We are not to conclude that physical heredity is of no importance to the

social order; it must be obvious that the better the qualities of the

individuals constituting a race, the more easily they will fit

themselves into good social traditions, the more readily they will

advance those traditions to a still higher point of excellence, and the

more stoutly they would resist deterioration. The qualities upon which

the social fabric calls must be there, and the more readily they are

forthcoming, the more easily the social machine will work. Hence social

progress necessarily implies a certain level of racial development, and

its advance may always be checked by the limitations of the racial type.

Nevertheless, if we look at human history as a whole, we are impressed

with the stability of the great fundamental characteristics of human

nature and the relatively sweeping character and often rapid development

of social change.

In view of this contrast we must hesitate to attribute any substantial

share in human development to biological factors, and our hesitation is

increased when we consider the factors on which social change depends.

It is in the department of knowledge and industry that advance is most

rapid and certain, and the reason is perfectly clear. It is that on this

side each generation can build on the work of its predecessors. A man of

very moderate mathematical capacity today can solve problems which

puzzled Newton, because he has available the work of Newton and of many

another since Newton's time. In the department of ethics the case is

different. Each man's character has to be formed anew, and though

teaching goes for much, it is not everything. The individual in the end

works out his own salvation. Where there is true ethical progress is in

the advance of ethical conceptions and principles which can be handed

on; of laws and institutions which can be built up, maintained, and

improved. That is to say, there is progress just where the factor of

social tradition comes into play and just so far as its influence

extends. If the tradition is broken, the race begins again where it

stood before the tradition was formed. We may infer that, while the race

has been relatively stagnant, society has rapidly developed, and we must

conclude that, whether for good or for evil, social changes are mainly

determined, not by alterations of racial type, but by modifications of

tradition due to the interactions of social causes. Progress is not

racial but social.

B. PROGRESS AND SCIENCE

1. Progress and Happiness[337]

Human progress may be properly defined as that which secures the

_increase of human happiness_. Unless it do this, no matter how great a

civilization may be, it is not progressive. If a nation rise, and

extend its sway over a vast territory, astonishing the world with its

power, its culture, and its wealth, this alone does not constitute

progress. It must first be shown that its people are happier than they

would otherwise have been. If a people be seized with a rage for art,

and, in obedience to their impulses or to national decrees, the wealth

of that people be laid out in the cultivation of the fine arts, the

employment of master artists, the decoration of temples, public and

private buildings, and the embellishment of streets and grounds, no

matter to what degree of perfection this purpose be carried out, it is

not to progress unless greater satisfaction be derived therefrom than

was sacrificed in the deprivations which such a course must occasion. To

be progressive in the true sense, it must work an increase in the sum

total of human enjoyment. When we survey the history of civilization, we

should keep this truth in view, and not allow ourselves to be dazzled by

the splendor of pageantry, the glory of heraldry, or the beauty of art,

literature, philosophy, or religion, but should assign to each its true

place as measured by this standard.

It cannot be denied that civilization, by the many false practices which

it has introduced, by the facilities which its very complexity affords

to the concealment of crime, and by the monstrous systems of corruption

which fashion, caste, and conventionality are enabled to shelter, is the

direct means of rendering many individuals miserable in the extreme; but

these are the necessary incidents to its struggles to advance under the

dominion of natural forces alone.

It would involve a great fallacy to deduce from this the conclusion that

civilization begets misery or reduces the happiness of mankind. Against

this gross but popular mistake may be cited the principle before

introduced, which is unanimously accepted by biologists, that an

organism is perfect in proportion as its organs are numerous and varied.

This is because, the more organs there are, the greater is the capacity

for enjoyment. For this enjoyment is quantitative as well as

qualitative, and the greater the number of faculties, the greater is the

possible enjoyment derivable from their normal exercise. To say that

primitive man is happier than enlightened man, is equivalent to saying

that an oyster or a polyp enjoys more than an eagle or an antelope. This

could be true only on the ground that the latter, in consequence of

their sensitive organisms, suffer more than they enjoy; but if to be

happy is to escape from all feeling, then it were better to be stones or

clods, and destitute of conscious sensibility. If this be the happiness

which men should seek, then is the Buddhist in the highest degree

consistent when he prays for the promised _Nirvâna_, or annihilation.

But this is not happiness--it is only the absence of it. For happiness

can only be increased by increasing the capacity for feeling, or

emotion, and, when this is increased, the capacity for suffering is

likewise necessarily increased, and suffering must be endured unless

sufficient sagacity accompanies it to prevent this consequence. And that

is the truest progress which, while it indefinitely multiplies and

increases the facilities for enjoyment, furnishes at the same time the

most effective means of preventing discomfort, and, as nearly all

suffering is occasioned by the violation of natural laws through

ignorance of or error respecting those laws, therefore that is the

truest progress which succeeds in overcoming ignorance and error.

Therefore, we may enunciate the principle that progress is in proportion

to the opportunities or facilities for exercising the faculties and

satisfying desire.

2. Progress and Prevision[338]

We have confused rapidity of change with progress. We have confused the

breaking down of barriers by which advance is made possible with advance

itself.

We had been told that the development of industry and commerce had

brought about such an interdependence of peoples that war was henceforth

out of the question--at least upon a vast scale. But it is now clear

that commerce also creates jealousies and rivalries and suspicions which

are potent for war. We were told that nations could not long finance a

war under modern conditions; economists had demonstrated that to the

satisfaction of themselves and others. We see now that they had

underrated both the production of wealth and the extent to which it

could be mobilized for destructive purposes. We were told that the

advance of science had made war practically impossible. We now know that

science has not only rendered the machinery of war more deadly but has

also increased the powers of resistance and endurance when war comes.

If all this does not demonstrate that the forces which have brought

about complicated and extensive changes in the fabric of society do not

of themselves generate progress, I do not know what a demonstration

would be. Has man subjugated physical nature only to release forces

beyond his control?

The doctrine of evolution has been popularly used to give a kind of

cosmic sanction to the notion of an automatic and wholesale progress in

human affairs. Our part, the human part, was simply to enjoy the

usufruct. Evolution inherited all the goods of divine Providence and had

the advantage of being in fashion. Even a great and devastating war is

not too great a price to pay for an awakening from such an infantile and

selfish dream. Progress is not automatic; it depends upon human intent

and aim and upon acceptance of responsibility for its production. It is

not a wholesale matter, but a retail job, to be contracted for and

executed in sections.

Spite of the dogma which measures progress by increase in altruism,

kindliness, peaceful feelings, there is no reason that I know of to

suppose that the basic fund of these emotions has increased appreciably

in thousands and thousands of years. Man is equipped with these feelings

at birth, as well as with emotions of fear, anger, emulation, and

resentment. What appears to be an increase in one set and a decrease in

the other set is, in reality, a change in their social occasions and

social channels. Civilized man has not a better endowment of ear and eye

than savage man; but his social surroundings give him more important

things to see and hear than the savage has, and he has the wit to devise

instruments to reinforce his eye and ear--the telegraph and telephone,

the microscope and telescope. But there is no reason for thinking that

he has less natural aggressiveness or more natural altruism--or will

ever have--than the barbarian. But he may live in social conditions that

create a relatively greater demand for the display of kindliness and

which turn his aggressive instincts into less destructive channels.

There is at any time a sufficient amount of kindly impulses possessed by

man to enable him to live in amicable peace with all his fellows; and

there is at any time a sufficient equipment of bellicose impulses to

keep him in trouble with his fellows. An intensification of the

exhibition of one may accompany an intensification of the display of the

other, the only difference being that social arrangements cause the

kindly feelings to be displayed toward one set of fellows and the

hostile impulses toward another set. Thus, as everybody knows, the

hatred toward the foreigner characterizing peoples now at war is

attended by an unusual manifestation of mutual affection and love within

each warring group. So characteristic is this fact that that man was a

good psychologist who said that he wished that this planet might get

into war with another planet, as that was the only effective way he saw

of developing a world-wide community of interest in this globe's

population.

The indispensable preliminary condition of progress has been supplied by

the conversion of scientific discoveries into inventions which turn

physical energy, the energy of sun, coal, and iron, to account. Neither

the discoveries nor the inventions were the product of unconscious

physical nature. They were the product of human devotion and

application, of human desire, patience, ingenuity, and mother-wit. The

problem which now confronts us, the problem of progress, is the same in

kind, differing in subject-matter. It is a problem of discovering the

needs and capacities of collective human nature as we find it aggregated

in racial or national groups on the surface of the globe, and of

inventing the social machinery which will set available powers operating

for the satisfaction of those needs.

We are living still under the dominion of a laissez faire philosophy. I

do not mean by this an individualistic, as against a socialistic,

philosophy. I mean by it a philosophy which trusts the direction of

human affairs to nature, or Providence, or evolution, or manifest

destiny--that is to say, to accident--rather than to a contriving and

constructive intelligence. To put our faith in the collective state

instead of in individual activity is quite as laissez faire a proceeding

as to put it in the results of voluntary private enterprise. The only

genuine opposite to a go-as-you-please, let-alone philosophy is a

philosophy which studies specific social needs and evils with a view to

constructing the special social machinery for which they call.

3. Progress and the Limits of Scientific Prevision[339]

Movement, whether of progress or of retrogression, can commonly be

brought about only when the sentiments opposing it have been designedly

weakened or have suffered a natural decay. In this destructive process,

and in any constructive process by which it may be followed, reasoning,

often very bad reasoning, bears, at least in western communities, a

large share as cause, a still larger share as symptom; so that the

clatter of contending argumentation is often the most striking

accompaniment of interesting social changes. Its position, therefore,

and its functions in the social organism are frequently misunderstood.

People fall instinctively into the habit of supposing that, as it plays

a conspicuous part in the improvement or deterioration of human

institutions, it therefore supplies the very basis on which they may be

made to rest, the very mold to which they ought to conform; and they

naturally conclude that we have only got to reason more and to reason

better in order speedily to perfect the whole machinery by which human

felicity is to be secured.

Surely this is a great delusion. A community founded upon argument would

soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent

elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly woven out of common

sentiments, common tastes, common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by

which from our very earliest childhood we are all bound unconsciously

but indissolubly together into a compacted whole. Imagine these to be

suddenly loosed and their places taken by some judicious piece of

reasoning on the balance of advantage, which, after taking all proper

deductions, still remains to the credit of social life. These things we

may indeed imagine if we please. Fortunately, we shall never see them.

Society is founded--and from the nature of the human beings which

constitute it, must, in the main, be always founded--not upon criticism

but upon feelings and beliefs, and upon the customs and codes by which

feelings and beliefs are, as it were, fixed and rendered stable. And

even where these harmonize, so far as we can judge, with sound reason,

they are in many cases not consciously based on reasoning; nor is their

fate necessarily bound up with that of the extremely indifferent

arguments by which, from time to time, philosophers, politicians, and, I

will add, divines have thought fit to support them.

