Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/201

Rh are many, and hence in attempting to account for social progress we should be careful not to overestimate the influence of any single factor; and, second, that in none of the foregoing classifications of the factors of progress is there mention of war. Why is war omitted? Is it because in the analyses it has been overlooked? Or is it because it may not properly be included among the factors of progress? Clearly the latter is the explanation. War is not a factor of social progress. This will be obvious on considering the real meaning of the term "factor."

If we turn to a definition of the word factor we find it means anything that is employed in the production of a given result. Thus, three is a factor of eighteen. It may be employed in the production of that number, but the manner or method of its employment may be either addition or multiplication. Now it is quite worth while in the interest of clearness of thought on the present subject to make a distinction between the factors that unite or that are employed in the production of a given result, and the manner in which these factors naturally combine or the method by which they are employed in producing that result. Clearly three and six, the factors of eighteen, are quite different from the addition or the multiplication, that is, the method, employed in producing the number. Observe, too, in this connection that while the number of factors that combine or are employed in the production of a given result may be and in general are fixed, the method of employing them is variable. It may be a natural and fortuitous reaction, which is really no method at all, or if consciously employed the methods may be as many and as varied as human ingenuity can devise. With exactly the same factors which by natural reaction or by conscious employment produce a given result, methods of employing them may be accepted or rejected in accordance with our judgment with respect to their effectiveness. We may eliminate what we consider bad methods and employ only what seem to us to be good methods, while the factors may remain the same.

In the case, then, of progress, or its opposite effected by war, the factors are the social groups involved, the war itself being merely the manner in which these factors combine to produce the given result. Is this mode of combining properly to be called a method? That is to say, is war a method of social progress? If war is a method of social progress it is clearly not the only method. Hence it is subject to comparison with other methods as to its relative efficiency. Its value as a method must depend upon its cost and effectiveness as compared with the cost and effectiveness of other conceivable methods of social progress, as for instance education, commerce, contact through travel, and the various other forms of intercommunication by which alone one social group may stimulate the progress of another. If, on comparison, a better method were found, it would show lack of social intelligence not to discard the worse for the better.