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Title: A history of social thought

Author: Emory S. Bogardus

Release date: September 1, 2022 [eBook #68889]
Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: University of Southern California
press, 1922

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A History of Social Thought

A HISTORY OF
SOCIAL THOUGHT
BY
EMORY S. BOGARDUS, Ph.D.
Professor and Head of Department of Sociology and Social Work
University of Southern California
Author of
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
ESSENTIALS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
ESSENTIALS OF AMERICANIZATION

1922
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PRESS
3474 UNIVERSITY AVENUE
LOS ANGELES

Copyright 1922, University of Southern California Press
JESSE RAY MILLER
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PRESS
LOS ANGELES

DEDICATED TO MY STUDENTS
WHO ARE TRANSFORMING THEIR SOCIAL THOUGHT
INTO HELPFUL LIVING

CONTENTS
1. The Nature of Social Thought 11
2. Earliest Social Thought 20
3. The Social Thought of Ancient Civilizations 36
4. The Social Thought of the Hebrews 54
5. Plato and Grecian Social Thought 74
6. Aristotle and Grecian Social Thought 101
7. Roman Social Thought 114
8. Early Christian Social Thought 121
9. Social Thought in the Middle Ages 145
10. More and Utopian Social Thought 154
11. Individualistic Social Thought 173
12. Malthus and Population Concepts 199
13. Comte and Positive Social Thought 209
14. Marx and Socialistic Social Thought 226
15. Buckle and Geographic Social Thought 246
16. Spencer and Organic Social Thought 257
17. The Sociology of Lester F. Ward 277
18. Anthropologic Sociology 301
19. Eugenic Sociology 325
20. Conflict Theories in Sociology 338
21. Co-operation Theories in Sociology 352
22. Psycho-Sociologic Thought 367
23. Psycho-Sociologic Thought (continued) 389
24. The Trend of Applied Sociology 423
25. The Rise of Educational Sociology 442
26. The Sociology of Modern Christianity 451
27. Methods of Sociological Investigation 475
28. The Dissemination of Sociological Thought 489
Index 504

PREFACE
This book is written for the world of students. In it any seriously-
minded person should find a fundamental background for understanding the
central theme of human progress, a substantial basis for attacking the most
important problems of the day, and a call to renew his faith in the soundness
of human aspirations.
Inasmuch as this treatise is written for students, it is not intended to be
the last word on the subject, but simply a first word. The theme of each
chapter is in itself a subject for further investigation. In fact, the student
with an alert mind will find in each chapter many subjects concerning
which he will want to learn more. If the discussions in this book stimulate
the student to make inquiries on his own initiative, they will have
accomplished more than the author could have expected.
Emory S. Bogardus.
University of Southern California.
June 1, 1921.

A HISTORY OF SOCIAL THOUGHT

Chapter I

The Nature of Social Thought
Man faces a world of social problems. As a result he is perplexed
beyond description; his thinking often ends in confusion. Inasmuch as the
average citizen, for the first time in the world’s history, is beginning to
attack social problems, he is entitled to all the aid that can be made
available. Upon the success of the average person in mastering the
intricacies of social thinking, the cause of democracy depends.
A large proportion of the analyses of social questions has been
academic. These discussions have often terminated in quibbles or erudite
generalizations. Insofar as social theories have been correct they have
unfortunately been reserved for the theorists alone. The people themselves
have not understood the nature of social thought; they have not benefited;
and hence, they have held social thought in contempt. Sound social thought
needs to be democratized, that is, to be made available for all people.
In thinking about social problems, the so-called practical person has
proceeded in his own way. He has had personal experience—and that to
him has been sufficient. He has been motivated by a sense of injustice, and
stung into fervid thought by circumstances which seemed to him unfair; he
has concocted a make-shift remedy, or impulsively accepted a ready-made
program. Perhaps he has urged a single cause for all social ills and
prescribed a single remedy for all social diseases. Usually, he has been very
limited in his observations, untrained in making proper inductions, and
hence, narrow and intolerant in his conclusions. He has been entirely
baffled, or else he has felt cock-sure.
The practicalist is often a poor theorist. He may be even the most
dangerous type of theorist. He has scoffed at theory and then fallen into the
pit of incorrect theory. He has failed to see, for example, that a good bridge
does not project itself across a chasm, but that a correct bridge-building

theory is essential. With social practicalists and theorists calling each other
names, instead of co-operating and unselfishly giving the world of people
the benefit of their combined points of view, the world has floundered and
its social problems have piled up, mountains high.
Another difficulty in the pathway of sound social thinking is found in
an absence of proper backgrounds. People are prone to offer solutions for
social questions without first equipping themselves with a knowledge of
foundational elements. Moreover, they are often unwilling to acquaint
themselves with these necessary factors. It is only by accident, however,
that current social movements can be understood unless the historical
sequences of social cause and effect are perceived. Nearly all social
problems are essentially the outcroppings of tendencies which have had a
long human history. A current social maladjustment is generally indicative
of a long line of antecedent factors. A knowledge of societary fundamentals
is essential to sound thinking about present-day evils. A history of social
thought furnishes a minimum social background for the understanding of
current social processes and problems.
Social thought, as distinguished from individual thought, treats of the
welfare of one’s associates and of groups. It may be very simple, merely
observational, the result of daily experience, or it may be a scientific study
of social processes. Sociology as an organized science has developed only
during the past few decades. Inasmuch as sociology has simply begun its
work of formulating the principles of societary progress, a large proportion
of the thinking that has thus far been done in human history about the
welfare of socii or associates is either individual or social, rather than
sociological. A history of social thought, therefore, includes the larger social
field as well as the more specific one of recent development, namely, the
sociological. The time is hardly ripe for a history of distinctly sociological
thought.
Social thought, as here used, is a synthesis of the observations of
individuals about the welfare of other individuals, considered as individuals
or as groups. The focus of social thought is not the welfare of the ego but of
the alter, not of the self but of others, not of the individual but of the class,
group, organization, or process. Social thought draws from the thought-life
of persons who have done unselfish thinking and who have focalized their
attention upon the nature and principles of associative activities. It tests

group progress by the degree in which human personalities secure
constructive, co-operative expression. It measures the individual in his
relationships to the social whole, whether that unit be the family, school,
church, state, or the world society. It rates the individual in terms of a
functioning unit in group life. It evaluates the group both in regard to the
quality of the personalities which it produces in its membership, and to the
loyalty which it manifests as a unit of a larger group, even of human society
itself.
Social thought is both concrete and abstract. Concrete thinking rarely
goes deep. It asks few questions, raises few doubts, and perceives few
connections. Abstract thinking seeks causal explanations, classifies
concretenesses, penetrates relationships, and proposes well-balanced
procedures. The distinction, however, is largely one of degree. Concrete
thinking is characteristic of every normal person, but abstract perceptions
are uncommon. The ability to do abstract thinking, to get at the deeper
meanings of phenomena, to penetrate the mysteries of life, is rare. Concrete
thinking constitutes the major sector of the thought-life of every person,
nearly all the time.
Here and there, however, in human history we find individuals who
have been freed or who have freed themselves from the daily struggle for a
living, from the race to make money, or from the selfish enticements of life-
long loafing, and have joined the world of scholars, seeking to know the
truth, the truth which makes men and women free—free to develop useful
personalities in a vast, changing complex of human living. When man,
having leisure to think abstractly, has set himself to the task of thought
research, his mind has ventured along at least five pathways.
(1) Man has given considerable attention to his relation to the universe.
Primitive man conceived of a personal universe, peopled with spirits.
Throughout human history man has been a religious being, trying to solve
the problems of a universe ruled by spirits and gods or by one supreme
God. This type of thought has produced polytheisms, monotheisms,
theocracies. It has formulated theological creeds and led to bitter
ecclesiastical controversies. It has created fears, hopes, faiths, social ideals,
and sacrificial standards.

(2) Irrespective of religious needs, man has endeavored to discover
proper relations to his universe. He has philosophized. He has tried to
reduce to terms of thought this baffling, intangible, universal environment.
He has searched for a specific ground for explaining the universe. He has
sought unity in change and monism in multiplicity. He has proclaimed that
change itself is Lord of the universe, or perhaps he has found solace in a
creative evolution. At any rate, he has sought ultimate meanings in as
unbiased an interpretation of the universe as is humanly possible.
(3) From the far-flung horizons of religious and philosophic theory,
man has turned his thought in an opposite direction—he has directed his
thought upon itself. He has maneuvered his thought processes
introspectively. He has puzzled over the structure and functions of his own
mind. These series of studies have led on the one hand to treatises such as
the Critique of Pure Reason, and on the other hand to the current
expressions of behavioristic psychology or of psychoanalysis.
(4) Man has sought to fathom the material secrets of the earth. Since
the Industrial Revolution in England, inquiring minds have focussed
tremendous energies upon attempts to master the physical elements. Rocks
and strata of rocks have been caused to yield a wealth of ores, and
subterranean caverns have been made to pour forth reservoirs of gas and oil.
Modern transportation has been made possible by the use of steam,
gasoline, electricity. Mechanical inventions have followed one another in
unanticipated fashion, paying awe-inspiring tribute to the genius of man.
Abstract thinking has given man a marvelous degree of control over the
material side of life.
(5) Recently, the problem of man’s adjustment and responsibility to his
fellowmen is being accorded a worthy hearing at the bar of scientific
thought. For millenniums man has pondered hard over his relations and
obligations to his God and to his universe, over the nature of his mind and
spirit, over ways and means of acquiring individual success through a
manipulation of the material resources of the earth. Incomprehensible as it
may seem, it is true, however, that man has neglected almost wholly, until
recently, the very heart of all successful living, namely, his relations and
obligations to his fellow men and to society. Social thought, the center of all
sound thinking, has been ignored. Consequently, the world, beneath its load
of social ills, has slipped backward nearly as often as it has advanced.

In the present age, however, the world is making unprecedented
demands upon social thought, long before social thought is adequately
prepared for its gigantic tasks. Religion is seeking re-vitalization through
socialized thinking. In its modern endeavor to win the world, Christianity is
making tremendous demands upon applied sociology.
After many vain searches among false theories and impersonal ends,
philosophy is seeking to find itself in a social universe. Psychology,
likewise, is no longer individual, structural, and formal; it is now trying to
interpret itself in terms of human behavior. Group processes are being
searched for the origins of stimuli that will explain individual conduct.
Economic thought, too, has reached a stage where it is endeavoring to
re-define its concepts in the light of sociological knowledge. The material
resources of the earth as well as industrial and business enterprises, in fact
all economic values, are being measured, and re-valued in terms of their
societary significance. The meaning of industrial democracy is being sought
in sociological terms.
In the distinctively associative life enormous demands are being made
upon sociology. It is invited to formulate the criteria by which the worth of
an educational system may be determined. Groups are trying to provide for
the use of the leisure time of their members by methods that are socially
valuable. Many attempts are being made for restoring to the family its
fundamental prerogatives as a social institution.
The history of social thought rises out of the beginnings of human life
on earth and with jagged edges extends along the full sweep of the changing
historical horizon. It finds expression through some of the world’s best
minds. Our quest will bring us in contact with the most vital moments of the
world’s most valuable thinkers.

Chapter II

Earliest Social Thought
Primitive people were inquisitive. They thought about what happened
and they sought explanations. Their attention was centered on the tangible
phenomena of life. Their imagination worked out fantastic and superstitious
interpretations. They reasoned about the daily occurrences of life in
concrete, graphic, and personal terms.
Primitive people everywhere, apparently, sensed in a piecemeal and
microscopic way the meaning of social relationships. Archeological records
disclose crude and simple, but nevertheless genuine social implications.
Early mythologies recognize the importance of social bonds. Out of the dim
dawn of tribal life there appeared a rough-hewn sense of social property.
The proverbs of primitive people include implications, if not definite
statements, of social responsibility.
Primitive people lived simple group lives. If the paternal relationship
was not always known or recognized, the maternal relationship functioned
for at least a few years. The loose family ties harbored a degree of social
responsibility. Wherever ancestor worship developed, the family group
assumed large proportions and manifested strong social characteristics. The
clan, or gens, betokened social fealty.
Communal property testified to communal thinking. The existence of
common hunting grounds and tribal flocks was indicative of folk thought.
Group dances, feasts, building enterprises, celebrations delineated the social
spirit. Warfare produced bursts of tribal loyalty. An examination of the
folkways reveals indistinct but incipient notions of societal welfare. Such a
treatise as Sumner’s Folkways chronicles a vast amount of elemental folk
thinking.
Folk thinking permeated primitive religions. The earliest forms of
religion presupposed societies of spirits or gods. The conduct of the

individual was regulated by his ideas concerning the ways in which he had
pleased or offended the spirits or gods. An infant was born into a society
peopled with human and spirit beings. The latter were often more numerous
than the former; they frequently were more feared; and hence were more
powerful. The living people, the departed spirits, and the gods in a
hierarchal order constituted an effective society for the exercise of many
vigorous forms of social control.
If pestilence came, it was because the gods had been offended by some
human being. As a result of the offense of one individual, the whole tribe
was considered to be liable to punishment. Consequently, the tribe in turn
would punish the offending member and through the use of force and fear
would exert a tremendous power over the conduct and thought of
individuals.
Primitive people were dominated by custom. They were subject to the
autocracy of the past. They were hopelessly caught between ancestral
ascendance and current fears. They threaded their way, mentally, through
tantalizingly uncertain and narrow apertures. They learned the meaning of
obedience, but obedience to a harsh and rigorous past and a fickle and
disconcerting future. Leadership was drastic and capricious; followership
was frantic and tremulous.
Some of the incipient social concepts of primitive peoples have been
preserved in the form of proverbs, maxims, fables, and myths. Many of the
subtler social relationships of life were recognized by early man. His
limited thinking drifted into simple formulae. His vocabulary was scanty;
his ideas were few. He spoke in conventional sayings. “Primitive man spoke
in proverbs.”
Many folkthoughts, or primitive conceptions of social obligations, have
been preserved. The early proverbs of man reveal the beginnings of social
thought. Equally valuable and similar materials are found in the sayings of
the tribes which today are in a state of arrested development. A few
II-1
illustrations of embryonic social thought will be given here.
The first examples will be selected from the folkthoughts of the
Africans of the Guinea Coast. The proverb, Ashes fly back in the face of
him who throws them, recognizes that evil deeds return upon the doer, or as
moderns declare, Curses come home to roost. In the saying, Cowries are

men, primitive man roughly but succinctly stated the theory of the
economic determination of human history. It is cowries, or money, which
molds human thought, determines human evaluations and attitudes, gives
social power, and “makes the man.” An age-long conception, indicative of a
low sense of social feeling, but possessing great force in society, is revealed
in the dictum, Full-belly child says to hungry-belly child, “Keep good
cheer.” Throughout human history, the fortunate glutton has always
recommended patience and tranquility to the unfortunate, hard-working
brother. An eminent American financier of the multi-millionaire class
expressed pity for telephone girls who undergo hard labor, but declared that
their harsh conditions were what the good Lord had made for them. But
how far has this well-groomed citizen of our century advanced beyond the
“full-belly” social philosophy of savage man?
In the observation, A fool of Ika and an idiot of Iluka meet together to
make friends, the African has noted that friends are persons of similar types,
of similar minds, of similar prejudices, and that “birds of a feather flock
together.” Whether conscious or unconscious, association occurs among
persons of a kind, among fools of Ika and idiots of Iluka.
Romantic love, evidently, has always been fickle, for the African has
discovered that “quick loving a woman means quick not loving a woman.”
If this naïve but shrewd reflection concerning lovemaking were taken at its
real worth at the present time, it would be crystallized into a federal
marriage law requiring that a license to marry should be obtained at least
fifteen or thirty days before the marriage could be celebrated.
A rather keen sense of social injustice is expressed in the monologue:
“The ground-pig said: ‘I do not feel so angry with the man who killed me as
with the man who dashed me on the ground afterward.’” Here the injustice
of striking an individual when he is down is depicted. Even primitive man
has a sense of sympathy for the defeated and helpless.
“Three elders cannot all fail to pronounce the word ekulu (antelope):
one may say ekúlu; another ekulú; but the third will say, ékulu (which is
correct).” In other words, several heads are better than one; or, in a
multitude of counsellors there is safety. It was this simple social precept
which a highly individualistic man like Roosevelt used frequently to the
advantage of himself and the nation. When a perplexing problem would

confront President Roosevelt, he was wont to invite to the White House
persons whose beliefs were contrary to his own in order to secure their
opinions. He acted independently, but after taking counsel with several
“elders.”
In Thinking Black, Daniel Crawford has presented phases of the
II-2
colored man’s philosophy. While much is individual, more is social
philosophy. Custom imitation prevails. The social philosophy of the African
Negro is summarized in the rule: Follow your leader. Social precedent, not
principle, is the guide to conduct. If you are a follower, follow patiently; if
you are a leader, lead drastically. “If thou art an anvil, be patient ... but if
thou art a hammer, strike hard.”
The African understands the social psychology of language. He
watches the eyes more carefully than the voice. To him the human eye
speaks all languages under the sun. Mr. Crawford says that the wary eye of
the African “can easily fish news out of the two deep liquid pools of your
eye-balls.” If your eye says one thing and your tongue another, then the
African “will plump for the verdict of the eye.”
The aphorism, There is no pocket in a shroud, warns the individual
against the possibility of taking his material goods into the next world. To
share with other persons is rated a higher act than to store from others. He is
richest who shares most. Among the Africans with whom Mr. Crawford
worked, the word for criminal was not applied to the person who had stolen
property or who had taken life, but to the one who eats alone. “The high
crime and misdemeanor of the town is to dine alone;” the criminal above
other criminals is “Mr. Eat-Alone.” He who refuses to share his food with
those who are less fortunate than himself is an arch-devil. Such a vice is
common among beasts; it is beneath the dignity of man—according to the
African. When several primitives were taken to London and shown the
wealthy and the poor sections of that city, they were dumbfounded. They
were utterly unable to understand how any persons with the slightest spark
of human nature in them could endure to live to themselves in wealth when
in the same city there were the wretched and prostrated multitudes of
Whitechapel and the other cheerless slums.
“What baby lion ever trembled at his father’s roaring?” A few mornings
ago, I heard an angry parent yelling at his son, but the disobedient child

kept on in his own way. I wondered how far this father had advanced in
parental influence and discipline beyond the stage represented by the
African seer who drew his social images from a lion-frequented
environment. “If a tree has grown up crooked, it is because no one
straightened it when young.” This statement postulates social responsibility
for juvenile delinquency and even for adult crime. The underlying principle
is the same as that in the Hebraic injunction: Train up a child in the way he
should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. The principle has
received current recognition in the doctrine of contributory negligence of
parents. The modern observation full of socially dangerous implications,
that parents are blind to the weaknesses of their children, has its African
counterpart: The beetle is a beauty in the eyes of its mother. A gleam of
light is thrown upon the current discussions concerning social parasitism by
the African’s assertion: The parasite has no roots.
The Australian Blackfellow who goes upon a journey, sometimes takes
a handful of mother earth with him. In this way he testifies to his loyalty to
home, and provides against the rise of lonesomeness which he will
experience during tribal hunts. His act crudely represents the essence of the
concept of patriotism. A sense of justice is common to primitive
Australians. Among the Whayook of Australia a man who has wounded a
fellow tribesman is required to present himself to the injured in order to
II-3
receive a similar wound. Among the Wumbais, a person who is absent
when a relative dies must not speak on his return to camp to anyone until he
II-4
has had spears thrown at him. Spencer and Gillen report that the
Australian primitive regards any offense as wiped out by a suitable proffer
II-5
of atonement.
The Filipino declares: A piece of green wood will burn if placed near
the fire. In other words, temptation is a subtle element that ultimately may
destroy even persons who are supposedly temptation-proof. In the proverb,
Boastfulness drives away wisdom, the Filipino has pointed out that the
desire to make a strong impression upon associates hinders intellectual
progress. The chief danger of luxury is stated in the saying: He who is
raised in ease, is usually destitute. The leading result of being financially
fortunate is summarized thus: Easy earning means quick spending. The
evils of hypercriticism are bluntly phrased: The fault-finder has the biggest

faults. The law of social compensation is stated as follows: You laugh
today; I laugh tomorrow. The organic nature of society is implied in the
truism: The pain of a finger is the suffering of the whole body. The need for
independent thinking is urged in the declaration: Whoever believes
everything said, has no mind of his own. On the other hand, the egocentric
mind receives solemn warning in the dictum: He who despises counsel is on
the way to misfortune. The value of a social spirit is proclaimed as follows:
Kindness is a great capital; and again: Good deeds are more precious than
gold or silver. A gentle hint of social importance is given in the formula:
Kindness is with kindness to be paid, not with gold or silver. In these and
related proverbs the earliest social thought of the Filipino mind is indicated.
Let us now examine a few ancient Japanese axioms. (1) The mouth of
the mass melts gold. This proverb refers to the fundamental force of public
opinion. (2) The world is like a looking-glass; if you smile, others also
smile. Here is depicted the elemental character of unconscious imitation. (3)
What the ruler wants, the ruled also wants. In other words, what the upper
classes desire, the lower classes long for; or, as Tarde has said: “The
superior are imitated by the inferior.” (4) Three men get together and have
knowledge equivalent to that of Monju (a famous Buddhist thinker). The
African, Filipino, and English equivalents of this adage have already been
given. All races, apparently, have early observed the safety which comes
from taking counsel. (5) The net of Heaven is rough, but will never miss
one victim. Our equivalent, of Graeco-Latin origin, is: The mills of the gods
grind slowly, but exceedingly small. Evil brings its own rewards sooner or
later. The law of retribution cannot be overcome, even by social
manipulations. (6) If one dog barks a falsehood, ten thousand others spread
it as a truth. In these words, gossip is condemned, and the humanity-wide
tendency of hearsay evidence to gain social force is pictured. (7) The
tongue is but three inches long, but it can kill a man six feet high. Again, the
vicious nature of gossip is shown. Further, the severest punishment is not
always physical; it may come from the human tongue. (8) A man takes a
drink; then the drink takes the man. In this dramatic description, the
drinking of intoxicating liquors is effectively indicted. (9) Applause is the
root of abuse. Even the Japanese have recognized the force of opinion in
influencing the individual, and of favorable opinion in unduly expanding
the ego. A unique characteristic of many Japanese proverbs is the
fundamental and deep-moving knowledge of social psychology which they

show. Judged by their proverbs, the Japanese possess an unusual
understanding of human nature.
Bulgarian proverbs disclose social thought. The “full-belly” philosophy
of the African, or the pig-trough philosophy that has been analyzed by T. N.
Carver, has its Bulgarian counterpart: The satiated man cannot believe the
hungry man. The South Slavs are noted for their weddings which often
continue for three days. When these festivities are over, the bride enters
upon a more or less monotonous round of bearing and rearing children.
These social conditions are aptly described:

Dum! Dum! for three days;
Oh dear! Oh dear! for all days.

Patience is enjoined in the Bulgarian adage: Endure, O horse, until the
time of green grass. Hope that rises in the heart of man is paid homely but
genuine tribute in the rural Slavic proverb: The hungry hen dreams of
millet.
The Danes have many sayings which emphasize social dependence.
The individual is instructed: Act so in the valley that you need not fear
those that stand on the hill. The shrewd man is socially dangerous, for:
Cunning has little honor. Gossip is shown as a swift messenger in the
axiom: A man’s character reaches town before his person. The most serious
result of cheating others is the effect upon the cheater, or: He is most
cheated who cheats himself. The common character of sin is recognized in
the Danish proverb: He must be pure who would blame another. Custom is
a powerful agency of control. The Danes command: Follow the customs, or
fly the country.
The Portuguese have a social saying to the effect: He buys very dear
who begs. The unscientific nature of love is indicated in the Portuguese
declaration: Love has no law. The frequent antithesis between money
lending and friend making is succinctly phrased: Money lent, an enemy
made.
A few Arabian proverbs state social ideas. The laws of human
association and imitation can be found in the following axiom: A wise man

associating with the vicious becomes an idiot; a dog traveling with good
men becomes a rational being. The strength which comes from unity is
forcibly phrased: Three if they unite against a town will ruin it. The
transforming power of love is recognized: Love can make any place
agreeable. An idealistic social standard is set for the individual in the
aphorism: It is more noble to pardon than to punish. On the other hand,
mercy may be misplaced: Mercy to the criminal may be cruelty to the
people. The individual must beware of being an ingrate; he must not permit
his selfish desires to crush out the spirit of gratitude: A tree that affords thee
shade, do not order it cut down. The omnipresence of envy is understood:
Envy assails the noblest; the winds howl around the highest peaks. The anti-
social tendency of a vicious habit is well described: A hand accustomed to
take is far from giving. Perhaps the Malthusian advocate will find solace in
the simple dictum: If the sailors become too numerous, the boat will sink.
He who pleases everybody has done so at the expense of his own character,
or as the Arabs say: He deserves no man’s good will of whom all men speak
well.
From Ceylon comes the philanthropic request: When you eat, think of
the poor. The Cingalese, however, recognize the importance of maintaining
the scientific attitude in charity, for they have a saying: He who gives alms
must do it with discretion. The blighting influence of wealth is stated in the
Cingalese axiom: A covetous man has two sources of iniquity—how to
amass money, and how to use it.
Among Mexican proverbs, social ideas are not missing. The reader will
catch the social significance of the following: (1) A howling cat is not a
good hunter; (2) Everybody can climb up the limbs of the fallen tree; (3) A
rich widow cries with one eye and rings the wedding bells with the other;
(4) The tongue slow, the eyes quick; (5) From January to January the
bankers have all the money.
The illustrations which have been given from several racial sources will
suffice to show the nature of the earliest social thought of primitive peoples.
By way of comparison, a few social proverbs which are common among
English, Scotch, French, and German speaking peoples, and which are of
various origins, will be given. It will be unnecessary to comment upon the
social thought which is stated or implied in these proverbs.

That is not lost which a friend gets.
The shortest road is where the company’s good.
A man is known by the company he keeps.
Do unto others as you would have others do to you.
A man who would have friends must show himself friendly.
One bad example spoils many precepts.
Honesty is the best policy.
One good turn deserves another.
Birds of a feather flock together.
As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.
People who live in glass houses mustn’t throw stones.
Bare is the gift without the giver.
What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.
He laughs best who laughs last.
To make a happy couple, the husband must be deaf and the wife
blind.
Charity gives itself rich; covetousness hoards itself poor.

The nature of the primitive social thought that has been preserved
through proverbs and sayings justifies the following observations. (1)
Primitive social thought was exceedingly simple, crude, and undeveloped.
(2) It was uncorrelated and unsystematic. (3) A classification of the total
number of known proverbs of any primitive people into individual and
social types shows that not more than ten per cent are social. Primitive
thinking was done in terms of the welfare of the individual himself. The
social thought was commonly of individualistic origin. A social idea was
originally not suggested for its own sake or disinterestedly, but for the
reason that its observance would enable individuals to live together more
harmoniously and prosperously. (4) Social proverbs employ figures of
speech. Similes from nature are frequent; physical analogies are not
uncommon. Many of these figures disclose a rural or bucolic mind. (5)
Frequently, the social proverbs of the various races pertain to family and
community relationships. The sense of social responsibility does not
penetrate as a rule beyond the small group. The responsibility of group to
group is rarely expressed or implied. The social vision does not extend to
large groups. (6) A comparative study of primitive social sayings indicates

countless similarities, and testifies to the uniformity of human experiences
and social needs, irrespective of racial distinctions. These resemblances do
not imply collaboration, collusion, or imitation. They mean that the needs of
primitive individuals in various and unrelated parts of the world have
everywhere led the human mind out in search of socially satisfactory
explanations. Primitive thinking produced fundamental social concepts,
such as kinship, authority, dependence, and tribal loyalty.

Chapter III

The Social Thought of Ancient Civilizations
In this chapter the discussion of earliest social thought will be
presented from the standpoint of the ancient civilizations of Egypt,
Babylonia and Assyria, India, China, and Persia. The evidences of social
thought are meagre and inchoate. Nevertheless, there are data which cannot
be ignored. Inferential evidence and proverbial references constitute the
main portion of these data.
(1) The ancient Egyptian social order was bureaucratic and autocratic.
The king was supreme. With the rise of the Theban hierarchy, the priestly
class came to power and established a theocratic régime. Then military
leaders came into prominence and overthrew the theocracy of the priests.
With the historical rise of Egypt, about 4000 B. C., the emphasis upon
law as the basis of the social order stands out prominently. The books of
laws early acquired sacred significance. They were reputed to be of divine
and monarchical origins; they provided courts of justice; and they
prescribed punishments for offenses.
The social ideas are to be gleaned almost entirely from proverbial
sayings. Egyptian scholars refer to collections of these moral precepts as
being of a practical rather than a systematic philosophical nature. The most
frequently mentioned of the Egyptian books of proverbs are the Proverbs of
Ptah-hotep, and the Prescriptions of Ani.
The social order was dominated as a rule by the king, who was
supposed to be divine. The king and a relatively small number of nobles
owned the land. The large percentage of the people were serfs and slaves.
Throughout ancient Egyptian history, the middle class must have been
weak, and small in numbers. When the lands passed under the control of the
temple authorities no change occurred in the social conditions of the
masses. The priests shared the authority with their auxiliaries, the soldiers.

The unprivileged classes included the farmers, boatmen, mechanics, trades-
III-1
people, besides the slaves.
Egyptian life was rural. Commerce was undeveloped. Higher education
was reserved for the very few, although it appears that elementary education
was widespread. The priests often used their educational advantages to prey
upon and excite the superstitions of the people, thereby strengthening the
social control which they enjoyed.
An anomalous phase of the Egyptian mind was that it shifted back and
forth from a hedonistic enjoyment of the moment to a serious contemplation
of the future life. Amusements were fostered; the drinking of intoxicating
liquors was extensive, and music was promoted. The game of draughts was
perhaps the national pastime. The people were not warriors. They employed
mercenaries, who ultimately became socially powerful.
Polygamy was countenanced and practised, but only of course among
the wealthy. A relatively high degree of freedom was granted the women
among the privileged classes. They appeared in public with their husbands;
they publicly engaged in religious ceremonies; and they were given unusual
property rights. At one time it is reported that Egyptian women could not
only own property, but could dispose of it as they wished, or could loan
money at interest to their husbands. At another time the following
injunction seems to have been issued: “Thou shalt never forget thy mother,
and what she has done for thee, that she bore thee, and nurtured thee in all
ways.” Children were enjoined to obey their parents, to be respectful to
their superiors, and to be reserved. Greatness was identified with kindness.
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Justice and kindliness were urged upon the leaders.
The belief in the future world claimed a lion’s share of the attention of
the Egyptian. As a result, sculpture flourished. It was believed that if the
human figure was copied and the copy preserved, the spirit and the body of
the departed person could be more easily re-united. Architecture developed,
but with the tombs or pyramids and other monuments as the chief forms.
Urban mural divisions and fortified walls are still to be found as evidences
of Egyptian social institutions.
It was taught that in the next world the individual would be held
accountable for his deeds in this life. This belief acted as a powerful social

control; it involved specific social obligations. The individual must deal
openly with his fellowmen. He must observe the rights of the weaker
members of society. For example, he must not make false charges against a
slave to the master of the slave. He must show that he has respected the
social rights that were invested in property. From the moral and social
writings of the Egyptian scribes, it is apparent that in religious matters, the
individual was moved to give thought to his duties as a citizen and as a
neighbor.
(2) The ancient Babylonian and Assyrian social order was similar in
many ways to Egyptian civilization. The Babylonian description of a great
deluge resembles the account of the Flood that is given in the Old
Testament, and indicates thought about morals and social life. Both Babylon
and Assyria developed a religion which was expressed in terms of the
nation-group. The boundaries of one, with Merodach at the head, and of the
other with Assur in supreme control, marked the national group divisions.
Merodach, it was believed, accompanied the king in the wars and fought for
the nation. He was concerned entirely, according to traditions, with the
welfare of Babylonia as a population group.
The attitude in Babylonian society toward the institution of slavery was
distinctly different from that in Rome, but similar to the Egyptian practices.
The slave was considered in a more social way than by the Romans. He was
frequently regarded as one of the family; he could even become a free
member of society. “Slavery was no bar to his promotion.” Moreover,
slavery did not necessarily imprint a social stigma upon the slave.
The social rights of women were similar to the Egyptian customs. The
married woman of the ruling classes possessed definite property rights. She
could use the property that she owned as she saw fit; she could even
bequeath it as she chose. Her dowry gave her economic independence; it
was her absolute property, which she could bequeath by will in any way
that she desired.
The earliest well-known Babylonian ruler was Hammurapi (2124–
2081). He is known best through his famous book of laws, the Code of
Hammurapi. The Code bespeaks for the author the desire to rule Babylonian
society justly. There are minute regulations of private business and of labor

conditions which give the Code some of the characteristics of modern
mercantilistic thought.
The Code contains perhaps the earliest forms of labor legislation that
were enacted. Hammurapi sought through legislation to determine wages
for different classes of labor. The Code prescribed severe punishment for
anyone who sheltered a runaway slave. In this and similar ways, property
rights were protected and human elements subordinated. It was not until the
Deuteronomic Code was written that the rights of labor received legislative
recognition.
Hammurapi stood for a paternalistic control of society. His idea of
justice was literally that of an eye for an eye. “If a man has caused the loss
III-3
of a patrician’s eye, his eye shall one cause to be lost.” Justice,
moreover, was subject to the law of social gradation. An offense against a
man of lower rank might be atoned by paying money. “If a man has caused
III-4
a poor man to lose his eye, he shall pay one mina of silver.” Additional
light is thrown on the concept of justice by other passages from the Code,
especially by this one: “If a builder has built a house for a man and has not
made strong his work, and the house he has built has fallen, and he has
caused the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to
III-5
death.”
The intellectual progress and the inventions of the Babylonians are
indicative of social status. The development along artistic lines, particularly
in architecture and sculpture, must have exerted an indirect but important
social influence. Significant advances in surgery had been made preceding
the reign of Hammurapi. In medicine, however, the demonic theory of the
causes of disease enslaved the people.
The Assyrians, who lived to the north of the Babylonians, were less
social in type. They were little concerned about the future life; their religion
was relatively undeveloped. The Assyrian artists gave their attention chiefly
to the king, the court, and to war. They reproduced in artistic form the king
and the soldier, but ignored the life and customs of the people.
(3) When we turn to early East Indian records, we find a higher
development of social ideals than among any peoples which have thus far
been considered. In the Vedic documents there is considerable evidence of

communal life and of a remarkable degree of social spirit and brotherliness.
In the East Indian account of a Deluge—similar to the Deluge that is
described in Genesis—there is a conception of punishment that falls upon
the group because of the sins of individuals. Sacrifice, among the Vedic
believers, had acquired a positive social function. It was considered as a
social act, in which the worshipper and the god took part. The food
strengthened the god and the spiritual contact strengthened the worshiper.
Hence mutual sympathy was generated.
With the rise of Brahmanism, the caste system developed. It divided
society. It gave structure to the concept that some people are naturally—and
artificially—superior to other people. In the laws of Manu, several social
concepts are broached. The nature of marriage and the duties of a
householder are explained. The duties of a woman are prescribed. The
nature of private and public law is noteworthy, and the recognition of the
obligation of one caste to another in times of distress marks the beginning
of a reaction against the caste system. It was considered possible for an
individual to fall from a caste to the one below, but not for an individual to
rise in caste. The moral standards for individuals reached a level
comparable to those represented in certain of the teachings of Jesus. For
example, notice this instruction:
Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult anybody, nor
become anybody’s enemy for the sake of this perishable body. Against an
angry man let him not in return show anger; let him bless when he is
cursed.
Buddhism inaugurated a set of social ideas which involved the
abolition of the caste system. In the fourth of the “Four Noble Truths” the
principles which are formulated, are partly of social import. Commendation
is extended to right speech—speech that is friendly, and sincere toward
others. The requirements include right conduct—conduct which is
peaceable and honorable toward other persons. Stress is placed upon right
means of securing livelihood—methods which do not involve the injury or
the taking of life. There are types of modern business enterprise that are
extolled in our Christian America which would fall under the ban of the
“Noble Truths” in pagan India.

Among the “ten commandments” of Buddha, eight represent social
ideas and obligations:
(1) Not to kill any living being.
(2) Not to take that which is not given (not to steal).
(3) To refrain from adultery.
(4) To speak no untruth (not to lie to other people).
(5) To abstain from intoxicating liquors.
(6) Not to slander.
(7) Not to covet.
(8) Not to be angry.
Buddha taught that hatred is to be repaid by love, that life is to be filled
with kindness and compassion, that the widest toleration is to be practised.
The teachings of Buddha engendered a delicate social consciousness
regarding the relation of the individual to his fellows. The precepts were
strong enough to break down rigid class barriers. The underlying
conception was broadly human.
Additional light is thrown on the social thought of Buddha by the
following sayings which are credited to him:
Pity and sympathy is the Buddha’s mind.
Pity to his parents is the Supreme Law.
Honesty is the Paradise of the Bodhisattva.
O my Disciples, flee from fornication, know how to be content with
your own wife, and do not even for a single moment lust after another
woman.
A state without a ruler is like a body without a head; it cannot exist
very long.
The king looks upon his subjects with a heart of mercy, as if they were
his children; and the people regard the king as their father.
If there is no Buddha in the world, be good to your parents; for to be
good to one’s parents is to minister unto Buddha.

Nursing a sick man is the great field where the righteous tree of mind
grows.
Even a strong man cannot lift himself.
Ten people have ten colors (opinions).
The paint which is painted by ten fingers (men) is accurate. (In the
multitude of counsellors there is safety.)
The sayings of Buddha may be summed up in the statement that, like
many of the teachings of Jesus, they accent the gentle virtues and the
passive traits of a people bearing a yoke against which they are powerless to
revolt, the virtues of obedience, respect to those in authority, long-suffering,
patience, even resignation.
(4) The social thought of early China can best be gleaned from the
writings of Confucius. This scholar was not a reformer or a religious leader,
but primarily a conserver. He was interested in civil and political affairs.
His books reflect not his own ideas, for his originality was not great, but the
concepts which had been worked out before his time. In the Li Ki, or
Record of Rites, there are many social and domestic precepts. In a way the
Li Ki, “the Chinamen’s manual of conduct,” is a treatise on social as well as
individual ethics. Around the family group, Chinese social ideas revolved.
On the death of his mother, Confucius, for example, went into seclusion for
twenty-seven months. On sacrificial occasions the living members and the
departed spirits of the household were accustomed to gather in one filial
communal group. The welfare of the individual was completely
subordinated to the interests of the family group of spirits.
The Chinese worship, or honor, their ancestors. The worship of the past
has paralyzed new thought. Custom imitation has ruled and tradition has
been reverenced.
Marriage receives special attention, but the arrangements are made by
parents or “go-betweens.” Socially, the sexes do not intermingle. The
parents exercise complete control over the children; the mother bears a
considerable portion of the burdens of parental discipline. Filial piety is the
cardinal virtue. Although polygamy is discountenanced, concubinage is
permitted. The sexes dress very much alike, except in headdress and

footgear. The style of wearing apparel is not only simple and aesthetic, but
it “minimizes the visible distinctions of sex.”
Confucius, or Kung-fu-tsze, believed in the efficacy of setting good
examples. Imitation would then accomplish the desired results. By these
methods, Confucius expected that society would be improved. Fundamental
principles of a stable social order, more than of social progress, were in the
mind of Confucius. He conceived of the universe as a perfect order.
Likewise, he thought of the state as a perfect social order. Confucius urged
that the individual strive for perfection. According to the Confucian
doctrine of the Superior Man, the individual should master his own passions
and desires, substituting an enjoyment of music, ceremony, and of
friendship, for the enjoyment that comes from the exercise of the bodily
passions. He should seek salvation through the study of nature and of
things. Moral character and intelligence if accompanied by bravery will
produce the highest type of personality.
In Chinese social thought the family and state were early recognized as
the two leading institutions in society. In the civil organization it is worth
while to note the hien, or city district. The hien has been pronounced “the
real unit of Chinese corporate life”; and the hien magistrate, “the heart and
soul of all official life.” Since this magistrate keeps closely in touch with
the masses, he is called by the people “the father and mother officer.” The
hien contains some of the germ ideas of democracy; it emphasizes local
self-government.
The ancient laws were elaborate, giving an unusual degree of power to
the judges. Although customs ruled, the judges often possessed a liberal
margin of freedom in determining the nature of punishments. Contrary to
Western procedure, the Chinese consider an accused man as guilty until
III-6
proved otherwise. Excessive corporate punishment is deplored.
Confucius objected to the maintenance of a government by the use of fear
and of coercive measures. He predicted that capital punishment (even in a
land ruled by custom) would be abolished in a hundred years.
The ideas of peace and harmonious social relationships have long held
sway in China. Militarism has been scorned, and war held in contempt. It is
ironical that as China begins to function as a world power in contact with

Western and Christian nations, she is compelled to find her chief defense in
an uncivilized and unChristian militarism.
Sympathy is a fundamental concept among the Chinese. Unfortunately,
it has been instrumental in producing a highly specialized and
professionalized class of beggars. Industry and patience are characteristic
social virtues. Lao-tse, the founder of Taoism and a contemporary of
Confucius, taught the social precept: Recompense injury with kindness.
Confucius, who disagreed, taught that kindness should be paid with
kindness, and injury with injury. This conception led Confucius to
formulate his golden rule of human conduct: Do not do to others what you
would not have others do to you.
Obedience to authority has been for centuries a cardinal social principle
of the Chinese. It was enunciated by Confucius, who spoke as a
representative of the ruling classes. In stressing obedience to temporal
authorities and in shunning the gods, Confucius has been accused of
fostering a materialistic philosophy. This charge is partly offset by his
ethical teachings. Confucius was a humanitarian rather than a materialist; he
was a utilitarian rather than an idealist. In these attitudes he reflects not his
own opinions so much as the thought of the generations which preceded
him.
Mencius, who lived shortly after Confucius, was an environmentalist in
the sense that he believed that external evil influences have corrupted man’s
original good nature. On the other hand, Mencius urged progress through
regeneration of the heart. Mencius was a more thoroughgoing humanist
than Confucius, for he made the happiness of the people the supreme goal
for the individual. He condemned war and warriors alike and declared that
generals are criminals. He asserted that it is wrong to conquer a territory
against the will of the people of that territory.
Additional sidelights upon early Chinese social thought are afforded by
the following social proverbs of ancient Chinese origin:
If a cat cries after eating the mouse, this is false sympathy.
Follow good, learn good; follow beggar, learn to beg.
Gentlemen use heart; lesser men use strength.
New clothes but old friends are good.

Within the four seas all are brothers.
If two people were 1000 miles apart and be like-minded, they will
come together; if they sit opposite one another and are not like-minded
there will be no mutual acquaintance.
Speak language fitting to station of man you meet.
All under heaven is one home.
Although a man is away from home, his heart is there.
The big fish eat the little ones, the little ones eat the shrimps, and the
shrimps are forced to eat mud (applied to the classes of society who pay
taxes).
He who praises me on all occasions is a fool who despises me or a
knave who wishes to cheat me.
Govern thyself, and you will be able to govern the world.
The hearts of the people are the only legitimate foundations of an
empire.
By nature all men are alike; but by education, widely different.
For the sake of one good action, a hundred evil ones should be
forgotten.
To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree
without a root.
Rogues differ little; each began first as a disobedient son.
Of all man’s actions, there is none greater than filial piety.
When they saw an old man, people walking or driving gave him the
road. Men who had white hairs mingling with the black did not carry
burdens along the highways (care for the aged).
When the man of high station is well instructed, he loves men; when
the man of low station is well instructed, he is easily ruled.
Three friendships are advantageous: friendship with the upright,
friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of observation.

Three are injurious: friendship with a man of spurious airs, friendship with
the insinuatingly soft, and friendship with the glib-tongued.
Who taught you politeness? The impolite.
To be a successful monarch, one must be a just monarch.
Of the different peoples which have thus far been considered, the
Chinese have furnished the most elaborate degree of social thought. While
the social ideals of the Chinese are largely unsystematic, they accent the
family and the state as essential social institutions. They also reveal even a
significant conception of world brotherliness. The Chinese have probably
created more social proverbs than any other people, past or present. For the
stage of civilization that is represented by proverbs and sayings, the social
thought of the Chinese is unsurpassed. In this regard the Chinese have but
one close competitor, the ancient Hebrews.
(5) The Persians, who after their defeat by Alexander the Great in 331
B. C. have been credited with having turned over the torch of civilization to
the Greeks, made a contribution to social thought similar to that of the other
ancient peoples. Under Cyrus the Great, Darius, and Xerxes a system of
state education was fostered which was designed chiefly to train soldiers. It
did not stress social and intellectual development, although it existed in a
land that produced the Magi. The individuals who were not in the army
received slight educational benefits.
It is in the teachings of Zoroaster of the sixteenth century B. C. that we
first find the main trend of Persian social thought. The Zend Avesta, the
document from which Zoroasterism and the modern Parsee religion have
evolved, emphasizes the principle of kindliness in all important human
relationships. Sanitation, business honesty, and chastity in family
relationships are taught.
The ancient Hebrews and the Greeks each made such large
contributions to social thought that separate chapters will be devoted to
these peoples. In a summary of the social thought of the Egyptians,
Babylonians and Assyrians, East Indians, Chinese, and Persians, it may be
said that there is a rather uniform emphasis upon the elemental virtues,
particularly upon kindliness. While the individual’s salvation is given
prominence, the individual is urged to be socially considerate and to

cultivate sympathetic relationships with the gods and with his fellow human
beings.

