Social process

PUBLIC OPINION AN ORGANIC PROCESS RATHER THAN A CONSENSUS—DECISION—THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MINORITIES

Public opinion, if we wish to see it as it is, should be regarded as an organic process, and not merely as a state of agreement about some question of the day. It is, in truth, a complex growth, always continuous with the past, never becoming simple, and only partly unified from time to time for the sake of definite action. Like other phases of intelligence, it is of the nature of a drama, many characters taking part in a variegated unity of action. The leaders of the day, not only in politics but in every field, the class groups—capitalists, socialists, organized labor, professional men, farmers and the like—the various types of radicals and reactionaries; all these are members of an intricate, progressing whole. And it is a whole for the same reason that a play is, because the characters, though divergent and often conflicting, interact upon one another and create a total movement which the mind must follow by a total process. For practical uses as well as for adequate thinking this conception is better than the idea of public opinion as agreement. It aims to see the real thing, the developing thought of men, in its genesis and tendencies, and with a view to its probable operation.

The view that we have no public opinion except when, and in so far as, people agree, is a remnant of that obsolete social philosophy which regarded individuals as normally isolated, and social life as due to their emerging partly from this isolation and coming together in certain specific ways. It is this habit of thought, apparently, that makes it difficult for most persons to understand that a group which has maturely thought over and discussed a matter arrives at a public opinion regarding it whether the members agree or not. That is, the mental process has developed about the matter in question and there has come to be a unity of action, as in a play, which insures that, however opinions may differ, they make parts of a whole, each having helped to form all the others. No one would deny unity of action to Macbeth because the characters are various and conflicting; if they were not, the unity would be too mechanical to be of interest; and so would it be with opinion if it attained any such uniformity as is sometimes supposed.

It is true that a process of opinion can hardly exist without a certain underlying like-mindedness, sufficient for mutual understanding and influence, among the members of the group; if they are separated into uncommunicating sections the unity of action is lost. Race difference may do this (largely, perhaps, by making men think they are more unlike than they are), religious division has done it, also traditional hostility, as where one nation has subjugated another, and even social caste. But communicated differences are the life of opinion, as cross-breeding is of a natural stock.

The main argument for basing the idea of public opinion upon agreement is that this is the only method of decision and consequently of action; which is what all is for; in other words, that it is only as agreement that opinion can function.

It is true that decision is a phase of the utmost importance, corresponding to choice in the individual, and that the whole process of attention, discussion, and democratic organization is, in a sense, a preparation for it. It is equally true, however, that it is only a partial and often a superficial act, involving compromise and adjusted to a particular contingency. A real understanding of the human mind, both in its individual and public aspects, requires that it be seen in the whole process, of which majorities and decisions are but transient phases. The choice of to-day is important; but the inchoate conditions which are breeding the choices to come are at least equally so. We shall be interested to find whether Democrats or Republicans win the next election; but how much more interesting it would be to know what obscure group of non-conformers is cherishing the idea that will prevail twenty years from now.

The organic view seems to be the only one that does justice to the significance of minorities. If you think of agreement as the essential thing they appear as mere remnants, refractory and irreconcilable factions of no great importance. But if you have an eye for organic development, it is obvious that minorities, even small ones, may be the most pregnant factors in the situation. All progress, all notable change of any kind, begins with a few, and it is, accordingly, among the small and beginning parties that we may always look for the tendencies that are likely to dominate the future. Originality, faith, and the resolution to make things better are always in a minority, while every majority is made up for the most part of inert and dependent elements.

It is a fact of the utmost significance when a few, or even a single individual, are so convinced of something that they are willing to stand up for it in the midst of a hostile majority; their very isolation insuring that they have more convincing grounds for their action than the ordinary undecided and conforming citizen. So Liebknecht, who alone in the German Reichstag opposed and denounced the war, was perhaps of more significance than all the more docile mass of the Socialist party. All great movements have in their early history heroes and often martyrs who were the seed of their future success.

There is nothing more democratic than intelligent and devoted non-conformity, because it means that the individual is giving his freedom and courage to the service of the whole. Subservience, to majorities, as to any other authority, tends to make vigorous democracy impossible.

