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Perils of Biological Analogies

The fallacy of regarding sociology as no more than a recondite branch of biology is not merely verbal, implying differences of opinion on the tedious question of the best definition of these two sciences; it involves a misconception of what human society is, a misconception which is discredited by the facts of history and experience. No one doubts that the life of a social group is made up of a complex of activities of individual persons-but these are integrated, harmonized, and regulated in a manner as far beyond present biological analysis as the integration, harmonization and regulation of the chemical and physical processes in the individual organisms are at present beyond mechanical analysis.

To keep to the concept of selection for a moment; it was applied to plants and animals, it was illustrated, justified if not demonstrated and formulated; and now with the imprimatur of biology it comes back to sociology as a great law of life. That it is so we take for granted, but it is surely evident that in social affairs, from which it emanated as a suggestion of biology, it must be reverified and precisely tested. In any case a formula borrowed from another science and applied to a new order of facts even to those in which it first arose as a suggestion-must be rigorously tested. Otherwise, both organic and social sciences resolve themselves into socio-morphic illusions.

We do not need to review the attempts of various writers to treat of society as an organism nor to consider critically the pictures of some of the ablest of them-say Spencer— who believed that society was evolving from a military to an industrial type in which the functions of government would be reduced to the minimum. Spencer has proved to be a poor prophet. A vast host of lesser men have fallen into the error of thinking that analogy is equivalent to evidence. Organic evolution has produced parasitism as well as independence. Can we apply the word progress to retrograde movements?

Criteria of Progress

In so far as the writer can see, there is no way of testing progress by subjective things like happiness or contentment. The pig in his wallow is as happy, so far as we can tell, as any man. Poverty and happiness are not incompatible, while wealth and happiness often appear as enemies. Nor can we tell whether savage man is better or worse than civilized man. Society, like the individual, can be measured only by the things it does, its achievements. It seems possible to suggest a classification of these achievements:

1. Increased knowledge

2. Increased wealth

3. Increased understanding of man himself

4. Broadening and extension of human programs
5. Refinement of social processes

6. Emphasis on social as well as personal virtues

Knowledge

PROGRESS MEASURED BY ACHIEVEMENT

The necessary basis of all achievement is knowledge of the physical universe. Without this man leads a hand to mouth existence wholly dependent on what nature furnishes.

The application of knowledge makes possible the production of wealth which is, as Thucydides suspected long ago, the material base of civilization. As already indicated, increased wealth makes possible rising standards of living. It may seem strange in these days of overemphasis on money that the rôle of wealth calls for special comment. Yet this is true. The mass of men is to-day so great and so many men are not directly employed in production, or are engaged in trade, that serious misunderstanding has arisen; hence the current philosophy that there is ample wealth if it were equitably distributed. Color is given to this belief by the fact of overproduction, as in agriculture. But it is wealth that makes possible the leisure that enables the poet to sing or the artist to create. Wealth allows man to work for distant goals to visualize, plan and create tunnels and bridges, to erect sky-scrapers. That wealth may be abused and used in antisocial ways needs no demonstration.

Modern man likes to flatter himself by assuming that his mental processes are better than those of savage or primitive man. This is open to serious question. We have accumulated a great mass of facts which have been examined and compared until we have eliminated many earlier misunderstandings. This mass, still a blend of truth and fiction, is taught to the next generation and becomes its starting point. We all embody in our explanations the theories we have learned. No man is able, and no man has time, to demonstrate all the things he asserts as true. As Boas says:

...

We are only too apt, however, to forget entirely the general, and for most of us purely traditional, theoretical basis which is the foundation of our reasoning, and to assume that the result of our reasoning is absolute truth. In this we commit the same error that is committed by all the less civilized peoples. There is an undoubted tendency in the advance of civilization to eliminate traditional elements, and to get a clearer and clearer insight into the hypothetical basis of our reasoning. It is therefore not surprising, that with the advance of civilization, reasoning becomes more and more logical, not because each individual carries out his thought in a more logical manner, but because the traditional material which is handed down to each individual has been thought out and worked out more thoroughly and more carefully.

We know more because we build on the foundations handed over to us by our predecessors.

"Man unlike the lower animals has had to be his own domesticator," wrote Bagehot. The process has been very slow and still is far from complete, but there has been a marked advance in the understanding of things human. Traders and missionaries have spread the wares and ideas of culture centers to the tribes on the marginal areas of earth until all are dreaming of expansion and self-determination. A few great languages are so widely known that the effort to develop one world language is hardly necessary. There is little knowledge which is in any sense secret or even guarded. Man is beginning to talk in terms of a united world though he still plans and acts in smaller units. With wider contacts the exaggeration of local tenets is lessened and sympathy and understanding broadened. Brotherhood becomes a reality between kindred spirits even in countries temporarily hostile. Man's development is automatically breaking down artificial boundaries.

Refinement of Manners

There has come about a refinement of manners and of speech with the growth of civilization; at least, it seems to be true, for exact comparison with earlier standards is very difficult. Guts become intestines; legs twist into limbs; rebels are modified into confederates, to cite a few current examples. At times there seems to be danger that this refinement will be at the expense of virility, just as families of highest pedigree often have little else but pedigrees. The increasing group life is forcing the ruder individualists of north European stock to accept some of the courtesies characteristic of Spain and Japan.

Social Virtues

With these changes there is coming an emphasis on social virtues as well as on private. Even to-day the stock defense of a scoundrel in public life is that he is a good husband, a kind father, a pillar of the church. Some day we shall insist that a public official know his job and not care whether he is a Republican and a saint, or a Democrat and a sinner. We may even insist that an automobile mechanic know something of machinery. To condemn a man who steals five dollars and then praise a man who, though personally virtuous, allows the state to be fleeced, is idiocy. Private virtue is not enough. The situation calls for reanalysis.

To such things as have just been mentioned it is entirely proper to apply the term progress. If so, though the list may not be wholly complete or satisfactory, it includes about everything which can be suggested. Subjective mental attitudes are excluded. Concrete data on these matters are available and when "social scientists" stop gabbling about Plato and Spencer and tackle their real job it may prove possible to find ways of measuring and classifying the data, that is, to develop a real sociology, and not a philosophy of history.

Social Classifications

It can hardly have escaped the notice of the reader that the preferred basis of classification of human societies has been their chief method of getting a living. Such terms as hunters, fishers, farmers, and manufacturers are universally employed. These words are far more accurate and informing than savages, barbarians, and civilized. A strict definition of savage would enable us to employ the word but hitherto it has been impossible to secure such definitions. We must always ask just what a writer means by the term. The average man reads moral values into these terms; the savage is cruel or treacherous, for example. Ultimately we must come to technical terms in spite of this handicap. When we do it is evident that the three just cited will be inadequate to represent all levels of human culture. To call the Eskimo hunters and fishers is to give a fairly adequate notion of their status but to call the Americans civilized is meaningless. In reality the high spots of human development, called civilizations, have always been the places where wealth was aggregated and where, therefore, cer

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