Chapter IV

The Social Thought of the Hebrews
Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian, East Indian, Chinese, and
Persian records disclose a set of elemental and yet more or less passive
social backgrounds against which the social ideals of the Hebrew prophets
shine forth like stars of the first magnitude. The Pentateuch and the writings
of the Hebrew wise men are rich in gleams of a social spirit, while the
Hebrew prophets, notably, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, uttered
flaming indictments of social evils.
The Hebrews stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries in
social thinking. They left a series of historical documents, covering several
centuries and revealing a specific evolution in social concepts. They
expressed the fundamentals from which Christian social thought developed,
and from which much of the ethical and social thinking of Western
civilization on its practical side has evolved.
The social thought of the Hebrews was born of group suffering.
Through the mists of the earliest Hebrew traditions we discern that conflicts
occurred in the Euphrates Valley which sent Abraham out on his perilous
journey toward unknown and hostile Canaan. The gaunt spectre, famine,
brought distress to the household of the domestic-loving Abraham and
drove him to Egypt where he sojourned for a time. Abram, exalted father, or
Abraham, father of a multude, became the founder in a sense of three world
religions, for to him Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism trace their
origins.
Throughout the years of migration, exile, and suffering, Abraham
maintained his religious faith and belief. By means of his simple religion he
was able to interpret sanely the troubles and conflicts of life. Out of
suffering interpreted religiously, Abraham developed a remarkably well-
balanced and social personality. From this beginning, Hebrew social

thought evolved. Ultimately, Israel created social concepts which has won
for her the distinction of being “the leading social teacher of the human
IV-1
race.”
As a social entity the Hebrews were the result of “a titanic social
struggle;” they arose out of an industrial crisis. The scene was laid in Egypt.
The descendants of Jacob were working long hours with little pay, as
slaves, and under harsh social conditions. One of their number, more
favored than the rest by heredity and environment, saw a Hebrew workman
being beaten by an Egyptian “boss.” The favored one, Moses, felt the
surging passions of social injustice rising within his breast—and he slew the
boss. Moses thereby became the founder of the world’s labor movement. By
an act of violence in the impassioned days of youth, Moses became “a
social agitator”; by years of patient service of his people in the name of
Jehovoh, he became one of the world’s greatest social seers.
Rameses II was “an unprincipled captain of industry.” He was haughty,
hard-hearted, and without social conscience. Moses was sympathetic,
socially sensitive, and keenly religious. Rameses II was a leading
representative of an ancient aristocracy; Moses was the first great exponent
of an incipient democracy, and “the first man in history with a well-
developed social consciousness.”
According to the Exodus record Moses, as the murderer of an Egyptian
boss, felt no qualms of conscience, but he did fear the mighty Pharaoh. At
that time in history it was a minor matter to kill a slave; but to have killed a
boss was vastly different. The slave represented weakness; the boss was the
official representative of political and financial power. Consequently, Moses
fled the country. In Egypt he was helpless, and in danger of losing his life.
He fled to Midian.
In Midian, Moses pondered over the economic and social injustices to
which his people were being subjected. He communed with God, from
whom he received the motive power to correct a gigantic social wrong. His
vision of Jehovah gave him the conviction that Jehovah is a God of justice
and mercy who understands social and industrial evils and sympathizes
with the socially defeated classes. Moses reports this remarkable social
message from Jehovah:

“I have surely seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt, and
have heard their cry of anguish because of their taskmasters, for I know
their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the power of the
IV-2
Egyptians.”
In other words, against the union of great wealth and political power in
the hands of an unjust man, God revolted, and God said to Moses: “Rescue
this Israelitish people from the heels of autocracy.” Moses conceived of
Jehovah as a God who is “full of sympathy for the afflicted and dependent
and ever eager to champion their cause against cruel oppression.” Moses’
conception of Jehovah as a socially spirited God is unique for that day in
human history. God is described as a lover of justice and even a lover of
mankind. When God speaks, it is usually in terms of democracy. The first
social teachings of the Old Testament, considered chronologically, are those
against social and industrial oppression.
A momentous conflict ensued. Fired by the promises and presence and
power of Jehovah, Moses journeyed back to Egypt. He proceeded to
organize the first labor strike known to mankind. Thereupon, the angry
Pharaoh commanded the workers to make brick without straw. And when
the workers cried out against the impositions and burdens, the agents of
“the first great captains of industry” taunted the workers and cried at them:
“Ye are idle, ye are idle.” But God and Moses won against the hosts of
autocracy and plutocracy. The workers were freed.
Out of these struggles the Hebrew nation took form. Group loyalty, or
patriotism, became a conscious Hebrew concept. The idea of kinship was
supplemented by an appreciation of the meaning of national life.
Furthermore, a sense of social and economic justice received a clear-cut and
positive human expression and divine approval. For the first time the social
problem was defined.
The major social chord which the Hebrew prophets kept vibrating was
justice. Some of the recurring interpretations of the needs of the hour were:
Let justice roll down like waters; Rulers shall govern in justice; Hear, I pray
you, ye heads of Israel, is it not for you to know justice?
The Hebrew word for the English “justice” is mishpat. It is used in
various senses, such as, justice, order, law, right, legal right. Amos wanted
mishpat established in the land. Micah asserted that Jehovah requires the

individual to do mishpat, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with his
God. Isaiah urged the people to do well and to seek mishpat; he pronounced
woe upon those who turned aside the needy from mishpat; he declared
Jehovah to be a God of mishpat. Jeremiah made plain that Jehovah
exercises mercy and mishpat among the people.
Amos protested vigorously against special class privileges. He
denounced the wealthy classes because of their social arrogance and
economic injustice. In describing them, he points out a fundamental
principle of social procedure. By their repression of those who are
protesting, they “are heaping up violence”; that is, autocratic repression will
never right injustice, but will foster ultimate revolution. Amos charged the
rulers and all persons in positions of social power with the primary
obligation of seeing that the poor and the outcast are protected from
exploitation. What satire in a day when rulers were noted for their
exploitation of the weak social classes!
A special responsibility rests upon judges. Amos severely arraigned all
who turn judgment to wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground.
Anathemas were heaped upon the takers of bribes, especially if they sit in
places of public authority and wear the robes of law and patriotism. Hot
denunciation fell also upon the private doer of injustice; upon the merchant
who makes smaller the measure and perverts the false balances; upon all
who trample in any way upon the needy, who trample on the head of the
poor, who sell the righteous for silver, who turn aside the way of the
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humble. The concept of justice was vividly defined by Amos. Moreover,
the shepherd prophet of Tekoa had the courage and ability to make the
concept clear to all who would listen to him. Amos spoke for justice on the
throne, on the judge’s bench, in the activities of the wealthy, in the
transactions of merchants, and in the daily dealings of individuals with one
another.
The campaign against injustice is carried forward by the first Isaiah, the
statesman and orator. In the Kingdom of Judah, Isaiah found the same
social evils that Amos had earlier preached against in the Northern
kingdom. The boldness of his attack is startling:
Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: everyone loveth
gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither does

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the cause of the widow come unto them.
Then Isaiah enters upon perhaps the most open, daring, and indignant
challenge to doers of social iniquity that is to be found anywhere:
Ye have eaten of the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the
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poor?
After the manner of Amos, Isaiah protested vigorously against the
judges and officers of the law who for a bribe vindicate the wicked and
deprive the innocent man of his innocence. He denounced in no doubtful
language the scribes who devote themselves to writing oppression, who turn
aside the dependent from securing justice, who prevent Jehovah’s followers
from receiving honest treatment, who prey upon widows and despoil
orphans. Special condemnation was heaped upon those who set up
iniquitous decrees.
Isaiah was a forerunner in an indirect sense of Henry George, for he
vehemently rebuked land monopolists. His new principle is contained in a
pronouncement of woes upon the persons who join house to house and add
field to field, until there is no land left except for the monopolist who
dwells as a lord over all. Isaiah protested against social injustice not only
because of the harmful effects upon the individual but also because of the
destructive and enervating national results.
After the fashion of Amos and Isaiah, Micah conceived of Jehovah as a
just God. Micah depicts the social injustice of his day in terms of the
persons who hate the good and love the evil, who pluck off the skin of the
weak, even the flesh from the bones of Jehovah’s followers; “who also eat
the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break
their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the
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caldron.”
Micah unhesitatingly condemns the priests who are giving oracles for a
reward, and the prophets who are divining for silver and who are trusting in
Jehovah to protect them. Micah was perhaps the first person to describe the
activities of the criminaloid which have been so carefully analyzed by
Professor E. A. Ross. He grasped the concept of the social sinner who keeps
within the law. He attacked wealthy landowners who crush the small

holders; he spared neither high officials, nor priests. He presented his social
concepts with precision and effectiveness.
The invectives against social injustice are carried into the teachings of
Jeremiah. They appear later in the Deuteronomic Code. The Psalmists
deprecated injustice. The wisdom teachers uttered profound warnings on the
subject. The writer of Job deplored injustice. Throughout the Old Testament
the almost countless references justify the conclusion that justice is the
leading social concept which is presented by ancient Hebrew thought.
The Old Testament parallels its denunciation of unjust social
relationships with diatribes against luxury. The evil effects of great riches
are again and again described. Amos boldly pointed the finger of scorn at
the idle rich, at those who “lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves
upon their couches.”
The possession of vast wealth has usually been considered by those
persons who are immediately concerned as an expression of divine favor.
Amos exposed the fallacies in this belief, commanded the owners of wealth
to assume social responsibility, and instantly to cease their unholy practices
of securing gain.
Isaiah united with Amos in treating the possession of wealth not as a
matter of favor or luck, but as a social trust. With one stroke Jeremiah tore
off the gilded frame from about the life of the self-indulgent, luxury-loving
King Jehoiakim. What powerful and autocratic monarch was ever charged
with indulging in luxury in such relentless and uncompromising language
as this?
Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his
chambers by injustice....
Shalt thou reign, because thou closest thyself in cedar?...
But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for
to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.
The ways of the dishonest rich are vividly described by Jeremiah. They
set snares and catch people with lying. Their houses are full of evidences of
their crooked dealings. They maintain themselves in luxury despite wanton
expenditures by violating the needs of the fatherless and the needy.

Zephaniah was no less direct in pointing out the dangers in wealth. He
declared that ill-gotten gains shall themselves become a prey and that the
houses of the sinful rich shall become desolate. All their silver and their
gold shall not be able to deliver them from their ultimate desolation.
In a beautiful and effective style the Wisdom writer in Proverbs
unconsciously sums up the Old Testament philosophy concerning wealth:
Labor not to become rich; cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set
thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves
wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
The Old Testament with surprising uniformity supports the cause of
labor. The welfare of the slave is frequently espoused. According to the
Deuteronomic Code a runaway slave who was caught did not necessarily
need to be returned to his owner. In fact, a person who harbored such a
slave was expressly enjoined not to return him. By this injunction the rights
of property and vested interests in slaves were ignored. Such an attitude was
in opposition to the Code of Hammurapi and to the codes of vested interests
throughout history. Slavery, however, was a well-established institution
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among the ancient Hebrews.
Although the law book of Hammurapi fixed the wages of laborers, the
Old Testament law book restricted the hours of labor. Not only is the master
to limit his labor to six days a week, but he is commanded to see that his
slaves, male and female, do not work more than six days. Modern industry,
even twentieth century manufacturing enterprise in the United States, has
been persistently violating the labor rules of the Hebrew law-givers.
Employers are commanded not to take advantage of poor and needy hired
servants. They shall not oppress labor simply because they are powerful and
labor is weak. Even the poor immigrant laborer is not to be exploited!
The first legislation in behalf of immigrants is found in Deuteronomy.
Employers must respect the needs of alien workers. The foreigner shall not
be oppressed. In the ordinary dealings between citizens and foreigners,
justice must not be perverted. The Hebrew law makers even went so far as
to issue the command: Love ye therefore the strangers, for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt.

The institution of marriage is early accented in the Old Testament. In
the second chapter of Genesis divine approval is placed upon marriage. In
accordance with biological and social needs the institution of marriage is
made sacred. Although the Hebrews are noted for their emphasis upon the
responsibility of children to parents, the husband is ordered to forsake his
father and his mother and cleave unto his wife. A man’s obligation to his
helpmate exceeds even his obligations to his father and mother.
The concept of a long-suffering, patient husband is extensively
elaborated in the teachings of Hosea. This prophet of the eighth century,
B. C., demonstrated the sanctity of the marriage relation by remaining true
to it even after his wife bore children of whom he was not the father. It is
remarkable that Hosea should not have divorced his wife at once when he
learned of her unfaithfulness to the marriage vow. Hosea taught, by
example, that divorce should be the last resort after all the means of love
have been used in trying to win back the erring partner.
The description of Hosea’s domestic difficulties, whether allegorical or
not, is an early protest against the double standard of morals for man and
woman. The attitude of people in modern society who blame and shun the
fallen woman but permit the guilty man to continue to enjoy the company
of respectable men and women is vigorously challenged by Hosea.
The last word against sex immorality was pronounced by Hosea. His
description of the effects of widespread sex immorality is brief but incisive.
Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.
Their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, and from the
womb, and from the conception.
Their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit.
In the Deuteronomic laws we find the duties of parents to children and
of children to parents carefully outlined. Parents, primarily, are made
responsible for moral and religious education in the home; and children are
under obligations to obey their parents. This teaching is summed up in the
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injunction: Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long
upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee; and in the imprecation:

Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure
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darkness.
The Wisdom writers dwell at considerable length upon the proper
relationships of husbands and wives and of parents and children. They point
the finger of shame at the quarrelsome woman. They warn against the
woman whose chief asset is her beauty. A virtuous wife is a crown to her
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husband, but an immoral wife is as rottenness in his bones.
The Wisdom teachers do not minimize the importance of parental
discipline. On occasion parents must act with force. Correction of children
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is commanded. The situation is pictured in the following language:
The word and reproof give wisdom; but a child left to himself bringeth
his mother to shame.
In other words, it is necessary that parents assume a positive, definite
attitude in regard to child nurture. They must see that their children are
actually trained in the ways in which they should go. Even the loving parent
must sometimes show his affection for his child by chastising the child.
Only by such a procedure do children grow up to be a comfort to parents in
their old age.
On the other hand the child must assume his share of responsibility. It
is the part of wisdom for children to receive willingly the instruction that
parents can give. The wise son loves parental advice. He listens gladly to
his father; he does not despise his mother’s counsels.
It has already been intimated that the Old Testament writers frequently
stress the importance of high standards of conduct for women. Amos
rebuked the wives of nobles and the wealthy who fritter away their best
impulses in idleness and sinful living and who dissipate their deepest
instincts in debauchery. Amos and Isaiah agreed, apparently, that a nation’s
welfare depends on the attitudes of its women. The wrath of God will fall
upon women who are haughty, who walk with heads held high and with
wanton glances, who go tripping along, “making a tinkling with their feet.”
The anti-social character of sin was pointed out in Genesis. Cain was
the first to raise naïvely and blandly the question: Am I my brother’s
keeper? Sinful living narrows the soul, increases selfishness, and vitiates a

genuine social attitude. Sinning is repudiating social responsibility. Amos
advanced the idea that selfish living was nothing less than disloyalty to
one’s country. To dissipate one’s energy is to undermine one’s usefulness to
his country.
Intemperance was deplored. Isaiah has been called the first temperance
reformer of the world. His impassioned and classic utterances are well
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represented by the following lines:
Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow
strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them.
Isaiah warned especially the priests and prophets of the evils of
intemperance. Wine will swallow them up, it will put them out of the way, it
will cause them to err in wisdom and to stumble in judgment.
In both Leviticus and Numbers the danger that lurks in the wine cup is
recognized. The special servants of Jehovah are commanded to separate
themselves from wine and strong drink. In Proverbs the Wisdom writer
IV-15
declares: Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and whoever is
deceived thereby is not wise. The same authority admonishes rulers and
judges not to drink wine lest they forget the law and pervert the judgment of
the afflicted. On the other hand, a reversion to a lower standard is made in
Proverbs when the legitimacy of giving strong drink to the poor and
miserable is recognized, so that they may forget their poverty and
IV-16
misery. The general teaching, however, is that strong drink leads to
social inefficiency and the disintegration of human personalities.
The cities of refuge represent a new social idea. A person who has
taken life without intention may flee to and find protection in the cities of
refuge. The altar and the sanctuary are designated as places to which
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persons may flee who are not wilful murderers.
The social concept of democracy occupies an interesting place in the
Old Testament literature. In the days of Abraham the kinship group
prevailed. Within this group there were many households, ruled by
patriarchs. Within the kinship groups high standards of honor were
maintained, but anti-social attitudes toward outside and foreign groups were

encouraged. It was justifiable, for example, to lie to foreign groups and
even to kill the representatives of such peoples.
The concept of democracy developed pari passu with the evolution of
the idea of Jehovah. In the minds of the Hebrews, Jehovah, or Jahweh, was
first a tribal god, then a national god; and finally, a universal God, that is, a
being who is interested in the welfare of all peoples, and not simply in the
welfare of “the chosen people.”
The Hebrew conception of the state contained several democratic
elements. The fundamental purpose of the state was declared to be the
welfare not of an irresponsible monarch, but of the people themselves. This
idea stands out in marked contradiction to the practices of the Canaanites,
who submitted themselves helplessly to capricious and autocratic rulers.
The Hebrews treated the state as a part of a theocracy. But when
Jehovah spoke, he usually arraigned false wealth, arbitrary political power,
selfish ambition of kings, luxurious living, and special privileges. Jehovah
IV-8
spoke for the oppressed, the poor, the defeated, the laborer, in short, for
humanity.
Consequently, loyalty to the nation was positive and persistent.
Consider this statement from Psalm 137 of Hebrew patriotism on the part of
exiled Hebrews who longed for their native land:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof....
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
According to Hosea, Jehovah charged the citizens of the land to deal
with one another on the basis of fidelity and true love, and to stamp out all
social evils, such as perjury, stealing, committing adultery, and mob
violence. The writer of the Book of Job portrayed a good citizen as one who
delivers the poor, who helps those about to perish, who causes the widow’s
IV-18
heart to sing for joy. He is eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and a
father to the needy. He searches out the cause of social evils. Moreover, he

breaks the jaws of the unrighteous, and plucks the prey from their mouths.
He defends the blameless. He does not put his confidence in gold or rejoice
at his enemies when evils beset them or they are destroyed. It may be truly
said that fundamental ideas of democracy were originated by the Hebrews.
Amos raised the question of internationalism. For the first time in
history, the idea of a universal God was postulated. Amos pronounced
Jehovah the God of other peoples besides the Israelites. “Have not I brought
up Israel out of the land of Egypt?” said Jehovah, “and the Philistines from
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Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?” The day would come, according to
Isaiah and Micah, when Jehovah would judge over many peoples and
rebuke strong nations. The conception of Jehovah as a Being who
transcends both time and space gave to the Hebrew mind at its best a
broader cast and a more universal comprehension than the peoples of
contemporary tribes and nations possessed.
The concept of universal peace was invented by the Hebrews. Isaiah
and Micah share the honor of being the first persons to advocate world
peace, and to predict the day when all nations shall worship a just God and
thereby be enabled to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears
into pruning-hooks, when nation shall not stand against nation, and when
the methods of warfare shall no longer be taught. The spirit of hatred and of
blind, selfish antagonism shall pass away. No modern writer has ever
spoken the doom of militarism so trenchantly as the Old Testament prophet,
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Isaiah, who said, according to the translation by Charles Foster Kent:

“For every boot of the warrior with noisy tread,
And every war-cloak drenched in the blood of the slain,
Will be completely burned up as fuel for the flame.”

The Hebrews strongly emphasized laws as a social dynamic. Love will
make socialized individuals. It will demonstrate to a person his
responsibilities as a member of society and his duties to his fellow human
beings. It will stifle hatred. It will even return good for evil. It is the
cardinal virtue and an eternal principle of right living.

The Old Testament teaches social salvation. Jehovah is fundamentally
interested in the improvement of social and living conditions. He
commanded the socialization of all human relationships. His teachings, as
given by the prophets and Wisdom writers, take cognizance of the influence
of environment upon character.
Hebrew social thought deals largely with social injustice. Social evils
are vividly described and evil-doers, chiefly kings and judges, are
vigorously and fearlessly arraigned. The family is made the chief social
institution, and love is crowned servant of all. Education is centered in the
home, and moral discipline is made the keynote of education; hence the
Hebrews survived the Greeks and Romans. A new and perfect social order,
directed by a just Jehovah, and motivated throughout all its individual and
social relationships by love, is prophesied.

Chapter V

Plato and Grecian Social Thought
In turning to a study of Grecian civilization we find a development of
social thought which on the rational side excels in many particulars the
social thinking of the Hebrews, but which in its affective elements falls far
below the quality of Hebrew social thought. We may expect to find,
therefore, in Grecian social thought important new contributions which are
complementary to the legacies from the Hebrews, and which when taken in
conjunction with the early Christian forms of Hebrew social thought
constitute the main foundations of modern social thought.
The thought life of the Greeks reached the crescendo in the idealism of
Plato (427–347 B. C.) and the opportunism of Aristotle (384–322 B. C.). In
an idea-world Plato depicted an ideal society. After studying 158
constitutions, Aristotle formulated rules of practical social procedure.
Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics are the two leading source books of
Grecian social thought.
Plato and Aristotle were the first two thinkers in history who left
definitely organized analyses of societary life. Although in point of time
they stand close together, in content of social reasoning they are at many
places antagonistic. However, their high rank as thinkers need not blind
anyone to the fact that their social thought was in part an outgrowth of
theories held by predecessors. Antecedent to Plato was Socrates and the
Sophists; antecedent to these scholars was a large number of thinkers who,
incidentally to their main intellectual efforts, gave expression to isolated but
significant social ideas.
As early as the ninth century, B. C., Lycurgus declared that the state
owned the child, and urged a system of education which would prepare the
child for the state. Despite, however, of a similar emphasis by many later
Greek leaders, “Hellas” never developed a genuine national unity. She

experienced a temporary national patriotism only when attacked by the
Persians and at the seasons when the national games were at their height.
It was Hesiod, the founder of Greek didactic poetry, who about 700
B. C. described the Golden Age and the subsequent ages of society. Hesiod
V-1
protested mildly against the social injustice in his time. In the following
V-2
century, Anaximander, the philosopher, and Theognis, the elegiac poet,
discussed the value to society of providing that children should be well born
and well trained—the fundamental concepts of current eugenics and
euthenics.
Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, about 590 B. C., began to put into
legislative practice certain ideas of social reform, thereby preventing
revolution. At that time it was customary to sell persons into slavery who
could not pay their debts—a procedure which Solon ended. The cost of
living was very high, consequently Solon forbade the export of food
products and thereby reduced prices for the consumer. He introduced a
measure which today would be considered revolutionary, namely, the
limiting of the amount of land which an individual might hold. For the
classification of people on the basis of wealth, he substituted a classification
on the basis of income. He lessened the severity of the laws of Draco, and
in other ways increased the freedom of the individual. Although Solon’s
régime was followed by a tyranny, Solon is credited with initiating certain
essential ideas of democracy.
After the Tyrants, Athens under the leadership of men like Cleisthenes
became “a pure democracy.” Cleisthenes democratized the Athenian
Constitution. For the four phylae he substituted ten phylae, or units of
government, thus securing a new and better distribution of authority. He is
credited with introducing ostracism as a mode of punishment; he, it is
alleged, was the first individual to be ostracised by his government.
The fifth century precursors of Plato and Aristotle were numerous.
Aeschylus (525–456 B. C.), the first of the famous Athenian tragic poets,
V-3
described in general terms the evolution of civilized society. The artistic
historian, Herodotus, developed through his imagination a world point of
view. From an almost unlimited store of legendary and ethnological
materials, he elaborated a planetary theme which had its beginning in the

Trojan War and its culmination in the conflict between Eastern and Western
civilizations. The basic social principle in the writings of Herodotus is that
downfall awaits the insolent autocrats of earth. Herodotus describes the
V-4
customs and habits of the peoples whom he visited on his numerous
foreign travels in such a detailed and elaborate fashion that he has been
styled the world’s first descriptive sociologist.
Pericles (495?-429 B. C.), perhaps the greatest statesman of Greece,
furthered the cause of democracy. His conception of democracy led him to
make the entire body of citizens eligible to office-holding. Pericles initiated
a social program which in certain aspects was paternalistic. He instituted
the plan of granting allowances for performing public duties. As a result,
unselfish public service was minimized and political morale was weakened.
V-5
Pericles was led into this error by the desire to compete for public esteem
with Cimon, who made extensive gifts to the poor in the form of dinners
and clothes.
In his tragedies, Euripides (480–406 B. C.), aroused interest in the
experiences, not of legendary characters as many of his predecessors had
done, but of the ordinary members of Athenian society. He was a
V-6
spokesman for the emancipation of woman; his writings reveal the social
changes that were occurring in the fifth century in Athens. Likewise, the
comedies of Aristophanes reflected social changes, and, in addition,
caricatured social conditions.
Hippocrates, the so-called father of medical science, wrote several
works which attracted the studious attention of Plato. He gave as the first of
two chief causes of disease, the influence of climate, seasons, weather on
V-7
the individual. He might be called the first anthropo-geographer. At any
rate he opened the field which has recently been so well covered by Ellen
C. Semple in her Influences of Geographic Environment.
By their disconcerting and sceptical teachings the Sophists, who also
lived in the fifty century, B. C., stimulated the intellectual activities of
Socrates. The influence of the Sophist leaders, such as Protagoras, Gorgas,
Callicles, Thrasymachus, brought forward the problem of training pupils to
solve civic questions rather than scientific or philosophical questions.
According to Plato, Callicles believed that government was an instrument

for exploiting the masses. Thrasymachus argued that so-called justice is that
type of activity which favors the interest of the strongest members of
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society, and that might determines what is called right. Epaminondas, the
Theban statesman, personified in his own career an unusually high
interpretation of the concept of patriotism, perhaps a more unselfish
expression of patriotism than is represented by any other political
spokesman of the Hellenic states.
The argument of the Sophists that what is best for the individual is best
for society aroused the antagonism of Socrates (469–399 B. C.), whose
ideas are reported by Plato and Xenophon. Socrates, the son of an Athenian
sculptor, asserted that the qualities of justice, wisdom, temperance, and
courage, which make a person a good member of society and which
increase social welfare, are the same qualities which make a person a good
individual and secure his individual advancement. Socrates spent many
years at the market places, on the streets where people congregate and at the
public resorts in studying the actions of individuals and in engaging them in
conversation concerning their moral life. As a result Socrates evolved a
significant social philosophy. The heart of this philosophy is found in the
statements that virtue is knowledge, not in the sense of mere memorized
facts but of a thorough understanding. If a person understands completely
the good and evil phases of a proposed act, he will choose the right. For
example, when one is completely convinced of the harmful effects of poor
teeth, he will employ the regular services of a dentist to keep his teeth in
good condition. When he perceives the evil effects of dishonesty, he will
establish honest habits. The conclusion might be drawn that social virtue
rests upon societary knowledge.
Socrates was convinced that something was fundamentally wrong with
Athenian society. Everywhere he saw that ignorance led to vice. Only in the
mechanical and professional activities did he discover correct action, but
V-9
this was preceded by correct knowledge.
A good carpenter is an individual who thoroughly understands
carpentry; a good man is an individual who truly knows the value of good
actions. Similarly, it might be said that a good urban resident is an
individual who deeply appreciates what it means to have a city of mutually
developing people.

Socrates wished to make all men intelligent. His teachings raised the
deep-seated social question: How can social organization be made highly
advantageous to the individual, and the individual made so aware of these
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advantages that he will always act socially? Inasmuch as Socrates left
no writings, it is impossible to explain with certainty his teachings.
Fortunately, he left a permanent impress of his personality on the lives of
his associates, and particularly, upon his able and brilliant pupil, Plato.
In the fundamental dictum that virtue is knowledge, Socrates is
theoretically correct, but practically he ignores the overpowering influence
that oftentimes is exerted by the instincts and established habits. He
underestimates the power that is represented by a deeply ingrained instinct
or a habit which has existed for several years. Instincts and nearly all habits
are firmly established neurologically, whereas knowledge is often new to
the individual and merely a veneer on the surface of the individual’s life.
The acquisition of knowledge is no guarantee that instincts centuries old
will be promptly overcome or re-directed.
Furthermore, with a young child the instinctive tendencies begin to
assert themselves and to give direction to the growth of the character of the
child, long before his mentality has unfolded and developed to the point
where he is capable of genuinely understanding the real meaning of many
forms of activity, and where many phases of knowledge are entirely beyond
his ability to comprehend.
Little is known concerning Plato’s early life and training. The most
influential factors were the life and teachings of Socrates. The strong
Socratic personality left its indelible impress upon the thought-life of Plato.
As a young man, Plato became greatly interested in Athenian social and
civic life. When he was perhaps twenty-three years of age, the self-styled
“Fair and Good” rulers came into control of Athens. The failure of these
men, whom history calls the Thirty Tyrants, to govern wisely, produced an
attitude of thorough disgust in the mind of Plato. Further, the legalized
murder of Socrates by the restored democracy in 399 B. C. aroused the
bitter antagonism of Plato to the existing forms of government. In the years
which followed the death of Socrates, popular rule produced loose and
licentious social conditions. As a consequence, Plato turned to the realms of
the thought world in order to find a perfect society. As a result of his contact

with every-day life and government, Plato evolved in his mind an ideal
republic.
The Socratic principle that virtue is knowledge was accepted by Plato.
In Plato’s thinking this proposition led to the generalization that education
is the most important thing in the world. Upon this doctrine more than any
other, Plato’s twentieth century influence thrives.
What shall be the nature of a world-molding education? Theoretically,
Plato gives his answer in his epistemology. Ideas are the ruling forces in
life. Over against the uncertain fluctuating sense world, Plato set up a realm
of eternal, changeless ideas. An individual man is simply an ephemeral
expression of Man. Plato created a concept of unchangeable reality which
he found in Ideas. These, alone, are the permanent, worth-while elements
which man must seek to know and understand.
Because of his aristocratic attitudes and of his early disgust with the
experiments in democracy in his day, Plato turned away in his social
philosophy from the direct study of the people, such as had engaged the
attention of Socrates, to a search for a just society in the world of ideas.
This line of thinking found expression chiefly in the Republic, written
during Plato’s mature manhood. A discussion of these idealistic concepts is
found in the Laws and the Politicus, the latter being written in Plato’s old
age and representing a partial reaction from the idealism of the Republic.
Because of its consideration of nearly every aspect of social life from a
specific viewpoint, the Republic may be called the first treatise in social
philosophy. While it falls below the social writings of the Hebrews in its
dynamic and practical phases, it excels them in its unity, its profundity, and
its philosophic quality.
Inasmuch as Plato had turned away from an inviting though strenuous
public career to a private life of scholarly thought, his perfect society
assumed characteristics that were far from mundane. Because Plato lived in
a day of small political groups and in a country of limited size, he limited
his ideal society—to a group represented by 5040 heads of families.
Consequently it is impossible to apply Plato’s social ideas with accuracy to
a modern metropolitan center of 5,000,000 people, or to a nation-state of
100,000,000 people. Several phases of Plato’s thought, however, were given

a practical turn in the Laws. In revealing Plato’s social philosophy, the
V-12
Politicus, or Statesman ranks third.
In Plato’s ideal society there is a hierarchy of rank, which includes
three classes of people: the rulers, or true guardians; the soldiers, or
auxiliaries; and the artisans, or the industrial and agricultural workers. In
V-13
introducing the ideal state Plato uses mature individuals. Out of the
needs and through the activities of fully-developed persons, Plato builds an
ideal commonwealth.
No individual is self-sufficing. Each has his peculiar bias, or ability. By
uniting, all will profit. There are not only specialized classes, but there is
specialization within the occupational groups. An essential rule for the
building of a just society is that each individual shall find his place in the
social order and shall fulfil his special function. Plato recognized the need
for correlating the diversities of nature and the different types of
V-14
occupation.
The common people are engaged in the foundational occupations as
skilled artisans. The advantages of a special education are not open to them.
They receive the common education, including gymnastic and music
training. But, in accordance with the aristocratic strain in Plato’s social
philosophy, it is useless to try to give a higher education to that large
proportion of the population who are mentally incapable of profiting by
higher education. The logic is good but the major premise is faulty in this
pedagogical rule.
The second class, the soldiers, will maintain order at home, repel
invaders, and conduct territorial wars. The growth of population will create
a demand for more territory. Other states likewise will need more territory,
V-15
and war will become inevitable. Plato frankly admits the territorial basis
of wars. From this factor he sees no escape, although he declares peace to
V-16
be better than war. In his Tamias and Critias he pictured a peace-state,
“Atlantis.”
The soldier’s occupation is an art which requires years of training. The
chief physical trait of a true soldier is courage. The social psychological
significance of a military régime is that soldiers are continually inciting

their country to go to war. Such a régime raises up enemies against itself,
many and mighty, and results either in ruining the specific people or in
V-17
enslaving the foes of these people. On the other hand, the non-soldier
classes, since they prefer to lead a peaceful life and seek to conduct their
affairs quietly, unduly endeavor to avoid war. By degrees they become
unwarlike; their children develop a like attitude. Eventually, they find
V-18
themselves at the mercy of their enemies and are enslaved.
Among the members of the state there will be a few especially able
individuals, destined by birth and reinforced by training to be rulers and
V-19
true guardians of the welfare of all. They are lovers of wisdom and
philosophy. Flabbiness of character, drunkenness, selfishness are
V-20 V-21
unbecoming to them. Selfish living is condemned. The guardians are
characterized, according to Plato, by the greatest eagerness to do what is for
the good of their country. They show utter repugnance to anything that is
V-22
contrary to the best interests of the state.
V-23
The guardians, however, rule aristocratically. They do not inquire of
the citizens the kind of laws which they want passed, for the same reason
that a physician does not ask the patient the kind of medicine which he
wants. In the Republic, the Laws, and the other dialogues where the nature
of rulers and philosophers is discussed, Plato’s “best men” show an
indifference to earthly or material things and uniformly seek righteousness,
even social righteousness.
The candidates for guardianship receive first the elements of education.
At twenty years of age they must pass a general education in order that they
may go on with a special course, including arithmetic, geometry, and
V-24
astronomy. At thirty they are subjected to a further examination, after
which the successful individuals devote five years to the study of
philosophy. At thirty-five they enter practical life, hold minor offices,
balance their theoretical training by practical studies, and submit to diverse
V-25
temptations. They undergo a civil service examination which extends
over a period of years. At the close they are subjected to a final series of
three-fold tests. The first test is that of logic; they must argue successfully
that it pays an individual, especially a guardian, to serve society. The

second test is that of fear; they are faced with dangers, for example, the
dangers to life, which beset those who undertake to rule without favoritism
and without compromising their principles when confronted with the
ambitions and desires of powerful selfish interests. The third test is that of
pleasure; they are submitted to all the pleasures which thrill the heart of
man. In other words, they must show proof that the highest interest of the
V-26
state is to be the ruling interest of their lives. Neither pain nor threats
must affect their loyalty. The temptations which come from pleasures and
enchantments must not disturb their self-control or weaken their qualities of
guardianship. From these requirements it will be seen that Plato provided
for a long period of intensive and extensive training for the rulers. His idea
varied widely from the ancient theory of the divine right of kings and from
the current practice of distributing political spoils to friends.
Plato saw that the rulers when once selected and installed in office
would be tempted to become avaricious at the expense of the state. Instead
of becoming and remaining allied to all the citizens, they will be prone to
V-27
become tyrannical. Plato perceived that it would be difficult, after good
rulers had been selected, to keep them on the plane of good rulership. In
order to preserve their virtue as guardians and to remove the powerful
temptation to wink at exploitation that is carried on by the economically
powerful, Plato indicated certain protective devices. The guardians shall be
permitted no private property beyond a few incidentals. They shall not live
in private houses, but shall dwell and eat together. They shall receive a
fixed salary, sufficient to meet necessary expenses but no more. They shall
not be allowed to touch gold and silver or to wear gold and silver
ornaments. They shall be taught that they are made of divine gold and
silver, and therefore shall have no need of the earthly dross. They shall not
be subject to pollution from any earthly contacts. If the guardians should
acquire lands or moneys or homes of their own, they would be unable to
give their undivided attention to the state, and they would become not
guardians of the welfare of the citizens, but tyrants, plotting and being
V-28
plotted against. In his zealous care that the rulers might not be distracted
from guarding with undivided attention the interests of the state, Plato
V-29
advocated community of wives and children for the rulers.

The question arose: Will the people be content to accept the division of
the population into hierarchal classes? In reply, Plato suggested that the
power of public opinion be utilized, and that all the inhabitants of the state
be taught that they are brothers, that is, children of their common Mother
Earth. This instruction will serve to keep the masses in a humble attitude.
Further, they are to be told that different metals have been used by Mother
Earth in making different individuals. Those persons in whose make-up
gold has been mingled have the power of command and may become rulers.
Others who are made of silver may become auxiliaries, or soldiers; while
the masses, being made of brass and iron, are destined to become
V-30
artisans.
The objection is raised that people will not believe this “audacious
fiction.” The truth of the objection is admitted, and a solution of the
problem is offered. Teach the children the gold, silver, brass and iron
fiction; and they will believe it. When they grow to maturity, they will tell
V-31
their children, who in turn will teach it. Posterity, thus, will accept it. In
this way Plato founded his social philosophy upon education. Plato made
clear that any kind of social or economic theory can be foisted upon a
whole people through the utilization of the educational processes. A few
selfish exploiters, by controlling the educational system, can ruin a nation in
a generation.
The guardians are instructed to examine the children in order to
discover of what metals they are made. Plato admitted a democracy of
talent in the sense that talent is likely to appear in the children of brass and
iron parents, while gold parents may beget brass and iron children. If a gold
child is found among the children of the artisans, he is to be encouraged and
trained to become a guardian. If a brass and iron child is found among the
children of the gold parents, he must descend the social scale and be trained
V-32
for husbandry or artisanship. Plato foresaw the fact, now scientifically
established, that geniuses are born indiscriminately among all classes of
society from the highest to the lowest. They are just as likely to be born in
the hovel or overcrowded tenement as in the spacious and luxuriant palace.
Consequently, society should seek out potential genius and give it
opportunities commensurate with its possibilities and not allow its dynamic
and divine spark to be snuffed out in a heavy-laden tenement atmosphere.

Furthermore, according to Plato, the guardians are to seek out the
imperfect children and put them out of the way as easily as possible and
V-33
without attracting public attention. If the capable must devote their
energies to the care of imperfect children, they would presumably be
wasting their ability and would be prevented from devoting themselves to
upbuilding the state. This doctrine neglects the consideration of the harsh,
unsympathetic attitude which it would engender. Although rigorously
eugenic, the doctrine is undemocratic, unchivalric, and unChristian. It is
thoroughly aristocratic.
The guardians are to supervise marriage. Plato especially deplores the
fact that almost all persons choose their life-partners in marriage without
V-34
proper regard to the kind of children that will be procreated. The
marriage relationship should not be primarily an individual affair, but
should be governed by the thought of the children that are not yet born and
V-35
by due regard to the welfare of the state and society. The true purpose of
marriage is not found in wealth or power or rank, but in the procreation of
healthy minded children. Marriage is sacred in the highest degree because it
is socially necessary. Plato deplores class marriages, that is, marriage within
temperamentally similar groups. Persons of gentle nature seek persons of
gentle nature; the courageous seek the courageous. It would be better if the
V-36
gentle would seek the courageous in marriage, and vice versa. Marriage
is sacred, and hence should be subjected to strict eugenic safeguards.
The guardians shall prevent the extremes of poverty and riches. With
far-sighted social wisdom Plato points out that poverty is the parent of
meanness and viciousness, and that wealth leads to luxury and
V-37
indolence. Both result in discontent and both cause the deterioration of
the arts. The poor man cannot properly equip or train himself, or enter into
his work painstakingly; the rich man will grow careless and no longer act
V-38
diligently when he comes into the possession of unlimited wealth.
In the acquisition of wealth the laws of imitation function powerfully.
One person accumulates property; others are immediately stimulated to do
V-39
likewise. In consequence, all the citizens may become lovers of money.
But a money-loving public would be disastrous to the state.

The larger the amount of wealth that an individual accumulates, the
more he will want to accumulate. The momentum of the desire for money-
getting is socially destructive. The more the individual is hypnotised by the
wealth-getting delusion, the less attention does he give to the maintenance
of virtue. When the desire for virtue is in competition with the desire for
V-40
riches, the former decreases as the latter increases.
When the state becomes established on a property basis, the rich
V-41
exercise power and the poor are deprived of it. In ordinary times the rich
are as indifferent to the welfare of the poor as to the development of virtue,
but in times of group crises they will not despise the poor. In the days of
prosperity and peace the poor man is given the hindmost position, but when
war comes, “the wiry, sunburnt poor man” is placed in battle at the side of
V-42
the wealthy man —and social democracy obtains. But in battle the poor
man fights longer and better than the rich man “who has never spoilt his
complexion and has plenty of superfluous flesh.” In the words of the poor
man Plato draws the astounding conclusion that many persons are rich
V-43
because no one has had the courage to despoil them. At this point Plato
has given a striking explanation of the rise of socialism, syndicalism, and
economic radicalism.
When you see paupers, according to Plato, you may safely conclude
that somewhere there are also present thieves, robbers of temples, and
V-44
malefactors. The causes of pauperism are given as (1) a lack of proper
education, (2) ill-training, and (3) unjust social laws and an unjust
V-45
constitution of the state.
Plato suggested two instruments for preventing extreme wealth and
poverty—legislation and education. Each individual is to be guaranteed a
minimum amount of property. He may acquire as much as four times this
amount, but above the maximum a one hundred per cent excess tax
V-46
operates. Plato planned a form of communism, not primarily to secure
the material well-being of the state, but to safeguard the rulers against
falling before selfish temptations. Plato also wanted to protect the state
from splitting asunder because of the distractions that arise from labor-
capital controversies. By educational means the children are to be trained to

V-47
be satisfied with the necessaries of life —at least some children are to be
so trained. Parents should bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit
V-48
of reverence.
The guardians shall be censors. They shall establish a censorship over
the arts in order to protect the children from seeing indecent sights and
hearing vulgar sounds. The works of fiction shall be censored in order to
prevent the children from reading and adopting bad ideas. The creative
artists shall be prevented from exhibiting forms of vice and intemperance,
in order that the future guardians may not grow up in an atmosphere
contaminated by images of moral deformity, and in order that all children
may develop in an environment of fair sights and should and may receive
V-49
unhindered and unhampered the good in everything.
The guardians shall protect the mores. When Plato described a perfect
V-50
state, any change in the established customs would mean retrogression.
Hence, the rulers should jealously guard the customs, allowing no insidious
innovations. Further, if any change is permitted to take place in small
things, there may be no stopping the spirit of change.
Plato rested his argument for an ideal society upon the education of
wise leaders. Their judgment is better even than government by law. Law is
too rigid and inflexible. In view of the changeable character of human
conditions, which Plato recognized, no final or absolute laws can be laid
V-51
down. The chief advantage of laws, however, is not that they make men
honest but that they make men act uniformly, and hence in a socially
reliable way. Laws are to be respected because they represent the ripe fruits
V-52
of long experience.
V-53
Considerable attention is given to penology in the Laws. In view of
the sanctity of custom and of the necessity of law, obedience is a highly
important social virtue. In theory Plato is modern and scientific, for he
advocated punishment, not as a vindictive but as a preventive and
V-54 V-55
reformatory measure. Reformation is the true aim of punishment. In
practice Plato is rigid and harsh. For example, beggars are simply to be sent

V-56
out of the city and out of the country. The death penalty is utilized
V-57
freely.
Plato opened all occupations to women as well as men, even the
V-58
highest, that of ruling. The only difference between the sexes that needs
to be recognized occupationally is that men are stronger physically than
V-59
women. Women, like men, vary in occupational temperament. One
individual is fitted for one kind of vocation; another, for some other type of
work.
Although the fundamental importance of bearing children is
appreciated, Plato observed that it is unnecessary that a woman devote her
whole life to the rearing of children. All women should have opportunities
for the development of their personalities. Those women who have special
talent for public service should enter thereupon. Although a social
conservative Plato admits an innovation in the ideal republic—universal
woman suffrage.
Since women have the same duties as men, they receive the same
opportunities for training. Women must share in the toils of war and the
V-60 V-61
defense of their country. Women are priestesses; they serve on
committees for the regulation of marriage, and for deciding divorce
V-62
cases.
Although Plato was averse to change, he advocated a dynamic type of
education. This educational system, however, is to be definitely controlled
by the guardians. It is also paternalistic. Common education shall be of two
V-63
kinds: gymnastic, for the body; music, for the soul. Gymnastic training
will produce a temper of hardness, and music will lead to gentleness. The
extreme of the one is ferocity and brutality; the extreme of the other is
V-64
softness and effeminacy. When taken together, they produce a well-
ordered personality. The one sustains and makes bold the reason, the second
V-65
moderates and civilizes the mildness of passion. Gymnastic exercises
provide for the care and training of the body through childhood and youth
V-66
so that in maturity the body may best serve the soul. Music, including
literature, trains through the influence of its qualities of harmony and

rhythm. For example, through exercises in harmony the child develops a
harmonious temperament.
Education is not a process of acquisition, but of the development of the
V-67
powers within the individual. It is a life-long process; it begins with
birth and continues until death. It, however, slows up as the individual
grows old. An aged person cannot learn much, no more than he can run
V-68
much. Education in the early years of life is the most important. As a
V-69
child is educated, so will his future be determined. A child should be
taught early to respect his parents. Great care should be given to the first
years of life. From three to six years of age the children in Plato’s republic
come under the supervision of chosen matrons and nurses.
Education shall be universal, but not compulsory, that is, all shall be
taught, but not compelled to learn. Education shall be made attractive,
V-70
almost a form of government. The laws of imitation shall be utilized.
V-71
The tutor shall carry out his teachings in practice.
A well-trained individual is a replica of a just society. Plato draws a
parallelism, which is inaccurate, between the three classes in society and
three traits of the individual. The rulers, soldiers, and artisans are compared
respectively to the reason, the spirit, and the passions of the individual. The
passions must be subordinated to the spirit, and both must be controlled by
V-72
reason. The result will be a just individual. In society a similar
hierarchal relation shall hold between the rulers, soldiers, and artisans. The
fundamental aim in education shall be to secure a change in the attitudes of
people. Such changes are more important than modification in external
matters. Thus, according to Plato, the divine foundations of a state are laid
in education.
Religion plays a basic rôle in the ideal Republic. Plato held that belief
in God superseded in importance the doctrine that might is right. Impiety
undermines the strength of the social kingdom. God created the individual
for the whole, but not the whole for the individual. The worship of God is
necessary for the individual in order to prevent him from reverting to
selfishness and from making his humanitarian beliefs purely egoistic
phenomena.