We habitually talk as if a self-governing or free community was one

which managed its own affairs. In strictness, no community manages its

own affairs, or by any possibility could manage them. It manages but a

narrow fringe of its affairs, and that in the main by deputy. It is only

the thinnest surface layer of law and custom, belief and sentiment,

which can either be successfully subjected to destructive treatment, or

become the nucleus of any new growth--a fact which explains the apparent

paradox that so many of our most famous advances in political wisdom are

nothing more than the formal recognition of our political impotence.

As our expectations of limitless progress for the race cannot depend

upon the blind operation of the laws of heredity, so neither can they

depend upon the deliberate action of national governments. Such

examination as we can make of the changes which have taken place during

the relatively minute fraction of history with respect to which we have

fairly full information shows that they have been caused by a multitude

of variations, often extremely small, made in their surroundings by

individuals whose objects, though not necessarily selfish, have often

had no intentional reference to the advancement of the community at

large. But we have no scientific ground for suspecting that the stimulus

to these individual efforts must necessarily continue; we know of no law

by which, if they do continue, they must needs be co-ordinated for a

common purpose or pressed into the service of a common good. We cannot

estimate their remoter consequences; neither can we tell how they will

act and react upon one another, nor how they will in the long run affect

morality, religion, and other fundamental elements of human society. The

future of the race is thus encompassed with darkness; no faculty of

calculation that we possess, no instrument that we are likely to invent,

will enable us to map out its course, or penetrate the secret of its

destiny. It is easy, no doubt, to find in the clouds which obscure our

paths what shapes we please: to see in them the promise of some

millennial paradise, or the threat of endless and unmeaning travel

through waste and perilous places. But in such visions the wise man will

put but little confidence, content, in a sober and cautious spirit, with

a full consciousness of his feeble powers of foresight and the narrow

limits of his activity, to deal as they arise with the problems of his

own generation.

4. Eugenics as a Science of Progress[340]

Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the

inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the

utmost advantage.

What is meant by improvement? There is considerable difference between

goodness in the several qualities and in that of the character as a

whole. The character depends largely on the _proportion_ between

qualities whose balance may be much influenced by education. We must

therefore leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion, not

entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as

to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. Moreover, the goodness

or badness of character is not absolute, but relative to the current

form of civilisation. A fable will best explain what is meant. Let the

scene be the Zoölogical Gardens in the quiet hours of the night, and

suppose that, as in old fables, the animals are able to converse, and

that some very wise creature who had easy access to all the cages, say a

philosophic sparrow or rat, was engaged in collecting the opinions of

all sorts of animals with a view of elaborating a system of absolute

morality. It is needless to enlarge on the contrariety of ideals between

the beasts that prey and those they prey upon, between those of the

animals that have to work hard for their food and the sedentary

parasites that cling to their bodies and suck their blood and so forth.

A large number of suffrages in favour of maternal affection would be

obtained, but most species of fish would repudiate it, while among the

voices of birds would be heard the musical protest of the cuckoo. Though

no agreement could be reached as to absolute morality, the essentials of

Eugenics may be easily defined. All creatures would agree that it was

better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill

fitted for their part in life. In short, that it was better to be good

rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be. So

with men. There are a vast number of conflicting ideals of alternative

characters, of incompatible civilisations; but all are wanted to give

fulness and interest to life. Society would be very dull if every man

resembled the highly estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede. The aim of

Eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that

done, to leave them to work out their common civilisation in their own

way.

The aim of Eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably

employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute

_more_ than their proportion to the next generation.

The course of procedure that lies within the functions of a learned and

active Society such as the Sociological may become, would be somewhat as

follows:

1. Dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of heredity so far as they

are surely known, and promotion of their further study. Few seem to be

aware how greatly the knowledge of what may be termed the _actuarial_

side of heredity has advanced in recent years. The average closeness of

kinship in each degree now admits of exact definition and of being

treated mathematically, like birth- and death-rates, and the other

topics with which actuaries are concerned.

2. Historical inquiry into the rates with which the various classes of

society (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed to

the population at various times, in ancient and modern nations. There is

strong reason for believing that national rise and decline is closely

connected with this influence. It seems to be the tendency of high

civilisation to check fertility in the upper classes, through numerous

causes, some of which are well known, others are inferred, and others

again are wholly obscure. The latter class are apparently analogous to

those which bar the fertility of most species of wild animals in

zoölogical gardens. Out of the hundreds and thousands of species that

have been tamed, very few indeed are fertile when their liberty is

restricted and their struggles for livelihood are abolished; those which

are so and are otherwise useful to man becoming domesticated. There is

perhaps some connection between this obscure action and the

disappearance of most savage races when brought into contact with high

civilisation, though there are other and well-known concomitant causes.

But while most barbarous races disappear, some, like the Negro, do not.

It may therefore be expected that types of our race will be found to

exist which can be highly civilised without losing fertility; nay, they

may become more fertile under artificial conditions, as is the case with

many domestic animals.

3. Systematic collection of facts showing the circumstances under which

large and thriving families have most frequently originated; in other

words, the _conditions_ of Eugenics. The names of the thriving families

in England have yet to be learnt, and the conditions under which they

have arisen. We cannot hope to make much advance in the science of

Eugenics without a careful study of facts that are now accessible with

difficulty, if at all. The definition of a thriving family, such as will

pass muster for the moment at least, is one in which the children have

gained distinctly superior positions to those who were their classmates

in early life. Families may be considered "large" that contain not less

than three adult male children. The point to be ascertained is the

_status_ of the two parents at the time of their marriage, whence its

more or less eugenic character might have been predicted, if the larger

knowledge that we now hope to obtain had then existed. Some account

would, of course, be wanted of their race, profession, and residence;

also of their own respective parentages, and of their brothers and

sisters. Finally, the reasons would be required why the children

deserved to be entitled a "thriving" family, to distinguish worthy from

unworthy success. This manuscript collection might hereafter develop

into a "golden book" of thriving families. The Chinese, whose customs

have often much sound sense, make their honours retrospective. We might

learn from them to show that respect to the parents of noteworthy

children, which the contributors of such valuable assets to the national

wealth richly deserve.

4. Influences affecting Marriage. The passion of love seems so

overpowering that it may be thought folly to try to direct its course.

But plain facts do not confirm this view. Social influences of all kinds

have immense power in the end, and they are very various. If unsuitable

marriages from the eugenic point of view were banned socially, or even

regarded with the unreasonable disfavour which some attach to cousin

marriages, very few would be made. The multitude of marriage

restrictions that have proved prohibitive among uncivilised people would

require a volume to describe.

5. Persistence in setting forth the national importance of Eugenics.

There are three stages to be passed through. _Firstly_, it must be made

familiar as an academic question, until its exact importance has been

understood and accepted as a fact; _secondly_, it must be recognised as

a subject whose practical development deserves serious consideration;

and _thirdly_, it must be introduced into the national conscience, like,

a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox

religious tenet of the future, for Eugenics cooperates with the workings

of Nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest

races. What Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do

providently, quickly, and kindly. I see no impossibility in Eugenics

becoming a religious dogma among mankind, but its details must first be

worked out sedulously in the study. The first and main point is to

secure the general intellectual acceptance of Eugenics as a hopeful and

most important study. Then let its principles work into the heart of

the nation, who will gradually give practical effect to them in ways

that we may not wholly foresee.

C. PROGRESS AND HUMAN NATURE

1. The Nature of Man[341]

Man is certainly an animal that, when he lives at all, lives for ideals.

Something must be found to occupy his imagination, to raise pleasure and

pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic alternative between

comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow.

Now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull, when religion for the

most part is so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast

impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of

honor. It has become the one eloquent, public, intrepid

illusion--illusion, I mean, when it is taken for an ultimate good or a

mystical essence, for of course nationality is a fact. It is natural for

a man to like to live at home, and to live long elsewhere without a

sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity. It is right to feel

a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to one's self. But

this necessary fact and even duty of nationality is accidental; like age

or sex it is a physical fatality which can be made the basis of specific

and comely virtues; but it is not an end to pursue or a flag to flaunt

or a privilege not balanced by a thousand incapacities. Yet of this

distinction our contemporaries tend to make an idol, perhaps because it

is the only distinction they feel they have left.

Everywhere in the nineteenth century we find a double preoccupation with

the past and with the future, a longing to know what all experience

might have been hitherto, and on the other hand to hasten to some wholly

different experience, to be contrived immediately with a beating heart

and with flying banners. The imagination of the age was intent on

history; its conscience was intent on reform.

2. Progress and the Mores[342]

What now are some of the leading features in the mores of civilized

society at the present time? Undoubtedly they are monogamy,

anti-slavery, and democracy. All people now are more nervous than

anybody used to be. Social ambition is great and is prevalent in all

classes. The idea of class is unpopular and is not understood. There is

a superstitious yearning for equality. There is a decided preference for

city life, and a stream of population from the country into big cities.

These are facts of the mores of the time. Our societies are almost

unanimous in their response if there is any question raised on these

matters.

Medieval people conceived of society under forms of status as generally

as we think of it under forms of individual liberty. The mores of the

Orient and Occident differ from each other now, as they apparently

always have differed. The Orient is a region where time, faith,

tradition, and patience rule. The Occident forms ideals and plans, and

spends energy and enterprise to make new things with thoughts of

progress. All details of life follow the leading ways of thought of each

group. We can compare and judge ours and theirs, but independent

judgment of our own, without comparison with other times or other

places, is possible only within narrow limits.

Let us first take up the nervous desire and exertion which mark the men

of our time in the western civilized societies. There is a wide popular

belief in what is called progress. The masses in all civilized states

strain toward success in some adopted line. Struggling and striving are

passionate tendencies which take possession of groups from time to time.

The newspapers, the popular literature, and the popular speakers show

this current and popular tendency. This is what makes the mores.

3. War and Progress[343]

Let us see what progress means. It is a term which covers several quite

different things.

There is material progress, by which I understand an increase in wealth,

that is, in the commodities useful to man, which give him health,

strength, and longer life, and make his life easier, providing more

comfort and more leisure, and thus enabling him to be more physically

efficient, and to escape from that pressure of want which hampers the

development of his whole nature.

There is intellectual progress--an increase in knowledge, a greater

abundance of ideas, the training to think, and to think correctly, the

growth in capacity for dealing with practical problems, the cultivation

of the power to enjoy the exercise of thought and the pleasures of

letters and art.

