THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGIST 07 



open up a sort of cosmic science that led them every whither 

 into all sorts of remote places, and into the most discouraging 

 deviations from commonplace things. 



A case in point is that of Professor Mark Baldwin's 

 Theory of Imitation in which the profound psychologist 

 attempts to explain social action by a theory, which, if log- 

 ically followed up, will land us cheek by jowl with the radio- 

 activity men and the physicists. 



There is one American sociologist who deserves special \ 

 mention in this huge work of pioneering; and I venture the 

 prediction that a century from now his name will be a thousand 

 times more widely known than it is at present in his own day. 

 The man to wdiom I refer is Lester F. Ward, the tireless and 

 highly original scholar of the Smithsonian institution. Pro- 

 fessor Ward, we may say, was the founder of American soci- 

 ology; or let us say that he was the first American to attempt 

 a rational inquiry into causes and to suggest a practical 

 method by which human society could reach a stable and 

 physiologically satisfactory state. Ward's now famous book I 

 Dynamic Sociology was published more than twenty years / 

 ago, and although it was widely read it did not sell like a suc- 

 cessful historical romance. It is essentially a pioneer w^ork 

 and the stamp of originality it bears is found in the new terms 

 which the author found needful to create for his peculiar 

 purpose. Since the first publication of Dynamic Sociol- 

 ogy, Ward's ideas have expanded in every direction, but I 

 think he will bear me out when I say that his original practical 

 idea has remained unchanged. A study of Ward's work 

 impresses the thoughtful reader with the notion that under 

 his euphemistic term collective telesis, there abides a so- 

 cialism far deeper than any socialism that has as yet gone 

 current b}' that name. 



In plain speech, telesis is a process of doing something 

 from a distance. The management of a great business by 

 the individual who owns it would be, I take it, individual 

 telesis. What then are we to understand by collective telesis? 



Ward is not only too deep for the average man, but he 

 sometimes offers the specialist a rather hard nut to crack, 

 and his implied conclusions are often too difficult for the busy 



Vol. 7-7 



