One of the darkest curses that has fallen on the working class is its being shut out of the wondrous world of modern thought. The great gates of the Temple of Science are clanged in its face, and its mind is fed on the theological garbage of the Middle Ages. In the school, the press, and especially the pulpit, ideas are gravely presented as serious truths, which are known by all university men to be thoroughly exploded lies.

A twentieth century newspaper will brazenly devote a whole page to presenting, with pictorial illustrations, alleged recently discovered proofs of the truth of that Genesis legend which has done such loyal service to the ruling class by stultifying the brains of its victims. These hypocritical displays are never publicly contradicted, although every man with the least smattering of scientific knowledge, including the editors, knows how utterly false they are. These worthies indulge in a sly grin and lower one eyelid, for it is generally understood among them that the great donkey—the working class—will only consent to carry everybody’s burdens in addition to its own, just so long as it is kept in childish ignorance of everything it ought to know.

And this is not all. Now that a great body of workingmen are discarding these ancient lies, and groping for those great truths that contain the germs of their redemption, the official savants, true servants of the ruling class, twist and warp their own science in order to make it contradict every working class idea.

This attitude of the time serving intellectual lackeys of the professorial chairs has brought with it another blighting curse—it has made a considerable number of working men suspicious of modern science itself. It is an old-time tragedy, this breaking with one’s best friend because of the groundless calumnies of an interested enemy.

This terribly mistaken antagonism to science has unfortunately found its way, in some measure, into the Socialist movement, though happily, increasing acquaintance with Socialism’s classic literature is breaking it down. In this connection the following passage from the pen of Isador Ladoff is very pertinent:

“Rationalistic modern Socialism is based, not exclusively on certain economic theories and maxims, as some narrow-minded ‘Socialists pure and simple’ think and would fain make us believe, but on the broad foundation of modern science and thought. The economic theories peculiar to modern Socialism are derived from the application of the results of the achievements of modern knowledge and philosophy to the field of social economics. The trouble with the ‘Socialists pure and simple’ is in the extreme limitation of their mental horizon. They happen to know, or rather imagine they have mastered Marxian economics, while modern science and philosophy remains to them a sealed letter. That is why they get irritated whenever and wherever they meet in the socialistic press an article containing something else than the everlasting parrot-like repetitions of pseudo-socialistic commonplaces and shibboleths. Every attempt to present to the attention of the readers of socialistic publications, glimpses of the radiant world of science and philosophy, leading up to socialistic ideas and ideals in all their world-redeeming significance, appears to the simpleminded and superstitious simon-pure Socialists as an attack on somebody or something, as a heresy and heterodoxy of some kind. To such people the religion of science is the religion of ignorance and vice versa, ignorance is their religion and science.”

The use of science and philosophy by the ruling class as a pretence for the appropriation of the lion’s share of the wealth produced by labor does not prove that workingmen should abandon philosophy as useless to their cause. On the contrary, as Dietzgen says: “Philosophy is a subject which closely concerns the working class,” and he adds: “This, of course, does by no means imply that every workingman should try to become acquainted with philosophy and study the relation between the idea and matter. From the fact that we all eat bread does not follow that we must all understand milling and baking. But just as we need millers and bakers, so does the working class stand in need of keen scholars who can follow up the tortuous ways of the false priests and lay bare the inanity of their tricks.”

It is quite clear that working men, instead of underestimating the value of mental training, should remember what a terrible weapon it has proved in the hands of their enemies. It is precisely because the workers have lacked this weapon, that in spite of their overwhelming numbers and physical strength, they have always been outwitted. “The emancipation of the working classes,” concludes Dietzgen, “requires that they should lay hold on the science of the century.”

Lester F. Ward, whose theories we shall now examine, warns us against the erroneous supposition “formerly quite prevalent,” that “science consists in the discovery of facts.” He maintains that “there is not a single science of which this is true, and a much more nearly correct definition would be that science consists in reasoning about facts.”

We may recall here that learned body which sneered at Darwin as “a mere theorizer” and conferred its honors upon an unknown man who had collected some facts about butterflies but had carefully avoided “reasoning about them.” Of course the value of this reasoning is that it leads to the discovery of those laws or generalizations which reveal the relation of the facts to each other, and thus enables us to appreciate their real significance.