There is moral progress--a thing harder to define, but which includes

the development of those emotions and habits which make for

happiness--contentment and tranquility of mind; the absence of the more

purely animal and therefore degrading vices (such as intemperance and

sensuality in all its other forms); the control of the violent passions;

good will and kindliness toward others--all the things which fall within

the philosophical conception of a life guided by right reason. People

have different ideas of what constitutes happiness and virtue, but these

things are at any rate included in every such conception.

A further preliminary question arises. Is human progress to be estimated

in respect to the point to which it raises the few who have high mental

gifts and the opportunity of obtaining an education fitting them for

intellectual enjoyment and intellectual vocations, or is it to be

measured by the amount of its extension to and diffusion through each

nation, meaning the nation as a whole--the average man as well as the

superior spirits? You may sacrifice either the many to the few--as was

done by slavery--or the few to the many, or the advance may be general

and proportionate in all classes.

Again, when we think of progress, are we to think of the world as a

whole, or only of the stronger and more capable races and states? If the

stronger rise upon the prostrate bodies of the weaker, is this clear

gain to the world, because the stronger will ultimately do more for the

world, or is the loss and suffering of the weaker to be brought into the

account? I do not attempt to discuss these questions; it is enough to

note them as fit to be remembered; for perhaps all three kinds of

progress ought to be differently judged if a few leading nations only

are to be regarded, or if we are to think of all mankind.

It is undeniable that war has often been accompanied by an advance in

civilization. If we were to look for progress only in time of peace

there would have been little progress to discover, for mankind has lived

in a state of practically permanent warfare. The Egyptian and Assyrian

monarchs were always fighting. The author of the Book of Kings speaks of

spring as the time when kings go forth to war, much as we should speak

of autumn as the time when men go forth to shoot deer. "War is the

natural relation of states to one another," said Plato. The fact has

been hardly less true since his day, though latterly men have become

accustomed to think of peace as the normal, war as the abnormal or

exceptional, relation of states to one another. In the ancient world, as

late as the days of Roman conquest, a state of peace was the rare

exception among civilized states as well as barbarous tribes. But

Carthage, like her Phoenician mother-city, went on building up a mighty

commerce till Rome smote her down, and the Hellenic people, in its many

warring cities, went on producing noble poems and profound philosophical

speculations, and rearing majestic temples and adorning them with

incomparable works of sculpture, in the intervals of their fighting with

their neighbors of the same or other races. The case of the Greeks

proves that war and progress are compatible.

The capital instance of the association of war with the growth and

greatness of a state is found in Prussia. One may say that her history

is the source of the whole thesis and the basis of the whole argument.

It is a case of what, in the days when I learned logic at the University

of Oxford, we used to call the induction from a single instance.

Prussia, then a small state, began her upward march under the warlike

and successful prince whom her people call the Great Elector. Her next

long step to greatness was taken by Frederick II, again by favor of

successful warfare, though doubtless also by means of a highly

organized, and for those days very efficient, administration. Voltaire

said of Frederick's Prussia that its trade was war. Another war added to

her territory in 1814-15. Three successful wars--those of 1864, 1866,

and 1870-71--made her the nucleus of a united German nation and the

leading military power of the Old World.

Ever since those victories her industrial production, her commerce, and

her wealth have rapidly increased, while at the same time scientific

research has been prosecuted with the greatest vigor and on a scale

unprecedentedly large. These things were no doubt achieved during a

peace of forty-three years. But it was what one may call a belligerent

peace, full of thoughts of war and preparations for war. There is no

denying that the national spirit has been carried to a high point of

pride, energy, and self-confidence, which have stimulated effort in all

directions and secured extraordinary efficiency in civil as well as in

military administration. Here, then, is an instance in which a state has

grown by war and a people has been energized by war.

Next, let us take the cases which show that there have been in many

countries long periods of incessant war with no corresponding progress

in the things that make civilization. I will not speak of semi-barbarous

tribes, among the more advanced of which may be placed the Albanians and

the Pathans and the Turkomans, while among the more backward were the

North American Indians and the Zulus. But one may cite the case of the

civilized regions of Asia under the successors of Alexander, when

civilized peoples, distracted by incessant strife, did little for the

progress of arts or letters or government, from the death of the great

conqueror till they were united under the dominion of Rome and received

from her a time of comparative tranquillity.

The Thirty Years' War is an example of long-continued fighting which,

far from bringing progress in its train, inflicted injuries on Germany

from which she did not recover for nearly two centuries. In recent times

there has been more fighting in South and Central America, since the

wars of independence, than in any other civilized countries. Yet can

anyone say that anything has been gained by the unending civil wars and

revolutions, or those scarcely less frequent wars between the several

republics, like that terrible one thirty years ago in which Peru was

overcome by Chile? Or look at Mexico. Except during the years when the

stern dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz kept order and equipped the country

with roads and railways, her people have made no perceptible advance and

stand hardly higher today than when they were left to work out their own

salvation a hundred years ago. Social and economic conditions have

doubtless been against her. All that need be remembered is that warfare

has not bettered those conditions or improved the national character.

If this hasty historical survey has, as I frankly admit, given us few

positive and definite results, the reason is plain. Human progress is

affected by so many conditions besides the presence or absence of

fighting that it is impossible in any given case to pronounce that it

has been chiefly due either to war or to peace. Two conclusions,

however, we may claim to have reached, though they are rather negative

than positive. One is that war does not necessarily arrest progress.

Peoples may advance in thought, literature, and art while they are

fighting. The other is that war cannot be shown to have been a cause of

progress in anything except the wealth or power of a state which extends

its dominions by conquest or draws tribute from the vanquished.

What, then, are the causes to which the progress of mankind is due? It

is due partly, no doubt, if not to strife, to competition. But chiefly

to thought, which is more often hindered than helped by war. It is the

races that know how to think, rather than the far more numerous races

that excel in fighting rather than in thinking, that have led the world.

Thought, in the form of invention and inquiry, has given us those

improvements in the arts of life and in the knowledge of nature by which

material progress and comfort have been obtained. Thought has produced

literature, philosophy, art, and (when intensified by emotion)

religion--all the things that make life worth living. Now the thought of

any people is most active when it is brought into contact with the

thought of another, because each is apt to lose its variety and freedom

of play when it has worked too long upon familiar lines and flowed too

long in the channels it has deepened. Hence isolation retards progress,

while intercourse quickens it.

The great creative epochs have been those in which one people of natural

vigor received an intellectual impulse from the ideas of another, as

happened when Greek culture began to penetrate Italy, and thirteen

centuries later, when the literature of the ancients began to work on

the nations of the medieval world.

Such contact, with the process of learning which follows from it, may

happen in or through war, but it happens far oftener in peace; and it is

in peace that men have the time and the taste to profit fully by it. A

study of history will show that we may, with an easy conscience, dismiss

the theory of Treitschke--that war is a health-giving tonic which

Providence must be expected constantly to offer to the human race for

its own good.

The future progress of mankind is to be sought, not through the strifes

and hatreds of the nations, but rather by their friendly co-operation in

the healing and enlightening works of peace and in the growth of a

spirit of friendship and mutual confidence which may remove the causes

of war.

4. Progress and the Cosmic Urge

_a. The "Élan Vitale"_[344]

All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to

accumulate energy and then to let it flow into flexible channels,

changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely

varied kinds of work. That is what the _vital impetus_, passing through

matter, would fain do all at once. It would succeed, no doubt, if its

power were unlimited, or if some reinforcement could come to it from

without. But the impetus is finite, and it has been given once for all.

It cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes

turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed; and the evolution of

the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict. The first great

scission that had to be effected was that of the two kingdoms, vegetable

and animal, which thus happen to be mutually complementary, without,

however, any agreement having been made between them. To this scission

there succeeded many others. Hence the diverging lines of evolution, at

least what is essential in them. But we must take into account

retrogressions, arrests, accidents of every kind. And we must remember,

above all, that each species behaves as if the general movement of life

stopped at it instead of passing through it. It thinks only of itself,

it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles that we behold

in nature. Hence a discord, striking and terrible, but for which the

original principle of life must not be held responsible.

It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally

different outward appearance and designed forms very different from

those we know. With another chemical substratum, in other physical

conditions, the impulsion would have remained the same, but it would

have split up very differently in course of progress; and the whole

would have traveled another road--whether shorter or longer who can

tell? In any case, in the entire series of living beings no term would

have been what it now is.

There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the

two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an

individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make the balance

weigh on one side or the other. If we take an infusorian sufficiently

large, such as the Stentor, and cut it into two halves each containing a

part of the nucleus, each of the two halves will generate an independent

Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a protoplasmic

communication is left between the two halves, we shall see them execute,

each from its side, corresponding movements; so that in this case it is

enough that a thread should be maintained or cut in order that life

should affect the social or the individual form. Thus, in rudimentary

organisms consisting of a single cell, we already find that the apparent

individuality of the whole is the composition of an _undefined_ number

of potential individualities potentially associated. But, from top to

bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is manifested. And

it is this that we express when we say that unity and multiplicity are

categories of inert matter, that the vital impetus is neither pure unity

nor pure multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communicates

itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice will never be

definitive: it will leap from one to the other indefinitely. The

evolution of life in the double direction of individuality and

association has therefore nothing accidental about it: it is due to the

very nature of life.

Essential also is the progress to reflexion. If our analysis is correct,

it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the

origin of life. Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for

the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as matter;

consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket

itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into

organisms. But this consciousness, which is a _need of creation_, is

made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant

when life is condemned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the

possibility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms

unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of

locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in

animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of

the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called

motor intersect--that is, of the brain.

Consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice;

it is coextensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the

real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with

freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never anything but a variation

on the theme of routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it

succeeds, no doubt, in enlarging them by its individual initiative; but

it escapes automatism only for an instant, for just the time to create a

new automatism. The gates of its prison close as soon as they are

opened; by pulling at its chain it succeeds only in stretching it. With

man, consciousness breaks the chain. In man, and in man alone, it sets

itself free. The whole history of life until man has been that of the

effort of consciousness to raise matter, and of the more or less

complete overwhelming of consciousness by the matter which has fallen

back on it. The enterprise was paradoxical, if, indeed, we may speak

here otherwise than by metaphor of enterprise and of effort. It was to

create with matter, which is necessity itself, an instrument of freedom,

to make a machine which should triumph over mechanism, and to use

determinism of nature to pass through the meshes of the net which this

very determinism had spread. But, everywhere except in man,

consciousness has let itself be caught in the net whose meshes it tried

to pass through: it has remained the captive of the mechanisms it has

set up. Automatism, which it tries to draw in the direction of freedom,

winds about it and drags it down. It has not the power to escape,

because the energy it has provided for acts is almost all employed in

maintaining the infinitely subtle and essentially unstable equilibrium

into which it has brought matter. But man not only maintains his

machine, he succeeds in using it as he pleases. Doubtless he owes this

to the superiority of his brain, which enables him to build an unlimited

number of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old ones

unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against itself, to rule it. He

owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an

immaterial body in which to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from

dwelling exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon drag it

along and finally swallow it up. He owes it to social life, which stores

and preserves efforts as language stores thought, fixes thereby a mean

level to which individuals must raise themselves at the outset, and by

this initial stimulation prevents the average man from slumbering and

drives the superior man to mount still higher. But our brain, our

society, and our language are only the external and various signs of one

and the same internal superiority. They tell, each after its manner, the

unique, exceptional success which life has won at a given moment of its

evolution. They express the difference of kind, and not only of degree,

which separates man from the rest of the animal world. They let us guess

that, while at the end of the vast springboard from which life has taken

its leap, all the others have stepped down, finding the cord stretched

too high, man alone has cleared the obstacle.

