SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY, 493 



it would be to give him employment instead of taking care of him. All 

 modern philanthropic legislation has relied upon palliatives ; it has 

 undoubtedly ameliorated the near effects of poverty, but unquestiona- 

 bly it has failed to remove its remote causes. We must believe that 

 these social evils of pauperism and crime are incurable, or that the 

 treatment of them is wrong and pernicious. 



The latter conclusion leads us all the more to the firm belief that 

 Philanthropy should be established upon a definite and exact scientific 

 basis. In his address before the Academy, in 1880, Victor Sardou said 

 that sympathy impelled men to apply a remedy before they ascertained 

 the cause of the disease — to trust in the efficacy of panaceas, rather 

 than in the vis medicatrix. This he called sentimental Philanthropy. 

 The conflict between the sentimental and scientific methods in social 

 science has come from the intrusion of what may be called the sym- 

 pathetic Bias — that is, the former class allow their emotions to pre- 

 dominate over their judgments, while the latter subordinate their 

 feelings of sympathy to their faculty of reason. The sentimentalist 

 employs in sociology the empiric method ; in ethics he builds upon 

 intuition ; in political economy he favors the principle of co-operation. 

 The innumerable Reforms, Leagues, and Associations are evidences of 

 the unscientific nature of the remedy administered for deep-seated 

 evils. Therefore, all measures of public relief must depend for their 

 success on the correctness and certainty with which the laws of men- 

 tal and biological science are applied ; and the legist must likewise 

 depend, not on short-lived and hastily-contrived plans for relief, but 

 on the logical precision with which* he draws his conclusions from 

 these scientific studies to shape the course of his present and future 

 policy. M. Fouillee declares that the aim of philanthropy will be to 

 establish among the social classes solidarite — union between the rich 

 and the [poor. In the terms of evolution, our modern Philanthropy 

 will produce a state of social equilibrium — " a state of human nature 

 and social organization such that the individual has no desires but 

 those which may be satisfied without exceeding his proper sphere of 

 action, while society maintains no restraints but those which the indi- 

 vidual voluntarily respects." * Unhappiness will be the result of imper- 

 fect adjustment of faculties to their functions and conditions, while hap- 

 piness will consist in the due exercise of all the faculties consistent with 

 the similar exercise of the like faculties of others. Without one word 

 of displeasure to those tender-hearted philanthropists who have com- 

 mitted grievous errors by short-sighted plans, let us speak with pleas- 

 ure of the labors of Arkwright, Stephenson, Whitney, Bessemer, Sie- 

 mens, and others — scientific philanthropists, who have been all the 

 time " weaving the web of concord among nations." The spirit that 

 animated Faust to dig and drain vast territories has led these practical 

 ♦ " First Principles," p. 612. 



