Part 18

“The purpose of applied sociology is to harmonize achievement with improvement. If all this achievement which constitutes civilization has really been wrought without producing any improvement in the condition of the human race, it is time that the reason for this was investigated. Applied sociology includes among its main purposes the investigation of this question. The difficulty lies in the fact that achievement is not socialized. The problem, therefore, is that of the socialization of achievement.

“We are told that no scheme for the equalization of men can succeed; that at first it was physical strength that determined the inequalities; that this at length gave way to the power of cunning, and that still later it became intelligence in general that determined the place of individuals in society. This last, it is maintained is now, in the long run, in the most civilized races and the most enlightened communities, the true reason why some occupy lower and others higher positions in the natural strata of society. This, it is said, is the natural state and is as it should be. It is moreover affirmed that being natural there is no possibility of altering it.

“Of course all this falls to the ground on the least analysis. For example, starting from the standpoint of achievement, it would naturally be held that there would be great injustice in robbing those who by their superior wisdom had achieved the great results upon which civilization rests and distributing the natural rewards among inferior persons who had achieved nothing. All would assent to this. And yet this is in fact practically what has been done. The whole history of the world shows that those who have achieved have received no reward. The rewards for their achievement have fallen to persons who have achieved nothing. They have simply for the most part profited by some accident of position in a complex, badly organized society, whereby they have been permitted to claim and appropriate the fruits of the achievements of others. But no one would insist that these fruits should all go to those who had made them possible. The fruits of achievement are incalculable in amount and endure forever. Their authors are few in number and soon pass away. They would be the last to claim an undue share. They work for all mankind and for all time, and all they ask is that all mankind shall forever benefit by their work.”

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.

We will now briefly compare this position with that of the great German thinker, Joseph Dietzgen, who at the international congress at The Hague, in 1872, was introduced by Karl Marx to the assembled delegates with these words: “Here is our philosopher.” Of course we shall only deal with his theories here as they relate to the conclusions reached by Ward.

“All exertion and struggle in human history” says Dietzgen, “all aspirations and researches of science find their common aim in the freedom of man, in the subjection of nature to the sway of his mind.”

This is, as we have seen, precisely Ward’s idea of what constitutes the substance of civilization.

“Man, to be sure,” says Dietzgen, “is still dependent on nature. Her tribulations are not yet all overcome. Culture has yet a good deal to do; aye, its work is endless. But we have so far mastered the dragon, that we finally succeeded in forging the weapon with which it can be subdued; we know the way to tame the beast into a useful domestic animal.”

What is this “weapon” which humanity has forged and which constitutes the possibility of its salvation? “This salvation,” says Dietzgen, “was neither invented nor revealed, it has grown of the accumulated labor of history. It consists in the wealth of to-day which arose glorious and dazzling in the light of science, out of human flesh and blood, to save humanity. This wealth in all its palpable reality, is the solid foundation of the hope of social-democracy.”

And here lest there should seem to be a plain contradiction between Dietzgen and Ward, we will go further and see that Dietzgen, like Ward, does not mean merely those items of wealth which happen to be in existence in the shape of tangible commodities.

“The wealth of to-day does not consist in the superb mansions, inhabited by the privileged of society, nor does it consist in their costly apparel, or in the gold and precious stones of their jewelry, or in the heaps of goods peeping through the show windows of our great cities. All that as well as the coin and bullion in the trunks and safes form but an appendix or, so to speak, the tassels and tufts, behind which is concealed that great and real wealth--the rock on which our hope is built.

“What authorizes the people to believe in the salvation from long ages of torture--nay, not only to believe in, but to see it, and actively strive for, is the fairy-like productive power, the prodigious fertility of human labor. In the secrets which have been wrung from nature; in the magic formulas by which we force her to do our wishes and to yield her bounties almost without any painful work on our part; in the constantly increasing improvement of the methods of production--in this I say consists the wealth which can accomplish what no redeemer ever could.”