It is in this quite special sense that man is the "term" and the "end"

of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends finality as it transcends

the other categories. It is essentially a current sent through matter,

drawing from it what it can. There has not, therefore, properly

speaking, been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abundantly

evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of man: we struggle

like the other species, we have struggled against other species.

Moreover, if the evolution of life had encountered other accidents in

its course, if, thereby, the current of life had been otherwise divided,

we should have been, physically and morally, far different from what we

are. For these various reasons it would be wrong to regard humanity,

such as we have it before our eyes, as prefigured in the evolutionary

movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of

evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on several divergent

lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other

lines have been followed with other species at their end. It is in a

quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the ground of

evolution.

From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave

which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the

whole of its circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at

one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed

freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but

in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has

kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely,

although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in

itself. On other lines of evolution there have traveled other tendencies

which life implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man

has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has kept only very

little. _It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we

will_, man _or_ superman, _had sought to realize himself, and had

succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way_. The losses

are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the

vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above

the accidents of evolution.

From this point of view, the discordances of which nature offers us the

spectacle are singularly weakened. The organized world as a whole

becomes as the soil on which was to grow either man himself or a being

who morally must resemble him. The animals, however distant they may be

from our species, however hostile to it, have none the less been useful

traveling companions, on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever

encumbrances it was dragging along, and who have enabled it to rise, in

man, to heights from which it sees an unlimited horizon open again

before it.

Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it

must undergo its vicissitudes. As the possible actions which a state of

consciousness indicates are at every instant beginning to be carried out

in the nervous centres, the brain underlies at every instant the motor

indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependency of

consciousness and brain is limited to this; the destiny of consciousness

is not bound up on that account with the destiny of cerebral matter.

Finally, consciousness is essentially free; it is freedom itself; but it

cannot pass through matter without settling on it, without adapting

itself to it: this adaptation is what we call intellectuality; and the

intellect, turning itself back towards active, that is to say, free,

consciousness, naturally makes it enter into the conceptual forms into

which it is accustomed to see matter fit. It will therefore always

perceive freedom in the form of necessity; it will always neglect the

part of novelty or of creation inherent in the free act; it will always

substitute for action itself an imitation artificial, approximative,

obtained by compounding the old with the old and the same with the same.

Thus, to the eyes of a philosophy that attempts to reabsorb intellect in

intuition, many difficulties vanish or become light. But such a doctrine

does not only facilitate speculation; it gives us also more power to act

and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves no longer isolated in

humanity, humanity no longer seems isolated in the nature that it

dominates. As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire

solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent

which is materiality itself, so all organized beings, from the humblest

to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we

are, and in all places, as in all times, do but evidence a single

impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself

indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield to the same

tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides

animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one

immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an

overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the

most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

_b. The "Dunkler Drang"_[345]

Every glance at the world, to explain which is the task of the

philosopher, confirms and proves that _will to live_, far from being an

arbitrary hypostasis or an empty word, is the only true expression of

its inmost nature. Everything presses and strives towards _existence_,

if possible _organized existence_, i.e., _life_, and after that to the

highest possible grade of it. In animal nature it then becomes apparent

that _will to live_ is the keynote of its being, its one unchangeable

and unconditioned quality. Let anyone consider this universal desire for

life, let him see the infinite willingness, facility, and exuberance

with which the will to live pressed impetuously into existence under a

million forms everywhere and at every moment, by means of fructification

and of germs, nay, when these are wanting, by means of _generatio

aequivoca_, seizing every opportunity, eagerly grasping for itself every

material capable of life: and then again let him cast a glance at its

fearful alarm and wild rebellion when in any particular phenomenon it

must pass out of existence; especially when this takes place with

distinct consciousness. Then it is precisely the same as if in this

single phenomenon the whole world would be annihilated forever, and the

whole being of this threatened living thing is at once transformed into

the most desperate struggle against death and resistance to it. Look,

for example, at the incredible anxiety of a man in danger of his life,

the rapid and serious participation in this of every witness of it, and

the boundless rejoicing at his deliverance. Look at the rigid terror

with which a sentence of death is heard, the profound awe with which we

regard the preparations for carrying it out, and the heartrending

compassion which seizes us at the execution itself. We would then

suppose there was something quite different in question than a few less

years of an empty, sad existence, embittered by troubles of every kind,

and always uncertain: we would rather be amazed that it was a matter of

any consequence whether one attained a few years earlier to the place

where after an ephemeral existence he has billions of years to be. In

such phenomena, then, it becomes visible that I am right in declaring

that _the will to live_ is that which cannot be further explained, but

lies at the foundation of all explanations, and that this, far from

being an empty word, like the absolute, the infinite, the idea, and

similar expressions, is the most real thing we know, nay, the kernel of

reality itself.

But if now, abstracting for a while from this interpretation drawn from

our inner being, we place ourselves as strangers over against nature, in

order to comprehend it objectively, we find that from the grade of

organized life upwards it has only one intention--that of the

_maintenance of the species_. To this end it works, through the immense

superfluity of germs, through the urgent vehemence of the sexual

instinct, through its willingness to adapt itself to all circumstances

and opportunities, even to the production of bastards, and through the

instinctive maternal affection, the strength of which is so great that

in many kinds of animals it even outweighs self-love, so that the mother

sacrifices her life in order to preserve that of the young. The

individual, on the contrary, has for nature only an indirect value, only

so far as it is the means of maintaining the species. Apart from this,

its existence is to nature a matter of indifference; indeed nature even

leads it to destruction as soon as it has ceased to be useful for this

end. Why the individual exists would thus be clear; but why does the

species itself exist? That is a question which nature when considered

merely objectively cannot answer. For in vain do we seek by

contemplating her for an end of this restless striving, this ceaseless

pressing into existence, this anxious care for the maintenance of the

species. The strength and the time of the individuals are consumed in

the effort to procure sustenance for themselves and their young, and are

only just sufficient, sometimes even not sufficient, for this. The whole

thing, when regarded thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous

to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic)

_Ideas_, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. For the individuals

are fleeting as the water in the brook; and Ideas, on the contrary, are

permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also

do away with the eddies. We would have to stop at this unintelligible

view if nature were known to us only from without, thus were given us

merely _objectively_, and we accepted it as it is comprehended by

knowledge, and also as sprung from knowledge, i.e., in the sphere of the

idea, and were therefore obliged to confine ourselves to this province

in solving it. But the case is otherwise, and a glance at any rate is

afforded us into the _interior of nature_; inasmuch as this is nothing

else than _our own inner being_, which is precisely where nature,

arrived at the highest grade to which its striving could work itself up,

is now by the light of knowledge found directly in self-consciousness.

Thus the subjective here gives the key for the exposition of the

objective. In order to recognize, as something original and

unconditioned, that exceedingly strong tendency of all animals and men

to retain life and carry it on as long as possible--a tendency which was

set forth above as characteristic of the subjective, or of the will--it

is necessary to make clear to ourselves that this is by no means the

result of any objective _knowledge_ of the worth of life, but is

independent of all knowledge; or, in other words, that those beings

exhibit themselves, not as drawn from in front, but as impelled from

behind.

If with this intention we first of all review the interminable series of

animals, consider the infinite variety of their forms, as they exhibit

themselves always differently modified according to their element and

manner of life, and also ponder the inimitable ingenuity of their

structure and mechanism, which is carried out with equal perfection in

every individual; and finally, if we take into consideration the

incredible expenditure of strength, dexterity, prudence, and activity

which every animal has ceaselessly to make through its whole life; if,

approaching the matter more closely, we contemplate the untiring

diligence of wretched little ants, the marvellous and ingenious

industry of the bees, or observe how a single burying-beetle

(_Necrophorus vespillo_) buries a mole of forty times its own size in

two days in order to deposit its eggs in it and insure nourishment for

the future brood (Gleditsch, _Physik. Bot. Oekon. Abhandl._, III, 220),

at the same time calling to mind how the life of most insects is nothing

but ceaseless labour to prepare food and an abode for the future brood

which will arise from their eggs, and which then, after they have

consumed the food and passed through the chrysalis state, enter upon

life merely to begin again from the beginning the same labour; then also

how, like this, the life of the birds is for the most part taken up with

their distant and laborious migrations, then with the building of their

nests and the collection of food for their brood, which itself has to

play the same rôle the following year; and so all work constantly for

the future, which afterwards makes bankrupt--then we cannot avoid

looking round for the reward of all this skill and trouble, for the end

which these animals have before their eyes, which strive so

ceaselessly--in short, we are driven to ask: What is the result? What is

attained by the animal existence which demands such infinite

preparation? And there is nothing to point to but the satisfaction of

hunger and the sexual instinct, or in any case a little momentary

comfort, as it falls to the lot of each animal individual, now and then

in the intervals of its endless need and struggle. Take, for example,

the mole, that unwearied worker. To dig with all its might with its

enormous shovel claws is the occupation of its whole life; constant

night surrounds it; its embryo eyes only make it avoid the light. It

alone is truly an _animal nocturnum_; not cats, owls, and bats, who see

by night. But what, now, does it attain by this life, full of trouble

and devoid of pleasure? Food and the begetting of its kind; thus only

the means of carrying on and beginning anew the same doleful course in

new individuals. In such examples it becomes clear that there is no

proportion between the cares and troubles of life and the results or

gain of it. The consciousness of the world of perception gives a certain

appearance of objective worth of existence to the life of those animals

which can see, although in their case this consciousness is entirely

subjective and limited to the influence of motives upon them. But the

_blind_ mole, with its perfect organization and ceaseless activity,

limited to the alternation of insect larvae and hunger, makes the

disproportion of the means to the end apparent.

