[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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