Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/577

Rh law of evolution as we now read it is the decree to every intelligent person: "Apply today's force to make tomorrow's fact!"

Men's instincts accept more frankly than their intellects the provisional and mediate character of present institutions. In order to contend that improvement is the present and the future order of the day, it is necessary to presume that the things of the present are defective. This premise is virtually an impeachment of established order. It is a reflection on accepted institutions. Hence it is easy for conservatism to regard it as a letter of marque sanctioning piratical intentions on the ship of state. Although every advance of civilization in the past has been by virtue of the provisional character of institutions, which permitted a certain self-surrender of the old order and the installation of a substitute, conservatism is timid about becoming party to the continuation of this cosmic process. In preferring the ills he had to others that he knew not of, Hamlet was the eternal conservative.

Scholarship is likely to become retrospective, and so not conservative but obstructive, in proportion to its insistence that nothing belongs in its province except demonstrative evidence. The only things which to our minds are absolutely certain are accomplished facts. Scholarship which would guard against becoming speculation and adventure, dreads departure from this sure region of the has-been, for exploration of the somewhat conjectural realm of the more reasonable and possible and desirable which is to be. But the stage of human evolution upon which we have entered presents an order of facts which scholarship cannot much longer ignore. Man is beginning to discover himself, and this self-discovery by man incites to new world-discovery and world conquest.

Once only a human animal demanded of the world animal comforts. Now this animal is become a self-conscious center of myriad wants, expressed in an infinity of physical and psychical desires. Men are consequently attacking the resisting material and moral environment at more points than ever before. In this conflict mind wields the balance of power, and mind is swinging