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 Sugaestions toward an applied science of 
 
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Suggestions 
 
 Toward 
 
 An Applied Science of 
 Sociology 
 
 BY 
 
 Edward Payson Payson 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 Xlbe IkiUchcrbocher iprees 
 
Copyright, 1898 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD PAYSON PAYSON 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 
 tCbe fkniciicthocbcv press, IRew l^orlfi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE main proposition hereinafter submit- 
 ted is that a physical as distinguished 
 from although not antagonistic to an 
 animistic science of sociology can now be 
 formulated and practically utilized. 
 
 A corollary from that is, that much human 
 evil not hitherto sufficiently assigned to specific 
 and physical causes, but viewed as intangible 
 and so dealt with at arm's length, or largely 
 left to theory, and reproof, may, because of its 
 physical character, be reached and should be 
 grappled with by the secular energies of the 
 state. 
 
 Illustrations of the practical application of 
 this proposition and its corollary are then at- 
 tempted in criminal law and public philan- 
 thropy. 
 
 It may not be true that an auxiliary science 
 of applied sociology can rest upon physical as 
 distinguished from animistic foundation premi- 
 
iv Preface 
 
 ses, or that the time has come when knowledge 
 of and power of manipulating the human or- 
 ganism can be made the basis for a science 
 of the improvement of communities ; but, as it 
 thus seems to the author, he has ventured to 
 say so. And if this incomplete setting forth of 
 reasons therefor shall serve no better purpose 
 than to whet a critic's knife to separate the 
 above proposition, as an error, from the truth, 
 and so to help us along toward that improve- 
 ment in social relations which so much of pity, 
 thought, and effort are striving for, the follow- 
 ing pages may not, even then, be deemed 
 wholly useless. 
 
The author would like to express his grate- 
 ful recognition of the encouragement extended 
 to him by Professor C. F. Brackett of Prince- 
 ton, Mr. Arthur MacDonald of the United 
 States Bureau of Education, and ex-Justice J. 
 W. Symonds of the Supreme Court of Maine, 
 in the preparation of this essay, but without 
 thereby intimating that they are responsible for 
 its reasoning or in accord with its conclusions. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS . . I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BEGINNINGS OF A THEORY 9 
 
 Social progress a phase of evolution. — Its acceleration 
 dependent upon, First, favorable opportunity for, Second, 
 absence of restraint upon, the complete development of 
 the individual. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE OF FACT, NOT ASSUMPTION 15 
 
 The suggestion that the physics of social progress be 
 made an applied science based upon fact and not 
 assumption. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FIRST QUESTION RESTATED ... 23 
 
 How shall such science deal with the supersensible, or 
 animism? — Discussion of this is discussion of ideas. — 
 Two classes of ideas, one class having sensible correla- 
 tives- in-fact, the other not.— The latter termed imagina- 
 tion-ideas. — To which class do ideas of the supersensible 
 belong? 
 
viii Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ANSWER INHERENT IN THE NATURE OF 
 
 LANGUAGE . 32 
 
 (a) What words are. 
 
 (i) " Consciousness " and kindred words. 
 
 («■) The physics of " Consciousness." 
 
 (a') A working hypothesis concerning consciousness. 
 
 {/) The physics of " Intent." 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ANSWER TO THE FIRST QUESTION AND ITS 
 
 POLITICAL VALUE . . . I05 
 
 Sociology as an applied science should not be an animistic 
 science. — The reasons for this answer show that much 
 hitherto regarded as supersensible should be politically 
 treated as physical. — Consequences in broadening the 
 rights and duties of the state. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE ANSWER DEFENDED . . . I24 
 
 Its tendency not hostile to the foundations of faith. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TRUE USE OF IMAGINATION-IDEAS IN PHYSICAL 
 
 SOCIOLOGY 139 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SECOND QUESTION STATED .... 142 
 
 Method and scope of physical sociology as an applied 
 science. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE SUGGESTIONS IN CRIMINAL 
 
 LAW 153 
 
Contents ix 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 APPLICATION OF THE SUGGESTIONS IN EDUCATION . 205 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE SUGGESTIONS IN PUBLIC 
 