Therefore we might venture to push the matter a little further and define science as the discovery of laws. But for the uniformity and invariability of physical phenomena, astronomy would be impossible. The discovery of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology. Dalton’s theory of atoms and Lavoisier’s permanence of matter emancipated chemistry from the superstitions of alchemy.

Ward is therefore on solid ground when he maintains that “the indispensable foundation of all economic and social science” consists in the fact that “all human activities and all social phenomena are rigidly subject to natural law.” It is just the difficulty of discerning uniform laws amidst the highly complex phenomena of society that delays the proper development of sociology, although, as we have seen, this difficulty is materially augmented by the class interests at stake.

Again, just as biology was hindered in its growth by the doctrine of special creations and, still earlier, Copernican astronomy was checked by the geocentric theory, so now the progress of sociology is restrained by the doctrine of divine providence. Believers in divine providence are well represented by the Hindoo who in his lesson on English composition spoke of his father as having “died according to the caprice of God which passeth all understanding.”

It is precisely because “caprice” can not be understood and cannot therefore, be made the basis of prevision, that it can not be admitted into the domain of science. Science, as Starcke well said, is founded on “faith in the universality of causation.” If the activities of men and the policies of nations are not ruled by cause and effect a science of society is impossible.

And yet, contends Ward, it was the very adoption of this “altogether sound abstract principle” that “led to the greatest and most fundamental of all economic errors, an error which has found its way into the heart of modern scientific philosophy, widely influencing public opinion, and offering a stubborn resistance to all efforts to dislodge it.”

And now we come to the keynote of Ward’s whole system and at the same time to the point where he completely breaks with the biological sociologists. The error, which Ward attributes to them all, the refutation of which is the main object of his work, is described as follows:

“This error consists in practically ignoring the existence of a rational faculty in man, which, while it does not render his actions any less subject to natural laws, so enormously complicates them that they can no longer be brought within the simple formulas that suffice in the calculus of mere animal motives. This element creeps stealthily in between the child and the adult, and all unnoticed puts the best laid schemes of economists and philosophers altogether aglee. A great psychic factor has been left out of the account, the intellectual or rational factor, and this factor is so stupendous that there is no room for astonishment in contemplating the magnitude of the error which its omission has caused.”

This is the foundation stone of Ward’s sociology. With great care he elaborates the vital difference between the economy of nature with its blind forces, and the economy of society with its mental arrangement of means to ends. He marshals that well-known array of facts which prove the tremendous waste continually going on in the natural world.

According to M. Quatrefages, two successive generations of a single plant-louse would cover eight acres. A large chestnut tree in June contains as much as a ton of pollen. Considering the size of pollen-grain the number on such a tree would be next to inconceivable. Burst a puff-ball and there arises from it a cloud that fills the air for some distance around. This cloud consists of an almost infinite number of exceedingly minute spores, each of which should it by the rarest chance fall upon a favorable spot, is capable of reproducing the fungus to which it belongs.

And yet in spite of all this enormous reproductivity the population of these species remains practically stationary. Ward objects very strongly to this insane waste of nature being set up as a model for human society, and he is entitled to the sympathy of Socialists who have always protested against the planless anarchy of capitalist production, which however, bad as it is, can hardly be considered a circumstance compared with the random waste of nature.

“The waste of being,” says Asa Gray, “is enormous, far beyond the common apprehension. Seeds, eggs, and other germs, are designed to be plants and animals, but not one of a thousand or a million achieves its destiny.” And Gray quotes with approval from an article in the Westminster Review: “When we find that the sowing is a scattering at random, and that for one being provided for and living, ten thousand perish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would be considered the worst disorder in any human sphere of action.”

Ward, of course, takes the same view: “No one will object to having nature’s methods fully explained and exposed, and thoroughly taught as a great truth of science. It is only when it is held up as a model to be followed by man and all are forbidden to ‘meddle’ with its operations that it becomes necessary to protest. I shall endeavor still further to show that it is wholly at variance with anything that a rational being would ever conceive of, and that if a being supposed to be rational were to adopt it he would be looked upon as insane.”