Inasmuch as Plato outlined at the start a perfect republic, any change
would likely constitute a deterioration. But even an ideal state is not
immune to the entry of destructive ideas. The wise men, the rulers, are not
proof against the temptations of absolute power. To remove the stirrings of
self-interest in the minds of the guardians, Plato planned a communistic
order. He overlooked, however, the weaknesses of communism, but these
were pointed out at a later time by Aristotle.
In spite of excellent safeguards the wisdom of the best rulers will
occasionally fail them. Sooner or later they will err. In examining the youth
they will allow warrior youth to be trained for the guardian class. With their
spirit of contention and of ambition for honor these adventitious guardians
V-74
will start the perfect state upon the downward road. When the rulers
seek personal power and honor, the ideal republic will be superseded by a
timocracy.
In a timocracy the ruler with the most private wealth will possess the
greatest personal power and receive the highest honor. Moreover, other
persons will be stimulated, thereby, to acquire wealth and power. In the
meantime the masses will lose nearly everything. The result is an oligarchy
V-75
in which the wealthy are honored and made rulers. The poor are treated
with dishonor and deprived of position.
In such an oligarchic state there is a fundamental division; there are two
states instead of one. In spirit, the rich and the poor comprise separate
states. They live in the same territory but are conspiring against one
V-76
another. Social stability is destroyed by the conflicts between the
extremes of countless riches and utter poverty. The propertyless hate and
V-77
conspire against the propertied. Civil war ensues. Because the wealthy
have fallen into carelessness and extravagance, and because the poor
possess superior numbers, the poor are the victors. A democracy—the rule
of the Demos—comes into being. Everyone rules.
But the populace is not fitted to rule. They are without experience.
Since the drones are numerous among the common people, the drones
V-78
manage almost everything in a democracy. Excess of liberty among
people untrained for liberty leads to anarchy. Individuals will set themselves
up as the special friends of the common people. These self-appointed

friends of the people will prove to be self-seeking tyrants; the democracy
will be transformed into a tyranny—the lowest state of all in Plato’s five-
fold devolution.
With distrust of the masses and with a paternalistic government, Plato
coupled a belief that the individual must participate in the life of society.
Social justice does not consist in doing good to one’s friends and ill to one’s
enemies, or in catering to the interests of the most powerful. The theory that
V-79
might is right is repudiated. A just society is one in which every person
has found his place of greatest usefulness to the state and fulfils his entire
obligations in that place. On the whole Plato exhibited an impassioned faith
in the moral and social order.
Plato believed that Ideas are real and that they are the tools with which
the world is made over. He perceived perfect Forms, even a perfect social
Form. Through intellectual control, Plato planned a new social order.

Chapter VI

Aristotle and Grecian Social Thought
Aristotle (384–322 B. C.), the distinguished pupil of Plato, did not
make, like his master, a unified contribution to social thought. He sacrificed
unity for the examination of parts. Aristotle was an opportunist, a
pragmatist, and a practical student of conditions and constitutions. Unlike
Plato, Aristotle did not look for Ideas separate from but in things.
Aristotle studied 158 constitutions inductively and comparatively. His
primary attention was given to what is, rather than to what ought to be. His
eyes were directed first of all to the parts, and then to the whole. In this
examination he found that the parts are related, and further, that they hold a
developmental relation. Instead of Plato’s perfection, we shall now consider
Aristotle’s process of becoming. Although unsystematic, the social ideas of
Aristotle reveal the concepts of process and progress.
In Aristotle’s Ethics the discussion of virtue is socially valuable. Virtue
is a mean. Virtue is an impulse which is expressed neither in excess or in
deficiency. It is an impulse expressed temperately until it becomes a habit.
Excess and deficiency are equally fatal. The coward is he who avoids and
VI-1
fears anything; the foolhardy is he who rushes into danger anywhere.
Liberality is the mean between prodigality and avarice; civility is the mean
between obsequiousness and insolence. Virtue itself is the mean between
self-indulgence and asceticism. In virtue, lies happiness, man’s summum
bonum.
Aristotle’s Politics affords a searching analysis of many phases of
societary life. The family and the state are by nature prior to the individual,
VI-2
since the whole must exist before any individual part. When isolated, the
individual is not self-sufficient. Thus, the state is founded on the social
needs of the individual. By virtue of these social needs, man possesses the

VI-3
gregarious, or social, instinct. By nature, man is a political animal, that
is, he is a being who by nature or necessity lives in association with his
kind. Man can attain his highest good only as a member of society.
Property is accorded by Aristotle a fundamental social position.
Physical necessities can best be provided through the efforts of individuals.
Communal ownership of property on a large scale will fail. In referring to
Plato’s communism, Aristotle declared: “For that which is common to the
VI-4
greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.” Further, when one
VI-5
feels a thing to be his own, how much greater is his pleasure in it. Then,
if one has private property, he may have the great pleasure which comes
from making gifts to others. Moreover, communism will lead to an unusual
amount of quarrelling; those who work faithfully will feel aggrieved when
they see that those who work dilettantishly receive and consume a full
VI-6
portion.
Aristotle deprecated land equalization. Equalization of the desire for
land is urged. Instead of dividing land equally or of establishing
communism in land, Aristotle advocated that the higher classes be trained
not to desire more land. He also stated that speculators and land schemers
VI-7
should be prevented from getting more land.
The communism in wives and children that Plato suggested, Aristotle
denounced as impracticable and foolish. Such a procedure will weaken
friendship and destroy love. Moreover, it will break up the unity of the
VI-8
state.
Aristotle held the prevalent disdainful attitude toward manual labor,
and theoretically justified slavery. A slave is a person who by nature is a
slave, a person who by nature expresses himself through bodily action. He
VI-9
is unable to guide himself by means of reason.
The subject of social control and government received extended
treatment from Aristotle. After considering a great variety of forms of
government, he avoided a dogmatic choice of any particular form. He
arrived at what is the modern, scientific conclusion, namely, that no one
form of government is to be worshipped to the exclusion of all other types.
A successful, or virtuous, government depends on the attitude of the people.

Human nature must be changed. All people must become socially virtuous
before a perfected government can be established.
Theoretically, Aristotle believed that the best government would come
through the absolute rulership of one man, provided that there is available a
man pre-eminently wise and virtuous. But practically, Aristotle held that in
choosing a form of government which will succeed, it is necessary to
consider the actual social conditions, the state of development of the people,
and the attitude of the ruler or rulers. It does not matter whether one person,
or a few persons, or a large number of persons perform the function of ruler
so long as the best interests of the state are kept uppermost. If the interests
of the entire group are the guiding principles, then royalty, aristocracy, or
constitutionalism is commendable. The one, the few, or the many are good
rulers, providing they are dominated by the common interests. In these
declarations Aristotle overlooked the fact that participation in government
by the governed is essential. He also neglected the fact that a “best” ruler
would be subject to very many temptations as a result of personifying in
himself all the forms of political, economic, and social power that exist
within the state. After a period of time he would probably yield to some
VI-10
interests which are inimical to the welfare of the whole.
When private interests control the government, the resultant forms of
government are either tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy. According to
Aristotle the chief difference between oligarchy and democracy is that an
oligarchy is the rule of the rich and a democracy is the rule of the poor.
Evidently, he believed that the poor are as selfish as the rich and that the
poor are incapable of being trained to the levels of virtuous citizenship.
Although Aristotle is aristocratic in his political science and advocated
frequently the rule of the best few, he endorsed a constitutional republic.
Such a form of government will succeed where there are many wise and
virtuous individuals. He admitted that in large numbers there is a stability of
judgment and that common sense bulks large. Under constitutional
government, the extremes will cancel one another, and the virtuous mean
will rule. Large numbers of persons are less likely to be corrupted than a
VI-11
few persons or even the one best person.
There are two fundamentals in a good government: first, actual
obedience of the laws by the citizens; second, the social goodness of the

laws. Aristotle’s formula for an ideal society is this: virtuous people and
good laws, both judged by the common welfare. And practically, the form
of political organization—a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a constitutional
republic—depends upon the place of the members of the social order on the
incline of socialization.
If a constitutional republic is established, then rotation in office should
VI-12
be practiced. The tenure of office should be restricted to six months. An
office should rarely be held more than once by the same person.
VI-13
On the other hand, the laws should be changed slowly. Law has no
power to make people obey in spirit, except through force of habit. The
state must guard itself against small changes in laws. Any apparently slight
neglect or disregard of law is insidious; transgression creeps in
VI-14
unperceived. At first, small transgressions may not be observed; then,
they may gain such momentum that they will ruin the state. Hence, there
should be at all times strict observance of laws.
The major chord in Aristotle’s ideal society is the social mean. The
existence of two classes only, the very rich and the very poor, will bring
disaster to the state. The very wealthy consider themselves above legalistic
or social authority; the very poor are too degraded to understand the
VI-15
necessity for and the reason for authority. In fact, all who possess, not
simply an unusual degree of wealth, but great beauty, great strength or a
“noble” birth feel that they should be accorded special privileges. Further,
not only those who are very poor, but also the persons who are very weak,
or very disgraced find it difficult to follow the dictates of law or of social
reason. With the privileged characters who possess a superabundance of
advantages, the arrogant attitude developed when they were yet children. At
home, they received special considerations; they did not learn obedience
within the small family group. In consequence, how could they be expected
to be obedient citizens within the larger nation-group? The rich are likely to
VI-16
become insolent and avaricious; they will rule despotically. Not
everyone can bear either prosperity or adversity. An increase in prosperity
in any part of society should be carefully noted, and that part of society
should be placed under surveillance. No one should receive extraordinary

power, either from friends or through money. Even the pre-eminent are not
above egotism.
VI-17
A society is safest when the middle class is in control. The states
will likely be well administered in which the middle class is numerous.
Persons of about equal condition do not plot against others; neither are they
plotted against. A middle class prevents both the arrogant wealthy and the
impetuous proletariat from dominating the state. “Inequality is the source of
all revolutions.”
VI-18
Poverty is a cause of revolution and crime. In time of war, it is
important that the poor be well fed else they will cause disturbances.
Aristotle might have added that in time of peace the poor should be able to
feed themselves well else they will in due season cause revolution.
But poverty is not the only cause of crime. Riches often lead to crime.
Wealth causes the commitment of greater crimes than does poverty. The
VI-19
greatest offenses are not occasioned by necessity but by excess. In
order to gratify some passion or desire, crime is often committed. Of the
VI-20
passions ambition and avarice are the chief causes of crime.
VI-21
Intoxication produces crime.
The causes of social revolution are manifold. The desire for equality
VI-22
and the desire for inequality are common factors. Inferiors revolt in
order that they may attain a state of equality with other persons. Equals
revolt in order that they may gain superior levels of honor and status.
Aristotle cited a long list of additional factors in social revolution:
insolence, fear, political graft, a disproportionate increase of wealth in some
part of the state, neglect of trifles in the observance of laws, dissimilarity in
elements such as racial. The fundamental cause, however, of social
revolution is love of gain and honor.
Aristotle was not a militarist, for he believed that war in itself is not a
social good. No people should be trained to conquer and obtain dominion
VI-23
over neighboring states. Military states are safe only when they are at
war. After they declare peace the weight of their military burdens brings
VI-24
about their downfall.

The principle of social telesis, which has been recently developed by
Lester F. Ward, was foreseen by Aristotle. A society of individuals, like the
VI-25
individual himself, has a work to do. It should adapt itself to its task.
Aristotle was a public health advocate. The location for an ideal city
should be carefully chosen. It should be selected, first of all, with reference
to the health of the citizens. This point is of greater importance than that of
VI-26
locating a city wisely for the purpose of public administration or war.
The importance of a pure water supply is given almost a modern emphasis.
The question of eugenics received the attention of Aristotle. In order
that children may be as physically sound as possible, legislators should give
special attention to the institution of marriage. Youthful marriages are
condemned because the children that are born to such unions will be
VI-27
wanting in respect for their parents. Late marriages will be
unsatisfactory because there will be too great difference between the ages of
the parents and their children. The marriage of a man and a woman whose
ages are widely disproportionate will lead to misunderstandings and
quarrels. According to the rigorous, unsympathetic dictum of Aristotle, no
VI-28
deformed child shall be permitted to live. Even the advocates of
modern birth control may turn for encouragement to Aristotle.
In the marriage relation there is inequality. The man is by nature better
VI-29
fitted to command than the woman. The chief characteristic of a good
wife is obedience to her husband—a doctrine which is patriarchal.
VI-30
Unfaithfulness of either sex in marriage is disgraceful.
Aristotle, like Plato, considers education the leading social force. There
is a fundamental educational problem: Shall youth be trained primarily (1)
VI-31
to do useful work, (2) to be virtuous, or (3) to gain higher knowledge?
No final answer is given. Aristotle’s conception of education, however, is
paternalistic.
Utilitarian education possesses a danger line. To be seeking always
VI-32
after the useful prevents one from developing a free and exalted soul.
Utilitarian education should cease when it cramps the body or spirit and
makes either less fit for the practice of virtue.

Gymnastic education should never be professionalized or allowed to
VI-33
hinder the individual’s higher education. The excessive training which
leads to Olympic victories is anti-social, because the constitution of the
given individual is exhausted. Music is valuable inasmuch as it has the
VI-34
power of forming character. The persons who are engaged in seriously-
minded occupations need amusements which will give relaxation.
In summary of Aristotle’s social thought it may be said that the
Stagirite introduced the comparative method of studying human institutions.
He demonstrated the relative value of institutions, showing that those which
are best for one age of society will be worthless for a later period. In order
to meet changing social needs and conditions, institutions must change.
There is a fundamental evolution in social changes.
A communistic social organization, according to Aristotle, is psycho-
sociologically untenable. The importance of the middle classes is socially
inestimable. Laws should be respected in small particulars. The attitude of
the members of society toward their social organizations is more important
than the type of organization itself. Human conduct in the mass is to a
degree predictable.
After the time of Aristotle, Hellenic life degenerated. Political
corruption, military intrigue, and intellectual scepticism vitiated the
Hellenic morality that was founded on custom. The ideal, held by Plato and
Aristotle, of man as an integral part of a constructive social order was
supplanted by a philosophy of pure individualism.
In Athens, Epicurus (341–270 B. C.) became the leader of the popular
hedonistic philosophy with its emphasis upon pleasure. Self-sacrifice and
noble conduct in the social sense are foreign to Epicureanism. Friends
should be sought, not for the sake of cultivating their friendship, but for the
pleasure to the seeker. If you treat other persons unjustly, they will retaliate;
therefore, treat others justly.
Stoicism which was founded in Athens by Zeno reached its culmination
among the Romans and hence will be discussed in the following chapter.
Polybius (203–121 B. C.), known as the last Hellenic social philosopher,
developed a theory of social evolution, based on the belief that people
associate because of the selfish benefits that accrue, and on the fact that

group approval and disapproval play a leading part in the development of
human attitudes.
Grecian social thought is noteworthy because of its intellectual
foundations. It ignored many affective elements, and for that reason it
became one-sided and unbalanced. It was rational rather than affective or
supernatural. It was designed to meet the needs of this life. It moved away
from authority and towards opportunism.
Economically, Hellenic social thought assumed or justified human
slavery. It postulated a democracy, but a democracy builded on the backs of
thousands of slaves. In practice at the height of the Athenian democracy
there were only about 25,000 free Athenians as against 300,000 slaves.
Women were not enfranchised. The governments put slaves into the armies,
and ultimately attempted to throw out a commercial net over the other
Mediterranean states. As a result they lost the spirit of democracy. The
whole system and concept of democracy was undermined by the
debilitating influences of an industrial autocracy. The social thought of the
Greek was limited in its actual application largely to the privileged few,
who aristocratically ignored the needs of the helpless many.
Grecian social thought at the height of the Athenian democracy did
achieve, however, for its day and epoch, a unique degree of expression
among the free citizens. For example, in the matter of athletics and
recreation, the Athenians worked together in furnishing themselves
organized group activities. Their athletic contests were of a free community
nature, untrammelled by commercialized motives. In furnishing recreation
for themselves, they co-operated, they acted as community units. Moreover,
in these community activities they generated in themselves the spirit of a
genuine democratic consciousness.
The fundamentals of Grecian social thought were preserved by the
Romans, without being augmented by them. Together with the Hebrew and
early Christian social thought, Grecian social thought laid the foundations
for the rise of modern social science, and even of sociology.

Chapter VII

Roman Social Thought
Roman social thought is an outgrowth of Hellenic philosophic
movements. It is represented in part by the codification of important phases
of societary control—the product of the legalistic genius of the Romans.
Stoicism, moreover, greatly affected and conditioned the meager social
thinking of the Roman scholars.
Lucretius (99–55 B. C.) was the chief Roman exponent of
Epicureanism. In his story of social evolution he began with the various
phases of the biological struggle for existence, and proceeded to depict in a
remarkably significant fashion the origins of social practices and
VII-1
customs. Although his data are of questionable value, his descriptions
of social origins often run strangely parallel to modern findings.
The ideal commonwealth of Cicero (106–43 B. C.) is founded on the
VII-2
belief that Rome has the possibility of becoming an ideal state. The best
ideas in this connection were selected by Cicero from the Aristotelian,
Epicurean, and Stoic philosophies. Cicero was apparently an exponent of
honest statesmanship and finally gave his life for civic efficiency. He
argued that a child should not be punished by either a parent or a teacher in
a fit of anger. Corporal punishment should be considered only when other
methods fail to discipline.
The descriptive studies of Julius Caesar (100–44 B. C.) are noteworthy.
The Commentaries present social studies of contemporary conditions; they
possess modern value. In a large number of instances the accuracy of
Caesar’s social notes has been verified.
The teachings of the Roman Stoics may be traced back to the Socratic
formula: Virtue is knowledge. Virtue is knowledge which grows out of
practical human conduct. Unlike Aristotle, the Stoics believed that

sympathy is a disease. It is pathological and hence must be overcome. In
helping other people the wise individual does not allow the emotion of pity
to appear.
Contrary to the theory of the Epicureans, the Stoics taught that pleasure
is a tiresome and sickly goal. Seneca (4 B. C.-65 A. D.), a leading Roman
Stoic, declared: “I am seeking to find what is good for a man, not for his
VII-3
belly.” Virtue, according to Stoic philosophy, consists in living a free
and undisturbed life. A line was drawn between the virtuous and non-
virtuous, between a few virtuous and a multitude of fools. This doctrine
tends to engender in the few virtuous a contemptuous regard for the pig-
trough philosophy of the many.
This tendency, however, was offset by the Stoic belief that all persons
originally possess the same nature and that all are children of the same
universal Spirit. Social differences, hence, are external and superficial.
Beneath the surface of human nature there is a cosmopolitanism which
constitutes a passive brotherhood of man. Brotherly love should rule,
according to the Stoics, but it should rule temperately, and not in such a
way as to disturb the individual’s self control. Brotherly love should be not
a passionate but an intellectual element.
In his treatise on Benefits, Seneca makes benevolence the most social
of all virtues; and ingratitude the most venal of all crimes. Marcus Aurelius
VII-4
(121–180 A. D.) gave the social injunction: Love mankind. Living
VII-5
should consist in passing from one social act to another. This is a social
VII-6
world; men exist for the sake of one another.
The Stoic Emperor declared that God is social and that individuals are
part of God’s universe. Each individual is a component part of the social
system, and hence every act of the individual is an integral phase of social
VII-7
life. Inasmuch as the Intelligence of the universe is social, human
society functions as a phase of the cosmic co-ordination. We are all co-
laborers and co-operators. Even the persons who find fault and who hinder
VII-8
what happens, are performing useful co-operative functions. That which
is harmful to the swarm is likewise harmful to the individual. Man is a

VII-9
citizen of the world. The services of a good citizen are never lost. The
VII-10
good citizen does good chiefly by the example he sets.
But the cosmopolitanism of the Stoics never extended beyond a passive
interest in the world of affairs. It meant that the individual should be
agreeable with other persons, that he should be tolerant of the weaknesses
of others, and that he should be aware constantly that others are watching
VII-11
him and likely to copy the example he sets. Stoicism requires the
suppression of anger and the exercising of clemency toward all human
beings. While Stoicism does not extend so far in its profession as
Christianity’s doctrine of brotherhood of man, it represents a broader
viewpoint of life than any code of conduct which previously had developed
in the non-Christian world.
The purpose of punishment, according to Seneca, is two-fold: either to
reform the evil-doer; or to prevent the operation of his evil influence and to
VII-12
stop him from setting harmful examples. The social medicine must be
determined, quantitatively and qualitatively, by the nature of the offender
and the offense. Above all things else, he who administers punishment must
VII-13
not act in anger. Justice cannot be angry. Lynch procedure is entirely
contrary to the teachings of Stoicism.
First of all, thieves and robbers should be instructed in the error of their
ways. Obtain their point of view and administer punishment accordingly.
Pity them. The individual who understands why criminals commit offenses
VII-14
is prevented from becoming angry with them. Aurelius, like
VII-15
Jesus, gave the injunction: Love even those who do wrong. Aurelius,
VII-16 VII-17
like Paul, urged an attitude of charity toward wrong-doers.
The Stoics condemned luxurious living and fashion racing. True riches
consists not in augmenting one’s fortune, but in abating the desires for
VII-18
securing material wealth. The words of Emperor Aurelius regarding
ostentatious living do not seem out of place when applied to the modern
display of wealth. Seneca asserted that he would despise wealth as much
when he has it as when he does not possess it.

Stoicism urged the Aristotelian social mean regarding property. Much
property is a burden and a cause of worry and fear. It excites envy in others.
The best society is that which is characterized by neither poverty nor plenty.
The poor should not condemn riches, and the wealthy err in extolling the
benefits of poverty—each is speaking of a situation which is objective to
him and outside his sphere. Since it is objective to him, he is not qualified
to speak concerning it. The individual is a great man who is not corrupted
by his wealth; but he is a greater man who is honestly poor in the midst of
VII-19
plenty. Riches constitute a power to do evil, hence mediocrity of
VII-20
fortune with a gentleness of mind represents the best status.
Stoicism enunciated excellent social ideals, which were, however,
passively intellectual. They were not affectively dynamic. Despite their
implications, they begat social inertia. The teachings of the Stoics removed
rather than instilled a sense of public responsibility. The doctrines are
available to the few rather than to the masses, although a Roman slave,
Epictetus, as an exception, rose to a full interpretation of Stoic principles.
The social ideals and concepts of the Stoics did not possess enough power
to regenerate a degenerate society. They had sufficient strength, however, to
maintain themselves in a voluptuous and pleasure-seeking world. They
performed the exceedingly useful function of preparing the way for the
invasion of the Roman Empire by the new and active Christian propaganda.
The teachings of the Stoics made easier the conquest of Rome by
Christianity. They softened a little an otherwise hard-hearted world.
As a class the Romans were men of action. They were soldiers and
administrators. The name of Rome is still synonymous with power. On the
whole it must be said that the Romans made little contribution to societary
thought.
The constructive work of the Romans was legal and administrative.
They built up a special social science—legal science. The legal genius of
the Romans emphasized the rights of contract, of private property, of
interest. Although this attention to the development of individualistic
institutions was fatal to the rise of new social attitudes and to an increase in
the sense of social responsibility, it nevertheless was instrumental in
constructing a stable framework for the evolution of the social process.

The Romans preserved a portion of Hellenic culture. The teachings of
Plato and Aristotle were saved to modern civilization. Credit is due the
Romans for receiving, keeping, working over, and handing on a part of the
best Hellenic civilization.
Roman thought accentuated military principles of authority, even to the
point of autocracy. It tended to crush the unprivileged populace. It tried to
keep the masses contented by generous state aid. It denied to personality its
complete individual and social expressions. In building an individualistic
framework which would provide an orderly milieu for the rise of the
institution of private property, it ignored the needs of the uneducated and
poverty-enslaved masses for a full measure of liberty.
Rome developed the concept of organized power. The organizing
ability of the Romans was marvelous, an organizing power that lives today
in and through the Catholic Church.
The greatest gift of Rome was its Stoic concepts. Although these
originated in Hellas, they attained their maturity in Rome. They opened the
way for the reception of the Christian social concepts of love, service,
brotherhood of man.

Chapter VIII

Early Christian Social Thought
Christian social thought is the direct outgrowth of Hebrew social
concepts. Amos and Hosea and Isaiah paved the way for the social
teachings of Jesus. The social commandments of the Old Testament were
the progenitors of the modified social injunctions of the New Testament.
Job, the social citizen, was not an unworthy precursor of Jesus, the lover of
humanity. Out of the love and tender care for children which thrived in
Hebrew homes there arose the concept of the brotherhood of man and the
Fatherhood of God—the two cardinal principles of Christianity.
Jesus gave expression to no system of social thought, but uttered social
principles and concepts which, when put together, constituted the basis of a
new social order. He dealt with personalities rather than with institutions.
He looked to the individual rather than to the mass. He emphasized
functions rather than structures. He proclaimed the need for socio-religious
personalities. If he could get these, he was sure of the ultimate societal
results. He foresaw a perfect society—the Kingdom of God.
Unlike Plato and Aristotle, Jesus was a continual student of everyday
life. Like Socrates, Jesus was fond of people. He was a student of individual
and social affairs. He mixed with all types of human beings. Like Socrates,
he wrote practically nothing. Unlike Socrates, Jesus had a dynamic element
in his nature which forbade him to remain content to argue with people
(after the Socratic manner), but which drove him to help and to heal. He
went about doing good. The Gospel records are replete with instance after
instance of his work in healing the sick of their infirmities. He was not,
however, a physician but a teacher and a savior from sin and evil.
Behind all the teachings of Jesus, there is the concept of a perfect
VIII-1
human order. This Kingdom begins in the hearts of individuals. It is a
spirit or an attitude of mind which leads the individual toward co-operative

living. The Kingdom may come on earth as well as in heaven. Consider the
picture of a harmonious community life which Jesus gave when lamenting
over Jerusalem: “How often would I have gathered thy children together, as
a hen doth gather her brood together under her wings, and ye would
VIII-2
not!”
Jesus extended the concept of brotherhood. Whoever shall do the will
VIII-3
of God is a brother to me. The world, under God, is one family. The
Kingdom, therefore, is to include all human beings, who worship God in
spirit and in truth and who at the same time love their fellowmen in justice
and co-operative living.
The ideal society is organic. It grows from good examples. Live so that
other persons, seeing the helpfulness of your life, may live likewise. The
Kingdom grows like a grain of mustard seed, which finally becomes a tree
VIII-4
in whose branches the birds find homes. Love grows, and like leaven,
permeates and transforms the whole mass,—the result is the perfect
Kingdom.
God is the spiritual leader of the new society, to whom Jesus prayed in
the social term, Our Father. God is the personification of love. God loved
the sinful world so much that he gave his only son to the task of saving not
simply the Jews or modern Europeans, but the whole world from all sins.
The Star which guided the Magi was God’s service Star, announcing that he
had given his only son in the war against sin.
Love is the new note that is to re-form the world. Love is the scientific
principle from which all other true sociological concepts are derived. Love
received the most perfect human expression in the personality and life of
Jesus, who came not for self glory but to save people from hate and sin;
who sought not the sheep to oppress and slay them for his own gratification,
but to direct them, when lost, back to safe living; who sought not to weigh
down the burdened with unjust taxes and harsh living conditions, but to
relieve and give rest to the heavy-laden: who cared less for the upper Four
Hundred than for the lower Four Hundred Million.
The principle of love compels the members of the Kingdom to show
mercy. God is full of mercy, therefore, let his followers show mercy. Love
forgives. The Christian citizen is instructed to become reconciled with his

VIII-6
brother citizen before worshipping at the altar of God. If the individual
would be forgiven of his sins, he must acquire the habit of forgiving other
persons. He must be careful not to judge harshly, lest other persons judge
him harshly. He should forgive others seventy times seven times, that is,
without stint or measure.
St. Luke, the physician, recites the story of a loving father. The prodigal
son impetuously demanded his share of the inheritance, and going into a far
country, wasted his substance in riotous living. But upon showing true
remorse for these exceedingly grave offenses, his father received him back
with a loving, forgiving heart, a feast, the best robes, and music and
dancing. One of the malefactors who was crucified with Christ, showed a
penitent heart at the last moment and received forgiveness from the loving,
dying Christ. Since no one is without sin, no one has a right to be
unforgiving. Even the woman taken in adultery came within the law of
forgiving love.
The societary principle of love is the major chord of Christianity. It is
Christianity’s unscientific but greatest gift to sociology. It has become the
fundamental concept of sociology. To the Old Testament type of love which
urged the individual to love his neighbor and to love the alien and stranger,
Jesus repeatedly insisted upon a love that is still greater, namely, a love
VIII-7
which will include enemies. Love your enemies. Jesus himself
exemplified this form of love. He made no idle interpretation of an
impossible love, but demonstrated and lived a love which forgave his
enemies, even those who mockingly, shamelessly nailed him to a cross. So
great is the drawing power of this almost superhuman love which Jesus
expressed in deeds that he himself predicted that if he were lifted up he
would draw all people unto him.
Love fills people with compassion. The Gospels are replete with
references to the fact that wherever Jesus saw sickness, poverty, sin, he was
moved with compassion. The illustrations range from the blind men by the
wayside to the bread-hungry multitudes, from the unclean leper in Galilee
to murderous Jerusalem.
Love is cosmopolitan. All peoples are entitled to know the meaning of
VIII-8
Christian love. Both Jew and Gentile shall feel its warming glow. The

Samaritan lives it. Loving neighborliness includes more than priestly and
Levitical acts; it involves Samaritan kindness. The love in the heart of Jesus
reached first to a few close friends, then to sinners and outcasts, then to the
Samaritans and the Gentiles, and finally to the whole world. It led
ultimately to that most unselfish of all human enterprises—the missionary
movement.
Love leads to humility and self-sacrifice. Alms-giving is done in
private, not for social plaudits. The individual prays, not to be seen of men
VIII-9
and thereby to be accounted good. He who seeks to save his life shall
lose it; whoever loses his life for the sake of the Kingdom shall save it. He
who stores up for himself the wealth of the world shall lose himself.
Salutations in the market places and chief seats in the synagogues in
themselves are unworthy. The poor in spirit are blessed.
Love shuns positions of worldly power, lest they be secured at the loss
VIII-10
of one’s soul. The best positions in life are not to be seized; they are
obtained through the exercise of love; they are bestowed in recognition of
merit and worth. He who exalts himself will be abased; the humble will be
exalted.
Love creates true greatness. The members of the society of perfect love
VIII-11
are characterized by the sincerity, purity, humility of little children. He
who serves most is greatest. The Kingdom of God is an aristocracy, not of
Might but of Service. The Son of God came to serve, not to be served. For
the sake of those outside the Kingdom, Jesus sanctified himself, sacrificing
even his life in that cause.
Love makes the Golden Rule the best sociological proposition in
Hebrew and Jewish literature. “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye even so to them.” In reply to a lawyer of the Pharisees, Jesus
enunciated a two-fold commandment, the first part of which invoked
complete love to God; and the second part, to man. The love of the
individual for his fellow man as shown in both attitude and deeds is the test
of the love of the individual for God. Love means service. Love does not
connote lip-service; neither does it mean divided service. No one can serve
two masters, God and mammon.

Christian love implies definite and continued public service. Social
service is the test of entrance to the Kingdom, and of the sincerity of the
VIII-12
individual’s religious profession. On the judgment day those on the
right hand will be blessed and given life eternal, and to them the king of the
judgment will say:

I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat;
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink;
I was a stranger, and ye took me in;
Naked and ye clothed me;
I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then the righteous, with surprise, will inquire of the Lord of the
judgment: When did we see you hungry and feed you; or thirsty, and give
you drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in? Then the Lord
of the judgment will answer them that when they had served the weak and
poor and the heavy-laden on earth, they had been serving him and thereby
had proved their loyalty to God and earned the rewards of everlasting life.
And those who fail to measure up to the social service test, whether
professing Christians or not, will be turned away.
The importance and nature of religio-social service is indicated by
Jesus when he symbolizes the giving of a cup of cold water in his name as a
VIII-13
test for receiving eternal life. He who has two coats should give one to
him who has none. The sharing of food with those who have no food is
VIII-14
commanded. Give liberally; give all thou hast. It is blessed to give
under all circumstances. Material riches are insignificant in value when
compared with spiritual wealth. To give the things of this world is to receive
the greater things of the spirit. He is richest who gives most, both of
material and spiritual goods. As an expression of his love for God, Jesus
lived a life of social and human service.
Whenever Jesus mentioned the ten commandments—all three synoptic
writers agree on this point—he omitted the four commandments of
individual import and repeated only the social rules, or principles:

(1) Thou shalt do no murder,
(2) Thou shalt not commit adultery,
(3) Thou shalt not steal,
(4) Thou shalt not bear false witness,
(5) Honor thy father and mother,
(6) Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
After the fashion of the major social prophets, Jesus cried out
vehemently against social injustice. He denounced the persons who devour
widows’ houses, or who lay unnecessary economic burdens upon their
fellowmen.
Anti-social religion, above all things else, angered Jesus. He wanted no
followers who were practicing social or political injustice. Cursed are those
persons who appear righteous, who make long prayers, or who go about in
long robes, but who inwardly are hypocrites, are full of dead men’s bones,
VIII-15
of uncleanness, of extortion and excess. The shedding of innocent
blood is condemned. The paying of money in order to expiate sin will avail
VIII-16
nothing. Such money is tainted; it is blood money.
Anti-social and commercialized religion so angered Jesus that, contrary
to his customary attitudes toward sinners, he committed violence on one
occasion against offenders. He overthrew the tables of the money changers
in the temple, and, making a scourge of small cords, he drove out the
money changers. In so doing, he declared that the worship of God should
VIII-17
not be commercialized. He would not have the house of worship
turned into a cultured den of thieves.
So furious were the scribes and the chief priests because of the attack
of Jesus upon anti-social religious practices that they planned how they
VIII-18
might kill him. It appears that as a direct result of the antagonism of
Jesus to the anti-social practices of the religious, or temple, authorities and
of the other religious leaders the conspiracy against Jesus finally brought
about his death. Jesus went about stirring up the common people in a
democratic movement against the autocratic, hypocritical, anti-social
religious leaders among the Jews. He met his death while championing the
needs of the masses who were being exploited in the name of religion.

Jesus was the highest type of social democrat. The perfected social
order which he foresaw is a democracy, ruled by the principles of love and
service in the name of God. Furthermore, no one shall be compelled to
come into the Kingdom. The good tidings shall be presented to all
individuals, but the liberty of the individual shall not be violated. The
principle of voluntary assent, not compulsion or conscription, rules in
recruiting for the Kingdom. Moreover, within the Kingdom, compulsion is
unknown. Love sufficeth.
Jesus hated sin. To him, sin was anything which overcomes love and
which causes the individual or society to disintegrate. Sin is that which
defeats or hinders the coming of the Kingdom of Love. Sin breaks up or
holds back the social process. Sin, like love, is organic. Sin grows. An evil
tree brings forth evil fruit; grapes and figs are not gathered from thorns or
thistle-bearing plants.
Jesus forgave sinners; even social sinners. By means of his
imagination, he put himself in the place of the sinner and sought to
understand the causes of the sinning. As his mind filled with an
understanding of sin, his heart overflowed with pity and forgiveness for the
sinner. He sought primarily to reclaim; he thought secondarily of
punishment. Even in the case of the adulterous woman, he sought to save
what was left of the broken spirit rather than to punish. His cardinal
penological principle was reformation.
It is significant that the social institution which Jesus supported above
all others, even above the church and the state, was the family. Jesus spoke
frequently for the family. He commanded that children should
unwaveringly act loyally toward parents; he used not only the clear-cut
terms of the writer of Exodus but added a curse of death upon those who
VIII-19
abuse their parents.
An even stronger command was given by Jesus concerning loyalty to
the marriage relation. A man’s genuine loyalty to his parents, undiminished
VIII-20
in intensity, must be subordinated to faithfulness to his wife. This
social theory is opposite in character to that of Confucius concerning
attitudes toward parents and wives. The conception which Jesus urged leads
to social progress, while the teaching of Confucius leads to social
stagnation.

A man and woman who have been spiritually joined together in
wedlock are one flesh, above and beyond separation by civil authorities.
Jesus uttered the stern and awe-inspiring sanction: What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder. The family as an institution is
accorded a sacredly fundamental place in the social order.
Jesus recognized woman as equal with man spiritually. His attitude
toward his mother and the other women of his day was one of respect,
chivalry, and gentleness. He laid the foundations of a social process in
which women function on terms of equality with men.
Honor to parents and honor to wife must be supplanted by honor to
children. Jesus worshiped little children. In them he saw the innocence and
purity of God. When he wished to describe the attributes of the Kingdom,
he selected a little child and held him up as typifying the simple, natural
spirit of perfect living. Although without children himself, Jesus loved little
children, choosing them for special honors, and declaring that of such is the
Kingdom of God. It is not God’s will that one of these little ones should
perish; it is the stupidity of man and the lack of social conscience that
causes a high mortality rate of little children. He who harms the trustful
child shall be cursed. It were better for such a miscreant that a millstone
VIII-21
were tied about his neck and that he were thrown into the sea.
In regard to the influence of private property Jesus was fearful. His zeal
for and whole-hearted loyalty to spiritual values made him suspicious of
vested interests. He repeatedly warned in vigorous language against the lure
of gold and the baneful influences of material wealth upon the attitudes and
acts of the individual. He himself showed no interest in owning property.
He lived without a home of his own and without private means. If he had
possessed these, his life-work probably would have failed. He urged his
disciples to remain free from the desire for money; he even commanded
them to rely for the means of material subsistence upon the people with
whom they labored. Jesus believed that private property hindered the
realization of the principle of brotherhood of man. He made a sharp
distinction between the interests of God and mammon. He believed that
these two sets of interests are diametrically opposed to each other. To the
extent that the individual relies upon property, he separates himself from
God and the things of the Spirit. The disciples were instructed to scorn, not

only the earning of wealth, but if they possessed earthly goods, they were to
VIII-22
sell these and give the proceeds to the poor. The disciple of the
spiritual life must divorce himself from the love of monetary gain.
Toward the poor, Jesus was sympathetic. The Gospel shall be preached
chiefly to the poor, not because the poor, per se, need it more than the rich
and not because the poor should be specially favored, but because they
recognize their needs. They are in a receptive attitude whereas the attitude
of the rich has been calloused by their wealth. The response to the Gospel is
not likely to be whole-hearted by persons who possess an extensive interest
in riches.
Jesus taught a spiritual socialism. He thought in terms of spiritual love
for all persons, not of material well-being for the proletariat. But he seemed
to prefer the company of the poor. Blessed are the poor, was his attitude; for
they are in a frame of mind which makes them fit subjects for the perfect
Kingdom. The possession of property gives the individual a feeling of self-
exaltation; poverty gives rise to humility—a cardinal virtue of the
Kingdom.
Jesus did not attack poverty with preventive measures. Poverty will
VIII-23
continue to exist. Perhaps it is well that it should continue, for a
nation of economically satisfied people might not be religiously minded. It
is harder for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to get
into the swing of an untrammeled social process. Woe unto the rich,
because they are self-centered, materially inclined, and pleasure-loving. The
man who pulled down his barns in order to build larger barns, saying to
himself, “Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” is scathingly
VIII-24
condemned by Jesus. He is ostracized from the ideal society. In the
story of Lazarus and the rich man, the former is carried to Abraham’s
bosom, but the latter, in torments, begs for a cup of water and the company
of Lazarus. He wanted Lazarus sent to him; he longed for the company of
him whom he once ignored. The attention of Jesus was continually centered
on the dangers of wealth, but rarely on the need of preventing poverty.
Zaccheus, a rich man, was called as a disciple of Jesus. But before the
discipleship began, the superintendent not only had to come down from the
mulberry tree and declare his allegiance to God, but he had to become

socially converted as well. He promised to give one-half of his wealth to the
poor and to restore falsely acquired possessions fourfold.
Then there was the rich young man who came to Jesus, asking how he
might obtain admittance to the Kingdom, declaring that he observed the
commandments. One more thing, however, was required of him, namely,
that he sell all his possessions and give the returns to the poor. Only by so
giving might he have treasure in the social Kingdom.
The teaching of Jesus concerning the Sabbath throws light on the
exceedingly human element in his thought. The Sabbath is a special day for
VIII-25
doing good deeds. The Sabbath is to be treated not primarily from the
standpoint of religious rites but from the viewpoint of human welfare.
Works of necessity, and deeds of mercy and kindness to man and beast are
VIII-26
proper to the Sabbath. Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the day
of rest and good deeds was designed for the benefit of man.
The attitude of Jesus toward the problem of peace versus war has
aroused considerable controversy. There are certain of his sayings which
seem to contradict each other. But an analysis of all his teachings
demonstrates that his emphasis was on peace. The exceptions to the rule
VIII-27
will be stated first. On one occasion he said: I came not to send peace,
but a sword. The context shows that Jesus was speaking in an individual
and not a national way. He had in mind the conflicts which arise between
the individuals who are converted to the ideals of the Kingdom and those
who are not. Jesus explained that those who love him must do so even at the
VIII-28
expense of forsaking father and mother. Loyalty to the Kingdom may
mean that the son will oppose the practices of his father in business, the
daughter will object to the time wasted in the unChristian practices of her
mother, the parents will protest the sowing of “wild oats” by son or
daughter.
In the temple, on one occasion, Jesus displayed anger and used
violence. He was dealing, however, with a group of criminals, cultured
criminals, who apparently would respond to no treatment except violence.
They would not cease their nefarious practices except through compulsion.
On the other hand, the illustrations are many where Jesus used love in
order to change the ways of people. He never used force in his own behalf,

even to save his life. He rebuked Simon Peter for drawing his sword and
cutting off the right ear of the servant of the high priest who in company
VIII-29
with others were seeking Jesus in order to bind him and kill him. At
another time Jesus specifically enjoined: Resist not evil; and instructed his
followers when smitten upon the right cheek to turn the left also. Those who
take the sword shall perish by the sword; the nation that builds itself up by
VIII-30
the sword shall be destroyed by it.
The birth of Jesus was accompanied by glad tidings and song,
VIII-31
proclaiming peace on earth and good will toward men. Blessed are the
peacemakers. In the perfect society, good will by all to all will be shown,
perfect love will reign, and permanent peace will prevail.
Jesus may or may not have expressed himself on several important
issues of his day. The incomplete records do not indicate his attitude upon
many vital social problems. It appears that Jesus usually spoke in remedial
rather than preventive social terms. However, beneath this remedial
terminology there are fundamental social principles, which, if put into
common practice, would solve all social problems. Jesus proposed to build
an ideal society by re-making and regenerating individuals. He dared to
promulgate the radical program of re-making human nature itself. He
commanded that all selfish impulses and instincts be completely
subordinated to the altruistic and socializing desires.
Jesus insisted throughout his life-work upon the principle that material
factors must be subjected to spiritual values. In order to make this principle
clear he often took particular pains to treat material goods with the utmost
insignificance. He perceived that individuals are made slaves by the
worship of wealth, either on the part of themselves, of the privileged
classes, or of society itself. He inaugurated a program of spiritualization
which would free the world from the slavery which may come from
economic forces.
Although a religious teacher above all things else, Jesus insisted upon
the necessity of the existence of something more than saving faith alone. He
required a social attitude of mind, a heart of social love, and a spirit of
service. Give freely to others. Serve others. By giving himself for others,

the individual will function in the Kingdom of perfect love, and win other
individuals to that Kingdom.
Jesus required that love be substituted for hate. Unkind deeds must be
supplanted by kind deeds. According to this principle, employers and
employees must learn to love one another; and business must be put upon
the basis of love and service. Government must be a series of mutual
services. Religion must harbor no selfishness. In all human relationships,
Jesus reiterated the principle: Love, love, love. This is the spiritualizing and
socializing principle by which Jesus proposed to make over the social
process.
Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, by virtue of unique experiences and
many travels, possessed a cosmopolitan attitude of mind. He gave a
practical application of the teaching of Jesus concerning the brotherhood of
man. He urged the equal treatment of Jews and Gentiles, bond and
VIII-32
free. He preached the essential unity of mankind. God is no respecter
of persons; his Kingdom is a spiritual democracy. We are all—Jew and
Gentile—children of the same Father, who gave his son in service for
VIII-33
all. To the call to come over into Macedonia for the purpose of
rendering aid, Paul responded immediately and favorably. By so doing he
believed that he was carrying out the true implications of the love of God.
The greatest tribute that has ever been paid to love as a social force was
VIII-34
given by Paul. Although possessing the highest educational
qualifications and being able to speak with the greatest eloquence, any
individual leads a practically useless life unless that life is motivated by
love. Giving one’s possessions to the poor and sacrificing one’s body counts
little if one does these things in any other spirit than that of love. Love
protects the individual from envying his neighbors, from becoming proud
and haughty and boastful. Love is the greatest principle of life.
The members of the Kingdom of God should love one another under all
VIII-35 VIII-36
circumstances. They should bear one another’s burdens. They
should do good to all men, even to those who persecute. Above all, they
should not recompense any man with evil for evil, or fail to feed their
enemies if the latter hunger. Love is the law of God. Perfect love is more
VIII-37
powerful than principalities and powers and even death. Love

conquers all evil. Love is more powerful than might. A practical,
cosmopolitan brotherhood of man is one of the fundamental concepts of
Paul’s teachings.
Paul taught the organic unity of mankind. In the perfect Christian order
each individual has a specific function to perform which is a part of the
whole process. Paul compares this situation to the human body in which
there are many organs, each performing its individual but correlated
VIII-38 VIII-39
function. No one liveth to himself, no one dieth to himself.
Every individual, even in dying, influences the social equilibrium and
affects group progress. All individuals in the perfect Kingdom are co-
laborers and co-operators. Whatever weakens one individual weakens
society; whatever strengthens the individual strengthens society, providing
that strength is used societarily.
Another fundamental element in the social thought of Paul was his
concept of sin. Sin is socially and individually destructive. The wages of sin
—a generic term—is death. Paul made a long list of social sins, namely:
covetousness, maliciousness, drunkenness, wantonness, dishonesty, fraud,
stealing, fornication, murder. In nearly all his letters, Paul warned his
followers against the evils which beset mankind. He urged people to beware
of the appearance of doing evil. Paul’s rule of conduct was the Aristotelian
mean: Be temperate in all things.
On the other hand, Paul cited long lists of virtues. Love is continually
urged. Temperance, meekness, gentleness, honesty, purity, and justice are
repeatedly stressed. Paul’s description of a good man and bishop is the
delineation of the character of a social citizen, who is temperate, a good
husband, who is not mercenary nor covetous, and who ruleth well his
household, with good reputation and character.
In all Paul’s thought, righteous living was uppermost. Cheerful giving
was commended. The strong should bear the infirmities of the weak, not
only for the sake of the weak, but in order that the strong may not become
self-centered.
Paul taught a gospel of peace. He deprecated strife between individuals.
He trusted in the operation of the law of love. Love will bring order out of
confusion, and peace out of discord. The social Kingdom of God, motivated
by love, moves orderly, harmoniously, and constructively.

