INVENTION AND PRODUCTION 233 



present, are more inclined to follow Weismann, De Vries and 

 Mendel. 



2. His materialistic monism l is opposed by those sociologists 

 who prefer to follow such idealistic philosophers as Hegel or Kant, 

 by the pragmatists who follow James, by the theists to whom the 

 " personalism " of Bowne furnishes the most acceptable explana- 

 tion of cosmic evolution, and especially by those who consider 

 that sociology should be a science rather than a philosophy. A 

 monist, yet supremely interested in emphasizing the place of 

 purposeful activity in social progress, Ward is forced to face the 

 dilemma of determinism and free will which he admits is a " fool's 

 puzzle." 2 He grants the necessity of practical belief in free will 

 but denies a place for it in philosophy. The difficulty here, as in 

 all monism, is its endeavor to interpret life in terms of discursive 

 thought. 



3. Growing out of his monism and his preference for deductive 

 reasoning, have arisen certain fallacies connected with his theory 

 of the " dynamic agent " and with his analysis of " social forces." 3 

 Modern psychologists are calling our attention to the fact that 

 there is no such thing as feeling in general, or thought or will. 

 Experience gives specific feelings, ideas, volitions. 4 These may 



1 i. e., an endeavor to interpret cosmic evolution in terms of the redistribution 

 of matter and force. This is shown in the following quotations: — 



" No line of demarcation can be drawn between the properties of matter and 

 physical forces. ... It is now known that all matter is active, and the only 

 difference between substances is the different ways in which they act. . . . Matter 

 is causality," Pure Sociology, p. 19. 



" All life has sprung from a homogeneous, undifferentiated plasm, which con- 

 tained within itself the potency of all the varied forms that have evolved out of 

 this plasm," ibid., p. 85. 



" This eternal pelting of atoms, this driving of the elements, this pressure at 

 every point, this struggle of all created things, this universal nisus of nature, push- 

 ing into existence all material forms and storing itself up in them as properties, 

 as life, as feeling, as thought, this is the hylozoism of the philosophers, the self- 

 activity of Hegel, the will of Schopenhauer, the atom-soul of Haeckel: it is the 

 soul of the universe, the spirit of nature, the ' First Cause ' of both religion and 

 science, — it is God," ibid., p. 136. 



2 Ibid., p. 2i. 



3 Cf. "The 'Social Forces' Error," by Professor E. C. Hayes, Publications of 

 American Sociological Society, vol. v. 



* Especially Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man. 