“Such,” says Ward, “is nature’s economy. How different the economy of a rational being! He prepares the ground, clearing it of its vegetable competitors, then he carefully plants the seeds at the proper intervals so that they shall not crowd one another, and after they have sprouted he keeps off their enemies whether vegetable or animal, supplies water if needed, even supplies the lack of chemical constituents of the soil, if he knows what they are, and thus secures, as nearly as possible, the vigorous growth and fruition of every seed planted. This is the economy of mind.”

And now Ward presents a truth that is very familiar to all Socialists—that the difference between an animal living in a state of nature and man living in human society, is that man is a tool using animal. This use and development of tools is due to that application of reason called the inventive faculty, which no other animal possesses. “The beaver indeed, builds dams by felling trees, but its tools are its teeth, and no further advantage is taken than that which results from the way the muscles are attached to its jaws. The warfare of animals is waged literally with tooth and nail, with horn and hoof, with claw and spur, with tusk and trunk, with fang and sting—always with organic, never with mechanical weapons.”

And because man can invent tools and improve them he has an immense advantage over other animals. It is this advantage which the biological sociologists have overlooked. But this advantage makes an incalculable difference. The fundamental difference is, that “the environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment.”

What, then, is civilization? It is human development beyond the animal stage. What it its chief factor? It is psychic—the application of “mind” to the problems of life.

Now we see still further how Ward is irresistibly driven, by the logic of his position, to Socialist conclusions. He sees that another striking difference between irrational nature and rational society is that nature is competitive, while society is increasingly co-operative. And this co-operation is due to the greater development of that psychic factor, which is the chief instrument of civilization and leads men to avoid waste. Turning now to “Pure Sociology,” we are told that the subject-matter of sociology is “human achievement.” When we ask, in what does this achievement consist, we are informed that: “Achievement does not consist in wealth. Wealth is fleeting and ephemeral. Achievement is permanent and eternal.”

Again the sum total of the things which constitute achievement may be summed up in the one word “inventions.”

Achievement with Ward is another name for civilization. Page after page is given to an enumeration of its particulars,—music, painting, poetry, exploration, industry and many other things which we have not space even to mention. The one thing that is vital here is that “achievement,” while it does not include perishable wealth, nor yet the actual, perishable machinery by which the wealth has been produced, does nevertheless undoubtedly include that something described by Socialists as the “process of production.”

This is of prime importance because now when we turn to Ward’s “Applied Sociology,” we find that not only achievement, but “improvement” is the theme of that branch of the science.

And now listen to this great American sociologist, who has so far outstripped all his contemporaries as to be practically without a rival, this thinker whose monumental works have gained him an international reputation; listen and compare what follows with the hocus-pocus that usually comes from the official chairs:

“The purpose of applied sociology is to harmonize achievement with improvement. If all this achievement which constitutes civilization has really been wrought without producing any improvement in the condition of the human race, it is time that the reason for this was investigated. Applied sociology includes among its main purposes the investigation of this question. The difficulty lies in the fact that achievement is not socialized. The problem, therefore, is that of the socialization of achievement.

“We are told that no scheme for the equalization of men can succeed; that at first it was physical strength that determined the inequalities; that this at length gave way to the power of cunning, and that still later it became intelligence in general that determined the place of individuals in society. This last, it is maintained is now, in the long run, in the most civilized races and the most enlightened communities, the true reason why some occupy lower and others higher positions in the natural strata of society. This, it is said, is the natural state and is as it should be. It is moreover affirmed that being natural there is no possibility of altering it.

“Of course all this falls to the ground on the least analysis. For example, starting from the standpoint of achievement, it would naturally be held that there would be great injustice in robbing those who by their superior wisdom had achieved the great results upon which civilization rests and distributing the natural rewards among inferior persons who had achieved nothing. All would assent to this. And yet this is in fact practically what has been done. The whole history of the world shows that those who have achieved have received no reward. The rewards for their achievement have fallen to persons who have achieved nothing. They have simply for the most part profited by some accident of position in a complex, badly organized society, whereby they have been permitted to claim and appropriate the fruits of the achievements of others. But no one would insist that these fruits should all go to those who had made them possible. The fruits of achievement are incalculable in amount and endure forever. Their authors are few in number and soon pass away. They would be the last to claim an undue share. They work for all mankind and for all time, and all they ask is that all mankind shall forever benefit by their work.”