WHAT IS RATIONAL CONTROL?—STANDARDS AS TESTS OF FUNCTION—MINIMUM STANDARDS—MECHANICAL TREND OF STANDARDIZATION—HIGHER FUNCTIONS NOT NUMERICALLY MEASURABLE—THE JUDGMENT OF EXPERT GROUPS—NEED OF STANDARD-SETTING GROUPS—UNIVERSITIES AS STANDARD-MAKERS—THE CRITIC

The ideal aim of intelligence seems to be the rational control of human life. Just what do we mean by this? Surely not that a conscious process must everywhere be substituted for an unconscious; common sense tells us that this is impracticable or inexpedient. Perhaps a fair statement would be that we mean by rational control a conduct of affairs such that their working, in a large way, commends itself to intelligence, even though not always guided by it.

A man’s every-day life runs, for the most part, on instinct and habit. His digestion and other physiological functions, his routine work and recreation, go on without much help from his thinking. Rational control consists mainly in a certain watchfulness over these processes, which awakes attention when anything goes wrong with them, and applies an intelligent remedy if it can. It is quite as likely to be manifested by judicious inactivity as by interference. So with the manager of a factory: the secret of effective control, in his case, is to allow every machine and every subordinate to do his own work, paying, for the most part, no attention to the details, and yet carrying in his mind an ideal of the working of the whole which enables him to see and correct anything that goes wrong. Likewise with the social organization at large. Its working consists, in great preponderance, of ideas, feelings, actions that have no conscious reference to the system as a whole, but are, from that point of view, merely mechanical; while rational control calls for an intelligence and idealism that understands how the whole ought to work, and exerts the necessary authority at the right time and place.

There is a certain presumption in favor of letting the unconscious processes alone. They are the outcome of a tentative development, confused and blind for the most part, but resulting in something that does, after a fashion, work; and this is no mean achievement. One of the best fruits of our study of history is to perceive how little we know, and how possible it is that what appears to us senseless and harmful does serve some useful purpose. A conservatism like that of Burke is always worth considering, whose later writings, as every one knows, are largely an endeavor to make us conscious of the limits of consciousness, in order that we may conserve the benefits that we owe to unconscious growth. The traditional organisms of society—language, folkways, common law and the like—exhibit on the whole an adaptability to conditions, a workableness, that could not be equalled by reflective consciousness alone. The latter may give us Volapük, but from the former we have the English of Shakespeare.

Nevertheless there is an evident need of a competent intelligence to watch and supplement the unconscious processes. George Meredith compares the irregular and uncertain progress of the world to that of a drunkard staggering toward home,

No doubt it does get on, after a fashion, but the fashion is often one that is disgraceful to a rational being. While there is a great deal of truth in the idea of the involuntary beneficence of economic competition, it is certain that under the too great sway of this idea natural resources are wasted, children stunted and deprived of opportunity, women exploited, and the unrighteous allowed to thrive.

If we consider how rational control may be achieved we are led at once into the question of standards of service. If we could devise and apply, in connection with every function, some sound test of performance, so that all concerned might know just what good service is, and how the service of one agent compares with that of another, the question of control would become simple.

This would not only act directly to promote efficiency of every sort through selecting the best men and methods, and holding them to a high grade of work, but would have an immeasurably beneficent effect in diffusing through the community order, contentment, clearness of purpose, and good-will, instead of the confusion, unrest, and hostility that now so largely prevail. Standards of any kind, if generally accepted, have the same kind of effect that the use of money has in economic exchanges: they make relations definite and thus facilitate co-operation and allay disputes. Ill-feeling, whether toward other persons or toward life in general, is based chiefly, perhaps, on resentments and perplexities arising from the lack of settled valuations. If we all knew what our place in life was and what our just claims were, as compared with those of others, the confusion that now prevails would subside.

We may distinguish, as regards human conduct, two sorts of standards: the higher or emulative, instigating us to attain or approach an ideal, and minimum standards or limits of toleration, conformity to which is more or less compulsory. The former appeal to the more capable and ambitious, the latter are imposed on the backward. One defines the type at the bottom, the other at the top.

In almost every kind of activity it is harmful to tolerate those who fall below a certain level of achievement: they not only set a bad example and lower the grade of service, but impair co-operation and esprit de corps. Even in competitive games, such as foot-racing, jumping, golf, and the like, it is usual to classify the players so that those in each group shall be sufficiently homogeneous to incite one another to do their best; and every one knows how detrimental is the influence of a player of a lower class. In the breeding of animals we have the immemorial practice of eliminating individuals who lack certain “points,” and the social science of eugenics aims, in a similar manner, to set a standard of propagation for the human race. Our whole body of penal law is a system of minimum requirements as to conduct, and the conventions or mores enforced by public sentiment have much the same character.

