THE TESTS OF DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS
“The fundamental reform for which the times call is rather a
reconsideration of the ends for which all civilised government
exists, in a word, the return to a saner measure of social
values.”—LORD MORLEY.
THE next stage in the realisation of the democratic ideal would appear
to be tolerably clear. We are moving toward an extension of the
democratic principle into the economic and industrial sphere; but is the
movement governed by an understanding of the goal we have in view? Are
we sure that our immediate policies are consistent with the “far gain”
which we should seek? Or are we to regard progress purely as a somewhat
blind experimental affair, largely beyond control? We are obviously
moving—somewhere; the movement indeed promises to be an improvement. But
are there any tests which can be applied to it in order that we may
satisfy ourselves that the course we are on will land us safely in port?
I
Mr. Thorstein Veblen has rendered an important service to this
generation by showing how the technology of the machine industry has
invaded our minds and led us to an almost exclusive pre-occupation with
_processes_. It is this intellectual bias which explains—at least in
great part—our complete capitulation to the Darwinian hypothesis and
accounts for the way in which we have pressed it out of its proper
sphere to furnish clues in religion, history, and ethics—regions in
which there are factors to be considered which are not included among
the data of the doctrine of biological evolution. Here also is the
explanation of the wide acceptance of the pragmatist philosophy.
Pragmatism is indeed the characteristic philosophy of the machine-age;
its postulate “that truth is what works” is clearly derived from the
engine-shop, where efficiency is the only rule. Generally it may also be
said that it is this mechanistic attention to processes which accounts
for the importance and omnicompetency ascribed to the still juvenile
science of psychology; and this is particularly true of the application
of psychology and psychological method to the problems of sociology.
Psychology is the fruit of the application of the scientific method to
mental processes; its subject matter consists of the observable
phenomena of mind. Its application to sociology has produced an almost
exclusive concentration on social functions; and while this has
important uses, it does not furnish us with the clue we need to our
sociological tasks. Mental functions, whether of the individual or of
society, cannot be treated in the same way as chemical reactions.
Chemical reactions are predetermined and invariable; human functions are
dirigible. Those functions which ultimately govern and sustain human
activity and determine human character are directed to more or less
sharply recognised and chosen ends. It is indeed true that many of the
processes which are concerned in the movement of life are, as Mr. Cooley
has pointed out, unconscious and seemingly impersonal, such as those
which account for the growth of tradition and the variations of
language. Nevertheless, as Mr. Cooley himself very excellently shows in
his illustration of the growth of a book in its author’s mind, even
these unconscious and involuntary processes fall into line with a
definitely fixed purpose of the mind.[6] The problem of sound social
integration is not merely an affair of processes operating properly. For
human powers may function, at least for a time, in a normal way even
while they are being directed to mischievous and perverse ends. Modern
Germany supplies an instance of unexampled attention to social
processes; but it is not open to question that all this has been
directed to a perverse and immoral end, and has (as the event has shown)
culminated in catastrophe and confusion. Just so a man’s intellect may
operate brilliantly; yet the man himself may be a thief. Psychology may
claim that its business is a disinterested study of processes; and the
claim is justly made. But the same claim cannot be made for sociology.
The sociologist may indeed claim that he too is a scientist; and that
his science like every other is empirical and not teleological. But the
two claims are not parallel. Psychology deals with an _opus operatum_,
the actual concrete mind as it is; whereas the assumption which
underlies all sociology is that it is handling an _opus operandum_, a
work still to be done, the production of a living and wholesome society.
The teleological interest is necessarily supreme. This does not mean
that sociology has not its empirical aspects; of course, it has; and
these aspects are all important for the construction of a sound
sociology. But we shall produce a mere torso of sociology if we suppose
we can ignore the problem of ends. The relation of psychology to
sociology is of much the same character as its relation to education or
the relation of physiology to public health.
Footnote 6:
Charles Horton Cooley, _Social Process_, p. 16.
It is probable, moreover, that the obscuration of this question of ends
has been helped by the modern acceptance of the doctrine of progress.
