Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/660

 644 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

case is different with the optimist in world-philosophy. Convinced that thing's may be better if man will only better himself, he stumbles against rude disappointments at every step, and he is constantly com- plaining that men, and with them life itself, is ever failing to make improvement. In eternal expectation of better times, he experiences constantly new disappointments and falls from one despair into another. The optimist in world-philosophy usually presents to us in life the picture called up by the word " pessimist."

Let us hold, however, to the distinction we have made between shadings of our conception of the world, and to the significance appropriate to the words " pessimist " and " optimist " in this connec- tion. With that proviso we find that usually the members of the propertied classes are pessimists ; they say there have always been rich and poor, and we cannot change the situation. That is the order of the world. Gluttons and starvelings have always existed side by side, and we cannot prevent it. States maintain this inequality and even protect it. This is " the order of nature." The non-propertied and their advocates are the optimists. They say: "These things ought not so to be ; we will change all this ; the traditional state is badly organized ; it must be improved. Everyone must and shall have his own chicken in the pot. Let us only do our part ; we shall soon have things righted. Long live the state of the future ! "

I was always of the opinion that these optimists in world- philosophy are never genuine scientists, and that they are naive enough to believe that they can change a natural process ; that is, the social process ; which, in fact, proceeds according to " eternal iron laws " as truly as the stars in their courses. For that reason it has happened that socialists have called me not merely a pessimist, but, more than that, a cynic, because I gave free expression to my opinion and justified it. Now, however, I have experienced something worse. One day last summer there appeared before me a natural scientist of genuineness and merit, who is at the same time the greatest soci- ologist in America. He explained to me most persistently that I was wrong, and that the social nature-process may one day, with the help of the human intellect, which is itself "also a natural force," if this intellect works in the appropriate direction, enter upon a course indeed, already has entered upon it in which we may arrive at a " social integration " that may bring all men to equal happiness and welfare. The stranger who explained all this to me with youthful ardor was a tall, slim gentleman, no longer young, with smoothly