WHAT IS SOCIAL EVOLUTION? 45 



instrumental to social evolution, and that in the absence of processes 

 facilitating social sustentation social evolution can not take place, no 

 one could have gainsaid his conclusion. And if he had inferred that 

 whoever improves these processes betters the conditions which favor 

 social evolution, his inference would have been true. But this admis- 

 sion may be made without admitting that the men who directly or 

 indirectly further sustentation, or who improve the quality of the 

 social units, are the agents who determine and direct social evolution. 

 An account of their doings in no way constitutes an account of that 

 social transformation from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to 

 a definite coherent heterogeneity, in which the evolution of a society 

 essentially consists. 



Moreover Mr. Mallock is justified in contending that the great 

 man — discoverer, inventor, teacher, administrator, or other — may 

 equitably receive all the reward which, under the principle of con- 

 tract, flows to him as the result of his superiority ; and that disregard 

 of his claim by the mass of men is alike inequitable and ungrateful. 

 This is the position I have myself taken, as witness the following : — 



Even were an invention of no benefit to society unless thrown open to 

 unbought use, there would still be no just ground for disregarding the in- 

 ventor's claim ; any more than for disregarding the claim of one who 

 labors on his farm for his own benefit and not for public benefit. But as it 

 is, society unavoidably gains immensely more than the inventor gains. 

 Before he can receive any advantage from his new process or apparatus, he 

 must confer advantages on his fellow men — must either supply them with 

 a better article at the price usually charged, or the same article at a lower 

 price. If he fails to do this, his invention is a dead letter ; if he does it, he 

 makes over to the world at large nearly all the new mine of wealth he has 

 opened. By the side of the profits which came to Watt from his patents, 

 place the profits which his improvements in the steam-engine have since 

 brought to his own nation and to all nations, and it becomes manifest that 

 the inventor's share is infinitesimal compared with the share mankind 

 takes. And yet there are not a few who would appropriate even his infini- 

 tesimal share ! * 



Had Mr. Mallock recognized the fundamental distinction I have 

 pointed out between social sustentation, life, activity, enlightenment, 

 etc., on the one hand, and the development of social structures on the 

 other, his polemic against socialists and collectivists would have been 

 equally effective, and he would not have entailed upon me an ex- 

 penditure of time and energy which I can ill spare. — The Nineteenth 

 Century. 



* Justice, pp. 110, 111. 



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-LliHARYJf 