Let us now add the consideration of the human race. The matter indeed

becomes more complicated, and assumes a certain seriousness of aspect;

but the fundamental character remains unaltered. Here also life presents

itself by no means as a gift for enjoyment, but as a task, a drudgery to

be performed; and in accordance with this we see, in great and small,

universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife,

compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and

mind. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good,

each individual on account of his own; but many thousands fall as a

sacrifice for it. Now senseless delusions, now intriguing politics,

incite them to wars with each other; then the sweat and the blood of the

great multitude must flow, to carry out the ideas of individuals, or to

expiate their faults. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions

work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all

ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All strive, some

planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate

aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented

individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate ease with

endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at

once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its

striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the

reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken

objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which

everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for

something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we

shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency

entirely without ground or motive.

The law of motivation only extends to the particular actions, not to

willing _as a whole and in general_. It depends upon this, that if we

conceive of the human race and its action _as a whole and universally_,

it does not present itself to us, as when we contemplate the particular

actions, as a play of puppets who are pulled after the ordinary manner

by threads outside them; but from this point of view, as puppets that

are set in motion by internal clockwork. For if, as we have done above,

one compares the ceaseless, serious, and laborious striving of men with

what they gain by it, nay, even with what they ever can gain, the

disproportion we have pointed out becomes apparent, for one recognizes

that that which is to be gained, taken as the motive power, is entirely

insufficient for the explanation of that movement and that ceaseless

striving. What, then, is a short postponement of death, a slight easing

of misery or deferment of pain, a momentary stilling of desire, compared

with such an abundant and certain victory over them all as death? What

could such advantages accomplish taken as actual moving causes of a

human race, innumerable because constantly renewed, which unceasingly

moves, strives, struggles, grieves, writhes, and performs the whole

tragi-comedy of the history of the world, nay, what says more than all,

_perseveres_ in such a mock-existence as long as each one possibly can?

Clearly this is all inexplicable if we seek the moving causes outside

the figures and conceive the human race as striving, in consequence of

rational reflection, or something analogous to this (as moving threads),

after those good things held out to it, the attainment of which would be

a sufficient reward for its ceaseless cares and troubles. The matter

being taken thus, everyone would rather have long ago said, "Le jeu ne

vaut pas la chandelle," and have gone out. But, on the contrary,

everyone guards and defends his life, like a precious pledge entrusted

to him under heavy responsibility, under infinite cares and abundant

misery, even under which life is tolerable. The wherefore and the why,

the reward for this, certainly he does not see; but he has accepted the

worth of that pledge without seeing it, upon trust and faith, and does

not know what it consists in. Hence I have said that these puppets are

not pulled from without, but each bears in itself the clockwork from

which its movements result. This is _the will to live_, manifesting

itself as an untiring machine, an irrational tendency, which has not its

sufficient reason in the external world. It holds the individuals firmly

upon the scene, and is the _primum mobile_ of their movements; while the

external objects, the motives, only determine their direction in the

particular case; otherwise the cause would not be at all suitable to the

effect. For, as every manifestation of a force of nature has a cause,

but the force of nature itself none, so every particular act of will has

a motive, but the will in general has none: indeed at bottom these two

are one and the same. The will, as that which is metaphysical, is

everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which it

cannot go. We often see a miserable figure, deformed and shrunk with

age, want, and disease, implore our help from the bottom of his heart

for the prolongation of an existence, the end of which would necessarily

appear altogether desirable if it were an objective judgment that

determined here. Thus instead of this it is the blind will, appearing as

the tendency to life, the love of life, and the sense of life; it is the

same which makes the plants grow. This sense of life may be compared to

a rope which is stretched above the puppet show of the world of men, and

on which the puppets hang by invisible threads, while apparently they

are supported only by the ground beneath them (the objective value of

life). But if the rope becomes weak the puppet sinks; if it breaks the

puppet must fall, for the ground beneath it only seemed to support it:

i.e., the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria,

spleen, melancholy: its entire exhaustion as the inclination to suicide.

And as with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and

movement. This is not something freely chosen; but while everyone would

really gladly rest, want and ennui are the whips that keep the top

spinning. Therefore everything is in continual strain and forced

movement, and the course of the world goes on, to use an expression of

Aristotle's (_De coelo_ ii. 13), [Greek: "ou physei, alla bia"] (_motu,

non naturali sed molento_). Men are only apparently drawn from in front;

really they are pushed from behind; it is not life that tempts them on,

but necessity that drives them forward. The law of motivation is, like

all causality, merely the form of the phenomenon.

In all these considerations, then, it becomes clear to us that the will

to live is not a consequence of the knowledge of life, is in no way a

_conclusio ex praemissis_, and in general is nothing secondary. Rather,

it is that which is first and unconditioned, the premiss of all

premisses, and just on that account that from which philosophy must

_start_, for the will to live does not appear in consequence of the

world, but the world in consequence of the will to live.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Progress and Social Research

The problem of progress comes back finally to the problem of the

ultimate good. If the world is getting better, measured by this ultimate

standard, then there is progress. If it is growing worse, then there is

retrogression. But in regard to the ultimate good there is no agreement.

What is temporary gain may be ultimate loss. What is one man's evil may

be, and often seems to be, another man's good. In the final analysis

what seems evil may turn out to be good and what seems good may be an

eventual evil. But this is a problem in philosophy which sociology is

not bound to solve before it undertakes to describe society. It does not

even need to discuss it. Sociology, just as any other natural science,

accepts the current values of the community. The physician, like the

social worker, assumes that health is a social value. With this as a

datum his studies are directed to the discovery of the nature and causes

of diseases, and to the invention of devices for curing them. There is

just as much, and no more, reason for a sociologist to formulate a

doctrine of social progress as there is for the physician to do so. Both

are concerned with specific problems for which they are seeking specific

remedies.

If there are social processes and predictable forms of change in

society, then there are methods of human intervention in the processes

of society, methods of controlling these processes in the interest of

the ends of human life, methods of progress in other words. If there are

no intelligible or describable social processes, then there may be

progress, but there will be no sociology and no _methods of progress_.

We can only hope and pray.

It is not impossible to formulate a definition of progress which does

not assume the perfectibility of mankind, which does not regard progress

as a necessity, and which does not assume to say with finality what has

happened or is likely to happen to humanity as a whole.[346]

Progress may be considered as the addition to the sum of accumulated

experience, tradition, and technical devices organized for social

efficiency. This is at once a definition of progress and of

civilization, in which civilization is the sum of social efficiencies

and progress consists of the units (additions) of which it is composed.

Defined in these terms, progress turns out to be a relative, local,

temporal, and secular phenomenon. It is possible, theoretically at

least, to compare one community with another with respect to their

relative efficiency and their relative progress in efficiency, just as

we can compare one institution with another in respect to its efficiency

and progress. It is even possible to measure the progress of humanity in

so far as humanity can be said to be organized for social action.

This is in fact the point of view which sociologists have adopted as

soon as progress ceased to be, for sociology, a matter of definition and

became a matter of observation and research. Score cards for

neighborhoods and for rural communities have already been devised.[347]

2. Indices of Progress

A few years ago, Walter F. Willcox, in an article "A Statistician's Idea

of Progress," sought to define certain indices of social progress which

would make it possible to measure progress statistically. "If progress

be merely a subjective term," he admitted, "statistics can throw no

light upon it because all such ends as happiness, or self-realization,

or social service are incapable of statistical measurement." Statistics

works with indices, characteristics which are accessible to measurement

but are "correlated with some deeper immeasurable characteristic." Mr.

Willcox took as his indices of progress:

1. Increase in population.

2. Length of life.

3. Uniformity in population.

4. Racial homogeneity.

5. Literacy.

6. Decrease of the divorce rate.

Certainly these indices, like uniformity, are mere temporary measures of

progress, since diversity in the population is not per se an evil. It

becomes so only when the diversities in the community are so great as

to endanger its solidarity. Applying his indices to the United States,

Mr. Willcox sums up the result as follows:

The net result is to indicate for the United States a rapid

increase of population and probable increase in length of life,

and increase in racial uniformity and perhaps in uniformity of

other sorts connected with immigration, and at the same time a

decrease in uniformity in the stability and social

serviceability of family life. Some of these indications look

towards progress, others look towards retrogression. As they

cannot be reduced to any common denominator, the statistical

method is unable to answer the question with which we

started.[348]

The securing of indices which will measure satisfactorily even such

social values as are generally accepted is difficult. The problem of

giving each index in the series a value or weight in proportion to the

value of all the others is still more difficult. This statement, at any

rate, illustrates the procedure and the method.

The whole subject of numerical indices for the measurement of

civilization and progress has recently been discussed in a little volume

by Alfredo Niceforo,[349] professor in the School of Criminal Law at

Rome. He proposes as indices of progress:

1. The increase in wealth and in the consumption of goods, and the

diminution of the mortality rate. These are evidences of material

progress.

2. The diffusion of culture, and "when it becomes possible to measure

it," the productivity of men of genius. This is the measure of

intellectual superiority.

3. Moral progress he would measure in terms of crime.

4. There remains the social and political organization, which he would

measure in terms of the increase and decrease of individual liberty.

In all these attempts to measure the progress of the community the

indices have invariably shown progression in some direction,

retrogression in others.

From the point of view of social research the problem of progress is

mainly one of getting devices that will measure all the different

factors of progress and of estimating the relative value of different

factors in the progress of the community.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. THE DEFINITION OF PROGRESS

(1) Dewey, John. "Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, XXVI

(1916), 311-22.

(2) Bury, J. B. _The Idea of Progress_. An inquiry into its origin and

growth. London, 1921.

(3) Bryce, James. "What is Progress?" _Atlantic Monthly_, C (1907),

145-56.

(4) Todd, A. J. _Theories of Social Progress_. A critical attempt to

formulate the conditions of human advance. New York, 1918.

(5) Woods, E. B. "Progress as a Sociological Concept," _American Journal

of Sociology_, XII (1906-7), 779-821.

(6) Cooley, Charles H. _The Social Process_. Chap, xxvii, "The Sphere of

Pecuniary Valuation," pp. 309-28. New York, 1918.

(7) Mackenzie, J. S. "The Idea of Progress," _International Journal of

Ethics_, IX (1899), 195-213.

(8) Bergson, H. _Creative Evolution_. New York, 1911.

(9) Frobenius, L. _Die Weltanschauung der Naturvölker_. Weimar, 1899.

(10) Inge, W. R. _The Idea of Progress_. The Romanes Lecture, 1920.

Oxford, 1920.

