[03] Between the development of society and the
development of species there is a close analogy. In the
lowest forms of animal life there is little difference of
parts; both wants and powers are few and simple; movement
seems automatic; and instincts are scarcely
distinguishable from those of the vegetable. So
homogeneous are some of these living things, that if cut
in pieces, each piece still lives. But as life rises into
higher manifestations, simplicity gives way to
complexity, the parts develop into organs having separate
functions and reciprocal relations, new wants and powers
arise, and a greater and greater degree of intelligence
is needed to secure food and avoid danger. Did fish, bird
or beast possess no higher intelligence than the polyp,
nature could bring them forth only to die.
[04] This law — that the increasing complexity
and delicacy of organization which give higher capacity
and increased power are accompanied by increased wants
and dangers, and require, therefore, increased
intelligence — runs through nature. In the
ascending scale of life at last comes man, the most
highly and delicately organized of animals. Yet not only
do his higher powers require for their use a higher
intelligence than exists in other animals, but without
higher intelligence he could not live. His skin is too
thin; his nails too brittle; he is too poorly adapted for
running, climbing, swimming or burrowing. Were he not
gifted with intelligence greater than that of any beast,
he would perish from cold, starve from inability to get
food, or be exterminated by animals better equipped for
the struggle in which brute instinct suffices.
[05] In man, however, the intelligence which increases
all through nature's rising scale passes at one bound
into an intelligence so superior, that the difference
seems of kind rather than degree. In him, that narrow and
seemingly unconscious intelligence that we call instinct
becomes conscious reason, and the godlike power of
adaptation and invention makes feeble man nature's
king.
[06] But with man the ascending line stops. Animal
life assumes no higher form; nor can we affirm that, in
all his generations, man, as an animal, has a whit
improved. But progression in another line begins. Where
the development of species ends, social development
commences, and that advance of society that we call
civilization so increases human powers, that between
savage and civilized man there is a gulf so vast as to
suggest the gulf between the highly organized animal and
the oyster glued to the rocks. And with every advance
upon this line new vistas open. When we try to think what
knowledge and power progressive civilization may give to
the men of the future, imagination fails.
[07] In this progression which begins with man, as in
that which leads up to him, the same law holds. Each
advance makes a demand for higher and higher
intelligence. With the beginnings of society arises the
need for social intelligence — for that consensus
of individual intelligence which forms a public opinion,
a public conscience, a public will, and is manifested in
law, institutions and administration. As society
develops, a higher and higher degree of this social
intelligence is required, for the relation of individuals
to each other becomes more intimate and important, and
the increasing complexity of the social organization
brings liability to new dangers.
[08] In the rude beginning, each family produces its
own food, makes its own clothes, builds its own house,
and, when it moves, furnishes its own transportation.
Compare with this independence the intricate
interdependence of the denizens of a modern city. They
may supply themselves with greater certainty, and in much
greater variety and abundance, than the savage; but it is
by the cooperation of thousands. Even the water they
drink, and the artificial light they use, are brought to
them by elaborate machinery, requiring the constant labor
and watchfulness of many men. They may travel at a speed
incredible to the savage; but in doing so resign life and
limb to the care of others. A broken rail, a drunken
engineer, a careless switchman, may hurl them to
eternity. And the power of applying labor to the
satisfaction of desire passes, in the same way, beyond
the direct control of the individual. The laborer becomes
but part of a great machine, which may at any time be
paralyzed by causes beyond his power, or even his
foresight. Thus does the well-being of each become more
and more dependent upon the well-being of all — the
individual more and more subordinate to society.
[09] And so come new dangers. The rude society
resembles the creatures that though cut into pieces will
live; the highly civilized society is like a highly
organized animal: a stab in a vital part, the suppression
of a single function, is death. A savage village may be
burned and its people driven off — but, used to
direct recourse to nature, they can maintain themselves.
Highly civilized man, however, accustomed to capital, to
machinery, to the minute division of labor, becomes
helpless when suddenly deprived of these and thrown upon
nature. Under the factory system, some sixty persons,
with the aid of much costly machinery, cooperate to the
making of a pair of shoes. But, of the sixty, not one
could make a whole shoe. This is the tendency in all
branches of production, even in agriculture. How many
farmers of the new generation can use the flail? How many
farmers' wives can now make a coat from the wool? Many of
our farmers do not even make their own butter or raise
their own vegetables! There is an enormous gain in
productive power from this division of labor, which
assigns to the individual the production of but a few of
the things, or even but a small part of one of the
things, he needs, and makes each dependent upon others
with whom he never comes in contact; but the social
organization becomes more sensitive. A primitive village
community may pursue the even tenor of its life without
feeling disasters which overtake other villages but a few
miles off; but in the closely knit civilization to which
we have attained, a war, a scarcity, a commercial crisis,
in one hemisphere produces powerful effects in the other,
while shocks and jars from which a primitive community
easily recovers would to a highly civilized community
mean wreck.
