A Rational and Humane Science 



commercial period of the last loo years, the leading 

 students of social science, being themselves filled 

 with the spirit of the time, have been fain to look 

 upon the acquisition of private wealth as the one 

 absorbing motive of human nature ; and so it 

 has come about that the economists, from Adam 

 Smith to John Stuart Mill, have founded their 

 science on self-seeking and competition, as the 

 base of their analysis. To-day another series 

 of economists coming to the front — their minds 

 preoccupied with the great facts of Community 

 of life and Co-operation — have discovered that 

 Society is in the main an illustration of these 

 latter principles, and have evolved a quite new 

 phase of the science. It is not that Society has 

 changed so much during this period, as that the 

 altered point of view of the students of Society 

 has caused them simply to fix their attention on 

 a different aspect of the problem and a different 

 range of facts. 



I have alluded already to the way in which 

 the prevalent use of Machinery in practical life 

 has affected our mental outlook on the world. 

 It is curious that during this mechanical age of 

 the last lOO years or so, we have not only come to 

 regard Society in a mechanical light, as a concourse 

 of separate individuals bound together by a mere 

 cash-nexus, but have extended the same idea 

 to the universe at large, which we look upon 

 as a concourse of separate atoms, associated to- 

 gether by gravitation, or possibly by mere mutual 

 impact. Yet it is certain that both these views 



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