Modern Sociology

In his History of the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, Dr. MacCaffrey says very truly: — “ The development of sociological studies in the nineteenth century has opened up a new field of inquiry for moral theologians, and has raised a host of new problems, which demand careful treatment.”¹ I understand Dr. MacCaffrey to refer not only to socialism with all the problems connected with it, but to what professes to be the new science of sociology. Much of the interest taken in this new science may be attributed to a natural reaction from the now discredited doctrines of liberalism. The liberalism of the nineteenth century was above all things individualistic. It admitted, indeed, the necessity of society or the State, but a cardinal point of its teaching insisted that State action should be restricted to the necessary defense of life and property from violence and fraud. Although J. S. Mill thought these limits too narrow, yet he, too, maintained that with regard to State action, letting alone should be the general practice. “Every departure from it,” he says, “ unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.”² We have advanced very far indeed beyond this laissez faire theory of the powers of the State. The modern State not only educates the children of the people free of cost, but it is beginning to feed them as well and have them medically inspected. It grants pensions to the aged poor without regard to whether they have led thrifty lives or not. It unites and dissolves marriages, and indications are not wanting that in the name of eugenics it may some day endeavor to have a voice in determining who is to marry and who is to remain celibate. It takes a share of the unearned increment of property, and Socialists wish it to assume the ownership of all productive property and of the means of distribution of wealth. The theory of the influence of society on the individual has more than kept pace with the State’s inroads on his private life and rights. A modern authority on the subject says, in effect: ‘Instead of the old antithesis between the individual and society, modern science discovers a complete harmony between them. Neither could exist without the other. The science of the individual and the science of society are inseparable; every philosophical and moral question will end by being a social question. The psychologist in studying the individual sees that his faculties and tendencies are a heritage from the race and the species, and so from society. What would be left of the individual if we took from him all that he owes to society? The moralist who without bias tries to find a natural origin for the laws of his science discovers them in the general conditions of society, and the conditions of society are nothing but the conditions of physical and intelligent life. The whole universe

¹ Vol. II., 485.

² Principles of Political Economy, Book V., c. ii.

is but one vast society in process of formation, and so social science, the crown of all the sciences, will one day disclose to us the secret of the universe.”³

³ A. Fouillée, La Science Sociale Contemporaine, Preface, p. vi.

Similarly, Mr. B. Kidd, one of the chief authorities on the subject in England, writes: “ According to the old conception the meaning of society was to be reached through a study of the individual. The study of the individual’s mind and of the individual’s interests constituted the science of man. Society was considered as an aggregation of these. Put equally briefly the meaning of the ruling conception of the new era in the application of the theory of organic evolution to society almost reverses this position. According to the new conception the individual is only to be understood through the meaning of the social process. . . . It is in the social process alone that we have the full meaning of man and of the laws which are governing his development. The social process has its own interests, its own experiences, its own laws, its own psychology, its own meaning. And it is this meaning of the social process which is everywhere in the ascendant in history, controlling the meaning of the individual, slowly imposing itself upon his interests, and in the end completely governing his development. . . . The real truth is that it is the meaning of the social process which is constructing the human mind. This is the most pregnant idea in Western thought at the present time, and it is with preliminary aspects of it that recent developments like Pragmatism are beginning to be occupied.”⁴ Whereas, then, fifty years ago the tendency was to exalt the rights of the individual citizen at the expense of the power of the State, nowadays the tendency is all the other way. What is called the modern science of sociology throws light on this tendency, and so no apology is needed for treating the subject here.

⁴ Principles of Western Civilization, 1908, pp. vii., viii.

Sociology, as the word implies, is the science of man in society. Some, with Froude and Kingsley, whom Herbert Spencer endeavored to refute,⁵ deny that such a science is possible. Of those who maintain its possibility and who have tried to formulate its principles, all admit that the science does not exist as yet. It is as yet in the analytic stage in which the phenomena belonging to the science are being observed, collected, and compared. A few empirical laws have already been formulated, but it cannot be said that there is anything like general agreement on a complete and systematic body of sociological doctrine. One sign of this incipient stage of the science is the number of different systems which are in vogue. Mr. Lester F. Ward, in a recent work, enumerates twelve of these, and adds another of his own to the number. For the purposes of this paper we may divide the different systems into objective and subjective. The objective are materialistic while the subjective are idealistic or pantheistic. The former derive their descent through Herbert Spencer from Comte, and they are much more popular and widely diffused than the latter. Comte, as is well known, divided the history of philosophy into three periods, the theological, the metaphysical or critical, and the positive. During the first period, which lasted till the dawn of the Protestant Reformation, natural phenomena were explained by the agency of supernatural beings. This theological explanation was discredited by the metaphysical or critical school, which followed it, but however powerful criticism proved as a solvent, it was incapable of building up a system which could be generally accepted. To do this was reserved for the third period, the truly scientific period, which rests its doctrines on the firm basis of exact observation of certain and verifiable facts. The last and the most general of all the positive sciences, according to Comte, was social physics, a new science, which he was the first to call by its name — sociology. Herbert Spencer adopted the name and much of the teaching of Comte about the new science. He tells us that “His [Comte’s] mode of contemplating the facts was truly philosophical. Containing, along with special views not to be admitted, many thoughts that are true as well as large and suggestive, the introductory chapters to his Sociology show a breadth and depth of conception beyond any previously reached. Apart from the tenability of his sociological doctrines, his way of conceiving social phenomena was superior to all previous ways.”⁷ However, as Comte lived in pre-Darwinian days, the dogma of fixity of species to which he adhered kept his conceptions of individual and social change within limits much too narrow, says Spencer. Then he adds:

⁵ The Study of Sociology, p. 37.

⁷ The Study of Sociology, p. 325.

6 Pure Sociology. London, 1909.

“Nor did he arrive at that conception of the Social Science which alone affiliates it upon the simpler sciences — the conception of it as an account of the most complex form of that continuous redistribution of matter and motion which is going on universally. Only when it is seen that the transformations passed through during the growth, maturity, and decay of a society, conform to the same principles as do the transformations passed through by aggregates of all orders, inorganic and organic — only when it is seen that the process is in all cases similarly determined by forces, and is not scientifically interpreted until it is expressed in terms of those forces — only then is there reached the conception of Sociology as a science, in the full meaning of the word.”⁸

⁸ The Study of Sociology, p. 325.