Paul firmly supported the family as an essential institution of society.
He admonished children to obey their parents, to honor their fathers and
mothers. He commanded wives to obey their husbands, and husbands to
love their wives even as Christ loved the church and as men love
VIII-40
themselves. He commanded men to remain true in the marriage
relation, and to keep the single standard of morals inviolate.
The dangers of wealth were frequently pointed out by Paul. We brought
no riches into this life: we can not take any riches out. Riches continually
subject us to temptations, snares, and lusts. The love of money is the root of
VIII-41
all evil. The greatest wealth which any person can acquire is the
wealth of good deeds done to other persons.
The thought of Paul concerning law is exceedingly modern. Law is not
for the righteous; law is for the lawless and disobedient. The honest and
righteous and just are above the law in the sense that a well-mated husband
and wife are above the law of divorce. If there were none other than
happily-mated husbands and wives, there would be no need of divorce laws.
In a similar way, if perfect love prevailed among all people, law could be
entirely discarded. The teachings of Paul run the gamut of brotherly love.
Paul thought in terms of concepts such as these: being well-grounded in
love; abounding in love; let brotherly love continue; the love of Christ
constraineth. Paul carried a message of love to all men, and established the
church as a home for all who would accept Christ’s message of love.
The apostle James spoke in no uncertain terms of the democracy of
God, the need of helping the weak, the dangers of riches, the evils of strife,
and the social commandments. James made social service a fundamental
VIII-42
test of religion.
Peter attacked the same social sins that Jesus and Paul had flayed,
argued in behalf of the justice of God, and proclaimed with new vigor the
law of love.
John is the chief exponent of the principle of love. God is love. The
reign of God is a reign of love; the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of
perfect love. In the Book of Revelation, John describes two cities; one
wicked; and the other, perfect. The first is elegantly clothed in purple and
gold, bedecked with precious stones. But her heart is rotten. Lust and vice

have ruined her. Her dominating sins are sex immorality and luxury. The
perfect city is the new Jerusalem, a community of happy people, motivated
in all things by love. Nothing that defileth is permitted in the New
VIII-43
Jerusalem, nor anything that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.
The fundamentals of early Christian social thought may now be
summarized. The New Testament authorities offered no system of
sociology; they did not submit a scientific program for the social
reorganization of the world, but made, however, substantial contributions.
(1) Early Christian social thought represented a system of changing the
attitudes of individuals. By making over individuals the world can be
improved. The individual is exalted. The individual must be re-educated.
The right sort of men will produce the right sort of social structure and the
proper type of social process and society. Christianity indicated socialized
principles of conduct which the disciples of Christianity must accept.
(2) The Fatherhood of God is made a cardinal principle of the
Kingdom. When all persons recognize the Fatherhood of God, they will
have a strong tie binding them together and impelling them to regenerated
living.
(3) The universal brotherhood of man is a natural corollary of the
principle of the Fatherhood of God. When everyone recognizes the
underlying brotherhood of all individuals, the prejudices of race which now
so bitterly divide mankind will begin to dissolve.
(4) Marriage is a divine right, and husbands and wives shall work
together in behalf of their children. The family is the chief social institution
which the New Testament writers supported.
(5) Little children set examples of simple faith and trust. They call for
sacrifice and transform parents into altruistic beings.
(6) Early Christian thought was missionary. It was not self-centered. It
said: Go. It drove out its adherents unto all forms of unselfish living. It
required that its followers help the sick, preach the gospel, travel into
foreign lands. It was an activity religion. It defined in living terms the
dynamic and driving principle of love.

Chapter IX

Social Thought in the Middle Ages
The social thought of the Middle Ages was in part a reflection of the
unsettled social conditions, and in part an outgrowth of the thought and life
of the five centuries which intervened between the beginning of the
Christian Era and the Fall of Rome. During these centuries the Church
Fathers moved away from the pristine Christian teachings. While they
accepted the underlying social nature of mankind and believed that
government and social organization were necessary in order to curb evil
tendencies, their teachings treated government as a divine institution and
transformed rulers into super-powerful beings with divine rights. The
autocratic rather than the democratic element in government received
support.
The strong Roman bias for organization and administration was builded
into the church—the result was the powerful Church of Rome with its
hierarchal structure. After the Fall of Rome, the Roman proclivity for
centralization of government lived on and produced within the Church a
center of power that has been the marvel of church history.
The Church Fathers directed the attention of the people to the next
world and to preparation therefor. Sacramental and sacrificial methods of
salvation were elaborated. The importance of improving social conditions
was ignored. In fact, the injustices in the current social order were
considered as disciplinary measures for the soul in its preparation for the
next world. The improvement of living conditions was considered to be
wasted effort, if not indicative of heretical tendencies of mind.
By the third century, loyalty to creed had become a dominant note in
Christianity. The poor constituted a decreasing influence in church life;
wealth was exerting unChristian influences. The aristocratic elements in
church organization began to transform the poor into a special class within

the church. Poverty was not viewed preventively. By the time of the Fall of
Rome the poor had become objects upon which to bestow alms as a means
of expiating sin.
The greatest of the Latin Fathers was Saint Augustine (354–450).
Among other works, he wrote a large set of twenty-two volumes under the
title of The City of God. In this gigantic undertaking social thought was
submerged beneath theological discussions. A part of the argument is
devoted to an explanation of the Fall of Rome. The leading causal elements
are described as economic factors, such as the rise of luxury; and religious
unbelief, such as the worship of pagan gods. Augustine describes two cities,
one of this world, materialistic and debasing; and one of the next world—
the City of God, which through the will of God will finally triumph.
During the first half of the Middle Ages the dominant tendencies are
Roman and Christian. The Roman power of organization gains increasing
strength in its new form—the Church. The Christian influences were
expressed in high ideals, new duties, and asceticism. The church acted as a
soothing and quieting force in the centuries of unrest. It built elaborate
monasteries and gathered together under its protecting wing large numbers
of people, chiefly the poor. Under the supervision of the church, these
religious believers lived in communal and sympathetic fashion. Along with
these developments the church also manifested grave abuses. At the
expense sometimes of the ignorant and the poor the church grew powerful.
Out of the period of social disorder which characterized the early
Middle Ages there developed educational movements, such as that which
Charlemagne sponsored, and the system of Feudalism, which gave to the
Middle Ages its most distinctive set of characteristics. Feudalism made land
the central institution of society. The ownership of land gave power; land
constituted social and political power. Land was parcelled out upon the
receipt of oaths of homage and fealty. Under this land system there were
three classes of people: the nobles, the clergy, and the peasants. The nobles
were the rulers and exercised military prerogatives. The clergy were either
the privileged subjects of the nobles, or else through the institution which
they represented they acquired land power. The peasants often despised the
nobles, although they worked for and supported them.

As an outgrowth of feudal industry various forms of guilds or industrial
organizations flourished from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. Sometimes
the masters and workmen jointly belonged to guilds, as in the case of the
merchant guilds. Sometimes the guilds became local monopolies. Always
they possessed the aim of improving the conditions of the membership.
The religious wars, or Crusades, of the eleventh to the thirteenth
centuries inaugurated many changes. They gave the restless nobility major
themes of attention and even removed many nobles through death in battle
from the European arena. They created intellectual unrest. They enlarged
the horizons of many individuals and gave rise to skepticism. They led to
the Reformation.
Social thought in the Middle Ages received a considerable stimulus
from Teutonic sources. The barbarous Teutons contributed ideas of
freedom. They increased the emphasis upon the individual. They were
rough, bold exponents of “personal liberty,” and disregarded mere churchly
procedure, social traditions, and some of the finer ideals of life and
character. On the other hand, chivalry and knighthood were perhaps of
Teutonic origin.
The church utilized chivalry. It became the duty of the knight to defend
the church and that which belonged to the church. Chivalry became a form
of social discipline which ruled in the latter part of the Middle Ages. It
softened manners and became the sponsor for virtue. It remained, however,
a modified military structure with military traditions.
The rise of scholasticism took place in opposition to monasticism. In
the ninth century the leading thinkers had not advanced beyond the
conception of a natural social state, characterized by chaotic conditions, and
organized by political machinery. By the twelfth century only the faintest
glimmerings of a doctrine of popular sovereignty had begun to appear. The
thought of the day was largely theological.
The church through its systems of monasteries had maintained centers
where religious and intellectual traditions had been preserved. These centers
were undoubtedly important factors in conserving much that was valuable
in an age when ruthless disregard for civilized values prevailed.

Because of the abuses which sprang up in connection with the
monasteries, certain positive reactions against the monasteries arose. St.
Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) turned from the monastery to actual life. He
inaugurated a method for the regeneration of society. He and his followers
lived and spent themselves among the actual poor, subjecting themselves to
the economic conditions of the poor. They helped the poor, not by giving
alms as an expiation for sin and to secure self-salvation, but by the first-
hand giving of their lives. St. Francis ignored the regular ecclesiastical
conception of charity and gave it all the reality of a new and genuine social
force. By renouncing the possession of property and living as the poor live,
he obtained what he could secure in no other way—the poor man’s point of
view. In this way, also, he secured an entrance into the poor man’s mind and
heart that could not be had so well by any other method. By renouncing
wealth and accepting literal poverty he reached the core of the problem of
poverty. St. Francis was motivated by a desire to live a life of love. He
spent not wealth but his life for the poor.
Scholasticism developed as a reaction against churchly asceticism.
According to scholasticism the individual should look to reason rather than
to church dogma for religious and spiritual guidance. Scholasticism
repudiated church traditions as a guide for individual action; it turned to
Aristotelian logic for its technique. Thomas Aquinas (1226–1274), the best
known of the scholastic philosophers, pushed forward the Aristotelian
premises as follows: Man is a social being: he unites with other individuals
in a social organization in order to gain his own purposes. The individual
looks to able rulers for wise political guidance; he accords the requisite
power to these rulers. Aquinas thus recognized a tacit social compact, or
contract, foreshadowing Rousseau.
In religion, scholasticism reduced religious mysticism to rational forms.
It based religion on learning rather than on authority; it pursued the
methods of reasoning rather than of contemplation.
Scholasticism furthered the advancement of learning; it aided and
developed the life of the universities. It encouraged the growth of
independent thinking, although its decline set in about the fourteenth
century, before it had had a fair opportunity to inaugurate a movement
which would lead to an inductive or a positivistic philosophy, or sociology.

Various other thought elements appeared in the closing centuries of the
Middle Ages. As early as the ninth century a maritime code, a military code,
and a rural code were formulated in the Byzantine Empire in order to meet
new social needs. Until the fall of Constantinople the Byzantine influence
was a deterrent against the forces from the East. Byzantium preserved and
gave a new impetus to Grecian literature, art, architecture, and law.
In Arabia the celebrated historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332–
1406), made a detailed and surprisingly accurate description of the social
life of the Arab tribes. With the evolution of the life of the individual, he
compared the development of the successive stages in social life. This
distinguished historian urged that history should consider not simply rulers,
dynasties, and wars, but also racial factors, climatic forces, the laws of
association, and the stages of associative life. He wished to make history
scientific, even a social science. He formulated an evolutionary doctrine of
social progress. He evolved a spiral theory of social evolution, beginning
with the crudest primitive life and ending with the most civilized urban life.
In the latter part of the fourteenth century, England’s great popular
poet, William Langland, wrote an allegorical poem entitled, Piers
Ploughman. In this work the oppressed laboring and peasant classes cry
aloud their longings for improved conditions. They are personified in Piers
the Ploughman, who as a dignified laborer, plays for the first time the
leading rôle in serious thought. He is the leader of a field of all types of
people who are laboring together and longing for a better social order.
Along with the agricultural laborers we see weavers and tailors, friars and
minstrels, merchants and knights. Labor of every sort is dignified. All living
laborers who work with their hands and minds, truly earning, living in love
and according to the laws of social order and progress, will become the pure
and perfected leaders of truth.
Langland depicted well the living and working conditions of the
English laboring classes. Productive toil, he argued, will receive its crown
of glory. But he did not indicate practical solutions. Langland was sure,
however, that the service of labor to society is sacred. He pronounced
patient poverty to be the prince of all virtues. He personified Jesus in the
form of a working man. Langland’s fourteenth century social message was

that the individual should renounce wealth, join the honest laboring poor,
IX-1
and follow Christ’s example of living a life of labor and love.
Social thought in the Middle Ages is fragmentary. While several
centuries are included in the period, new social ideas are very few. The
centuries of unrest and transition, the paucity of great leaders, the
intellectual stagnation, and the prevalent illiteracy of the masses produced
situations in which little social thinking of importance was stimulated. New
thought of any type was almost negligible except as an isolated individual
stood forth, such as Augustine, Charlemagne, Ibn Khaldun, Aquinas. A
portion of the social thinking of the preceding age, however, was preserved,
constituting a foundation for the renaissance of social thought that was
coming.

Chapter X

More and Utopian Social Thought
Shortly after the close of Middle Ages with its modicum of social
thinking, the idealism of Plato appeared in a new form, namely, in
descriptive utopias. Of these, the chief and subtlest was the work of
England’s sane, shrewd, tolerant student of society, Sir Thomas More
(1478–1535). More’s Utopia deserves a degree of attention which is not
customarily accorded it.
More mediated Plato to modern social philosophy; he moved in the
field of Platonic ideas and ideals. He was also indebted to Plutarch’s
account of Spartan life. At the dawn of the Renaissance he presented the
concept of a perfect commonwealth.
If one would understand the social thought of More, a contemporary of
Columbus, he must put himself under the spell of fifteenth and sixteenth
century conditions in England. He must remind himself of Henry VII and
Henry VIII, two autocratic rulers whom it was difficult for any individually-
minded person to please. The living conditions of the peasants were almost
intolerable. Unemployment was common. Punishments were severe and
brutalizing. Even thieves were subject to capital punishment. If an
individual stole a loaf of bread, he might as well kill the person who saw
him steal the bread. In fact, by so doing, he might be better off—the only
witness to his theft would thus be unable to testify against him.
Sir Thomas More could not have openly criticised the unjust social
conditions of his day, and long escaped death. It was necessary for him to
put his radical ideas into the mouth of a fictitious traveler, Raphael
Hythloday, and thereby disown them. At is was, More became a martyr to
his religious faith and to the cause of social freedom.
More wrote the Utopia in two parts. Part one was written as an
explanation, or introduction, to part two. In part one a conversation

involving three persons is reported. A conservative Dutch citizen of
Antwerp converses with Raphael Hythloday, an experienced traveler, and
with More. Hythloday, however, is the chief speaker. He is well versed in
Latin and especially in Greek culture. Moreover, he has traveled
extensively, even with Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator. In this
way he is given prestige in the mind of the reader. It is not impossible in
part one of Utopia to recognize a distinct resemblance to the dialogue form
of Plato.
Part one describes certain factors in the political situation in England.
The untoward phases of poverty and the vicious forms of punishment that
prevailed are painted in gloomy colors. The reader is glad to turn from this
unpleasant social picture to the description in part two of Utopia, where the
people are living under well-ordered conditions.
The ideal commonwealth is located on the mystical island of Amaurote,
where Raphael Hythloday lived for five years. On this island the economic
and social life is communistic, somewhat after the manner of Plato’s
Republic. It is a fundamental communism which More postulates. Complete
X-1
communism of goods exists on Amaurote. All possess equal portions of
wealth. The Utopian communistic state implies a radical change in human
nature. More justifies communism on the grounds that it roots out that
X-2
serious social evil, covetousness. Likewise, the incentive for stealing and
plundering is removed. If there is a scarcity of economic commodities in
any part of Utopia, the surplus in any other part is immediately drawn upon
to meet the need. Thus the whole land conducts itself as if it were one
X-3
family or household. The guiding principle in regard to economic goods
is that of human needs.
In Utopia everyone finds his greatest pleasure in giving to others. The
strongest league of peoples or of nations is not that which is united chiefly
by covenants or treaties, but one which is knit together by love and a
X-4
benevolent attitude. The strongest league in the world is that which is
based on the fellowship of kindred natures—a genuine Christian
brotherhood of nations.
In Utopia, agriculture is the most highly respected occupation.
Agriculture is a science in which all Utopian men and women are expert. In

the harvest days the urban people, both men and women (farmerettes) go
X-5
out into the country and help gather in the crops. Urban and rural co-
operation at harvest time solves the farmer’s employment problems to the
pleasure, good feeling, and advantage of all concerned. The food question is
considered of paramount national importance. The agriculturist is equipped
X-6
with the best tools and follows intensive methods.
In addition to agricultural science, every citizen of Utopia learns at
X-7
least one trade or craft. Even every woman learns a skilled trade. The
advantages of learning a trade by every citizen are obvious—they include a
great increase in the potential industrial resources of a people. The question
may be raised here, if it would not be a worth-while asset for every citizen
in our modern days to learn a trade. Such an accomplishment would give a
sense of economic independence to every individual; it would afford to
everyone the point of view of the skilled workman; it would add a gigantic
potential force to production.
In Utopia, there is one leader, or syphogrant, to every thirty families.
Although there are other officers, including a prince for each city and a king
for the island, the syphogrants are in reality the leading officials. It is
noteworthy that no public matters are to be decided until they have been
considered and debated for at least three days. By this scientific procedure
the necessity of rescinding hasty legislative action is reduced to a minimum.
An important duty of the syphogrants is to regulate employment. Not
only is everyone in Utopia to have a trade, but all are to work. There are no
idle poor or idle rich. All rich men, commonly called “gentlemen,” all
women, priests, monks, and friars (except a few) engage in productive
labor. Even the syphogrants, or officials, work spontaneously. All useless
occupations are prohibited. In countries where the dollar rules, there are
many vain occupations which serve only to augment riotous
X-8
superfluities. Thus, since all persons work and since only needed
occupations are permitted in Utopia, the working day is shortened to six
hours.
In the case of a season of unemployment, the simple device is adopted
of shortening temporarily the labor day. By cutting down the hours of labor
to four a day during an unemployment period, work is provided for all.

When an individual, it may be added, visits his friends, he works the same
as if he were at home. He sets himself to the task in which his friends are
engaged. No one in Utopia is encumbered with visitors who sit about doing
nothing and at the same time hinder their hosts from productive activities.
The syphogrants prevent idleness; they also prevent overwork. They
permit no one to work at a task like a laboring and toiling beast; they allow
no one to become a slave to his labor.
Laws in Utopia are few in number. Inasmuch as all the people are well
X-9
instructed and socially minded, many laws are needless. Each citizen is
above the law in the same way that an honest person is above the law
against stealing. In the case of those disputes which must necessarily arise,
the plaintiff and defendant go before the judge and plead for themselves.
Utopia is noted for its scarcity of laws and the absence of attorneys. No
crafty and subtle interpretation of laws by attorneys is permitted. Every man
is his own attorney and simply states the facts in the given dispute; the
judge knows the law and decides the case.
The organization of the cities is interesting. In the middle of each
quarter of each city there is a market place for the exchange of all manner
of goods. Public abattoirs are in operation. Splendidly appointed hospitals
are located outside the cities in a quiet environment. Contagious wards are
provided. So excellent is the care which is afforded the patients in the
public hospitals that any person who falls sick prefers to go to a hospital
than to be cared for by the kindly ministrations of relatives at home. It may
be noted that every city is provided with a hall of fame.
Every urban community is a garden city; every house has a garden plot.
Furthermore, the people take much pride in their gardens; they compete
with one another, endeavoring to excel in the fruitage and in the beauty of
X-10
the gardens.
X-11
City planning rules in Utopia. Overcrowding is not permitted;
whenever a city exceeds the norm, a new city is established. New urban
communities are established by public action.
Social centers are common on the island of Amaurote. In the winter
when the people cannot work in their gardens after the supper hour, they
gather in their community halls, where they engage in music, wholesome

conversation, and games. Dice-play and similar foolish and pernicious
X-12
games are unknown. Wine taverns, alehouses, “stewes,” lurking
X-13
corners, and places of wicked counsels are prohibited.
Good health is a virtue in Amaurote; great pleasure is derived from
possessing a well-ordered state of public health. Health is considered a
X-14
sovereign pleasure in itself. Preventive measures are substituted for
remedial medicines.
Fashions are regulated rigidly. Fashion imitation is prevented. The
X-15
garments for men are all of one mode; and for women, of another mode.
The married are distinguished from the unmarried by the style of wearing
apparel. Thus, there are simply four sets of styles in Amaurote. Coats of
uniform colors—the natural color of wool—are worn. It is argued that coats
of many colors are no warmer and hence no more practical than coats of the
one natural color; they are more expensive and hence more wasteful.
In Utopia, gold and silver are held in reproach. They are not considered
to be as useful as iron. Consequently, the Utopians load down their slaves
X-16
with gold and silver ornaments and pearls. In this connection the
description of the visit of a group of ambassadors to Amaurote is amusing.
The ambassadors from an adjoining country were dressed in gorgeous
apparel like the very gods. They came to Amaurote wearing chains of gold
and displaying peacock feathers. The citizens of Amaurote, coming out to
meet the guests, rushed past the ambassadors and saluted the plainly
dressed slaves of the ambassadors. They mistook the ambassadors for fools
and knaves. Even the little children of Amaurote, when they saw the
jewelry of the ambassadors, looked at their mothers and said: “See, how
great a lubber doth wear pearls and precious stones, as if he were still a
X-17
little child.” After being in Amaurote a short time, the ambassadors
perceived how foolish it was to set emphasis on the doubtful glistenings of
trifling stones. They recognized that it is foolish to consider oneself nobler
than other selves because one can wear clothes that are spun from finer
wool than the clothes of other persons. After all, whether the wool is coarse
or fine, it may have come from the self-same sheep.
An individual does not become a god by wearing precious stones. The
more the individual burdens himself with heavy stones and gorgeous

apparel, the more insignificant he is.
Although in Utopia no man is wealthy, yet in a sense, all men are
wealthy. All live joyfully, without worrying, and without fearing that they or
their children will fall into poverty. Amaurote is a gigantic household,
wherein the more able take a personal interest in the less able and in the
unfortunate. No one lives in idleness and no one lives by virtue of any form
of unnecessary economic enterprise. Rich men are not permitted by either
private fraud or common law to snatch away from the poor man some
portion, great or small, of his daily earnings. There are no idle rich,
conniving how they may keep their unearned wealth or how they may grind
down the poor in order to get more wealth. Since the love of money is
unknown in Amaurote, other passions are also absent. Since the people do
not love money, they have lost the desire to perpetrate the money crimes,
such as fraud, theft, murder, treason. Likewise, pride which measures its
satisfaction, not in terms of its own merits, per se, but by comparison with
the poverty of human beings, is destroyed. The Utopians have conquered
materialism. They are not subject to the death grapples which are caused by
the love of money. Luxuries have been suppressed and the leisure class has
been eliminated. Social extremes are unknown.
People are honored, not for their wealth but for their serviceableness to
X-18
the community. In the halls of fame, to which allusion has already been
made, benefactors of the commonwealth are rewarded by having images of
themselves set up in perpetual memory of their good deeds to their fellows.
The family is the fundamental social unit, but it is of the patriarchal
type. Pure monogamic love is idealized. Especial care is taken that neither
of the parties of a marriage vow possesses any hidden vices. Adultery is the
chief justification for breaking the marriage bond. A single standard of
morals for both husband and wife is set. Love may be won by beauty, but it
can be kept and preserved only by virtue and obedience.
Because of freedom from long hours of monotonous labor, nearly every
one in Utopia is able to maintain his intellectual interests and to experience
intellectual growth throughout life. It is the solemn custom to have daily
lectures early every morning and it is the habit of multitudes of people of all
X-19
types to attend. All of the time that it is possible to spare from the
necessary occupations is devoted to the development and garnishing of the

X-20
mind. Nearly all the citizens devote their extra-occupational hours
throughout their lives to the arts and sciences. The chief felicity of life is
said to be found in learning. In training the mind, the Utopians never weary.
As a matter of course, a common school education is provided for every
individual. Classes for adults and adult education are made the outstanding
features of the public school system in Amaurote. One must learn to live
and must go on learning throughout life. Hence, the provisions of public
education should be adequate for the adult as well as for the adolescent.
Religious education and practice are considered essential. More’s
tolerant attitude in an age of brutal intolerance is shown by the fact that the
Utopians are permitted whatever religion they prefer. Superstitious beliefs
are taboo. More makes a subtle thrust when he observes that the priests of
X-21
Amaurote are possessed of great holiness and hence are few in number.
It is no esoteric or monastic religion which More endorses. Future
happiness may be secured best by busy labors and social efforts in this
X-22
life. Public service, including the care of the sick, is religiously
emphasized.
War is beastly. Contrary to the attitudes of the people in all other
countries, the people of Amaurote count nothing so inglorious as the glory
X-23
that is obtained in fighting and killing. No imagination is necessary in
order to understand the courage which More displayed in making a
vigorous attack in the sixteenth century upon war.
Under limited conditions, however, war is justifiable. More gives three
worthy reasons for declaring war: (1) the defense of one’s own country; (2)
the defense of the country of one’s friendly neighbors; and (3) delivering
X-24
oppressed peoples anywhere from the yoke and bondage of tyranny.
From the twentieth century point of view, these justifications of war are
sound.
These reasons are all “defense” factors,—which is remarkable in view
of the fact that they were enunciated in an age when “offensive” wars were
common. The only reason for assuming the offensive in matters of war is
the social one of taking land away from people who deliberately withhold
land from cultivation and fail to produce food for the nourishment of

X-25
mankind. By this plan, More severely indicts the holders of large landed
estates which are held chiefly for the selfish gratification of the owners.
Hired or mercenary soldiers are employed in war. The people of
Amaurote employ hideous, savage fighters from the wild woods and the
high mountains to do their fighting for them. The larger the number of these
impetuous barbarians who are killed in battle, the better off is the world.
More opposed conscription. Ordinarily, no one is forced to fight,
because under such circumstances he will not fight well. In the case,
however, of defending Amaurote, the cowards are distributed among the
bold-hearted. In warfare, the people of Amaurote do not allow their warriors
to lay waste or destroy the land of their enemies. Neither foraging nor the
burning of food supplies is permitted. No one who is unarmed is to be hurt.
More’s penological ideas are modern. He points out the folly of making
theft a capital offense the same as murder. The temptation will be to steal,
or rob, and to kill also, whereas under a more reasonable law the temptation
in many cases would be to steal only. A law which makes theft a capital
offense is harsher than even the harsh Mosaic law of an eye for an eye, a
life for a life, because the former justifies the government in taking the life
of an individual who is guilty of stealing money. In Utopia the thief is
compelled to restore the stolen goods to the person from whom he stole,
and not to the king, as in many lands in More’s time. The thief is put at
common labor, not thrown into a city or county jail and left in idleness.
X-26
Compulsory labor is the common method of punishment.
The fundamental penological principle which More developed was that
X-27
crime should be prevented by taking away the occasion of offense. He
condemned the prevailing method in England of allowing wickedness to
increase, and then of punishing the sinners after they had been permitted to
grow up in an environment of sin. He objected to taking men from the
trades for war service and then later irresponsibly discharging them, leaving
many of them industrially stranded, unemployed, and subject to the
temptation of stealing. More’s dictum was: Show people how to live; do not
let them steal and then take their lives away. Life in Utopia is more or less
equally divided between five factors: industry, study, music, travel, and
domesticity.

In the Utopia, Sir Thomas More made a direct criticism of conditions in
England; he showed himself an able student of social problems; and his
ideas are noted for their “modernness.” Altogether, the Utopia has made a
remarkable impression, not simply upon social idealists but also upon
practical thinkers. As a literary invention for shrewdly suggesting criticisms
of vicious but entrenched social wrongs it has been followed by imitations,
but remains unparalleled in quality.
In the New Atlantis, Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1628), wrote an
unfinished description of a utopian island where there is a high degree of
social welfare and where “social salvation by scientific education” obtains.
An Order or Society of “Solomon’s House” is established which sends out
every twelve years merchants of light (intellectual) who travel for the
following period of twelve years, gathering facts in all branches of science
X-28
and art. Upon being relieved by the next group of traveler scholars, they
return home and contribute their knowledge to the acquired store, which in
the meantime has been added unto by many trained experimenters and
research scholars. Airplanes, horseless wagons, and submarines are not
unknown in the New Atlantis. Superstition is banished. Social knowledge
will lead to a nation of socialized persons,—this is the Baconian
implication.
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), a monk, a philosopher, and an
Italian contemporary of Francis Bacon, urged that human nature should be
studied rather than books. Because of so-called heretical ideas, he was
imprisoned for twenty-seven years. Shortly after his release he fled to Paris,
where he died. In prison he wrote The City of the Sun, a crude but
significant psychological analysis of society. It is a social order based on the
balanced relations of the three principles of Power, Intelligence, and Love.
These forces are equally expressed in the social process and produce a
perfect society.
Oceana, “a Midsummer Night’s Dream of politics,” is the title of a
romance which was written by James Harrington (1611–1677). His social
order rests on economic factors, chiefly landed estates. However, the author
advocates the election of rulers by ballot every three years and the choosing
of the rulers from the intellectually élite.

In this chapter it is impossible to note all the “utopias” that have been
written. The utopian and communistic systems of socialists, such as Fourier,
Saint Simon, and Owen will be referred to in Chapter XIV. There are other
important utopian contributions, such as those by William Morris and
Edward Bellamy. In News from Nowhere, William Morris (1834–1896), an
English artist and socialist, describes his native England as a perfected
society under a régime of socialism. Because of its American setting,
Bellamy’s Looking Backward will be presented in some detail in the
following paragraphs.
In recent decades the utopian postulates of Edward Bellamy (1850–
1898), in Looking Backward and Equality have had a wide reading. The
author was the first American to command attention in the field of utopian
thought. Bellamy presents a plan of industrial organization on a national
scale with individuals sharing equally in the products of labor, or in public
income, in the same way that “men share equally in the free gifts of nature.”
Bellamy protests against an economic order whose chief evil is summed up
in the following question: How can men be free who must ask the right to
labor and to live from their fellows, and seek their bread from the hand of
others?
Society is likened to a gigantic coach to which the masses of humanity
are harnessed, toiling along a very hilly and sandy road. The best seats are
on top of the coach. The occupants of the elegant seats are constantly in fear
of falling from their cushions of ease, splendor, and power,—and hence
their interest in the toilers.
In Looking Backward the entire social process is made an expression of
service. Service is a matter of course, not of compulsion. No business is so
fundamentally the public’s business as the industry and trade on which the
X-29
livelihood of the public depends. Therefore, to intrust industry and
commerce to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly
“similar to that of surrendering the functions of political government to
kings and nobles for their personal glorification.”
Buying and selling are pronounced anti-social. They are an education in
X-30
self-seeking at the expense of others. Citizens who are so trained are
X-31
unable to rise above a very low grade of civilization. They are sensible

chiefly to such motives as fear of want and love of luxury. For buying and
selling, credit books are substituted which are good at any public
warehouse. In place of higher wages, the chief motives to activity are honor,
men’s gratitude, the inspiration of duty, patriotism, the satisfaction of doing
one’s work well—in other words, the same motives that now influence, for
example, the members of the teaching profession.
The arduousness of the trades are equalized, so that all shall be equally
attractive, by making the hours of labor in different trades to differ
X-32
inversely according to arduousness. Everyone works as a common
laborer for three years and then chooses an occupation—agriculture,
mechanics, the professions, art. The working life is twenty-four years long,
from the ages of twenty-one to forty-five, after which all may devote
themselves to self-improvement and enjoyment, but subject to emergency
calls along industrial and other social service lines.
Bellamy challenges an individualism which incapacitates people for co-
operation. He builds his society upon solidarity of race and brotherhood of
man. He does not fear corruption in a society “where there is neither
X-33
poverty to be bribed nor wealth to bribe.”
All cases of criminal atavism are treated in hospitals. There are no jails.
Under capitalism nineteen-twentieths of misdemeanors are due to economic
inequality. The remainder are the outcropping of ancestral traits. In
Bellamy’s ideal society there are no private property disputes and no
lawyers.
The educational system in Looking Backward does not educate some
X-34
individuals highly and leave others untrained. It gives everyone “the
completest education that the nation can give,” in order that individuals
may enjoy themselves, in order that they may enjoy one another, and in
order that the unborn may be guaranteed an intelligent and refined
parentage.
Bellamy holds that human nature in its essential quality is good, not
bad, and that men are naturally generous, not selfish; pitiful, not cruel;
godlike in aspirations, moved by divine impulses of goodness, images of
X-35
God and not the travesties upon Him which they have seemed. It is our
economic order which has fostered shameless self-assertion, mutual

depreciation, a stunning clamor of conflicting boasts, and a stupendous
system of brazen beggary.
In three utopias, H. G. Wells portrays societary conditions that are
X-36
kinetic rather than static and world-wide rather than local in scope.
While the author provides a changed economic system, socialistic in nature,
he urges that changed social attitudes are also needed.
In the utopian social thought that has been presented in this chapter and
in similar works which are not mentioned here there is generally displayed
(1) a common weakness of impracticability under current circumstances,
(2) an over-emphasis upon simply changing the economic order, and (3)
static rather than dynamic principles. The strength of utopian social thought
is found (1) in its drastic criticism of current social evils, (2) in its relative
harmlessness at the given time, (3) in the force of its indirect suggestion, (4)
in the widespread hearing which it secures, and (5) in its social idealism.

Chapter XI

Individualistic Social Thought
At the dawn of the Renaissance, tradition and dogmatism were ruling
mankind. Here and there, however, individuals were perceiving the nature
of the bondage. Occasionally a cry for individual freedom was uttered.
Petrarch dared to say that the world was made for man’s enjoyment. The
early Teutons crudely developed the idea of personal liberty. In France a
movement arose which culminated in the doctrines of natural rights and
“Back to Nature.” The stress upon individualism in England became so
deeply ingrained that it exists today as a powerful form of traditionalism.
The United States was founded, in part, upon a doctrine of natural rights.
Absolutely unlike Sir Thomas More in many ways, Niccolo
Machiavelli (1469–1527), an Italian contemporary, broke with tradition and
received the sobriquet, the Galileo of social science. Unfortunately, many
people think of the Italian writer in terms of the adjective which bears his
name, Machiavellism, or political intrigue. While he deserves this
reputation, he also should be considered in another light. He cut loose from
the customary ways of thinking of his time and asserted that it is not
necessary to take all things on fiat or alleged divine decree. Although this
may be dangerous doctrine, it serves a useful and constructive purpose
when people are ruled by political and ecclesiastical autocrats. Machiavelli
was no idealist in the accepted sense of the term, but a man who mixed with
people, traveled extensively, and studied actual conditions. He declared that
people should be considered as they are, and not according to false
teachings about them.
A century before the time of Sir Francis Bacon, the inaugurator of the
so-called inductive or scientific method of study, Machiavelli was
observing human conditions and upon the basis of these observations was
drawing conclusions. He believed that it does not pay to be guided in one’s
conduct by abstract ethics or impracticable ideals—and said so, in an age

when imprisonment, exile, or death awaited anyone who opposed the
autocratic authorities. From abstract ethics, Machiavelli swung to the
extreme of concrete expediency. He lived and thought in the exigencies of
the moment. He is an example of one who reacts so strongly against the
stress and strain of the hour that he cannot get the larger vision that is
necessary for balanced thinking on fundamental issues.
Machiavelli wrote on the subject of leadership and government. He
advocated either an autocratic or democratic form of government—
according to the conditions of the time and place. In the Prince he described
with noteworthy accuracy the traits and methods of a leader whose
constituents must be treated with absolute authority. In the Discourses he
dealt with a democratic-republican type of leadership and control.
The succesful prince, or leader, in the selfish sense, makes himself both
XI-1
beloved and feared by his people. On occasion he uses force and even
fraud. Sometimes he must either exterminate or be exterminated. He must
repeal or suppress old laws and make new ones to fit the social situation. He
seeks to be considered merciful rather than cruel. He exercises universal
pity in order to prevent social disorders from occurring and producing
XI-2
rapine and murder. He does not allow his mercy to be taken advantage
of by ungrateful and hypocritical persons. He is strong-minded; he is either
a sincere friend or a generous foe. He is paternalistic, urging that his
XI-3
subjects be well-fed and have a good livelihood, thus gaining and
maintaining the affection of the people. In international affairs he acts with
a strong hand, fortifying well his city or nation, and providing good laws for
XI-4
internal growth. He errs grossly, however, in his fundamental
philosophy that any plan or action that is for the welfare of the state, or
nation, considered as a supreme unit of authority in itself, is morally sound.
Sir Francis Bacon, whose contribution to utopian social thought has
been indicated in the foregoing chapter, placed all social and sociological
thinkers under deep obligations by his emphasis upon inductive reasoning.
He helped to free the individual from control by dogma and superstition. He
provided the individual with a technique for securing a new sense of
individual freedom. In freeing himself the individual discards his irrational
pre-judgments, whether socially inherited or individually developed. He
protects himself from anthropomorphic judgments, i. e., from judgments

which he makes because he looks upon life and the universe through human
eyes. These pre-judgments are common to all mankind—they are “the idols
of the tribe.” On the other hand, the individual avoids purely personal
preferences, which he is likely to hold because of his own peculiar
experiences, and which thus place him outside the pale of common
experience—these are “the idols of the cave.”
Then there are “the idols of the forum,” which cause the individual to
give undue dependence to words and language. “The idols of the theater”
are traditional systems of thought. Bacon’s dictum has been stated as
follows: Get as little of yourself and of other selves as possible in the way
of the thing which you wish to see.
Having eliminated human predispositions, the individual is ready to
gather facts, arrange them in groups, draw conclusions from them, and act
XI-4
according to the resultant laws. Knowledge gives power. Social
knowledge gives power to improve human conditions and makes possible
wise social control. Thus, Bacon opened the road to individual freedom.
Too much individual freedom, however, destroys government and the
social order. If each individual is a law unto himself, anarchy reigns and
progress is prevented. Consequently, the question arises: How can
individually free persons unite in a society without giving up their freedom?
The answer to this question took the form of a controversy on the subject of
the social contract, i. e., the contract or agreement of individuals, as units, to
form and maintain societies. This controversy arose in the seventeenth
century and was waged vigorously in the eighteenth century.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678), the distinguished social philosopher of
England, introduced his analysis of society with the idea that man was
originally self-centered, egoistic, and pleasure-loving. He was an
independent center. His interest in other people was based on their ability to
cater to his own good. He and they desired the same things in life. His hand
was thus raised, in competition, against every other man. This state of
XI-5
continual conflict became mutually destructive and unbearable. In
consequence, each individual agreed to give over some of his precious,
inalienable rights to a central authority or sovereign, whose decrees should
constitute law and serve as the guide for conduct. The war of each against
all, with the concomitant state of fear, was thus supplanted by a mutual

contract, conferring sovereignty by popular agreement upon the ruler. In
this way Hobbes met the dilemma of supporting an absolute form of
government in which he believed and of denying the divine right of kings
which he abhorred. Hobbes performed a useful service in intellectually
destroying the idea of the divine right of kings, but urged after all an
undemocratic political absolutism. Hobbes conferred humanly derived but
irrevocable authority upon the king. He, however, traced sovereignty back
to the people rather than to a divine right.
In getting away from the conditions “of Warre of every one against
every one” in the natural state where “every man has a Right to
everything,” Hobbes swung to an undemocratic extreme. His Puritanic
training gave an undue severity to his social thought. The Puritans,
however, believed in the complete eradication of the savage human
tendencies and also in the ultimate elimination of kings. Hobbes did not
analyze deeply the instinctive bases of human nature. He built his Leviathan
out of natural human qualities and tied its units together by means of a
strong, central will—this was his perfect society.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), the Portuguese Jewish philosopher of
Holland, improved the social contract idea. He believed that man was
originally of an anti-social and a tooth-and-fang nature, possessing only
incipient social impulses. Hence, man is not naturally bad, but naturally
anti-social. Social organization was effected for purposes of individual gain
and glory; it was promulgated and furthered by individuals in order that
they might escape the miseries of unregulated conflict. Agreements were
made whereby sovereignty was embodied in a ruler, but if the ruler abused
the sovereignty entrusted to him, it reverted immediately to the people. This
democratic conception was vastly superior to the idea of Hobbes, that
sovereignty is delegated by the people to the king as an irresponsible
monarch.
John Locke (1632–1704) strengthened the social contract theory,
elaborating the idea that sovereignty reverts to the people whenever the
king becomes a tyrant. He held that the natural state of individuals is a
condition of perfect freedom to order their actions, not asking leave of any
XI-6
man. This state of liberty is not a state of license to individuals to
XI-7
destroy themselves or their neighbors. The state of liberty has the law of

nature to govern it. Since all are equal, no one ought to harm another in his
liberty or possessions.
Locke affirmed that men are in a state of nature until by their own
XI-8
consent they join in a political society. In order to meet their needs
effectively, they join in societies. One of these important needs is the
preservation of property. Locke defended private property on the ground
that it is a normal expression of individuality and necessary to individuality.
Right and wrong are not determined by the ruler or the state; they
existed before society developed. Here the Puritanism of Locke enters. He
stressed moral values. He made the natural rights of individuals supreme;
individuals may even overturn the government and still keep within their
rights.
Locke’s justification of revolution is his most startling doctrine.
Imagine the heart-throb of the common people who heard Locke’s
contention that the end of government is the good of mankind, that people
should not submit to tyranny, that whoever uses his force without right and
law puts himself in a state of war with those against whom he uses it, and
that in such a state the people have a right to resist and defend
XI-9
themselves. Further, the people have a right to act as the supreme social
force and to put legislation into new forms and into the hands of new
executives. By these bold declarations Locke created a new public opinion,
and aroused new moral power in the minds and hearts of the common
people.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the concept of individual
freedom became crystallized in the doctrines of the natural rights of the
individual, the contractual societary relationships between independent
individuals, and the laissez faire principle in governmental science. The
physiocrats, who took up the ideas of natural liberty and economic freedom,
exercised a tremendous influence in France during the three decades
following 1750. Their leaders were Quesnay, de Gournay, Condorcet, and
Turgot. They believed that there was a natural law ruling human lives, just
as there is a natural law ruling the physical world. They chafed under social
restraints. Under the natural law, every individual has natural rights, chief
of which is the right to the free exercise of all his faculties so long as he
does not infringe on the similar right of other individuals. Unlike John

Locke and other English thinkers who accepted the idea of individual
liberty, the physiocrats argued that this natural liberty could not be abridged
by a social contract.
According to the physiocrats the chief function of governmental control
is to preserve the natural liberty of individuals. Industry and commerce
must not be governmentally regulated, for by such regulation the rights of
some men, chiefly employers, will be infringed upon. Employees, on the
other hand, who are being treated unjustly will freely quit a harsh employer
and obtain employment with considerate masters. Thus, an unjust employer
will be unable to secure workers and be forced to discontinue his unjust
practices—without government regulation. Likewise, a dishonest merchant
will lose his customers and be forced to become honest or to close his shop
—and again without government regulation. The physiocrats became
known by their famous phrase, laissez faire, laissez passer.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), an able but baffling character, is
the best known champion of the social contract idea. Although he advocated
the family as a social institution and praised fatherhood, he reports that he
carried his own children to a foundling asylum. He deprecated the
disintegrating elements in civilization and urged a return to nature’s simple
ways. In his chief works, the Contrat social and Emile, he attacked
civilization vigorously. He asserted that civilization had almost destroyed
the natural rights of man. His dictum was: Trust nature.
According to Rousseau the early life of mankind was nearly ideal in its
simplicity and pleasantness. War and conflict were relatively unknown. In
his later writings, Rousseau modified his belief and asserted that primitive
confusion made necessary some kind of social organization. On the other
hand, it became the belief of Rousseau that civilization generates social
evils and results sooner or later in social deterioration. Corruption in society
has become notorious. Social inequality is rampant and unbearable. “Man is
born free, and is everywhere in chains.” People have become so engrossed
in the artificialities of social life and so bewildered by its complexities that
happiness has been lost.
Leave the individual free to carry out his own plans, untrammelled by
complex social rules, restrictions, and duties. There is no social sanction at
all; there is no authority except nature, which is necessity. In Emile,

Rousseau takes his two leading characters to an island, where they live
alone—happily! Liberty not authority reigns. But Emile, who has declared
for liberty as opposed to authority, insists in his discussions of domestic
relationships that “woman is made to please man.” The “unselfish, unsocial
life” of Emile and Sophie turns out to be more than purely individualistic—
it is anarchic and sensual. Emile fails to demonstrate the merit of
Rousseau’s own theories, such as “Man is good naturally but by institutions
he is made bad,” and “Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the
Author of Nature; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”
XI-11
Slavery is wrong, according to Rousseau. It is a contract or
agreement, at the expense of the slave and for the profit of the slaveholder,
in which the slaveholder asserts: I’ll observe the agreement and you will
observe it—as long as it pleases me.
Strength does not make right. Strength and moral force are not
necessarily the same. Strength may often be ironically accepted in
appearance and established in principle. By a social contract man loses his
XI-12
natural liberty and gains civil and moral liberty. In this connection
Rousseau was simply the spokesman of a point of view which found
frequent expression in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For
example, in 1635, John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts
colony, made a clear-cut distinction between natural liberties, and civil and
moral liberties. Natural liberty is liberty to do what one lists, to do evil as
well as good. Civil, or moral, liberty is liberty under the covenant between
God and man, under the political covenants between men and men, and
under the moral law. It is a liberty to do only that which is good, just, and
XI-13
honest.
It was Rousseau who contended that life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness are man’s inalienable rights. It was this doctrine which
profoundly influenced Thomas Jefferson, as evidenced in the Declaration of
Independence. Sovereignty rests not in a ruler or monarch but in the
community of people—this was perhaps Rousseau’s main contribution to
social thought.
Before Rousseau, however, wrote the Contrat social, the social contract
theory had been overthrown. The writings of Montesquieu (1689–1755)

offer an elaborate analysis of social and political processes. These analyses
are similar, in some ways, to Aristotle’s analyses of 158 constitutions.
Montesquieu discussed the doctrine of natural rights, but did not believe
that the natural state of mankind was one of conflict, in which social
organization was forced as a means of meeting the needs of individual
protection. He asserted that there was a natural, innate tendency in man
toward association. In the support of this belief, Montesquieu drew facts
from the lives of the individual members of the primitive tribes which were
extant in his day. The influence of Montesquieu was clearly inimical to the
social contract doctrine.
In the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu dissected the laws of many nations
and tried to show the relations between these laws and social and political
conditions. The general implication is that laws are a natural outgrowth of
life conditions rather than of formal contractual agreements. Hence, society
is a natural evolution rather than a contract.
Perhaps the chief antagonist in the eighteenth century of the social
contract theory was David Hume (1711–1776), the father of social
psychology. According to Hume, the origin of society was not in a contract
arrived at by intellectual processes; it was instinctive. Man is a social
animal. At the basis of this sociability lies the sex instinct, which resulted in
the establishment of the family. The sex instinct is strongly supported by the
sentiment of sympathy, which also is innate, and which may develop into
intelligent co-operation. Man is not entirely self-centered; he takes pleasure
in other people’s pleasures and suffers when others are in pain, or the
victims of disease, or are dying.
Sympathy, like the sex instinct, is a genuinely fundamental element in
human nature and in society. However, the combination of sympathy and
the sex instinct is not strong enough to support the family in either its
simple or complex stages from the attacks upon it that are made by inherent
human selfishness. Hence, social and political organizations are necessary
to hold the selfish impulses and interests of mankind in check. Intellectual
control of society thus becomes necessary and consciously recognized.
Environment alone does not cause people in a given community to act alike.
It is imitation, primarily, which operates to bring about group
XI-14
conformity.