(11) Balfour, Arthur J. _Arthur James Balfour, as Philosopher and

Thinker_. A collection of the more important and interesting passages in

his non-political writings, speeches, and addresses, 1879-1912. Selected

and arranged by Wilfrid M. Short. "Progress," pp. 413-35. London and New

York, 1912.

(12) Carpenter, Edward. _Civilization, Its Cause and Cure_. And other

essays. New and enlarged ed. London and New York, 1917.

(13) Nordau, Max S. _The Interpretation of History_. Translated from the

German by M. A. Hamilton. Chap viii, "The Question of Progress." New

York, 1911.

(14) Sorel, Georges. _Les Illusions du progrès_. 2d ed. Paris, 1911.

(15) Allier, R. "Pessimisme et civilisation," _Revue Encyclopédique_, V

(1895), 70-73.

(16) Simmel, Georg. "Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual

Functions," _International Journal of Ethics_, III (1893), 490-507.

(17) Delvaille, Jules. _Essai sur histoire de l'idée de progrès jusq'à

la fin du 18ième siècle_. Paris, 1910.

(18) Sergi, G. "Qualche idea sul progresso umano," _Rivista italiana di

sociologia_, XVII (1893), 1-8.

(19) Barth, Paul. "Die Frage des sittlichen Fortschritts der

Menschheit," _Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_,

XXIII (1899), 75-116.

(20) Lankester, E. Ray. _Degeneration_. A chapter in Darwinism, and

parthenogenesis. Humboldt Library of Science. New York. 18--.

(21) Lloyd, A.H. "The Case of Purpose against Fate in History,"

_American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1911-12), 491-511.

(22) Case, Clarence M. "Religion and the Concept of Progress," _Journal

of Religion_, I (1921), 160-73.

(23) Reclus, E. "The Progress of Mankind," _Contemporary Review_, LXX

(1896), 761-83.

(24) Bushee, F. A. "Science and Social Progress," _Popular Science

Monthly_, LXXIX (1911), 236-51.

(25) Jankelevitch, S. "Du Rôle des idées dans l'évolution des sociétés,"

_Revue philosophique_, LXVI (1908), 256-80.

II. HISTORY, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND PROGRESS

(1) Condorcet, Marquis de. _History of the Progress of the Human Mind_.

London, 1795.

(2) Comte, Auguste. _The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte_.

(Translated from the French by Harriet Martineau) Book VI, chap, ii, vi.

2d ed. 2 vols. London, 1875-90.

(3) Caird, Edward. _The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte_. 2d ed.

Glasgow and New York, 1893.

(4) Buckle, Henry Thomas. _History of Civilization in England_. 2 vols.

From 2d London ed. New York, 1903.

(5) Condorcet, Marie J.A.C. _Esquisse d'un tableau historique des

progrès de l'esprit humain_. 2 vols in one. Paris, 1902.

(6) Harris, George. _Civilization Considered as a Science_. In relation

to its essence, its elements, and its end. London, 1861.

(7) Lamprecht, Karl. _Alte und neue Richtungen in der

Geschichtswissenschaft_. Berlin, 1896.

(8) ----. "Individualität, Idee und sozialpsychische Kraft in der

Geschichte," _Jahrbücher für National-Ökonomie und Statistik_, XIII

(1897), 880-900.

(9) Barth, Paul. _Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie_. Erster

Teil, "Einleitung und kritische Übersicht." Leipzig, 1897.

(10) Rickert, Heinrich. _Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen

Begriffsbildung_. Leipzig, 1902.

(11) Simmel, Georg. _Die Problems der Geschichtsphilosophie_. Eine

erkenntnistheoretische Studie. 2d ed. Leipzig, 1905.

(12) Mill, John Stuart. _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and

Inductive_. Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the

methods of scientific investigation. 8th ed. New York and London, 1900.

(13) Letelier, Valentin. _La Evoluçion de la historia_. 2d ed. 2 vols.

Santiago de Chile, 1900.

(14) Teggart, Frederick J. _The Processes of History._ New Haven, 1918.

(15) Znaniecki, Florian. _Cultural Reality._ Chicago, 1919.

(16) Hibben, J. G. "The Philosophical Aspects of Evolution,"

_Philosophical Review_, XIX (1910), 113-36.

(17) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics._ Or thoughts on the

application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance"

to political society. Chap. vi, "Verifiable Progress Politically

Considered," pp. 205-24. New York, 1906.

(18) Crawley, A. E. "The Unconscious Reason in Social Evolution,"

_Sociological Review_, VI (1913), 236-41.

(19) Froude, James A. "Essay on Progress," _Short Studies on Great

Subjects._ 2d Ser. II, 245-79, 4 vols. New York, 1888-91.

(20) Morley, John. "Some Thoughts on Progress," _Educational Review_,

XXIX (1905), 1-17.

III. EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS

(1) Spencer, Herbert. "Progress, Its Law and Cause," _Westminster

Review_, LXVII (1857), 445-85. [Reprinted in Everyman's edition of his

_Essays_, pp. 153-97. New York, 1866.]

(2) Federici, Romolo. _Les Lois du Progrès._ II, 32-35, 44, 127, 136,

146-47, 158 ff., 223, etc. 2 vols. Paris, 1888-91.

(3) Baldwin, James Mark. _Development and Evolution._ Including

psychophysical evolution, evolution by orthoplasy, and the theory of

genetic modes. New York, 1902.

(4) Adams, Brooks. _The Law of Civilization and Decay._ An essay on

history. New York and London, 1903.

(5) Kidd, Benjamin. _Principles of Western Civilization._ London, 1902.

(6) ----. _Social Evolution._ New ed. New York and London, 1896.

(7) Müller-Lyer, F. _Phasen der Kultur und Richtungslinien des

Fortschritts._ Soziologische Überblicke. München, 1908.

(8) McGee, W. J. "The Trend of Human Progress," _American

Anthropologist_, N. S., I (1899), 401-47.

(9) Carver, Thomas N. _Sociology and Social Progress._ A handbook for

students of sociology. Boston, 1905.

(10) Weber, L. _Le Rythme du progrès._ Étude sociologique. Paris, 1913.

(11) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental

Development._ Chap. xiv. "Social Progress," pp. 537-50. New York, 1906.

(12) Kropotkin, P. _Mutual Aid._ A factor of evolution. London, 1902.

(13) Wallace, Alfred R. _Social Environment and Moral Progress._ London

and New York, 1913.

(14) Freeman, R. Austin. _Social Decay and Regeneration._ With an

introduction by Havelock Ellis. Boston, 1921.

IV. EUGENICS AND PROGRESS

(1) Galton, Francis, and others. "Eugenics, Its Scope and Aims,"

_American Journal of Sociology_, X (1904-5), 1-25.

(2) Saleeby, Caleb W. _The Progress of Eugenics._ London, 1914.

(3) Ellis, Havelock. _The Problem of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911.

(4) Pearson, Karl. _National Life from the Standpoint of Science._ 2d

ed. London, 1905.

(5) Saleeby, Caleb W. _Methods of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911.

(6) Davenport, C. B. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics._ New York, 1911.

(7) Demoor, Massart, et Vandervelde. _L'Évolution régressive en biologie

et en sociologie._ Paris, 1897.

(8) Thomson, J. Arthur. "Eugenics and War," _Eugenics Review_, VII

(1915-16), 1-14.

(9) Southard, E. E. "Eugenics _vs._ Cacogenics," _Journal of Heredity_,

V (1914), 408-14.

(10) Conn, Herbert W. _Social Heredity and Social Evolution._ The other

side of eugenics. Cincinnati, 1914.

(11) Popenoe, Paul, and Johnson, R. H. _Applied Eugenics._ New York,

1918.

(12) Kelsey, Carl. "Influence of Heredity and Environment upon Race

Improvement," _Annals of the American Academy_, XXXIV (1909) 3-8.

(13) Ward, L. F. "Eugenics, Euthenics and Eudemics," _American Journal

of Sociology_, XVIII (1912-13), 737-54.

V. PROGRESS AND THE MORAL ORDER

(1) Harrison, Frederic. _Order and Progress._ London, 1875.

(2) Hobhouse, Leonard T. _Social Evolution and Political Theory._ Chaps,

i, ii, vii, pp. 1-39; 149-65. New York, 1911.

(3) ----. _Morals in Evolution._ A study in comparative ethics. 2 vols.

New York, 1906.

(4) Alexander, Samuel. _Moral Order and Progress._ An analysis of

ethical conceptions. 2d ed. London, 1891.

(5) Chapin, F. S. "Moral Progress," _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXXVI

(1915), 467-71.

(6) Keller, Albert G. _Societal Evolution._ New York, 1915.

(7) Dellepiane, A. "Le Progrès et sa formule. La lutte pour le progrès,"

_Revue Internationale de sociologie_, XX (1912), 1-30.

(8) Burgess, Ernest W. _The Function of Socialization in Social

Evolution._ Chicago, 1916.

(9) Ellwood, C. A. "The Educational Theory of Social Progress,"

_Scientific Monthly_, V (1917), 439-50.

(10) Bosanquet, Helen. "The Psychology of Social Progress,"

_International Journal of Ethics_, VII (1896-97), 265-81.

(11) Perry, Ralph Barton. _The Moral Economy_. Chap, iv, "The Moral Test

of Progress," pp. 123-70. New York, 1909.

(12) Patten, S. N. "Theories of Progress," _American Economic Review_,

II (1912), 61-68.

(13) Alexander, H. B. "The Belief in God and Immortality as Factors in

Race Progress." _Hibbert Journal_, IX (1910-11), 169-87.

VI. UTOPIAS

(1) Plato. _The Republic of Plato_. Translated into English by Benjamin

Jowett. 2 vols. Oxford, 1908.

(2) More, Thomas. _The "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More_. Ralph Robinson's

translation, with Roper's "Life of More" and some of his letters.

London, 1910.

(3) _Ideal Commonwealths_. Comprising More's "Utopia," Bacon's "New

Atlantis," Campanella's "City of the Sun," and Harrington's "Oceana,"

with introductions by Henry Morley. Rev. ed. New York, 1901.

(4) Kaufmann, Moritz. _Utopias, or Schemes of Social Improvement_. From

Sir Thomas More to Karl Marx. London, 1879.

(5) Bacon, Francis. _New Atlantis_. Oxford, 1915.

(6) Campanella, Tommaso. _La città di sole e aforasmi politici_.

Lanciana, Carabba, 19--.

(7) Andreä, Johann V. _Christianopolis_. An ideal state of the

seventeenth century. Translated from the Latin by T. E. Held. New York,

1916.

(8) Harrington, James. _The Oceana of James Harrington_. London, 1700.

(9) Mandeville, Bernard de. _Fable of the Bees_. Or private vices,

public benefits. Edinburgh, 1772. [First published in 1714.]