The idea is ancient and familiar, its present interest arising largely from a tendency to apply it more and more stringently in the control of economic competition. It appears here in a great variety of forms, but the general aim is to classify more definitely the kinds of economic struggle, to determine who are and who are not legitimate participants in each, and to see to it that all are carried on under proper rules for the protection of the weak and the welfare of the public.

All competent students feel that there is urgent need of a rational programme for the protection from crushing and degradation of those who, for whatever reason, are not in a position to protect themselves. If their weakness is intrinsic they need to be removed from the general struggle and put in a class by themselves; if it is accidental they require intelligent succor while they are recovering their strength.

The weak side of the standardization idea, as applied to society, is its trend toward the numerical and mechanical. An external, visible test, almost always superficial in this sphere, is easy to apply, and for that reason recommends itself to all who seek precise results without an exercise of the higher faculties of the mind. This, added to the prestige which numerical methods have gained by their value to physical science, has given rise to a formalism which intrudes them where they do not belong, and inspires a confidence in results often in inverse ratio to their value.

To the statistical type of mind precision is apt to seem in itself a guaranty of truth, and it is common to see elaborate calculations based on assumptions which will not bear scrutiny. The authors of such structures instinctively avoid any kind of thinking except mathematical. This was partly the case with Francis Galton, a man of real eminence, who made a statistical study of men of genius, in which the numerical part is logically dependent upon the postulate that practically all men of genius become famous.^[81] This view he does not examine adequately; the bent of his mind unfitted him to do so. He had to have a standard test of genius in order to open the way for statistical treatment; and he easily convinced himself that fame was such a test. His postulate, however, is pretty clearly false, and his calculations, consequently, of doubtful value.

Many accept numerical system and precision as “science” without further inquiry. I have seen a university faculty adopt without question a resolution recommending as scientific the distribution of examination marks according to the statistical curve of chance variations from a mean, when probably few if any of those present had asked themselves whether it was likely, in common sense, that the performances of the students followed any such law.

Numerical tests may, no doubt, be used to compare the results of processes which are in themselves nonmechanical and perhaps inscrutable. Thus of two salesmen spending the same time on similar routes selling the same goods at the same prices, one will sell twice as many as the other; it is often impossible to say why. “Personality” does it; that is, a complex of influences beyond the sphere of precise analysis. But you can measure the results of its operation and be fairly sure they will be repeated. It is the same with authors. When a new writer submits the manuscript of a novel the publisher can make only a very uncertain guess as to how many copies of it will sell; but when several novels have been published and shown their power to interest the public a reasonably safe prediction is possible. The statistical method does not require that the process we are testing be understood, but only that it be uniform. In that case its future working may be predicted from its past. There is a large and legitimate field for ingenuity in thus standardizing human function.

Formalism is apt to come in, however, by our taking a mechanical view of the function itself, of the end to be sought, in order to make it more easily measurable. This objection may be made, for example, to rating and rewarding salesmen according to the amount of their sales. It seems that this is not, in practice, a good plan, because their behavior counts in many ways not covered by such a calculation. A merchant says: “If you have five hundred sales-people working on a straight commission basis, you have five hundred individuals who are, in principle, each one in business for himself.... This means that there is no group spirit, no sense of unity in the organization, no co-operative spirit present. It works out very badly.” He suggests a modified test, also numerical, which is inadequate in theory, however it may work. The complete function of personality is never measurable. We have the same fallacy in the attempts to measure the value of a professor by the number of students electing his courses, or the number of hours he spends in his classroom.

It seems to be a general truth that the higher a social or mental function the less capable it is of numerical measurement; the reason being that the higher functions are acts of creative organization that can be appreciated only by a judgment of the same order. The work of a lawyer, a teacher, a clergyman, a man of science, even of an artistic craftsman, can be measured only by expert opinion. Our tests of the mental capacity of children should be mechanical only in so far as they relate to mechanical processes, like verbal memory or calculation. When it comes to higher capacities, like the understanding of complex ideas or sentiments, such as honor, the test, if it is to be of any value, must be applied, not mechanically, but by some one of imagination to understand what the child means by his answers.

I have little confidence in the more ambitious projects of some psychologists in the way of measuring a priori the capacity of the mind for the various vocations. I do not doubt that many useful hints can be gained by laboratory methods; but if a function is essentially social the test should also be social: science should keep as close to nature as possible. In civil service examinations such qualifications as speed in typewriting may be ascertained by a mechanical test, but as regards any sort of social ability, such as fitness for collecting labor statistics, or conducting correspondence, the main reliance is necessarily placed on success in actual work of a similar character.

