methodology of pure science, to acquit them of the charge of sentimentalism when they attempt to calculate the lines of action which the conduct of society ought to take. As I have argued at length in the monograph, "The Significance of Sociology for Ethics," 3 the latest word of sociology is with reference to the end which gives to social activities their meaning. After all our analysis of the origin and evolution and mechanism of the social process, we are conscious that the final use of the whole complex procedure is what it can avail us in estimating the values of different activities. We have concluded that the whole social process, so far as we can anticipate it, is comprehended in the formula derived from survey of all of the process which we can observe; viz.: the social process is continuous advance in the development, adjustment, and satisfaction of the health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness desires. Those activities are good which promote this process, and those are bad that retard it. Virtually the same thought is expressed by Professor Ludwig Stein, of Bern, in these words: The veil is gradually lifting from the meaning of history. That meaning is and can be nothing else than progressive ennobling of the human type, the upbuilding of the human species into social persons, the final subjugation of the bête humaine through social institutions in the realms of law and custom, of religion and morality, of art and science.* With the same emphasis that Stein places, throughout his argument, on the element of organization and co-operation among men, as a factor of progress equally essential with improvement of the individual type, I accept this description as an expansion of mine. Of course, I cannot claim that these propositions command general assent among the sociologists, any more than elsewhere. They are the result of a long course of constructive analysis, which is the best that I have been able to do toward getting at the final criterion of life. I am bound to use it, therefore, till clearer light appears. I cite it now, not for the purpose of further defending it, but in order to show its bearings upon programs of social action. University of Chicago Decennial Publications, Vol. IV, p. 111. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that our conclusions thus far are unchallenged, I see only one radical obstacle in the way of a positive principle of social guidance. It is this: We have not proved that the operation of this process must extend to any definite proportion of the human race. It is possible to contend, somewhat in the spirit of Aristotle, that the conditions of life do not permit many to have much share in the higher ranges of the social process, and that our social program must necessarily contemplate, as the working end, the increasing satisfactions of the few, while the many must always furnish the means by which the few realize the increased quantity and quality of satisfaction. It is, indeed, claimed that modern science, and specially the mass of evidence from which evolutionary generalizations are reached, distinctly reinforces Aristotle's opinion. We find that nature perfects a few of the lower types, by wasting millions of unfortunate specimens of the type. Is it not probable that human myriads must always be miserable in order that a few may progress? Is not a social program indicated by the facts of life which contemplates the greater good of the few at the expense of the many? It would be pure pretense to claim that we have a conclusive scientific refutation of the views implied in these questions. There is no visible demonstration that the social process in which we are included does not converge upon excellences in a few at the cost of the rest. That is, the philosophy of Nietzsche, for example, and the working policy of the unsocial fraction of society that would monopolize opportunity so long as there is anything left for them to desire, cannot be absolutely proved to lack sanction in the laws of nature. Nevertheless, if we hold that the social process involves progressive satisfaction of all the interests, and not merely of some of them, we are obliged to infer that the process must include enough people to satisfy the conditions of its own operation. That is, if we find that the social process, as we know it, indicates continuance of higher powers of health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness satisfaction for somebody, we are bound to conclude that the population concerned in that process must be great enough to maintain the complicated activities upon which these enlarged satisfactions depend. Accepting 5 per cent. of the population of the United States as a liberal estimate of the class which we call the unemployed, it might be possible to make a plausible argument to the effect that these 5 per cent. of our population have no claim to an equity in the social process. "There is no use for them. They ought not to have been born. No theory of life can find a rightful place for such a social surplus." 