Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/211

Rh and progressive. Between these internal and external forces, between moral and material activities there may be, in some instances, an apparent antagonism. The mind may be developed in excess and to the detriment of the body, and the body may be developed in excess and to the detriment of the mind.

The animal man is a bundle of organs, with instincts implanted that set them in motion; man, intellectually, is a bundle of sentiments, with an implanted soul that keeps them effervescent; mankind in the mass, society—we see the fermentations, we mark the transitions; is there, then, a soul in aggregated humanity as there is in individual humanity?

The instincts of man's animality teach the organs to perform their functions as perfectly at the first as at the last; the instincts of man's intellectuality urge him on in an eternal race for something better, in which perfection is never attained nor attainable; in society, we see the constant growth, the higher and yet higher development; now, in this ever-onward movement are there instincts which originate and govern action in the body social as in the body individual? Is not society a bundle of organs, with an implanted soul of progress, which moves mankind along in a resistless predetermined march?

The strangest part of all is, that though wrought out by man as the instrument, and while acting in the capacity of a free agent, this spirit of progress is wholly independent of the will of man. Though in our individual actions we imagine ourselves directed only by our free-will, yet in the end it is most difficult to determine what is the result of free-will, and what of inexorable environment. While we think we are regulating our affairs, our affairs are regulating us. We plan out improvements, predetermine the best course, and follow it, sometimes; yet, for all that, the principle of social progress is not the man, is not in the man, forms no constituent of his physical or psychical individual being; it is the social atmosphere into which the man is born, into which he brings nothing, and from which he takes nothing. While a member of society he adds his quota to the general fund, and there leaves it; while acting as a free agent, he performs his part in working out this problem of social development, performs it unconsciously, willing or unwilling, he performs it, his baser passions being as powerful instruments of progress as his nobler; for avarice drives on intellect as effectually as benevolence, hate as love, and selfishness does infinitely more for the progress of mankind than philanthropy. Thus is humanity played upon by this principle of progress, and the music sometimes is wonderful: green fields, as if by magic, take the place of wild forests; magnificent cities rise out of the ground, the forces of Nature are brought under the dominion of man's intelligence, and senseless substance is endowed with speech and action.

As to the causes which originate progressional phenomena there are differences of opinion. One sees in the intellect the germ of an