The Nature of Society 71 



or changed until an economic advance is suffi- 

 ciently developed to make its influence felt. 

 Yet this is certainly not the case with the cen- 

 tral ideals to which civilization formally sub- 

 scribes. Humanitarian conceptions of love, 

 truth, and freedom are anticipations running 

 far in advance of actual accomplishment, and 

 in view of their power over the human spirit 

 they may reasonably be held to constitute the 

 organizing and creative element in social 

 progress. 



A consideration of the development of even 

 the physical sciences indicates that idealistic 

 rather than economic forces should be re- 

 garded as primary. Primitive man early de- 

 veloped a mystic sense of undefined forces 

 dwelling in nature — forces potent to bless or 

 to curse the race. His motive for reaching 

 out after these forces was, perhaps, related to 

 hunger, but the intuition of their presence and 

 the form that his strivings took were original, 

 idealistic realities like prayer or poetry. The 

 various methods of magic were prophetic 

 gropings rather than practical conclusions 

 from experience. Through them man was 

 reaching out to the handling of the forces of 

 nature, as the tendrils of a plant search blindly 