In short, any merely mechanical test of the higher human faculties and achievements is, and must remain, an illusion. The only real criterion is the sympathetic and, as it were, participating judgment of a mind qualified by capacity and training to understand these faculties and share in their operation. Goethe maintained that the only competent critic of literary work is the man who can do similar work himself, and the principle is of wide application.

Is there, then, any way of testing the higher functions, involving leadership and creative organization, so as to maintain a high level of performance? There is no way that is precise or final, especially where originality is in question—since it is the nature of originality to set aside accepted tests—but higher functions of a somewhat settled character may be kept up to the mark through the judgments of an expert group. The various branches of natural science—say, astronomy, geology, or physiology—offer good examples, in that each possesses a group of men with high and definite ideals as to what is standard achievement in their specialty, and with a disposition to apply these in exalting the worthy and casting the unworthy out. It is much the same in all the so-called learned professions. The principle applies also, though with a somewhat looser discipline, in literature, sculpture, painting, architecture, and music; that is, achievement in each of these is appraised, more or less decisively, by a competent special group.

Such groups may act quite definitely. They may form associations and appoint judges—let us say to accept or reject paintings for an exposition, or to select among competing plans for a public building. The judges, if they are competent, do not decide wholly according to old models or traditions. They are men trained by active participation in the artistic endeavors of the time, and they aim, by an effort of creative appreciation, to understand what new achievement an artist has sought, and the measure of his success.

In spheres like patriotism, philanthropy, and religion, the standards are embodied in the lives and works of men whom the appreciative imaginations of a kindred group recognize as bearers of the ideal. For the Christian tradition the “glorious company of the apostles, the noble army of martyrs,” and their successors incarnate the ideals of the group in cherished examples.

In this regard society greatly needs a more various and closely knit group organization. The modern enlargement of relations has in part broken down the old groups, based chiefly on locality, family, and class, and brought in a somewhat formless and unchannelled state of things for which a remedy must apparently be sought in the development of groups of a new kind. Only close and lasting co-operation can discipline the individual and provide standards for every kind of function.

It is peculiarly requisite to have vigorous and distinctive groups devoted to achievement for which there is no commercial reward. We need men who will passionately set themselves to do fine and ever finer work, hungry for perfection, careless of popular recognition, inspired by congenial example and appreciation, and creating higher standards for those who follow.

The action of commercialism in repressing higher achievement is quite simple: it merely sets up such a din that it is hard to hear anything else. It is ever assailing us from newspapers and from the voices, eyes, and actions of our associates. If we have no momentum of our own it carries us along. It is scarcely possible for one to make separate headway against it: we must have groups and environments, organized to other ends, in which we may take refuge.

It is a frequent remark that it is the function of the universities to set the standards of modern democracy. I suppose the idea of this is that since we have abandoned the standard-setting leadership of a hereditary class we must look for a substitute to groups trained and inspired by the educational institutions. This implies a noble conception of such institutions, and the more one thinks of it the more reasonable it appears. It would mean that the universities should select and train competent men in all the more intellectual functions, including literature and the fine arts, inspiring them with ideals which, as members of special groups, they would uphold and effectuate for the good of society. Beyond this, it should mean for all students a moral culture and spirit of devotion to their country and to humanity fit to set the standards of the nation in these high regards. I do not think that such supreme leadership or standard-setting can come from any one source, but the universities, as the appointed organs of higher culture, may aspire to take a large part in it. To their actual achievement only moderate praise can be given.

When I am raking and burning leaves, as I have to in the fall and spring, I often light one little pile, and, when it is well afire, I pick from it a burning leaf or two on my rake and carry them to the next pile, which thus catches their flame. It seems to me that this is what a university should do for the higher life of our people. It should be on fire, and each student who goes out should be a burning leaf to start the flame in the community where he goes.

The working out of higher control turns much upon the critic, whose function is no less than to incarnate intelligence, to embrace in his mind the whole organism and process, and to evaluate the operation of every part. In literature and art the competent critic—Goethe, let us say, or Sainte-Beuve—aims to appreciate each man’s work as a function of the universal spirit and declare its part in the whole. The same principle applies to more special groups. In the army the critic is the consummate officer who, in times of peace, observes carefully the tests and evolutions and brings to bear upon every detail an expert judgment of its significance with reference to that success in war which is his supreme ideal. In industry, considered as production, he is the efficiency expert. Considering it from the standpoint of human welfare he is a social expert with or without official standing.

