252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE CAUSE OF SOCIAL PEOGEESS AND OF THE EATE OF 



INTEEEST 



By Professor J. PEASE NORTON 



YALE UNIVERSITY 



IT has been generally considered by the scholars of the social sciences 

 that there is no fundamental cause in human societies for social 

 progress. Indeed, the whole Malthusian theory is to the effect that the 

 overwhelming rate of increase possible in human societies tends to keep 

 a considerable percentage of the members of a society on the threshold 

 of continuous poverty. A moral hopelessness characterizes the books of a 

 great many economists, when- they touch upon the subject of population. 

 By reason of these gloomy chapters, political economy has been termed 

 the dismal science. 



How many established doctrines of good writers have been swept 

 away by the light of subsequent discoveries and later reasoning ! Were 

 it not for the high improbability of any one scientific doctrine long 

 standing without modification, I should hesitate seriously before ad- 

 vancing these notes on the views held by me and which are so com- 

 pletely at variance with the long-established and present theories of 

 the science of political economy with respect to population and interest. 

 Yet, because these views have greatly brightened my interest in all sub- 

 jects of human history, I am interested in subjecting them to early 

 criticism. 



There seems to exist in the tendency of populations to increase in 

 numbers the cause of progress, which, if unimpeded by certain de- 

 structive agencies, which I have termed to assist me in my thinking 

 the " wastes of nations," would carry along on the waves of comfort 

 and prosperity an ever-increasing population up to an unassignable 

 limit, so great is the possibility at which a stationary state could be 

 maintained. These destructive agencies are not a product of the in- 

 crease in numbers, but they constitute the elements of the hostile en- 

 vironment against which progress has been continually made since the 

 earliest historic times. 



Now a social group on any habitat at a given time exists through 

 the application of a series of arts which are possessed by the society 

 and are exercised over the environment. The arts existing at any time 

 may be inventoried and logically classified. The arts are productive 

 and are ways of doing things which bring a return. There are the arts 

 of the food supply, such as hunting, fishing, agriculture, food preser- 



