Social regeneration

“ Jesus Christ sought only to transform the man. He was satisfied to have the man deal thereafter with his own environment. Social reform is possible only through spiritual renewal. To have a new society we must first have new men. When the regeneration of the individual has been accomplished, society itself will, perforce, be regenerated, and a social organization that will do justice to all men will spring automatically into existence. I tried to make this clear to you that night at the Tracy house. ”

“ Give them that, the one thing needful alike for social happiness and moral improvement, and you make a mighty step in social amelioration and elevation; because you lay the foundation on which it all rests, and on which it must, in a general point of view, all depend—without it, all the rest will be found to be as much thrown away as the seed cast on the arid desert. ”

“ That the struggle for existence, just in proportion as it becomes intense, impels men to new efforts and inventions. That this improvement and capacity for improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and extended by the tendency of the best adapted individual, or most improved individual, to survive and propagate among individuals, and of the best adapted, or most improved tribe, nation, or race to survive in the struggle between social aggregates. ”

“ Ease in gaining subsistence, the greater independence of the individual and the family, emancipation from carking care, the hopeful attitude of mind engendered by the consciousness of an almost unlimited opportunity and capacity for expansion, the expectation of large returns upon labor, and, finally, the profound influence of this hopefulness upon the national character, all combined, produce a social rejuvenation of the race. ”

“ The Harbinger will be devoted to the cause of a radical, organic social reform, as essential to the highest development of man's nature, to the production of those elevated and beautiful forms of character of which he is capable, and to the diffusion of happiness, excellence and universal harmony upon the earth. ”

“ We regard those changes as progressive whether they be moral, intellectual, or material, which bring about a better adaptation of individuals to one another in society, and of social groups to the requirements of their existence. Social progress means, in other words, the adaptation of society to a wider and more universal environment. The ideal of human progress is apparently adaptation to a perfectly universal environment, such an adaptation as shall harmonize all factors whether internal or external, present or remote, in the life of humanity. ”

“ Or, to put the matter in slightly different words, while the struggle for safety develops the esthetic life, and the struggle for subsistence becomes the economic life, and the struggle for adaptation broadens into the ethical life, the struggle of resembling creatures to adjust their similar adaptations to one another, is the beginning and the continuing process of the social life. ”

“ Could this book succeed but a little in showing that old things are often old only because they are traditional, or, conversely, that in the evolution of new things lies social salvation; that the "submerged tenth" is submerged because of ignorance and low wages; and that the community abounds in latent ability which awaits the opportunity for development,—it will accomplish an office of untold value, turning men forever away from outgrown creeds, and leading them to a vision of social coöperation and adjustment. ”

“ Such results can be achieved under a social pattern aimed at respect for life--all life; the preservation and improvement of the conditions under which the good life can be lived by all members of each community as well as by the human family as a whole. If human society is to be preserved and progressively improved it must encourage individuals and cherish institutions whose responsibility and duty it is to stimulate self-criticism to a point that will make survival and social improvement the first charge on community life--from the locality, through the region to the whole human family. ”

“ The changes brought about in the human life pattern in the course of the great revolution have created a new world—in structure, in function, in outlook, in stepped-up capacity for even more spectacular changes in the future.
Instead of regarding human beings and human society as unchangeable and sacred we must regard both as a part of our social problem: taking the steps necessary to reach and occupy the highest possible levels of social and individual health and effectiveness. We can and should make every effort to improve human society. ”

“ My conviction is that the transformation of human nature will take place, not when the whole of humanity becomes Christian, but when the whole of humanity awakens to the consciousness of the 'holiness of generation.' This consciousness will make the central work of Society the new race, its origin, its management, and its education ”

“ And transformation of the home will in time exercise its influence on public spirit. As the solidity of a wall depends upon the grain of the stones and the consistence of the cement which binds them together, so also the energy of public life depends upon the individual value of men and their power of cohesion. The great desideratum of our time is the culture of the component parts of society, of the individual man. Everything in the present social organism leads us back to this element. ”

“ They have radically changed the methods of agriculture, of manufacture, of commerce, of travel, and of business; and they are radically changing the methods of charity, of philanthropy, of religion, of reform, and of education. Indeed, it is difficult to name a single field of human activity which has not been profoundly influenced by one or both of these two revolutions. ”

“ In our day the attempt is made to reform society by civilisation, by education, by material progress, by change of policies and organisations. No! the change needed is vital. It is the change from moral death to moral life. ”

“ We shall have, of course, to enlarge our family and social life, not in the petty spirit of present day Social Reform, hammering at small details and belittling our immediate past, but with a larger idea and more generous impulses. ”

“ The renovation of our Social System is a work so vast that no one of us, nor all of us put together, can define all the measures that will have to be taken before we attain even the Cab-Horse Ideal of existence for our children and children's children. ”

“ Now this human over-life may take either beneficent or maleficent or neutral aspects towards the general life of humanity. It may present itself a law and pacification, as a positive addition and superstructure to the Normal Social Life, as roads and markets and cities, as courts and unifying monarchies, as helpful and directing religious organisations, as literature and art and science and philosophy, reflecting back upon the individual in the Normal Social Life from which it arose, a gilding and refreshment of new and wider interests and added pleasures and resources. ”