This in its turn appears to be mainly due to the application of the
principle of evolution to human affairs. We have supposed that because
living nature shows a process of development, the life of man is also
necessarily governed by a law of predestined progress, from worse to
better, from the simple to the more complex. The result of this
evolutionary view of human affairs has been to make the study of ends
appear impertinent. The ends are already determined; why then trouble
ourselves about them? It is true that we do not know whither this _vis a
tergo_ is propelling us; the only thing we can do, therefore, is to
study the processes by which it works as we see them in operation in
men’s minds, whether the single or the mass mind. We shall observe them,
duly record them, and contemplate them in a spirit of detachment,
without concerning ourselves overmuch with their destination. But it is
now too late in the day to suppose that this attitude can be seriously
maintained. The area of the margin of human freedom may be a subject of
controversy; but it is impossible to take seriously the kind of
determinism which denies the possibility of directing human action to
deliberately chosen ends. The actual range of our control over our
actions may be limited; but within those limits it is very real. And in
any case it does not require to be very much to make the evolution
hypothesis of very doubtful validity as an interpretation of the whole
life of man.[7]
Footnote 7:
For a concise statement of the philosophical argument against a
doctrine of progress based upon biological evolution, see Bertrand
Russell, _Mysticism and Logic_, pp. 105, 106.
Sociology must concern itself with ends; and it must do so at its own
beginnings. If this means that it has to forfeit its claim to a strictly
scientific status, so be it. There is no virtue in replying that the
question of ends is an affair of speculation and hypothesis. That is
indeed true; but it cannot be helped. We are compelled to speculate
concerning ends since there is no other way of reaching a conception of
them. And there is no harm in speculation so long as it starts from the
soundest available premises, and its conclusions are not hardened into
dogma. Sociology will hardly rise above an academic futility until it
abandons its obsession to rank as a pure science and makes bold to
define however tentatively the goal toward which social processes should
be directed. Let it by all means make its surveys and collate its
statistics unremittingly; but these things it ought to do and not to
leave the other undone.
II
Yet it becomes plain, immediately we begin to discuss this question of
ends, that if we exclude definitely religious considerations from the
argument, we cannot indicate an end that has the character of a real
end, that is, an absolute ultimacy. It is indeed questionable how far
even the religious postulate directly provides the conception of an end,
except to the comparatively small company of people who are strongly
mystical by nature. The Shorter Catechism taught us that the chief end
of man was to seek God and to glorify Him for ever, but to most of us
this brings not information but bewilderment; and Mr. Kipling’s paradise
where the painter “draws the thing as he sees it for the God of things
as they are” is attractive but elusive. The truth appears to be that for
the multitude of religiously disposed persons, the sense of God becomes
effectual for conduct only as it dramatises itself in the form of a
social vision or a personal relationship; and the ascendency of Jesus in
the Christian tradition is explained by the power He has possessed of
inviting that unreserved personal loyalty through which the sense of God
assumes reality for common men. Such a phrase as “the glory of God”
describes not our knowledge but our ignorance. All the content which can
intelligibly be given to it is that there is an ideal end toward which
we are called to move. This, however, does not mean that it is barren of
immediate effect on conduct. We know that throughout history it has had
the power to evoke a supreme disinterestedness in people who have been
sensitive to it. It is, of course, akin to what Mr. Benjamin Kidd calls
“the emotion of the ideal;” and it is related closely to the
characteristic poetic anticipation and hope expressed in such passages
as Tennyson’s in which he speaks of the “one far-off divine event to
which the whole creation moves.”