There we have, stated in plain, bald language, the fundamental postulate of modern sociology. All that man is or does, whether individually or in society, is the result of the necessary transformations of matter and motion. When the Greeks fought at Marathon and when Bismarck dispatched the Ems telegram which precipitated the Franco-German war, their actions were as inevitably determined by the forces of nature as are the waters which flow over Niagara. The different forms which human society assumes, the various constitutions and laws under which men live, their religious, political, and social ideas are as truly the necessary product of the evolution of matter and force, as are the various forms into which matter crystallizes. There is no science of society in the strict sense unless its phenomena are interpreted in the light of this fundamental postulate. That is why the labors of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other philosophers of antiquity who wrote works on the State, are dismissed as pre-scientific, and as scarcely worthy of notice. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the other schoolmen, are not thought worthy even of being mentioned in an historical survey of writers on sociology. The situation is sufficiently remarkable, and would hardly be credited by one who had not read the authors in question. It is also of great importance, for it is already beginning to produce its inevitable effects in several directions. Mr. Lester F. Ward, in his Applied Sociology, published in 1906, calls attention to one important result. He writes: “On the part of scientific men the study of evolution in general, and social evolution in particular, has given rise to a sort of scientific pessimism. . . . The latest teachings of modern science have thus thrown a sort of pall over the human mind and introduced a new philosophy —a philosophy of despair, it may be called, because it robs its adherents of all hope in any conscious alteration of the course of nature with respect to man, and denies the efficacy of effort.”⁹

⁹ Op. cit., p. 14.

Another important result is the support which this materialistic doctrine of society gives to the principles of socialism. Marx and his followers made great use of the doctrine.

I have no intention of undertaking here a refutation of this materialistic conception of the universe. The important thing to notice is that it is taken for granted in modern sociology, and that no other philosophy of the world is accepted as scientific. In spite of the testimony of Lord Kelvin and many other scientists of the highest standing, the action of a Creator is quietly ignored. To bring in the action of a supernatural Being is to revert to the infancy of human speculation. As I have said, the extent to which this materialistic explanation of society has been carried would hardly be credited by one who had not read the authors in question. In some of them the doctrine is more or less veiled, but in others it is set forth with unblushing frankness. It will be worth while to take a few representative writers on sociology and allow them to expound the principles of the science as far as possible in their own words.

And, first of all, I will quote a few passages to show that I am doing modern sociology no injustice when I say that it has been monopolized and developed by writers who are not only evolutionists, but upholders of the mechanical theory of evolution.

Mr. F. H. Giddings writes: “Since Comte, sociology has been developed mainly by men who have felt the full force of an impulse that has revolutionized scientific thinking for all time to come. The evolutionist explanation of the natural world has made its way into every department of knowledge. The law of natural selection and the conception of life as a process of adjustment of the organism to its environment have become the core of the biology and the psychology of to-day. It was inevitable that the evolutionary philosophy should be extended to embrace the social phenomena of human life. The science that had traced life from protoplasm to man could not stop with explanations of his internal constitution. It must take cognizance of his manifold external relations, of the ethnical groups of the natural societies of men, and of all the phenomena that they exhibit, and enquire whether these things also are not products of the universal evolution. . . . On evolutional lines then, and through the labors of evolutionist thinkers, modern sociology has taken shape. It is an interpretation of human society in terms of natural causation. It refuses to look upon humanity as outside of the cosmic process, and as a law unto itself. Sociology is an attempt to account for the origin, growth, structure, and activities of society by the operation of physical, vital, and psychical causes, working together in a process of evolution.”¹⁰

¹⁰ The Principles of Sociology, p.

‘The distinction made here between physical, vital, and psychical causes must not blind us to the fact that according to the dominant school of sociologists all causes are fundamentally physical. As the same writer says in another place: “Social evolution is but a phase of cosmic evolution. All social energy is transmuted physical energy. The conversion of physical into social energy is inevitable, and it necessarily occasions those orderly changes in groupings and relationships that constitute development. Or, if the statement may be made in slightly different terms, the original causes of social evolution are the processes of physical equilibration, which are seen in the integration of matter with the dissipation of motion, or in the integration of motion with the disintegration of matter.” '!

7 (1909).

It follows from this that human societies are nothing but very complex machines, as Mr. Lester F. Ward expressly affirms. “In general,” he says, “it may be said that society as a whole, including all its structures and institutions, both general and special, constitutes a mechanism. The structures are not chaotic and haphazard, but symmetrical and systematic. They conform to the universal law of evolution which creates the spheres of space and the adapted forms of organic life.” 12

This mechanical theory of society implies, of course, that there is no such thing as free will. This is admitted, and even insisted on, by the modern sociologist. Mr. Lester F. Ward writes: “Sociology, therefore, can only become a science when human events are recognized as phenomena. When we say that they are due to the actions of men, there lurks in the word actions the ghost of the old doctrine of free will, which in its primitive form asserts that any one may either perform a given action or not, according as he may will. From this point of view it is not supposed that any event in human history needed to have occurred. If the man whose actions caused it had willed otherwise, it would not have occurred. That is, the old form of the doctrine of free will maintained that men might have willed otherwise than they did. It is not merely that they might have acted differently if they had willed to do so, but that they might have willed to act differently. If we substitute wish for will, as of course we may, since it is simply a peculiarity of the English language, that there are two words for the same thing which in other languages is expressed by the same word (volere, wollen, vouloir, etc.) the doctrine becomes that men might have wished to act otherwise than they did wish to act. This is a violation of the metaphysical axiom of contradiction, or, as Sir William Hamilton more correctly calls it, non-contradiction. That axiom is that a thing cannot both be and not be. In other words, the old-fashioned doctrine of free will assumes that men may act differently from what they do act irrespective of character and environment. If this were so, there could certainly be no science of action, no philosophy of history, no sociology. There would be no social phenomena, but only arbitrary actions due to no true cause, and all power of prevision or prediction would be wanting.”

11 Op. cit., pp. 363, 364.

13 Outlines of Sociology, p. 170 (1909).

A German author, who wrote in the year of grace, 1895, is quoted as the authority for this summary demolition of the doctrine of free will. No comment is called for.