 PHILANTHROPY OR BENEVOLENCE . . 215 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 234 
 
SUGGESTIONS TOWARD AN APPLIED 
 SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS 
 
 IN an opening scene, Goethe presents Faust 
 struggling with the mysterious problems 
 of the microcosm, seeking its origin, 
 bemoaning its renunciations, questioning its 
 purpose, until, resorting to the magic of Nos- 
 tradamus, " he opens the book and beholds the 
 sign of the macrocosm." In like bewilderment, 
 many a man occasionally finds himself as an in- 
 dividual confronting his existence as a whole, 
 wondering what are the true relations between 
 "my little body" and "this great world." 
 And, sooner or later, on such bird's-eye view 
 as his education and imagination permit, he, 
 too, turns to "the sign of the macrocosm." 
 
2 Applied Sociology 
 
 Geology and astronomy, history and po- 
 etry, are spells of a different order from those 
 of Nostradamus, with which he may seek to 
 bring before his eyes some, however inade- 
 quate, view of that whole of which he is a part. 
 By their aid it is possible to go backward in 
 time until, in turn, is found no aesthetic culture, 
 no humane civilization, no civilization, no na- 
 tions, no families, no language, no anthropoid 
 apes, no vertebrates, no saurians, no mollusca, 
 no animal life, no vegetable life, no water, no 
 solid earth, — nothing but aether and nebulae. 
 Finally, nothing but some primal Source — the 
 Logos, the God. 
 
 And there, at the point where matter loses 
 itself in spirit, within the potentiality of the 
 first " star-dust," lies the all of yet invisible 
 creation, the universe, its systems, and among 
 them the cloud-girt earth, irradiated with 
 splendors of sun and rainbow by day, of stars 
 and moons and auroras by night, blooming 
 into foliage, flower, and fruit, trembling into 
 forms of animal life, and becoming the home 
 of man, 
 
 " The microcosm, the adding up of works," 
 
 possessing emotion, reason, imagination, to 
 dream of constructing and beautifying, to de- 
 
Introductory Reflections 3 
 
 vise methods and be happy in results, until, 
 through seons of time, through geometrical 
 series of transformation scenes, through more 
 and more complex and delicate combinations, 
 which we sum up as growth, this gradual crea- 
 tion reaches to-day's material development in 
 Christianity's nineteenth century. 
 
 And while there are those who say there is 
 no further progress, humanity as a whole ever 
 strives to read a prophecy in this history writ- 
 ten in earth and sky and waters, in the color 
 of the flower, and in the face of man ; to trans- 
 late the voice of nature throughout the gamut 
 of her products, until in man it becomes re- 
 ligion and belief, as a prophetic voice, musical 
 with many a vague yet splendid promise, tell- 
 ing of some vague yet thrilling vision of a 
 diviner future in which humanity as a phoenix 
 from the fires wherein its world was forged 
 shall gain a yet clearer atmosphere and find 
 the full justification for its creation. 
 
 And notwithstanding phantoms, and shapes, 
 and distorted idiosyncrasies of Individualism 
 often associated with, or interrupting, this fund- 
 amental belief, it ever grows and broadens, 
 as though inherent in the very constitution of 
 matter, constantly progressing, through new 
 
4 Applied Sociology- 
 
 combinations, toward higher planes of exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Where then is the culmination of this pro- 
 gress ? If a higher level of life be visible, it 
 is, abstractly, possible. Change is inevitable 
 — it is everywhere a concomitant of life. But 
 the to-and-fro movement of waves in this ris- 
 ing life-tide does not indicate that here is the 
 limit of all things. 
 
 " The Word "—the " Word " that we cannot 
 understand although we go back to it — has 
 been " made flesh." Belief has somehow 
 arisen that the power which presided at the 
 beginning has embodied and partially revealed 
 itself ; that nothing perishes ; that all things 
 pass to new forms of higher activity. 
 