But disinterestedness and “the emotion of the ideal,” while they are
essential to any kind of healthy social existence afford but slender
foundation for a positive social policy. No moral attitude or emotion
will carry us far except it be evoked by an ideal which can dramatise
itself in terms of a more or less achievable undertaking. We are
therefore compelled to relinquish the hope of a definition of absolute
social ends, and must be content with something more modest and
manageable. We may at least attempt to indicate certain proximate social
aims. Even if we cannot hopefully describe the ultimate goal of life, we
may reasonably endeavour to answer the question—What do we want our
social organisation to produce? Just what results are we to aim at? That
some such discussion as this is involved in any fruitful handling of the
question of social integration is clear from the fact that the
conception of an aim is either implicit or explicit in all attempts to
formulate a social polity ever since Aristotle defined the aim of the
Republic as the promotion of the good life. But this definition, like
Mill’s “greatest good of the greatest number” raises further
questions—What is the nature of the good? What is the characteristic
note and quality of the good life? This indeed takes us to the very
centre of our problem; for at last the controversy between the
militarist and the pacifist, the protectionist and the free-trader, the
authoritarian and the libertarian, springs from differing conceptions of
the good life. This is not to say that either party has worked out a
reasoned conviction on the point. Both appear to start from certain
instinctive acceptances, determined largely by temperamental
variations,—which points to the need of a rigorously rationalistic
exploration of this entire region. Mr. Graham Wallace speaks of “the
organisation of happiness”; but as he himself perceives, he is speaking
in paradox. It seems in any case improbable that our social aims can be
defined in terms of an emotional state.
III
A good deal of confusion has been introduced into this subject by a
tendency to regard society itself as an end. In much modern thought upon
the matter, the individual is conceived as attaining his own end through
his due contribution to the life of the group. The extreme development
of this view is to be found in the German doctrine of the state, a
doctrine which prevails in more or less perfection wherever the Hegelian
philosophy has struck its roots.[8] On this view, the individual has
neither function nor end which is not to be expressed in terms of his
own personal subordination to the state. He is a cog in the wheel, and
no more. The modern dogma of progress has reinforced this view to some
extent; as has also the obsession of _size_, which is one of the
by-products of our extended knowledge of the physical universe and which
has had the effect of minimising the significance of the single life.
But whatever the causes to which this view is attributable, its
influence on sociological thought is beyond question. It has been
assumed, with varying explicitness, that the supra-personal end which
the individual is to serve is to be identified with the social group to
which he belongs. It is his appointed purpose to minister to the
happiness of the group or to increase its efficiency as a military or
economic unit.
Footnote 8:
The devout Hegelian who dislikes the Prussian doctrine of the state is
nowadays at some pains to explain that Hegel’s view of the state does
not cohere quite congruously with the rest of his philosophy.
(_a_) It may be urged against this view that the antithesis which it
implies between the individual and the group is fallacious. For the
group is composed of individuals and it cannot have a conscious end
except in the minds of the individuals who compose it. There is a degree
of truth in speaking of the “personality” of a group so long as the
analogy is not pressed too far. A group may have a common thought and
may unite in a collective act; but to say that a group has a definite
“personality” of its own is to carry the process of abstraction too far.
A group attains to consciousness only in the several minds of its
members. Moreover social ends must take shape in individual lives. That
the individual should serve a social end is true; it is equally true
that the social aim must be achieved in the character and experience of
individuals. For if they are not realised in persons, where shall they
be realised? If our ultimate social aims do not become effective in the
single life, they remain mere abstractions, existing only in a
speculative thought and never reaching the point of actuality. But it
serves us as little to insist on the converse of this view and to assert
that the end of society is the individual. The truth would rather appear
to be that the individual is to reach his own end in and through a
society which it is his first business to create. Personal
self-realisation and social integration will proceed _pari passu_. The
individual and the group will find themselves in each other; the great
soul and the great society will arrive together. But from the nature of
the case, we must seek the clue to the character of right social aims
through a study of personality, and of what is involved in its
self-realisation.
(_b_) A further objection to this view is that it subordinates
personality to aims that are limited and sectional. In practice it may
make good Germans, but almost certainly it cannot make good men. While
it is better for a man to serve the narrowest social group than to serve
his self-regard, yet the exclusiveness of the social group as it is
identified with the state or the nation is hostile to that increasing
social integration which is implied in a self-consistent sociology. The
current conceptions of the state and the nation must undergo some
revision if they are to be made congruous with a fruitful social polity.