Mr. B. Kidd agrees that the sociological process is involuntary and necessary.¹⁴

¹⁴ Social Evolution, p. 41.

Whether society should be called an organism, and of what kind, is largely a question of terminology. Spencer held that it is an organism of a very real kind. “Metaphors,” he says, “are here more than metaphors in the ordinary sense. They are devices of speech hit upon to suggest a truth at first dimly perceived, but which grows clearer the more carefully the evidence is examined. That there is a real analogy between an individual organism and a social organism, becomes undeniable on observing that certain necessities determining structure are common to both.”¹⁵ In other words he developed this idea and traced the analogy in minute detail and with much ingenuity.¹⁶ Mr. Giddings seems doubtful as to whether society should be called an organism at all. At any rate, he says, it is not a physical, but a psychical organism essentially, with a physical basis. Mr. Lester F. Ward admits that it is an organism, but one of the low and undeveloped type. He writes: “On any ‘social organism’ theory government must be regarded as the brain or organ of consciousness of society, and the small amount of ‘ brains’ shown by government is simply in confirmation of the conclusion reached in another chapter that society represents an organism of low degree.”¹⁷

¹⁵ The Study of Sociology, p. 326.

¹⁶ Principles of Sociology, I., pt. il, c. 2; Essays, II., 148.

¹⁷ Outlines of Sociology, p. 268.

18 Pure Sociology, p.

57 (1908).

Whatever they may say about the question of terminology, the representative sociologists of this school agree that society is a product of the evolution of natural forces. These natural forces as productive of society are called “social forces,” or “ idea forces,” though they are merely transformations of the one physical force which permeates the universe. They are sometimes called psychical, volitional, mental, and these terms might lead the unwary reader to think that a spiritual explanation of society was mixed with the mechanical. This would be to misunderstand the doctrine altogether. It is obvious that what is called intelligence and affection play a large part in producing social phenomena ; but according to the writers whose views we are expounding, both intelligence and affection are merely the manifestations of a very complex mechanism which is the evolutionary product of physical and chemical forces. On this point the modern sociologist has quite made up his mind. Mr. Giddings says: “The real question is not on the existence or the importance of volitional and of distinctively sociological causes. It is whether these are underived from simpler phenomena than themselves, and are undetermined by processes of the physical and organic world. To this question the answer of sociology is an unqualified negative. Sociology is a product of those new conceptions of nature — natural causation and natural law — that have grown up in scientific minds in connection with doctrines of evolution and the conservation of energy. . . . Therefore, while affirming the reality of sociological forces that are distinctly different from merely biological, and from merely physical forces, the sociologist is careful to add that they are different only as products are different from factors, only as protoplasm is different from certain quantities of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; only as an organism and its co-ordinated activities are different from a group of nucleated cells having activities that are unrelated.”¹⁸

¹⁸ The Principles of Sociology, p. 416 ff.

The course of the evolution of social forces into the complex phenomena exhibited by human society has been worked out in great detail by Mr. Lester F. Ward in several of his works. He classifies the social forces into those that seek pleasure, avoid pain, the sexual and amative desires, the parental and consanguineal affections, the æsthetic, emotional or moral, and intellectual forces. These forces generate, preserve, and elevate society, and how they themselves are derived from original physical forces is explained in this way.

The appetites or passions are the genetic source of all man’s other faculties, the seat of all psychic power, the basis of any true science of mind and of sociology. Appetite or desire is a true vis a tergo, and acts by impact like any other physical and efficient cause. Thus an empty stomach necessarily impels the sentient being to seek the satisfaction of repletion. Satisfied desire causes pleasure, whose opposite is pain. Pleasure is good, it leads to an increase of life; pain is evil and leads to extinction. While all creatures seek their good, or the satisfaction of their wants, natural selection eliminates those which are not in conformity with the conditions of existence, and develops those that are in conformity with them. These principles are verified throughout all non-rational nature, and their application to the problems of sociology is obvious.¹⁹

¹⁹ Outlines of Sociology, p. 143 ff.

The chief difficulty arises in the explanation of the evolution of intellect. It may be admitted, says Mr. Ward, that as yet this is unknown. The following theory is offered as an hypothetical explanation of the matter. Intellect is not a force but a directing agency. It arose in this way. External objects register their impressions on the sentient organs, and the gradual accumulation of a mass of such impressions and their simultaneously felt presence render it possible to make comparisons and recognize differences and samenesses. Thus arises the intellectual process which is a perception of relations. Intellect thus enables the rational creature to perceive what will satisfy its wants, and if it cannot attain the satisfaction of those wants directly, it can perceive what means may be taken towards their satisfaction indirectly. Intellect can thus switch off the movement caused by desire of the end, and direct it to the attainment of the means by which the end may be finally secured. The evolution of this wonderful power of reason in man has given him command of the forces of organic and inorganic nature which he can use for the attainment of his ends. It has thus been the cause of his wonderful progress and of all the civilization to which he has attained.”²⁰

²⁰ Outlines of Sociology, p. 240 ff.

Although my purpose in this paper is to show what modern sociology is rather than to attempt its refutation, I cannot refrain from making a few criticisms of the system. We have seen that nothing but matter and motion are postulated in order to explain the phenomena of sociology, and in fact everything else. When evolution begins motion is regarded as hitting out blindly in all directions. If it happens that one of these pulses of matter in some way secures an advantage over others which tends to its preservation and development, an upward stage in evolution has taken place. It was thus that the faculties of sensation and of intellect were evolved. To quote Mr. Lester F. Ward: “There is no true economy in the operation of the law of nature. It is a sort of trial-and-error process and involves enormous waste. I have endeavored to formulate what may be called the law of biologic economics, with the result that while every creation of organic nature has within it the possibility of success, that success is only secured through the multiplication of chances. . . . This saves the expense of trying to go in all the impossible directions with the resultant failure. Yet this last is nature’s method. Not only must we conceive the effort as proceeding from the center of a circle, but we must usually conceive it as proceeding from the center of a sphere.”²¹ On another page of the same book Mr. Ward says: —“ It must be remembered that the intellect or telic power was developed as an aid to the will for the better satisfaction of desire. But for its value as such it could not have come into existence under the biologic law of advantage [Mr. Ward’s term for natural selection]. It is as much a product of that law as any useful organ in an animal or plant.”²²

²¹ Outlines, p. 254.