Man in a large measure is governed by interest. It is impossible for men
to consult their interests “in so effective a manner as by a universal and
inflexible observance of the rules of justice, by which alone they can
preserve society, and keep themselves from falling into that wretched and
savage condition, which is commonly represented as the state of
XI-15
nature.”
According to the contract theory, people expect protection and security.
If they meet with tyranny and oppression, they are freed from their
promises and return to that state of liberty which proceeded the institution
of government. But Hume maintained that if people entered into no contract
and made no promises, government would still be necessary in all civilized
societies. The obligation of submission to government is not derived from
XI-16
any promise of the subjects.
Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) wrote an Essay on the History of Civil
Society and The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman
Republic. He argued that social institutions and social convenience lead to
inherent sociability, and pointed out that competition and conflict are vital
to social development. Thomas Paine (1737–1809) asserted that man is
inherently social and that social organization is a natural development.
The natural rights theory and the resultant individualism not only
repudiated their false derivative, the social contract concept, but also
wrestled with considerable success with the socio-economic concept of
mercantilism. Mercantilism was a system of regulating industrial enterprise
by governments in order to build up strong nation-states. Mercantilism
reached its strictest form in France in the writings of Colbert (1619–1683).
It prevailed in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
the first four decades of the eighteenth century. It was a system which grew
out of feudalism and the city-state type of society. It operated to bring
together towns and cities into national unities. Under feudalism, the town
had regulated industry for its own advancement and against the welfare,
perchance, of neighboring towns. Mercantilism served to unite towns and to
create in townspeople a national loyalty.
Under mercantilism, the nation entered upon the task of regulating
industry and finance so as to build a strong state. A favorable balance of
trade was sought in order to add to the bullion within the state. High tariffs

were enacted, which sometimes defeated the intended purposes. A dense
population was favored as a means of securing cheap labor, and hence of
furthering manufacture, which in turn would develop foreign trade and
bring in the coveted bullion—the heralded strength of a nation.
In the eighteenth century, mercantilism in France and England met
defeat in the contest with the laissez faire theory, with which the names of
the physiocrats and of Adam Smith are inseparably connected. It often
fathered too stringent regulations. Instead of supporting national ends,
mercantilistic measures frequently furthered private interests. Mercantilism,
however, played a strong part in building up the concepts of national unity
and loyalty.
In the German states and Austria, cameralism represented the ideas for
which mercantilism stood in England, France, and elsewhere in Western
and Southern Europe. Among the leading cameralists were Seckendorf,
Horing, Justi, and Sonnenfels. Cameralism obtained a far deeper hold upon
the German states than mercantilism did, for example, in England. The
laissez faire philosophy was never able to make a deep inroad upon
cameralism. In fact, the laissez faire philosophy did not receive serious
consideration in the German states before 1800, and did not strike deep.
National self-sufficiency, paternalistic control, minute regulation of internal
affairs, rearing of large families, and subordination of the welfare of the
state—these are the concepts which ruled in Germany.
Adam Smith (1723–1790), primarily an economist and often referred to
as the father of political economy, exerted a profound influence upon social
thought. He coupled a modified natural rights theory with a doctrine of
sympathy; he spoke for the natural rights of the individual, of the poorer
classes in society, and of the smaller nations. He vigorously attacked
mercantilism with its system of minute regulation of individuals. He
objected to promoting unduly the interests of one class of men in a country,
for by so doing, the interests of all other classes in that country and of all
XI-17
persons in all other countries are harmed. He pointed out the fallacy of
building a nation of shopkeepers, for in so doing the government of such a
nation will be unduly influenced and controlled by the interests of
shopkeepers. The interests of other classes will be more or less ignored.
Adam Smith protested against Great Britain’s methods of regulating the

American colonies. To prohibit the American colonies from making all they
could of every part of their own produce or from employing their stock and
industry in the way that they judged most advantageous to themselves, was
XI-18
“a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”
Mercantilism made use of monopoly of one kind or another, and hence
is objectionable, according to Smith. Mercantilism is regulation, and
regulation is often carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful, thus
XI-19
neglecting and oppressing the poor. Smith failed to note, however, that
the laissez faire policy likewise favored the rich and powerful and neglected
the poor. Mercantilism, according to Smith, considers production and not
consumption as the end of industry and commerce, and thus favors one
class at the expense of other classes.
“Wherever there is great property,” said Smith, “there is great
inequality.” For every very rich man there must be at least 500 poor men,
XI-20
and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. But
no society can be flourishing and happy wherein the greater part of the
XI-21
members are poor and miserable. The laboring men should have “such
a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well
fed, clothed, and lodged.” Poverty does not prevent the procreation of
children, but is on the other hand extremely unfavorable to the rearing of
XI-22
children.
XI-23
Smith pointed out four causes of social inequality: (1) Superiority
in personal qualifications, such as strength, beauty, agility of body; or
wisdom, virtue, prudence, justice, fortitude, moderation of mind. (2)
Superiority of age and experience. (3) Superiority of fortune. Riches give
social authority; riches possess power to buy. (4) Superiority of birth, based
on family prestige.
Smith extolled the merits of division of labor in industry with the
resultant increase in the quantity of work. There are three sets of causal
XI-24
circumstances: (1) the increase of dexterity; (2) the saving of time in
passing from one kind of work to another; and (3) the invention of a large
number of machines. Smith, however, deplored the deadening effect upon
the individual of repeating over and over a simple process, hundreds or

thousands of times daily. In summary, Adam Smith (1) applied the concept
of natural rights to industrial conditions; (2) developed Hume’s concept of
sympathy into a theory of mutual aid between individuals, classes, and
nations; and (3) supported the necessity of division of labor.
The natural rights and social contract theories affected in one way or
another the thinking not only of the men who have already been considered
in this chapter, but also of many other individuals. Blackstone (1723–1780)
held that man’s weakness in isolation led to association. The primary group
was the patriarchal family. Blackstone was not an advocate of social
regulation. His exposition of English law in the Commentaries stood for
law itself, and became the bulwark at once of the doctrines of individual
rights and property rights in both England and the American colonies. In the
United States, its influence remained dominant for more than a century after
the founding of the republic.
Although Edmund Burke (1729–1797) believed in a corporate unity of
society, he became in his century the chief spokesman of humanity for
humanity’s sake. He pleaded for justice for and conciliation with the
American colonies; he spoke for the benighted Hindus who were being
plundered by English stockholders; and he championed the rights of slaves.
He failed, on the other hand, to appreciate the struggles of the French
people which culminated in the French Revolution.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1817) declared man in a natural state is both
social and unsocial and referred to the “unsocial sociableness” of man.
“Man cannot get on with fellows and he cannot do without them.” Man has
an inclination to associate with others and also a great propensity to isolate
himself from others. He wishes to direct things according to his own ideas
and thus courts resistance and conflict. It is this conflict, however, which
leads to individual advancement.
XI-25
Kant laid great stress upon a good will. The individual may have
intelligence and sagacity, power and wealth, but he may still be a pernicious
and hurtful member of society. He is not even worthy to be happy unless he
possesses a good will. A man’s will is good not because of the end he seeks
nor because of the results of his activities but because he inherently wills
the good. It is this “good will” of Kant which is in conflict with the
utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and also with modern behavioristic

psychology and objective sociology. To Kant, morality is subjective. Social
laws may regulate and control man’s conduct but they cannot control his
motives.
Johann Fichte (1762–1814) joined with Kant in the interpretation of a
good will. He held that property is essential to the development of freedom.
However, he pushed the social contract idea to an extreme and developed a
doctrine of an idealistic state socialism, including the superiority of
Germany among the nations of the world.
Hegel (1770–1831) supported cameralism by developing the State idea,
with the implication that Germany would become the supreme State in the
world. Hegel even asserted that man has his existence and his ethical status
XI-26
“only in being a member of the State.” Morality is not a matter of
striving independently to realize one’s inner self, but of living in accord
with the traditions of one’s State.
Perhaps the individual rights theory never manifested a greater
aberration than in the mind of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Power is
supreme. The individual or the nation with the greatest power has the
greatest right to live. Against this idea or the expressions of this idea, the
weaker individuals tend to combine and to extol their weaknesses as
virtues, even building a religion out of these glorified weaknesses, for
example, Christianity. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the superman and the
superstate will be discussed in Chapter XXI.
Closely related to the discussions concerning natural rights and the
social contract is the doctrine of utilitarianism, a modified form of
individualism with certain objective standards. Jeremy Bentham (1748–
1832) made utilitarianism well-known, and particularly the standard: The
greatest good of the greatest number. In accordance with a formal idea of
social change, Bentham urged that social improvements be made by
legislation. He demanded objective standards as opposed to Kant’s
emphasis on the inner motive. Where Kant accented the “how” of conduct,
Bentham insisted on the “what” of conduct. He pointed out the need for
improved forms of government, apparently ignoring or at least greatly
underestimating the fact that real progress comes chiefly through modifying
organic processes. However, Bentham may be rated a virile social reformer,

for he strongly advocated such measures as the secret ballot, woman
suffrage, trained statesmancraft. He made social welfare a main goal.
The doctrine of utilitarianism was carried forward by James Mill
(1773–1836) and was brought to its highest fruition by the son, John Stuart
Mill (1806–1873). The elder Mill contended that utility is morality. Like
Bentham the elder Mill urged many social reforms.
John Stuart Mill adopted a modified form of the natural rights theory.
He asserted that the individual should have all the rights that he can
exercise without infringing upon the equal rights of other individuals. Mill
recognized a gradation in the pleasures which satisfy individuals. He
declared that it is better to be a man dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; he
objected to the prevailing classification of people on the basis of poverty
and wealth, and urged the substitution of standards of personal worth,
honor, and true leadership as bases for social classification.
Sir Henry Maine (1832–1888) invented the phrase: From status to
contract. He applied this phrase to a program of social welfare. There are
many illustrations, he pointed out, in business and industrial life, and even
in political and fraternal activities where people make social contracts. The
marriage contract also has many of the characteristics of a genuine social
contract. Maine pushed the social contract idea to its furthest practical
point; but deprecated the possibility that the masses might come into power.
His individualism deprived him of a faith in the possible social
development of the uneducated.
Herbert Spencer, whose ideas will be discussed more extensively in a
subsequent chapter, became one of the chief exponents of the doctrine of
laissez faire in governmental matters. He brought a vast reading knowledge
and able arguments to the support of individualistic doctrines. He added
very little that was new to individualistic and laissez faire theories although
he was at one time perhaps their leading exponent. One of his chief
contributions to social thought was indirect and unintentional, namely, the
way in which his writings challenged the attention of an American
paleontologist, Lester F. Ward, and led him to point out the psychical nature
and hence telic possibilities of civilization. In consequence of this challenge
Spencer fell, and Ward rose to the rank of dean of American sociologists.
An entire chapter will be devoted to the sociology of Lester F. Ward.

William G. Sumner (1840–1910) was the last noted champion of a
governmental laissez faire doctrine. He held that the State owes nothing to
anybody except peace, order, and the guarantee of rights. It is not true that
the poor ought to care for each other, and that the churches ought to collect
capital and spend it for the poor; it is not true that if you get wealth you
should support others; and that if you do not get wealth others ought to
support you. In a society based on contract there is no place for sentiment in
XI-28
public or common affairs. Every individual will develop the self-
reliance of a free person, if he is not taught that others will care for him in
case he fails to care for himself. Sumner spoke vigorously as well as
harshly in support of liberty, contract, and private property. Although he
took an extreme and untenable position his ideas will bear careful, unbiased
study, for they contain a large amount of common sense. His ethnological
work will be indicated at some length in another chapter.
A noteworthy statement which has come from a current American
school of legal thinkers concerning individualistic social thought, is found
in the writings of Professor Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law School. In “A
XI-29
Theory of Social Interests” he has summed up the new point of view. In
the last century all interests were thought of in terms of individual interests,
all were reduced to their purely individual elements and considered as
rights.
In this century, Dean Pound indicates that law, for example, aims
primarily to conserve some general social interest. It conserves the social
interest in the general security, that is, in public health and in peace. It
conserves the social interest in institutions,—domestic, religious, political.
It conserves the social interest in natural resources, preventing the waste of
oil and gas and protecting water rights. It conserves the social interest in
general progress, in economic, political, cultural progress, although its main
contribution in other fields, such as promoting the esthetic interests, are yet
to be made. It conserves the social interests in individual life and in seeing
that people live humanly and that the will of the individual is not trodden
upon. Legal processes have thus become types of social engineering.
The doctrine of natural rights reached its largest degree of acceptance
in England, France, and the United States. It was not only reflected in the
thought of Thomas Jefferson but in the fundamental principles upon which

the United States was established. It suffered an aberration in the form of
the social contract theory which in its extreme forms was later repudiated.
Its greatest weakness was the exaggerated form which it assumed,
especially in England and the United States. In the latter country it became
greatly magnified through contact with the spirit of discovery, invention,
and pioneering which prevailed for over a century. Consequently, it
dominated the thought life of the United States throughout the nineteenth
century. It permitted captains of industry to exploit the helpless masses, and
encouraged politicians to pursue selfish practices until governments became
honeycombed with graft. It nearly capsized the good Ship of State—
Democracy.
Theories of natural rights have been supplanted by considerations of
natural needs, both individual and social. Human needs are now considered
the only imperatives, but even they are relative and changing.

Chapter XII

Malthus and Population Concepts
A unique and distinctive trend in social thought with important
sociological implications developed in the closing years of the eighteenth
century, namely, Malthusian thought regarding population. Malthusianism,
however, was preceded by the ideas of William Godwin and Adam Smith.
In 1775, Adam Smith had stated that “every species of animals naturally
multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species
XII-1
can ever multiply beyond it.” Scanty subsistence, however, destroys a
large percentage of offspring. Inasmuch as men, like all other animals,
multiply naturally in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is
always, more or less, in demand; and food, or the cost of living, regulates
XII-2
population. City people must depend upon the country for their
subsistence, whereas seaport towns can command food resources from all
parts of the earth.
The population ideas of William Godwin (1756–1836) were the
immediate stimuli which set Malthus at work. In 1793, Godwin’s Enquiry
Concerning Justice was published. Godwin elaborated several radical social
ideas of the French Physiocratic philosophers. He declared that human
misery is caused by coercive institutions. Government, he asserted, is an
evil and should be abolished. He urged also the abolition of strict marriage
relations, although he personally acquiesced in the custom and in his last
days he commended marriage. He thought that no social group should be
larger than a parish, and that there should be an equal distribution of
property. Godwin thus carried the doctrine of natural rights to the verge of
anarchy and licentiousness. His ideas furnished a basis for the nineteenth
century experiments in communism. But what is more important, Godwin’s
ideas regarding the reconstruction of society stimulated Thomas Malthus,
who developed what is commonly known as the Malthusian doctrine of
population.

In 1798, under an assumed name, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834)
offered to the world the first carefully collected and elaborated body of
data, dealing with what he called the social problem, namely: What is the
underlying cause of human unhappiness? This study may be counted, in a
sense, the beginning of modern sociological study. Early in life Malthus
showed an interest in social questions. Godwin’s ideas had centered
Malthus’ attention on population. Malthus’ well-known treatise entitled, An
Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement
of Society, undertook two important tasks: (1) To investigate the causes that
have impeded the progress of mankind toward happiness, and (2) to
XII-3
examine probabilities of a total or partial removal of these causes.
Among both plants and animals there is a constant tendency to
reproduce numerically beyond the subsistence level. Wherever there is
liberty, this power of increase blindly asserts itself. Afterwards, a lack of
XII-4
nourishment and of room represses the superabundant numbers. It
appears, therefore, that the ultimate check to population is lack of food, due
to the fact that population increases faster than food supply. Nature, in other
words, sets a harsher law over the increase of subsistence than she does
over the birth rate. Man fails to take cognizance of this law and brings
untold misery upon himself. The lower economic classes are the chief
victims, and the giants of poverty and pauperism rule over whole sections
of human population. Malthus considers the question of population the
fundamental social problem.
Since population outruns food supply, dire human consequences
naturally follow. Food supply, as a check upon population, operates harshly;
it is but representative of an entire series of rigorous natural, or positive,
checks upon population. In this list there are unwholesome occupations;
forms of severe labor; extreme poverty; damp and wretched housing
conditions; diseases, epidemics, plagues, poor nursing; intestine
commotion, martial law, civil war; wars of all forms; excesses of all
XII-5
kinds. These positive checks upon population are the results of two
main causes, namely, vice and misery. As a result of the operation of these
factors, population is being continually cut down and kept near the mere
subsistence plane.

Malthus pointed out another check upon population, the preventive.
The fear of falling into poverty causes many young people to postpone
marriage until they can safely marry—economically. This check so far as
voluntary is peculiar to man and, to the extent that it is not followed by
irregular sex gratification, is prudential. The actual pressure of population
upon food supply, or the fear of this impingement, prevents people from
marrying earlier than they do and from reproducing their kind faster than
they would do otherwise. This pressure, or the fear of it, cuts down the
marriage rate in times of economic depression. But let prosperity come and
the marriage rate leaps upward, especially among the poorer classes.
The positive and preventive checks upon population hold a definite
relation to each other. “In every country where the whole of the procreative
power cannot be called into action, the preventive and the positive checks
XII-6
must vary inversely as each other.” That is to say, when positive checks,
such as famine and war, slay large numbers of people, moral restraint is
diminished and the population numbers rapidly increase. When the
preventive check expresses itself strongly, the population is kept down
numerically, and positive checks, such as famine or even war, are defeated.
Malthus attempted to establish three propositions:
(1) The limitation of population by the restriction of the means of
subsistence.
(2) The invariable increase of population whenever the means of
subsistence increase, unless prevented by powerful checks.
(3) The factors which keep population on a level with the means of
subsistence are all resolvable into three: moral restraint, vice, and
XII-7
misery.
No one can gainsay the importance or the seriousness of the problem of
population. Plato wrestled with it, and urged that procreation when it goes
on too fast or too slow should be regulated by the state—through a proper
distribution of marks of ignominy or of honor. The number of marriages
should be determined by the magistrates.
Aristotle suggested that the ages of marriage for both sexes should be
regulated; he even advocated the regulation of the number of children for

each marriage. Additional children should be aborted.
Malthus, however, was wiser than either Plato or Aristotle, for he
observed that the cause which has the most lasting effect in improving the
condition of the poorer classes is the conduct and prudence of the
XII-8
individuals themselves. Malthus asserted that it is in the power of each
individual to avoid all the evil consequences to himself and society which
result from the principle of population, “by the practice of a virtue clearly
dictated to him by the light of nature and expressly enjoined in revealed
XII-9
religion.”
Malthus demonstrated clearly the weakness of liberal poor-laws. Give
more food to the poor, and they will produce more children, and suffer more
misery. Poor-laws increase the numbers of children of the poor, and hence
increase the amount of misery. Both private benevolence and poor-laws
XII-10
increase the number of marriages and of children.
XII-11
Education is the solution which Malthus demanded. Educate the
poor to postpone marriage, to keep the birth rate down, and to practice
economic thrift. To a great extent education will secure the operation of the
prudential check upon population. The science of moral and political
philosophy should not be confined within such narrow limits that it is
unable to overcome in practical ways the obstacles to human happiness
XII-12
which arise from the law of population.
There are factors in the population situation which did not exist at the
time of Malthus, or which he did not see. Today there are additional
preventive checks upon population, for example, the rise of democracy in
the family whereby the wife and mother no longer is dominated by the
husband and father, but has a voice of her own regarding domestic matters,
such as the number of children. Closely related to this tendency is the
feminist movement, or woman’s rights movement, whereby women are
demanding that they not be confined to the sphere of bearing and rearing
children. Increasing intelligence and foresight has served as a powerful
preventive check upon population. The current emphasis upon luxury is
inimical to the birth rate. A higher economic status almost uniformly cuts
down the birth rate. Within the last score of years the new science of
eugenics has attracted widespread attention. Eugenics stresses quality of

population. It would effect a decrease in the numbers of children born
among the lower classes, among the poorer stocks, and prevent procreation
among the mentally deficient. It would increase the birth rate among the
cultured and the high grade stocks.
Malthus appreciated the dependence of urban population upon rural
districts, but he could not foresee the degree to which cities would grow in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The relative decrease of agricultural
labor and the proportional increase in non-agricultural labor has thrown a
burden upon the food supply which even Malthus could not forecast.
On the other hand, Malthus did not realize the extent to which new
countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina would
contribute to the world’s means of subsistence. He could not predict the
way in which invention would be applied in solving agricultural problems,
and how today one man with improved machinery and intensive methods
can produce a hundred ears of corn where one was produced a century ago.
Nevertheless, the “new country” argument against Malthus’ principle of
population is ultimately fallacious, for new countries soon become old, the
supply of new countries becomes exhausted, and there is even a limit to soil
productiveness. The very pressure of population against means of
subsistence is, however, a cause of inventiveness, so that unanticipated
increases in food supply may occur at any time.
Socialism has criticized Malthus severely. Socialism holds that at a
given time the food supply is sufficient to meet human needs but that it is
poorly or unjustly distributed. With just distribution of the returns from
industry, food supply would not impinge strongly on population. But
socialism might greatly endanger the prudential check on population, and
hence result in an increased birth rate; which in turn would more than
balance any release from human misery that a just distribution of the returns
from industry would effect.
Another point which Malthus did not observe is that the increase in
technical skill which comes with vocational education is overcome by the
tendency of the world’s population to overtake the world’s food
productiveness. With increase in population, the price of land rises, the rent
for land increases, the cost of living mounts upward, and the purchasing
power of the dollar, or its equivalent, declines.

Some of the followers of Malthus have advocated birth control as an
artificial means of regulating population. Birth control prevents by physical
means the birth of children. It is a useful weapon against sexually brutal
husbands. It does not provide for self control or moral control of the sexual
impulses. It encourages rather than controls gratification of the sexual
desires. By it a gain is made in protecting helpless women and in cutting
down the birth rate among the lower moral classes, whether wealthy or
poor, but the gain is more than lost by the opportunity which birth control
gives to the irregular gratification of sexual impulses and by the resultant
weakening of moral fibre.
Thomas N. Carver, whose work will be referred to again in subsequent
chapters, has developed an interesting population theory which is partly
XII-13
Malthusian. The increase in population from both immigration sources
and the birth rate should be cut down, thereby decreasing the percentage of
unskilled labor. Further, persons should be trained out of the unskilled
group into the skilled group and then into the entrepreneur class. Thus, by
greatly decreasing the number of unskilled laborers and by increasing the
number of entrepreneurs, wages will advance and profits will be
increasingly subdivided. The poor will become well-to-do, and poverty as it
is now known will tend to disappear. This theory underestimates the
importance of psychological motives and of social attitudes under a system
where a marked degree of competition is encouraged.
In conclusion, it may be stated that the principle of population as given
by Malthus is fundamental to an understanding of the problems of social
XII-14
progress. There is a positive relation between population and means of
subsistence. Positive and preventive checks upon population are continually
at work. Moral restraint and self control, based on scientifically devised
human laws, create a better moral fibre than birth control. The quality of
personality is far more important than mere numbers of population. The
struggle for quality in personality must be supplemented by justice in
industrial and social processes before the population problem can be solved.

Chapter XIII

Comte and Positive Social Thought
An organized foundation for the field of social thought was not laid
until near the close of the first half of the nineteenth century. At that time
Auguste Comte (1798–1857) gave at least an organized groundwork, if not
a synthetic introduction to sociology. He was the first to stake out the
territory of social thought, to show the relation of social thought to other
fields of knowledge, and to separate social statics from social dynamics. He
was the first important social philosopher, and his Positive Philosophy the
first treatise roughly to outline the field of sociology.
Auguste Comte invented the term, sociology, by which he meant the
science of human association. While he did not contribute much to the
science itself, he laid important foundation stones. He reacted against all
forms of loose thinking about man, rejected metaphysical and theological
speculations, and insisted upon the observation and classification of social
phenomena. He repudiated attempts to discover causes of social
uniformities, and coined the name, positivism, for the philosophical system
upon which he founded sociology. The bases of positivism may be found in
the ideas of Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes. As each of these three men
broke with tradition and sought observed facts in their respective fields, so
Comte was likewise prompted to do in the field of social thought.
Auguste Comte was born at Montpelier, France, the son of humble and
law-abiding Catholic parents. At the age of nine he displayed unusual
mental ability, a strong character, and a tendency to defy authority. He is
described as brilliant and recalcitrant. He possessed a wonderful memory
and a remarkable avidity for reading. In school he won many prizes, and
took a position of leadership among his fellow students, who called him
“the philosopher.” At the age of sixteen he was devoting his energies and
abilities to the study of mathematics.

As a youth Comte demanded the resignation of one of his instructors,
criticized Napoleon, and disregarded both ecclesiastical and parental
authority. He especially enjoyed to point out the stupidity of his superiors
and to oppose tyranny.
At the age of nineteen Comte made the acquaintance of Saint Simon,
the well-known socialist. The friendship lasted for only a few years, but
long enough to exert a deep influence upon the youthful mathematician.
Saint Simon (1760–1825) had indicated the need for a scientific
classification of the sciences with political science at the head of the list,
and had developed a new fraternalism under the name of Le nouveau
Christianisme. This system was optimistic and humanitarian, but dreamy.
Comte was dissatisfied with it, and undertook to work out a better scheme
of social analysis and organization.
In 1822, Comte’s first important work was published. It contained an
introduction by Saint Simon, and was entitled A Prospectus of the Scientific
Works Required for the Reorganization of Society. It represented an
important beginning of the task on which Comte was to spend his life.
Upon the problem Comte read and worked assiduously, save as he was
interrupted by an unhappy married life and by mental aberrations, due to
overwork. He gave courses of public lectures, but insisted upon working
gratuituously. He would not accept royalties from the sale of his books,
despite the fact that he lived continually on the verge of starvation. His
friends, however, made him gifts and established a subsidy. He insisted
upon the rule that all his literary productions should be given to the public
XIII-1
gratuitously.
His method of composition has been commented upon by his
biographers. As a result of his unusual memory and the high degree of
mental concentration to which he attained, he was able to plan chapters and
volumes in their smallest details, and then from memory to put them into
written form. This method enabled him to secure “an extraordinary unity of
conception and organic symmetry of plan.”
Comte manifested an unusual regard for the truth. This attitude required
him to modify and qualify statements of fundamental principles at great
length. As a result his works are often tedious reading. He preferred,

however, to write meticulously and thus to safeguard truth, rather than
speak in epigrams and sacrifice truth.
Comte’s two leading works are: the Positive Philosophy and the
Positive Polity. The first appeared in six volumes during the years from
1830 to 1842. The second work, in four volumes, was published in the years
from 1851 to 1854. It is not the equal of the Positive Philosophy, which was
translated into English in 1853 by Harriet Martineau.
John Stuart Mill has referred to Comte as among the first of European
thinkers; and, by his institution of a new social science, in some respects the
XIII-2
first. George Henry Lewes called Comte the greatest of modern
thinkers. John Morley, the English statesman and author, says of Comte:
“Neither Franklin, nor any man that has ever lived, could surpass him in the
heroic tenacity with which, in the face of a thousand obstacles, he pursued
his own ideal of a vocation.” Harriet Martineau summarizes his methods as
follows: “There can be no question but that his whole career was one of the
most intense concentration of mind, gigantic industry, rigid economy, and
XIII-3
singular punctuality and exactness in all his habits.”
In laying the foundations for a new social science, Comte began with
an analysis of types of thinking. (1) Primitive and untrained persons
everywhere think in supernatural terms. They suppose that all physical
phenomena are caused by the immediate action of capricious supernatural
beings. The primitive man believes in all kinds of fetishes in which spirits
or supernatural beings live. Fetishism admitted of no priesthood, because its
XIII-4
gods are individual, each residing in fixed objects.
As the mind of primitive man became better organized, fetishism
became cumbersome. Too many fetishes produced mental confusion. A
coalescence of gods resulted and polytheism arose. The polytheistic gods
represented different phases of life. This state in human thought is well
illustrated by the Homeric gods.
But a large number of capricious divinities are mentally unsatisfactory.
They create mental contradictions. Consequently, the gods are arranged in a
hierarchy. Finally, the idea of one God, or of monotheism, developed. The
belief arose that every phenomenon is produced by the immediate action of
the one God. As man’s vision widened and his observations increased in

scope and depth, the concept of a monotheistic universe became clarified.
Monotheism is the climax of the theological stage of thinking.
But rationalism argues that God does not stand directly behind every
phenomenon. Pure reason insists that God is a First Cause or an Abstract
Being. Pure reason speaks in terms of inalienable rights: metaphysical
explanations, however, are unsatisfactory to the mind.
Hence, Comte developed his concept of positivism, which is a purely
intellectual way of looking at the world. Comte held that the mind should
concentrate on the observation and classification of phenomena. He
believed that both theological and metaphysical speculations, as he used the
terms, were as likely to be fiction as truth, and that there is no way of
determining which is the case. Thus it will be more profitable if the
individual should direct his thoughts to the lines of thinking which are most
truly prolific, namely, to observation and classification of data.
Comte even took the position that it is futile to try to determine causes.
We can observe uniformities, or laws, but it is mere speculation to assign
causes to these uniformities. Positivism deified observation and
classification of data. Its weaknesses should not hinder the student,
however, from seeing the importance of its emphasis upon the scientific
procedure of observing and classifying data in an age when dogmatism and
speculation were rife.
The three stages of thought which Comte described are not three levels
of thought, as Comte contended, but, as Herbert Spencer indicated, they
may represent the same plane of thinking. Each requires about the same
degree of thinking ability. Moreover, as John Fiske argued, the three
methods of approach to problems are often pursued simultaneously by a
given person. Some phenomena are explained theologically; others,
metaphysically; and others, positively.
A second main contribution which Comte made to social thought is that
each of the three modes of thinking determines and corresponds to a type of
social organization. Speaking from the standpoint of his own religious
contacts, he declared that theological thinking leads to a military and
monarchial social organization, with God at the head of the hierarchy as
King of kings and a mighty warrior, and with human beings arranged in a
military organization. Divine sanction rules. As expressed through the

human leaders, this divine sanction must not be questioned. Dogmatism
must be meekly endured, or else its threatened punishments will be turned
loose upon helpless offenders. Divine rights rule.
Metaphysical thinking produces a government dominated by doctrines
of abstract rights. Natural rights are substituted for divine rights. A
priesthood is furthered. Social organization becomes legalistic, formal,
structural, without adequate content.
Positive thinking produces practical results in the form of industrial
enterprises, and ushers in an industrial age. It inquires into the nature and
utilization of natural forces. It transforms the material resources of the
earth, and produces material inventions.
Comte failed to postulate a fourth mode of thinking, namely, socialized
thinking, or a system of thought which would emphasize not simply the use
of natural forces, but the use of natural forces for social ends, for the
purpose of building constructive, just, and harmonious societies, and of
developing personalities who will evaluate life in terms of the welfare of
other personalities. Comte, however, should be credited with opening the
way for the rise of socialized thinking.
A third phase of Comte’s system was his classification of the sciences,
with sociology as the latest and greatest of the group. The Greek thinkers, it
will be recalled, undertook to classify all knowledge under three headings:
physics, ethics, and politics. Bacon made the divisions correlative to the so-
called mental faculties of memory, imagination, and reason, namely:
history, poetry, and science.
Comte chose as his principle of classifying knowledge, the order of
increasing dependence. He arranged the sciences so that each category may
be grounded on the principal laws of the preceding category, and serve as a
XIII-5
basis for the next ensuing category. The order, hence, is one of
increasing complexity and decreasing generality. The most simple
phenomena must be the most general—general in the sense of being
XIII-6
everywhere present.
Comte began with mathematics, the tool of the mind. Accurate thinking
is always done in terms of mathematics. With mathematics as its chief tool,
the mind of man can go anywhere in its thinking. Mathematics is the most

powerful instrument which the mind may use in the investigation of natural
XIII-7
laws.
Mathematics is not a constituent member of the group of sciences. It is
the basis of them all. It holds the first place in the hierarchy of the sciences,
and is the best point of departure in all education, whether general or
XIII-8 XIII-9
special. It is the oldest and most perfect of all the sciences.
Mathematics is the science which measures precisely the relations
XIII-10
between objects and ideas. It is the science. The Greeks had no other.
Its definition is the definition of all science. Its function is that of
ascertaining relationships, a process which is basic to scientific thinking in
all fields. Education that is based on any other method is faulty, inexact, and
unreliable. It is only through mathematics that we can understand science.
The highest form of mathematics is calculus. There is no scientific
inquiry in which calculus is not used. Even the physician in prescribing for
the cure of a disease, must provide for the mixing together of different
quantities of different medicines, so that, when taken at determined
intervals of time, they will possess the right qualities for bringing the
human body back to its normal state. Calculus is the branch of science
which has the highest intellectual dignity. In it the proportion of reasoning
to observation is greater than elsewhere.
With mathematics as the tool, the classification of knowledge may
proceed. All natural phenomena fall into two grand divisions: inorganic and
organic. The inorganic are more general and should be considered first.
Inorganic phenomena are of two classes: astronomical and terrestrial.
Astronomical phenomena are the most general of all. The stars and planets
XIII-12
appear under the least varied aspects. Astronomy is the science by
which the movements of the heavenly bodies, including the earth, are
measured. How can we thoroughly understand any terrestrial phenomena
without considering the nature of the earth and its relation to the other units
XIII-13
of the solar system?
Terrestrial physics includes two fields: physics proper and chemistry.
Material bodies may be regarded in either their physical or chemical
aspects. Physics is more general than chemistry; it deals with masses rather

than elements. Chemical phenomena depend upon the laws of physics,
without being influenced by them in turn. Chemical action is conditioned
by the laws of weight, heat, electricity. The study of inorganic phenomena
thus falls under three scientific heads: astronomy, physics, and chemistry.
Organic phenomena include two types: individual and group. The first
refers to the function and structure of all individual forms in the plant and
animal worlds. It is general physiology, or, in modern terms, biology. It
involves the study of all life and the general laws pertaining to the
individual units of life.
Biology rests on chemistry, because it is in chemistry that all reliable
knowledge about nutrition or secretion is found. Biology is indebted to
physics for knowledge concerning the weight of, temperature of, and
related facts about living organisms. Biological laws are partially
determined by astronomical factors. If the earth were to rotate faster than it
does, the course of physiological phenomena would be accelerated, and the
XIII-14
length of life would be shortened. If the orbit of the earth were to
become as eccentric as that of a comet, changes of a fatal nature would
occur to all life on the earth. If there were no inclination of the earth’s axis,
the seasons would be unknown, and the geographical distribution of living
species would be vastly different from the present situation. All accurate
work in biological studies is mathematical in character. Thus biology, the
science of organic phenomena, is dependent on all the preceding divisions
on the scale of knowledge.
The study of gregarious or associative life is a special field. Comte
called this science social physics, and for it invented the specific term,
sociology. It rests in turn upon biological, chemical, physical, astronomical
knowledge and uses mathematics as its tool. Comte virtually defines six
sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and
sociology. He treats of transcendental biology, which is the basis of modern
psychology. Comte urged that no science could be effectually studied
without competent knowledge concerning the sciences on which it depends.
It is necessary not only to have a general knowledge of all the sciences but
that they should be studied in order—this is Comte’s dictum to the student
of sociology. Comte insisted that one general science could not develop
beyond a given point until the preceding science has passed a given stage.

Each of the six general sciences has passed through the three stages of
thought. Mathematics, which has advanced furthest into the positive stage,
is still connected with superstition, such as that which hovers round the
number 13. The other general sciences are less further along. Sociology, the
latest science to develop, Comte hoped by his works to push over into the
positive stage.
Comte divided sociology, or social physics, into social statics and
social dynamics. Social statics is the study of the laws of action and
reaction of the different parts of the social order, aside for the time being
XIII-15
from the general social movements which are modifying them. Social
dynamics considers the laws of progress. Social statics inquires into the
laws of co-existence of social phenomena; social dynamics examines the
laws of social succession. Sociology is the study of social organization and
of social progress.
Society is in a state of anarchy. Individuals with the best of purposes
are continually weakening the efforts of each other. Powerful persons are
crushing the weak. The defeated are conniving against the strong. Why all
this social anarchy? To Comte the answer is clear. Behind moral and social
anarchy there is intellectual anarchy. People do not have a knowledge of the
fundamental laws of social order and social progress.
Moreover, people fail to appreciate the necessity of knowledge of
social laws. They are insensible to the value of sound social theory. They
want nothing but the “practical,” unmindful of the fact that the “practical” is
as likely to be based on incorrect social theory as upon sound social
conceptions.
The necessity of fundamental concepts concerning society underlies
social organization. In the absence of these general ideas, there is “no other
daily resource for the maintenance of even a rough and precarious social
XIII-16
order than an appeal, more or less immediate, to personal interests.”
In the absence of a moral authority, the material order requires the use of
either terror or corruption; the latter is less inconvenient and more in
XIII-17
accordance with the nature of modern society. Moreover, politicians
and other public men work against the elaboration of the social theory
which is necessary for the salvation of society. They sneer at the

development of social science. Many of those who occupy the chief
political stations regard with antipathy the true reorganization of society.
Social principles are not even sought. On the other hand, social
charlatanism attracts by the magnificence of its promises and dazzles by its
transient successes. Comte deplored attempts to re-make society through
institutionalism, regardless of social theory. He stressed the fundamental
importance of social principles as the only means of guaranteeing a correct
institutional procedure. As a practical principle of social adjustment, Comte
endorsed the Catholic ideal: In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things,
liberty; in all things, charity.
Comte protested vigorously against materialism. He pointed out that for
three centuries the best minds had been devoted to material science and had
XIII-18
neglected societary problems. Material institutions should be modified
and made to harmonize with the underlying laws of social evolution. A
moral reorganization of society must precede and direct the material and
XIII-19
political reorganization.
Social improvement is a result of mental development. This
development favors the preponderance of the noblest human tendencies.
Prevision and science when applied to society will bring out the best phases
of human nature, and thus result in social improvement. Although the lower
instincts will continue to manifest themselves in modified action, their less
XIII-20
sustained exercise will debilitate them by degrees.
The three chief causes of social variation result from, first, race;
second, climate; and third, political action in its whole scientific content.
The first and second factors cannot be changed greatly, but the political
influences are wide open to modification by social prevision. In this
connection sociology finds its manifestation.
With the development of society, intellectual activity and
gregariousness slowly overcome the preponderance of the affective over the
intellectual phases of life. But even in the best natures the personally
affective elements are more powerful than the social affections. Real
intellectual development, however, will strengthen man’s empire over his
passions, refine his gregariousness, and release his energies for social
activities.

Comte makes the family the social unit. Man cannot live in isolation,
XIII-21
but the family can survive by itself. The striking characteristic of
domestic organization is its establishment of the elementary idea of social
perpetuity, by directly and irresistibly connecting the future with the
XIII-22
past. Family life will always be the school of social life, both for
XIII-23
obedience and for command. Comte failed to escape the logic of the
patriarchal family life. He did credit women, however, with being superior
to men in the spontaneous expansion of sympathy and sociality, although
inferior in understanding and reason.
The direction of social evolution is toward further development of the
noblest dispositions and the most generous feelings, and away from the
XIII-24
expression of the animal appetites and the material desires. The trend
is from the satisfaction of the selfish impulses to the habitual exercise of the
social impulses. Happiness depends on the presence of new stimuli in one’s
form of activity. A life of labor that is full of constructive stimuli is after all
the fittest to develop personality.
XIII-25
Comte was the friend of popular education. He based his
contention on the invariable homogeneity of the human mind. The minds of
people of all races are potentially similar. All members of the race are
capable of development to a common plane.
In his Positive Polity, Comte made important changes in his thinking.
This work was the product of his later years, and shows the effects of
deprivation and struggle. It is inferior in quality to his earlier treatise on
Positive Philosophy. It is a question, therefore, how far his later ideas
should be permitted to supersede his thinking when he was in his prime. In
his later thought-life he receded from his emphasis upon the intellectual
nature and stressed the importance of the affections. He made affection the
central point of life and developed the concept of love. We tire of thinking
XIII-26
and even of acting, he asserted, but we never tire of loving.
The Comtean ideal became a disinterested love of mankind. Comte
developed a religion of humanity. His contact with Christianity gave him
the belief that it is chiefly ecclesiastical. He did not see in Christianity a
social keynote. Hence, he attempted to create a purely social religion. He

made mankind an end in itself; he failed to see that human society is
probably an outcropping of universal purpose.
If we judge Comte by his own time and age, we shall see the
importance of his contributions to social thought, which were as follows: 1.
There is need for accurate thinking about society. Mathematics is the best
tool for obtaining social accuracy. 2. Comte developed positivism with its
emphasis upon observation and classification of social data. 3. Knowledge
has scientific divisions, according to the principles of increasing
dependence and decreasing generality. This scale begins with mathematics
and astronomy, includes physics, chemistry, biology, in order, and ends with
the social sciences, particularly sociology. 4. Sociology deals with the static
and dynamic phases of human association. 5. Comte developed a
humanitarian philosophy. 6. Comte insisted on an intellectual understanding
of social processes as the only true basis for overcoming social anarchy and
for solving the problems of society.