5 Without attempting to construct a brief for the benefit of this 5 per cent., the only reply necessary seems to me to be that this is really a negligible quantity. The life-process, as we understand it, requires, at any rate, the other 95 per cent. In order that any of us may get on in the higher developments of our interests, whether the essential material interests, or the derived spiritual interests, all this mass of people is necessary. The requisite division of labor and variety of situation is not otherwise possible. There must be so many hundred farmers and artisans in order that there may be one scholar and artist and moral leader. And there must be so many more farmers and artisans in order that scholarship and art and moral leadership may ascend to higher planes. The social process is not carried on by the few only who may be called the pinnacles of society. It is carried on by all who maintain the conditions upon which the pinnacles rest. It may be that too many people are born in a given part of the world, and that diminution of the birthrate becomes to that extent a part of the social problem. It is conceivable that the 5 per cent. which we have just conceded, for the sake of argument, may represent an excessive accession-rate in the United States. But, on the other hand, it may also be that organization of life in accordance with the best that we know would absorb that 5 per cent. and create a demand for more sharers in the social process. It may be that the existence of the 5 per cent. is an index of abnormality in our social This is merely a guess at the number of unemployable plus the average number of employable out of work. The force of the argument does not depend on the accuracy of the guess. arrangements, or of invincible perversity in individuals, which must be charged to profit and loss. Not pressing this point, however, no way is visible by which any portion of the 95 per cent. of our social population can advance toward all-around satisfaction without needing each other in the process. If the process needs all the persons, each of the persons must be entitled to a share in the process. Practically the same thing might be stated in this way: The type of life that civilization has developed calls for a type of persons capable of the most intensive and many-sided co-operation. Ability to fit into an infinitely refined and complex system of co-operation is the mark of fitness for the present social environment. At the same time democracy has given to the individual both demand and capacity for a share in consumption of all the achievements of civilization. Unless this demand. is measurably satisfied, the fitness of the individual for his part in co-operation is reduced toward the point of obstruction. That is: On the most cynical basis of calculation that could be adopted, the program of civilization is a system of inevitable co-operation. If control of that co-operation were in the hands of one despot, he would be obliged, in order to keep the system from breaking down, to run it in the interest of all the persons necessary for the co-operation. To do this, he would be obliged to run it on a plan which would admit all the persons necessary to the co-operation to progressive participation in all the advantages of the co-operation. The reason for this is in the fact that they are persons, not things. This conclusion is no more demonstrative than its opposite, but it is more probable, more morally convincing. The plausibility of the special-privilege hypothesis grows out of failure to remember the facts which make the exceptional individuals possible. Without social partnership no man could improve himself enough to exhibit any marked differences from other men. The more extensive the social partnership, the greater the possibility of making particular talents distinguish their possessors from others. But that distinction comes from co-operation, and the co-operators are at least entitled to such terms of co-operation that each may move forward in the general direction which the whole social process pursues. This means that, with such conceptions of justice as we now hold, with our present concepts also of human individuals, there can be no tolerable program of life which does not admit practically all persons to the franchise of all the interests represented by any person. The problem, then, which general sociology reaches at last is this, to put it in the concrete: In the actual present situation of the American people, for instance, what program is necessary, in order to satisfy the conditions of that stage of the process in which we find ourselves? As we have seen, the indicated end of the process is more of the process, i. e., more intensive and extensive satisfaction of all the interests; and the condition which we have just discussed is that all the individuals sharing in the mechanism of the process shall share in the benefits of the process in proportion to their contribution to the process. In other words, normal continuance of the social process requires that each person sharing in the process shall be secure in opportunity to get on, in realization of each of the interests to which the process contributes; or to make gains toward a more harmonious balance of the desires satisfied. But we must now turn back upon the track of our argument far enough to recognize that we have jumped over a very wide chasm in our survey of social activities. Before we can have a standard of action appropriate to the actual social situation, we must have a thoroughly adequate analysis of the situation. The most serious and the most astonishing omission thus far in sociological theory is the failure to carry out the work of generalizing sociological notions far enough to furnish the schedules necessary for working knowledge of the actual situation. The things that are worth doing are the things that will promote the social process; but to know what those things are we must know accurately the situation at which the process has arrived. Perhaps a homely illustration is worth while. Everybody knows in general the science of running a steam engine. There must first be the properly constructed engine itself; it must have |