Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/368

 354 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

A second type which is even commoner than the man who sees the whole without seeing the parts, the end without the means, is the man who contrariwise sees the part without seeing the whole.

As an example of this abstraction, we may take the man who sees one thing wrong here, another there, but has no clear idea of what is right as a whole or of the direction in which progress ought to move. He sees marks of social disease at this point or at that, but has no articulate conception of what social health in the long run means. And so when he sets to work upon a remedy he is apt to be like the doctor who treats the symptoms instead of the disease. As the former type may usually be known by their contempt for law and government, the people I am now speaking of may usually be recognized by their exaggerated faith in the mechanism of parliament. They aim rather at altering the law than at altering the law-giver. Mr. Herbert Spencer is in bad odor with the newer school of philosophical radicals. He has been roundly and, as I think, rightly denounced on account of his abstract and doctrinaire individualism. And yet there is this of truth at the bottom of his denunciation of laws and law-givers, that hasty legislation dealing with isolated evils is not unlikely in suppressing one only to create another. Mr. Spencer draws the conclusion that since we are so likely to do mischief by legislation we had much better cease to legislate altogether. The argument does not, of course, support this conclusion, but it is a forcible reminder of the obligation politicians are under to make sure before they proceed to legislate that they have as concrete a view as possible of the purpose for which the new act is devised and the circumstances under which it works.

IV.

One or two difficulties raised by the above contention remain to be considered. After the example just quoted, it may sug- gest itself to some that my indictment is, after all, not against these particular extremes of tendency alone, but against all