The nation represents a stage in the social education of the race, in
that discipline whereby the caveman grows into a citizenship of the
world; and in no sense can the nation be ethically regarded as
constituting an adequate end for the individual, except as the nation in
its turn is consciously seeking its own end in the service of the whole.
It is true that men have in the past generally regarded the glory and
the power of their particular group as an end which has the right to
command their absolute devotion, and have believed that to suffer death
in such a cause is the highest conceivable self-realisation. This does
indeed represent a much higher ethical plane than that on which a man
fights only for his own hand or the tiny circle of his blood kindred.
But the fact that this loyalty to his group has had the power to evoke
the highest possible sacrifice, does not prove that the glory and the
power of the group provides a full and valid end for him as a man. In
his character as German or Englishman, it may appear to provide him with
an end to which he may properly submit himself without reserve; but it
is questionable whether he can do so without some sacrifice of his
possibilities and obligations as a man. The propaganda of Germanism
produced very efficient and docile Germans; but the records of the war
leave us little room to doubt that the process has had a mischievous
effect upon their manhood. From the standpoint of an expanding society
polity, education should produce individuals who are human before they
are national. There is no system of national education which achieves
this result; but the ultimate logic of the prevailing educational
tradition as we see it in the German conduct of the war should provoke
serious misgivings and minister to a change of heart in those persons
who direct the policies of public education.
(_c_) It is worth observing in this connection that even in Germany the
Germanic propaganda had to trick itself out in a pseudo-universal
jargon. It had to say large-sounding things about a _Kultur-mission_ to
the world in order to validate itself in the eyes of the German people.
The claim implied in the _Kultur-mission_ as it was commonly expounded
is so preposterous as to be self-refuting to a normal mind; but this
systematic diffusion of the idea proves that man has reached a point
where the power and wealth of a particular group is no longer able by
itself to evoke an effectual response in the individuals who compose the
group. The fact is that civilised mankind is slowly learning to think in
universal terms. Its social grasp is already faintly embracing the whole
world.
This circumstance tends to simplify the sociologist’s task very
materially. While the application of the polity which he evolves will
require to take account of the peculiar traditions and institutions of
different groups, he will be free to work out his polity in terms which
are independent of the present exclusive and conflicting aims of the
groups which compose the world of man. He will state the ultimate
problems of society in Germany in the same terms as he will state those
in America; for he will necessarily be dealing with the one factor which
is common to both. There cannot be a distinctive social science in
Germany and another in America, differing from one another in essentials
and both at the same time being true. There will be endless variety in
the methods by which social principles are applied by different groups;
for we cannot write off the past of a people and the institutions in
which its history is embodied. Yet there can be no true sociology in
England or in Germany unless its postulates are equally valid in
America. In other words these postulates must be drawn from a
disinterested study of personality. They will not concern themselves
with the welfare of a particular group, in whatever terms that welfare
may be defined. But they will be concerned with the good of the world of
groups because they are derived from the one fact which is common to and
underlies them all, and which, despite conflicting aims still binds
human groups together in a permanent unity, namely, personality.
IV
The aims of our social polity must, therefore, be defined congruously
with the nature of personality; and the corresponding social processes
must validate themselves by bringing to those whom they affect, the
sense of movement towards a real and recognisable personal good. It does
not require that all the individuals composing a society should organise
their common life with the conscious and deliberate aim of personal
self-realisation; but it is certain that the processes of a genuine
social integration will be accompanied by a certain growing emotional
satisfaction in the persons concerned. It is generally assumed that this
emotional satisfaction is to be described as _happiness_; but it is
probably something deeper and more organic than the state which this
word connotes. Professor Dewey says that “to find out what one is fitted
to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key of
happiness.”[9] This is, of course, true so far as it goes; but it is
symptomatic of the inadequate analysis which this point generally
receives. Obviously there are possibilities of self-realisation and
personal satisfaction far beyond the attainment which Professor Dewey
indicates in this sentence. We might, perhaps, find a better definition
of the emotional state which we should require our process of social
development to produce, in the New Testament use of the word _joy_.