All the settled and interesting lines of human achievement naturally produce critics, because contemplative men, familiar with the tradition, find enjoyment in surveying the field as a whole, and appraising the various contributions. The matter is bound up with organization, and where that is lacking criticism is usually weak. For this reason, largely, American culture is sadly deficient in it.

We urgently need a criticism of our social system that shall be competent to a somewhat authoritative estimate of the human value of the various activities. In order to this it must be well instructed in social science and history, familiar also with practical conditions, courageous, judicious, and highly gifted by nature with insight and faith. We have not attained this as yet; our judgments, like the conditions themselves, are in much confusion. It is fairly apparent, however, that social criticism is growing with the growth of research and endeavor. Although social workers are ardent people, often with a good deal of bias, yet their serious struggle with real conditions, preceded, commonly, by academic training, has already enabled them to illumine many obscure matters and put public sentiment in right tracks. And the more retired students who deal with social psychology, philosophy, and statistics are no doubt doing their part also. There is a decline in that particularistic spirit that spent itself in the advocacy of conflicting panaceas, and a growth in the larger spirit which judges all schemes with reference to a common organic ideal.

DRAMATIC CHARACTER OF THE SCIENCES OF LIFE—SPECIAL CHARACTER OF SOCIOLOGY—NUMERICAL EXACTNESS NOT ITS IDEAL—QUALIFICATIONS OF A SOCIOLOGIST—PRACTICAL VALUE OF SOCIOLOGY

We have seen that social intelligence is essentially an imaginative grasp of the process going on about us, enabling us to carry this forward into the future and anticipate how it will work. It is a dramatic vision by which we see how the agents now operating must interact upon one another and issue in a new situation. How shall we apply this idea to social science? Shall we say that that too is dramatic?

There would be nothing absurd in such a view. All science may be said to work by a dramatic method when it takes the results of minute observation and tries to build them into fresh wholes of knowledge. This, we know, takes creative imagination; the intelligence must act in sympathy with nature and foresee its operation. The work on the evolution of life for which Darwin is most famous may justly be described as an attempt to dramatize what mankind had come to know about plants and animals. He took the painfully won details and showed how they contributed to a living process whose operation could be traced in the past, and possibly anticipated for the future. And, indeed, so homogeneous is life, the phases he found in this process—divergence, struggle, adaptation—are much the same as have always been recognized in the drama.

Darwin regarded the study of fossils as a means to the better understanding of life upon earth, as a way to see what is going on, and in like manner the precise observation of individuals and families in sociology is preparatory to a social synthesis whose aim also is to see what is going on.

The routine conception of science as merely precise study of details is never a sound one, and is particularly barren in the social field. If we are to arrive at principles or have any success at all in prediction we must keep the imagination constantly at work. And even in detailed studies we must dramatize more or less to make the facts intelligible. An investigator of juvenile delinquency who was not armed with insight as well as schedules would not report anything of much value.

There are marked differences, however, between biology and sociology, considered as studies of process, of which I will note especially two. One is that in biology essential change in types is chiefly slow and not easily perceptible. For the most part we have to do with a moving equilibrium of species and modes of life repeating itself generation after generation. It took a Darwin to show, by comparing remote periods, that nature was really evolving, dramatic, creative.

In social life, on the other hand, change is obvious and urgent; so that the main practical object of our science is to understand and control it. The dramatic element, which in biology is revealed only to a titanic imagination, becomes the most familiar and intimate thing in experience. Any real study of society must be first, last, and nearly all the time a study of process.

Again, the sciences that deal with social life are unique in that we who study them are a conscious part of the process. We can know it by sympathetic participation, in a manner impossible in the study of plant or animal life. Many indeed find this fact embarrassing, and are inclined to escape it by trying to use only “objective” methods, or to question whether it does not shut out sociology and introspective psychology from the number of true sciences.

I should say that it puts these studies in a class by themselves: whether you call them sciences or something else is of no great importance. It is their unique privilege to approach life from the point of view of conscious and familiar partaking of it. This involves unique methods which must be worked out independently. The sooner we cease circumscribing and testing ourselves by the canons of physical and physiological science the better. Whatever we do that is worth while will be done by discarding alien formulas and falling back upon our natural bent to observation and reflection. Going ahead resolutely with these we shall work out methods as we go. In fact sociology has already developed at least one original method of the highest promise, namely that of systematic social surveys.

The reason that students of the principles of sociology (as distinguished from those whose aim is immediately practical) are somewhat less preoccupied with the digging out of primary facts than with their interpretation, is simply that, for the present, the latter is the more difficult task. We have within easy reach facts which, if fully digested and correlated, would probably be ample to illuminate the whole subject. It is very much as in political economy, whose principles have been worked out mainly by the closer and closer study and interpretation of facts which, as details, every business man knows.

