Lester Frank Ward

“ The errors thus forced into man's mind came to receive the sanction of religion which rendered it vastly more difficult to dislodge them. This herculean task has been the mission of science, for the truth lies deeply buried under this mass of error at the surface and can only be brought to light by the most prolonged and patient research in the face of this time-honored prejudice. The progress of man and society has been strictly proportioned to the degree to which hidden realities have thus been substituted for false appearances. ”

“ Organic evolution must not, however, be restricted to the mere span which the life of an individual represents. To fully comprehend its scope, the conception of the organic aggregate should be extended to embrace all the life, past, present, and future, on the globe. The mysterious process of reproduction, unknown to all other aggregates, has the effect of binding all living organisms into one continuous whole, and giving to all terrestrial life the stamp of unity. The individuals of a race or species do not represent so many distinct aggregates. ”

“ No animal possesses a government in any such sense. The primary object of government is to protect society from just these anti-social influences, and it is generally admitted that without it society could not exist. This means that even in the most enlightened peoples the anti-social tendencies are still so strong that they would disrupt society but for an artificial system of protection. To call man of whom this can be said a social being by nature is obviously absurd. No doubt strong social impulses exist among men, but they are the product of ages of constraint. ”

“ The nervous system, as the reservoir of protoplasm and seat of life, sensibility, will, and ideas, is a fundamental factor. Everything in an organism depends upon it. It antedates and has alone made possible all the other systems of an organized body. It controls them all absolutely, and without it the rest would all instantly cease.
What, then, is the result of a comparison of society with an organism from this point of view? Where in the scale of animal development shall we find an organism at the same stage of integration as that which society now occupies? ”

“ Like the all-pervading circumambient air, its power is not felt so long as no vacuum is produced. Each organism has long since reached the limit of its power to extend its dominion. The plant grows up from the germ to maturity under a constant surveillance, and every attempt to overstep its fixed limits is instantly checked. It stands in its fixed position, locked in the embrace of forces which permit it neither to advance nor retreat.
Such is the state of equilibrium which is always and necessarily reached in a state of Nature, and in which man first finds each newly-discovered flora. ”

“ I call these the great cosmical crises of the earth's history—the origin of life, of feeling or consciousness, and of intellect or reason. These have occurred in this order at different geologic epochs, and certainly with an enormous interval between the second and third. The forms through which the first and second have manifested themselves—the plants and animals—are innumerable. That through which the last has chiefly manifested itself is man, a single species of the animal kingdom. ”

“ And when we shrink with a sense of dread from the idea of any such state of social centralization, it is because we fail to realize the possibility of a homogeneous development throughout all the parts of society, including the necessary modification in the character of its individual members, to adapt them to such a regime of subordinate cooperation in the grand scheme. We fail to realize, on the one hand, the possibility of the central control being absolutely devoted to the welfare of the whole, as the animal consciousness is devoted to the welfare of the animal ”

“ Sociology, on the contrary, deals primarily with association and whatever conduces to it or modifies it. But association is not a material thing; it is a condition, and the science that deals with it is chiefly concerned with the laws and principles that produce and affect that condition. In short, while anthropology is essentially a concrete science, sociology is essentially an abstract science. The distinction is very nearly the same as between biology and zoology, except that anthropology is restricted to a single species of animal. ”

“ We are now prepared to consider the true relation that developed man in the social state bears to the great cosmos of which he is a part. That cosmos, as we have seen, must be contemplated as wholly unintelligent and wholly passive. Man must regard himself as in full possession of the authority to subjugate it and to appropriate it, to reduce all the powers of nature to his service and to apply all the materials of the universe to his own personal use. Notwithstanding the rigid law to which all things are subject, he is to look upon the universe as in a certain sense fortuitous. ”

“ Indeed, the solar and sidereal radiations are the only examples which the whole universe presents to us of such a force. It seems strange enough to be compelled to ascribe all the phenomena which have been embodied in the term organic evolution to the action of a force which is the precise opposite of evolution, and which ultimately accomplishes the dissolution of every such aggregate. Yet it is only because the sun is in a state in which its matter is being integrated, and its motion radiated into space, that our earth is capable of producing the forms of organic life. ”

“ This field is not restricted to the purely intellectual operations which have formed the exclusive subject of philosophy until a quite recent date, nor even to the more enlarged field of the senses and the intellect embraced in more modern works; it reaches out and gathers to its fold that other not merely neglected but generally despised field variously called the passions, the affections, and the emotions. In short everything which is not clearly a vital attribute—is not exclusively concerned in furthering the functions of life—must belong to mind and form a part of psychology. ”

“ Thus the hardest facts of existence are seen to embody the germs of the brightest hopes. Those dark realities which have been taken as arguments for pessimism, are themselves, when correctly understood, the foundations of the only sound philosophy of social progress.
The only proper attitude on all these questions is to view the universe objectively. Dismissing forever all idea of what it ought be, we must simply seek to determine what it is. ”

