond of association, might have fallen to a condition not much above
that of the North American Indians or only received civilization with an
Asiatic impress from the conquering scimiters of the invading hordes
which had been welded into a mighty power by a religion which, springing
up in the deserts of Arabia, had united tribes separated from time
immemorial, and, thence issuing, brought into the association of a
common faith a great part of the human race.
Looking over what we know of the history of the world, we thus see
civilization everywhere springing up where men are brought into
association, and everywhere disappearing as this association is broken
up. Thus the Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests
which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the incursions of the
northern nations that broke society again into disconnected fragments;
and the progress that now goes on in our modern civilization began as
the feudal system again began to associate men in larger communities,
and the spiritual supremacy of Rome to bring these communities into a
common relation, as her legions had done before. As the feudal bonds
grew into national autonomies, and Christianity worked the amelioration
of manners, brought forth the knowledge that during the dark days she
had hidden, bound the threads of peaceful union in her all-pervading
organization, and taught association in her religious orders, a greater
progress became possible, which, as men have been brought into closer
and closer association and co-operation, has gone on with greater and
greater force.
But we shall never understand the course of civilization, and the
varied phenomena which its history presents, without a consideration of
what I may term the internal resistances, or counter forces, which arise
in the heart of advancing society, and which can alone explain how a
civilization once fairly started should either come of itself to a halt
or be destroyed by barbarians.
The mental power, which is the motor of social progress, is set free by
association, which is,--what, perhaps, it may be more properly
called,--an integration. Society in this process becomes more complex;
its individuals more dependent upon each other. Occupations and
functions are specialized. Instead of wandering, population becomes
fixed. Instead of each man attempting to supply all of his wants, the
various trades and industries are separated--one man acquires skill in
one thing, and another in another thing. So, too, of knowledge, the body
of which constantly tends to become vaster than one man can grasp, and
is separated into different parts, which different individuals acquire
and pursue. So, too, the performance of religious ceremonies tends to
pass into the hands of a body of men specially devoted to that purpose,
and the preservation of order, the administration of justice, the
assignment of public duties and the distribution of awards, the conduct
of war, etc., to be made the special functions of an organized
government. In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer has
defined evolution, the development of society is, in relation to its
component individuals, the passing from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage
of social development, the more society resembles one of those lowest of
animal organisms which are without organs or limbs, and from which a
part may be cut and yet live. The higher the stage of social
development, the more society resembles those higher organisms in which
functions and powers are specialized, and each member is vitally
dependent on the others.
Now, this process of integration, of the specialization of functions
and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by virtue of what is probably
one of the deepest laws of human nature, accompanied by a constant
liability to inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the necessary
result of social growth, but that it is the constant tendency of social
growth if unaccompanied by changes in social adjustments, which, in the
new conditions that growth produces, will secure equality. I mean, so to
speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political institutions,
which each society weaves for itself, is constantly tending to become
too tight as the society develops. I mean, so to speak, that man, as he
advances, threads a labyrinth, in which, if he keeps straight ahead, he
will infallibly lose his way, and through which reason and justice can
alone keep him continuously in an ascending path.
For, while the integration which accompanies growth tends in itself to
set free mental power to work improvement, there is, both with increase
of numbers and with increase in complexity of the social organization, a
counter tendency set up to the production of a state of inequality,
which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, brings improvement to a
halt.
To trace to its highest expression the law which thus operates to evolve
with progress the force which stops progress, would be, it seems to me,
to go far to the solution of a problem deeper than that of the genesis
of the material universe--the problem of the genesis of evil. Let me
content myself with pointing out the manner in which, as society
develops, there arise tendencies which check development.
There are two qualities of human nature which it will be well, however,
to first call to mind. The one is the power of habit:--the tendency to
continue to do things in the same way; the other is the possibility of
mental and moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social
development is to continue habits, customs, laws and methods, long after
they have lost their original usefulness, and the effect of the other
is to permit the growth of institutions and modes of thought from which
the normal perceptions of men instinctively revolt.
Now the growth and development of society not merely tend to make each
more and more dependent upon all, and to lessen the influence of
individuals, even over their own conditions, as compared with the
influence of society; but the effect of association or integration is to
give rise to a collective power which is distinguishable from the sum of
individual powers. Analogies, or, perhaps, rather illustrations of the
same law, may be found in all directions. As animal organisms increase
in complexity, there arise, above the life and power of the parts, a
life and power of the integrated whole; above the capability of
involuntary movements, the capability of voluntary movements. The
actions and impulses of bodies of men are, as has often been observed,
different from those which, under the same circumstances, would be
called forth in individuals. The fighting qualities of a regiment may be
very different from those of the individual soldiers. But there is no
need of illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature and rise of
rent, we traced the very thing to which I allude. Where population is
sparse, land has no value; just as men congregate together, the value of
land appears and rises--a clearly distinguishable thing from the values
produced by individual effort; a value which springs from association,
which increases as association grows greater, and disappears as
association is broken up. And the same thing is true of power in other
forms than those generally expressed in terms of wealth.
Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue previous, social
adjustments tends to lodge this collective power, as it arises, in the
hands of a portion of the community; and this unequal distribution of
the wealth and power gained as society advances tends to produce greater
inequality, since aggression grows by what it feeds on, and the idea of
justice is blurred by the habitual toleration of injustice.
In this way the patriarchal organization of society can easily grow
into hereditary monarchy, in which the king is as a god on earth, and
the masses of the people mere slaves of his caprice. It is natural that
the father should be the directing head of the family, and that at his
death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experienced member of the
little community, should succeed to the headship. But to continue this
arrangement as the family expands, is to lodge power in a particular
line, and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to increase, as
the common stock becomes larger and larger, and the power of the
community grows. The head of the family passes into the hereditary king,
who comes to look upon himself and to be looked upon by others as a
being of superior rights. With the growth of the collective power as
compared with the power of the individual, his power to reward and to
punish increases, and so increase the inducements to flatter and to fear
him; until finally, if the process be not disturbed, a nation grovels at
the foot of a throne, and a hundred thousand men toil for fifty years to
prepare a tomb for one of their own mortal kind.
So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one of their number,
whom they follow as their bravest and most wary. But when large bodies
come to act together, personal selection becomes more difficult, a
blinder obedience becomes necessary and can be enforced, and from the
very necessities of warfare when conducted on a large scale absolute
power arises.
And so of the specialization of function. There is a manifest gain in
productive power when social growth has gone so far that instead of
every producer being summoned from his work for fighting purposes, a
regular military force can be specialized; but this inevitably tends to
the concentration of power in the hands of the military class or their
chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the administration of
justice, the construction and care of public works, and, notably, the
observances of religion, all tend in similar manner to pass into the
hands of special classes, whose disposition it is to magnify their
function and extend their power.