²² Outlines, p, 247.

So that after all Democritus and Lucretius were right substantially ; this orderly world is the resultant of a fortuitous concourse of forces, if not of atoms. Chance has presided at all the steps that have been taken in the upward progress, and it rules the world. The latest phase of philosophy is a recurrence to that with which it began. It is true that Mr. Ward affirms that when reason appeared on the scene the primordial process of evolution was reversed. Up to rational man the environment had molded the course of development; when rational man appeared, he began to mold his environment to suit his needs and tastes. This is true; it shows how difficult it is for philosophy to stifle common sense; but Mr. Ward asserts it at the expense of consistency, for it is out of harmony with his system. If man is himself a bundle of physical and necessary forces, his whole activity is merely the activity of those forces; every thought, word, and action is the necessary outcome of their interaction. There is no room for and no possibility of a conflict between the forces of mind and those of nature. Other writers of the same school are much more logical than Mr. Ward. We may quote M. Durkheim, one of the best-known members of the school on the continent. This author writes: “La civilisation est elle-même une conséquence nécessaire des changements qui se produisent dans le volume et dans la densité des sociétés. Si la science, l’art, l’activité économique se développent, c’est par suite d’une nécessité qui s’impose aux hommes; c’est qu’il n’y a pas pour eux d’autre manière de vivre dans les conditions nouvelles où ils sont placés. Du moment que le nombre des individus entre lesquels des relations sociales sont établies est plus considérable, ils ne peuvent se maintenir que s’ils se spécialisent davantage, travaillent davantage, surexcitent leurs facultés; et de cette stimulation générale résulte inévitablement un plus haut degré de culture. De

ce point de vue, la civilisation apparaît donc, non comme un but qui meut les peuples par l’attrait qu’il exerce sur eux, non comme un bien, entrevu et désiré par avance, dont ils cherchent à s’assurer par tous les moyens la part la plus large possible, mais comme l’effet d’une cause, comme la résultante nécessaire d’un état donné. Ce n’est pas le pôle vers lequel s’oriente le développement historique et dont les hommes cherchent à se rapprocher pour être plus heureux ou meilleurs; car ni le bonheur, ni la moralité ne s’accroissent nécessairement avec l’intensité de la vie. Ils marchent parce qu’il faut marcher, et ce qui détermine la vitesse de cette marche, c’est la pression plus ou moins forte qu’ils exercent les uns sur les autres, suivant qu’ils sont plus ou moins nombreux.”²⁸

²⁸ De la Division du Travail Social, p. 327.

Even more serious difficulties than a recurrence to a fortuitous concourse of forces are caused by the mechanical explanation of the gradations existing among creatures. As according to that theory all creatures are but different manifestations of the one universal and physical force, it follows that life, sensations, and intellect are nothing but different forms of motion among particles of matter. This, as we have seen, is not only admitted but insisted on, by the writers under review. It is admitted that the actions which we call vital, sensitive, and intellectual, are altogether different from, and in many ways opposed to, the actions of merely physical forces. It is admitted that life has never been known to originate from merely physical forces, and that all attempts to produce it have failed absolutely. And yet mechanical evolutionists obstinately cling to their dogma. It has been so, because it must have been so, on the principles of evolution. To state the argument in Mr. Spencer’s words: “If there has been Evolution, that form of it here distinguished as super-organic must have arisen by insensible steps out of the organic.”²⁴ To help out the lameness of the argument, Mr. Ward appeals to what he calls scientific faith. “The theory of units,” he says, “is applicable to every true science in proportion as it can be reduced to exact measurement. In mechanics, astronomy, and physics the phenomena can, for the most part, be thus reduced, but in the more complex sciences, at least in their present state, this can be done only to a limited extent. It must not, however, be inferred from this that exact laws do not prevail in these domains. They are as rigid here as in the simpler ones, and the only imperfection is in our knowledge of them. The acceptance of this statement is what constitutes scientific faith. Those who do not accept it and doubt the uniformity and invariability of natural law in the fields of life, mind, and human action, simply lack faith in the order of the universe.”²⁵ On a subsequent page the same author says: “In the advanced stages of human development when intellectual and moral influences have entered the field the case is still more complicated, but even then, if there is a social science, what I have characterized as scientific faith, when it is fully developed, does not permit

²⁴ Principles of Sociology, I., p. 4.

²⁵ Outlines of Sociology, p. 141.

any doubt to come in and qualify in the least the universal law, and we must say, with Immanuel Kant, that if we could investigate all the phenomena of man’s volition to the bottom, there would not be a single human act which we could not with certainty predict and recognize as necessarily proceeding from its antecedent conditions.”²⁶

²⁶ Outlines, p. 150.

It is hardly necessary to point out how entirely unscientific this position is. Ridicule is poured on the old philosophy and theology because, as it is asserted, they appealed to unproved and unverifiable dogmas. But here we have scientists appealing to faith, to unproved and unverifiable dogmas to explain not what is mysterious, but facts which are absolutely opposed to the explanation.

In the meantime great and irreparable harm is being done in the field of practical conduct. The authors whose teaching we are criticizing, maintain that religion and codes of morals have been invented by society in order to put a check on individualistic and destructive tendencies. It was necessary to cheat people into being self-restrained for the benefit of the race. But what influence are such lying checks likely to exercise when the deception has been discovered? Indeed, Mr. Ward himself openly abandons those old-world devices. He preaches the new gospel in this wise: ‘“ But most important of all is the growing sense of good which equally characterizes the progress of intelligence. Not merely does man more and more value life and shrink from pain, but he progressively enhances his estimate of enjoyment, and properly so. This is to him the only good, and having been developed as a correlate of function it is safe in the long run to trust it as the expression also of universal or cosmical good — or, if any prefer, of divine good. It has served this purpose well thus far, and upon those who deny it this function rests the burden of proof. What specially concerns the sociologist is the fact that with the development of the race more and more attention has been devoted to attaining the satisfactions of life, until these become in the most advanced societies the real if not the avowed ends of existence.” 27

