Charles A. Ellwood

“ It is an old truth that making men "better-off" does not necessarily make them "better," and one which cannot be too often emphasized, but one which the modern socialist gets angry at when it is mentioned to him. It is therefore a matter of comparative indifference, from the standpoint of the happiness and ultimate survival of the race, whether economic goods are distributed relatively evenly in human society or not. We say comparative indifference, because, of course, no one can be indifferent to the material needs of life, inasmuch as they are the basis of its higher development. ”

“ It is, indeed, very difficult to separate ethics from sociology. It is the business of sociology to furnish norms and standards to ethics, and it is the business of ethics as a science to take the norms and standards furnished by the social sciences, to develop them, and to criticize them. ”

“ Moreover, when we extend our view in history we find that poverty has been oftentimes in the past even much more prevalent than it is at present. This question of poverty is, in other words, a world-old question and is intimately bound up with the question of material civilization—that is, man's conquest of nature—and with social organization,—the relations of men to one another. At certain times in history certain institutions like slavery have either obviated or concealed poverty, and particularly its extreme expressions, in dependence and legal pauperism. ”

“ The ideal social life of man has never been the isolated life of the rural community. The city has always been in a sense man's ideal, as is shown by the fact that nearly all attempts to depict a perfect human society have been pictures of cities. Man's ideal, as Dr. Weber says, is not the city or the country, but the city and the country blended, and this is what the city of the future should become. No doubt the time will come when present cities will be looked back upon with horror, as we look back on eighteenth-century cities. ”

“ The Function of the Family in Social Progress.—While the conservative function of the family is very obvious, its function in furthering social progress is perhaps not so obvious. Nevertheless, this is one of the greatest functions of the family life, because the family is the chief or almost sole generator of altruism in human society, and it is upon altruism that society depends for every upward advance in coöperation. It is in the family that children learn to love and obey, to be of service, and to respect one another's rights. ”

“ In conclusion we would emphasize again that the era of the city is just beginning; that a larger and larger proportion of our population must come to live in the cities, and that, therefore, the city will dominate the society of the future. Hence, humanity must solve the problem of the city if social progress is to continue. And the problem is by no means insoluble. Man is not yet adjusted to city life. The city is so new even to civilized man that he has carried into it the habits which he practiced in isolated rural communities. ”

“ If some scheme of artificial selection were substituted to take the place of natural selection, it is evident that competition would still have to be retained to determine who were the fittest. A society that would give positions of trust and responsibility to individuals without imposing some competitive test upon them would be like a ship built partially of good and partially of rotten wood,—it would soon go to pieces. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII THE GROWTH OF POPULATION Mass is a factor in the survival of a social group. Other things being equal, that society will stand the best chance of surviving which has the largest population. Moreover, the larger the mass of a given group the greater can be the industrial and cultural division of labor in that group. Hence, other things being equal, a large population favors the growth not only of a higher type of industry, but also of a higher type of culture or civilization in a given society. ”

“ Why should the sociologist accept Darwin's theory? What proofs does it rest upon? What warrant has a student of sociology for accepting a doctrine of such far-reaching consequences? The reply is, that biologists, generally, during the last fifty years, after a careful study of Darwin's arguments and after a careful examination of all other evidence, have come substantially to agree with him. There is no great biologist now living who does not accept the essentials of the doctrine of descent. ”

“ Human groups are free only in the sense that they may go either backward or forward on the path which the conditions of survival mark out for them. They are free to progress or to perish. But social evolution in any case, in the sense of social change either toward higher or toward lower social adaptation, is a necessity that cannot be escaped. Sociology and all social science is, therefore, a study not of what human groups would like to do, but of what they must do in order to survive, that is, how they can control their environment by utilizing the laws which govern universal evolution. ”

“ It must be replied that the history of human society undoubtedly substantiates this position, but even if it did not, we should still have good ground for claiming that education can be such an all-powerful factor in the social future. The sociological study of past civilizations, however, shows quite conclusively that all of them have depended in one way or another upon educational processes, not only for continuity, but largely, also, for their development. As we have already seen, the life history of a culture or a civilization is frequently the life history of a religion. ”

“ This makes sociology deal with the laws or principles of the relations of individuals to one another, and of institutions to one another. It is to be criticized as faulty because it fails to emphasize the evolution of those relations. All science is now evolutionary in spirit and in method and believes that things cannot be understood except as they are understood in their genesis and development. It would, therefore, perhaps be more correct to define sociology as the science of the evolution of human interrelations than to define it simply as the science of social organization. ”

“ But material progress alone does not lead to spiritual progress, and therefore mere material progress can never add anything to the real happiness and social betterment of the race. On the contrary, it is possible to conceive of a society in which every one has an economic surplus,—a society rolling in wealth, approximately equally divided, and yet one in which human misery in its worst forms of vice and crime, pessimism and self-destruction, prevail. ”

“ Hence, the commanding place which sociology and the social sciences should occupy in the education of all classes, and especially in the training of the teacher himself.
It is not unreasonable to believe that the development of the social sciences will show us the way to remove many, if not all, social evils; and it is also not unreasonable to believe that the knowledge which these sciences will furnish will stimulate in the vast mass of individuals an impetus to remove these evils. ”

“ Malthus, as we have already seen, attributed all human misery to the fact that population tends to increase more rapidly than food supply, and that it is the pressure of population upon food which sufficiently explains poverty in human society. Karl Marx offered an equally sweeping explanation when he attributed all poverty to the fact that labor is not paid a sufficient wage; that the capitalist appropriates an unjust share of the product of labor, leaving to the laborer just enough to maintain existence and reproduce. ”