 This was the old, dim Lucretian faith, with- 
 out inductive reason. This is the conclusion 
 of Darwinian reason. This Is also the Revela- 
 tions — personification lighting up truth. To 
 the earliest struggling atoms force was the 
 father — the God, — as to humanity is its un- 
 known, or personified, deity. What need had 
 the chaos of creation, the first types of life, 
 even the first animal life, of ideas of God or 
 love or perfection ? But the yearning heart 
 of man, in recognizing religion — Fetishism, 
 
Introductory Reflections 5 
 
 Fire-worship, Paganism, Christianity — and in 
 adoring in each its central figure, may well 
 have obeyed a like compulsion with that which 
 drove together in elemental strife of cold and 
 heat, of ice and flame, the constituent atoms of 
 the first-formed particles of solid matter. Re- 
 ligion itself may be in its origins not only ideal 
 but atomic, complex, as is the complex being 
 built from the growth of these same atoms. 
 If " growth " is the law, the fact, it would be 
 strange indeed had it not been so expressed, 
 if this growth had not eventuated in the erec- 
 tion of altars and the formulation of creeds. 
 And again the question asserts itself; Where, 
 then, is the culmination of this progress ? 
 
 Faith, for answer, points toward the stars. 
 Poets, prophets, preachers, clothe each with 
 his own metaphor, each in his own language, 
 the ever widening conception. 
 
 Even science speaks and, perhaps with as 
 wide an authority, confirms the vision of the 
 mystic, the hope of the believer, the dream of 
 the spirit of man, unfolding through the ages. 
 
 " Ainsi, I'histoire du monde nous revele un progres 
 qui s'est continue a travers les ages. Ce progres s'arre- 
 tera-t-il ? J'ignore si, dans I'avenir, les plantes porteront 
 des fleurs plus belles, des fruits plus delicieux. Je ne 
 
6 Applied Sociology 
 
 sais si les animaux s'amelioreront, mais ce qu'on peut 
 assurer c'est que I'homme n'a pas atteint son perfection- 
 nement. Nous n'avons pas fini la serie des inventions 
 qui changeront la face de la terre ; nous n'avons pas 
 eleve nos ames autant que nous pouvons la faire." — 
 Albert Gaudry, de I'Academie des Sciences, Rev. des 
 Deux Monies., March i, 1896, p. 200. 
 
 But this belief in progress excites questions 
 which bring everyday life and the fundamental 
 necessities of its continuance into a practical 
 relation to this vast scheme of evolution. As 
 the original " star-dust " followed its own duty 
 and destiny, with work enough in its day, so 
 to-day must humanity follow its own duty and 
 destiny, and with this difference — that hu- 
 manity knows more of its own work, is 
 " conscious " of it, even to the capability of ad- 
 vancing it. As the visible universe — the macro- 
 cosm — appears to us but material, as was the 
 original "star-dust," for a grander universe, 
 of which religion is a promise and for which 
 man's aspiration is a prayer ; so in the micro- 
 cosm — the lesser life of the individual — its own 
 constituents are factors for progress. 
 
 If this progress is the law of all life and the 
 humanity of to-day has a part in it, what is 
 humanity's individuality ? What has it most of, 
 
Introductory Reflections 7 
 
 that can be best worked into the scheme of the 
 ages ? What shall the humanity of to-day do, 
 make, leave ? Here is what we call imagina- 
 tion — to picture new conditions ; reason — to 
 pass judgment on this imagination ; emotion — 
 to enable participation in and enjoyment of that 
 which it shall help to make for not only itself 
 but for all time. Here are humanity and its 
 units, the " atoms " for a higher growth, to 
 be combined into or consolidated with the 
 vaster life of the universe. Everything that 
 we have individually loved and lost out of 
 our eyes but not out of ourselves ; everything 
 that we have longed for and not in any part 
 possessed or accomplished ; every danger that 
 the now is the all of our individuality ; every 
 hope that this same now is but a point of 
 change and growth of that same individuality 
 until it be purged of its dross and supple- 
 mented in its powers, — calls to us to seek dili- 
 gently to appreciate, even unto enthusiastic 
 self-surrender into harmony with such law of 
 growth, this universal development, that man, 
 in the superiority of acquired self-consciousness 
 and reason, may hasten — even faster than the 
 forming atoms, that, in spaces lying far beyond 
 the visible constellations, now strive to blend 
 
8 Applied Sociology 
 
 into particles of a nascent world — onward to- 
 ward a life which is as much higher than ours 
 as ours is beyond the life of the sea-swung 
 anemone. 
 
