Chapter XXXVII:
The Social Intellect.
The social forces only need to be investigated as the rest have been, in order to discover ways in which their utility can be demonstrated. Here is a vast field of true scientific exploitation as yet untracked, and which to the legislators of this age is not known to exist. . . . If the domain of social phenomena is as completely one of law as that of physical phenomena then may we logically expect the same measure of success, in proportion as these laws are known, which marks the progress of human supremacy in the material world. — Dynamic Sociology, I, 43.
Il ne faut pas que l'homme croie qu'il est égal aux bêtes, ni qu'il croie qu'il est égal aux anges, ni qu'il ignore l'un et l'autre ; mais qu'il sache l'un et l'autre. — Pascal: Pensées, II, 85.
Man must not believe that he is equal to beasts, nor believe that he is equal to angels, nor ignore either; but know both.
The important truth, set forth in Part I, that feeling was developed as a means of preserving life where other means were wanting, is scarcely more momentous than the other great truth, established in Part II, that the intellect was developed as a means of securing ends of being which the unguided will could not secure. The several forms which that faculty assumed in the performance of this function were described and their success and progress traced. It was seen that the purely biological ends of being were successfully pursued through the egoistic forms of intellection, but that the form which led to social progress and civilization was the inventive faculty rising into inventive genius and bringing all the material and dynamic resources of nature into the service of man. In Chap. XXVIII the precise nature of this faculty was described, and the secret of its success was pointed out.
The perpetual failures which in the animal world attended direct efforts of will to secure the higher ends of being and arrested organic development until the intellectual faculty came into existence and gave it such a new and astonishing impetus, also characterized the efforts of the social will to reach forward to better things, and they will continue to characterize them until the social intellect shall be developed and shall begin to organize the forces of human nature and enlist them in the service of society.
Considerable progress has actually been made in this direction, but, as in the animal world, it was the egoistic forms that were first employed. This took place and still takes place chiefly in the relations of tribes with tribes or nations with nations. As self-preservation is for the individual the first law of nature, so is it with tribes and nations, and accordingly it is in obedience to this primary law that the most intense efforts of collective man have been put forth to make the dictates of will successful. Here, therefore, the intellectual auxiliary has been most clearly manifest. The two principal directions in which this has made itself felt were considered in Chap. XXIII, viz., strategy in war and diplomacy in peace. To these may, however, be added retaliatory laws, discriminating duties, and a variety of other efforts to checkmate rival nations and insure national safety and industrial prosperity. But the exercise by nations of the inventive faculty even in dealing with other nations has been rare. It is still rarer in dealing with their own citizens. It is here that the great opportunity is open, and this may now be briefly considered.
In Dynamic Sociology the principle was distinctly formulated under the name of "attractive legislation" (see the several passages referred to in the index of that work) and a few illustrations were given of applications that have actually been made of it. Probably the most important examples are those that relate to subventions of various kinds, including tariffs, bounties, and other subsidies. The introduction of stamps in the collection of revenues, whether as postage or excise, was a truly ingenious device of the law-maker, and there are many others. But there is room for the indefinite extension of the principle. There is no doubt that it will one day be carried into nearly every department of legislation. There is nothing that would go so far to remove the odium that seems to attach to the acts of government, however necessary. Not only might all revenues probably be collected in a way that would be far less irritating than present methods, as well as in ways that would be more just, but nearly every other function of government might, if statesmen were sufficiently ingenious, be performed with such smoothness and ease that society would scarcely feel the weight of law upon it.
The principle itself is absolutely identical with that of mechanical invention, the only difference being that it deals with social instead of physical forces, with men instead of with things. The ingenuity which has been displayed in dealing with animals by which wild beasts have become man's most useful servants and through which man has gained the complete mastery over the lower kingdoms of nature, shows that the inventive faculty may successfully cope with vital and psychic forces. It only requires a somewhat higher type of this same quality of mind to tame the human animal and make him as harmless and as useful to society as domestic animals are to man. First of all the idea must be got rid of that there are any essentially evil propensities. Those with which men are endowed have been developed for a useful purpose. They must be recognized as natural and the effort made to direct them into useful channels just as the elements of nature — fire, wind, water, electricity, etc. — are directed by mechanical invention. Instead of the brusque command: "Thou shalt not," there must be devised such measures that when man acts according to nature his act will be at least harmless; if possible, useful. Instead of waiting till the natural result of an action has wrought injury to others and then punishing the agent, the desire to do that which will injure others might in most cases, by the exercise of ingenuity in the modification of his environment, be completely removed. The moralists have undertaken the impossible task of removing the so-called evil propensities of man. Meliorism teaches that there are no such, but that the evil consequences of actions dictated by natural impulses may be rendered impossible. Desires there will be, for so is man constituted, but these seek only their own satisfaction. The injury of others is only incidental, and the problem is to get others out of the way.