Knowledge requires both observation and interpretation, neither being more scientific than the other. And each branch of science must be worked out in its own way, which is mainly to be found in the actual search for truth rather than by a priori methodology. Sociology has as ample a field of verifiable fact as any subject, and it is not clear that the interpretations are more unsettled than they are elsewhere. The chief reason why it has developed late and still appears uninviting to many is the very abundance and apparent confusion of the material, which seems to take away the hope of simple, sure, and lasting results. One purpose in our study of principles is to restore this hope and give order to this abundance. And while there are certainly special difficulties, as in all sciences, our own is coming to afford, I think, as great intellectual attraction as can be found in other studies, along with a human and social character peculiar to itself. It will be strange if an increasing proportion of good minds do not give themselves to it.

While I ascribe the utmost importance to precision in preparing the data for social science, I do not think its true aim is to bring society within the sphere of arithmetic. Exact prediction and mechanical control for the social world I believe to be a false ideal inconsiderately borrowed from the provinces of physical science. There is no real reason to think that this sort of prediction or control will ever be possible.

Much has been made of the fact that human phenomena, when studied statistically on a large scale, often show a marked numerical uniformity from year to year; and some have even inferred that human spontaneity is an illusion, and that we are really controlled by mathematical laws as precise as those which guide the course of the planets. But I take it that such uniformities as are to be observed in births, marriages, suicides, and many other human phenomena do not indicate underlying principles analogous to the laws of gravitation or chemical reaction. They merely show that under a given social condition the number of persons who will choose to perform certain definite acts within the year may remain almost the same, or may be increased or diminished by certain definite changes, such as the advent of war or economic hardship. They no more prove that human conduct is subject to numerical law than does the fact that I eat three meals a day, or that I shall spend more money if my salary is raised, and less if it is diminished.

In other words statistical uniformities do not show that it is possible to predict numerically the working of intelligence in new situations, and of course that is the decisive test. Where exact prediction is possible the whole basis of it I take to be the fact that the general social situation remains the same, or is changed in ways which do not involve new problems of choice in the field studied. In short, the more the question is one of intelligence the less the numerical method can cope with it.

Uniformity in the suicide rate, so far as it exists, shows that the causes of suicide, whatever they may be, are operating in about the same degree from year to year, that the social situation is static, or rather in moving equilibrium. It reveals no law of suicide beyond the fact that it is connected in some definite way with the social situation in general. It does not help you to understand why Saul Jones killed himself, or to predict whether Jonathan Smith will or not. All you know is that if the general current of human trouble goes on about the same, the number of cases is not likely to vary much.

Serious attempts to understand suicide and to predict its prevalence under various conditions are based, if they are intelligent, upon psychological theories of an imaginative character. Thus Dürkheim, in his book upon the subject, develops the idea of “altruistic” suicide, and enables us to understand how a disgraced army officer, for example, might be driven to it by social pressure. To such studies statistics is only an adjunct.

In the case of marriage you may be able to predict with some accuracy the effect of the simpler sort of economic changes, such as larger or smaller crops, but, if so, it is because marriage is a familiar problem, settled in much the same way by one generation after the other, on the basis of lasting instincts or conventions. You cannot, in the same way, anticipate the outcome of the next presidential campaign, or of any other transaction in which the human mind is confronting a fresh situation.

The only instrument that can in any degree meet the test of prediction, where new problems of higher choice confront the mind, is the instructed imagination, which, by a kind of inspired intelligence, may anticipate within itself the drama of social process, and so foresee the issue. That this supreme act of the mind, never more than partly successful, even in the simplest questions, can ever become, on a large scale, sure, precise, and demonstrable before the event, there is no evidence or probability. So far as we can now see or infer, social prediction, in the higher provinces, must ever remain tentative, and I suspect that all the sciences which deal with the life process are subject to a similar limitation. Darwin’s suggestion regarding the “free will” of the dinosaur would seem to indicate that this was his opinion.^[82]

Intelligent social prediction is contradictory to determinism, because, instead of ignoring the creative will, it accepts it and endeavors by sympathy to enter into it and foresee its working. If I predict an artistic or humanitarian movement, it is partly because I feel as if I myself, with whatever freedom and creative power is in me, would choose to share in such a movement.

