Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/204

190 men as nations, tribes, laborers, capitalists, the governed and their governors, and so on. But then, again, we remember that Mr. Baldwin's standpoint is the genetic one, and at once his apparent dogmatism about the force of ideas or thoughts seems somewhat less dogmatic. He is not thinking (he reminds us) — to use the language of Tönnies — of companies, but of societies, and, moreover, of society as human and psychical And "personal," and, further still, of society as progressive. And what is it, he holds, that makes society progress, if it be not the thoughts of individuals or the thoughts that arise in them in consequence of their efforts at social conformity and social and personal evolution ? These thoughts, to be sure, he tells us, take the form of ethical ideals. Thus, if we agree to Mr. Baldwin's contention from his own genetic standpoint, we shall not stumble over the apparent dogmatism of the closing sections of the book. The idea that society is a psychological organization is at once a new conclusion and yet a very old one — as old as the Republic of Plato. Of course, we must allow to Professor Dewey and other critics that Mr. Baldwin himself seems somewhat to desert his own genetic point of view and his own early frank recognition of "epistemological considerations," when he puts forward his theory that the matter of social organization is thoughts as a direct answer to the problem of sociology, and puts forward his psychology of personal and social growth as the thing which the sociologists have been seeking in vain. I am bound to say that I think he is perfectly right in this, and that he has by his investigation killed, as it were, two birds with one stone — he has given us a true theory of personal, mental, and moral development, and at the same time laid down the basis for the sociology of the future. Only I go back to my point about the positive value and character of Mr. Baldwin's whole book and whole psychology, and beg to insist that his theory of the organization of society by the thoughts of the wisest and best individuals is not to be dissociated from his psychology that thoughts cannot become the matter for new thoughts save in so far as the actions to which they lead are tested on the side of their social-survival value. It is a conclusion from his psychology of the relation of thought to movement that society