Lester Frank Ward

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been my purpose thus far simply to indicate that course and to show what I conceive the science of sociology to be as distinguished from all those special sciences which, indeed, fall within its general purview, but which are entitled to be cultivated, and have been cultivated, as sciences. I have taken economics as an example because it seems to be most prone to overflow into the broader field, and because it is out of this department that sociologists are now being chiefly recruited. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In selecting from among them all that of Comte as best adapted to the subject of social philosophy I am far from condemning all others or even making odious comparisons. There is always more than one entirely correct way of classifying the phenomena of any great field. For example, the classification of the sciences which Spencer proposes as a substitute for Comte's, although a good one for certain purposes, is not a substitute for that classification and cannot be devoted to the purpose for which Comte employed it. ”

“ France has furnished the warp of science and philosophy, other nations their woof.
What has been said of astronomy and the sciences that fall within its far-reaching scope is also true of the other great groups. It is not necessary to give illustrations in all, but biology furnishes some that are specially instructive. Biology is the science of life and as such includes all that has life. Its principal branches are therefore vegetal and animal life. Yet biology is neither botany nor zoölogy, nor both combined. ”

“ When we can rise to the position of divesting ourselves of these crude prejudices, due to our narrowed range of vision, and our inability to realize that what is now, need not always be, then will it be possible for the student of human society to look forward over the possible future, aided by the light which he receives from looking backward over the known past. ”

“ Sociology is an advanced study, the last and latest in the entire curriculum. It should perhaps be mainly postgraduate. It involves high powers of generalization, and what is more, it absolutely requires a broad basis of induction. It is largely a philosophy, and in these days philosophy no longer rests on assumptions but on facts. To understand the laws of society the mind must be in possession of a large body of knowledge. ”

“ And just as the great bulk of geology and geography are not astronomy at all, so the greater part of both botany and zoölogy is not biology at all. This principle holds of all truly logical classification. The lower terms of any system of generalization always contain much more than the next higher. They stand under them, but all that belongs properly to them as lower terms does not belong to the higher terms but is additional to what is necessary to characterize them. This is well illustrated in both botany and zoölogy as systematic sciences. ”

“ We can scarcely conceive of art without society or society without art. The development of society has been the development of art, and human civilization has advanced through all the stages of culture into which ethnologists subdivide it as the result of successive advances in the perfection of the arts. ”

“ Everything indicates that we, the occupants of this earth in the historic period of the human race are living at a time when life conditions are in their ascending stage, and that our teeming world is, as it were, rejoicing in the morning of creation. The forces of evolution are in full play, and therefore, while dismissing the idea of purpose, we may legitimately inquire what are the tendencies of evolution. ”

“ And in the same way, while economics belongs within the great field of sociology, there should be no confusion or overlapping in speaking of these sciences or in teaching them, so that nothing that clearly belongs to economics should be treated as sociology. While in so complex a field of phenomena it may be difficult in practice to draw the distinction thus definitely and always maintain it, this should be the constant aim and ideal both of the teacher and the social philosopher. ”

“ We are thus strikingly impressed with the great relative imperfection of society, and at the same time we are furnished with the means of seeing more clearly than in any other way the true relation of sociology to biology. ”

“ As in Hobbes's "Leviathan," the representative of the sovereign authority in the living organism, though he derives all his powers from the mass which he rules, is above the law. The questioning of his authority involves death, or that partial death which we call paralysis. Hence, if the analogy of the body politic with the body physiological counts for anything, it seems to me to be in favor of a much larger amount of governmental interference than exists at present, or than I, for one, at all desire to see. ”

“ Not content with thus broadly outlining a science to which he would have undoubtedly applied the name sociology if Comte or any one else had at that date suggested it, he proceeds to show how this science differs from that of political economy, and in these terms:
"Political Economy" is not the science of speculative politics, but a branch of that science. It does not treat of the whole of man's nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. ”

“ The sociologist is dealing with an undeveloped stage of a great series of phenomena, and he may well ask himself the question: If such an inchoate being is capable of accomplishing such results as have been accomplished by the social organism, what may we not expect when, under the great law of development operating throughout the organic world this social organism shall have attained even the lower stages of integration manifested in the humbler animal creatures with which we are all familiar? ”