Chapter XIV

Marx and Socialistic Social Thought
Socialism proper had its beginning in the second and third decades of
the nineteenth century. It developed primarily in continental Europe and in
England. Although Plato’s communism and More’s utopianism were
forerunners of socialism, the social unrest in Europe in the early years of
the nineteenth century was the direct causal factor. Socialism also
represented a reaction against the prevailing laissez faire thought regarding
the evils of society and the suffering of the poorer classes.
Socialism began with the concepts and experiments of Saint Simon and
Fourier in France, of Robert Owen in England, and of Rodbertus, Lassalle,
Marx, and Engels in Germany. In France the movement was carried forward
by Proudhon and Blanc; and in England by the Christian socialists, chiefly
Maurice and Kingsley. In Germany, Marx maintained the position of
leadership for many decades, and finally became the best known exponent
of socialist thought in the world.
In his New Christianity, Saint Simon, who was referred to in the
preceding chapter, made a unique contribution to social thought. His
thinking was not deep, or systematic, but characterized by ingenuity. Saint
Simon advocated a society in which only useful things are produced. In this
industrial order, men of science will be in control. Saint Simon was greatly
interested in the welfare of the poorest classes. His New Christianity was
essentially a plea that the whole world devote itself to the improvment of
the living conditions of the very poor. The influence which Saint Simon had
upon Comte has already been mentioned.
Another important socialistic ideal was developed by Fourier (1772–
1837), who worked out a social system in which the phalange is the chief
instrument in securing a perfect society. The phalange is composed of from
twenty-four to thirty-two groups of people. Each group comprises from

seven to nine individuals. The unifying bond is natural attraction, or free
elective love and sympathy. The members of each phalange live
communistically in a large commodious structure called a phalanstère. The
phalanges were to unite in one large world federation, with headquarters at
Constantinople.
The people work according to their interests, frequently changing
occupations. The products of labor are subdivided; a minimum goes equally
to all, irrespective of any conditioning factors; of the remainder five-
twelfths goes to labor, three-twelfths to special ability, and four-twelfths to
capital. Difficult common labor is paid the most, on the assumption that he
who does pleasant labor receives pay in mental ways. Every individual
should have an opportunity to become a capitalist; and every woman should
be enabled to become independent economically. These utopian plans of
Fourier called for a sudden and complete transformation of human nature.
They underestimated the force of human selfishness.
Socialistic thought was carried into politics by Louis Blanc (1811–
1882). He declared that no genuine reformation of society could take place
until political machinery was organized democratically. The democratic
state would endow national workshops. These workshops would be
operated by industrial associations composed of workingmen, who would
elect their own officers, regulate their own industries, and provide for the
distribution of the returns from industry. Once started by the state these
industrial associations will expand and increase in number until the whole
nation, and then the world, will be organized in this way.
Blanc participated in the French Revolution of 1848 and became a
member of the provisional government. His national workshop idea failed
in practice. His enemies were partly responsible for this defeat, because the
essentials of productive work and guarantees of character which Blanc
urged were disregarded. The fact, however, that these two essentials were
considered necessary for the successful development of national workshops
indicates that the system, under average conditions, might not be a success.
Nearly all the early socialists were evolutionists rather than
revolutionists. They did not advocate class struggle theories. They
developed bourgeois rather than proletariat ideas. An outstanding exception
to these statements is found in the radical attitude of Babeuf (1760–1797),

who was essentially a forerunner of Marxian socialism and also of the
anarchistic philosophy of Proudhon and Bakunin. Babeuf vigorously
proclaimed the sovereignty of the proletariat, and advocated the abolition of
inheritance laws and of private property. He urged that the property of
corporations be confiscated, and that a communistic state be established.
The well-known principles of justice, liberty, and equality were utilized
by Proudhon (1809–1865), a philosophic anarchist. He would have the
same wages paid to an unskilled workman as to a successful business or
professional man. He predicted that equalization of opportunity would bring
about an equalization of ability.
Proudhon attacked property rights. He declared that property is theft. In
itself property is lifeless, but it nevertheless demands rent, interest, or
profits, or all three. It protects itself behind law, and in order to guarantee its
alleged rights, it calls out the militia, evicts families, and takes bread from
XIV-1
the mouths of little children. It robs labor of its just returns.
By unsatisfactory reasoning Proudhon urged the free development of
individuals in society, whereby each individual would learn to govern
himself so well in society that government would no longer be needed. This
theory is Proudhon’s concept of anarchy. In this doctrine Proudhon neglects
to provide an adequate dynamic or to foresee the ultimate complexity of
human relations.
In England, Robert Owen (1771–1858) became a founder of socialism.
As a factory manager, Owen developed social ideas. Living in an age of
long hours, woman and child labor of the worst forms, and deplorable
housing conditions, Owen deserves the credit of inaugurating a twentieth
century program of welfare work. It was Owen’s theory that the
workingman is so subject to his environment that even his character is
determined for him. Owen attempted in theory and practice to prevent the
impingement of the economic environment upon the workers. He believed
in self-governing organizations of labor. He inaugurated the co-operative
movement as a means of securing industrial justice and of giving the
workingman a chance at the free development of his personality.
Owen objected to Malthus’ doctrine of population on the ground that it
failed to consider the marvelous increase in the means of subsistence which
might come from the application of inventive genius to the sources of the

food supply. He also protested against the Malthusian argument for the
restriction of population, because this argument did not give due weight to
the unjust distribution of wealth and to the enslaving social organization to
which labor is subject.
Owen’s experiments, particularly at New Harmony, Indiana,
demonstrated that a communistic organization of society in itself cannot
save society. The strength of Owen’s social thought lay in its accentuation
of the need for providing labor with opportunities of industrial initiative and
co-operation.
During the middle of the nineteenth century in England, the Christian
socialists flourished. The founders of this movement were Frederick
Maurice and Charles Kingsley. These men were clergymen who became
greatly interested in the welfare of the working classes. They made clear the
evils of the prevailing economic order, the formality of the Manchester
school of economics, and proposed to apply the principles of Christianity to
the economic system of the day. They opposed economic competition. For
this method they urged the substitution of the ethical and spiritual principles
of co-operation and love in industrial relationships—for both employer and
employee in all their dealings with each other. Their socialism is essentially
a vigorous application of Christian love to every-day relationships.
The influence of Christian socialism strengthened the experiment of the
Rochdale weavers who in 1844 had organized a consumers’ co-operative
society. The concept of consumers’ co-operation received its original
impetus from the thought and practice of Robert Owen, achieved a
measurable degree of concreteness under the efforts of the Rochdale
weavers, and through Maurice and Kingsley won the assistance of
Christianity.
In Germany, Rodbertus, Lassalle, Marx and Engels molded the thinking
of socialists about the nature of human society. Rodbertus (1805–1875), the
son of a university professor, was a quiet, deep thinker about social
processes. According to his analysis of social development, three stages
may be pointed out. The first was marked by slavery, or by private property
in human beings. The second state is an indirect form of the first, namely,
one of private property in land and capital. Through this type of ownership
the economically fortunate or shrewd are able to exercise widespread power

over the unfortunate and the uneducated. In the third state, toward which
society is trending, the concept of service will rule, and private property as
a dominant concept will be compelled to take a thoroughly subordinate
place in human activities. The ultimate goal, according to Rodbertus, is a
world communist society, with land and capital as national property, and
XIV-2
with labor rewarded according to its productiveness.
Rodbertus denied the validity of the wages fund theory and argued that
wages are not paid by capital; it is that part of the productive earnings of
labor which labor receives. His fundamental thesis is that labor is the source
and measure of all value. He advocated an evolutionary procedure whereby
the state should pass legislation that would guarantee just returns to labor.
This form of state socialism is to be gradually developed, until a scientific
socialism is reached with its emphasis upon a government of labor, for
labor, and by labor.
The founder of Social Democracy in Germany, Ferdinand Lassalle
(1825–1864), wrote two significant treatises, the Bastiat-Schulze and the
Working Men’s Programme. Lassalle believed that natural conditions are
productive of misery and vice, and that it is the chief business of the state to
extricate men from this thraldom. The state should provide means for lifting
the laboring man to a level of industrial freedom.
Lassalle objected to the theory known as the iron law of wages. He
protested against the smallness of the share of his earnings which the
laborer really receives. He advocated the establishment of productive
associations wherein labor might perform the double function of workman
and capitalist. In order that these productive associations might be started,
the state should advance funds. After the productive associations have
secured momentum they will continue by virtue of their own strength.
Ultimately, industry will be conducted exclusively through productive
associations; both industrial and social democracy will finally rule in
political life. Lassalle became the founder of the Social Democratic party in
Germany. Lassalle boldly denounced the reactionary classes that were in
political power in his time and led the workers in a movement to overthrow
XIV-3
the existing social order.
The name of Karl Marx (1818–1883) is supreme on the list of
socialists. Marx was born in Germany of Jewish parents, and educated at

the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He became a journalist, but the paper
which he edited was considered too liberal and was suppressed. Marx went
to Paris in 1842, where he continued editorial work. At this time he was
influenced by French socialism and its leader, Proudhon. In 1845, he was
expelled from Paris at the request of the Prussian government. He went to
Brussels. In the meantime a deep friendship with Friedrich Engels (1820–
1895) had been established.
XIV-4
In 1847, Marx and Engels issued the Communist Manifesto. This
radical document was circulated widely and became extensively accepted
by social revolutionists. Its doctrines were:
1. Abolition of property in lands; rents to be used for public purposes.
2. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
3. Progressive income tax.
4. Nationalization of the means of transportation and commerce.
5. Extension of productive enterprises by the state.
6. Compulsory labor.
7. Free education; no child labor.
8. Elimination of the distrust between town and country.
Marx returned to Germany and established the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung in Cologne in 1848. Engels served as editor. Because of
revolutionary activity, Marx was forced to leave Germany in 1849. He went
to Paris and then to London, where he became a newspaper correspondent
and where he lived until his death in 1883.
In 1859, the Kritik der politischen Oekonomie was published. It
contains the essential principles of Marx’s system of thought. In 1864, Marx
found the opportunity for which he had long been seeking, namely, to
organize the workers of the world into one large association. On September
28, in St. Martin’s Hall, Marx in the presence of a vast concourse of people,
he initiated the “International Workingmen’s Association.” The fundamental
idea was to organize the societies of workingmen which have a common
purpose, namely, the emancipation of the working classes, into a world or
international union for co-operative purposes. The International proposes

that governments shall put the interests of the working classes to the
forefront of national concern, and subordinate the present attention they
give to war, diplomacy, and national jealousies.
In 1869, Marx, aided by Karl Liebknecht (1826–1900), Engels and
others, organized in Germany the Social Democratic Labor Party. The
movement which Lassalle had started became united with the Marxian
movement, and in 1875 the German Social Democracy presented a united
front to capitalism. Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and Bebel are its best-known
leaders. Bismarck was forced to acknowledge its power, and condescended
to inaugurate a system of social insurance in order to appease its rank and
file.
In 1867, 1885, and 1895, the three volumes of Das Kapital appeared, in
XIV-5
chronological order. By this work, Capital, Marx is known throughout
the world. The style is laborious; the analyses are minute and in places
difficult to follow. The method is historical. Marx analyzes social evolution.
He traces the rise of capitalism from its humble beginnings to its autocratic
fruition. In this development the instruments of capital showed a tendency
to congregate in a decreasing number of hands. By this token it will be seen
that the number of the propertyless ever increases. Likewise, their influence
decreases. In this way, the proletariat is developed, a product of capitalism.
A definite class, the capitalist, acquires increasing industrial, political,
and social power. The proletariat suffer increasing misery. They own
nothing except their ability to labor. They are forced to throw this human
quality on the commercial market and sell it to the highest bidder. But
capitalism increases the number of the proletariat. This tendency, together
with the increase in population, creates a superabundance of labor. Laborers
are forced to compete in the labor market. The laborers who will sell their
labor for the least wages will be employed. Capitalism thus forces wages to
a mere subsistence level, with the result that the misery and suffering of the
proletariat are greatly augmented. In this way the laborer is crushed by the
operation of the iron law of wages.
By the operation of the iron law, the capitalist is enabled to appropriate
to himself an increasing amount of the earnings of labor. This appropriated
amount is called the surplus value. Marx developed at length the concept of
surplus value. Capitalism exploits the laborer by taking possession of as

large a proportion of the earnings of labor as it can obtain—through its
might and its shrewdness.
The growth of capitalism, also, causes a class consciousness to develop
among the members of the proletariat. This class consciousness is
increasing. It produces labor organizations; these organizations are
acquiring vast power. The struggles between them and the capitalistic
classes go on. The two groups have little in common. By force of numbers
the proletariat are bound finally to win, and to overthrow the capitalistic
classes which are now in power. They will seize the means of production
and manage them for the good of all.
Marx did not outline an utopia. He described the historical evolution of
society as he saw it, and he participated in plans for the organization of all
laborers for their common good. Inasmuch as Marx advocated compulsory
labor, the laboring class under Marxian socialism would include all people.
Marx advocated an equal distribution of wealth, not in the sense of the
popular misconception of that term, but in the sense that the earnings from
the industry shall be distributed to the workers in proportion to their
achievements.
In Russia, Marxian socialism in 1918 came into power. The Bolsheviki
represent the radical wing of the Marxian followers. They established
essentially a dictatorship of the proletariat, substituting it for the
dictatorship of capitalists which existed under the reign of the czars.
Bolshevism substitutes occupation for geographic area as a basis of
representative government. This program is deficient and sociologically
untenable, because occupational groups do not encompass all phases of
human personality. A government based on occupational group needs is
representative of only a portion of the elements of human life. When
seventy-five per cent of the people are illiterate, as has been the case in
Russia, no form of government whether democratic or not can be other than
a dictatorship.
Revolutionary socialism coincides, in part, with syndicalism, a
movement which developed in France and England. Syndicalism is a
radical form of trade unionism. It declares that workingmen cannot hope for
genuine betterment through politics. They must organize and inaugurate a
general strike. This universal strike will paralyze the present régime and

render it helpless. As a result the workers will come into power. In the
meantime, the workers must keep up a running warfare with capitalists and
the government which supports capitalism. Sabotage is a common concept
among syndicalists. It implies a program of destroying machinery,
hindering the production of economic goods, and creating inefficiency in
capitalistic industry. In both England and the United States, syndicalism has
appeared. In the United States, the Industrial Workers of the World, or I. W.
W., confess to doctrines similar to those which have been espoused in
Europe under the name of syndicalism. The philosophic exponent of
syndicalism has been George Sorel.
Revolutionary socialism has been paralleled in certain ways by
anarchism. These teachings first acquired force through the writings of
Proudhon. Another leading anarchist was the Russian nobleman and
military officer, Michael Bakunin (1814–1876). Although of aristocratic
birth, Bakunin became furious when he observed the human misery among
the masses which Russian autocracy was producing. He became an agitator.
He was confined in dungeons and exiled to Siberia. He escaped from
Siberia, and by way of California went to England and then to Switzerland.
His chief work is God and the State. Vital, vigorous, magnetic, fearless—
these are the adjectives which describe the personality of Bakunin.
Bakunin scorned rank, birth, and fortune. He attacked external
authority of all kinds. He denied the validity of concepts such as “God” and
the “state”; they are parts of systems which enslave the free will of man.
Classes must be abolished and the masses of individuals freed from all
enslaving institutions, such as marriage, the church, the state.
In a related way Prince Kropotkin (1842–1921) developed anarchistic
principles. Peter A. Kropotkin was of aristocratic Russian birth and a person
of mild, courteous manners. His father was a serf owner; the son could not
bear to see the sufferings which the serfs underwent. He threw away the
privileges of rank and became a defender of the oppressed. He attempted to
correlate the theories of anarchism with those of mutual aid, and fought
socialism with the concept of centralized control on the ground that it
XIV-6
would destroy individual liberty. In Chapter XXII, Kropotkin’s theory
of mutual aid will be analyzed.

Anarchism and socialism make similar attacks upon the evils of
capitalism. Both are determined to overthrow capitalism. Both believe in
revolt. They part ways when they advocate a constructive program for the
new order which shall follow the violent overthrow of capitalism. Unlike
socialism, anarchism holds that all government is an evil and that industry
can go on without organization. It advocates a free communism.
One of the essentials in the Communist Manifesto was the
appropriation of rents for public purposes. Starting from a viewpoint
distinctly different from that of Karl Marx, Henry George (1839–1897)
became the founder of single tax propaganda. In early manhood Henry
George came to San Francisco and established a struggling newspaper. At
once he found himself practically overwhelmed by the brutal competition of
the metropolitan press and telegraphic news service. George was crushed by
monopoly. It was this defeat which gave him a new idea—an idea that was
to command the attention of the world.
As George walked the streets of New York City he puzzled over the
existence of indescribable destitution and suffering in the shadow of the
XIV-7
princely rich with their ostentatious luxuries. Why in a land blessed
with generous natural resources should there be such poverty? Although
discovery has followed discovery and invention has followed invention,
neither has lessened the toil of those who most need respite. With material
progress poverty takes on a larger aspect. Material progress may be likened
to an immense wedge which is being forced, not underneath society, but
through society. “Those who are above the point of separation are elevated,
XIV-8
but those who are below are crushed down.” George set himself the
task of finding out why poverty is associated with progress.
This cause George found in the land situation. As land increases in
value, poverty increases. The price of land is an index of the disparity in the
economic conditions of the people at the extremes of the social scale. Land
is more valuable in New York City than in San Francisco, and there is more
squalor and misery in New York City than in San Francisco. Land is more
valuable in London than in New York City, and likewise there is more
squalor and destitution in London than in New York City.
When increasing numbers of people live in a limited area under a
system of private property in land, rents are raised and land values go up.

The cost of living mounts, wages are kept to a minimum, overcongestion of
population ensues; and again, rents and land values are increased.
Upon what does title to land rest? Where did it originate? In force. But
has the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back all the chairs, and
claim that none of the other guests shall partake of the food that has been
provided? Does the first passenger who enters a railroad car thereby possess
the right to keep out all other persons, or admit them only upon payment to
him of sums of money? “We arrive and we depart, guests at a banquet
continually spread, spectators and participants in an entertainment where
XIV-10
there is room for all who come.” These illustrations are pertinent to
the unjust elements in the present economic order.
As a result of private property in land, the owner possesses power over
the tenant, a power which is tantamount to a system of slavery. There is
nothing strange, therefore, in the poverty phenomena of the world. The
Creator has not placed in the world the taint of injustice. The fact that amid
our highest civilization men faint and die with want, is not because of the
niggardliness of nature or the injustice of the Creator, but is due to the
XIV-11
injustice of man. Since the owner of land receives wealth without
labor to an increasing degree, so there is an increasing robbery of earnings
of those who labor.
George attacked Malthusianism, and pointed out the deficiencies in the
proposed remedies for poverty, such as greater economy in government,
diffusion of knowledge, and improved habits of industry. He then proceeded
to give his own and well known solution, namely, making land common
property through a system of taxation of land values alone. Since land, not
labor, is the source of all wealth, it is just and necessary to make land
common property.
The weakness of Henry George’s argument lies in his single panacea
for securing justice. He over-emphasized the importance of one line of
procedure. He neglects other important factors, such as a selfish human
nature. He rendered, however, a splendid service in showing the weaknesses
in the system of private property in land. In this connection he has been
unequaled in his contribution to social thought.

In this discussion of the contributions of socialism to social thought,
many types or expressions of socialism have not been presented. The
educational propaganda of the Fabian socialists in England should be
mentioned as being very effective. Although small in number this group of
intellectuals, the best known being Sidney and Beatrice Webb, have exerted
a constructive and practical influence upon social thought.
Socialism has assumed various phases. (1) It originated in utopianism
and in a loose, broad type of communism. (2) It then took the form of
associationism, urging the organization of groups of associated individuals,
such as phalanges. As utopianism was in part the expression of a poetic
imagination, so associationism represented a bourgeois philosophy. (3) In
the next place socialism assumed political aspirations, and advocated a
governmental program whereby the existing governments shall gradually
extend their power until they exercise control over rent-producing land and
interest-producing capital. (4) State socialism, however, was supplanted in
many minds by ideas of more radical procedure. Marxian socialism holds
that a class conflict is inevitable and that the workers must overthrow the
capitalists, together with the governments which they control. (5) To the
other radical extreme is philosophic anarchism, with its emphasis upon the
abolition of all existing governments and the establishment of individual
autonomy.
Socialism has made several contributions to social thought. (1) It has
called the attention of civilized mankind, and particularly of the
economically wealthy classes, to the needs of the weaker classes. It has
introduced humanitarian concepts into the minds of the socially unthinking
educated classes. (2) It has jolted many economic autocrats from their
thrones of power. It has thrown the spot light of publicity upon the selfish
and wicked ostentation of the hereditary leisure classes. (3) It has held
social theory to a more practical course and to developing more immediate
social solutions than it otherwise would have achieved. (4) It has developed
a power equal to that held by individualism. It has helped to demonstrate
the dualistic nature of social evolution, that is, that there are two poles to
human life rather than one.

Chapter XV

Buckle and Geographic Social Thought
It has long been observed that climate, fertility of soil, rainfall, and
similar factors have had a powerful influence upon human nature and upon
the development of civilization. The chief founders of this line of thought
were Buckle and Ratzel. In recent years Semple and Huntington have
become well-known authorities. Many other thinkers have contributed to
the present knowledge concerning the interactions between geographic
factors and human development.
One of the first writers to elaborate a climatic theory of social evolution
was Bodin (1530–1596). Hot climates, he observed, further the rise of all
kinds of superstitious beliefs. Cold climates produce brute will-power.
Temperate climates constitute an essential basis for the development of
reason. In the ideal commonwealth which Bodin described, all three types
XV-1
of climate are represented. The northern zone furnishes the fighters and
the workers. The southern zone produces poets, priests, and artists. The
temperate zone is the parent of legislative, judicial, and scholarly leaders.
In the Spirit of Laws to which reference was made in Chapter XI,
Montesquieu accentuated the importance of environmental influences on
social processes. He attempted to show the effects of climate upon social
institutions. Montesquieu did important pioneer work in what is now known
as the field of anthropo-geography.
By way of contrast, the attitude of Hume, whose contributions to social
psychology have already been noted, stands out sharply. According to
Hume, physical causes have no particular effect on the human mind. No
geographic factors influence either the temperament, disposition, or ability
of people. Hume was led to this extreme position by his staunch faith in the
subjective and psychological factors of human nature.

The distinguished German scientist, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–
1859), travelled extensively throughout the world, observing the physical
geography of many lands in conjunction with the meteorological conditions
of each. At the same time von Humboldt was a careful observer of the
customs, manners, and standards of the various peoples with whom he came
in contact. In these travels and studies, von Humboldt was careful to note
relationships between soils and civilizations. His contributions to social
thought were of this descriptive nature, based on first-hand observations in
many parts of the world.
The writings of Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) contain an
extensive and detailed explanation of the ways in which geographic and
natural factors modify human life. Buckle starts with a decidedly dualistic
universe—a dualism which is disjunctive. The dualism consists of nature
and mind, each subject more or less to its own laws. Rejecting both the
doctrine of free will and of predestination, Buckle concludes that the
actions of men are determined solely by their antecedents and that they
XV-2
have a character of uniformity. Man modifies nature, and nature
modifies man, but in the past in many parts of the world the thoughts and
desires of men are more influenced by physical phenomena than they
influence such phenomena. Because of this dominant activity of the
physical forces, these should be studied as a basis for understanding the
history of man.
The physical factors which have powerfully influenced men are four:
climate, food, soil, and the general aspects of nature. By the fourth, Buckle
refers to those appearances which are presented chiefly through the medium
of sight and which produce their chief results by exciting the imagination
and suggesting superstitions. The three first-mentioned factors do not
XV-3
operate on the mind directly.
The first effect of climate, food, and soil upon man that may be noted is
that they lead man to accumulate wealth. These accumulations permit that
degree of leisure from “making a living” which enables some members of
society to acquire knowledge. Upon these acquisitions of knowledge,
particularly of socialized knowledge, civilization depends. This progress in
the early stages of civilization rests on two circumstances: “First, on the
energy and regularity with which labor is conducted, and second, on the

XV-4
returns made to that labor by the bounty of nature.” Both these causes
are the results of physical antecedents. The returns which are made to labor
are regulated by the fertility of the soil. Moreover, Buckle asserted, the
energy and regularity with which labor is conducted will be entirely
XV-5
dependent on the influence of climate. When heat is intense, men will
be indisposed and partly unfitted for active industry. Climate also affects the
regularity of the habits of laborers. In very cold climates, the weather
interferes with regular habits and produces desultoriness. In southern
countries regular labor is likewise prevented—this time by the heat. Thus,
in the early stages of civilization the fundamental law may be stated: the
soil regulates the returns made to any given amount of labor; the climate
XV-6
regulates the energy and constancy of labor itself.
Of the two primary causes of primitive societary growth, the fertility of
the soil is more important than the climatic influences. It is only where soil
XV-7
fertility exists that civilization can arise at all. But in Europe, climate
has been more effective than soil fertility. In Europe a climate has existed
which has stimulated human activities.
Since the mental powers of man are unlimited they are more important,
once they get started, than the powers of nature, which are limited and
stationary. Man has endless capacity, through his dynamic mental
tendencies to develop the physical resources of the earth.
The birth rate depends on food supply. In hot countries, where less food
per capita is required than in cold countries, and where an abundance of
food exists, the birth rate is very high. In cold countries highly carbonized
food is necessary, but this food is largely animal in origin and great risk is
involved in procuring it. Hence the people of cold countries become
XV-8
adventuresome.
By the study of physical laws it is possible to determine what the
national food of a country will be. In India, for example, the physical
conditions are decidedly favorable to the growth of rice, which is the most
nutritive of all cereals, and which, consequently, is a causal factor in a high
birth rate.

But where there is a cheap national food, the increase in population
becomes very great. As a result, there are multitudes of people who are able
to keep just above the subsistence level. A few individuals who understand
the operation of these physical laws are able to manipulate the multitudes in
such a way as to make themselves immensely wealthy. Since wealth, after
intellect, is the most permanent source of power, a great inequality of
wealth has been accompanied by a corresponding inequality of social and
XV-9
political power. It produces classes and even castes. Poverty provokes
contempt. Class conflict results. The poor are ground low, murmur, and are
again subjected to ignominy. Under such conditions democracy has a hard
struggle. When physical conditions favor one class, that class will constitute
itself the government and bitterly oppose the extension of government to all
other classes. In Europe there was no cheap national food, no blind
multiplication of population, and hence no such disparity between classes as
in India. In Europe it has been easier for democratic movements to spread.
Early civilization developed in the Euphrates valley, the Nile valley,
and in the exceedingly fertile regions of Peru, Central America, and
Mexico. Modern civilization is found largely in fertile river valleys, such as
the Thames, Seine, Rhine, Po, Danube, Hudson, Mississippi. But in the
Amazon valley, the fertility of soil has not invited the growth of a large
population. The trade winds have brought in a superabundance of moisture,
producing torrential rains, and a luxuriance of plant life and a complexity of
virile animal life which thus far have defied the skill of man to overcome.
The fourth physical factor which Buckle presents is the general aspects
of nature. Of these the first class excites the imagination and the second
XV-10
stimulates the rational operations of the intellect. In regard to natural
phenomena it may be said that whatever inspires feelings of terror, of the
vague and uncontrollable, and of great wonder tends to inflame the
imagination and to cause it to dominate the intellectual processes. Where
nature is continually exhibiting its power, man feels his inferiority. He
assumes a helpless attitude. He ceases to inquire or to think. His
imagination, rather than his reason, reigns. On the other hand, where nature
works smoothly and quietly, man begins to assert his individuality. He even
essays to dominate nature and other men. His cognition develops and his
volition expresses itself vigorously.

All early civilizations were located in the tropics or sub-tropics. In
these regions nature is dangerous to man. Earthquakes, tempests,
hurricanes, pestilences prevail. Consequently, the imagination of man takes
exaggerated forms. The judgment is overbalanced; thought is paralyzed.
The mind is continually thrown into a frantic state. These reactions throw
human life into feeling molds, into poetic rather than scientific forms.
Religious feelings are promoted. The leading religions of the world
originated in the sub-tropical and tropical regions of the earth.
East Indian literature and thought illustrate the effect of nature upon the
feelings and the imagination. The works of the East Indians on grammar,
law, history, medicine, even on mathematics, geography, and metaphysics
XV-11
are nearly all poems. Prose writing is despised. The Sanscrit language
boasts of more numerous and more complicated metres than can any
European tongue. The East Indian literature is even calculated to set the
XV-12
reason of man at defiance.
The imagination, for example, in India has produced an exaggerated
respect for the past; it is this situation which has led poets to describe a
Golden Age in the remote past. In the literature of India there is recorded
the statement that in ancient times the average length of life of common
men was 80,000 years. There are instances of poets who lived to be half a
million years old.
In Greece, on the other hand, nature is more quiet and the mind of man
functioned in a reasoning way. In the North Temperate zone science
developed. “The climate was more healthy; earthquakes were less frequent;
hurricanes were less disastrous; wild beasts and noxious animals less
XV-13
abundant.” Buckle, in other words, insists that everywhere the hand of
nature is upon the mind of man.
The work of Buckle, the chief exponent of the influence of physical
nature upon mental man, accentuates important phases of the growth of
civilization. Buckle over-emphasized his anthropo-geographic observations.
However, they constitute a part of the whole picture of human progress, and
when seen in the light of modern mental growth and control of environment
they shrink into proper proportions.

The field which Buckle opened has been developed extensively by
Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904). This German scholar, traveler, and
geographer is generally credited with putting anthropo-geography on a
scientific basis. Miss Ellen Semple attempted to translate his work on
Anthropo-Geographie into English, but found the German constructions so
difficult to handle accurately that it was necessary for her to put Ratzel’s
observations into her own words. She also points out in Buckle a lack of
system and an undue tendency to follow one generalization after another.
Her own Influences of Geographic Environment has now become a standard
work on the ways in which physical nature affects mankind.
Miss Semple, following but improving upon Ratzel, has shown in turn
the influences of geographical location, area, and boundaries upon people.
She indicates the various ways in which oceans, rivers, and coast lines have
molded human minds; she distinguishes between mountain, steppe, and
desert effects upon mankind. She describes man as a product of the earth’s
surface. She stresses unduly the physical influences; she considers nature
the dominating force. Even where civilized man has developed inventive
XV-14
powers and spiritual prowess, nature is given the credit. Nevertheless,
Miss Semple has marshalled facts in powerful array and increased their
force by literary skill. No student or teacher can afford to neglect Miss
Semple’s extensive survey of the interactions between physical nature and
human progress.
Among the many other writers upon the relation of geographic factors
to civilization the investigations of Ellsworth Huntington are
XV-15
significant. He has described the climatic conditions that are most
favorable to mental stimulation and growth, and then has classified all
districts of the earth according to the degree in which they stimulate or
arrest mental advance.
In this same connection William Z. Ripley has investigated the relation
XV-16
of climate to races. After analyzing races and distinguishing between
them and the geographic influences upon pigmentation, head, form, stature,
and other traits, mainly structural, he classifies climatic elements in order of
importance, as follows: humidity, heat, and monotony. A high humidity,
excessive heat, and long series of sunshine or of cloudy weather produce
mental enervation, stagnation, and retrogression.

Acclimatization of races is a very slow process, according to Ripley. It
requires centuries. Perhaps the white race can never become truly
acclimated in the tropics. Racial differences he shows are due to
environmental factors far more than is ordinarily supposed.
In conclusion, it may be said that physical forces have operated
strongly on man. But when man has developed modern mental tools, he has
been able to escape a part of the enslaving environmental influences. The
history of the relation of geographic factors to human progress indicates a
fundamental but a proportionate decrease in those influences.

Chapter XVI

Spencer and Organic Social Thought
In the second half of the last century social thought passed under
biological influence. Society was discussed in terms of biological analogies,
that is, it was compared in its structure and functions to organic life. Herbert
Spencer was the leader among those writers who attempted to analyze
society in terms of biological figures of speech. He also stressed the
structural nature of society, and in his Principles of Sociology he went into
great detail in giving a historical description of social institutions.
The Greek writers, the Hebrews before them, the founder of
Christianity made references to the likenesses between human society and
plant and animal life. Mankind has often been compared to a tree or a plant
with its manifold, evolving branches and fruit.
Spencer’s famous organic analogies were preceded by the studies of
biologists, such as Lamarck and Darwin. Lamarck (1744–1829) argued that
by activity and use man could develop traits which would be transmitted by
inheritance. Although this theory has been undermined by Weismann, it
served as a basis for the further study of the biological laws of human
evolution.
The thought of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) upon the nature of
evolution was stimulated in part by Malthus’ doctrine of surplus population
and the consequent struggle for existence. He also based his ideas on the
Lamarckian theory of transmission of acquired characters. He developed
the concepts of the prodigality of nature and the struggle for existence,
which led to the resultant concept of natural selection and survival of the
fittest. The process of natural selection accounts for the instincts, imitation,
imagination, reason as well as for self-consciousness, and the esthetic and
religious impulses. In this way man, according to the Darwinian formula,
has ascended by stages from the lower orders of life.

The fittest to survive, concluded Darwin, are those individuals who are
best fitted to meet the conditions of their environment. If the environment
be competitive, savage, brutal, then the fittest will be the strongest
physically and the most vicious. If the environment be co-operative, then
the fittest will be the individuals who co-operate best. With the
development of intelligence and sagacity in early human society,
individuals otherwise cruel learned to co-operate. A tribe of co-operating
individuals would be victorious in a conflict with a tribe of non-co-
operating members. Thus co-operation and a co-operating environment
themselves are the result of natural selection.
Unfortunately, Darwin’s concept of natural selection has been grossly
distorted. Upon this misapprehension, a doctrine of “social Darwinism” has
gained recognition. According to this false interpretation of Darwinism, the
tooth and fang struggle for existence among animals is the normal
procedure among human beings. The most brutal, cruel, and shrewd men
are “fitted” to survive in an environment of physical and mental
competition. Likewise, the nations which can marshal together the most
powerful armies and navies are the “fittest” to survive in a world where
each nation is accountable unto itself alone. Thus, it is seen that human
society is simply an extension of the animal society and that the
fundamental law of social progress is the law of force and might, first
physical, and then physical and psychical.
But this interpretation is false to Darwin’s own principles. While
Darwin did describe and lay great emphasis upon the tooth and fang
struggle for existence, he noted and stressed the fact that even among
animals, modifying influences were at work. He made clear that co-
operation exists among many species of animal life, and that this co-
operative tendency is an important survival factor. He also saw that among
the highest types of animals there were new and complex expressions of co-
operation, and that the higher mental activity of these animal types seemed
to be a correlate in some way of the greater co-operative spirit. The
application of this principle to human progress implies that the co-operative
spirit may ultimately become the chief survival force, and that some day the
“fittest” to survive will be those individuals or groups of individuals who
co-operate most wisely. This theory will be developed further in the chapter

upon “Co-operation Theories in Sociology.” The chief contributors have
been Kropotkin and Novicow.
Darwin made another important contribution to social science in his
theory of sexual selection. This idea is a phase of natural selection. Among
the higher animals the females choose their mates. The males, for example,
with the singing voice and beautiful plumage, are the most likely to be
chosen. These males thus become the progenitors of the next generation of
the given species; the less attractive males mate if at all with the inferior
types of females. Thus signs of male attractiveness come to possess survival
XVI-1
value.
Among human beings the principle of sexual selection operates, but in
a reversed sexual form. During the earlier centuries of human history the
custom developed whereby the males took the initiative in choosing mates.
As a result, the females resorted to all sorts of devices to make themselves
“attractive” and to get themselves “selected.”
The social theories of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) have caused more
controversy than those of any other writer in the sociological field. The fact
that in these controversies the ideas of Spencer have usually been worsted
will not blind the fair-minded seeker after truth to the important rôle which
Spencer took in the field of social thought.
Spencer early developed the habit of causal thinking, that is, he
believed in causes, and hence searched everywhere for causes. Because of
the acrimonious discussions which took place between his father and
mother, and because of his own independent nature, he repudiated the
orthodox religious explanations of the universe. He was trained for the
profession of civil engineering. His studies in mathematics and mechanics
accentuated his precise and somewhat materialistic interpretation of the
universe. His social theories are an outgrowth in part of his emphasis upon
the laws of co-existence and sequences in the physical world.
In order to understand Spencer’s social laws it is necessary first to
consider his general law of evolution. He traced everything in the world
back through causal chains to two fundamental factors, namely, matter and
motion—two aspects of force. As a result of the operation of some First
Cause, an integration of matter began to take place, accompanied by a
concomitant dissipation of motion. As a result, matter passes from an

indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
During this process the unexpended motion undergoes a similar
XVI-2
change.
The best explanation of this law of evolution can be found in its
application to societary phenomena. Suppose that a modern city
neighborhood undertakes to organize itself. It possesses physical resources
and mental abilities. The “neighbors” are all more or less untrained in
community organization activities. In this sense they are homogeneous. At
first they are unable to work together; in fact they do not know what to do;
thus, they form “an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity.” But with
experience in community organization activities, the individuals of the
neighborhood learn to work together. Each finds the type of work which he
can do best. All work toward a definite goal. Thus, a definite, coherent
heterogeneity arises. Further, the unexpended energies of the people are
influenced and transformed by the pattern ideas which experience in
XVI-3
community organization measures has taught.
This application of Spencer’s law of evolution to human progress has
weak as well as strong points. There is not always an original homogeneity.
Upon close examination this homogeneity disappears before a variegated
conglomeration of heterogeneous experiences and potentialities of all the
individuals who are concerned. It is not necessary to point out additional
errors. Spencer deserves credit, however, for developing the concept of
social evolution as a phase of natural evolution and for stressing the idea of
natural causation in societary matters.
Spencer began his Principles of Sociology with a very elaborate
description of primitive man—the original societary unit corresponding to
the biological cell. The physical, emotional, and intellectual life of primitive
man is given prominence. An analysis is made of the behavior of man, the
original social unit, when he is exposed to the various environing conditions
—inorganic, organic, and super-organic. The emphasis upon “man” as the
primary unit neglects the importance of the “group” in the social
evolutionary process. Moreover, Spencer underrated the intellectual nature
of primitive man; he denied to early man the qualities involving
XVI-4
excursiveness of thought, imagination, and original ideas.

Spencer’s discussion of primitive ideas shows widespread reading of
volumes of source materials. The “inductions” are often influenced by
preconceived notions of human life, despite Spencer’s sincere desire and
effort to be scientific. While the horde, the family, and other groups are
described, the influences which are the result of the interaction of individual
minds and the interactions between the individual and his group are
scarcely recognized.
In regard to the state, Spencer carried forward the theories which have
already been noted, namely, of individual rights. He repudiated the state
which is the product of the military organization of society. Such a régime
is primordial and uncivilized. It is an organization of homogeneous units in
which the units, or the individuals, are slaves to the organization.
Spencer believed in a new industrial development whereby individuals
would become differentiated and developed, and whereby individuals
would be shifted from an autocratic maximum to a democratic maximum.
To Spencer, man is vastly superior to the state. In the coming industrial
order Spencer foresaw an era in which the main business of society will be
to defend the rights of individuals. Spencer forecasted an epoch of
industrial states which have abolished war. In such a day the only conflicts
that will take place between states will be natural. These will be only the
competitions that arise naturally between states that are engaged in building
up the best individuals, that is, those persons who develop their
individuality most freely and harmoniously.
The rise of industrial states with a minimum emphasis upon
government and a maximum emphasis upon individuality will produce a
world order in which national barriers will slowly melt away and a
planetary unity will develop. Spencer’s industrialism, however, has
fundamental weaknesses. It implies that social organization is more
important than social process. It neglects to provide for inherent psychical
changes. It assumes that an industrial society, per se, will be peaceful. It
underestimates the importance of socializing motives.
In the changes from a military to an industrial organization of society,
the six main sets of social institutions undergo deep-seated changes.
Spencer describes at length these six institutional structures, namely, the
domestic, ceremonial, political, ecclesiastical, professional, and industrial.

Two, the political and industrial, have been mentioned on the preceding
page. Spencer’s treatment of the other four is accurate to a degree but at
fundamental points is unreliable—judged by current conceptions and data.
Perhaps Spencer is best known for his treatment of the organic analogy.
He set up the hypothesis that society is like a biological organism and then
proceeded to defend his thesis against all objections with great logical
force. But logic was his sociological downfall, for it overcame his scientific
insight.
Spencer found four main ways in which society resembles an
XVI-5
organism. (1) In both cases growth is attended by augmentation of
mass. (2) In each instance growth is accomplished by increasing complexity
of structure. (3) In the organism and in society there is an interdependence
of parts. (4) The life of society, like the life of an organism, is far longer
than the life of any of the units or parts.
XVI-6
But there are ways in which society and an organism are unlike.
These were analyzed by Spencer and determined to be merely superficial
differences. There are four of these main differences. (1) Unlike organisms,
societies have no specific extensive form, such as a physical body with
limbs or a face. (2) The elements of society do not form a continuous whole
as in the case of an animal. The living units composing society are free, and
not in contact, being more or less dispersed. (3) The parts of society are not
stationary and fixed in their positions relative to the whole. (4) In an
organism consciousness is concentrated in a small part of the aggregate,
while in society consciousness is diffused. The alleged superficiality in this
difference between society and an organism was difficult for Spencer to
maintain.
In discussing the organic analogy further, Spencer compared the
alimentary system of an organism to the productive industries, or the
XVI-7
sustaining system in the body politic. Furthermore, there is a strong
parallelism between the circulatory system of an organism and the
distributing system in society with its transportation lines; but more
particularly, its commercial classes and media of exchange. Then, in both
cases there has developed regulating systems. In an organism there is a
dominant center and subordinate centers, the senses, and a neural apparatus.

A similar structure appears in society in the form of an adjustive apparatus,
or government, for the purpose of adjudicating the differences between the
producers and the consumers. These parallelisms throw only a small
measure of light upon the nature of society. They appear ridiculous when
carried to an extreme, for example, to the extreme to which Spencer himself
went when he compared the King’s Council to the medulla oblongata, the
House of Lords to the cerebellum, and the House of Commons to the
cerebrum.
Spencer uses his analogies very extensively and vigorously, and later
refers to them as merely a scaffolding for building a structure of deductions.
This conclusion contains contradictory elements. When the scaffolding is
removed, society is left standing as a more or less intangible affair. If a
society is like an organism, it experiences a natural cycle of birth, maturity,
old age, and death. But according to the telic concept of progress that was
advanced by Lester F. Ward and developed by later writers, the death of
society does not come with organic inevitableness, but depends on the
vision, plans, courage, and activities of that society’s members. A society
need never die.
For many years it has been popular to criticise Spencer. Nearly all the
criticisms are justified. Moreover, they have been so numerous that little of
worth seems to be left in Spencer’s writings. However, Spencer’s
contributions to social thought are not negligible for several reasons. (1) He
emphasized the laws of evolution and natural causation. (2) He described
social evolution as a phase of natural evolution. (3) He pointed out the
likenesses between biological organisms and human society. (4) He made
the rôle of social structures, or institutions, to stand out distinctly. (5) He
stressed the importance of individuality. (6) He undermined the idea that the
State is a master machine to which all the individual citizens must submit
automatically.
In the United States, Spencer possessed an able and loyal friend in John
Fiske (1842–1901). Fiske built his social thought upon the evolutionarily
formulae of Darwin and Spencer. In his Cosmic Philosophy, or philosophy
of the universe, Fiske contended that the evolution of man produced
fundamental changes in the nature of cosmic evolution. With the
development of man there appears a new force in the universe, the human
spirit, or soul. The advent of this psychical entity has produced a

subordination of the purely bodily, physical, material forces and established
a control by spiritual forces. Moreover, in human evolution there has been a
slowly increasing subordination of the selfish phases of spiritual life to the
altruistic. With the apparent cessation in important bodily changes there
have come unheralded and unanticipated psychical inventions, which have
released man from the passive adaptation to environment which animals
manifest, and given to him an increasingly positive control over the
processes of adaptation. Humanity as the highest product of the
evolutionary processes has the power to change the whole course of cosmic
development. Fiske distinctly emphasized the psychical forces in evolution
and the part which they are playing in making mankind purposeful and in
organizing groups on social principles. Humanity is not a mere incident in
XVI-9
evolution; it is the supreme factor. The main purpose of man is not the
perpetuation of the species, but the development of increasingly higher and
more social purposes.
Following the ideas of Maine, Tylor, McLennan, and Lubbock, Fiske
concluded that social evolution originated when families, “temporarily
organized among all the higher gregarious mammals, became in the case of
XVI-10
the highest mammal permanently organized.” Gregariousness
developed into definite family relationships and responsibilities. Social
evolution produced an increased complexity and specialty in intelligence,
which in turn required a lengthening of the period “during which the
nervous connections involved in ordinary adjustments are becoming
organized.” Such a transformation requires time, and hence the need for a
period of infancy which is not common to the lower animals.
Accompanying this period of infancy, there is the development of strong
affection of relatively short duration among higher animals. Among
mankind parental love takes on the characteristics not only of intensity and
unselfishness but of duration and forgiveness. In this phase of evolution
there is a correlative development of three factors, namely, the prolongation
of infancy, the rise of parental affection, and increasing intelligence. The
gradual prolongation of the period of infancy is partly a consequence of
increasing intelligence, and in turn the prolongation of infancy affords the
circumstances for the establishment of permanent relationships, of
reciprocal behavior, of sociality.

