AN AUSTRIAN APPRECIATION OF LESTER F. WARD 1
I
When one has outgrown the theological conception of history, and has also thrown overboard the rationalistic conception ; when one recognizes neither God nor man as " maker " of history, and has become a convert to " nature ; " when one has become with Haeckel a pure monist, and thereupon swears that the " one law of nature " causes the planets to swing in their orbits and states to rise and fall ; two shadings of this view still remain possible. The one naturalistic monist regards the " historical process " as remaining eternally the same, since " natural processes never change their character ; " the other, in spite of all naturalism and monism, regards man also as a " natural force ; " and since he thinks he knows from experience that one may alter this natural force by education and culture, he is of the opinion that, along with the present development of mankind, which is too evident to be denied, with the spiritual improvement of men, the time may also come when the natural process of history must undergo change, and a distant future will bring us social arrange- ments which have somewhat the same relation to those of today that the telegraphic news service of our time has to the method of trans- mitting messages by couriers in the old Persian empire. We are accustomed to call the adherents of the former view pessimists ; those of the latter, optimists. The terminology is misleading, because it is ambiguous. When we speak of "pessimists," we think of morose growlers who are always cursing and never satisfied ; while we mean by "optimists" people who are content with themselves and the world. This association of ideas is far from exact. On the contrary, the facts are precisely the reverse. The pessimist in world-philosophy is usually an optimist in life. The troublous course of the world does not surprise him, he expects nothing better ; he knows that the world is evil, that it cannot be otherwise. Thus he has no ground whatever for being unsatisfied with life ; it is as it always was, and always will be. He enjoys des Lebens Unverstand as a comedy of nature. The
1 The original of this paper appeared in Die Zeit, Vienna, August 20, 1904. Its obvious interest for American sociologists justifies departure from our rule not to publish articles that have appeared elsewhere.
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