(10) Cabet, Étienne. _Voyage en Icarie_. 5th ed. Paris, 1848.

(11) Butler, Samuel. _Erewhon: or over the Range_. New York, 1917.

[First published in 1872.]

(12) ----. _Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later_. New York, 1901.

(13) Lytton, Edward Bulwer. _The Coming Race_. London, 1871.

(14) Bellamy, Edward. _Looking Backward, 2000-1887_. Boston, 1898.

(15) Morris, William. _News from Nowhere_. Or an epoch of rest, being

some chapters from a utopian romance. New York, 1910. [First published

in 1891.]

(16) Hertzka, Theodor. _Freeland_. A social anticipation. New York,

1891.

(17) Wells, H. G. _A Modern Utopia_. New York, 1905.

(18) ----. _New Worlds for Old_. New York, 1908.

VII. PROGRESS AND SOCIAL WELFARE

(1) Crozier, John B. _Civilization and Progress_. 3d ed., pp. 366-440.

London and New York, 1892.

(2) Obolensky, L. E. ["Self-Consciousness of Classes in Social

Progress"] _Voprosy filosofii i psichologuïi_, VII (1896), 521-51.

[Short review in _Revue philosophique_, XLIV (1897), 106.]

(3) Mallock, William H. _Aristocracy and Evolution_. A study of the

rights, the origin, and the social functions of the wealthier classes.

London, 1898.

(4) Tenney, E. P. _Contrasts in Social Progress_. New York, 1907.

(5) Hall, Arthur C. _Crime in Its Relations to Social Progress_. New

York, 1902.

(6) Hughes, Charles E. _Conditions of Progress in a Democratic

Government_. New Haven, 1910.

(7) Parmelee, Maurice. _Poverty and Social Progress_. Chaps. vi-vii. New

York, 1916.

(8) George, Henry. _Progress and Poverty_. Book X, chap. iii. New York,

1899.

(9) Nasmyth, George. _Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory_. New

York, 1916.

(10) Harris, George. _Inequality and Progress_. New York, 1897.

(11) Irving, L. "The Drama as a Factor in Social Progress," _Fortnightly

Review_, CII (1914), 268-74.

(12) Salt, Henry S. _Animal Rights Considered in Relation to Social

Progress_. New York, 1894.

(13) Delabarre, Frank A. "Civilisation and Its Effects on Morbidity and

Mortality," _Journal of Sociologic Medicine_, XIX (1918), 220-23.

(14) Knopf, S. A. "The Effects of Civilisation on the Morbidity and

Mortality of Tuberculosis," _Journal of Sociologic Medicine_, XX (1919),

5-15.

(15) Giddings, Franklin H. "The Ethics of Social Progress," in the

collection _Philanthropy and Social Progress_. Seven essays ...

delivered before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Mass., during

the session of 1892. With introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams. New

York and Boston, 1893.

(16) Morgan, Alexander. _Education and Social Progress_. Chaps. vi,

ix-xxi. London and New York, 1916.

(17) Butterfield, K. L. _Chapters in Rural Progress._ Chicago, 1908.

(18) Robertson, John M. _The Economics of Progress._ New York, 1918.

(19) Willcox, Walter F. "A Statistician's Idea of Progress,"

_International Journal of Ethics_, XXIII (1913), 275-98.

(20) Zueblin, Charles. _American Municipal Progress._ Rev. ed. New York,

1916.

(21) Niceforo, Alfredo. _Les Indices numérique de la civilisation et du

progrès_. Paris, 1921.

(22) Todd, A. J. _Theories of Social Progress._ Chap, vii, "The Criteria

of Progress," pp. 113-53. New York, 1918.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. The History of the Concept of Progress

2. Popular Notions of Progress

3. The Natural History of Progress: Evolution of Physical and Mental

Traits, Economic Progress, Moral Development, Intellectual Development,

Social Evolution

4. Stages of Progress: Determined by Type of Control over Nature, Type

of Social Organization, Type of Communication, etc.

5. Score Cards and Scales for Grading Communities and Neighborhoods

6. Progress as Wish-Fulfilment: an Analysis of Utopias

7. Criteria or Indices of Progress: Physical, Mental, Intellectual,

Economic, Moral, Social, etc.

8. Progress as an Incident of the Cosmic Process

9. Providence versus Progress

10. Happiness as the Goal of Progress

11. Progress as Social Change

12. Progress as Social Evolution

13. Progress as Social Control

14. Progress and the Science of Eugenics

15. Progress and Socialization

16. Control through Eugenics, Education, and Legislation

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do you understand by progress?

2. How do you explain the fact that the notion of progress originated?

3. What is the relation of change to progress?

4. What is Spencer's law of evolution? Is it an adequate generalization?

What is its value?

5. Why do we speak of "stages of progress"?

6. To what extent has progress been a result (a) of eugenics, (b) of

tradition?

7. What do you understand by progress as (a) a historical process, and

(b) increase in the content of civilization?

8. What is the relation of progress to happiness?

9. "We have confused rapidity of change with progress." Explain.

10. "Progress is not automatic." Elaborate your position with reference

to this statement.

11. What is the relation of prevision to progress?

12. Do you believe that mankind can control and determine progress?

13. "Our expectations of limitless progress cannot depend upon the

deliberate action of national governments." Contrast this statement of

Balfour with the statement of Dewey.

14. "A community founded on argument would dissolve into its constituent

elements." Discuss this statement.

15. What is Galton's conception of progress?

16. What would you say to the possibility or the impossibility of the

suggestion of eugenics becoming a religious dogma as suggested by

Galton?

17. What is the relation, as conceived by the eugenists, as between germ

plasm and culture?

18. Is progress dependent upon change in human nature?

19. How are certain persistent traits of human nature related to

progress?

20. What is meant by the statement that progress is in the mores?

21. What are the different types of progress analyzed by Bryce? Has

advance in each of them been uniform in the last one thousand years?

22. Does war make for or against progress?

23. What is the relation of freedom to progress?

24. What place has the myth in progress?

25. To what extent is progress as a process of realizing values a matter

of temperament, of optimism, and of pessimism?

FOOTNOTES:

[322] Robert Flint, _The Philosophy of History in Europe_, I, 29-30.

(London, 1874.)

[323] W. R. Inge, _Outspoken Essays_, i, "Our Present Discontents," p.

2. (London, 1919.)

[324] Charles Booth, _Labour and Life of the People_, I, 154-55, 598. 2d

ed. (London, 1889.)

[325] Charles Cooley, _The Social Process_, p. 284. (New York, 1918.)

[326] Charles Zueblin, _American Municipal Progress_, pp. xi-xii. New

and rev. ed. (New York, 1916.)

[327] R. Austin Freeman, _Social Decay and Regeneration_. With an

introduction by Havelock Ellis. Pp. 16-17. (Boston, 1921.)

[328] J. B. Bury, _The Idea of Progress._ An inquiry into its origin and

growth, p. 1. (London, 1921.)

[329] W. R. Inge, _The Idea of Progress_, p. 9. The Romanes Lecture,

1920. (Oxford, 1920.)

[330] Author of _The Passing of a Great Race, or the Racial Basis of

European History_. (New York, 1916.)

[331] See Stoddard Lothrop, _The Rising Tide of Color against White

World-Supremacy_ (New York, 1920); and William McDougall, _Is America

Safe for Democracy?_ (New York, 1921.)

[332] Thomas H. Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics and Other Lectures_,

Lecture ii, pp. 46-116. (New York, 1894.)

[333] Adapted from F. S. Marvin, _Progress and History_, pp. 8-10.

(Oxford University Press, 1916.

[334] Adapted from Herbert Spencer, _Essays_, I, 8-10. (D. Appleton &

Co., 1899.)

[335] Adapted from Auguste Comte, _Positive Philosophy_, II, 124.

(Trübner & Co., 1875.)

[336] Adapted from Leonard T. Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political

Theory_, pp. 29-39. (The Columbia University Press, 1911.)

[337] From Lester F. Ward, _Dynamic Sociology_, II, 174-77. (D. Appleton

& Co., 1893.)

[338] Adapted from John Dewey, "Progress," in the _International Journal

of Ethics_, XXVI (1916), 312-18.

[339] From _The Mind of Arthur James Balfour_, by Wilfrid M. Short, pp.

293-97. (Copyright 1918, George H. Doran Company, publishers.)

[340] From Francis Galton, "Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims,"

in the _American Journal of Sociology_, X (1904-5), 1-6.

[341] Adapted from G. Santayana, _Winds of Doctrine_, pp. 6-8. (Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1913.)

[342] Adapted from W. G. Sumner, "The Mores of the Present and the

Future," in the _Yale Review_, XVIII (1909-10), 235-36. (Quoted by

special permission of the _Yale Review_.)

[343] Adapted from James Bryce, "War and Human Progress," in

_International Conciliation_, CVIII (November, 1916), 13-27.

[344] From Henri Bergson, _Creative Evolution_, translated by Arthur

Mitchell, pp. 253-71. (Henry Holt & Co., 1913.)

[345] From Arthur Schopenhauer, _The World as Will and Idea_, III,

107-18. (Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1909.)

[346] Scientific optimism was no doubt rampant before Darwin. For

example, Herschel says: "Man's progress towards a higher state need

never fear a check, but must continue till the very last existence of

history." But Herbert Spencer asserts the perfectibility of man with an

assurance which makes us gasp. "Progress is not an accident, but a

necessity. What we call evil and immorality must disappear. It is

certain that man must become perfect." "The ultimate development of the

ideal man is certain--as certain as any conclusion in which we place the

most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die." "Always

towards perfection is the mighty movement--towards a complete

development and a more unmixed good."--W. R. Inge, _The Idea of

Progress_, p. 9. (Oxford, 1920.)

[347] "Scale for Grading Neighborhood Conditions," _Publications of the

Whittier State School, Research Bulletin, No. 5_, Whittier, Cal., May,

1917. "Guide to the Grading of Neighborhoods," _Publications of the

Whittier State School, Research Bulletin, No. 8_, Whittier, Cal., April,

1918. Dwight Sanderson, "Scale for Grading Social Conditions in Rural

Communities," _New York State Agricultural College Bulletin_ [in press],

Ithaca, N.Y., 1921.

[348] "A Statistician's Idea of Progress," _International Journal of

Ethics_, XVIII (1913), 296.

[349] _Les indices numériques de la civilisation et du progrès_. (Paris,

1921.)

INDEX OF NAMES

[Page numbers in italics refer to selections or short extracts.]

Abbott, Edith, 223, 569.

Abbott, Grace, 780.

Abraham, Karl, 857.

Abrahams, I., 943.

