Law of development

“ This is not, as it appears to me, the correct expression of the law, but it points to a deep law lying at the basis of that development which men are studying so eagerly in the present day. All that is in the effect has come from the causes—it may be the successive causes. We are thus carried back to an inherent power, not created by development, but the source or spring of development. ”

“ It would seem more consistent with common sense, and all natural phenomena, that the law which governs the existence, growth, and changes of a living being should have its basis and development in that same organization. ”

“ Having argued thus far to show that the present age, material, mental and spiritual, is the legitimate result of the law of progressive development, the following propositions are deduced therefrom, forming a basis or platform from which to ask of the present—What of the future? ”

“ It may be necessary here to agree on a definition of human progress. According to the general law of organic evolution, it may be defined as follows: such progress in the individual and in his social relations as shall maintain him in health and happiness and increase the organic development of society.
If we accept such a definition of human progress, if we agree that progress is the duty of society, and that all social institutions are to be measured by it, we may proceed to our second premise. ”

“ Still more, if there is a convincing proof of how progress must be understood in the sense of immediate law, and, to use a strong expression, of a physical and inevitable law, it is precisely this fact,—that social development by the very reasons of the processus which are inherent in it, often leads to retrogression. ”

“ The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with what seems to be the law of mental development—not a necessary and involuntary progress, but a progress in which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life, as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go but a little way. ”

“ And, owing mainly to the wide diffusion of this credulous spirit of the modern type, as little disposed to examine what it receives as its ancient unreasoning predecessor, the development doctrines are doing much harm on both sides of the Atlantic, especially among intelligent mechanics, and a class of young men engaged in the subordinate departments of trade and the law. ”

“ A social aggregate which has chosen the fatal path of organic evolution must succumb to the same law of organic development to which all organisms are subject, namely greater and greater organization, increase of structure, greater differentiation, decrease of critical, personal, consciousness, loss of individual liberty, increased activity of the subconscious forces, falling into a state of somnambulism which can only be redeemed by revolution or by death. ”

“ The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. ”

“ Some guidance for political conduct would possibly be reached by asking, What is the normal course of social evolution, and how it will be affected by this or that policy? It may turn out that legislative action of no kind can be taken that is not either in harmony with, or at variance with, the processes of national growth and development as naturally going on ”

“ In the last analysis the development of any society is determined by the development of its method of production. We are today sufficiently familiar with these laws to recognize the direction which social evolution must take, and to determine the road the political happenings must take. ”

“ You asked me, was I opposed to any ‘plan’ for the Development of Humanity, and I replied, and reply, in effect, that I am not, always providing that it allowed for human development along human lines. ”

“ This progress is subject to the same general laws that are to be observed in the development of the faculties of individuals, for it is the result of that development, considered at the same time in a great number of individuals united in society. ”

“ We are well under way already in a higher stage of social development, conscious, well-organized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall be simple and founded on constructive principles instead of being a set of ring-regulations within which people may fight as they will ”

“ It will not be able, in the long run, to lean upon mere theories and maxims; it will be forced by the actual development to undergo changes, to reform and to remodel itself in correspondence with the great laws of historical progress. ”

“ The natural process of development would have ultimately accomplished it unassisted by other agencies, but a wise and humane governmental system was adopted, originating in the spirit world, which constituted a complete innovation upon and revolution in previous systems, and which gave a marked impetus to the growth and advancement of mind, and which produced also a wonderful improvement in the physical constitutions of succeeding generations. ”

“ These are some of the present means for spreading just principles and leading man on to the highest state of development. When these were fewer there was no progress; a more rapid progress, but a fiercer a strife is before us. For the final consummation no time can be set. The perfection of civil institutions is not hot-house development—it is the work of ages. ”

“ That accomplished, new fields of inquiry, knowledge, and improvement, will open themselves to the people, on which, by positive, creative action, they will have to build a solid substructure for a broader and higher development of American Civilization. ”

“ Hence, all the products of social heredity, of language, of science, of religion, of art, and of government are progressive in proportion as they are successfully used for individual and social betterment. For if government is used to enslave people, or science to destroy them, or religion to stifle them, there can be no progress.
Progress Expresses Itself in a Variety of Ideals and Aims.—Progress involves many lines of development. It may include biological development of the human race, the development of man, especially his growth of brain power. ”

“ What we see before us, be it good or evil in appearance, is the natural consequence of a development such as this country was bound to have, with a field of labor, resources and opportunities so great, with a population so ingenious, restless and energetic, with rewards of enterprise so certain, rapid and abundant. ”

“ It is this uncontrollable desire to work on and fashion the rough materials that lie under our hands that gives the first impulse to civilization, and impels us onward in the progress of improvement. And wherever we discern the faintest indication that such a principle is at work, there we may securely hope that development will ultimately take place. ”