So that Epicurus and the pig philosophy were right after all! The truth is that the loud-sounding pæans about the utter change in man’s outlook that has been brought about by the theory of evolution have been much overdone. Even if the evolution theory as distinguished from the mechanical theory of the universe be accepted, it leaves the old and fundamental questions untouched and unsolved. The inevitable reaction is already setting in, and this is beginning to be recognized by the best thinkers of the day. Thus Professor W. R. Sorley writes: “It is obvious that, in mentioning these points, I am referring to matters of ancient as well as present controversy. On them I have no intention of dwelling, partly because the subject is so vast, but also because it is enough for me to have shown that the theory of evolution still leaves the question open. That theory has widened our view of the world and tended to unify our view of its history. But it was a mis-

217 Outlines of Sociology, p. 158, take on Huxley’s part to make it claim the throne of the world of thought: it is not a philosophy, but a scientific generalization which leaves the questions of philosophy unanswered. Evolution is not the real claimant, but mechanism ; throughout the ages mechanism has been a pretender to the throne, but a flaw has always been found in its title. I have argued that the flaw remains even after the promulgation of the evolution theory; and if authority were wanted to back the argument, it might be found in words written by Darwin in the last year of his life, ‘If we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to look at it as the outcome of chance — that is, without design or purpose.’ ”²⁸

²⁸ The Interpretation of Evolution, a paper read before the British Academy, Nov, 24, 1909.

So, then, the mechanical theory of the universe and of man has never satisfied the best minds, and it does not satisfy them to-day. There is another school of social science which traces its descent from Plato and Aristotle, whose genius it is too well acquainted with to despise. Unfortunately in avoiding one extreme it has fallen into the opposite. The mechanical theory sees nothing in the universe but matter and force, while the theory with which we are now dealing sees nothing there but mind. It interprets Plato and Aristotle in a pantheistic sense; Christian dualism it ignores. It recognizes the beginnings of true social theory in the modern world in the writings of Rousseau. From Rousseau it traces the tradition through Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Those who owe allegiance to Hegel are numerous among the best philosophic minds in England, and among sociologists or political philosophers we may mention such names as T. H. Green, Bradley, Wallace, and Mr. B. Bosanquet. It will not be out of place to trace very briefly the connection of ideas in this movement, especially as it is the key to many of the secrets of modern thought not only in philosophy, but in literature, politics, and religion. Romanticism in literature, liberalism in politics, and the modern idea that religion is a sentiment or feeling, may all be traced to Rousseau.

‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” is the first sentence of the first chapter in Rousseau’s Contrat Social, published in 1762. It was the trumpet note which gave the signal for the era of revolution to begin. Freedom is man’s inalienable birthright and his distinctive quality. To renounce one’s freedom is to renounce one’s humanity. Not to be free is a renunciation of one’s rights as a man, and even of one’s duties, for the slave has neither rights nor duties. Man, however, though born free, must live in society; in isolation his very freedom is not safe. To live in society means to live under government. But government is the restriction of one’s natural liberty. Hence the fundamental problem in politics and in social theory is, in the words of Rousseau: “To find a form of association which shall defend and protect, with the entire common force, the person and the goods of each associate, and by which, each, uniting himself to all, may, nevertheless, obey only himself, and remain as free as before.”²⁹

²⁹ B. Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State. p. 89.

This is the famous paradox which Rousseau essays to solve by his device of the social contract. Men were to meet together, and by a common act surrender so much of their liberty as was necessary for the purpose of government into the hands of representatives chosen by themselves, and in obeying their representatives they only obeyed themselves. ‘“ The essence of this social pact,” says Mr. Bosanquet, quoting Rousseau, “is further reducible to the following formula: ‘Each of us puts into the common stock his person and his entire powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and we further receive each individual as an indivisible member of the whole. Instantaneously, in place of the particular person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly has voices, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self (son moi commun), its life, and its will. This public person which thus forms itself, by the union of all others, used to take the name of city, and now takes that of republic or body politic, which is called by its members State when it is passive, Sovereign when it is active, Power when comparing it with others.’ ”’³⁰

³⁰ The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 92.

The theory is neither historical, nor consistent, nor practical, as stated by Rousseau, but Mr. Bosanquet shows how it may be interpreted in an idealistic sense in the following manner. “ Putting aside the defective terminology, and bearing in mind that Rousseau considers himself to be analyzing the essence of that act or character ‘ by which a people is ‘a people,’ we ‘find in this passage very far-reaching ideas. ‘We find that the essence of human society consists in a common self, a life and a will, which belong to and are exercised by the society as such, or by the individuals in society as such; it makes no difference which expression we choose. The reality of this common self, in the action of the political whole, receives the name of the ‘general will,’ and we shall examine its nature and attributes in the following chapter.”³¹

³¹ Ibid., p. 92.

But how is the paradox to be solved? Modern states are said to be democratic and self-governed ; ‘does not the idea of self-government involve a contradiction? As Mr. Bosanquet says: “When the arbitrary and irrational powers of classes or of individuals have been swept away, we are left face to face, it would seem, with ‘the coercion of some by others as a necessity in the nature of things. And, ‘indeed, however perfectly self-government has been substituted for despotism, it is flying in the face of experience to suggest that the average individual self, as he exists in you or me, is ipso facto satisfied, and at home, in all the acts of the public power which is supposed to represent him. If he were so, the paradox of self-government would be resolved by the annihilation of one of its factors. The self would ‘remain, but government would be superfluous; or else government would be everything, and the self annihilated.”³²

³² Ibid., p. 75.