Fiske was one of the first social philosophers to point out the
significance of foresight as a phase of evolutionary development. Perhaps
the chief way in which civilized man is distinguished from the barbarian is
in his ability “to adapt his conduct to future events, whether contingent or
certain to occur.” Civilized man has the power to forego present enjoyment
XVI-12
in order to safeguard himself against future disaster. This quality is the
essence of prudence and is due in large part to civilized man’s superior
power of self-restraint, one of the chief elements in moral progress. It is
equally important as “an indispensable prerequisite to the accumulation of
wealth in any community.” It is the basic factor in civilized man’s elaborate
scientific provisions and in his numerous far-reaching philosophic and
religious systems.
Paul von Lilienfeld (1829–1903) made the organic analogy a definite
part of his theory of society. He compared the individual to the cells in an
organism; the governmental and industrial organizations, to the neural
system; and the cultural products of society, to the intercellular parts of an
XVI-13
organism.
Lilienfeld compared the stages of growth of the individual to the stages
of racial development, namely, savage, barbarian, and civilized. This
analogy was made use of by Fiske. Although somewhat true in a very
general sense, this recapitulation theory cannot be carried into minute
details.
The concept of social capitalization was originated by Lilienfeld. By it
he meant the ability of society to store up useful ideas and methods and
transmit them from generation to generation. In this way each generation
becomes the inheritor of all the human experiences that have gone before.
Lilienfeld was one of the first sociological writers to develop the
XVI-14
definite concept of social pathology. His treatment of this theme,
however, was exceedingly weak. He distinguished between a normal and
diseased organism and then, by analogy, between a normal and diseased
society. Social pathology, according to Lilienfeld, deals with three sets of
diseases, namely, of industry, of justice, and of politics. Lilienfeld carried
the organic analogy to a ridiculous and puerile extreme when he compared
the diseases of industry to insanity; of justice, to delirium; of politics, to

paralysis. He also elaborated a system of social therapeutics to correspond
to the diseases.
In Albert Schaeffle (1831–1903), the organic analogy found another
disciple, but a more worthy one than either Spencer or Lilienfeld. In the
thought of Schaeffle, society is not primarily a large organism but a gigantic
mind. Schaeffle presented a functional analogy rather than a biological
analogy. Whereas Spencer was especially interested in social structures,
Schaeffle set his attention upon social functions.
In his functional analogies Schaeffle compared the reason with the
legislature in society; the will, with the executive officers; and the esthetic
judgment, with the judiciary. Schaeffle’s psychology is inaccurate and on
the whole unscientific; his analogies add little to an understanding of
society. Nevertheless, his thought on these subjects represents an advance
over the ideas of Spencer.
In the Bau und Leben des Socialen Körpers, Schaeffle undertook to
develop a complete sociological system. His teachings follow the principle
that “function leads structure and structure limits function.” Activities
produce developments in bodily structure, and also cause the formation of
new social institutions. Bodily structures and social institutions alike limit
activities and usefulness. These propositions are a reversal of the emphasis
which Spencer maintained. They are fundamentally correct.
Although Schaeffle referred frequently to the “social body,” he did not
give the concept a specific meaning. He introduced the term “social
process,” but did not analyze its nature. He repudiated the idea that the
individual is the social unit; he considered the group to be the all-important
unit in society. Natural selection in social evolution manifests itself in
conflicts between the ideals of different groups. René Worms, it may be
added, has assumed the existence of a social consciousness apart from the
consciousness of individuals, and argued that the chief difference between
biological organisms and social organizations is one of degree.
Schaeffle considered that government justifies itself in protecting the
weaker members of society, and in maintaining the highest welfare of all.
He pointed out the social responsibility which rests upon the best educated
and most fortunate members of society. Schaeffle wisely emphasized the

development of purposeful activity on the part of both the individual and
society.
The ideas of John Stuart Mackenzie differ from those of Spencer,
Lilienfeld, and Schaeffle. Mackenzie does not use the figure of an organic
analogy; he speaks in terms of homologies. According to Mackenzie,
society is not like an organism; it is organic.
The organic nature of society is three-fold. (1) There is an intrinsic
relation between the parts of society and the whole. The individual reflects
the culture of the group in which he has been trained. (2) The development
of a group is by virtue of intrinsic processes. A group builds on ideas
derived from both the past and from other groups, but it does not genuinely
grow unless it takes these ideas and makes them over into a part of its own
nature. (3) Society develops towards ends which are discoverable in society
itself. By analysis of the ideals and motive forces of a group, it is possible
to determine in what direction the group is moving.
Mackenzie argues for the inner principle of things and particularly of
society. He believes, however, that knowledge concerning this inner
principle and the essential unity of mankind cannot be reduced to a science,
but will constitute the basis of a social philosophy. Social philosophy does
not supply facts, but seeks to interpret the significance of the special aspects
XVI-15
of human life with reference to the social unity of mankind.
The family and the state are the two forms of association in which the
most intimate bonds of union are nurtured. Language, if it can be called a
social institution, is perhaps the most fundamental institution of all, because
it produces that community of spirit whereby intimacy in social intercourse
can take place and whereby the realization of a common good can be
XVI-16
achieved.
According to Mackenzie, there are three main lines of social progress,
XVI-17
and hence three main types of social control to be encouraged. (1) The
control of natural forces by human agencies. (2) The control of individuals
by the communal spirit. (3) Self control.
The road of social advance is beset with obstacles. The chief are these:
(1) The dominance of vegetative needs. These economic factors are so
universal and insistent that they are likely at any time to override all other

human needs. (2) The insistence of animal impulses, chiefly love and strife.
While love promotes unity, it generally produced a limited unity. Moreover,
one mode of unity is apt to conflict with other types of unity, and thus lead
to intense strife. (3) The mastery of mechanism. Life is easily crushed under
the weight of organization; thought, by scholastic pedantry; industry, by
economic systems; nationality, by soulless bureaucracy. (4) Anarchism. The
remedy for over-organization is not anarchy, for life and society are
composed of numbers of conflicting tendencies, which must be controlled
by the power of thought. But the exercise of merely individual thought will
not suffice. Individual thought is likely to be egocentric, to evade the
problems of group life, or to solve them selfishly. (5) Conservatism. An
established and successful civilization is in danger of relying too much on
its past. It often carries within itself the canker of decay, and frequently
lacks any clear vision of higher development.
Mackenzie is committed to internationalism. It is no longer fitting for
anyone to think of his own country as an exclusive object of devotion. “The
earth is our country, and all its inhabitants are our fellow-citizens; and it is
only the recognition of this that entitles us to look for any lasting security.”
Mackenzie advances beyond the organic analogists when he describes
the ways in which society is organic. As a social philosopher he has
contributed important pattern-ideas. He has escaped from the foibles of the
organic analogy and at the same time indicated the values that lie beneath
that concept.
This chapter deals with a significant period in the history of social
thought. The biology of the time was very faulty and the sociological
applications of biological knowledge were consequently of little merit. The
early years of the present century were characterized by noteworthy
improvements in biological thinking. The facts about the laws of heredity
and variation increased in number; a science of heredity was established.
The first decade of the present century also marks the rise of the science of
eugenics. In a later chapter the contributions of recent scientific biology,
and particularly of eugenics, to social thought will be presented.

Chapter XVII

The Sociology of Lester F. Ward
The name of Lester F. Ward (1841–1913) stands forth between the old
and new eras of social thought. Ward belongs to both the old and new. He
adopted Comtean positivism and built in part upon Spencer’s evolutionary
principles, but opposed Spencer’s laissez faire ideas and his evolutionary
determinism, especially in regard to education. Perhaps his most notable
work was the way in which he shocked a Spencerian-tinged world of social
thought into a new method of thinking.
Ward became the ardent advocate of social telesis. Man can modify,
defeat, or hasten the processes of nature. Ward brought the concept of
dynamic sociology to the attention of the world. Although he was interested
in social statics, his primary concern was in the fact that man through the
use of his intelligence can transform not only the natural world but the
social world, and that he can harness not only the natural forces to social
ends, but even the social forces to social purposes. Hence it is that Ward
holds rank today, despite his monistic philosophy and his false
psychological beliefs, as one of the world’s leading sociologists.
Lester F. Ward was born in Joliet, Illinois. He received a limited
schooling, and early went to work, first on a farm and then as a
wheelwright. He manifested an unusual liking for books and to a great
extent was self-educated. He entered the employment of the United States
Government, where he remained for more than forty years, after he was
honorably discharged from service in the Civil War. In the Government
service he held the positions of geologist and paleontologist. Despite his
strenuous and efficient work for the Government, he found time to think
through and write out an elaborate sociological system of thought.
Ward’s published works in sociology began with his Dynamic
Sociology (1883) and ended with the Glimpses of the Cosmos (1913) in

several volumes, which, with the exception of volume one, have been
published posthumously. The intermediate books of importance in order
were: Pure Sociology, Applied Sociology, and Psychic Factors of
Civilization.
Ward was characterized by an impressive command of his subject and
“a terrific mental drive.” In 1906, he began the unique experiment of
teaching sociology at the age of 65. As a professor of sociology he served
Brown University until his death—for a period of seven years. He was
supported by the indefatigable assistance of his wife, as shown by the many
files which she kept of “Reviews and Press Notices”, “Autograph Letters,”
and “Biography.”
Ward was led to produce the Dynamic Sociology because of his
observation that preceding 1875 there was an essential sterility in social
science thinking. Ward observed that the prevalent teachings of Herbert
Spencer were statical, and that the ideas of Spencer’s American disciples
were only passively dynamic. Ward believed that before the science of
society could be truly established the active dynamic factors must be
described. A science which fails to benefit mankind is lifeless. To save
sociology from the lifelessness which it was manifesting, Ward wrote the
Dynamic Sociology. He contemplated social phenomena “as capable of
XVII-1
intelligent control by society itself in its own interest.” His main thesis
in the Dynamic Sociology is “the necessity for universal education as the
one clear, overshadowing, and immediate social duty to which all others are
subordinate.” He argued for a truly progressive system of popular scientific
XVII-2
education. He declared that not one-hundredth of the facts which
original research has already brought forth are today obtainable by a one-
hundredth of the members of society, and hence not one truth in ten
XVII-3
thousand is fully apprehended.
The prevailing doctrine in social thought, that of laissez faire as
championed by Spencer, drew forth Ward’s best intellectual efforts as a
challenger. Ward protested against the teaching that natural forces are
operating only as elements in the all-powerful evolutionary process. He
pointed out that man is distinguished from animals by the development of
his psychical nature, i. e., of his foresight and reason. He demonstrated that
by this development man is able to master and regulate the operation of the

blind evolutionary forces. Hence, the doctrine of laissez faire is not only
false but pernicious. It defeats social progress. The truth is, said Ward,
society is able to improve itself, and it should set itself scientifically at once
to the opportunity.
Passive, or negative, progress is represented by the social forces
operating in their natural freedom, subject only to general evolutionary
XVII-4
laws. Active, or positive, progress is represented by the social forces
guided by conscious human purposes. Social statics deals with the nature of
social order; social dynamics treats of the laws of social progress. Social
dynamics concerns itself with two types of studies. One line analyzes and
describes what is going on in society under the influence of natural laws—
this is pure sociology. It is pure diagnosis; it has nothing to do with what
society ought to be. It describes the phenomena and laws of society as they
XVII-5
are. The other procedure discusses the application of human purpose
to the natural social forces—this is applied sociology. It studies the art of
applying the active, or positive, forces to the natural evolution of society.
This method is distinctly a human process and “depends wholly on the
action of man himself.” Applied sociology treats of social ends and
purposes.
Pure sociology describes the spontaneous development of society;
applied sociology deals with the artificial means of accelerating the
XVII-6
spontaneous processes in society. Pure sociology treats of
achievement; applied sociology, of improvement. But applied sociology is
not social reform; “it does not itself apply sociological principles, it seeks
only to show how they may be applied.” It lays down principles as guides to
social action. The carrying of these principles into social and political
practice is social reform.
The distinction is now clear between natural and artificial
XVII-7
progress. The former is a blind growth; the latter, a purposeful
manufacture. One is a genetic process; the other, a teleological process. One
is characterized by increasing differentiation; the other, by a process of
calculation. Artificial progress is considered superior to natural progress.
Ward was a monist. He believed in the absolute unity of nature, from
the revolutions of celestial orbs to the vicissitudes of social customs and

XVII-8
laws. He held that “life is a property of matter,” and naïvely declared
that “it is simply the result of the movements going on among the molecules
XVII-9
composing a mass of protoplasm.” Psychic phenomena are “the
relations which subsist among the material molecules of the brain and
nervous system and between these and the material objects of the outside
world....” Since mind is relational, it is immaterial, but it has matter for its
basis. Relations, however, constitute the properties of matter, and hence
XVII-10
mind, as well as life, is a property of matter. The logical length to
which Ward goes in supporting his monistic doctrine is in itself a proof of
his error.
Unlike Comte, Ward believed that man originally was anti-social and
completely selfish. In the earliest stage of human existence, man lived a life
XVII-11
almost solitary, or at least in small groups. He was surrounded by
destructive forces both inorganic and organic. Against the wild and
ferocious beasts he found himself almost physically helpless. Some of his
number overcame their physical defenselessness by using their “wits.”
Through sagacity and cunning they were able to withstand the attacks of the
wild beasts, to survive, and to propagate their young. Along with increased
cunning there went an increased brain size in proportion to size of body,
and also an improved brain structure qualitatively.
This brain development is the essential prerequisite for perceiving the
XVII-12
advantages of association. Man early recognized the merits of
association, and moved up from the solitary, or autarchic, stage of social life
to the second, or constrained aggregate stage. This second stage does not
contain the elements of permanency because of its forced nature. The
tendencies toward association are often counteracted and at times destroyed
by fierce contests for the limited natural foods. In contending that man’s
early ancestors were very irascible and quarrelsome beings, Ward went
beyond the limits of scientific induction. In believing that altruism is an
outgrowth of egoism, Ward again violates the best scientific thought. The
probabilities are that both egoism and altruism have developed pari passu,
and in part from different causes. During the second stage human speech
became an art. It was a natural outgrowth of the associational life.

The rise of the rudiments of an established government marks the
beginning of the third period in human society. For protection, tribes unified
themselves under central controls. Through compulsion or interest, and for
protective reasons, tribes united; the spheres of social organization thus
were enlarged. But government, which was established for the purpose of
securing peace, became one of the chief causes of external wars.
Governments, autocratic control, and territory hunger led peoples into
destructive war. The world is still in this third stage.
But some day, according to Ward, wars between nations will cease,
national prejudices will soften, diversity of language will be overcome, and
all governments probably will be consolidated into one. This picture
represents the fourth, or ideal, level of societary life, and may never be
attained. Ward cherishes the strong belief that the present national stage will
be succeeded by the cosmopolitan, or pantarchic, age. Ward perceives an
ultimate triumph of humanitarian sentiments, which will be also “a triumph
of practical interests, that shall sweep away the present barriers of language,
national pride, and natural uncongeniality, and unite all nations in one vast
XVII-13
social aggregate with a single political organization.”
Ward’s analysis of social evolution rests on his conception of the social
forces. The primary social force is desire. Desire is the expression of any of
the native impulses which, at the given moment, has not been gratified. This
striving for gratification constitutes desire and the moving force in the
societary world. “Desire is the essential basis of all actions.”
The desires are numerous and complex, but upon examination lend
themselves to classification. There are two fundamental and primary sets of
desires, the nutritive and the reproductive. The end of the first is to preserve
the individual; and of the second, to preserve and maintain the race.
“The first desire of all creatures is for nourishment.” This desire
remains dominant throughout life. The human race, Ward summarizes,
spent its infancy—thousands of years—in the single pursuit of
XVII-14
subsistence. When the natural food supply failed, man was forced to
be inventive and to labor or die. Too many individuals in one place meant
either the migration of some individuals or that others must compel nature
XVII-15
through labor to increase her normal yield of subsistence.

The nutritive desire has led man to labor. Labor, however, is not the
XVII-23
natural condition of man. Work, according to Ward, is unnatural and
irksome. The constant spur of hunger transformed man into a working man.
To be useful, however, work must be continuous and applied steadily to a
given object until that object is attained. This process is the essence of
invention, the highest and most useful form of labor. Without wings,
valuable weapons of offense and defense, claws for digging, man has had
but one line of advance open to him, namely, invention, whereby he could
overcome his limitations and master nature.
Ward overlooked what Veblen has called the instinct of workmanship.
Man has a desire to do, to achieve, to be active—only so can he escape the
terrors of ennui. He secures illimitable enjoyment from seeing the crude
materials of nature change under the manipulations of his hand and mind
into works of art.
Nevertheless, the need of nutrition was probably the chief factor in the
invention of tools and in the storing of food against the hungry day. These
tools and stores constituted property. Property at once represented power.
The law of acquisition soon exerted a great force. Intense rivalries in
acquiring property developed. “The grand rivalry was for the object, not the
XVII-16
method; for the end regardless of the means.” Through the centuries
and until the present hour, the morality of obtaining wealth has rarely risen
to the morality of many other phases of life.
Deception early came into prominence. We deceive an animal, in order
to catch and domesticate or kill him. We deceive a fellow human being and
take his hard earned property away from him. Society, blindly, has praised
deception even when used by one individual against the welfare of his
fellows. Society has honored him who could “drive a bargain.”
Ward declared that the desire to acquire property regardless of the
XVII-17
method is as strong as ever. The only changes that have come are a
mitigation of the harshness of the method and the rise of compulsory laws
and codes which force individuals to “drive their bargains” and to practice
their deceptions within prescribed limits. The acquisitive impulses have
created major social evils, as evidenced by “the exceeding indigence of the
poor and the exceeding opulence of the rich,” and by a relatively large

proportion of non-producing rich people to the entire number of
XVII-18
wealthy. On the other hand, those who are poor because they are
indolent are only a small proportion of those who are poor and industrious.
The evils of acquisitiveness cannot be overcome by softening the
human heart. Ward would make it impossible for individuals to take away
the property of others by making it to the interest of all individuals not to
act in that way. And then he would teach them, through the social sciences,
that such conduct is against their own highest development.
Ward pronounced the money-making tendency one of the most useful
and at the same time “one of the coarsest and cheapest of all mental
XVII-19
attributes.” It is useful because it is “the spur of all industry and
commerce; it provides the leisure which makes intellectual pursuits
possible; it encourages exploration, discovery, and invention; it is the basis
of all large business undertakings; and it has been an essential force in the
development of civilization. Since civilization is so exclusively artificial,
money can buy a vast variety of objects of human desire; hence, the
possession of money is strenuously sought.
On the other hand, money-making confers a pleasure which after all is
XVII-21
sordid. It often leads to avarice. It has produced a pecuniary
inequality of mankind which socially admits of little justification. From a
moral viewpoint the great struggle for pecuniary possession has been man’s
XVII-22
greatest curse. Because of it, many infants have opened their eyes as
millionaires in a world of boundless plenty; others (equally worthy) have
opened their eyes as beggars in a world of abject poverty.
Society becomes divided into two main classes: the industrials and the
non-industrials, or parasites. The non-industrials use their cunning in
XVII-24
various ways. The leading non-industrial modes of acquisition are
these: robbery, theft, war, statecraft, priestcraft, and monopoly. This list
represents the chronological order and history of non-industrial types of
acquisition.
Robbery is the coarsest manner of acquisition. Theft represents the
lowest order of cunning. Wars of conquest are robbery on so large a scale
that they arouse group patriotism. Cunning and treachery in war have given

way to strategy. Statecraft has often been characterized by the egoistic
attempts of a few shrewd individuals, who have devised means for
supplying the wants of the many, and appropriated rich rewards for
themselves from “the befriended and grateful community.” Priestcraft as
represented by many of the priests of Brahma, Buddha, Osiris, Ormuzd,
Mahomet and even Jesus have developed successful modes of acquisition.
They have often stood at the gates of death, and for pay guaranteed to the
stricken and fearful friends of a departed loved one a safe journey through
the perils following death. Monopoly takes cunning advantage of a scarcity
of the means of substance, or creates an artificial and false scarcity.
Monopoly has organized the fields of transportation, exchange, finance,
labor, manufacture.
The non-industrials co-operate better than the industrials and against
the welfare of the latter. The industrials, unfortunately, do not understand
the principles of co-operation very well and do not have the intelligence to
carry them into practical operation. They receive less education than the
non-industrials; the years of their industrial apprenticeship are taken from
their school days. After their apprenticeship begins, the fatigue of their
XVII-25
labor gives them little time or energy for intellectual improvement. In
pronouncing co-operation the product of superior intelligence Ward
neglects the rôle played by the gregarious, parental, and related social
instincts. Ward sees only part of the truth when he calls competition a
natural law, and co-operation artificial. He wisely observes, however, that
XVII-26
those who co-operate thrive at the expense of those who compete. In
the same way that individuals co-operate in order to secure their own gain,
society must organize to secure the progress of all.
The second primary set of fundamental forces is the reproductive.
These operate for the future and for the species. In animals they operate
without arousing shame or modesty. Among human beings they are
manipulated through the agencies of the reason and the imagination and
XVII-27
give rise to the sentiments of shame and modesty. They are so
clouded in secrecy that they arouse dangerous forms of curiosity.
Among animals the choice of mates is largely determined by the
females. In fact, among the lowest types of animals there are no males.
Among certain higher forms of animal life the male appears as a mere

adjunct. But among human beings, male sexual selection developed. This
change in sexual selection is one of the differences between the brute and
the human worlds. This transition is explained by the fact that the higher a
being rises in the scale of development the more sensitive its organs
become, and by the correlated fact that the male human being through his
reason is able to arouse and satisfy a thousand desires within the female,
and thus cause her to look to him for “that protection and those favors
XVII-28
which he alone can confer.”
In the human world the reproductive forces have first produced a crude
sexual love, animal in its nature, but far-reaching in its basic implications.
Sexual love is an unconscious but dominant factor in courtship. In its
refined form, and modified by the addition of genuine but often short-lived
affective elements, it becomes romantic love. Romantic love, according to
Ward, unfits lovers for the normal pursuits of life. While under its spell they
are unable to enjoy anything but each other’s presence. “The man is unfitted
for business, the woman for social life, and both for intellectual pursuits.
The only spur that can make either party pursue other things, is the sense of
XVII-29
doing something that the other desires.”
In the sense that natural, or sexual, love becomes the basis of romantic
love, so romantic love in turn represents the genesis of a still higher form of
love, namely, conjugal love. The love of a man for his wife or of a woman
for her husband is, however, fundamentally different from romantic love. It
is more stable, less disturbing to the normal processes of life, and makes the
home and the family socially productive institutions. It often reaches a high
state of refinement and develops its beauty of content from the sharing
together by husband and wife of great joys and sorrows.
Maternal love, an outgrowth of maternity, manifests startling degrees of
courage even among animals. Under the spur of the need for defending her
young, a mother will often perform miraculous deeds. In its highest form
maternal love manifests a remarkable strength throughout life and an extra-
human power of forgiveness.
Then there is consanguineal love, which according to Ward includes
paternal and fraternal affections. It becomes the blood bond or feeling of
attachment that exists among the members of a primitive kinship group, and
it leads to feelings of race and world solidarity and attachment.

Ward also pointed out that for each of these forms of love there is a
correlative hate. This force of repulsion is often greater than the correlative
love. Jealousy often leads to violent and destructive actions. Race hatred
frequently becomes a vicious, brutal, and widespread sentiment that
paralyzes all tendencies toward world progress.
Marriage institutions have developed from the operation of the
reproductive forces. Polygamy, polyandry, and a score of other types of
marriage have arisen, although monogamy has demonstrated itself to be the
superior type of marriage institution.
The reproductive forces have led to numerous sexuo-social inequalities.
Men and women have come to occupy separate spheres of activity, and to
XVII-30
represent distinct social conditions. Although the two sexes live
together and appear to be companions, they are in fact dwelling in separate
worlds and on different planes. There are several principal inequalities. (1)
There is an inequality of dress, which has loaded woman with ornaments
and caused her an enormous amount of disease and suffering. (2) There is
an inequality of duties, which has kept woman confined to the house, and
made a slave or a pampered pet of her. (3) There is an inequality of
education. Society has shut woman in the past from all opportunities for
gaining knowledge by experience. Moreover, society has seen fit to debar
women from the knowledge that is acquired by instruction. (4) An
inequality of rights has meant that women have been discriminated against
before the law. Without direct representation in legislatures, women have
suffered in proprietary matters. (5) A general sex inequality has at times
made woman the property or the slave of man. In short, women have been
denied, until with recent years, entrance to the higher intellectual forms of
activity and at the same time denied social and political rights.
Reverting to Ward’s classification of desires, we may now proceed to a
discussion of the third set of forces, the sociogenetic. In contradistinction to
the nutritive and the reproductive desires, or to the ontogenetic and the
phylogenetic forces, respectively, the sociogenetic forces lead directly to
race, or social, improvement. The ontogenetic forces guarantee individual
preservation; the phylogenetic, race preservation; and the sociogenetic, race
and social progress. Ward classified the sociogenetic forces as moral,
XVII-31
esthetic, and intellectual.

Morality is either racial or individual. Race morality is largely an
outgrowth of custom. Duty, according to Ward, is conduct favorable to race
safety, while virtue is “an attitude of life and character consistent with the
XVII-32
preservation and continuance of man on earth.” Individual morality
on the other hand, is based on altruism. Altruism is the expenditure of
energy in behalf of other individuals, and involves the power of
representing the psychic states of others to one’s self. Morality leads to
humanitarianism, whose aim is meliorism. Meliorism aims to reorganize
society so that the minimum pain and the maximum enjoyment may be
insured. Meliorism is a non-sentimental improvement or amelioration of the
XVII-33
human or social state.
Ward holds that the esthetic forces consist of a desire for open or deep-
seated symmetrical forms. Behind a landscape which at first appears
irregular and jagged, there is a fundamental symmetry and balance.
Sculpture, painting, and landscape-gardening are largely imitations of
nature. Architecture, however, emphasizes straight lines, regular curves, and
XVII-34
other symmetrical and geometrical figures. Because of the invention
of popular musical instruments, music is open to and enjoyed by the
common people. No such invention, unfortunately, has taken place in the
fields of painting and sculpture. These realms are limited to the highest
geniuses and “their choicest productions appropriated by the few who
XVII-35
combine wealth with taste.”
The intellectual forces are chiefly the desires to know. These desires are
three-fold: (1) to acquire knowledge, (2) to discover truth, and (3) to impart
XVII-36
information. The desire to acquire knowledge is perhaps strongest in
the young. Youth will often learn anything, without exercising any powers
of discrimination. The gratification of the desire to discover new truth
yields almost divine thrills of satisfaction. There are four methods of
imparting information to others, viz., (1) by conversing, (2) by teaching, (3)
by lecturing, and (4) by writing.
In addition to the dynamic forces there is the directive agent in society,
namely, the intellect. Ward makes a precarious distinction between the
feelings and thought, or between intellect as a seat of emotion, appetite and
motive power, and intellect as the organ or source of thought and

XVII-37
ideas. Ward’s psychology is admittedly unscientific. The thought or
ideational phase of the intellect Ward divorced almost absolutely from the
affective aspects of consciousness. He failed to perceive the dynamic
character of thought and ideas. He made thought simply the directive agent
in society.
In thought, Ward found the hope of the race. Thought can restrain and
control social energy. It can produce telic methods of progress which are
immeasurably superior to the blind, ruthless methods of nature. The
procedure of nature with unlimited resources is “to produce an enormously
XVII-38
redundant supply, and to trust the environment to select the best.”
Nature secures success through “the indefinite multiplication of chances.”
Hence the survival of the fittest results in a sacrifice of a great majority—a
highly wasteful method. The method of mind is the reverse. Though
prevision, mind utilizes all the dynamic forces of society, that is the human
desires, in constructive, orderly ways. Social waste may be reduced, by telic
methods, to a minimum. Mind can perceive the best social ends and pursue
them, whereas nature works blindly. Thought has in its power the
possibility of subjugating natural forces and turning them into contributors
to human needs.
Ward developed essentially four leading principles of social dynamics
and hence of societal progress. (1) The first law he called “difference of
potential.” This term, which he borrowed from physics, refers to the
difference in potential possibilities of individuals. This difference is
manifested, for example, in the crossing of cultures. It disturbs social
stability, and creates social liability. Sex is a device whereby a difference of
potential is maintained. While asexual reproduction is characterized chiefly
by repetition of forms, sexual reproduction creates changes in the stock in
countless directions. The difference of potential which is caused by a
crossing of strains is highly dynamic, resulting in unnumbered variations,
and hence in providing endless opportunities for progress. In a similar way
a cross fertilization of cultures opens many opportunities for social
XVII-40
advancement. “Progress results from the fusion of unlike elements.”
Difference of potential, again, is illustrated in the friction of mind upon
mind. Thoughts conflict, and the result is likely to be an invention.

XVII-41
Difference of potential may lead to creative synthesis. When two
elements are joined, the result is usually more than the sum of the parts. The
combining of hydrogen and oxygen in given proportions produces water,
which manifests characteristics that are not possessed by either of the
constituents. Likewise, the combining of two ideas by the human mind may
result in a new idea, and thus in progress.
(2) A second dynamic principle is innovation, which has its biological
homologue in the sport, or mutant. Throughout nature and society,
fortuitous variations occur. Life at times breaks over the bounds of pure
heredity—the result is innovation. Variation, in the sense of mutation or
innovation, appears to be due to the exuberance of life. At times nature
appears to react against being bound by rigid laws of heredity, to defy her
own rules, and to become rampant.
Social innovation is invention. New ideas often appear accidentally.
The mind in its exuberance coins new phrases, catches new glimpses of
reality, and creates ideas which are contrary to all that is established and
supposedly true.
(3) Ward’s third law of progress is called conation. This concept refers
to social effort which is carried on naturally to satisfy desire, to preserve or
continue life, to modify the surroundings. In satisfying normally the
gregarious desires, the individual advances the cause of social progress. In
preserving the life of the child, the mother presumably contributes to the
welfare of the race. The sacrifices which parents make in behalf of children
are efforts which further the welfare of society. Every constructive
modification of either the physical or spiritual environment benefits
mankind. Conation is thus a term which covers a multitude of activities that
are performed in the ordinary course of daily life, and which unconsciously
to the doers are adding to the sum total of human welfare.
(4) The fourth dynamic principle which Ward described has already
been discussed, namely, the principle of social telesis. The possibilities in
social telesis are illimitable. Social telesis can turn the passions and desires
of men into socially useful channels. These passions are bad only when
directed to wrong ends. They are like fire—they can destroy or they can
refine. If individuals as members of society could develop prevision and
work together for societary ends, they would be able to transform the world.

Ward believed that greatness does not rest so much in intellectual
power as in emotional force. He had great faith in persons of average
intellectual ability who are ambitious. It thus becomes the part of wisdom
for society to educate wisely the average intelligence. Ward challenged the
idea that only a very few persons are geniuses and that these individuals, by
virtue of their superior abilities, will uniformly overcome their
environments. He held that genius is largely a matter of focalization of
psychic energy, and that by this process all individuals may have the honor
of contributing something valuable to civilization.
Ward pointed out that geniuses are as likely to appear in one social
stratum as in another, among the poor as among the healthy, in the hovel as
in the palace. He also demonstrated how society allows genius and talent to
be ruthlessly destroyed among the lower classes through denial of
opportunity. As a solution for this problem, Ward advocated social
distribution, that is, the distribution of all useful knowledge to all humanity
everywhere. A scientific system needs to be perfected for the more thorough
and equal distribution of the great volume of valuable knowledge which has
already been discovered. Ward was a strong advocate of the socialization of
education.
In an article which appeared in the month following his death, Ward
discussed his idea of social progress under the terms, eugenics, euthenics,
XVII-42
and eudemics. He supplemented a theory of sound birth with a theory
of sound environment. The practical result in society would be a state of
eudemics, or a society of sound people.
Ward was an advocate of sociocracy. By sociocracy he did not mean a
democracy or a rulership that is likely to be conducted selfishly by the
individuals who exercise sovereign power. Sociocracy connotes a rulership
of the people in which each individual is governed primarily not by his own
interests but by the interests of society.
Achievement was a large concept in Ward’s mind. He made
“achievement” one of the chief goals of human life. By achievement in
behalf of human progress individuals gain social immortality. The masses
of humanity are achieving little or nothing in behalf of society.
In this treatment of Ward’s sociological thought it has not been the aim
of the writer to enter upon a dissertation regarding the abstract and

philosophic implications that are involved in the subject matter. Neither has
he attempted a polemic against the weaknesses in Ward’s thinking, except
to note the defective monistic philosophy and the erroneous “faculty”
psychology. It has been his purpose to let the strong, constructive elements
in Ward’s system of sociology speak clearly and effectively for themselves.

Chapter XVIII

Anthropologic Sociology
Additional light upon the nature of sociological thought may be secured
by consulting the anthropologists, and particularly, the students of social
origins. The last mentioned group of scholars have been unusually
successful in making valuable contributions to sociological thought,
because they have used the psychological approach.
For more than a century the anthropologists have been searching for
materials and advancing theories concerning the origin of man, of conflict
and co-operative tendencies, and of the early ideas and institutions of the
human race. They have been aided by the investigations of the geologists
and especially of the paleontologists. The ethnographers and ethnologists
have also discovered important data. The findings of all these groups of
investigators, as far as they relate to the main thread of this book, will be
here treated essentially as a unitary contribution. There is not space to deal
specifically with the work of anthropologists, such as Tylor, Morgan, Pitt-
Rivers, Haddon, Frazer, Goldenweiser, Keane, and a number of other
prominent authorities.
Anthropological social thought will be indicated here under several
headings. As far as possible the controversial and technical theories in
anthropology will be avoided. Certain of the ideas that have been advanced
by Sumner, Westermarck, Hobhouse, Wundt, Boas, and Thomas will
receive special attention, because they are unusually pertinent to the main
theme of this volume.
1. There is common agreement among anthropologists that man is the
descendant of a branch of higher animal life, and that the creation of man
took place by a slow, evolutionary process. The slowness of this
developmental process does not necessarily lessen the mysterious or
miraculous character of it. It places the origin of the human race at a much

earlier date than was once supposed—perhaps from 200,000 to 500,000
years ago. The animal inheritance of man need not lead anyone to deny the
correlative fact that man possesses spiritual qualities not common to the
XVIII-1
highest developed animals.
Even the psychic equipment of man can be traced in its origins to the
primates with their individual and social instincts. The instinctive bases of
human conduct are hundreds of thousands of years old. They are so
intrinsically a part of human nature that no discussion of current social
problems will neglect the imperiousness of the ancient instinct heritage of
the human race.
2. There is extensive anthropologic evidence that mankind had a
common origin. The remains of the earliest human beings are found in a
region which extends through India from Java to England. From these
geographic centers primitive man seems to have migrated in various
directions—northeast, southwest, and finally to the Western Hemisphere.
Different climatic and environmental conditions affected the migrating
groups in different ways. Those who migrated into the tropical regions were
retarded because of the enervating climatic factors. Those who reached the
frigid zone were also retarded, or subjected to recidivism for a different
reason—a harshness of living conditions and an excess of environmental
obstacles. The north temperate zone with its fertile lands and its
invigorating climate afforded the proper milieu for the development of the
race.
3. An important question relates to the alleged potential equality of all
races. The common origin of races is admitted, but the question remains
open whether, for example, the African races possess the same innate
mental abilities as the Caucasian races. The controversy here is sharply
drawn between the environmentalists and the eugenists. Each side of the
debate has collected a large body of evidence. In reality, the question
apparently boils down to this: Have the many centuries of living under the
enervating torrid zone conditions effected the African races so deeply that
under favorable cultural circumstances they have become incapable of
developing beyond a certain mental level which is lower than that attained
by the Caucasian races? In the past the answer to this question has been a

strong affirmative. The bulk of the evidence that has been collected in
recent years indicates that the affirmative answer is incorrect.
4. It is becoming clear that every race is a composite of several races.
Ethnological data show that the five grand divisions of the human race may
be subdivided into racial stocks, and into races and sub-races, until more
than 600 races may be described; and furthermore, that each of the 600 or
more races represents an amalgamation of at least three or four races. It is
evident that no clear line of racial demarcation can be drawn, and that
purity of race may be a fictitious term.
5. Intermarriage of the representatives of races belonging to similar
racial stocks seems advisable—according to the ethnologist. Pure bloods
apparently die out. The strongest races today are those in which
amalgamation has taken place recently—that is, within one thousand or two
thousand years, for example, the English, or the Scotch-Irish.
A mooted question of world importance relates to the intermarriage of
the representatives of races widely different, such as the white and the
yellow races, or the white and the black races. No race has yet developed
out of such combinations. Race prejudices and social distinctions have
produced conflicts which thus far have prevented the formation of such a
race. Very few scientific data are available regarding miscegenation.
Apparently, the interbreeding of whites and blacks leads ultimately to
the elimination of the racial characteristics of the blacks and to the complete
dominance of the whites. There are some writers who assert that this
process takes place to the gain of the lower race and to the loss of the higher
race. The last-mentioned point has not yet been proved. Miscegenation
between whites and blacks occurs under such abnormal and vicious social
conditions that the racial tendencies are definitely obscured.
6. Conflict between races is primordial; conflict between races today is
illustrated in national wars and race persecutions. Weaker races have often
combined against a stronger race; from these experiences there has come a
growing sense of the value of co-operation. Nations with high moral
principles have united against a powerful neighbor nation with bullying
tendencies. Out of these temporary combinations there has arisen a sense of
need for permanent forms of national co-operation. This common need will
ultimately lead, undoubtedly, to a permanent association of nations.

The conflict between the grand divisions of the human race will
probably continue for a long time to come. Sometimes it is concentrated in
an antagonism between the white and yellow races; and again, it is
expressed in the more fundamental struggle between Occidentalism and
Orientalism.
7. The origin and development of primitive ways of doing constitute a
well-cultivated field of study. Anthropologists have published an endless
amount of materials on the origin of languages, religions, occupations, sex
distinctions. A portion of this work has been done without an accurate
understanding of the psychological principles that are involved, and hence
has to be viewed with caution or neglected entirely.
W. G. Sumner, whose argument in favor of individualism and of a
laissez faire governmental policy was given in Chapter XI, published in his
Folkways a minute and extended account of the nature of primitive
institutions.
In the development of his theories, Sumner began with the needs of
primitive peoples and with the attempts to meet these needs. Repetition of
these acts leads to established ways of doing, that is, to folkways. Folkways
are “the widest, most fundamental, and most important operation by which
XVIII-2
the interests of men in groups are served.” Societal life consists
chiefly in making folkways and applying them. Even the science of society
might be defined as the study of folkways. Folkways are the product of the
trial and failure method of meeting needs. They tend to become firmly
established and to be passed on from generation to generation. They
become traditional. They acquire all the authority which is attached to the
memory of respected ancestors. Even the ghosts of ancestors stalk the earth
keeping guard over the folkways. The folkways carry with them the
conviction that they are essential to human welfare. It is this conviction
which gives them the force of mores. Thus the folkways are not purposeful
methods of securing progress but unconscious ways of meeting current
exigencies; they are blindly and rigorously forced upon successive
generations.
XVIII-3
8. Races are guilty of ethnocentrism. Each race considers itself
the center of mankind. It judges all other races by its own standards, and not
by a higher standard that is determined by data that are representative of the

best interests of all races. Ethocentrism compels each race to exaggerate the
importance of its own folkways and to depreciate the folkways of other
races. For example, the Romans and Greeks called all outsiders
“barbarians.” The Jews considered themselves “the chosen people,” and the
Romans and Greeks as “pagans.”
9. Sumner divided the chief motives of human action into four classes:
Hunger, sex passion, vanity, and fear (of ghosts and spirits). Behind each of
these motives there is a set of interests. (1) Hunger led primitive man to
invent simple weapons and tools, such as arrows and hoes, and then to
produce and hoard more complex forms of wealth. A strange peculiarity of
wealth is its effect on its creator; it seems to be stronger than its creator. It
often bears him down to a slavish, materialistic, and even selfish existence.
Labor in the struggle for existence is irksome and painful. Wealth and labor,
however, are both commendatory when they are used to increase human
welfare. In this statement Sumner overlooked the fact that wealth in order to
be commendable must also be produced under constructively social
conditions, and that labor in order to be praiseworthy must in its exercise be
individually helpful. In other words, Sumner’s test of the use to which
wealth and labor are put is incomplete.
Sumner gave a new meaning to the term, slavery. He held that “men of
talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and
XVIII-4
inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the art.”
Sumner deplored the tendency to call whatever one does not like by the
name of slavery. He felt that marriage slavery, rent slavery, sin slavery are
terms which are coined by a too easily disgruntled people.
(2) The sex passion leads to sex mores which cover the relations of men
and women to each other before marriage and in marriage, and the
obligations of married persons to society. The sex mores determine the
nature of marriage and of divorce. Sumner derided sex equality. Man has a
more stable nervous system than woman, is more self-absorbed, more
egoistic, less tactful. Since man has greater physical strength than woman,
woman was educated by circumstances in primitive days to adapt herself to
the stronger sex, and to win by developing charms where her lack of
comparative strength rendered her helpless. Resignation and endurance thus
became acquired traits of women.

Neither renunciation nor license is the proper method of control of the
sex passions. Both produce unnecessary agony. License, for example,
“stimulates desire without limit, and ends in impotent agony.” Sumner
advocated temperance and regulation—a regulation which comes from
knowledge and judgment.
Women by necessity must bear an unequal share in the responsibilities
of sex and reproduction. Likewise, men must bear an unequal share of the
responsibilities of property, war, and politics. For the latter types of duties
women are hampered by a delicately adjusted and cumbersome generative
XVIII-5
system which men do not possess.
Formerly women yielded to the will of men. Today, the marital state is
one of endless discussion, a defeat for one party or the other, with
unpleasant effects upon life and character. In ancient times women took
pride in the supervision which their husbands exercised over them and
XVIII-6
valued themselves as hidden treasures. This protected position was
considered aristocratic. Under polygamy, women looked with pity and
disgust upon the man who cannot, or is unwilling to, support more than one
wife.
At this point it is interesting to note that W. I. Thomas has distinguished
between the sexes on the basis of differences in metabolism—men being
katabolic and women anabolic. Man consumes more energy than
XVIII-7
woman. He is better fitted for bursts of energy, while woman
possesses more endurance. Man’s structural variability is toward motion;
woman’s, toward reproduction. Hence man seems to have been assigned in
primitive society to tasks requiring violence and exertion, whereas to
women fell the work requiring constant attention.
Civilization thus far has largely profited by the intelligence of man. If
to this situation it will develop and add the intelligence of women, it will be
supplanted by a higher type of civilization. Under these conditions a large
percentage of marriages will represent “the true comradeship of like
minds,” instead of being frequently, as now, an arrangement in which
woman is treated as a pet.
(3) The motive of vanity is all-powerful. “One likes to be separated
from the crowd by what is admired, and dislikes to be distinguished for

XVIII-8
what is not admired.” To satisfy vanity, barbarian mothers “deform
their babies toward an adopted type of bodily perfection.” Aristocracies
grow up out of appeals to vanity. An aristocracy is a group of persons
closely united who define the possession of things for which they are
admired and which the masses do not possess. Vanity leads to all types of
absurdities and indecencies in dress. Teeth are knocked out for the sake of
appeasing vanity. An Indian woman puts a board on the forehead of her
baby to make the forehead recede.
(4) Fear as a motive rules the lives of primitives. Fear of ghosts and
spirits is peculiarly enslaving. Pestilence, defeat in war, bodily pain were all
considered the result of the wrath of the gods.
The mass phenomena of fear are especially pitiful. Manias of various
types rule whole masses. Witchcraft thrived for centuries on the strength of
fear. Pilgrimages and crusades were partly due to fear; demonism was a
product of fear. When fear became firmly established in the folkways, it
acted as an ever-ruling tyrant. In the mores it became firmly entrenched and
was a leading factor in moulding character. Through religious practices and
dogmas it defined a “hell” and ruled with a fearful hand.
10. Upon simplest analyses, according to Sumner, four societal values
XVIII-9
stand out with clearness: intellectual, moral, economic, and physical.
Each of these, however, is composite. The highest societal value seems to
result from a harmonious combination of the four values enumerated. The
best member of society is he in whom the intellectual, moral, economic, and
physical values are more or less equally and harmoniously represented.
XVIII-10
11. Sumner divided society into five main classes. (1) The
masses represent social mediocrity. They are of average social usefulness.
(2) Then there are the dependent and defective classes—a drag upon society
but not harmful or vicious. (3) The delinquent classes are grossly harmful.
They are anti-social and a grievous burden. (4) Above the masses there are
the people of talent, and (5) above the talented are the geniuses. “A man of
talent, practical sense, industry, perseverance, and moral principle is worth
more to society than a genius who is not morally responsible, or not
XVIII-11
industrious.”

