INVENTION AND PRODUCTION 233 
present, are more inclined to follow Weismann, De Vries and 
Mendel. 
2. His materialistic monism! 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.” 
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. These may 
1 j, 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,” sbid., p. 136. 
2 Ibid., p. 21. 
§ Cf. “The ‘Social Forces’ Error,” by Professor E. C. Hayes, Publications of 
American Sociological Society, vol. v. 
4 Especially Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man. 