Bentham, J. S. Mill, and the Liberals admitted the contradiction and sought a practical solution and safeguard for the liberty of the subject by restricting the powers of government as far as possible. According to them it was the province of the government to defend the lives and property of its subjects and let everything else alone. That theory has been found by experience to be unworkable and it is now universally discredited. The idealists solve the problem by recurring to Hegel’s philosophy of identity. The subject and the State are one, not metaphorically and in interest merely, but in reality. According to Hegel, the universal and absolute be ing, which is at the root of all things is Idea. The Idea as Mind or Thought develops itself in the manner of a syllogism in a logical process. Thus absolute and indeterminate being implies being conditioned by the limitations of space and time. This is nature; the opposite of mind; but nature seeks ever to return to its source, and find itself again in the unity of the idea from whence it issued. Just as science develops and progresses by ever advancing through lower to higher generalizations, so the Idea is ever striving to express itself more perfectly and adequately in new forms. These new forms differ from the truths of science in that they are permanent facts or aspects of the organized whole. “In science,” says Mr. Bosanquet, “it may or may not be the case that the connection which has led to a discovery enters permanently as a discernible factor into the structure of knowledge. The re-organization of experience may sweep away the steps which led to it. But in the living fact of society this is not so. Its many sides are actual and persist, and the emphasis laid from time to time on the principle of each —e.g., on positive law, on family ties, on economic bonds — merely serves to accent an element which has its permanent place in the whole. Thus, there must always be family ties and economic bonds.”³³

³³ The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 257.

Every development is a distinct logical process as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The development of the modern State, according to the theory of Hegel, may be described as follows, keeping close to Mr. Bosanquet’s text.

The State is the realization of freedom. By freedom, however, Hegel does not understand mere absence of constraint, but the capacity for being and realizing one’s true or higher self. “It is just freedom that is the self of thought; one who repudiates thought and talks of freedom knows not what he is saying. The oneness of thought with itself is freedom, the free will. Thought, only taken in the form of will, is the impulse to break through one’s mere subjectivity, is relation to definite being, realization of one’s self, inasmuch as I will to make myself as an existent adequate to myself as thinking. The will is free only as that which thinks. The principle of freedom dawned on the world in Rousseau, and gave infinite strength to man, who thus apprehended himself as infinite.”³⁴

³⁴ The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 240. 35 The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 255.

The story of mind begins long before free mind appears on the scene and continues long after. Hegel’s “mind ” is not a separable entity, and throughout the story no such entity has appeared. “The ‘free mind’ does not explain itself and cannot stand alone. Its impulses cannot be ordered, or, in other words, its purposes cannot be made determinate, except in an actual system of selves. Except by expressing itself in relation to an ordered life, which implies others, it cannot exist. And, therefore, not something additional and parallel to it, which might or might ‘not exist, but a necessary form of its own action as real and determinate, is the actual fabric in which it utters itself as Society and the State. This is what Hegel treats in the second division of the Philosophy of Mind under the name of Mind Objective. It is not for him ultimate. A ‘particular society stands in time, and is open to criticism and to destruction. Beyond it lies the reality, continuous with mind as known in the State, but eternal as the former is perishable, which as Absolute Mind is open to human experience in Art, Religion, and Philosophy.” 35

Right or Law is the actual body of all the conditions of freedom, it is the realm of realized freedom, it is the mind as actualized in Society and the State. Law in the directest possible sense is what we call the letter of the law, the bare fact that it is a rule of the world we live in. The observance of law in this sense is legality. Against this legality rises the protest of conscience, especially the Protestant conscience, which refuses to be under the law, and only embraces the good because it is good, and because the conscience apprehends it as good. From the opposition of law and conscience issues the synthesis of the Ethical system, and this expresses the truth contained in the two opposites. The Ethical system or Social ethics is the moral life led by a good citizen who recognizes the laws, institutions, and customs of his country as the expression of his own best self, and observes them on that account. Hegel “ introduces reflective morality or conscientiousness into the sphere of Right, to represent the full nature of mind, which is only exhibited in a consciousness which pursues its aims of its own choice and for their own sake. . . . The Ethical system is the idea of freedom developed into a present world, and into the nature of self-consciousness.”³⁶

³⁶ The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 266.

The Ethical system, the mind and conduct of the citizen in Christendom, may be regarded as affirming freedom in three principal aspects, necessarily connected, and supplementing one another. Outwardly these aspects are different institutions, inwardly they are different moods and dispositions of the one and indivisible human mind. These institutions are the Family, Bourgeois Society, and the State in the strict sense. The family is the ethical factor which stands nearest to the natural world, it first represents the fact of the natural basis of social relations, being the embodiment of natural feeling in the form of love. The family is a factor in the rational whole, the State, and hence its nature and sanction are ethical, it rests neither on mere feeling nor on mere contract. It has a public side, and is an organ of public duties in the bodily and spiritual nurture of the children. The monogamous family alone can count as a true element of the ethical order. The monogamous family is naturally and necessarily, to some extent, a unit in respect of property. The mature man or woman on leaving the shelter of the family finds himself in a world of conflicting self interests. He has his living to make, he is tied to others only by the system of wants and work, and by what is necessary to these, police functions and the administration of justice. This phase of social life, and the temper and disposition which it engenders is Hegel’s Bourgeois Society. It is the opposite extreme of life and mind to that embodied in the family. This Bourgeois Society is the aspect of the social whole insisted on by the classical political economy, society held together by the nexus of cash payment. We must allow Mr. Bosanquet to describe the synthesis of these two opposites in his own words: “The State proper, or political constitution, presents itself to Hegel as the system in which the family and the Bourgeois Society find their completion and their security. He was early impressed, as we have seen, with the beautiful unity of the ancient Greek commonwealths. And the first and last idea which governs his representations of the modern

State is that of the Greek commonwealth enlarged as it was from a sun to a solar system. The family feeling and the individual interest are in the modern State let go, accented, intensified to their uttermost power; and it is out of and because of this immense orbit of its elements that the modern State has its ‘enormous strength and depth.’ It is the typical mind, the very essence of reason, whose completeness is directly as the completeness of each of its terms or sides or factors; and secure in the logical confidence that feeling and self-consciousness, the more they attain their fulness, must return the more certainly to their place in the reasonable system which is their very nature. As ultimate power, the State maintains on one side the attitude of an external necessity towards the spheres of private life, of the family, and of the economic world. It may intervene by force to remove hindrances in the path of the common good, which accident and immaturity may have placed there. But, in its essence, the State is the indwelling and explicit end of these modes of living, and is strong in its union of the universal purpose with the particular interests of mankind. It is, in short, the incarnation of the general or Real Will. ... True patriotism is the every-day habit of looking on the commonwealth as our substantive purpose and the foundation of our lives.”³⁷

³⁷ The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 280.