“ In the family, we repeat, the child first experiences all the essential relations of society, learns the meaning of authority, obedience, loyalty, and all the human virtues. Moreover, the family life furnishes the moral and religious concepts which human society has set before it as its goal. The ideal of human brotherhood, for example, is manifestly derived from the family life; so also the religious idea of the Divine Fatherhood. If a nation's family life fails to illustrate these concepts, it is safe to say that they will not have great influence in society generally. ”

“ Even though war passes away entirely, nations can never escape this competition with one another. While the competition may not be upon the low and brutal plane of war, it will certainly go on upon the higher plane of commerce and industry, and will probably be on this higher plane quite as decisive in the life of peoples in future as war was in the past.
While the primary struggle within the human species has been in the historic period between nations and races, this is not saying, of course, that struggle and competition have not gone on within these larger groups. ”

“ Just so far as the system of education is defective, is insufficient to meet social needs, in so far may we expect the production of individuals who are socially maladjusted, as shown in pauperism, defectiveness, and crime.
Education is, then, the great means of controlling habit and character in complex social groups, and as such it is the chief means to which society must look for all substantial social progress. It is the instrument by which human nature may be apparently indefinitely modified, and hence, also, the instrument by which society may be perfected. ”

“ There is no reason to believe that a perfectly just social organization which did not attempt to control heredity and the moral character of individuals would succeed in eliminating crime. On the contrary, biological variation alone arising from influences independent of the environment would produce a certain amount of crime. Crime, in other words, is, to a certain extent, like pauperism, an expression of the elimination of the inferior variants in society, and will continue to exist as long as we allow the process of evolution by natural selection to go on. ”

“ But it is evident that the main reliance in combating the evils which have given rise to the present instability of our family life must be placed upon education rather than upon legislation. Legislation, we may here note, has many shortcomings as an instrument of social reconstruction or reform. Legislation is necessarily external and coercive. It fails oftentimes to change the habits of individuals, and very generally fails to change their opinion. Education, on the other hand, alters human nature directly, changing both the opinions and habits of the individual. ”

“ In criticizing the most conspicuous of these schemes of social reconstruction, the so-called "scientific socialism," it should be understood at the outset that there is no intention of questioning the general aims of the socialists. Those aims, as voiced by their best representatives, are in entire accord with sound science, religion, and ethics. That humanity should gain collective control over the conditions of its existence is the ultimate and highest aim of all science, all education, and all government. ”

“ It would be far more scientific to reorganize society upon the basis of the needs of the family than to reorganize it simply upon the basis of industry. The reproductive process which the economic socialists ignore, or leave unregulated almost entirely, is far more important for the continued existence of human society than all its economic processes,—if by the reproductive process we mean the rearing as well as the birth of offspring; and if by the economic process we mean merely the forms and methods of the production and distribution of material goods. ”

“ In a sense, sociology is narrower than history inasmuch as it is an abstract science, and in another sense it is wider than history because it concerns itself not only with the social past but also with the social present. The facts of contemporary social life are indeed even more important to the sociologist than the facts of history, although it is impossible to construct a theory of social evolution without taking into full account all the facts available in human history, and in this sense history becomes one of the very important methods of sociology. ”

“ Some degree of competition, for example, has to be maintained by every group between its members if it is going to maintain high standards of efficiency or of loyalty. If there were no competition with respect to the matters that concern the inner life of groups, it is evident that the groups would soon lose efficiency in leadership and in membership and would sooner or later be eliminated. Consequently society, from certain points of view, presents itself to the student at the present time as a vast competition, while from other standpoints it presents itself as a vast coöperation. ”

“ If it is our duty to develop our institutions and our national life in such a way that they will make the largest possible contribution to the good of humanity, then it is manifestly our duty to exclude from membership in American society elements which might prevent our institutions from reaching their highest and best development. All restrictions to immigration, it must be admitted, must be based, not upon national selfishness, but upon the principle of the good of humanity ”

“ For all that we have learned concerning human society leads us to say that social organization at any particular time is very largely a matter of habit. Now collective habits are less easily changed than individual habits, because any change in collective habits practically necessitates the consent of all the individuals who make up the social group. We know also that even in individual life old habits are not easily supplanted by new ones and that there is always a tendency to revert to the old. ”

“ On the whole, it is probable that these economic causes of poverty figure in from 50 to 80 per cent of all cases, not operating alone, to be sure, but often in connection with faults of character or physical or mental defects in the individual; for it is always to be remembered in discussing the causes of poverty that one never finds a case which can be fairly attributed to a single cause. The complexity of causes operating in the case of a single dependent family frequently makes it impossible for any one to say with certainty what is the chief and what are the contributing causes. ”

“ Life, in its higher forms at least, could not exist without association. From the very beginning the association of the sexes has been necessary for reproduction and for the care and rearing of offspring, and it has been not less necessary for the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against enemies. From the association necessary for reproduction has sprung family life and all the altruistic institutions of human society, while from the association for providing food supply have sprung society's industrial institutions. ”

“ It is only in human social life that coöperation, or altruism, attains its full development. Human society is characterized by the protection it affords to its weaker members, and in human society the natural process of eliminating the inferior often seems reversed. As Huxley has pointed out, human society tries to fit as many as possible to survive, and we may add, not only to survive, but to live well. Altruism and its resulting coöperation have come especially to characterize human social evolution. To some extent this is due, no doubt, to the necessities of group survival ”