52 
Ward further says: “But what constitutes the environment of the 
civilized man? ‘The character of the environment of animals and of savage 
man is easy to perceive. It is the earth, the air, the rocks and waters, 
the trees, grass, birds and animals, the last to include, in the case of the 
savage, the men of his own tribe and of other tribes, and also civilized 
races, in case any such ever come in contact with him. It is by learning 
to know these things that he is enabled to protect and defend himself. 
“But, looking to races somewhat more advanced than the crude savage, 
we find, as frequently shown before, that their advancement has been due 
to action on their part in taking advantage of certain deeper laws of 
nature, in making use of materials that savages fail to make use of, in 
interpreting phenomena that savages do not correctly interpret, and, 
through these means, in devising plans and inventing appliances for mul- 
tiplying the products of nature and increasing the supply of physical, 
social, and intellectual wants. And, when we have reached the highest 
forms of social existence, we find that the only effective means by which 
desire is gratified, progress achieved, and happiness attained, consist in 
still deeper knowledge of the natural surroundings, in a still wider grasp 
of laws and principles, in the correct interpretation of still more obscure 
phenomena, and in the discovery and invention of still better means and 
methods of securing remote ends. To know one’s environment is to possess 
the most real, the most practical, the most useful of all kinds of knowledge, 
and, properly viewed, this class of information constitutes the only true 
knowledge.” (Ward, Dynamic Sociology, Vol. II, p. 495.) 
In discussing the expression ‘knowledge of the environment,’ Ward 
comes to the conclusion that it is co-extensive and synonymous with the 
word science. He says: “Knowledge of man’s environment is nothing 
more nor less than scientific knowledge; and, conversely, all scientific 
knowledge consists in knowledge of the environment * * *” (Vol. II, p. 
497). Farther on he says: “The only useful knowledge is that which 
furnishes relations. Isolated facts, until employed for this purpose, are 
not really employed at all. An object known only in itself can scarcely 
be said to be known. * * * Science is dynamic. Whatever it touches is 
transformed. The only object in knowing is by means of it to do some- 
things A at 5) Vol: Lp: 497): 
He refers to the attenuation of knowledge and of getting away from 
things, and how especially in the Middle Ages men were inclined to neglect 
facts, and how science brings us back to facts and to nature. We can 