“The State, as thus conceived,” says Mr. Bosanquet in another place, “is not merely the political fabric. . . . It includes the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is determined, from the family to the trade, and from the trade to the Church and the University. It includes all of them, not as the mere collection of the growths of the country, but as the structure which gives life and meaning to the political whole, while receiving from it mutual adjustment, and therefore expansion and a more liberal air. . . . It follows that the State, in this sense, is above all things, not a number of persons, but a working conception of life. It is the conception by the guidance of which every living member of the commonwealth is enabled to perform his function, as Plato has taught us.”³⁸

³⁸ The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 150.

Or to quote Hegel himself: “The State is the reality of the ethical idea, the reality of the substantial Will, the absolute end in itself, in which liberty attains its highest Right, which has supreme dominion over its members, whose highest duty it is to be members of the State. The State is Mind existing in the world and realizing itself in the world as conscious of itself, while in nature it only realizes itself as sleeping Mind. The State is the divine Will, as present Mind unfolding itself into the real and organic form of the world.”³⁹

³⁹ Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, § 257 ff.

In other words, the State is the highest expression of the absolute Being, it is God, become conscious of Himself in it and in man. And this is what Mr. Bosanquet means when he uses such expressions as that the philosophical theory of the State puts Man in his proper place. It makes him God.

This philosophy is a product of the private study and not of the market-place. It flatters the pride of the highly cultivated professor, who is naturally pleased at being told that his thought is evolving deity, and it furnishes very ingenious and far-fetched explanations of all things in heaven and on earth, but it is too remote from ordinary experience ever to become popular or generally accepted. Common sense absolutely refuses to admit that our every thought, word, and deed, are the thought, word, and deed of the all holy God. We know too much about the jobbery, injustice, violence, and selfish aims of States and politicians, ever to be able to believe that in the State we have “the very essence of reason,” the embodiment of freedom, and the highest incarnation of infinite Mind. The wonder is that stuff of this sort has exercised, and still does exercise, so powerful an influence on minds otherwise acute and well-balanced. For that it does so cannot be denied. Especially is this true of the leaders of what is called scientific socialism. As Mr. Kirkup, in his History of Socialism, says: “Marx and Lassalle were both trained in the school of Hegel, and naturally applied to the problems of society the Hegelian theory of development.”⁴⁰ In Hegelianism we see the explanation of Marx’s constant and contemptuous allusions to the bourgeois political economy, and to bourgeois society. Mr. Belfort Bax, one of the most thorough-going and intelligent of English socialists, draws much of his inspiration from the same source. Part of Hegel’s influence is doubtless due to the fact that his doctrine of development fits in with, and serves to

⁴⁰ Op. cit., p. 294.

complete, the doctrines of evolution. In many recent writers on sociology, belonging both to the mechanical and to the idealist school, we see a tendency to fuse the two philosophies into one in spite of their radical opposition to each other. Thus, while Mr. Bosanquet thinks it important to observe that the mechanical theory of society has not been productive hitherto of much success in the science of sociology, yet he praises its effort after harmony and precision, while he affirms that the general conception of a “continuity between human relations and the laws of the cosmic order is thoroughly in the spirit of Plato and betokens a scientific enthusiasm worthy to be the parent of great things.” 41 From the other side we see in the pages of such writers as Mr. Giddings and Mr. Lester F. Ward a disposition to stress the importance of mind in sociological explanations. In the meanwhile practical socialists make use of the doctrines of both schools of sociology for their own purposes. Sometimes, indeed, sociologists make the application desired by socialists themselves. Thus Mr. Lester F. Ward writes in his book Applied Sociology: “From this subjective side the whole upward movement of society has been in the direction of acquiring freedom. If we look over the history of this movement, we shall see that it exhibits three somewhat distinct stages, which may be called in their historical order national freedom, political freedom, and social freedom. The first and prime requisite during the early efforts at nation forming, as set forth in the tenth chapter of 41 The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 20.

Pure Sociology, following upon conquest and subjugation, was the consolidation of the amalgamating group into a national unit capable of withstanding the encroachments and attacks of other outside groups. ... The salient features of such an organization are extreme inequality, caste, slavery, and stern military domination. . . . But individual liberty is at its minimum. The conquered race, which always far outnumbers all the other elements, is chiefly in bondage, and the struggle for political freedom begins. Ultimately, as the history of the world shows, this is in large measure attained. . . . So all-important did this issue seem that throughout the eighteenth century and down to near our own time it was confidently believed that, with the overthrow of political oppression and the attainment of political freedom, the world would enter upon the great millennium of universal prosperity, well-being, and happiness. But this was far from being the case. As sages predicted, events have proved that there remains another step to be taken. Another stage must be reached before any considerable degree of the hopes that were entertained can be realized. This stage is that of social freedom. The world is to-day in the throes of this third struggle. Military and royal oppression have been overthrown. Slavery, serfdom, feudalism, have disappeared. The power of the nobility and the priesthood has been broken. The civilized world is democratic, no matter by what name its governments are called. The people rule themselves by their sovereign votes. And yet, never in the history of the world was there manifested greater unrest or greater dissatisfaction with the state of things. National freedom and political freedom have been achieved. Social freedom remains to be achieved. ... The forces that prevent social freedom are hidden and universally diffused through the social fabric. They are largely economic forces; they give rise to questions so recondite and obscure that the clearest thinkers differ as to their solution. ... The only science that can deal with them is sociology. Their study and solution belong to applied sociology.”⁴²

⁴² Applied Sociology, pp. 26-28 (1906).

