August 30, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



255 



almost alone active, remain on the plane 

 of the animal. 



To quote Professor Joseph Le Conte: " I 

 have from time to time shown that there 

 are certain limitations to the application 

 of the doctrines and methods of biology 

 to sociology — that in every case such limi- 

 tation is the result of the introduction of 

 some new principle characteristic of humanity 

 as distinguished from animality, of reason as 

 distinguished from iiistinct."-^ 



And Lester F. Ward, after careful analy- 

 sis, goes so far as to state rather strongly : 

 " that the whole farrago which has so long 

 passed for political economy is true only of 

 irrational animals and is altogether inappli- 

 cable to rational man."f 



Whatever value then all the other evolu- 

 tionary, biologic forces pure and simple, have 

 had in the animal development of man, in 

 the social development, in the progress of 

 moral and material civilization, the feelings, 

 emotions or affections have played a much 

 more important part, which has generally 

 been greatly undervalued, until Lester F. 

 Ward, in his Djmamic Sociology, and again 

 in his Psj'chic Factors of Civilization, called 

 forcibly attention to this fact. He recog- 

 nizes these, however, only as djiiamic 

 forces, without direction, conceding to the 

 intellect alone the power of direction. I 

 am not prepared to deny altogether direc- 

 tion to the emotions, just as the force of 

 gravity is both dynamic and directive. I 

 am inclined to keep these two exhibits of 

 the human mind distinctly and separably as 

 two social forces of unequal value and di- 

 rection, giving to the emotions the highest 

 value in the past, to the intellect a more 

 and more increasing importance, and modi- 

 fying the direction of the former. At any 

 rate we shall have to agree that the emo- 

 tions have had and have the largest share 

 in shaping men's civilization, and the rec- 



*Pop. Sci. Mo., Feb., 1879, p. 430. 

 t Psychic Factors. Ward. P. 279. 



ognition of this fact will appear as impor- 

 tant with regard to the subject I have pro- 

 posed to discuss. 



]S"either the individualists nor the social- 

 ists have recognized this notable fact which 

 history develops at every step. The latter, 

 i. e., the rational socialists, in their plans pf 

 improvement of social conditions, fail to 

 take account of it as well as of the biologic 

 factors. They propose to hasten the mil- 

 lenium by making cooperation compulsory 

 and reason rule supreme, suppressing the 

 individual as in a colony of ants, each exist- 

 ing only as a part of the whole. 



The individualists, on the other hand, 

 desire to let our progress depend or to shape 

 itself entirelj' under the working of the nat- 

 ural law of competition, suppressing as far 

 as possible the organisation which has served 

 to develop the moral and intellectual forces, 

 in fact they propose to reduce us as far as 

 possible to the conditions of the brute world. 

 They expect, to be sure, but with what 

 right it is difBcult to see, that the individu- 

 als will as such, independently of society, 

 develop the social instinct, will desire the 

 common good even at the expense of his 

 own good, and finallj', will seek voluntarily 

 cooperation as a result of superior intelli- 

 gence. And they claim that he will do so 

 sooner and with less friction if let alone. 

 It is not very clear why such a result should 

 occur, how the free exercise of competition 

 is to produce cooperation, which is its very 

 antithesis. " Cooperation," as Ward states 

 it, " always tends to reduce competition, 

 and competition denotes want of coopera- 

 tion;" and he further points out that the 

 seeming cooperation as a result of competi- 

 tion is in reality only competition between 

 corporations or classes, but in no sense the 

 cooperation which establishes the same aims 

 in all members of the society. 



"We are told," says he, "to let things 

 alone and to let nature take its course. 

 But has intelligent man ever done this ? Is 