The possibility of social science rests upon the hypothesis that social life is in some sense rational and sequent. It has been assumed that this can be true only if it is mechanically calculable. But there may easily be another sort of rationality and sequence, not mechanical, consistent with a kind of freedom, which makes possible an organized development of social knowledge answering to the organic character of the social process. The life of men has a unity and order of its own, which may or may not prove to be the same in essence as that which rules the stars. It seems to include a creative element which must be grasped by the participating activity of the mind rather than by computations. How far it can be known and predicted is a matter for trial. The right method is the one that may be found to give the best results. Apparently it is not, except in subordinate degree, the numerical method.

A sociologist must have the patient love of truth and the need to reduce it to principles which all men of science require. Besides this, however, he needs the fullest sympathy and participation in the currents of life. He can no more stand aloof than can the novelist or the poet, and all his work is, in a certain sense, autobiographic. I mean that it is all based on perceptions which he has won by actual living. He should know his groups as Mr. Bryce came to know America, with a real intimacy due to long and considerate familiarity with individuals, families, cities, and manifold opinions and traditions. He cannot be a specialist in the same way that a chemist or a botanist can, because he cannot narrow his life without narrowing his grasp of his subject. To attempt to build up sociology as a technical tradition remote from the great currents of literature and philosophy, would, in my opinion, be a fatal error. It cannot avoid being difficult, but it should be as little abstruse as possible. If it is not human it is nothing.

I have often thought that, in endowment, Goethe was almost the ideal sociologist, and that one who added to more common traits his comprehension, his disinterestedness and his sense for organic unity and movement might accomplish almost anything.

The method of social improvement is likely to remain experimental, but sociology is one of the means by which the experimentation becomes more intelligent. I think, for example, that any one who studies the theory of social classes—the various kinds, the conditions of their formation and continuance, their effect in moulding the minds of those who belong to them, and the like—using what has been written upon the subject to stimulate his own observation and reflection, will find that the contemporary situation is illumined for him and his grasp of the trend of events enhanced.

By observation and thought we work out generalizations which help us to understand where we are and what is going on. These are “principles of sociology.” They are similar in nature to principles of economics, and aid our social insight just as these aid our insight into business or finance. They supply no ready-made solutions but give illumination and perspective. A good sociologist might have poor judgment in philanthropy or social legislation, just as a good political economist might have poor judgment in investing his money. Yet, other things equal, the mind trained in the theory of its subject will surpass in practical wisdom one that is not.

At bottom any science is simply a more penetrating perception of facts, gained largely by selecting those that are more universal and devoting intensive study to them—as biologists are now studying the great fact of hereditary transmission. In so far as we know these more general facts we are the better prepared to work understandingly in the actual complexities of life. Our study should enable us to discern underneath the apparent confusion of things the working of enduring principles of human nature and social process, simplifying the movement for us by revealing its main currents, something as a general can follow the course of a battle better by the aid of a map upon which the chief operations are indicated and the distracting details left out. This will not assure our control of life, but should enable us to devise measures having a good chance of success. And in so far as they fail we should be in a position to see what is wrong and do better next time.

I think, then, that the supreme aim of social science is to perceive the drama of life more adequately than can be done by ordinary observation. If it be objected that this is the task of an artist—a Shakespeare, a Goethe, or a Balzac—rather than of a scientist, I may answer that an undertaking so vast requires the co-operation of various sorts of synthetic minds; artists, scientists, philosophers, and men of action. Or I may say that the constructive part of science is, in truth, a form of art.

Indeed one of the best things to be expected from our study is the power of looking upon the movement of human life in a large, composed spirit, of seeing it in something of ideal unity and beauty.

PROGRESS IS NOT IDENTICAL WITH GROWTH OF INTELLIGENT CONTROL—NOR IS IT DEMONSTRABLE—IT IS ESSENTIALLY TENTATIVE

I cannot accept the view that progress is nothing more or other than the growth of intelligent control. No doubt this is a large part of it; an enlightened and organized public will is, perhaps, our most urgent need; but, after all, life is more than intelligence, and a conception that exalts this alone is sure to prove inadequate. Progress must be at least as many-faceted as the life we already know. Moreover, it is one of those ideas, like truth, beauty and right, which have an outlook upon the infinite, and cannot, in the nature of the case, be circumscribed by a definition.

The truth is that it is often one of the requisites of progress that we trust to the vague, the instinctive, the emotional, rather than to what is ascertained and intellectual. The spirit takes on form and clarity only under the stress of experience: its newer outreachings are bound to be somewhat obscure and inarticulate. The young man who does not trust his vague intuitions as against the formulated wisdom of his elders will do nothing original.