 The complex social life of to-day divides 
 itself into that of the individual and that of the 
 community. Humanity includes the one and 
 the many. The individual has not only duties 
 as an individual but also as part of society, of 
 the state, of the community, with institutions 
 and subdivisions which accomplish particular 
 results. Religion is an institution ; govern- 
 ment, an institution ; education, an institution ; 
 law, an institution ; and humanity is approxi- 
 mating toward philanthropy as an institution. 
 
 All these, as well as the individual, are 
 slowly to improve if progress is the truth of 
 all this " weltering to-and-fro " which strikes the 
 eye gazing upon only a part of a whole which 
 is infinite. 
 
 All this may suggest itself — and the promise 
 and revelation of the New Testament may to 
 some confirm it all — to him who can find the 
 key to existence only by comparing it, how- 
 ever vaguely, to some vast flower unfolding 
 slowly into perfection. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF A THEORY 
 
 HOWSOEVER the belief be acquired, 
 when one does believe that humanity 
 grows ; that the individual becomes 
 from age to age more complex and more 
 capable ; that society becomes more many- 
 sided and more comprehensive, — he has found 
 a solid foundation for faith, effort, and even 
 enthusiasm. He can at least forswear the 
 weariness of the preacher who cried, " Vanity 
 of vanities, all is vanity." 
 
 Thus convinced, he turns again the pages of 
 the story of past progress to learn how human- 
 ity, individually and collectively, has grown, 
 that he may understand how it will continue to 
 grow. He reads that record of his progeni- 
 tors and is astonished that study of its com- 
 plex and often illegible pages shows the 
 obstacles of growth to have in part arisen out 
 of or been inherent in human nature itself, 
 
 9 
 
lo Applied Sociology 
 
 which, together with constructive, seems almost 
 equally endowed with destructive or suicidal 
 qualities ; so that no sooner has a civilization 
 perfected itself than it straightway perishes 
 from self-engendered overthrow. Again re- 
 turning to the investigation, one considers in 
 detail the phenomena which accompanied 
 periods of progress, and those which were 
 paramount in periods of decline. In some 
 respects, they are inextricably mixed and con- 
 fused. Thus selfishness, cruelty, debauchery, 
 seem prominent in progressive as in retrogres- 
 sive epochs ; while sentiments favorable to 
 beauty, art, literature, comfort, signalize the 
 downward career of every perished civilization. 
 
 Slowly the searcher gropes his way through 
 the dark catacombs of past ages, again emerges 
 into a slowly dawning light, and brings forth 
 conclusions more or less in harmony with 
 these : 
 
 (i) That humanity has advanced through 
 the improvement of the individual ; and that 
 this improvement has been automatic, natural, 
 and voluntary, as the normal human being has 
 been, by accident and personal striving, freed 
 from denial and complete oppression, and 
 scope given to all human energies. 
 
Beginnings of a Theory 1 1 
 
 (2) That the improvement of societies has 
 been but the improvement of many individuals 
 and their mutual relations. 
 
 Again returning to the problem, one seeks 
 to find what are the alterations which go on in 
 the relations between individuals as they thus, 
 from epoch to epoch, mount higher in the scale 
 of being, and how these exhibit themselves. 
 
 Here again one finds great darkness and 
 difficulty. The changes are so numerous and 
 are so interlaced with each other that one is 
 wellnigh tempted to say, " Humanity im- 
 proves ; and that is all there Is about it." But 
 this is unsatisfactory. 
 
 Finally, leaving other phases of the problem 
 still to be approached, one general proposition 
 seems clearly discernible, albeit of shadowy 
 outline, through modern history, and, if not 
 confirmed, at least not contradicted, by stren- 
 uous inspection of earlier epochs ; and that 
 proposition may be stated in this way among, 
 perhaps, several other ways : 
 
 Humanity has improved by such exertion 
 of the normal, natural activity of the individual 
 as to avoid the injury of either the individual 
 or his fellows ; "growth," when uninterrupted, 
 being as natural here as in the vegetable and 
 
12 Applied Sociology 
 
 animal kingdoms, until, in fact, " The thoughts 
 of men are widened with the process of the 
 suns." 
 