“ The recent triumph of science, in the discovery of oxygen in the sun, serves to show how easy it is to overlook phenomena all the while perceptible, and gives great hope that not only nitrogen, but many other substances, will yet be found there, which have hitherto escaped observation. The fact that an element exists in the earth may not be proof that it must exist in the sun, even on the assumption that the sun is the parent of all the planets, but it is certainly strong presumptive evidence that it is also there. ”

“ Indeed, it may be contended that this is the primitive form of all organization; seeing that, even in the highest creatures, as in ourselves, every tissue develops out of what physiologists call a blastema—an unorganized though organizable substance, through which organic points are distributed. Now this is very much the case with a society. For we must remember that though the men who make up a society are physically separate and even scattered, yet that the surface over which they are scattered is not one devoid of life, but is covered by life of a lower order which ministers to their life. ”

“ Man alone can block the wheels of his own progress. Neither optimism nor pessimism can be justified in a state of society where free play is allowed to all the human faculties. For a race whose intellect is fully matured these mental attitudes are only adapted to a condition of profound ignorance of the laws of nature, or of complete subjugation of the masses to the power of the few. ”

“ The pleasure of "doing good" is among the most delicious of which the human faculties are capable, and becomes the permanent stimulus to thousands of worthy lives. It is usually looked upon as the highest of all motives, and by some as the ultimate goal toward which all action should aspire. It should first be observed that the very act of doing good presupposes evil, i. e., pain. Doing good is necessarily either increasing pleasure or diminishing pain. Now if all devoted themselves to doing good it is maintained that the sufferings of the world would be chiefly abolished. ”

“ There is no fixed way in which things must be which enables us to reason out the way they are. While, of course, the way they are is really the only way they could have been, still the antecedent causes which have brought them into existence, besides being unknown to man, are so infinitely complex that they are for the most part wholly beyond his grasp. For example, anyone can conceive of a solar system in which no single relation is the same as exists in ours. Anyone can conceive of beings inhabiting a planet all of which shall be entirely different from any of those that inhabit this earth. ”

“ Doubtless there are other bodies in our solar system whose equilibration is even more complete than that of the moon—as, perhaps, some asteroids, or the satellites cf the outer planets. They have run their long cosmical course, and have arrived at last at the final state of complete, stable equilibrium. This state is the goal of the whole process of evolution. It must, therefore, be regarded, when viewed from this standpoint, as the state of greatest perfection in the life of every aggregate. ”

“ The least refined pleasures are in fact the most essential. They are most closely connected with function. They were the first developed and served, as they will always serve, their purpose in carrying out the scheme of Nature—the preservation, increase, and continuation of life. If possible, therefore, they have an even higher sanction than the more refined pleasures, which do not serve to the same extent, if at all, the disinterested ends of Nature, and exist far more for their own sake, egoistically. This shows clearly that the problem of ethics is to secure the greatest pleasure. ”

“ It is still a useful attitude to the swarming millions of human beings who do not reflect. But for it the realization of their unhappy lot, which it prevents, would multiply their misery and render life intolerable. But we are here considering its effect upon society, and it is easy to show that it is bad. It breeds stagnation and stifles progress. It yields contentment and contentment means inaction. Strange as it may sound, just as the only healthy state of the intellect is doubt, so the only healthy state of the feelings is discontent. ”

“ And just as astronomers and physicists, confining their investigations to the more obvious and perceptible motions of celestial and terrestrial bodies, long remained ignorant of the law of gravitation which constantly forces all things into a state of equilibrium, so in biology the statical condition has been lost sight of in the effort to obtain better views of that moving panorama which a broader knowledge of the phenomena of life so unmistakably unfolds. ”

“ For my own part I never have regarded the altruistic as the highest and purest of human motives. I place above them in this scale the pleasures of the intellect, and would make this the sixth and last class. The brain is not merely the organ of knowing. It is an emotional center also, and the feelings to which its exercise give rise are the most important from the standpoint of feeling of all that we have considered. ”

“ And after man acquires great knowledge and power over the universe, so that he can enlist all the forces and materials of nature in his service, the inequalities in individual opportunities, coupled with the intense egoism which has alone enabled the race to survive, practically robs society of the results by placing the masses in the power of the few under which system neither class can really enjoy the fruits of intelligence and industry. ”

“ In a word, amid all these manifest proofs of evolution, what proof exists of dissolution regarded as a cosmical process? We are bound to confess that there is none. We are justified in its assumption on a priori grounds alone, if at all. The law of the conservation of energy, now so well established in all the departments of physics, must be theoretically extended to the mechanics of space. This law is only another expression for the indestructibility of motion. If no motion can be destroyed, the same quantity must always exist in the universe. ”

“ The prevalent view that ethics is a vast system coextensive with the universe belongs to that class of vainglorious conceptions that make up the anthropocentric philosophy of the prescientific period and of the uninformed generally, and tends, like all crude and vaunting ideas, to render men arrogant and intolerant. But having said thus much it is necessary to recognize also that sociology has no other course left than to proceed upon the assumption that the good is everything.
Now the good, at bottom, is nothing else than agreeable sensation as it was developed for the preservation of life. ”