There the word is clearly associated with an emotional state consequent
upon a sense of accomplishment or discovery. The golfer experiences it
for a passing moment after a completely successful drive from the tee.
The artist knows it more durably as he puts the finishing touch to what
he believes to be his masterpiece. Gibbon had it (not without a large
tincture of self-admiration) on the memorable evening on which he
finished the “Decline and Fall.” It is the condition which is described
by the word “fruition;”[10] the inward reaction evoked by the sense of
arrival, of fulfilment, and of course—derivatively—of being surely on
the way. It comes to a man when he knows he is on the road to personal
completeness.
Footnote 9:
_Democracy and Education_, p. 360.
Footnote 10:
This word is so frequently mishandled that it is perhaps necessary to
point out that it does not mean _bearing fruit._ It is derived from
the Latin word _fruor_, _I enjoy_; and it describes an inward state.
Illustrative of the New Testament use of the word _joy_, the following
passages may be cited: John ii. 30, “_This my joy is made full_”
(spoken by John Baptist on hearing that Jesus was launched on the full
tide of His ministry.) John xvi. 21, “... when she is delivered of the
child, she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born
unto the world.” Matt. xiii. 14, “In his joy, he goeth and selleth all
that he hath” (the merchant man who has found the pearl of great
price). Luke xv. 9, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that
was lost.”
It is upon the question of what constitutes personal completeness that
we have to reach some kind of conclusion if our sociological thinking is
to be fruitful and if we are to have the proper tests to apply to our
social programmes. Obviously the society we want to produce is one which
will provide the conditions under which every man may rise to the full
stature of his manhood. But what is the full-grown man? Apparently the
only person in the modern world who has possessed a definite and vivid
conception of the full-grown man is Nietzsche. But Nietzsche’s doctrine
is ruled out by our democratic hypothesis. He has told us that mankind
falls into two broad classes of master and slave, and though he
recognises a considerable hierarchy of social grades, he sees,
nevertheless, at the one end the ruling class, and at the other “the
class of man who thrives best when he is looked after and closely
observed, the man who is happy to serve not because he must, but because
he is what he is, the man uncorrupted by political and religious lies
concerning liberty, equality and fraternity, who is half conscious of
the abyss which separates him from his superiors, and who is happiest
when he is performing those acts which are not beyond his
limitations.”[11] Obviously the only kind of society possible on the
Nietzschean terms is an armed peace between supermen and “slave
morality” for the rest. The will to power soon or late issues in
anarchy. The strength of the position of Nietzsche lies in the theoretic
justification it provides for the native human bias which leads to the
quest of personal ascendency, and the struggle for possession. The
result of this tendency has been the constant subordination and
exploitation of the weak by the strong, and a ceaseless scrimmage among
the strong in which the weak are the pawns; and if this struggle has not
brought about the Nietzschean equilibrium, it is due, presumably, to the
enervating influence of Christianity. Yet, here, in this self-regarding
bias we have the original source of all our social chaos; but the
disorder is not to be overcome by inhibiting this impulse. It is
sometimes supposed that human nature is incurably and permanently
self-regarding and anarchic; but this is not true. It is indeed true
that human nature does take easily to the practice of self-assertion as
against others; this is the penalty of our inheritance from the “ape and
the tiger.” But it is mere folly to suppose that man has to carry this
sorrowful entail in perpetuity. It is fastened on him largely by reason
of the external circumstances of his life, a vicious social heredity
which has put a premium upon power and pushfulness, and an atmosphere of
competition in which capacity and cunning win the prize. It is, however,
not impossible to communicate to men a social vision which is able to
divert the natural energies of the human spirit into more generous
channels. This, did they but know it, is the peculiar vocation of the
preacher and the teacher.
