CHAPTER XIII 



THOMAS N. CARVER (1865- ) 

 The Super-Group 



WITH Professor Carver the chief function of sociology is to work 

 out a consistent and thorough-going theory of social progress and 

 its only justification is social amelioration. 1 It is thus a social 

 philosophy. To the methods of sociological investigation out- 

 lined by Comte he adds a fifth, viz., the study of social forces now 

 at work, and holds that instead of interpreting present events 

 solely in the light of historical analyses the more effective method 

 is to interpret both the present and the past by an analysis of 

 forces now at work. 



Two preliminary assumptions are made: first, that this is a 

 rational universe, a cosmos rather than a chaos; and second, 

 that life is a good thing; i. e., that life is better than death. If 

 life is a good thing, then more life is a better thing. He goes a 

 step further in The Religion Worth Having, and assumes that 

 this is (rod's world and that the laws of the universe are God's 

 laws. From a religious point of view it is necessary to be obe- 

 dient to the will of God, but this calls for an understanding of 

 that will as revealed in the cosmic process. 



Professor Carver does not stop with mere abundance of life as 

 the goal of the cosmic process, but emphasizes quality; as a neo- 

 Darwinian, however, he believes that quality can be secured only 

 by a process analogous to that which prevails in biological 

 evolution, i. e., superabundance of life, variations, struggle for 

 existence, elimination of the ill-adapted and inheritance of 

 adaptive qualities, a process leading gradually to the production 

 of new and higher species, higher, that is, because better 

 adapted to life conditions. As the cosmic process, according to 



1 Sociology and Social Progress, Introduction. 



