INVENTION AND PRODUCTION 235 



5. Ward's teaching that all the stress should be placed on 

 material achievement — the outcome of his monism, deductive 

 method and hedonism — is open to question. The cycle of 

 national growth and decay as illustrated in history, as has been 

 pointed out by many sociologists, shows that emphasis on produc- 

 tion of material goods for the sake of consumption results in national 

 degeneration. If now we take the group instead of the individual 

 as the sociological unit, we are warranted in saying that stress on 

 material achievement when linked with hedonism furnishes the 

 most destructive kind of a social philosophy so far as the welfare 

 of the social group is concerned. 



6. Closely Hnked with the above criticism is that of his inter- 

 pretation of the function of art and reh'gion. These are the 

 product of sociological " sports " according to our author, as 

 noted above, and not to be evaluated because of their influence 

 on the life and success of a group. Indeed they are now, for the 

 most part, of no adaptive value, if not positively disuseful except 

 as they satisfy individual desire. The genius who is the inno- 

 vator hence the source of those variations which make for social 

 progress is likewise a " sport.'' Religion in the beginning was of 

 adaptive value, according to Ward, else it could not have gotten 

 a start, and this value was due to its relation to the " group 

 sentiment of safety." This sentiment, however, is considered to 

 play an ever decreasing part in social evolution; patriotism is 

 discounted,^ and the decay of a group or nation considered of little 

 moment. Individual pleasure and the process of civilization are 

 the " be all " and " end all " of telic activity and, with apparently 

 little appreciation of the potency of group self-consciousness and 

 loyalty as factors in increasing social and so individual well- 

 being, such concepts as social innovation, social suggestion and 

 social imitation are given almost no consideration.^ With more 

 recent emphasis on the species as the biological unit, and a social 



with all their momentous import, and out of it ultimately grew thought and in- 

 telligence. Nature cared nothing for any of these. They were unnecessary to 

 her general scheme, and not at all ends of being. Mind was therefore an accident, 

 an incidental consequence of other necessities, — an epiphenomenon" Pure Sociology , 

 pp. 127, 128. 



1 Ibid., pp. 211 f. 2 cf_^ however, ibid., pp. 568 f. 



