140 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



criticisms made, imply that it is requisite only to dissipate errors, and 

 that it is needless to insist on truths. It is forgotten that, along with 

 forms which are bad, there is a large amount of substance which is 

 good. And those to whom there are addressed condemnations of the 

 forms, unaccompanied by the caution that there is a substance to be pre- 

 served in higher forms, are left, not only without any coherent system 

 of guiding beliefs, but without any consciousness that one is requisite. 

 Hence the need, above admitted, for an active defense of that 

 which exists, carried on by men convinced of its entire worth ; so that 

 those who attack may not destroy the good along with the bad. 



And here let me point out, specifically, the truth already implied, 

 that studying Sociology scientifically leads to fairer appreciations of 

 different parties, political, religious, and other. The conception ini- 

 tiated and developed by Social Science is at the same time radical 

 and conservative — radical to a degree beyond any thing which current 

 radicalism conceives ; conservative to a degree beyond any thing con- 

 ceived by present conservatism. When there has been adequately 

 seized the truth that societies are products of evolution, assuming, in 

 their various times and places, their various modifications of struct- 

 ure and function, there follows the conviction that what, relatively 

 to our thoughts and sentiments, were arrangements of extreme bad- 

 ness, had fitnesses to conditions which made better arrangements im- 

 practicable : whence comes a tolerant interpretation of past tyrannies 

 at which even the bitterest Tory of our own days would be indignant. 

 On the other hand, after observing how the processes that have 

 brought things to their present stage are still going on, not with a 

 decreasing rapidity indicating approach to cessation, but with an in- 

 creasing rapidity that implies long continuance and immense trans- 

 formations, there follows the conviction that the remote future has in 

 store forms of social life higher than any we have imagined: there 

 comes a faith transcending that of the radical, whose aim is some re- 

 organization admitting of comparison to organizations which, exist. 

 And while this conception of societies as naturally evolved, beginning 

 with small and simple types which have their short existences and dis- 

 appear, advancing to higher types that are larger, more complex, and 

 longer-lived, coming to still higher types like our own, great in size, 

 complexity, and duration, and promising types transcending these in 

 times after existing societies have died away — while this conception 

 of societies implies that in the slow course of things changes almost 

 immeasurable in amount are possible, it also implies that but small 

 amounts of such changes are possible within short periods. 



Thus, the theory of progress disclosed by the study of Sociology 

 as science is one which greatly moderates the hopes and the fears 

 of extreme parties. After clearly seeing that the structures and ac- 

 tions throughout a society are determined by the properties of its 