“ On the other hand they are the farthest removed from the domain of function. To the race they contribute nothing. Nature never intended that they should exist, for they are of no use to her. Their service is a personal one to the possessor of this faculty, and not to the world. I shall soon show their bearing upon our science of sociology. For the present I am considering them from the standpoint not only of psychology but of subjective psychology, as I have defined it. The pleasures of the intellect, if they do not do good in the altruistic sense, at least do no harm. ”

“ The more complex and less exact sciences may be regarded as the children of the more simple and exact ones, but between parent and offspring there is no difference of rank. In contrast with this, the other classification, which I have called synoptical, is a true hierarchy, such as was taught to exist among the angels. It will be easier to comprehend if we liken it to the system of ranking that prevails in an army. The two kinds of classification are entirely different in principle, and the last named occurs independently in each of the great serial groups. ”

“ As Nature cares nothing for their enjoyments and is indifferent to their sufferings so they in turn care nothing for her great scheme of evolution, and would not make the smallest personal sacrifice to further it. Yet, from the ver.y manner in which this new element came into the world, this single pursuit of their own good proves to be that which could alone secure the success of Nature's scheme. Pleasure means life and pain means death. This new element is nothing more nor less than the moral element. No such element exists in Nature outside of this class of beings. Nature is wholly unmoral. ”

“ With man, however, and, in an embryonic form, in some of the higher animals, a new element was introduced, first exclusively as an aid to the will, which is the active expression of the affective powers. This was the perceptive element, by means of which the ends of being were rendered more secure, and the creatures in which it was most highly developed became the winners in the race. Man proved to be the specially favored of all the earth's inhabitants in this most important respect, and was thus enabled to become not only master of all other life but of the physical forces of nature as well. ”

“ There is a certain school of biologists who are somewhat disposed to sneer at the old-fashioned study of systematic botany and zoölogy, but if it had no other claims it could be defended from the pedagogic standpoint as the best possible discipline of the mind, as the supreme object lesson in logic. It may sound paradoxical to assert that the study of living organisms can be made an aid in grasping the abstruse problems of metaphysics, but it certainly can do this. ”

“ So that while all associative phenomena rest on subjective psychology, distinctively human association depends upon and presupposes a fully developed rational faculty.
I have called this the perceptive, as distinguished from the affective side of mind. This term, though inadequate to express the highest processes of the intellect is well adapted to describe the incipient stages of rational life. Since the new biology has taught us to account for every organ and attribute by the law of advantage, the intellect of man has presented the most marked obstacle to this mode of interpreting nature. ”

“ That the life and development of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged than, the life and development of any of its component units: who are severally born, grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body politic composed of them survives generation after generation, increasing in mass, completeness of structure, and functional activity. ”

“ Although, as was shown in the last paper, the intellect, as the result of superior brain-development, is the one leading attribute that distinguishes the human race from all other races and constitutes man, still, it was not developed at the expense of, or as a substitute for, his affective faculties, but pari passu with them and as an aid to them. It is therefore clear that it is these affective attributes that hold the first place and constitute that to which all others are subservient. Intellect is not an end in itself. ”

“ It is upon this affective part of mind that sociology rests, and not upon its intellectual part. Sociology is a science and as such it deals with a field of phenomena controlled by certain forces. The social forces are human motives, and all motives, in the correct sense of the term have feeling as their end. To attain pleasure or avoid pain is the only incentive to action. All motives are desires, and the term which expresses the aggregate of desires is will. ”

“ In Herbert Spencer's great scheme of the redistribution of matter dissolution is as much a factor as evolution, and whether we accept the estimate of Newcomb that the life period of this earth is to continue ten million years, or that of Helmholz that it will last seventeen million years, or that of Shaler that we may hope for yet one hundred million years, we must in any case admit a limit, and as it would seem, must assume that the last stages of that period will be marked by the gradual decline, as the first stages are with a slow advance in the state of living beings. ”