Footnote 11:
A. M. Ludovici, _Nietszche_, pp. 85f.
Mr. Bertrand Russell has recently laid just emphasis upon the supremacy
of impulse in determining human conduct; and has pointed out the
distinction between impulses which make for life and those which make
for death. William Blake had a somewhat similar view. What Blake in “The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell” calls _energy_ appears to be that vital
stress which expresses itself in our impulses, and which in the form of
“poetic” energy is the source of creative art. In Blake’s psychology,
this _energy_ only works out healthily and fruitfully when it is
co-ordinated on the one side with Reason and on the other by Desire; and
he traces our human troubles to an undue ascendency of one or other of
these two balancing principles. When Reason prevails over Desire, it
imposes disastrous restraint upon energy; but when the tables are
turned, the ascendency of Desire leads to the “vegetated life.” Blake’s
analysis has much to commend it; and it appears to supply the necessary
complement to Mr. Russell’s. For our impulses, whether they make for
life or death are the same impulses—the difference in their result
springing from a difference in their direction, and in the conditions
under which they operate.
The old psychological analysis of the mind into will, intellect,
affections, and so forth has served its turn; and for purposes of social
building we must betake ourselves rather to an analysis of Blake’s
_energy_ or Mr. Russell’s _impulses_. M. Bergson has shown us how the
“_elan vitale_” has in the course of its onward march split up again and
again, and in so doing has set afoot new lines of development and
variation; and we have for result the infinite wealth of plant and
animal form which fills the earth. The primitive urge of life was
seemingly a bundle of tendencies, which were released, one at this
point, and another at that, under the stress of the circumstances
encountered on the way. In the same way the _energy_, the vital stress
of personality is an organic complex of impulses, each of which has
released and shaped itself conformably to the conditions in which the
human spirit has found itself in the process of growth. In this complex
of impulses, it is possible to discern three main strands:
1. _The Impulse of Self-preservation._ This has to do with the desire
and purpose to maintain life; and its primitive form was determined by
the necessity of procuring food, clothing and shelter. Its
characteristic activity was that of discovering and adapting the means
which were available to the end of sustaining life; and out of this grew
agriculture, weaving, housebuilding and a range of operations which grew
in number and elaboration as the requirements of life increased. Here is
the origin of what Mr. Veblen has called _the Instinct of Workmanship_.
2. _The Impulse of Reproduction._ This in its elemental form expresses
itself in the begetting of children. But as man became more familiar
with the objects round about him, in the course of handling them for the
ends of self-preservation, this impulse became associated with the
instinct of workmanship, and man began to attempt to reproduce himself
in other media than his flesh. He came to do certain work which was not
required by the exigencies of his physical subsistence; and this work he
did—as it were—for the joy of doing it. He attempted to express himself
upon such materials as were capable of receiving his impress; and his
delight in his handicraft became the beginning of Art. Presently he
learnt to set line and colour and sound in combinations that pleased
him, and in which he was conscious of the joy of fatherhood. This is
_the Instinct of Creativeness_. It is not always perceived that there is
a very profound distinction to be drawn between the workmanlike and the
creative activities. Miss Helen Marot appears to assume (in her book
_The Creative Impulse in Industry_), that a democratic form of
co-operation, and an understanding of industrial processes will satisfy
the creative instinct in industry. It is difficult to see how this can
happen under the conditions of the modern large-scale machine industry.
Miss Marot rightly insists that the creative impulse is not merely an
affair of individual self-expression. Nevertheless, it is only possible
to a group when the group is comparatively small, and every member is in
active touch with the whole process. The instinct of workmanship is of a
routine productive character, the instinct of creativeness is original
and _reproductive_. Nothing on this earth can make our highly
specialised machine processes into opportunities of self-expression.
This, however, does not mean that the machine industry has no place in
the future social order.
3. _The Impulse of Association._—Man has always lived with men; and
there is perhaps nothing so distinctive of human nature as its faculty
for association. We are so made that we only find ourselves and each
other as we live together in societies, that we only find ourselves as
we find one another. The exchanges of love and friendship, the riches of
fellowship—these are the most fruitful experiences of life. “We are
members of one another”; and are fulfilled in each other. Our mutual
need has released in us _the Instinct of Sociability_.