It is true that the desires of men can be changed in their nature. The same individual will have entirely different desires if reared under one environment from what he would have if reared under an entirely different one. And this constitutes the overwhelming argument for the creation of a proper social environment. The desires and consequent conduct of men depend upon their ideas, that is, their opinions and beliefs, and these depend in turn upon their education, using the term in its broad sense. It is, therefore, this education that requires first to be attended to, and, as I have shown in Dynamic Sociology, the highest duty of society is to see to it that every member receives a sound education. This should not be like the education which interested individuals furnish, the inculcation of a particular set of beliefs without any reasons therefor, but it should consist exclusively in furnishing the largest possible amount of the most important knowledge, letting the beliefs take care of themselves. This alone would extract the fangs from nearly all human propensities and reduce the problem of attractive legislation to its lowest terms.
But should this great initial step be taken, and all the practical knowledge of the world be given to every member of society for his guidance, there would still remain, especially during the transition period before such a measure could bear its full fruit, a wide field for the exercise of the collective ingenuity. As happiness is the great object of man the problem before the social intellect is nothing less than that of the organization of happiness. The existing evils of society are so great and so universal that the first steps would necessarily be taken rather in the direction of mitigating or removing these than in that of increasing or extending the positive enjoyment of life. So long as there is pain to be relieved, the attempt to heighten pleasure seems a sacrilege. The social intellect should, therefore, first and foremost, grapple with the whole problem of reducing the social friction. Every wheel in the entire social machinery should be carefully scrutinized with the practiced eye of the skilled artisan, with a view to discovering the true nature of the friction and of removing all that is not required by a perfect system.
With regard to the method by which all this may be made practicable a final word may be indulged in. Before any such sweeping social regeneration as that which is here hinted at can be inaugurated a great change must be wrought in the whole theory of legislation. It must be recognized that the legislator is essentially an inventor and a scientific discoverer. His duty is to be thoroughly versed in the whole theory and practice of social physics. He is called upon to devise "ways and means" for securing the true interests and improvement of the people for whom he is to legislate. This obviously cannot be done by existing methods. A public assembly governed by parliamentary rules is as inadequate a method as could well be conceived of for anything like scientific legislation. Imagine all the inventors in the country assembled in a hall acting under the gavel of a presiding officer to devise the machines of the future and adopt the best by a majority vote! Or think of trying to advance scientific discovery by a general convention! Scientific associations there are, usually for the reading of papers setting forth the discoveries made by the members in their laboratories, and there would be no objection to this class of legislative assemblies. But in the latter case as in the former, the real work, the thought, research, observation, experimentation, and discovery of laws and principles of nature must be done elsewhere, under appropriate conditions, in the great field or in the private cabinet.
It may at first glance seem absurd to propose that legislation be done in any such way, but a little reflection will show that it is not only not absurd, but that there is at this moment a strong tendency in all enlightened countries toward its adoption. It is a well known fact that at the present time the greater part of the real legislation is done by committees. The members of legislative committees are carefully chosen with reference to their known fitness for the different subjects intrusted to them. These committees really deliberate. They investigate the questions before them, hear testimony and petitions, and weigh evidence for and against every proposed measure. This is truly scientific and leads to the discovery of the principles involved. Unless biased by partisan leanings they are very likely to reach the truth and report practical and useful measures. The body to which these committees belong respect their decisions and usually adopt their recommendations. The other members usually know very little about the merits of the questions, or at least, not having studied them, they defer to the superior judgment of those who have. Committee work is, therefore, the nearest approach we have to the scientific investigation of social questions. It is on the increase, and is destined to play an ever increasing role in national legislation.
