Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/870

846 an accompanying improvement in the general morality of the community, there would not be a correspondingly reduced need for the kind of legislation directed to constructive social ends which the author so ardently invokes? The community is to be educated up to the highest point, in order that a highly intelligent legislature may do for the eminently intelligent and moral community what the latter in spite of its advanced education is still not quite intelligent or moral enough to do for itself. We find here a somewhat excessive complication. Besides, why, after all, should a serious writer like Mr. Ward worry about a "social consciousness" of which he can not pretend to assert that any organ exists? He knows perfectly well that consciousness is essentially an individual thing, and that the consciousness which we conceive as residing in one brain can by no possibility be the consciousness of another brain. A legislative committee may wield a delegated power, but such a thing as a delegated consciousness never yet existed and never will exist.

We are sorry to find Mr. Ward repeating a statement regarding Mr. Spencer, the incorrectness of which was fully demonstrated by Mr. Spencer himself in an article published in this magazine in the month of December, 1896, on the occasion of the first appearance in print, in the form of an article in the American Journal of Sociology, of one of the chapters of Mr. Ward's present book. The passage to which we refer is as follows: "Herbert Spencer, although he treated psychology as a distinct science, and placed it between biology and sociology in his system of Synthetic Philosophy, made no attempt to affiliate sociology upon psychology, while, on the contrary, he did exert himself to demonstrate that it has exceedingly close natural affinities with biology" (page 94). Mr. Spencer's reply to this was that he had, in the most distinct manner, indicated the dependence of sociology upon psychology, and that, in point of fact, the opening chapters of his Principles of Sociology dealt almost wholly with psychical factors. He adduced numerous passages from his writings proving that he had made his position upon this point perfectly plain. Any of our readers who care to turn to the number of this magazine which we have mentioned can see for themselves how complete was the refutation of Mr. Ward's erroneous statement. It seems to us that, as a matter of courtesy as well as of elementary justice, Mr. Ward should have seen to it that he did not put forth a second time an utterance so ill-founded and injurious. Mr. Ward himself, in the very paragraph in which he makes the allegation complained of by Mr. Spencer, furnishes evidence of its incorrectness. He says that at the close of the third chapter of Mr. Spencer's Psychology the fact comes clearly forth that "the class of attributes in the individual animal with which those of society could best be compared were its psychic attributes." Surely if this was clearly the drift of Mr. Spencer's argument there was no great need of repeated affirmations that a nexus existed between psychology and sociology. Mr. Ward is an industrious writer, and his style is, as a rule, clear and interesting. He seems, however, to take himself a little too seriously. When, in recapitulating (page 164) the conclusions which he claims to have reached, he includes the doctrine that "social forces are psychic," he can not fail to bring a smile to the face of any one who has ever read Spencer. The same effect is produced when he says (page 111) that he is the only one, so far as he is aware, "who has attempted to show a way out of the difficulty" connected with