Abrikossof, N. A., 649.

Achelis, T., 937.

Adams, Brewster, 643, 656.

Adams, Brooks, 950, 1006.

Adams, Charles C., 218, 554.

Adams, Charles F., _760_.

Adams, Franklin P., _834_.

Adams, Henry, _5_, 14, _15_, 563.

Addams, Jane, 329, 331, 335.

Addison, Joseph, 66.

Adler, Alfred, 144, 150, 497, 501, 638, 645, 646.

Adler, H. M., 936.

Alexander, H. B., 1008.

Alexander, Samuel, 1007.

Alexander the Great, 987.

Alfred [_pseud._], _see_ Kydd, Samuel.

Alher, R., 1004.

Ambrosio, M. A. d', 566.

Ames, Edward S., 426.

Amiel, H., 151.

Ammon, Dr. O., 535.

Amsden, G. S., 152.

Anderson, Wilbert L., 334.

Andreä, Johann V., 1008.

Andrews, Alexander, 860.

Andrews, John B., 942.

Anthony, Katharine S., 151, 942.

Anthony, Susan B., 949.

Antin, Mary, 774, 782, 783.

Antony, Marc, 386.

Archer, T. A., 941.

Arcoleo, G., 649.

Aria, E., 948.

Aristotle, 11, 29, 30, 32, 61, 140, 144, 156, 223, 231, 261, 373, 640, 1000.

Aronovici, Carol, 218, 782.

Atkinson, Charles M., 949.

Aubry, P., 937, 938.

Audoux, Marguerite, 151.

Auerbach, Bertrand, 275, 660, 778.

Augustinus, Aurelius (Saint Augustine), 122, 144, 150.

Austin, George L., 949.

Austin, John, 106.

Austin, Mary, _881-83_.

Avebury, _Lord_, 649.

Bab, Julius, 731.

Babbitt, Eugene H., 275, _754-56_.

Babinski, J. F., 648.

Bachofen, J. J., 214, 220.

Bacon, Lord Francis, 66, _233-34_, 1008.

Baden-Powell, H., 219.

Baer, Karl Ernst von, 967.

Bagehot, Walter, 423, 429, _495-96_, 563, 564, 646.

Bailey, Thomas P., 652, 728.

Bailey, W. F., 778.

Bailie, William, 565.

Bakeless, John, 648.

Baker, Ray Stannard, 643, 651, 658, 936.

Balch, Emily G., 781.

Baldwin, J. Mark, 41, 85, 149, 150, 390, 423, 425, 429, 646, 663, 719, 725,

775, 1006.

Balfour, Arthur James, 964, _977-79_, 1004.

Ballagh, James C., 728.

Bancroft, H. H., 942.

Bang, J. P., 650.

Barbellion, W. N. P. [_pseud._], _see_ Cummings, B. F.

Barclay, Robert, 944.

Baring Gould, S., 274.

Barnes, Harry E., 659.

Barr, Martin W., 935.

Barrère, Albert, 428.

Barrow, _Sir_ John, 275.

Barrows, Samuel J., 781.

Barth, Paul, _4_, 211, 1004, 1005.

Bartlett, David W., 949.

Bastian, A., 673, 787.

Bastiat, Frederic, _505-6_, _552-53_, 563, 573.

Bates, Jean V., 778.

Bauer, Arthur, 729.

Bauer, Otto, 777.

Bax, Ernest B., 944.

Beard, Charles A., 498, 658.

Beaulieu, P. Leroy, _see_ Leroy-Beaulieu, P.

Bechterew, W. v, _123-25_, 150, 157, 345, _408-12_, _415-20_,

424, 430, 433, 434, 494, 501.

Beck, von, 179.

Beddoe, _Dr._ John, 536.

Beecher, Franklin A., 940.

Beer, M., 566.

Beers, C. W., 152.

Beethoven, Ludwig von, 228.

Begbie, Harold, 727, 942.

Behn, 366.

Belisle, A., 946.

Bell, Alexander G., 276.

Bell, Sir Charles, 421.

Bellamy, Edward, 1008.

Bellet, Daniel, 947.

Bennett, Arnold, 216.

Bentham, Jeremy, 106, 500, 940, 949.

Bentley, A. F., _458-61_, 501, 503.

Bergson, Henri, 373, 374, 422, 426, 964, _989-94_, 1004.

Bernard, Luther L., 854.

Bernhard, L., 275, 770, 946.

Bernheim, A., 430.

Bertillon, Jacques, 265.

Besant, Annie, 120, 121, 559, 949.

Besant, Walter, 335.

Best, Harry, 276, 567.

Bevan, Edwyn R., 659.

Beveridge, W. H., 567.

Bhattacharya, Jogendra N., 728.

Bigg, Ada H., 948.

Binet, Alfred, _113-17_, 145, 150, 154, 424, 430, 496.

Bing, Alexander M., 652.

Bismarck, 238, 239, 789.

Blackmar, F. W., 499, 779.

Blair, R. H., 362, 366.

Blanchard, Phyllis, 646.

Bloch, Iwan, 221, 333.

Blondel, H., 729.

Blowitz, Henri de, 859.

Blumenbach, J. F., 243.

Bluntschli, Johann K., 658, 858.

Blyden, Edward W., 651.

Boas, Franz, 19, 154, 332, 660, 725, 730, 770, 777, 938.

Bodenhafer, Walter B., 48.

Böhme Margarete, 650.

Bohannon, E. W., 273.

Bois, Henri, 943.

Bonger, W. A., 562, 569.

Bonnaterre, J. P., 277.

Boodin, J. E., 425.

Booth, Charles, 44, _45_, 59, 212, 219, 335, 955.

Booth, William, 942.

Borght, R. van der, 427.

Bosanquet, Helen, 215, 222, 1008.

Bossuet, J. B., 906.

Botsford, George W., 940.

Bouglé, C., 728, 729.

Bourde, Paul, 654.

Bourgoing, P. de, 275, 945.

Bourne, _Rev._ Ansel, 472, 473.

Bourne, H. R. Fox, 564, 859.

Boutmy, Émile, 940.

Boutroux, Pierre 650.

Bradford, Gamaliel, Jr., 731.

Bradlaugh, Charles, 559.

Bradley, F. H., 106.

Bradley, Henry, 941.

Braid, James, 424.

Brailsford, H. N., 651.

Braithwaite, W. C., 944.

Brancoff, D. M., 946.

Brandenburg, Broughton, 780.

Brandes, Georg, 141, 498, 778.

Braubach, Prof., 810.

Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., 222, 223, 569, 782.

Brehm, A. E., 810.

Brent, Charles H., 855.

Brentano, Lujo, 500, 658.

Breuer, J., 838.

Bridges, 368.

Bridges, Horace, 782.

Bridgman, Laura, 244, 366.

Bright, John, 447.

Brill, A. A., 273.

Brinton, Daniel G., _666_, _671-74_, 725, 857.

Brissenden, Paul Frederick, 566, 658.

Bristol, Lucius M., 718, 725.

Bronner, Augusta F., 152.

Brönner, W., 941.

Brooks, John Graham, 566, 658, 925, 935.

Browne, Crichton, 366.

Browne, Sir Thomas, 65, _128_.

Bruhl, S. Levy, _see_ Levy Bruhl, S.

Brunhes, Jean, 270, 274.

Bryan, William J., 734.

Bryce, James, 650, 652, 658, 726, 759, 779, 851, 852 n., 858, 861, 941,

_984-89_, 1004.

Brynmor-Jones, David, 149, 945.

Buchanan, J. R., 731.

Buck, Carl D., 660.

Buck, S. J., 942.

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 270, 493, 498, 912, 1005.

Bücher, Karl, _385-89_, 427, _529-33_, 728.

Bunyan, John, 122.

Burckhard, M., 941.

Burgess, Dr., 366, 367, 368.

Burgess, Ernest W., 426, 1007.

Burgess, John, 741.

Burgess, Thomas, 781.

Burke, Edmund, 449, 850.

Burnell, A. C., 276.

Burns, Allen T., 59, 335, 498, _773_, 782.

Burns, J., 943.

Burr, Anna R., 727.

Bury, J. B., 333, _958-59_, 1004.

Busch, 414.

Bushee, F. A., 1005.

Bussell, F. W., 904.

Buswell, Leslie, 649.

Butler, Joseph, 429.

Butler, Ralph, 660.

Butler, Samuel, 1008.

Butterfield, K. L., 1010.

Cabet, Étienne, 1008.

Cabrol, F., 939.

Cadière, L., 937.

Caelius, 386.

Caesar, 144, 238, 386, 387.

Cahan, Abraham, 335, 782.

Caird, Edward, 1005.

Cairnes, J. E., _546_, _547_, _548_.

Calhoun, Arthur W., 215, 222, 726.

Cambarieu, J., 938.

Campanella, Tommaso, 1008.

Campbell, John C., 275, 654.

Campeano, M., 941.

Canat, René, 273.

Cannon, Walter B., 422, 426.

Cardan, Jerome, 144.

Carlton, Frank T., 657.

Carlyle, Thomas, 494.

Carnegie, Andrew, 670.

Carpenter, Edward, 1004.

Carter, George R., 564.

Cartwright, Peter, 944.

Carver, Thomas N., 1006.

Case, Clarence M., 1005.

Case, S. J., 857.

Castle, W. E., _128-33_, 147.

Caxton, William, 237.

Cellini, Benvenuto, 151.

Chabaneix, Paul, 855.

Chapin, F. Stuart, 59, 1007.

Chapin, Robert C., 215, 222.

Chapman, 298.

Charcot, J. M., 144, 415, 424.

Charlemagne, 238.

Cherrington, Ernest H., 942.

Chevillon, Andre, 650.

Chevreul, M. E., 462.

Cheysson, E., 729.

Chirol, Valentine, 936.

Chrestus, 386.

Christensen, A., 940.

Churchill, William, 275, 428.

Cicero, 386, 387.

Ciszewski, S., 775.

Claghorn, Kate H., 782.

Clarendon, Earl of, 65.

Clark, H., 940.

Clark, John B., _544-50_.

Clark, Thomas A., 731.

Claudius, Emperor, 752.

Clayton, H. H., 947.

Clayton, Joseph, 855.

Clemens, Samuel L., (Mark Twain, _pseud._), 152.

Clements, Frederic E., 217, _526-28_, 554, 571.

Clerget, Pierre, 948.

Cleveland, Catharine C., 944.

Clibborne, 543.

Clodd, Edward, 857.

Clough, H. W., 947.

Cobb, Irvin, _735_.

Cobden, Richard, 447, 949.

Coblenz, Felix, 150.

Codrington, R. H., 857.

Coe, George Albert, _235-37_, 726.