And Dietzgen, like Ward, protests against this great legacy of history, this vast accumulation of the results of the combined social labor of a hundred generations, being the sole property of those “who never achieved anything!”

Dietzgen, like Ward, sees that the great problem which confronts the race is to break down those intolerable bars which prevent humanity from entering into its just inheritance.

To this great and culminating task man must bend all the powers of his mind. Now he has reached the point where the gates of liberty begin to yield and with one grand, united effort may be thrown wide open so that all the sons and daughters of men may finish the long centuries of misery and freely enter in.

To continue this senseless oppression longer would be the summit of stupidity.

“Consider the frugal needs of our people and at the same time the fertility of labor, and ask yourselves if mere instinct alone would not be sufficient to teach us how to supply adequately our needs with the help of the existing means of production?”

To make these “means of production the property of society” is then the problem of Ward’s applied sociology and Dietzgen’s social democracy alike. According to both, this emancipation of the mass of the people from the last form of slavery is the one consuming task of civilization.

And the psychic factor, the consciously reasoning brain of man is, according to both, to be more than ever the instrument of “achievement.”

To Dietzgen especially, the time is rotten-ripe for the great change.

“The salvation of humanity is involved in this question. It is so great and sublime that all other problems which time may bear in its folds must wait in silence. The whole of old Europe is waiting with bated breath the fulfilling of the things which are coming.

“Oh, ye short-sighted and narrow-minded, who can not give up the fad of moderate, slow, organic progress! Do you not perceive that all your great liberal passions sink to the level of mere trifling, because the great question of social salvation is on the order of the day? The calm precedes the tempest. History stands still, because she gathers force for a great catastrophe.”

THE LEWIS LECTURES.

This book, =Evolution, Social and Organic=, is the first volume of a series of lectures to which we expect to make notable additions in the future. We can at this time definitely promise two volumes, which will be made up from the lectures delivered by Mr. Lewis at the Garrick Theater during the winter and spring of 1908.

=Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind.= This will in all probability be the second volume of the Lewis Lectures, and we expect to publish it in May or June. It will consist of critical studies of the theories of such reformers, philosophers and moralists as Benjamin Kidd, Henry George, Dr. Schaeffle, Thomas Carlyle, Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant.

It must not be imagined that Mr. Lewis in these lectures is merely attempting to refute these thinkers, nor that he would disparage the service that each in his time has rendered. On the contrary his aim is to give the reader as clear a comprehension as possible of what each of these men has achieved. And he furthermore shows how the outlook of each was limited by the economic environment from which flowed the mental atmosphere in which he lived, so that it would have been unreasonable for us to expect from these writers any other conclusions than those at which they actually arrived. Understanding these conditions we can better understand how to meet the arguments of those still influenced by the outgrown ideas which are perhaps best stated in the writings of the leaders here considered.

=Socialism and Modern Thought.= This is planned for the third volume of the series, and will probably be ready in the summer or fall of 1908. It will be a direct supplement to this present volume, =Evolution, Social and Organic=, which explains the scientific basis on which socialism rests. The second volume, as we have shown, is taken up with an examination of rival theories. The third volume will restate the principles of socialism and show how they are applied to the pressing problems of today. A lecture on “The Economic Interpretation of History” will show how Marx’s historical method throws a search-light on the darkest places in which sociological students have hitherto groped. One on “The Positive School of Criminology” will tell how the socialist scholars of Italy have revolutionized the once hopeless science of crimes and punishments, and have established certain very definite and very fruitful propositions, showing all the while that crime must last while capitalism lasts. In “The Latest Word of Science and Philosophy--Monism,” Mr. Lewis will show how the clearest thinkers in the modern socialist movement have arrived at a conception of the universe that is broad enough to take in all reality, and to show the relation of the facts of mind to the facts of matter. We have room to mention here but one more lecture, and that shall be “The Inevitability of the Triumph of Socialism.”

Each of these volumes will be uniform with the present one; advance orders are solicited. The price, postage included, will be fifty cents each.