Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/197

 THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIOLOGY 185

parison of the periods, measured by thousands of years, required for the evolution of a race, with the brief periods that come into view in questions of social reform, reduces the belief in a healing harmonization of all the racial characteristics to an absurdity.

Connected with this race-problem is (7) the problem of public hygiene, which in the last analysis is the question of rooting out pathological tendencies. The suppression of hereditary dis- eases and tendencies to disease syphilis, gonorrhea, epilepsy, alcoholism, neurasthenia, etc. is one of the most vital issues of popular life in Europe, where people attend less to the morpho- logical and physiological conditions of race-development than to the economic and ethical conditions. We can no longer dis- regard the fact that hereditary tendency to disease has a very considerable part in the misery of the masses. The traditional views of legal philosophy upon the relation of human traits to the moral and social norms are in need of radical revision. The perception that human conduct is only the consequence of the more or less healthy bodily condition of men seems entirely incongruous with our existing systems of penal law; while, on the other hand, in consequence of the increase of population and the crowding of habitable regions, with the consequent increasing complication of all legal relationships, there is need of energetic protection for society against the excesses of the socially unfit.

This whole range of thought presents (8) the eighth prob- lem, namely : In what ratio should the political principles freedom and authority share in the work of civilization ; and in what ratio the political systems centralization and autonomy? All that has been discovered in this connection up to the present time scarcely rises above the level of mere political gossip. There seems to be constantly increasing justification for the doubts which are expressed about the value of the political principles of the eight- eenth and nineteenth centuries. Social evolution presses more and more toward an organising order, if it is to be possible to lead the majority of men into satisfying conditions. It is certain that the individualizing freedom of the present time produces only a diminishing minority, and that it does not bring satisfac- tion even to these.