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274
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be of a negative or passive kind, and he says that this has hitherto proved sterile or unproductive of benefit to the community. Like the other sciences, it needs application to make it useful and valuable. But this application involves active human agency, the control of social effects, and, as man's effort and directive power is here the main idea, he expresses this element of force by the term dynamic, and calls this branch of the subject "Dynamic Sociology." On this view, statical sociology deals with the great processes of nature, with genesis and natural evolution; while dynamic sociology treats of psychic human agency, and artificial results in the social sphere.

Mr. Ward maintains that the time has come when sociology must pass formally from the theoretic to the applied stage. While admitting the impracticability of most of the measures that have aimed at social amelioration, he nevertheless considers that we can no longer avoid the endeavor to derive certain fundamental principles of social action that shall bring the phenomena of society under the same intelligent control that science has long made possible in the division of physical phenomena, and guide the active interference of man in the direction of social affairs and to the accomplishment of social ends. This he assumes to be the art stage in the development of the subject in which purposed artificial agencies supplement and carry forward the natural processes of development for the attainment of the highest fruits of human progress.

Mr. Ward devotes his first volume mainly to "Statical Sociology." It opens with a long introductory chapter, presenting a general view of the entire scheme. This is followed by two historical chapters, reviewing the two great modern systems of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, in a manner sufficiently full for his general purpose. Then follow four chapters dealing with the most fundamental principles of cosmical development, or evolution in the domain of purely natural phenomena. These are entitled respectively "Cosmogeny," "Biogeny," "Psychogeny," and "Anthropogeny," dealing with the genesis of worlds, of life, of mind, and of man, and naturally leading up to the higher department of "Sociogeny," or the genesis and development of human society. Following the current terminology, we have here to do with pure sociology only, or its treatment from the point of view of the laws of nature. As a comprehensive exposition of the doctrine of evolution, this volume has great merit.

Sociological study thus far, Mr. Ward maintains, has chiefly given attention to the genetic or unconscious progress of society. The causes that have produced this passive or unconscious social progress are subjected to a searching analysis, and are found in the social forces. These consist fundamentally in desires, but they are desires which inhere permanently in the nature of man as a living organism. They are divided into two great groups, the original, or essential, and the derivative, or non-essential, social forces. The essential forces are those desires which belong to man as an animal, and are necessary to the maintenance of the primary functions of nutrition and reproduction. The non-essential forces are those desires which have been developed in the course of evolution, and they are divided into the æsthetic, the emotional, or moral, and the intellectual social forces. The primary forces, which have led to social transformations, are, therefore, blind forces, which result to the performance of acts with no reference to their ultimate effects.

Mr. Ward's argument for dynamical sociology, to which his second volume is devoted, is not easily presented in a paragraph, but it is substantially as follows: The ultimate end of human action is well being or happiness, but this can not be attained through direct effort; it requires means. There are five proximate ends standing in as many degrees of remoteness from the ultimate end, the attainment of any of which is equivalent to the attainment of all the less remote ones, and the ease in securing which is directly proportional to their remoteness. These proximate ends, therefore, constitute so many means to the attainment of the ultimate end of well-being.

The first of these proximate ends is human progress itself, which, in order to be true progress, must secure the ultimate end. But progress is not in any proper sense at-