Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/284

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

CONDUCTED BY J. D. FORREST, A. T. FREEMAN, H. A. MILLIS AND J. C. FREHOFF.

Religion as a Social Force. " The two most powerful social forces known to

are the religious and the economic. The latter has been discussed by an increas- ing number of able thinkers in all civilized lands for the past hundred years or more. The former has been strangely neglected. There have indeed been those who have attempted to give a scientific account of society and have entirely neglected religion, one of the two mightiest social forces. Something stranger still has happened. When others have called attention to the importance of religion as a social force, men in the name of science have denounced them and ridiculed them for so doing. Yet it is hard to think of anything more unscientific than any philosophy of society which neglects a consideration of the role played in its evolution by religion. The attempt to neglect this role is more than unscientific ; it is absurd."

Benjamin Kidd, in his Social Evolution, holds that the interests of the individual and that of society are antagonistic, and that religion has no rational sanction. It is undoubtedly true that progress leaves many uncoordinated members in its trail, but the vast majority of mankind have their interests enhanced by social evolution. Religion is first of all a social cement and so furnishes a rational sanction for social action. Religion is the very cause of society and without society we can have no progress. " No society has ever come into existence without the help of religion ; no society has ever thrived in which religion has not been a real, vital force ; no society has ever sur- vived a general decay of religion."

Religion is a source of disunion as well as of union. The areas of union, how- ever, are continually growing larger and larger. It provides rational and ultra-rational but not anti-rational sanctions for individual conduct, and this conduct is in the true interest of the individual and of society. " Religion clarifies the vision and enables men to see their own true Interests." It is also a power and so enables men to do that which is advantageous to them. It encourages the long view rather than the short view and so becomes a tremendous force in upward social evolution.

" Religion furnishes us with ideals of true social happiness, and encourages us to follow these ideals. In the pursuit of these ideals, which continually become higher and nobler, the interests of the individual and of society are in the main harmonious. It is in the minority and not in the majority of cases that a sacrifice of individual interests is required, and it is a minority and not a majority who must lay down their lives in the interests of society. When, however, the time comes for the ordinary indi- vidual to make a sacrifice in an exceptional case, or for the exceptional individual to give up all save honor and character, then religion is a support. Religion encourages all the self-sacrifice which social evolution demands. Self-sacrifice, however, is not an end, but is only a means. Religion encourages the pursuit of happiness, both social and individual, and in this pursuit of happiness we are meeting with a fair measure and a rapidly increasing measure of success, while the ideals of happiness become ever higher add nobler." RICHARD T. ELY, Christian Qtiarterly, July 1897.

Over-nutrition and its Social Consequences. The view is generally enter- tained that in the process of evolution organisms survive whose nervous system reacts pleasurably when brought in contact with utilities, while those which react painfully are eliminated. This does not seem fully to account for the role played by pleasure and pain in the evolutionary process.

Assimilation normally ends in pleasure, and pleasure conditions psychic control. An abundance of assimilation is necessary for pleasure-psychic control, which unifies the action between the various parts of the organism. Under-nutrition limits psychic control and so causes the displacement of the underfed.

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