DEFINITION OF SOME MODERN SCIENCES. 119 



which the economists have established their science. Self-preservation 

 has always been the first law of nature, and that which best insures this 

 is the greatest gain. So unerring is this law that it is easy to create a 

 class of paupers or mendicants by simply letting it be known that food 

 or alms will be given to those who ask. All considerations of pride or 

 self-respect will give way to the imperious law of the greatest gain for 

 the least effort. All ideas of justice which would prompt the giving of 

 an equivalent vanish before it, and men will take what is proffered 

 without thought of a return or sense of gratitude. In this respect men 

 are like animals. In fact, this is precisely the principle that underlies 

 the domestication of animals and the taming of wild beasts. So soon 

 as the creature learns that it will not be injured or molested and that 

 its wants will be supplied, it submits to the will of man and becomes a 

 — parasite. Parasitism, indeed, throughout the organic world is only 

 an application of the law of parsimony. Pauperism produced in the 

 manner described is social parasitism. But parasitism always results 

 in degeneracy, and pauperism, engendered in society by well-meaning 

 persons ignorant of the law of parsimony, is social parasitic degeneracy. 

 While, therefore, in view of the number and variety of causes that 

 combine to determine any single act, no law can be laid down as to 

 how any individual will act under a given set of circumstances, we 

 have a law which determines with absolute certainty how all men act 

 under all circumstances. If there is any apparent exception to this law 

 we may be sure that some element has been overlooked in the calcula- 

 tion. Just as, in the case of a heavenly body which is observed to move 

 in a manner at variance with the established laws of gravitation and 

 planetary motion, the astronomer does not doubt the universality of 

 those laws, but attributes the phenomena to some undiscovered body in 

 space of the proper size and in the proper position to cause the per- 

 turbation, and proceeds to search for that body; so in human society, 

 if there are events that seem at variance with the fundamental sociolog- 

 ical law of parsimony, the sociologist may safely trust the law and 

 proceed to discover the cause of the social perturbation. 