 The growth of the individual has resulted 
 from the free exercise of all muscular, mental, 
 and emotional powers. The growth of society 
 has resulted from the growth of the individual 
 being restrained from encroachment upon and 
 brought into proper relation with the growth 
 of his fellows. Arrived at these conclusions, 
 and convinced that they are prophetically as 
 well as historically sound, they naturally em- 
 body themselves in two propositions as to 
 certain political essentials for further progress, 
 viz. : 
 
 First : The individual must be provided 
 with chances for and be developed in all his 
 powers. 
 
 Second: His social relations must be framed 
 to aid this development and to restrain inter- 
 ference with it. 
 
 These two propositions next appear to be a 
 starting-point for practical study of sociology 
 as an applied science of practical political, 
 social progress. 
 
 But it is at once plain that no merely orna- 
 mental or curious or ingenious structure is 
 
Beginnings of a Theory 13 
 
 needed, but a working science or system, " true 
 to nature " but not going beyond nature as 
 understood. In nature, effects depend upon 
 adequate and appropriate causes, giving rise to 
 the formulation of a law of equivalents of 
 success and failure in ethics and politics as 
 well as in physics, which reveals itself through- 
 out history, alike in the rise and fall of empires 
 and in the least undertaking, moral or physical, 
 of the individual. This proposed science of 
 sociology, starting with the above two pro- 
 positions, must conform to this law in all re- 
 spects ; must, therefore, lean on no insufficient 
 premise and offer no inefficient methods of in- 
 dividual or social development ; must impose 
 no useless treatment ; must provide no baseless 
 assumptions in social institutions, in law, edu- 
 cation, or philanthropy ; must, indeed, as to 
 the individual in relation with society, show 
 what price is to be paid and how and when 
 shall be the payment, what causes must be set 
 to work and how and when they shall be called 
 upon, what plans shall be adopted and how 
 they shall be administered in order to obtain 
 such chances for and development of the indi- 
 vidual and such social relations as make these 
 chances sufficient and this development stable. 
 
14 Applied Sociology 
 
 It is at once manifest that such proposed 
 science of sociology must be, for the present 
 at least, of much less scope than an ardent 
 enthusiast could wish for it ; that its proper 
 boundaries are circumscribed within the circle 
 of sensible phenomena, and, within this circle, 
 limited by want of accurate knowledge, igno- 
 rance, and the irregular development of society, 
 as well as by the futility in social problems of 
 reliance upon insufificient or unproven premises 
 or upon theories incapable of accurate applica- 
 tion. And this indicates that such a social 
 science must depend upon exact data, labori- 
 ously attained and very slowly extended. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE OF FACT, NOT ASSUMPTION 
 
 SCIENCE has been defined, broadly, as 
 truth approximately complete within 
 given boundaries, both in point of logical 
 perfection of form and in point of ascertained 
 verity of subject-matter. It includes the as- 
 certainment of facts, the formulating of hypo- 
 theses, the use of logic, deductive and inductive, 
 experiment, and formulated conclusions. Sci- 
 ence, as the name of arranged human acquire- 
 ment, may be said to be not only actual 
 knowledge of the past and present but poten- 
 tial knowledge of the future, when supple- 
 mented by formulas for foretelling results or 
 equations for making the potential actual. It 
 is further observable that what is in general 
 termed science is based upon physical fact, as 
 in chemistry and biology, where hypothesis is 
 used only tentatively ; or largely upon hypo- 
 thesis, as in psychology and ethics ; or upon 
 
 15 
 
1 6 Applied Sociology 
 
 fact and hypothesis inextricably mingled, as in 
 the yet rudimentary science of political econ- 
 omy and such attempts as have been made 
 towards a science of sociology. It is evident 
 that any social science, starting from the two 
 propositions above suggested, must be a science 
 oi fact ; and that hypothesis, although experi- 
 mentally useful, must be rigorously excluded 
 as a basis for action until confirmed. This 
 suggestion that sociology, as an applied science 
 of social progress, should be a science of fact 
 assumes that it is possible for humanity to 
 understand itself as well in laws of action as of 
 birth and growth ; that an applied science of 
 sociology is as possible as sciences of chemi- 
 stry and medicine, which rest upon the basis of 
 physical facts sensible to a physical organism, 
 irrespective of theories of the ultimate source, 
 nature, or proof of such facts, or of the destiny 
 of humanity. 
 
