SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN LIFE. 493 



ical and social barriers, and the giving to each man an unimpeded 

 career, must be purely beneficial, yet there is, at first, a considerable 

 set-off from the benefits. Among those who, in older communities, 

 have by laborious lives gained distinction, some may be heard privately 

 to confess that " the game is not worth the candle," and, when they 

 hear of others who wish to tread in their steps, shake their heads and 

 say, " If they only knew ! " Without accepting in full so pessimistic 

 an estimate of success, we must still say that very generally the cost 

 of the candle deducts largely from the gain of the game. That which 

 in these exceptional cases holds among ourselves holds more generally 

 in America. An intensified life, which may be summed up as great 

 labor, great profit, great expenditure, has for its concomitant a wear 

 and tear which considerably diminishes in one direction the good 

 gained in another. Added together, the daily strain through many 

 hours and the anxieties occupying many other hours the occupation 

 of consciousness by feelings that are either indifferent or painful, 

 leaving relatively little time for occupation of it by pleasurable feel- 

 ings tends to lower its level more than its level is raised by the grati- 

 fications of achievement and the accompanying benefits. So that it 

 may, and in many cases does, result that diminished happiness goes 

 along with increased prosperity. Unquestionably, as long as order is 

 fairly maintained, that absence of political and social restraints which 

 gives free scope to the struggles for profit and honor conduces greatly 

 to material advance of the society develops the industrial arts, ex- 

 tends and improves the business organizations, augments the wealth ; 

 but that it raises the value of individual life, as measured by the 

 average state of its feeling, by no means follows. That it will do so 

 eventually, is certain ; but, that it does so now, seems, to say the least, 

 very doubtful. 



The truth is, that a society and its members act and react in such 

 wise that while, on the one hand, the nature of the society is deter- 

 mined by the natures of its members, on the other hand, the activities 

 of its members (and presently their natures) are re-determined by the 

 needs of the society, as these alter : change in either entails change in 

 the other. It is an obvious implication that, to a great extent, the life 

 of a society so sways the wills of its members as to turn them to its 

 ends. That which is manifest during the militant stage, when the so- 

 cial aggregate coerces its units into co-operation for defense, and sacri- 

 fices many of their lives for its corporate preservation, holds under 

 another form during the industrial stage, as we at present know it. 

 Though the co-operation of citizens is now voluntary instead of com- 

 pulsory, yet the social forces impel them to achieve social ends while 

 apparently achieving only their own ends. The man who, carrying 

 out an invention, thinks only of private welfare to be thereby secured, 

 is in far larger measure working for public welfare ; instance the con- 

 trast between the fortune made by Watt and the wealth which the 