The weakness of this kind of analysis is that it appears to untwine
threads that cannot be untwined in practice and never are separated in
experience. Human instincts do not operate independently; they blend
into each other continuously and inextricably in countless ways. We have
seen how the reproductive impulse fused with the instinct of workmanship
into an impulse toward creative art. But the debt has been repaid in the
introduction of requirements of beauty into the exercise of workmanship.
In the era of craftsmanship, the two impulses were very intimately
blended, workmanship and creativeness going hand in hand in the erection
of stately minsters, or in the making of harness for the squire’s
horses. It is due to the development of the machine that these two
impulses have been so widely parted in our time, to the immense injury
of both; and it is one of the tasks, perhaps the chief of the tasks,
facing us in the future to restore them to something of their old-time
intimacy. Of this restoration, the great modern prophet is William
Morris, who saw hope neither for the worker nor for the artist except in
a closer association of industry with beauty, and who laid the
foundation of this revived association by his own pioneer work as a
house-decorator. This does not require, as some suppose, the scrapping
of the machine industry, even though that were possible; it only
requires that we understand the true place of the machine industry and
put it there. Similarly, the instinct of sociability coalesced with
those of workmanship and creativeness. The signal instance of this
combination is to be found in the spirit of the mediæval Guilds; but
there are other instances in plenty. Most of the great human
achievements in thought, religion and art, have had a social origin, in
schools of philosophers and prophets, in groups of artists and the like,
and conversely new departures in thought, religion and art have become
the _foci_ of new groups.
Of all this the moral would seem to be that we must treat the _energy_
of personality, its characteristic outgoing, as a single undivided
indivisible stream; yet we must recognise it also as a stream containing
a certain range of ingredients. Therefore, what we shall require of our
ideal society is that it shall generate an atmosphere and an environment
in which the constituent ingredients of personal _energy_ shall find
opportunity of full, co-ordinated and parallel development. It will be a
society in which the instinct of workmanship, creativeness and
sociability will grow side by side and hand in hand toward “the perfect
man, of the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
Of this society then, we may say, that its marks will be that first
every man shall have the opportunity of a secure and sufficient physical
subsistence, second, that its work will press upward to the plane of
art, and that its sociability will grow into vital and purposeful
fellowship. By these tests we shall judge the soundness of democratic
progress.
Our analysis has hitherto taken account only of the common man without
reference to natural divergencies of genius or capacity. Professor
Geddes has lately been emphasising Comte’s doctrine of history as an
interplay of the temporal and spiritual powers, and his classification
of the four Social types—Chiefs, People, Emotionals and Intellectuals.
Mr. Arnold Bennett found men on the Clyde sorting themselves out into
Organisers, Workers, Energisers and Initiators, which classification, as
Professor Geddes justly points out, corresponds closely to Comte’s.
These types, however, reduce themselves to two, namely those chiefly
animated by the impulse of action, and those chiefly animated by the
impulse of reflection. Of course, these types shade off imperceptibly
into one another, because the impulses which give them their peculiar
colour are native to and present in universal human nature. And while it
is certain that nature will see to it that mankind will be delivered
from the doom of a dead uniformity, it is nevertheless necessary that we
should aim at the full development of both the active and reflective
impulses in every man. Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!
Hitherto, we have considered man as actuated mainly by the impulse of
action; but the release and development of the _impulse of reflection_
is essential to the growth of society. For the experience which is the
sequel of action is condemned to sterility except it be reflected upon.
Reflection upon experience is the appointed guide of further action. We
must, therefore, add to our tests of sound democratic progress, a
fourth, namely, that it shall be of a kind to stimulate and encourage
reflection. It must, that is, include a method of education whereby
every man shall as far as possible become capable of independent thought
and sound judgment.
Out of all this emerges immediately one certain conclusion. The kind of
society which encourages creative self-expression, independent judgment
and a living expanding fellowship must necessarily be conceived and
created in freedom. For to these essential human impulses, freedom is
the very breath of life. The initial problem of sociology is, therefore,
the achievement of freedom; upon that foundation, and that only, can it
build for eternity.
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