Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/571

Rh the method of Nature, and deferring to natural laws, quite overlook the meaning of these supreme facts, and seem unaware of the new dispensation upon which the world has entered. He makes "The open charge that the modern scientific philosophers fail to recognize the true value of the psychic factor; and again he says, "The laissez-faire doctrine fails to recognize that, in the development of mind, a virtually new power was introduced into the world."

Mr. Ward must not be here taken too literally, for certainly the laissez-faire people have some appreciation of mind as a factor in social progress. He can only mean that they have a very imperfect conception of it, because their do-nothing method does not imply the need of it. It is desirable, however, that we have first of all a correct idea of what this policy is. And here we must protest against some of Mr. Ward's extreme assertions. He declares that "the laissez-faire doctrine is a gospel of inaction"; and that, to be consistent, "its advocates must condemn all interference with physical laws and natural forces." He says they hold that "all schemes of social reform are unscientific"; that "they condemn all attempts to protect the weak, whether by private or public methods"; and that "in government every attempt to improve the condition of the state is condemned and denounced." These are unwarrantable exaggerations. The representatives of laissez faire have as much at heart the good of society, and work as hard to secure it, as any other class. It is not true that they hold to the method of Nature in social life in any such sense as absolves men from active effort in the direction of social improvement. Mr. Herbert Spencer is probably, as Mr. Ward himself recognizes, the leading living representative of the laissez-faire school, and he repeatedly, explicitly, and consistently in his earlier as in his later works, enforces the obligation of protecting the weak by sympathetic and discriminating aid, and he ever maintains that there is no more commendable or admirable social service than to help the weak and poor to help themselves. Moreover, his works throughout, from first to last, make imperative demands for radical and comprehensive scientific reforms in the policy of government with respect to the administration of social affairs. This is the common and distinctive ground of the laissez-faire school; and the question here is simply, What value does this give to "mind as a social factor"?

The believers in laissez faire, or in leaving things social more to themselves, hold that there is a natural order in the social state which has not been superseded or antiquated by the coming of man upon the stage, and that there are natural laws of human society, the understanding of which is the first condition of all real social advancement. They maintain that blind and ignorant intermeddling with these laws has been and is still productive of far more evil than good, and that therefore the first grand task of social science is their full and systematic elucidation, while it becomes the highest duty of education to disseminate knowledge of the laws thus gained. But the disentangling of social phenomena and the clear working out of their underlying principles are certainly among the highest efforts of the human mind. As yet we have only partial glimpses of these laws, insufficient for full guidance—but little more than sufficient to attest their existence. The most profound and fruitful intellectual work for generations to come is to be done here. Can it be said that those who contribute to the solution of these formidable social problems—so fundamental to practical success in social undertakings—are open to the charge of disparaging the function of "mind as a social factor"? On the contrary, is it not they who most eminently honor it? Mr. Ward not only admits that there are social laws which