[11] In a simpler state master and man, neighbor and
neighbor, know each other, and there is that touch of the
elbow which, in times of danger, enables society to
rally. But present tendencies are to the loss of this. In
London, dwellers in one house do not know those in the
next; the tenants of adjoining rooms are utter strangers
to each other. Let civil conflict break or paralyze the
authority that preserves order and the vast population
would become a terror-stricken mob, without point of
rally or principle of cohesion, and your London would be
sacked and burned by an army of thieves. London is only
the greatest of great cities. What is true of London is
true of New York, and in the same measure true of the
many cities whose hundreds of thousands are steadily
growing toward millions. These vast aggregations of
humanity, where he who seeks isolation may find it more
truly than in the desert; where wealth and poverty touch
and jostle; where one revels and another starves within a
few feet of each other, yet separated by as great a gulf
as that fixed between Dives in Hell and Lazarus in
Abraham's bosom — they are centers and types of our
civilization. Let jar or shock dislocate the complex and
delicate organization, let the policeman's club be thrown
down or wrested from him, and the fountains of the great
deep are opened, and quicker than ever before chaos comes
again. Strong as it may seem, our civilization is
evolving destructive forces. Not desert and forest, but
city slums and country roadsides are nursing the
barbarians who may be to the new what Hun and Vandal were
to the old.
[13] There is in all the past nothing to compare with
the rapid changes now going on in the civilized world. It
seems as though in the European race, and in the
nineteenth century, man was just beginning to live
— just grasping his tools and becoming conscious of
his powers. The snail's pace of crawling ages has
suddenly become the headlong rush of the locomotive,
speeding faster and faster. This rapid progress is
primarily in industrial methods and material powers. But
industrial changes imply social changes and necessitate
political changes. Progressive societies outgrow
institutions as children outgrow clothes. Social progress
always requires greater intelligence in the management of
public affairs; but this the more as progress is rapid
and change quicker.
[14] And that the rapid changes now going on are
bringing up problems that demand most earnest attention
may be seen on every hand. Symptoms of danger,
premonitions of violence, are appearing all over the
civilized world. Creeds are dying, beliefs are changing;
the old forces of conservatism are melting away.
Political institutions are failing, as clearly in
democratic America as in monarchical Europe. There is
growing unrest and bitterness among the masses, whatever
be the form of government, a blind groping for escape
from conditions becoming intolerable. To attribute all
this to the teachings of demagogues is like attributing
the fever to the quickened pulse. It is the new wine
beginning to ferment in old bottles. To put into a
sailing-ship the powerful engines of a first-class ocean
steamer would be to tear her to pieces with their play.
So the new powers rapidly changing all the relations of
society must shatter social and political organizations
not adapted to meet their strain.
[15] To adjust our institutions to growing needs and
changing conditions is the task which devolves upon us.
Prudence, patriotism, human sympathy, and religious
sentiment, alike call upon us to undertake it. There is
danger in reckless change; but greater danger in blind
conservatism. The problems beginning to confront us are
grave — so grave that there is fear they may not be
solved in time to prevent great catastrophes. But their
gravity comes from indisposition to recognize frankly and
grapple boldly with them.
[16] These dangers, which menace not one country
alone, but modern civilization itself, do but show that a
higher civilization is struggling to be born — that
the needs and the aspirations of men have outgrown
conditions and institutions that before sufficed.
[17] A civilization which tends to concentrate wealth
and power in the hands of a fortunate few, and to make of
others mere human machines, must inevitably evolve
anarchy and bring destruction. But a civilization is
possible in which the poorest could have all the comforts
and conveniences now enjoyed by the rich; in which
prisons and almshouses would be needless, and charitable
societies unthought of. Such a civilization waits only
for the social intelligence that will adapt means to
ends. Powers that might give plenty to all are already in
our hands. Though there is poverty and want, there is,
yet, seeming embarrassment from the very excess of
wealth-producing forces. "Give us but a market," say
manufacturers, "and we will supply goods without end!"
"Give us but work!" cry idle men.
[18] The evils that begin to appear spring from the
fact that the application of intelligence to social
affairs has not kept pace with the application of
intelligence to individual needs and material ends.
Natural science strides forward, but political science
lags. With all our progress in the arts which produce
wealth, we have made no progress in securing its
equitable distribution. Knowledge has vastly increased;
industry and commerce have been revolutionized; but
whether free trade or protection is best for a nation we
are not yet agreed. We have brought machinery to a pitch
of perfection that, fifty years ago, could not have been
imagined; but, in the presence of political corruption,
we seem as helpless as idiots. The East River bridge is a
crowning triumph of mechanical skill; but to get it built
a leading citizen of Brooklyn had to carry to New York
sixty thousand dollars in a carpet bag to bribe New York
aldermen. The human soul that thought out the great
bridge is prisoned in a crazed and broken body that lies
bedfast, and could watch it grow only by peering through
a telescope. Nevertheless, the weight of the immense mass
is estimated and adjusted for every inch. But the skill
of the engineer could not prevent condemned wire being
smuggled into the cable.
[19] The progress of civilization requires that more
and more intelligence be devoted to social affairs, and
this not the intelligence of the few, but that of the
many. We cannot safely leave politics to politicians, or
political economy to college professors. The people
themselves must think, because the people alone can
act.
[20] In a "journal of civilization" a professed
teacher declares the saving word for society to be that
each shall mind his own business. This is the gospel of
selfishness, soothing as soft flutes to those who, having
fared well themselves, think everybody should be
satisfied. But the salvation of society, the hope for the
free, full development of humanity, is in the gospel of
brotherhood — the gospel of Christ. Social progress
makes the well-being of all more and more the business of
each; it binds all closer and closer together in bonds
from which none can escape. He who observes the law and
the proprieties, and cares for his family, yet takes no
interest in the general weal, and gives no thought to
those who are trodden under foot, save now and then to
bestow aims, is not a true Christian. Nor is he a good
citizen. The duty of the citizen is more and harder than
this.
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