“ We should also probably better understand the conditions of successful growth or reform, and have less toleration for schemes of social reconstruction.
Civilization has been of slow and painful growth. ”

“ We can not, as yet, spare either the long-faced or the round-faced types. While this is true, elimination that acts on types and not on single traits must be a bungling means of social progress hurting more than it helps. When men are relocated, eat what they should and live as hygiene demands, our social traits can be reconstructed to meet the demands of a higher civilization. Disease, poverty, vice and inequality can be eliminated. Why leave the tried paths of progress for methods that might work among tigers and wolves, but which humanity has outgrown? ”

“ All definite and dogmatic schemes of social reform prove upon challenge to need adjustment and modification, to fit the actual workings of a society already infinitely complex. It is as the sentiment which for want of a better word we call socialistic works along with that broad and candid study of fact which we call scientific, and toward an ideal in which the material is but an instrument of the spiritual,—that there is solid promise of advance. ”

“ That the tendency is in this direction is demonstrated by the gradual increase [Pg 510] of the length of life. A high degree of mental, moral, and physical harmony in human society is no more "wonderful" or inconceivable than the high degree of harmony already attained in the movements of our own solar system. On the one hand, social progress means the attainment of results which call less and less for reform; and, on the other hand, we are accustoming ourselves to social change ”

“ Our only programme, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of moral and material regeneration, and we must do this among a population whose degeneration in its inherited conditions it is difficult to measure. ”

“ Social reformers need this lesson. Many voices proclaim many gospels to-day. Culture, economical or social reconstruction, is trumpeted as the panacea. But it matters comparatively little how society is organised. ”

“ With a fuller knowledge of human nature and human society it will be possible to indicate sane and safe reconstructions in the social order, so that ultimately humanity will control its social environment and its own human nature even more completely than it now controls the forces of physical nature. But the ultimate reliance in all such reconstruction, as we will try to show in the next chapter, must be, not revolution, nor even legislation, but education. ”

“ It is my firm conviction, for reasons I shall give farther on, that, when we have cleansed the Augean stable of our present social organisation, and have made such arrangements that all shall contribute their share either of physical or [132] mental labour, and that every one shall obtain the full and equal reward for their work, the future progress of the race will be rendered certain by the fuller development of its higher nature acted on by a special form of selection which will then come into play. ”

“ He pointed out that for three centuries the best minds had been devoted to material science and had neglected societary problems.XIII-18 Material institutions should be modified and made to harmonize with the underlying laws of social evolution. A moral reorganization of society must precede and direct the material and political reorganization.XIII-19
Social improvement is a result of mental development. This development favors the preponderance of the noblest human tendencies. ”

“ This essential nucleus, thus stripped, reveals itself as the systematic direction of the moulding forces that play upon the developing citizen, towards his improvement, with a view to a new generation of individuals, a new social state, at a higher level than that at which we live to-day, a new generation which will apply the greater power, ampler knowledge and more definite will our endeavours will give it, to raise its successor still higher in the scale of life. ”

“ It is encouraging to know, however, that life in its highest forms, that is, as represented by the most cultured aggregates of the human species, is evolving rapidly and irrepressibly toward the ideal, that is, toward a social state in which the interests and life of each individual being are more and more equally precious. What are civilization and morality? What do we mean by ethical progress? The growth of consideration for others—nothing more—simply cessation of, or abstinence from, exploitation. ”

“ It endeavors so to elucidate and commend what is just and practical in the pervading demands of our time for a Social Renovation that the humane and philanthropic can no longer misrepresent and malign them as destructive, demoralizing or infidel in their tendencies, but must joyfully recognize in them the fruits of past and the seeds of future Progress in the history of our Race. ”

“ I aim at a growing collective life, a perpetually enhanced inheritance for our race, through the fullest, freest development of the individual life. What they aim at ultimately I do not understand, but it is manifest that its immediate form is the fullest and freest development of the individual life. ”

“ It is another to argue that human nature is subject to the general law of change, and that the process by which it slowly but continuously tends to adapt itself more and more to the conditions of social life—children inheriting the acquired aptitudes of their parents—points to an ultimate harmony. Here profitable legislation and education are auxiliary to the process of unconscious adaptation, and respond to the psychological changes in the community, changes which reveal themselves in public opinion. ”

“ And so Ward’s conclusion is that the greatness of the present consists in that mass of achievements called civilization, among which are those inventions which have so wonderfully increased the capacity of social labor in its production of wealth. And the hope of the future lies in the socialization of those achievements so as to make their rich fruits the common heritage of all mankind. There are no Socialists who will quarrel with these conclusions. ”

“ Thus social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors, - the individual, deriving his peculiar gifts from the play of physiological and infra-social forces, but bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment, with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. ”

“ The creation of the first utility, the first substantial movement to increase the food supply, the first home for protection, the first religious ceremony, or the first organized household, represents the beginnings of civilization, and these are the landmarks along the trail of man's ascendency.
Progress Is an Essential Characteristic of Civilization.—The goal is never reached, the victory is never finally achieved. Man must move on, ever on. Intellect must develop, morals improve, liberty increase, social order be perfected, and social growth continue. ”