Lester Frank Ward

“ 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. ”

“ Optimism may be said to be the thesis, pessimism the antithesis, and meliorism the synthesis of man's relation to the universe. The optimist says: Do nothing, because there is nothing to do. The pessimist says: Do nothing, because nothing can be done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Optimism and pessimism assume nature to be in an active state toward man. The true attitude makes nature passive and man active. To the developed intellect nature is as clay in the potter's hands. It is neither best nor worst. It is what man makes it, and rational man always seeks to make it better. The true doctrine, then, is meliorism—the perpetual bettering of man's estate. This will be possible in precise proportion to man's knowledge of nature, so that the condition of the race ultimately depends upon the degree of intelligence that it shall attain. ”

“ 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 speak of a remote planet being "inhabited," although we can abstract from those inhabitants every physical character that belongs to man and conceive them as dragons, or satyrs, or monsters of any form, we cannot imagine them devoid of reason and intelligence in addition to the attributes of life and sensibility.
Coming back to earth and confining ourselves to what we actually know, we thus see that three great steps in evolution have been taken since the surface of our globe became firm enough and cool enough to render the first one possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Religion has its very origin in reason. No animal has developed even the rudiments of a religion. It is an exclusively human institution, much more so than society. It is the product of thought; an attempt to explain the universe. In this, its primary quality, it does not differ in the least from science, and no true philosopher can doubt that these two great human movements, starting out from the same base, will eventually arrive at the same goal. ”

“ He labors under the perpetual feeling that the most important of discoveries may in fact never be made, and that he may be at any time, without knowing it, walking over the keys to the secrets of the universe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first important fact to be noted is that to his slowly developing intellect the universe has ever been a great enigma. To solve this enigma has been the universal problem of the human mind. But man has been put into possession of no key to this solution and has attacked the problem wildly and at random, utterly unqualified to make the least impression upon it. ”

“ Optimism is preëminently the child of ignorance. By ignorance I mean solely the absence of knowledge relative to natural things, processes, and laws, and not lack of capacity to know these things and profit by such knowledge. Pessimism is more especially a product of social oppression. It results from an abandonment of all hope of relief from the power of a superior caste of men to keep the mass in physical subjection. In a word, pessimism is the product of a hostile social state. ”

“ That this little planet of ours happens to be peopled with life is merely an accident, or rather the convergence of a number of accidents. So far as can be judged from what we know of the essential conditions to life, the earth is highly favored among the planets of our system, and it may well be that this is the only one out of them all on which the conditions to a high development exist. It seems impossible that the great planets Jupiter and Saturn can be inhabited by any such beings as have been developed on our globe ”

“ And this is the true lesson for human society. There is no room for social Micawbers. Whatever "turns up" must be turned up. The passive attitude is suicidal. This folding of the arms and resignation to fate is certain to meet its fate. The cosmic Juggernaut will roll over and crush those who throw themselves before it. ”

“ On the contrary, it often and usually impels man to do just those things which his instincts and his natural propensities would never dictate. It counteracts the animal nature of man, and is one of those things which distinctively mark him off from the animal world. It could be easily shown that this is precisely the role that reason plays everywhere, and it is the failure to perceive this that has led many political economists and others into the gravest of errors in philosophizing about man. ”

“ The truth is that nature is neither friendly nor hostile to man; neither favors him nor discriminates against him. Nature is not endowed with any moral attributes. It is, as I said at the outset, a domain of rigid law. Man is a product of that law, but he has reached a stage on which he can comprehend the law. Now, just because nature is a domain of rigid law, and just because man can comprehend that law, his destiny is in his own hands. Any law that he can comprehend he can control. He cannot increase or diminish the powers of nature, but he can direct them. ”

“ Think of the optimism that is required to make out a favorable case from such facts! Even if all parts of all the planets were inhabited they would together make only part of the area of the sun's surface, while that of the earth alone is only . But our sun is only one of the lesser fixed stars, and it may be assumed that similar conditions prevail throughout the universe.
If we contemplate the earth itself we find an analogous state of things. The period that man has inhabited the earth is very small compared with what we know its age to be. ”