“ Development according to nature, social efficiency, and culture or personal mental enrichment. In each case we have seen that the aims when partially stated come into conflict with each other. The partial statement of natural development takes the primitive powers in an alleged spontaneous development as the end-all. ”

“ Successfully to prescribe for society, it is needful to know the structure of society—the principles on which it is organized—the natural laws of its progress. If there be not a true understanding of what constitutes social development, there must necessarily be grave mistakes made in checking these changes and fostering those. ”

“ But, beyond this main conception, it was implied throughout that there are such things as laws of social development, natural processes of rectification in society, and an adaptation of man to the conditions of social life. The scientific point of view was thus early assumed, and society was regarded not as a manufacture but as a growth. ”

“ We have, as I have intimated, passed through the pioneer stage of national development; we have tilled our fields, opened our mines, built our railroads, established our large cities—in short, have laid the foundations of a new and masterful civilization; it now remains for us to show whether we are capable of treating with originality the old problems which confront complex societies, and of solving them for the welfare of the public and the consequent elevation of individual character. ”

“ Everyone could understand that a generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be five times as civilised as one which only travelled twelve. Thus the beneficent 'law of progress' was exemplified in that nation which had best deserved to be its exponent. The myth in question is that there is a natural law of improvement, manifested by greater complexity of structure, by increase of wants and the means to satisfy them. A nation advances in civilisation by increasing in wealth and population, and by multiplying the accessories and paraphernalia of life. ”

“ At the most obvious level, such rethinking will have to address practical matters of policy, resource utilization, planning procedures, implementation methodologies, and organization. As it proceeds, however, fundamental issues will quickly emerge, related to the long-term goals to be pursued, the social structures required, the implications for development of principles of social justice, and the nature and role of knowledge in effecting enduring change. Indeed, such a reexamination will be driven to seek a broad consensus of understanding about human nature itself. ”

“ But, as I believe that history, when we look at it in small fragments, proves anything, or nothing, so I believe that it is full of useful and precious instruction when we contemplate it in large portions, when we take in, at one view, the whole lifetime of great societies. I believe that it is possible to obtain some insight into the law which regulates the growth of communities, and some knowledge of the effects which that growth produces. ”

“ Does not the growth of society resemble individual growth? Do not both exhibit to us phases of youth, of maturity, of decrepitude? To a person who has carefully considered the progressive civilization of groups of men in regions of the earth far apart, who has observed the identical forms under which that advancing civilization has manifested itself, is it not clear that the procedure is determined by law? ”

“ One principle of growth and development is being slowly revealed,—an approach to symmetry and civic form, which is seen in freedom, justice, popular education, the rise of masses, the power of public opinion, and a general regard for life, health, peace, national prosperity, and the individual weal. The day has passed when men merely lived, slept, ate, fought; they are now involved in an intricate and progressive civilization. Sociology, ethics, and politics are newly blazed pathways for its development, its guidance, and its ideals. ”

“ That great foundation of the stability of communities is thus connected with the same necessity; and in the same progress, and out of the same causes, arise the first great Laws by which society is held together in order. Thus that whole wonderful development of the Moral Nature [Pg 324] of man, in all those various forms which fill up the history of the race, in part arises out of, and is always intimately blended with, the labours to which he has been aroused by those first great necessities of his physical nature. ”

“ What is the measure of development possible to each epoch, and what is the form which corresponds to it in the present, which will secure for the future a more extended development, and which will bring with it new forms? ”

“ So true, also, is the process of her development to what is called nature—to the laws and principles that regulate human action and life—that, as it proceeds before us, we almost lose note that there is development. ”

“ Heretofore our system of government has worked on what may be termed a miniature scale in comparison with the development which it must thus assume within a future so near at hand as scarcely to be beyond the present of the existing generation. ”

“ The more I study the history of our economic development the more I become convinced that this country would have by this time been just as rich and prosperous as it is, had that development been permitted to take its natural course without any artificial protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But that it would take us too far out of our track, we should prelude this inquiry by illustrating at some length a certain general law of progress;—the law that alike in occupations, sciences, arts, the divisions that had a common root, but by continual divergence have become distinct, and are now being separately developed, are not truly independent, but severally act and react on each other to their mutual advancement. ”

“ What has grown up historically can only die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human beings who compose it; the internal conditions and the external are related to each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. ”

“ The assumptions directing most of current development planning are essentially materialistic. That is to say, the purpose of development is defined in terms of the successful cultivation in all societies of those means for the achievement of material prosperity that have, through trial and error, already come to characterize certain regions of the world. Modifications in development discourse do indeed occur, accommodating differences of culture and political system and responding to the alarming dangers posed by environmental degradation. ”