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. Jf 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 linked with the above criticism is that of his inter- 
pretation of the function of art and religion. 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.2, 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 Tbid., pp. 211 f. 2 Cf., however, ibid., pp. 568 f. 