There is one other important way in which the social intellect is being applied to human affairs. The theory is that the executive branch of government merely administers national affairs. This is a great mistake. A very large part of the real legislation of a country is done by the executive branch. The various bureaus of government are in position to feel the popular pulse more sensitively than the legislature. The officers charged with their administration become identified with certain industries and are appealed to by the public to adopt needed reforms. After stepping to the verge of their legal authority in response to such demands, whereby much real legislation is done not contemplated by those who framed the laws under which these bureaus were established, they finish by making recommendations of the rest to the law-making power. This latter usually recognizes the wisdom of such recommendations and enacts them into laws, thus ever enlarging the administrative jurisdiction of government. Such legislation is in a true sense scientific. It is based on a knowledge both of the needs of the public and of the best means of supplying them. It has been subjected to thoughtful consideration and mature judgment. It is a method that is being every year more and more employed, and its results are usually successful and permanent.
History furnishes the statesman an additional basis for legislation. It is now possible to acquire a knowledge of the industrial history of nations, not complete, it is true, because so much was lost during the period when history was supposed to relate exclusively to the operations of the state and those who stood at its head, but sufficiently full to serve as a valuable guide to the legislator. No man should consider himself qualified to legislate for a people who is not conversant with the history of modern nations at least, with their various systems of finance, revenue, taxation, public works, education, land surveying, patent and copyright law, military and naval equipment, general jurisprudence and constitutional, statute, and unwritten law. It will, of course, be said that very few legislators are thus informed, and this is true, but these few will be the ones who will do most to shape the action of the state and will furnish examples to all who aspire to play a leading part in the political drama.
Again there is the statistical method. No one will deny that this is rapidly becoming a leading factor in legislation. Statistics are simply the facts that underlie the science of government. They are to the legislator what the results of observation and experiment are to the man of science. They are in fact the inductions of political science, and the inductive method in that science is of the same value that it is to science in general, its only true foundation. There is no great state at this day that does not make an effort to collect statistics; in most of the leading nations of the world this is now done on an extensive scale. A census, which a short time ago was merely an enumeration of the population of a state, now means an exhaustive inquiry into its entire vital, industrial, and commercial condition. In this and many other ways governments furnish to their legislators the most important facts required to guide them in the adoption of the measures needful for the prosperity of the people.
There are many other ways in which the tendency toward scientific legislation is steadily growing, and, without indulging in any undue optimism on the subject, the fact may be considered established that no revolution is necessary in the character of society in order to bring about the gradual transformation required to realize all that has been foreshadowed in this chapter. The machinery already exists for the needed reformation and all that is necessary is that it be under the control of the developed social intellect. The quality of statesmanship is increasing. More thought is being devoted to the deeper questions of state and of society than ever before, and the signs of healthy progress are unmistakable. A modern Solon, paraphrasing the oft-quoted saying1 of the ancient one, has defined a statesman as "a successful politician who is dead." He doubtless intended to rebuke the tendency of every age to vilify public men while they are living and canonize them after they are dead. And it would be well if, not only those who stand at the helm of the ship of state at any given period, but also the achievements of this directive social intellect in guiding that ship into smoother waters, were looked at from the standpoint of some remote future date and estimated in the light of the history which is being made.
Notes
- εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσῃ τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητέεις, ὁ ὄλβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιος ἐστί· πρὶν δ᾽ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν, μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄλβιον ἀλλ᾽εὐτυχέα
—Solon: Herodotus, I, 32, p. 15.↩
English Translation
If besides all this he ends his life well, then he is the one whom you seek, the one worthy to be called fortunate. But refrain from calling him fortunate before he dies; call him lucky. (translation source: Project Perseus)
Λόγος μέν έστ' άρχαιος ανθρώπων φανείς,
ως ούκ αν αίων έκμάθεις βροτών πρίν αν
θάνοι τις, ουτ' εί χρηστός, ουτ' ε΄΄ τω κακός.
—Sophocles:Τραχίνιαι, I.English Translation
There is an ancient proverb people tell
that none can judge the life of any man
for good or bad until that man is dead;
—The Trachiniae, I(translation source: Project Perseus)