“ If the planet Mars is really the home of living beings the chances of the vertebrate type of structure occurring there are only as one to infinity. Yet some superior type may be developed there. And if there be on that planet or anywhere else in the solar system or in the universe a master being related to other beings in any such way as man is related to the other living creatures on this earth, the chances are again infinity to one against his possessing the form or any of the leading physical attributes of human beings. ”

“ It is not enough merely to learn that things are bad. The two errors of pessimism have been, first, that of overdrawing the picture, and second, that of failing to learn the lesson which the picture teaches. ”

“ The phase of optimism which most concerns the question of the relation of society to the universe is that unreasoned belief which I have called the "anthropocentric theory." [1] The idea that man is in any sense a favorite of nature is false and highly prejudicial to the progress of correct conceptions in social science. It may be called collective optimism, and results in social stagnation, just as personal optimism results in individual stagnation. The extreme opposite of optimism is pessimism. ”

“ His power over nature is unlimited. He can make it his servant and appropriate to his own use all the mighty forces of the universe.
Both optimism and pessimism are passive states of mind. The true state is an active one. ”

“ If Mars possesses life it must be inured to somewhat severer conditions than generally prevail with us, but it is admitted that these do not exclude the idea. If Jupiter radiates his own internal heat he may render some of his swift flying moons inhabitable, but most of the satellites of the solar system are doubtless as dead as our moon which has neither water nor air. The sun is an enormous mass of matter 1,400,000 times as large as the earth and containing 99.866 per cent, of the matter of the whole solar system. ”

“ It is impossible to separate this aspect of the question from the great fact that the world has always been swayed by religion. The foregoing considerations furnish an excellent basis tor comparing the great religions that have embraced the greater part of the human race. Religion is reason applied to life. Those who flippantly contend that a religious condition argues feeble intellectual powers make an immense mistake. But this view is by no means confined to the opponents of religion. ”

“ There is what we call human progress, but what is it but a rhythmic and only partial success in rendering a worse condition a trifle better? Even this is accidental and may go backward instead of forward. There are as many things that retard as there are that advance the race, and human progress, like the "regulator" of a steam engine, seems to be adjusted so as to defeat itself. ”

“ It lies in teaching the great lesson that no knowledge of anything can be gained by speculation, and that our only knowledge consists in the actual investigation of facts that lie within our reach. We must study the tangible, visible, demonstrable world and find out what it contains. ”

“ So long as we do not exaggerate, so long as these relations, however bad, are the true relations, no possible harm can come of knowing and realizing the truth. It is the only healthy attitude, while on the other hand, the ignorance of this truth or the refusal to avow it is fatal to progress. ”

“ In fact the Reformation is rather the product than the cause of a growing meliorism, and as soon as liberty of opinion and freedom to investigate the laws of nature were achieved the march of civilization had already begun. ”

“ Using the most moderate ones, the crust of the earth seems to have been fully formed not less than 100,000,000 years ago. Some form of life has probably existed on it during nearly all that period. But paleontology teaches that life, though slowly increasing in development, was of too low an order to be capable of intelligence until man appeared. Yet what are the estimates of man's entire historic and prehistoric existence? The most extravagant of them do not go back 500,000 years. ”

“ It is also probably true that the conditions of existence for the masses of India under a system of castes were much less favorable than those of western peoples. For these and other reasons religion in the East resulted in pessimism while in the West it took the form of optimism. The Orientals sought to escape the evils of life in Nirvana, which, however much scholars may dispute about its exact meaning, is certainly a wholly negative state. ”

“ Here instinct seems to have brought about the same general economic system that has resulted in part at least from rational calculation in man. But this question belongs more properly to a future paper and is only raised here as a natural sequel to the broader problems that we have been discussing. It is only by means of such a complete orientation of the mind that the true relations subsisting between sociology and kindred sciences can be clearly and correctly perceived, and these wider aspects of the subject belong preeminently to social philosophy. ”

“ As a somewhat anomalous but very important example of the erroneous ideas which the human race must needs acquire and reluctantly surrenders may next be considered the optimistic habit of thought. Optimism can scarcely be called a doctrine. ”