And so Ward’s conclusion is that the greatness of the present consists in that mass of achievements called civilization, among which are those inventions which have so wonderfully increased the capacity of social labor in its production of wealth. And the hope of the future lies in the socialization of those achievements so as to make their rich fruits the common heritage of all mankind. There are no Socialists who will quarrel with these conclusions.

We will now briefly compare this position with that of the great German thinker, Joseph Dietzgen, who at the international congress at The Hague, in 1872, was introduced by Karl Marx to the assembled delegates with these words: “Here is our philosopher.” Of course we shall only deal with his theories here as they relate to the conclusions reached by Ward.

“All exertion and struggle in human history” says Dietzgen, “all aspirations and researches of science find their common aim in the freedom of man, in the subjection of nature to the sway of his mind.”

This is, as we have seen, precisely Ward’s idea of what constitutes the substance of civilization.

“Man, to be sure,” says Dietzgen, “is still dependent on nature. Her tribulations are not yet all overcome. Culture has yet a good deal to do; aye, its work is endless. But we have so far mastered the dragon, that we finally succeeded in forging the weapon with which it can be subdued; we know the way to tame the beast into a useful domestic animal.”

What is this “weapon” which humanity has forged and which constitutes the possibility of its salvation? “This salvation,” says Dietzgen, “was neither invented nor revealed, it has grown of the accumulated labor of history. It consists in the wealth of to-day which arose glorious and dazzling in the light of science, out of human flesh and blood, to save humanity. This wealth in all its palpable reality, is the solid foundation of the hope of social-democracy.”

And here lest there should seem to be a plain contradiction between Dietzgen and Ward, we will go further and see that Dietzgen, like Ward, does not mean merely those items of wealth which happen to be in existence in the shape of tangible commodities.

“The wealth of to-day does not consist in the superb mansions, inhabited by the privileged of society, nor does it consist in their costly apparel, or in the gold and precious stones of their jewelry, or in the heaps of goods peeping through the show windows of our great cities. All that as well as the coin and bullion in the trunks and safes form but an appendix or, so to speak, the tassels and tufts, behind which is concealed that great and real wealth—the rock on which our hope is built.

“What authorizes the people to believe in the salvation from long ages of torture—nay, not only to believe in, but to see it, and actively strive for, is the fairy-like productive power, the prodigious fertility of human labor. In the secrets which have been wrung from nature; in the magic formulas by which we force her to do our wishes and to yield her bounties almost without any painful work on our part; in the constantly increasing improvement of the methods of production—in this I say consists the wealth which can accomplish what no redeemer ever could.”

And Dietzgen, like Ward, protests against this great legacy of history, this vast accumulation of the results of the combined social labor of a hundred generations, being the sole property of those “who never achieved anything!” Dietzgen, like Ward, sees that the great problem which confronts the race is to break down those intolerable bars which prevent humanity from entering into its just inheritance.

To this great and culminating task man must bend all the powers of his mind. Now he has reached the point where the gates of liberty begin to yield and with one grand, united effort may be thrown wide open so that all the sons and daughters of men may finish the long centuries of misery and freely enter in.

To continue this senseless oppression longer would be the summit of stupidity.

“Consider the frugal needs of our people and at the same time the fertility of labor, and ask yourselves if mere instinct alone would not be sufficient to teach us how to supply adequately our needs with the help of the existing means of production?”

To make these “means of production the property of society” is then the problem of Ward’s applied sociology and Dietzgen’s social democracy alike. According to both, this emancipation of the mass of the people from the last form of slavery is the one consuming task of civilization.

And the psychic factor, the consciously reasoning brain of man is, according to both, to be more than ever the instrument of “achievement.”

To Dietzgen especially, the time is rotten-ripe for the great change.

“The salvation of humanity is involved in this question. It is so great and sublime that all other problems which time may bear in its folds must wait in silence. The whole of old Europe is waiting with bated breath the fulfilling of the things which are coming.

“Oh, ye short-sighted and narrow-minded, who can not give up the fad of moderate, slow, organic progress! Do you not perceive that all your great liberal passions sink to the level of mere trifling, because the great question of social salvation is on the order of the day? The calm precedes the tempest. History stands still, because she gathers force for a great catastrophe.”