Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/423

 REVIEWS 409

conduct, this conditioning does not mean hopeless deformation, and as long as the reason is able to state the new rule for conduct in just as universal and social a form as the old, it is not compelled to work solely in the interest of a selfish ego.

Or, to make the statement concrete and applicable to the present instance, because we can never get outside of our experience to look at it, it does not follow that we cannot discover the method and process of that experience. No one knows what he is going to do, judged by results, for the result is too wide and far-reaching for him to estimate, but he may know that he is acting rationally. We may depend upon our interpretation of the present in terms of the past, so far as method is concerned. The engineer does not know the full value and meaning of the bridge he is building; no elevation will tell him that. But he knows how to build it. While we are perfectly willing to have the unexpected happen, we expect science, physical and mental, to tell us how to behave in its presence. Furthermore, we state the law, the universal, in terms of society, and its infraction, the exception, the particular, in terms of the individual. But that is only till we can either modify the law or enlarge the individual. Thus, while reason is bridging over the chasm between society and the individual, it is forming a new society or a new individual, and in either case is mak- ing a real identification. Here, also, this takes place, not by a state- ment of what either society or the individual is going to be, but by finding the point of identity between them, and controlling the process of reform by sacrificing nothing valuable in either. It is only the method we can be sure of, not the result.

Now, I take it that this is but an abstract way of saying that we have, in general, given up being programists and become oppor- tunists. We do not build any more Utopias, but we do control our immediate conduct by the assurance that we have the proper point of attack, and that we are losing nothing in the process. We are getting a stronger grip on the method of social reform every year, and are becoming proportionately careless about our ability to predict the detailed result. We may compare the programist to the concocter of the old-fashioned farmer's almanac, and the opportunist to the member of the signal service who is satisfied with a meteorological method that may control immediate conduct. If I have rightly inter- preted M. Le Bon, his psychology is that of the programist, and is as inadequate as the social theory.

The psychological problem is a real one. The author's position.