The opinion sometimes expressed that social science should set forth a definite, tangible criterion of progress is also, I think, based on a false conception of the matter, derived, perhaps, from mechanical theories of evolution. Until man himself is a mechanism the lines of his higher destiny can never be precisely foreseen. It is our part to form ideals and try to realize them, and these ideals give us a working test of progress, but there can be nothing certain or final about them.

The method of our advance is, perhaps, best indicated by that which great individuals have used in the guidance of their own lives. Goethe, for example, trusted to the spontaneous motions of his spirit, studying these, however, and preparing for and guiding their expression. Each of his works represented one of these motions, and he kept it by him for years to work upon when the impulse should return. So the collective intelligence must wait upon the motions of humanity, striving to anticipate and further their higher working, but not presuming to impose a formal programme upon them.

The question whether, after all, the world really does progress is not one that can be settled by an intellectual demonstration of any kind. It is possible to prove that mankind has gained and is gaining in material power, in knowledge, and in the extent and diversity of social organization; that history shows an enlarging perspective and that the thoughts of men are, in truth, “broadened with the process of the suns”: but it is always possible to deny that these changes are progress. We seem to mean by this term something additional, a judgment, in fact, that the changes, whatever they may be, are on the whole good. In other words progress, as commonly understood, is essentially a moral category, and the question whether it takes place or not is one of moral judgment. Nothing of this kind is susceptible of incontrovertible demonstration, because the moral judgment is not bound by definite intellectual processes, nearly the same in all minds, but takes in the most obscure and various impulses of human nature.

Suppose you compare the state of the first white settlers in America, narrow and hard, physically, mentally, and socially, with the comparatively easy and spacious life of their descendants at the present time; or contrast the life of a European peasant, dwelling in mediæval ignorance and bondage, with that of the same peasant and his family after they have emigrated to the United States and come to a full share in its intelligence and prosperity. It may seem clear to most people that these changes, which are like those the world in general has been undergoing, are for the better; but the matter is quite debatable. The simpler lot of the pioneer and the peasant can easily be made to appear desirable, and there are, and no doubt always will be, those who maintain that we are no better off than we were.

Development, I should say, can be proved. That is, history reveals, beyond question, a process of enlargement, diversification, and organization, personal and social, that seems vaguely analogous to the growth of plant and animal organisms; but whether we are to write our moral indorsement on the back of all this is another matter. Is it better to be man or the marine animal, “resembling the larvæ of existing Ascidians,”^[83] from which he is believed to have descended? In the end it comes down to this: is life itself a good thing? We see it waxing and shining all about us, and most of us are ready to pronounce that it is good; but the pessimist can always say: “To me it is an evil thing, and the more of it the worse.” And there is no way of convincing him of error.

In short, the reality of progress is a matter of faith, not of demonstration. We find ourselves in the midst of an onward movement of which our own spirits are a part, and most of us are glad to be in it, and to ascribe to it all the good we can conceive or divine. This seems the brave thing to do, the hopeful, animating thing, the only thing that makes life worth while, but it is an act rather of faith than of mere intelligence.

I hold, then, that progress, like human life in every aspect, is essentially tentative, that we work it out as we go along, and always must; that it is a process rather than an attainment. The best is forever indefinable; it is growth, renewal, onwardness, hope. The higher life seems to be an upward struggle toward a good which we can never secure, but of which we have glimpses in a hundred forms of love and joy. In childhood, music, poetry, in transient hours of vision, we know a fuller, richer life of which we are a part, but which we can grasp only in this dim and flitting way. All history is a reaching out for, a slow, partial realization of, such perceptions. The thing for us is to believe in the reality of this larger life, seen or unseen, to cling to all persons and activities that help to draw us into it, to trust that though our individual hold upon it relax with age and be lost, yet the great Whole, from which we are in some way inseparable, lives on in growing splendor. I may perish, but We are immortal.

I look with wonder and reverence upon the great spirits of the past and upon the expression of human nature in countless forms of art and aspiration. It seems to me that back of all this must be a greater Life, high and glorious beyond my imagination, which is trying to work itself out through us. But this is in the nature of religion, and I do not expect to impose it upon others by argument.

As regards the proximate future I see little to justify any form of facile optimism, but conceive that, though the world does move, it moves slowly, and seldom in just the direction we hope. There is something rank and groping about human life, like the growth of plants in the dark: if you peer intently into it you can make out weird shapes, the expression of forces as yet inchoate and obscure; but the growth is toward the light.