The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-31
REV Beeks RENEhH


science and authority as to the direction in
which the path of future progress lies,
Even our scientific teachers are silent.
Having traced the steps in the evolution
of life up to human society. science now
stands dumb before the problems presented
by society as it exists to-day. Even Her
bert Spencer, whose Synthetic Philoso-
phy'' was to have sned light upon the great
problems of human destiny, has really been
so little able to accomplish any practical
reading of the riddle that his investigations
and conclusions, according as they are
dealt with by one side or the other,
lead up to the opinions of the
individualists and collectivists into
which society is separating. In Germany
and in France those to whom we turn
for light have proven equally unable
to throw any certain illumination
upon the future. People and leaders
are alike without faith, for there is,
in reality, no science of human society.
To many the spirit of the French Revolu-
ton, which caused so universal feeling
of unrest at the end of the last century,
seems to be again loosed, and, after an
epoch of progress uneXampled in the
history of the world, we would appear to
have returned to the ideals of society which
moved mems minds at that period of up
heaval. We have, however, little in COM
mon with that past season of unrest. We
have, in reality, entered upon a new stage
of social evolution, in which the minds of
men are moving toward other goals.
The fruits of an industrial revolution are
demanding our attention. The world is
becoming unified. An organization with
nervous system of 100000 miles of tele-
graph wires and an arterlal system OF rail-
ways and steamships is a different factor
from the aggregate of isolated communi-
ties of even 100 years ago.
One of the most striking figures of the
times is the spectacle of Demos, enfran-
chised, recognized, emerging from the
long silence of social and political serfdom.
Another significant feature of the new
order is. the tendency growing within the
churches to assert that religion has to do
with the present as well as the future; that
Christianity was intended to save not men,
but man, to teach US not only how to die,
as individuals, but how to live, as society.
Still another remarkable sign of the times
is the widespread revolt among all classes
against the political economy of Adam
Smith, Ricardo and Mill. The time is ripe
for new formation of social science by
the biologist, who, having established law
and order in the lower branches of his sub
iect has carried US up to human society,
and there left US without a guide. He
must carry the methods of his science on
to where he deals with the phenomena of
life under its last and most complex
aspect.
This brings the author to consideration
of the conditions of human progress. He
traces the evolution of man from the
brute, feebly holding his own against fierce
competitors, up through the ages until he
finds him master of the earth and organized
into society. He finds, with Professor
Flower, that progress has been due to the
opportunity of those individuals who are
little superior In some respect to their fell
lows, to assert that superiority and to con-
tinue it to their descendants. In a word
progress depends upon selection, ceaSeless
stress and competition. Other things be-
ing equal, the wider the range of selection
the keener will be the rivalry, and the more
rigid the selection the greater the progress.
From this stress of nature rises the highest
forms we can conceive. The law of progress
as stated is inevitable, but in man occur
two modifying elements-reason and the
capacity for organization.
While thus stating the conditions of
progress the author frankly avows that he
finds no rational sanction for these con-
ditions. In other words, that any organ
iZation OF society with a system of re-
wards according to natural ability can
have no ultimate sanction in reason for all
the individuals. His welfare in this life is
as important to the ungifted as to the
gifted, and any regulation under which
the former will fare worse than the latter
must ultimately, however we may obscure
1t, be rule of brute force, pure and sim
pie. Thus, while showing that the evo-
luton scientist can readily prove that the
hopes of modern socialism are incompati-
BILE with the ultimate interests of a pro-
gressive society, he still admits it as evil
dent that it would be to the personal, i'm
mediate interests of the masses, who are
now inevitably predestined to hardship
and poverty, to put an immediate end to
existing social conditions.
He fatty contravenes the teachings of
certain of the later social economists, that
the interests of the individual can ever
become identical with the interests of
society. The ultimate aim of society is
progress-of the individual well being
which society in its march of progress
must oftentimes ignore, even to the extent
of crushing out the individual altogether.
Strange to say, mans reason, which has
apparently given him the power to sus-
pend the conditions OF progress, for the
good of the individual, has never operated
for this suspension. His conduct through
out has been such as reason could not
sanction. To explain this phenomenon is
only possible in the light of what Mr.. Kidd
terms the central feature of human his
tory-religion. A religion he defines as
"a form of belief providing an ultra
rational sanction for that class of conduct
in the individual where his interests and
the interests of the social organism are
antagonistic and by which the former are
rendered subordinate to the latter in the
general interests of the evolution which
the race is undergoing" Thus it is belief
in a supernatural power, obedience to a
higher spiritual law, that keeps the indi-
vidual in the attitude of subordinating his
interest to that of society. The belief in a
future life that shall be better than this
keeps the individual patient. 1t furnishes
him an International, a supernatural
| sanction for irrational unnatural conduct.
Two chapters are devoted to considera-
| ton of Western civilization and the prog
ress of the conflict between capitalism and
industrialism. The beginning of the
! Christian era saw the birth into the world
| OF new force of immeasurable social sig
| nltcance. Under the influence of this
! force men first began to forget self and
| draw together in the bonds of common
humanity recognizing interrelationship,
and subordinating selfish ends to the gem
eral welfare for the love of kind. 1t was
the altruistic ideals of the new religion
| that differentiated it from the old ones,
and 1T IS the spread of the altruistic ideals
! that has brought our Western civilization
TO Its present stage. A feature of modern
tunes is growing sensitiveness to the
spectacle OF suffering a spread of the hui
manitarlan spirit. The infection of suffer-