It is a mistake to think of the masses as being at the base of society;
they are located at the core. They are traditional, conservative, and the
bearers of the mores. The lowest sections of the masses are a dead weight of
ignorance, disease, and crime.
12. A social institution is composed of an idea, notion, or interest, and a
resultant structure. The primary institutions are property, marriage, and
XVIII-12
religion. These began as folkways; they became customs. Social
institutions can be modified only when the mores are changed; they develop
rituals, which are ceremonious, solemn, and strongest when perfunctory and
XVIII-13
when exciting no thought.
Sumner boldly asserted that nothing but might has ever made right, and
XVIII-14
that nothing but might makes right now. The fact that property began
in force is not proof that property is an unjust institution. Marriage and
religion also began in force, but the element of justice in the existence of
these institutions is not seriously questioned today. Sumner, however, did
not discriminate between force as an agent or a tool, and force as a primary
cause. He did not distinguish clearly between hate and love as the dynamic
factors behind action that is decisive. He did not set forth the distinction
between harsh, material, immutable force and a kindly, spiritual, attracting
love.
13. The persistency of folkways and mores is illustrated in a thousand
ways by Sumner. He described (1) their slow variability under changed life
conditions, (2) their sudden variability under revolutionary conditions, (3)
the possibility of changing them by intelligent action, (4) the problems
involved in adjusting one’s self to the mores of another group, (5) the
XVIII-15
conflicts between the mores of different groups.
The mores are powerful engines of societal selection. The most
important fact about the mores is the power which they exert over the
individual. He does not know their source. He is born into them. He accepts
them in his early years uncritically. His habits and character are moulded by
them. If in adult life he challenges them, he is ostracized by his group,
XVIII-16
labeled unpatriotic, and even trodden under foot. The mores develop
powerful watch-words, slogans, and even epithets of contempt and

disapproval which only the most independent and courageous individuals
dare to face.
XVIII-17
14. Ideals are entirely unscientific, declared Sumner. They are
phantasies little connected with fact. They are often formed to pacify the
restless, or to escape settling a question justly in the present. The “poor” are
told to look to the next life for their rewards. The radicals are urged to
accept the Christian virtues of meekness and lowliness. Ideals are useful,
chiefly, in homiletics, in self-education via auto-suggestion, in satisfying
vanity, in marriage. In these observations, Sumner undoubtedly pointed out
genuine weaknesses in ideals. He underestimated the psychological fact that
they spring from the very real affective phases of consciousness, and that
they can be projected rationally. He was right, however, in deploring the
chasm which exists between ideals and practices, and in showing how
ideals may become encysted in literature although not in the mores. “The
Greeks proved that people could sink very low while talking very nobly.”
Immorality is conduct contrary to the mores of the time and
XVIII-18
place. Chastity is conformity to the current taboo on the sex relation.
“Modesty is reserve of behavior and sentiment.” Even “nakedness is never
shameful when it is unconscious,” that is, when there is no consciousness of
a difference between fact and the rule set by the mores.
Sumner deduced an important principle when he asserted that the
“mores can make anything right.” The mores give usages a certain order
and form, and cover them with a protecting mantle of propriety. The
sanction of the mores is utilized by the class in power in order to maintain
the established régime, even though it be one of injustice.
Sumner decried the importance which is ordinarily attached to book
XVIII-19
learning, because it is addressed to the intellect rather than to the
feelings which are the springs of action. The real education is that which
comes through personal influence and example. It is derived from “the
habits and atmosphere of a school, not from the school textbooks.”
15. Despite Sumner’s failure to appreciate the significance of a
thoroughgoing psychological approach to an analysis of folkways, his
description of these societal phenomena constitutes a unique and valuable
contribution to social thought. Sumner’s rigorous attitude toward social life

did not permit him to enter into an extensive interpretation of the folkways
in the light of folk ideals. He dealt with what is to the exclusion of what
ought to be. He saw the past so clearly, and the present so much as a
reflection of the past, that no enheartening forward look was possible. He
rested his theories on the inexorable work of the laws of biological
evolution, modified chiefly by his belief in a strong individualism.
Sumner’s fundamental theses have been developed and modified by
A. G. Kellor. Professor Kellor has projected the Darwinian principles of
variation, selection, transmission, and adaptation into societal concepts. In
fact, he has done this so well that he has given the Darwinian principles full
sway, not allowing sufficiently for the rise and operation of complex
psychic principles. He has made the folkways the connecting link between
organic and societal evolution, but has not noted fully the new, countless,
and often intangible but powerful factors by which societal evolution is
characterized.
16. The rôle that concepts of conduct have played in the evolution of
society, has been analyzed by E. A. Westermarck and L. T. Hobhouse. The
former is usually known as an anthropologist, and the latter as a sociologist.
Professor Westermarck has shown that, strictly speaking, a custom is not
merely the habit of a certain group of people; it also involves a rule of
XVIII-21
conduct. It possesses two characteristics—habitualness and
obligatoriness.
Not every public habit, however, is a custom, involving an
XVIII-22
obligation. There may be certain practices which are more or less
common in society, but which at the same time are generally condemned.
The disapproval of these is as a rule not very deep or genuine.
Dr. Westermarck has indicated that there is a close similarity between
XVIII-23
the conscience of a community and of an individual. If a group
commits a sin twice, it is likely to be considered allowable. In order to get
at the real nature of societal life, the “bad habits” as well as the professed
opinions of groups must be examined.
“Society” says Dr. Westermarck, “is the birthplace of the moral
XVIII-24
consciousness.” Emotions which are felt by the community at large
tend to take the form of conduct standards. The moral emotions lead to a

variety of moral concepts. These fall into two main classes: concepts of
disapproval, such as the concepts, bad, vice, wrong; and concepts of
approval, such as good, virtue, and merit.
Professor Westermarck is convinced of the tremendous influence that
XVIII-25
religious beliefs have exerted upon the moral ideas of mankind. This
influence has been exceedingly varied. Religion has taught the principles of
love and yet has indulged in cruel persecutions. It has condemned murder
and yet been a party to child sacrifice. “It has emphasized the duty of truth-
speaking, and has itself been a cause of pious fraud.” Professor
Westermarck has contributed to social thought not only in his valuable
descriptions of the rise and evolution of moral ideas, but also in his History
of Human Marriage, to which reference will be made in Chapter XXIV.
The writings of L. T. Hobhouse reveal a thorough, comparative study
of the conduct rules of mankind. Professor Hobhouse has described the
evolution of ethical consciousness as displayed in the habits, customs, and
principles that have arisen in human history for the regulation of human
conduct. He has shown how, in the lowest forms of the organic world,
XVIII-27
behavior is regulated, and directed to some purpose. This behavior is
somewhat definitely determined by the structure of the organism
XVIII-28
itself.
There are three forces which may be called social, or which tend to
keep society together. These social bonds are: (1) the principle of kinship,
XVIII-29
(2) the principle of authority, and (3) the principle of citizenship.
Kinship is the moving force in primitive society. The principle of authority
becomes prominent when one tribe captures and enslaves a weaker group.
This principle is also invoked in order to secure an integration of openly
diverse attitudes within the group, even of modern national groups. It is
exemplified in the various forms of absolutism in government. The
principle of citizenship finds expression when certain individuals within the
group are delegated to perform as servants and ministers of the public as a
XVIII-30
whole. Personal rights and the common good are the two reigning
ideals. Every individual is recognized as having a right to the conditions
requisite for the full development of his social personality. The good in life
consists “in the bringing out into full bloom of those capacities of each

XVIII-31
individual which help to maintain the common life.” The third
principle, that of citizenship, when carried to its conclusion reveals the
XVIII-32
possibility of a world state.
It is the contention of Professor Hobhouse that there is a close
connection between the growth of law and justice and the prevalent forms
of social organization. Organized law has developed out of a sense of
community responsibility, which, however, has expressed itself as a rule in
crude ways, and without distinguishing between accident and design. This
sense of community responsibility in primitive groups tends to hold in
check the spirit of anarchy and of self-redress. Sooner or later, the method
of community self-redress yields to the authority of a chief or of a council
XVIII-33
representing the whole community. Ultimately the community
develops a special social organ for adjusting disputes and preventing crime.
It is then that the ethical idea becomes separated from the conflicting
passions of the collectivity. Thus, the foundations are laid for true judicial
inquiry by evidence and genuine proof, and for a system of scientific public
justice.
17. In applying the principles of folk psychology to the anthropologic
field, William Wundt has developed a new method and new theories. Folk
psychology is the study of “the relations which the intellectual, moral, and
XVIII-34
other mental characteristics of peoples sustain to one another.” The
term was originated by Lazarus and Steinthal, whose works will be referred
to again in Chapter XXII. In the masterpiece on the Elements of Folk
Psychology, Wundt has given a psychological description of the main
processes and institutions in society, tracing them from their beginnings in
the processes of nature; he has made a survey of human progress. His study
opens with a discussion of the processes which produced the digging stick,
the club, and the hammer; it ends with an analysis of world empire, world
culture, world religions, and world history. The intervening ages are the
totemic and the age of heroes and gods.
World empire affected primarily the material aspects of the life of
peoples. It led to world intercourse, which in turn multiplied the needs of
peoples. These multiplied needs were followed by exchanges of the means
of satisfying the needs. The external and material phases of culture are
survived by the spiritual phases—thus world culture is a sequence of world

empire. It may be said that the vicissitudes of peoples under the rule of the
world empire idea brings forth a unified history. World culture in turn
XVIII-36
creates a common mental heritage for mankind.
In the establishment of a world culture, world religions are the leading
forces. They have been foremost in creating the idea of a universal human
community. In particular, Christianity is based on a belief in a God who
makes no distinction between race or class or occupation. Consequently, “it
has regarded missionary activity among heathen peoples as a task whose
purpose it is finally to unite the whole of mankind beneath the cross of
XVIII-37
Christ.”
For a long time in human history, religious development was
considered to be the main connecting link—such was the contention of St.
Augustine. In 1725, Vico argued that the development of language and
XVIII-38
jurisprudence is of universal import. Finally, world history has
become an account of the mental life of peoples—“a psychological account
of the development of mankind.”
18. The work of Professor Wundt is similar in many ways, although
characterized by a distinctive starting point and by many differences, to the
contributions of Franz Boas and W. I. Thomas. Professor Boas has declared
his belief in man’s ability to dominate the laws of organic evolution as
expressed in human life. He has brought forward a large amount of
evidence in support of the theory that environment has caused differences
between races. He has pointed out that race prejudice is largely a product of
social environment, and that under changed conditions of life it has little
place in the world. Boas is a strong advocate of the theory, already
advanced in this chapter, that all races are potentially equal in ability, and
that they would demonstrate the truth of this statement, if given a common
cultural background and social opportunities. He has advanced the idea that
“the organization of mind is practically identical among all races of
XVIII-39
men.”
Professor Boas has amassed considerable evidence to show that in the
matter of inhibition of impulses, of power of attention, of ability to do
original thinking, primitive man compares favorably with civilized man.
Inasmuch as the social environment is powerful and education is effective

in making over social environments, education can raise all races to the
same high level, and at the same time unify them upon the same knowledge
bases. This contention is similar to the position that Professor Hobhouse has
made clear, namely: “While race has been relatively stagnant, society has
rapidly developed.” Moreover, social progress is determined not by
XVIII-40
alterations or racial type, but by modifications of social cultures.
These modifications are caused primarily by the interactions of social
causes.
19. Noteworthy pioneering in the field of social anthropology and
social origins has been done by W. I. Thomas. He has developed the theory
XVIII-41
that progress results from “crises.” As long as life runs along
smoothly, a lack of interest is likely to ensue. The result is ennui. But a
crisis in any of the life processes arouses the attention, that is, produces a
concentration of psychic energy. A disturbance of any habit is a crisis.
When the exigences of the crisis are solved through a focalization of
consciousness, the situation is said to be controlled by the individual, who
again lapses into a state of disinterestedness until another disturbance of
habit occurs. The new method of control will be imitated. If imitated
widely, it will mark a rise in the level of civilization.
It will be observed at once that the power of attention to meet crises is
largely an individual matter and that the rôle of the individual is very
important. The group level of culture limits the power of the mind to meet
XVIII-42
crises and to make adjustments. The mind is limited by the psychic
fund which the group already possesses. If there is no knowledge of
mathematics in the group, then a large banking system is impossible. Crises,
attention, control—these are the three leading concepts in Thomas’ theory
of social origins.
XVIII-43
Control is the object of all purposeful activity. It is the end, and
attention is the means. An animal differs from a plant in that it has a
superior control over a larger environment than does the plant. “It does not
wait for food, but goes after it.” Man differs from an animal partly in the
fact that his fore limbs are free to secure new and varied forms of control.
Moreover, man through his mind has a superior instrument of control. By
the use of knowledge, mind is effective in controlling factors that are
present in neither time nor space. Through its inventions, such as language,

religious creeds, mechanical appliances, forms of government, man has
risen to a high level of civilization.
Thomas has analyzed the social process in terms of social attitude and
social values. An attitude is a process of individual consciousness that
determines “the real or possible activity of the individual in the social
XVIII-45
world.” A social value, on the other hand, is any datum that has an
empirical content accessible to the members of a social group and a
meaning which may make it an object of activity. Activity is thus the bond
between a social attitude and a social value. The value is the meaning which
a material or spiritual datum may have. An attitude is a real or implied
going out after value. Social psychology is the science of social attitudes. At
this point anthropologic social thought has merged into social psychology.
Until twenty-five years ago, anthropology interpreted societary origins
pretty largely in terms of the individual. With the use of a social psychology
such as Cooley represents, “anthropology has given more accurate
explanations and become essentially a social anthropology.”
Before we discuss the different phases of psycho-sociologic thought, it
will be well to make clear the recent advances that have been made in the
biologic phases of social thought. The center of attention in this field is the
relation of the laws of heredity to human progress, which constitutes the
problem in eugenics. A discussion of eugenic social thought will bring
forward in a scientific way the chief elements of an intellectual situation
that was left, in Chapter XVI, in the unsatisfactory Spencerian formulae. A
presentation of eugenic social thought will give a valuable background to
the discussion which follows concerning psycho-sociologic thought.

Chapter XIX

Eugenic Sociology
Eugenic social thought is the child of biological discoveries. Eugenics,
the science of good breeding, which did not achieve scientific standing until
the closing years of the last century, may be traced back in its incipient
forms to Plato, who advocated that strength should mate only with strength,
and that imperfect children should be eliminated from society. In its
scientific origins eugenics dates from 1859, when Darwin’s Origin of
Species was first published. Its beginning as a distinct field of human
thinking is found in the articles by Francis Galton on “Hereditary Talent and
Genius,” which appeared in 1865; and in 1869, in book form under the title,
XIX-1
Hereditary Genius.
Eugenic social thought deals with the operation of the laws of heredity
in society. It was a part of this field which Francis Galton made world-
known by his treatises on Hereditary Genius and Inquiries into the Human
XIX-2
Faculty. In 1904, Galton wrote a paper entitled: “Eugenics; Its
Definition, Scope and Aims.” In this dissertation the new science of
eugenics was formally introduced to the world. Gabon’s analysis of
XIX-3
eugenics became its leading interpretation.
The mantle of the founder fell upon Professor Karl Pearson, whose
work at times has assumed a distinctly statistical nature. Professor Pearson’s
leaning toward biometry has brought severe criticism upon him. The
statistical approach, while exact and thought-provoking, is subject to
various errors in interpretation of data. The viewpoint from which Professor
Pearson writes, however, is not one-sided. For example, he states that “it
may require years to replace a great leader of man, but a stable and efficient
XIX-4
society can only be the outcome of centuries of development.” He
holds that group conscience ought for the sake of social welfare to be

stronger than private interest, and that the ideal citizen should be able to
XIX-5
form a judgment free from personal bias.
C. W. Saleeby, another English writer, has developed an independent
XIX-6
reputation as a eugenist. In the United States, such men as C. B.
XIX-7
Davenport and Paul Popenoe have made important eugenic
contributions. The recent tendency has been to be wary of purely statistical
studies of heredity and to rely more definitely upon case studies. However,
since eugenics is directly indebted to the studies of heredity and since
heredity must be investigated for several generations, eugenic social
thought has not yet developed far.
Galton defined eugenics as the science of good breeding. Its aim as a
pure science is to study the agencies under social control “that may improve
or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or
mentally.” Galton’s program, as outlined by the founder shortly before his
death, insisted upon (1) a study of the laws of heredity, (2) a dissemination
of knowledge about heredity, (3) a study of the factors underlying marriage,
(4) a study of birth rates, and (5) a case study of individual families.
Eugenic social thought holds that heredity among human beings
operates according to the same laws that govern heredity among animals.
The theory of Mendelian units becomes in practice the theory of multiple
factors. The unit characters, upon analysis, appear to be complex and to be
inherited in complex ways. Multiple factors are inherited from generation to
generation directly when pure factors are united with pure factors. But
when the pure is united with the hybrid, then the laws of dominance and
recessiveness operate. In such combinations certain factors tend to express
themselves in greater proportion than do other elements. This failure to
secure expression in a given generation, however, means that the specific
factor is recessive for the time being. Later, it will likely appear.
Galton stated another important eugenic law, the law of regression.
Each peculiarity is inherited by the offspring on the average in a slightly
less degree than it is found in the parent. Hence, according to Galton, good
traits and poor traits alike are inherited in a degree nearer mediocrity by the
offspring than by the parents. This law partially explains why gifted men
rarely have sons who are equally gifted. The law seems to hold good for

large numbers, but not when considered in relation to single families. It
serves as a check upon variation and mutation.
Galton and Pearson advanced another statistical law, the law of
ancestral inheritance. Galton supposed that the parents contribute to the
child one-half of his inherited factors, the grandparents one-fourth, and so
on. Pearson has secured statistical evidence which shows that Galton’s
geometric series is incorrect, and that on the average in a large number of
cases the parents together contribute to the child .624 of his traits; the four
grandparents, .198; the eight great grandparents, .063; and so on.
The law of mutation, described by de Vries and other geneticists, refers
to the appearance of mutants, or individuals who do not reproduce to form
but represent a new line of heredity. In this way the appearance of genius
may often be accounted for. However, the factors which explain the
appearance of mutants have not yet been analyzed.
Another fundamental genetic consideration is the law of selection. If
individuals with worthy traits mate only with individuals who possess
worthy traits, a superior stock will be produced. This tendency is very
important, since it points the way to a potent method of securing social
progress.
Eugenic social thought has been developed in part on the basis of the
Weismann theory of no or slight transmission of acquired traits. The germ-
plasm is transmitted from individual to offspring in a direct line of descent.
Injuries to the parent rarely change the nature of the germ-plasm. Only
extreme malnutrition or excessive use of alcohol apparently exerts a
definite influence on the germ cells. Nature has thus made provision for the
protection of germ-plasm, whether strong or defective. Society, then, may
encourage the mating of individuals who possess strong physical and
mental traits, and discourages the mating of individuals who are defective—
thus securing its own positive improvement.
Eugenic social thought follows two courses. Restrictive eugenics
advocates the segregation of the so-called dysgenic classes, such as the
feeble-minded, the insane, and the grossly defective criminal. Public
opinion reacts against sterilization; injustice that cannot be remedied may
be done through the use of sterilization. Segregation by sexes, while

involving expense, is a satisfactory eugenic method of safeguarding society
against the reproduction of dysgenic persons.
The other trend of eugenic thought supports the raising of the standards
of choice in mating. Constructive eugenics, as distinguished from restrictive
eugenics, urges a program of education whereby young people will
habitually rate one another by physical and mental standards rather than by
wealth and class standards.
Eugenics disapproves of random mating. It favors assortative mating,
because, for example, the “marriage of representatives of two long-lived
strains ensures that the offspring will inherit more longevity than does the
XIX-9
ordinary man.” Eugenics thus stresses the importance of teaching
young people eugenic ideas, and of training them to be guided by these
XIX-10
ideals rather than by caprice and passion. Eugenic ideals include
health, paternity and maternity, and pleasing disposition. Education and
character are secondary eugenic ideals of importance.
A study of the birth rate shows that the inferior stocks and classes of
individuals produce many more children than do the superior groups. Many
cultured people do not marry, or if they marry they keep the birth rate very
low. As a result, the racial character of a whole people may change within a
few generations. The superior strains may be lost and the inferior furnish
the entire population.
The low birth rate of the superior stocks is due to several factors: (1)
The lengthening period of education and of professional training calls for
the postponement of marriage. (2) The desire to give children the best
advantages limits the birth rate. (3) The increasing spirit of independence on
the part of women causes a postponement of marriage and a limitation of
the number of children. These and other causes have produced a differential
birth rate in favor of the inferior strains. Eugenic thought urges that the
differential be reversed in favor of the superior strains. This conclusion
implies that the dysgenic classes must be prevented from producing
children, that the poor must be raised to higher educational and economic
levels and taught to limit the birth rate, and that the eugenically superior be
taught to increase the birth rate.

XIX-11
Eugenics pronounces war to be both dysgenic and eugenic. (1) It
is dysgenic in that the bravest and the physically best are killed first. In the
case of a long war only the weakest men physically and mentally are left
alive to propagate the race. (2) War is dysgenic in that it produces a large
number of hurried marriages. Rational choices of mates are supplanted by
sudden emotional reactions. (3) War is dysgenic in that sex immorality
greatly increases. Prostitution flourishes in the neighborhood of military
encampments, unless rigid means of control are established. (4) Again, the
dysgenic effect of war is seen in the period of socio-mental unrest which
always follows war, and which among other things undermines rational
sexual selection.
The chief eugenic effect of war is manifested during the period of
training. This preparation period accents the importance of a strong
physique and health measures. An insipid, stoop-shouldered population of
city young men may be transformed into an army of fit soldiers. However,
the conclusions are obvious that the dysgenic effects of war are far more
potent than the eugenic gains, and that the eugenic advantages may he
acquired in other ways than by promulgating war.
Eugenics looks askance at the feminism movement. Feminism once
meant the development of the womanly traits of the sex. It now refers to the
elimination as far as possible of sex differences. It would make women as
nearly as possible like men. Eugenics objects to this trend, since it
underestimates the importance of the fact that women physically are built to
be mothers. To the extent that women enter into all the occupations, they
will become men-like; and their efficiency as mothers of the race will
decrease, and the race will suffer.
The economic equality of the sexes is a satisfactory doctrine to the
eugenist if the doctrine is extended to make motherhood a salaried
XIX-12
occupation, like mill work or stenography. “Child-bearing should be
recognized as being as worthy of remuneration as any occupation which
XIX-13
men enter, and should be paid for (by the state) on the same basis.”
Eugenics would throw every possible safeguard around motherhood,
especially in the period immediately before and after the birth of the child.
The mother, even the expectant mother, “is doing our business,

indispensable and exacting business, and we must take care of her
accordingly. She is not only a worker but the foremost of all
XIX-14
workers.”
Eugenic thought as represented in the writings of C. W. Saleeby has
denominated alcohol, venereal disease, and tuberculosis as “racial poisons.”
While there is some doubt regarding the eugenic effects of taking small
amounts of alcohol into the human body, eugenists are agreed that alcohol,
when taken in excess quantities, affects the germ-plasm and produces a
neurotic taint. It appears that alcoholism may be a cause in producing
defective children. The verdicts of hygiene and economics that alcoholism
is injurious to the race is supported by eugenics.
Venereal disease, another so-called racial poison, produces toxins
which apparently affect the germ-plasm indirectly if not directly. It lowers
the physical and moral tone and causes unfavorable racial tendencies.
Venereal disease tends to destroy the generative organs and to cut off the
birth rate entirely. It is a result of sex immorality which in itself tends to
produce children under such abnormal conditions of vice that it becomes an
anti-social, if not a dysgenic factor, in society. To the extent of course, that
venereal disease kills off the racially useless, it may be considered
XIX-15
eugenic. Such a point of view, however, fails to rate properly the
invasions which venereal disease is continually making upon normal and
superior types of germ-plasm.
Tuberculosis weakens the membranous tissues and probably leads in a
few generations to an unusual degree of susceptibility to the invasion of
tubercle bacilli. It is still a question, however, to what extent tuberculosis
may be counted a racial poison. Professor Hobhouse has argued that, by the
development of scientific hygiene, it will be possible to center attention not
upon eliminating a tubercular stock but upon eliminating the tubercle
XIX-16
bacilli.
In regard to race questions the social anthropologist and the eugenist
represent different poles of thought. As was indicated in the preceding
chapter, the social anthropologists, such as Boas and Thomas, support the
theory of potential race equality. The eugenist, on the other hand, contends
that there are inherently superior and inferior racial stocks, and that the

marriages of representatives of inferior stocks with representatives of
superior stocks will produce children of a stock distinctly lower than that of
the superior stocks. The eugenists in the United States hold that the
immigration of the southern and eastern peoples of Europe will not only
supplant through a higher birth rate the native stock of Nordic origin but,
where marriages between natives and southern and eastern European
immigrants occur, it will lower the racial quality of the population. While
eugenic thought in this matter deserves a complete and respectful hearing, it
must be considered along with the findings of social anthropology.
Eugenic thought opposes the miscegenation of the Caucasian and
African. The Negro, it is contended, is not only different from the
Caucasian but as a rule is eugenically inferior, judged by the achievements
of the Negro. Moreover, the eugenist interprets the anthropological tests to
show that the innate ability of a colored man “is proportionate to the
amount of white blood he has.” The conclusion of eugenics is that “in
general the white race loses and the Negro gains from
XIX-17
miscegenation,” —as far as the germinal natures of the two races are
concerned. The eugenist would forbid all intermarriage between the races,
and urge that the taboo against sexual intercourse between the races be
extended.
In the light of eugenic thought genealogy may become scientific, in
fact, it may become a valuable source of scientific materials for eugenics.
Heretofore genealogy has been the concern of a few leisure-class people,
who have taken pleasure and pride in recounting the fact that some one of a
possible thousand or more ancestors several generations back was
distinguished in some way or other, and who would have friends or the
public believe that they inherited from this ancestor of note the
characteristics which made him great. Eugenics points out a nobler purpose
to which genealogy may be put. It urges that mental and physical traits of
every individual in all families be carefully analyzed and accurately and
systematically recorded. In this way it will be possible in a generation to
have available a large amount of eugenic materials, and in a few
generations a reliable body of data for studying racial heredity.
The debate regarding the comparative influences of nature and nurture
has been long and bitter. It may be said here that both heredity and

environment are more or less equally essential in the development of human
personality. Without inherited factors in the individual the environment has
nothing upon which to work. Without a stimulating environment the
inherited traits will remain dormant. Each human being has inherited factors
which, if played upon by certain environmental factors, may lead the
individual to try to wreck society or himself or both. Every person, also, has
traits which, if stimulated by the proper environmental elements may cause
him to develop into a useful member of society. While the environment
cannot change the inherited potentialities very much, if any, it is a prime
factor of vast importance in determining which inherited tendencies will
never find expression, which will be expressed in modified ways, and
which will reach full fruition. Eugenics insists with increasing force that
educational programs shall provide that every child be not only well reared
but also well born. A weakness in eugenic thought is that it implies that
sound racial stock is sufficient to guarantee progress; it tends at times to
overstress an aristocracy of racial stock. It sometimes detracts from the
importance of character and moral discipline as essential elements in social
progress.

Chapter XX

Conflict Theories in Sociology
The concept of social conflict has already been introduced to the reader.
In the chapter on Individualistic Social Thought the prolonged struggle
between individual rights and genuine social control was analyzed. Malthus
described the conflict between population and the means of subsistence.
Comte insisted that man is not naturally a social being. Hence this unsocial
nature of mankind is a fruitful source of human conflict. Marx pictured the
class struggle; and Darwin elaborated the doctrine of the survival of the
fittest.
The slightest grasp of social thought reveals the fact that human
association is characterized at times by deep-seated and subtle conflicts;
and at other times by a fundamental co-operative spirit. Some sociological
writers have seen only or chiefly the conflicts of life; others have sought out
the co-operative activities; still others have tried to discover the
relationships between conflict and co-operation in societal development.
This chapter will deal with the concept of social conflict, while the next
chapter will be centered on the ideal of social co-operation and upon the
relationship of conflict to co-operation in group processes.
One of the outstanding believers in the theory that conflict dominates
societal life was Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1910). His system of thought
begins with the assertion that primitive hordes were the original units of
society. Gumplowicz dissented from Herbert Spencer’s belief in the
individual as the original societary unit, although he accepted the
determinism that is inherent in Spencer’s theory of evolution. Gumplowicz
also repudiated Comte’s belief in social amelioration through prevision, but
subscribed to Comte’s positivism.
According to Gumplowicz, society began with a large number of
primitive groups, which were self-sustaining and self-conscious units. Each

one of these hordes was a warring group, possessing an instinctive hatred of
XX-1
all other hordes. As these hordes increased in size, the general food
supply failed to meet the needs. Consequently, inter-group struggle resulted
and the members of the weaker hordes were either destroyed or enslaved.
The existence of slaves led to situations of intra-group inequality, which in
turn created problems involving justice and injustice.
As a result of continual conflicts between groups, there are frequent
changes taking place in their personnel. The vanquished are continually
being absorbed by victorious groups. In a given successful group two
classes are at once established, namely, the victors and the vanquished.
Classes are thus continually arising out of new juxtapositions of
XX-2
heterogeneous racial elements.
It was in an intense form of group self-interest that Gumplowicz found
the mainspring of social progress. This self-interest leads to an exaggerated
group appraisement, a strong degree of group unity, a state of warfare
between groups—and perhaps progress. Basic to this group self-interest,
there are the material needs of the members of the group; the economic
desires and the occupational interests; and the moral and spiritual
tendencies. The group is bound together by various factors, such as a
common social life, a common language, religion, and culture.
Gumplowicz advocated a theory of potential race equality. He argued
against innate racial superiority and racial inferiority. He doubted the
existence of any pure races. Each race is a compound of other races, and
hence races are potentially similar in fundamental respects. National
progress, therefore, holds no connection with race purity.
Gumplowicz minimized the importance of the individual. Society rules.
Centuries of traditions dominate. The thoughts of the individual are almost,
if not entirely, a mere reflection of the social environment. The group
develops group pride or group disloyalty in the minds of its members. The
distinguished leader is largely the man who expresses the will of the group
during the group crisis. Gumplowicz makes only a brief reference to the
XX-3
process of interaction between the individual and the group. An
underlying theory of natural determinism vitiates much of Gumplowicz’s
ideas concerning the individual.

Inasmuch as society, like individuals, passes through a cycle of growth
and decay, subject to unchangeable natural and societary laws, there is no
justification for individual interference with social processes. In fact, this
theory led Gumplowicz into pessimistic conclusions concerning life. He
failed to see that societal life is not necessarily a series of hopeless cyclical
conflicts, and that social processes are becoming increasingly subject to
human control—for good or ill. He did not appreciate the fact that groups
are not subject to laws of cyclical growth and decay after the manner of
individuals. Hence, his conflict theory of societal life ended in confusion
and pessimism.
A reference was made in Chapter XI to the theories of Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844–1900). This German philosopher developed the idea of
social conflict, basing it on the concept of the “will to power.” Leaders
desire power. They enjoy to exercise power and they thrive under that
exercise. Jealousy of the leaders arises. The weaker members of society join
together against the possessors of power. They develop a will to power, but
of a weaker type than that of the leaders. Conflicts ensue between the will
to power of the superior and the will to power of the inferior.
The superior and the inferior types each possess a distinctive code of
XX-4
morality. The supermen develop a harsh and rigorous attitude toward
themselves and others. They gird and prepare themselves for the crises of
life. They strive to augment their power. They become self-contained. They
take pride in crushing weakness and in deifying strength. Their morality
stresses those factors in life which create power. They feel a condescending
pity for the weak. They experience no sense of responsibility for the inferior
classes. Since supermen are the supreme goal of nature, supermen feel that
all persons and things should contribute to increasing the power of
XX-5
supermen. It is a waste of energy for supermen to give their lives in
behalf of inferior persons. They are interested only in the welfare of other
supermen.
The morality of the inferior is of a type which furthers weakness. It
accents sympathy. It emphasizes gregariousness. The inferior create a
slavish, cringing, meek morality. They sacrifice themselves readily and
humbly in behalf of others who may be inferior to themselves.

Nietzsche believed in a eugenics program. He declared that marriages
should be arranged with a view to producing supermen. Nietzsche’s
deterministic view of natural evolution led him to believe, however, that
equality of privileges is unattainable. He opposed democracy because its
theory of equal opportunities contradicts the tendencies of nature. He was
no socialist. He asserted that an aristocracy of power is the only true goal
for society. He carried forward the ruthless biological laws of tooth and
fang into his conception of the highest types of civilization.
Moreover, the superman is a biological mutant. He appears
sporadically. At this point Nietzsche’s inconsistency becomes obvious. For
example, if geniuses appear sporadically and without reference to biological
laws, why attempt to arrange marriages so as to produce supermen? To get
himself out of the dilemma, Nietzsche postulated cyclical returns of
supermen and lost his bearings in trying to interpret an endless circular
movement in social evolution, endlessly repeating itself. In an applied form
Nietzsche’s philosophy has appeared in German political life, but to the
defeat of Germany.
In starting points, Nietzsche and Gumplowicz were widely different.
Nietzsche began with an apotheosis of the man of power and extolled the
achievements of supermen. Gumplowicz had little place for the individual,
even for the most powerful. Both sets of theories ended in a deterministic
philosophy of individual and social despair.
An unusually fundamental delineation of social conflict has been
XX-6
advanced by Simon N. Patten in his Theory of Social Forces. Human
society is the product largely of a pain economy in which the requisites for
survival are determined “by the enemies and pains to be avoided.” In a like
manner a pain morality and a pain religion develop. The purpose of the pain
morality is “to keep persons from committing acts and putting themselves
in situations which lead to destruction.” The pain religion, likewise, aims to
invoke the aid of higher powers in the human conflict with enemies and
death. The social forces in a pain economy have been builded up in the
form of sets of ideals, instincts, and habits.
Society, however, is now in a transition stage—entering a pleasure
economy. A large number of the sources of pain have been eliminated
through the inventive and administrative phases of civilization. Dangerous

beasts and reptiles, barbarous invasions, and superstitious interpretations
are uncommon among the advanced human groups.
No nation, unfortunately, has been able to live under a pleasure
economy. Its members have not built up sets of instincts, habits, and ideals
that withstand the effects of a pleasure economy. Consequently, individuals
and nations have fallen into lethargy, vice, and decay. The enemies in a
pleasure economy are found within the individual; these are as yet
unconquered under the allurements of a pleasure environment. In discussing
the conflicts between these habits and ideals, Dr. Patten may err in implying
that the race once was not in a pain economy and hence did not originally
develop out of such an environment, but he nevertheless has analyzed an
important societal fact in his pain-pleasure transition concept.
Another type of conflict theory of society is advanced by Thomas
Nixon Carver. Professor Carver begins his analysis with a discussion of the
conflict of human interests. Originally all conflicts were settled on the basis
of might. But conflicts between persons who are beginning to think,
sometimes lead one or each of the contending parties to a consideration of
adjusting the conflict by other than physical strife. At this point the concept
of justice begins to take form.
Justice, according to Dr. Carver, is “that system of adjusting conflicting
XX-7
interests which makes the group strong and progressive.” Virtue and
strength are pronounced identical, and strength is defined “according to its
ability to make itself universal.”
Conflict arises out of scarcity. Where two men want the same thing,
conflict ensues. It is this antagonism of interests which produces moral
problems and furnishes a basis of determining justice and injustice. One
reason for the lack of supply of things which people seek is that in society
human wants are unduly expended. If wants could be kept low and
production high, an adaptation of people to things would take place which
would greatly lessen conflict.
Conflicts take place in three different fields: (1) between man and
nature, (2) between man and man, and (3) between the different interests of
XX-8
the same man. If there were no such conflicts, there would be no moral
problems. The result would be paradise.

The institutions of property, the family, and the state have developed
out of antagonism of interests, which in turn, as has been said, is the result
of scarcity. If things were not scarce, no one would think of claiming
property in anything. In a similar way the kinship group becomes desirous
of possessing property and hence acquires unity. In asserting that the
unifying principle in the family is an economic one, Dr. Carver espouses a
theory of economic determinism. In fact, he holds that “the economic
problem is the fundamental one, out of which all other social and moral
XX-9
problems have grown.”
Dr. Carver somewhat softens his rigorous social theories when he
admits that there may be a few people in the world whose feeling of
humanity is strong enough to overbalance an antagonism of interests and to
XX-10
lead them to treat the world as a normal individual treats his family. A
world of such people would make a world of communism. But such a world
is unthinkable, because world-loving people are social aberrations. The
individual whose altruism is such that he gladly gives his body to a tiger, is
not helping to transform the world into a world of saints but into a world of
XX-11
tigers. Extreme forms of benevolence and meekness constitute the
XX-12
very food upon which selfishness fattens.
Professor Carver, therefore, points out two sources of conflict, namely,
scarcity of desirable things and self-centered appreciation. These two bases
of conflict are fundamentally natural and normal. Conflicts appear,
however, in a great variety of forms. This classification of the methods of
XX-13
struggling for existence is fourfold.
(1) There is a group of conflicts which are primarily destructive, such
as war, robbery, dueling, sabotage, brawling. These conflicts are all crude,
primitive, brutal. They represent man at his lowest ebb. They are militant in
character, depending upon the individual’s power to destroy, to harm, or to
XX-14
inflict pain and injury.
(2) Deceptive conflicts are of an order slightly higher than the militant.
They include thieving, swindling, adulteration of goods, false advertising.
They imply a greater degree of intelligence than the purely destructive types
of conflict.

(3) Another form of conflict is persuasive in character, for example,
political, erotic, commercial, and legal conflicts. Political competition
includes seeking governmental appointments, running for office,
campaigning for a political party. Erotic conflicts are in the main different
forms of courtship. Commercial persuasion utilizes the agencies of
advertising and salesmanship. Legal conflicts include litigations in the
courts. In all these illustrations the individual strives to further his own
interests by his persuative ability. Oftentimes resort is made to cheap
persuasive methods, such as demagogy or political claptrap. Sometimes the
persuasion falls to the level of deception and, occasionally, to destructive
depths.
(4) The highest form of conflicts are the productive types. Some
productive conflicts refer to rivalries in producing economic goods; others
to rivalries in rendering service. In his Essays in Social Justice, Professor
Carver discusses three forms of economic competition at length. Here he
includes competitive production, competitive bargaining, and competitive
consumption of economic goods. The second class has already been
referred to as commercial persuasion. Competitive production increases the
supply of economic goods and “always works well.” Competitive
consumption, however, “always works badly.” It means “rivalry in display,
in ostentation, in the effort to outshine or to outdress all one’s neighbors, or
at least not to be outshone or outdressed by them.” It is usually deceptive; it
has no productive features about it. It may even assume a form of waste and
destruction. The highest type of conflict is friendly rivalry in rendering
service to other people.
Professor Carver would have self-interest direct its efforts toward the
welfare of the nation. Since neither law nor government can eliminate self-
interest, the next best thing is to connect it with national well-being. Nearly
all useful things that are done in a community are undertaken through self-
XX-15 XX-16
interest. Even co-operation is a form of competition. The purpose
of co-operation is to enable groups of individuals to compete more
effectively against opposing groups.
Competition is not an evil in itself. The spirit which dominates
competition is the important thing. Some people are motivated by the pig-
trough philosophy, which emphasizes struggle for the sake of possession

and consumption of goods. The workbench philosophy accents “action and
not possession, production and not consumption.”
These theories, excellent in many particulars, apparently do not rate at
full value the fact that education and love can and do modify the self-
interest of the individual, and at the same time direct the attention of the
individual toward unselfish service. In stressing service through
achievement and production, they neglect to emphasize achievement
through service. Competition in rendering unselfish service is underrated.
It was Novicow, the Russian sociologist, who laid bare the alleged
benefits of war, showing that the gains which come from war may be
XX-17
obtained through other methods of social interaction. Novicow argued
forcefully that the real enemies of a group of people are disease germs and
death, not the best people of other nationality groups. Novicow’s vision
enabled him to perceive the foolishness of men who lock themselves
together in destructive conflict, when the real enemies are microscopic
disease bacteria and the gaunt black specter of death.
Conflict bulks large in the sociology of Edward A. Ross. Any
interference with the carrying out of the individual’s plans and with the
satisfying of his interests creates opposition. The best characteristic of the
XX-18
phenomenon of opposition is that it awakens and stimulates.
Competition operates according to psychologic laws; for example, the
intensity of competition varies according (1) to the degree of personal
liberty, (2) to the rate of social change, and (3) inversely as the efficiency of
XX-19
the selective agents.
One of the most important forms of competition is found in
industrialism. The invention and adoption of the power-driven machine has
created an industrialism which is moulding and transforming society in
startling ways, and which is causing “its members more and more to cluster
XX-20
at opposite poles of the social spindle.” Professor Ross expresses
slight hope that the ownership of industrial capital will be disseminated
through the working class according to the conflict rules of the present
economic system.
Other conflict theories will be presented in the following chapters; for
example, the conflict theories of Gustav Ratzenhofer and Albion W. Small

will be noted in the chapter on co-operation concepts, and Gabriel Tarde’s
analysis of conflict will be taken up in the discussion of psycho-sociological
thought.
In general, the social conflict doctrines, when carried to the extreme,
fail to recognize that conflict and co-operation are correlative social
processes. Humanly speaking, one is as old as the other. Both spring from
the deepest types of human needs. While the earliest types of associative
life may have been characterized by a predominance of conflict, the highest
stages are ruled by the co-operative spirit. This transition together with the
leading co-operation theories of social progress will be taken up in the
chapter which follows.
Suffice it to say here that conflict and competition are essential to
social advance. They are both highly useful when operating in the fields of
production and service.

Chapter XXI

Co-operation Theories in Sociology
One of the first persons to work out a systematic interpretation of co-
XXI-1
operation was Giovanni Vico (1668–1744), an Italian philosopher.
Vico rejected the social contract idea because he believed that it was a false
interpretation of the true principle of co-operation. The concept of a social
contract embodied an artificial and metaphysical notion of social life.
In his chief work, Principles of a New Science Concerning the
Common Nature of Nations, Vico inaugurated a study of actual social
phenomena. He sought to discover possible social laws. He attempted to
cast aside the accidental social elements and to organize the regularities of
social phenomena into laws. He searched for the laws governing the growth
and decay of societies. He undertook to analyze the history of human
society.
Although Vico’s important treatise was not known outside of Italy until
a century and a half after it was originally published, it contained a
statement of the factor which is basic to any sound co-operation theory of
social progress. Vico was one of the first writers to describe the principle
that all human groups have a common nature. His comparative studies of
human institutions everywhere, led him always to the belief in the common
mind of mankind, a concept which in recent years has been ably elaborated
by D. G. Brinton. For this contribution Vico has been called “the father of
sociology.”
According to Vico, the fundamental social movement is a gradual
unfolding or evolution of social institutions in response to the common
needs of people. Society owes its development in part to the reflections of
the wise, as the social contract theorists have said, but also to the human
feelings even of the brutish. This natural sociability of man has furnished
the chief basis for the rise and development of the spirit of co-operation.

The natural sociability of human beings has led, more or less
unconsciously on the part of man, to the establishment of necessary social
relations and institutions. The purpose of social organization is to produce
perfect human personalities. Vico outlined the evolutionary character of
society according to the spiral theory, namely, that society does return upon
itself but that, when it completes a cycle, it is upon a higher plane of co-
operation than when the given cycle began. Vico also made religion a
necessary principle of progress. Although in adjusting himself to the
prevailing theological dogmas of his time, Vico committed serious scientific
errors, he nevertheless is deserving of special credit for his emphasis upon
the common nature and natural sociability of mankind.
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the celebrated Dutch scholar, gave to social
thought the international concept. He advanced the idea of the coming co-
operation among the nations—nations which in his time were moved
primarily by jealousy and hatred in their relations with one another. Grotius
was the originator of a definite set of principles and laws for international
co-operation. His work in this regard accentuated the importance of like-
mindedness in matters of international polity.
Spinoza, whose contributions regarding the concept of sovereignty
have already been stated, declared that the instinct to acquire is naturally
stronger than the tendency to share. Hence, man must be educated to
perceive the advantages of co-operative living. When this appreciation
occurs, when the advantages of co-operation become clear, then man will
sublimate his egoistic and self-seeking desires to altruistic communal
living. As man comes to understand, step by step, the values of co-operative
conduct, he will overcome, degree by degree, his selfish impulses.
The references which were made in Chapter XIV to the work and
writings of certain socialists, such as Robert Owen, form another link in this
discussion of the development of the co-operation concept. While the
experiments in consumers’ co-operation, such as the activities of the
Rochdale Pioneers, have had splendid success in many countries, they have
demonstrated that they can flourish only in an environment where the co-
operative spirit rules. While the experiments in producers’ co-operation
have often failed and have not yet as a class been successful, they have
testified to the absence of a developed co-operative spirit rather than to the
failure of the principle upon which they are based.

Peter Kropotkin, whose opposition to socialism was indicated in
Chapter XIV, rendered a useful service in writing his Mutual Aid; a Factor
in Evolution. Kropotkin, a loyal Darwinian, protested against the falsely
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labeled “social Darwinianism.” Kropotkin made plain that Darwin’s
interpretation of evolution, while stressing the struggle for existence, also
pointed out that there is in evolution a powerful tide of co-operation. The
logical conclusion of this treatment of evolution, according to Kropotkin, is
not a phase of “social Darwinianism” with its emphasis upon a biological
struggle in the highest human realms, but a world of human association in
which the co-operative spirit has risen to a position of control over physical
force and selfish desire.
Kropotkin studied animal life extensively and concluded that, although
there was among animals a severe struggle against a heartless Nature, there
was essentially no bitter struggle for existence “among animals belonging
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to the same species.” There is no pitiless inner war for life within this
species, and moreover, this alleged war is not a condition of progress. War,
declared Kropotkin, is not a condition of social progress.
Kropotkin considered the clan and the tribe rather than the individual or
even the family the starting point of society. The tribe itself developed a
morale on the basis of beliefs in its common origin and in the worship of
common ancestors. Then the possession in common of certain lands served
to arouse new tribal loyalties. These loyalties expressed themselves in the
form of “con-jurations,” sworn agreements, and ultimately in fraternities
and guilds for mutual support. Kropotkin believed that primitive man was
naturally peaceful, and that he fought from necessity rather than from
ferocity.
In primitive communal organization the judge and military chief united
for “mutual insurance of domination,” drawing to their support the slavish
loyalty of the witch-doctor or priest. In the twelfth century, however, the old
communal spirit broke forth with “striking spontaneity all over Europe;” it
stopped for a time the growth of the despotic monarchies of Europe; it
produced endless numbers of communes.
The free cities developed under the shelter of communal liberties, and
in them art and invention flourished, producing the beauty of Raphael, the
vigor of Michaelangelo, the poetry of Dante, and “the discoveries which