Philosophical doctrines of evolution and development form the ground of the conviction which is frequently expressed by socialists, with almost religious fervor, that the present order of society is bound to give place to a higher and better. The following is a sober expression of the conviction by Marx: “The working classes know that in order to work out their own emancipation—and with it that higher form of life which the present form of society irresistibly makes for by its own economic development— they, the working classes, have to pass through long struggles, a whole series of historical processes, by means of which men and circumstances will be completely transformed. They have no ideals to realize, they have only to set at liberty the elements of the new society which have already been developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society.” 43 Professor Karl Pearson writes: “Socialism arises from the recognition (1) that the sole aim of mankind is happiness in this life, and (2) that the course of evolution, and the struggle of group against group, has produced a strong social instinct in mankind, so that, directly and indirectly, the pleasure of the individual lies in forwarding the prosperity of the society of which he is a member. Corporate Society — the State, not the personified Humanity of Positivism — becomes the center of the Socialist’s faith. The polity of the Socialist is thus his morality, and his reasoned morality may, in the old sense of the word, be termed his religion. It is this identity which places Socialism on a different footing to the other political and social movements of to-day. ... Yes! sympathy with the Past we must have, but war, ceaseless war, with the Past which seeks with its idols to crush the growth of the Present! The right to re-shape itself is the one birthright of humanity, and the ‘ vested interests’ of priest or of class, the sanctity of tradition and of law, will be of less avail in checking human progress than the gossamer in the path of the king of the forest.”⁴⁴

⁴⁴ Ethic of Freethought, pp. 319-320.

48 Quoted in E. Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism, p. 204.

The doctrines themselves of evolution and development afford no foundation for this simple faith. Whatever be the aim of the cosmical process, it is admitted that on evolutionist principles we cannot flatter ourselves that it is concerned with man’s welfare and happiness. The latest interpreters of the process tell us that it apparently makes for greater efficiency, and for the sake of efficiency the welfare and happiness of the individual must be sacrificed. For Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, the individual citizen is but “a humble organ in society, seeking peace in service and wealth in sharing.” “In fact,’ he proceeds to say, “ disguise it from ourselves as we may, in our so-called practical moments, every conception of what morality is—except neurotic and erotic whims like those of Nietzsche, or antiquated pre-scientific notions like those of the Charity Organization Society — assumes that the individual is imbedded organically in his social medium, and that, therefore, the individual end can be gained only by promoting the social end; that the individual is primarily a cell in the organism of his Society; that he is not an absolute being, but one who develops best in relation to other beings, and who discovers the true meaning of his Ego only when he has discovered the oneness of Society.”⁴⁵

⁴⁵ Socialism and Society, p.

All the indications point to the coming slavery. The deification of the State by the idealists, the reduction of the individual to the condition of a mere cell in the gigantic organism of modern society, show us what kind of régime we are to expect if the new social order is established. The prophecy with which H. Spencer concludes his articles on The Man versus The State may prove to be one of the wisest things he ever said: “The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of Parliaments.”

If Spencer had studied history more closely than he did, he would have discovered that socialism and the coming slavery are but the logical outcome of the Liberalism which he professed. The motto of the dominant Liberalism of fifty years ago was — Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. It was professed with the fervor of religious conviction by thousands of the most influential politicians and writers of the day. One of the first English Liberals who saw clearly whither the Liberal doctrines were tending was J. Fitzjames Stephen, subsequently made a Judge of the High Court. Long meditation, his experience as legal member of council in India, and his sound common sense enabled him to see the fallacies of the Liberalism in which he had been bred. He clearly exposed them in his book Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, partly written on his way back to England from India in 1872. The publication of the book in the year following was one of the first signs that the old Liberalism was dead, and that new ideals were coming into view. A passage from that book will show clearly the connection between Liberalism and Socialism. Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen writes: “The only manner in which the famous Republican device can be rendered at once fully intelligible and quite consistent is by explaining Liberty to mean Democracy. The establishment of a Democratic government which proposes to recognize the universal brotherhood of mankind by an equal distribution of property, is as definite a scheme as it is possible to imagine, and when the motto is used in real earnest and not as a piece of meretricious brag, this is what it does mean. When so used the words ‘or death’ should be added to the motto to give it perfect

28 (1907).

completeness. Put together and interpreted in the manner stated, these five words constitute a complete political system, describing with quite sufficient distinctness for all practical purposes the nature of the political constitution to be established, the objects to which it is to be directed, and the penalty under which its commands are to be obeyed. It is a system which embodies in its most intense form all the bitterness and resentment which can possibly be supposed to be stored up in the hearts of the most disappointed, envious, and ferociously revengeful members of the human race against those whom they regard as their oppressors. It is the poor saying to the rich, ‘We are masters now by the establishment of liberty, which means democracy, and as all men are brothers, entitled to share and share alike in the common stock, we will make you disgorge or we will put you to death.’ It is needless to say more about this doctrine than that those who are attracted by the Republican motto would do well to ask themselves whether they understand by it anything short of this; and, if so, where and on what principle they draw the line.”⁴⁶

⁴⁶ Op. cit., p. 198.

It required keen insight in a Liberal to see the truth so clearly forty years ago; it is so evident now that even the blind may see it.

I have endeavored in these articles to give a faithful and objective account of the main systems of sociology which are now in vogue. The natural conclusion of the account which I have given is, I think, that there must be another system which avoids the extremes both of mechanism and of idealism. Man is neither a machine, nor is he God, much less an evolving god; he is a free creature of God, composed of body and soul; there is both a spiritual and a material element in his nature. He is a rational being, and his chief activities are, or should be, under the guidance of reason. Among man’s other activities, one of the chief is that by which societies or states are formed. Such societies are natural as is that of the family, but the process by which they are formed does not on that account cease to be rational and free. There must then be a rational doctrine of the constitution of States, just as there is a rational doctrine of the conduct of private life. The science of sociology is a normative not a physical science. It deals not with physical and inexorable laws of brute matter, nor with those of evolving deity, but with the moral laws of the free human will. This rational doctrine of sociology we possess in detail in the numberless treatises of Natural Law, and its broad outlines were traced authoritatively by Leo XIII. in his encyclical on the Christian Constitution of States, Nov. 1, 1885. It were much to be desired that we had in good readable English a text-book of sociology on Catholic lines. It would compare most favorably with the class of works that we have had under review. Its sound common sense would recommend it to all reasonable men. It would show that the Catholic Church has no idea and no desire to return to the feudalism or to the absolute monarchy of the past. We recognize that a new age requires new measures, new institutions. As Leo XIII said in

the encyclical alluded to above: “Our eyes are not closed to the spirit of the times. We repudiate not the assured and useful improvements of our age, but devoutly wish affairs of State to take a safer course than they are now taking, and to rest on a more firm foundation without injury to the true freedom of the people; for the best parent and guardian amongst men is truth. The truth shall make you free. (John viii. 32).”