 But to rear a particular science whose premises 
 are facts and not hypotheses, proper facts must be 
 taken for premises. Already many classes of 
 facts are well established as to this human 
 being, since its anatomy, chemistry, physical 
 needs of clothing, food, shelter, etc., its emo- 
 tional needs of sympathy along many lines, its 
 
A Science of Fact 17 
 
 mental needs of activity, and, to a considerable 
 degree, the whole range of facts as to birth, life, 
 and decease are constantly widening, even to 
 the examination of the physics of thought, 
 will, intellect, and emotion. 
 
 But there is a fundamental question as to 
 man which either must be shown capable of 
 being unanimously answered or else must be 
 eliminated from consideration in this sug- 
 gested science of sociology founded on fact. 
 Let us examine this leisurely. 
 
 When Mr. Disraeli appeared at a diocesan 
 conference in the theatre at Oxford, at a time 
 when Colenso on the " Pentateuch " and 
 Darwin on the " Origin of Species " had not 
 ceased to be subjects of daily discussion, he 
 said : 
 
 " What is the question now placed before society with 
 a glib assurance the most astounding ? The question is 
 this : Is man an ape or an angel ? I, my Lord, I am on 
 the side of the angels, I repudiate with indignation and 
 abhorrence the contrary view, which I believe foreign to 
 the conscience of humanity. . . Between these 
 
 two contending interpretations of man, society will have 
 to divide. This rivalry is at the bottom of all human 
 affairs." — Fronde's Lord Beacons fields 176. 
 
 The " rivalry " is no less strong to-day. And 
 it propounds the same question to every sci- 
 
1 8 Applied Sociology 
 
 ence which deals with man as a social being. 
 But must sociology answer it, Aye or Nay? 
 Shall sociology declare that it has for its pro- 
 vince to usurp the function of the confessor, 
 and, condensing all creeds to its service, to 
 satisfy their variant acolytes with one litany ? 
 Or shall it assume to unfrock all priests, ex- 
 tinguish a hundred altar fires, and summon 
 humanity to a new Carmagnole before a new 
 " Goddess of Reason " ? As Disraeli said : 
 " Man is a being born to believe, and if no 
 church comes forward with its title-deeds of 
 truth sustained by the traditions of sacred ages 
 and by the convictions of countless generations 
 to guide him, he will find altars and idols in his 
 own heart, in his own imagination." And as 
 Carlyle said, a propos of that same Carmag- 
 nole : " Man is a born idol-worshipper, sight- 
 worshipper, so sensuously imaginative is he ; 
 and also partakes much of the nature of the 
 ape." But must sociology take part in, and 
 therefore take sides in, this rivalry ; and so be 
 no unanimous science but merely the sworn 
 ally of one extreme theory, the avowed enemy 
 of the other? Is this necessary? 
 
 Let us see ; we have already premised that 
 a science of sociology, starting with the two 
 
A Science of Fact 19 
 
 general propositions above stated and depend- 
 ing upon facts, must conform to the law of 
 equivalents and offer no inappropriate or in- 
 adequate or mysterious premises, means, or 
 methods to accomplish any of its ends ; that it 
 must be founded upon unanimity and not con- 
 troversy, upon facts and not hypotheses ; that 
 its principles must be such as are understood, 
 and capable of administration and application, 
 for otherwise they furnish no safe practical 
 guidance. But this indicates how sociology 
 may deal with this question which meets it in 
 li7nine, namely : restate it to find if it admits 
 of an answer in fact ; and if not, eliminate it 
 from, as not falling within, the province of 
 sociology as an applied science. 
 
 But, at this juncture, some definitions are in 
 order; for "reality," "fact," etc., are vague 
 words. What " reality," what sort of "fact," 
 are we talking about ? 
 
 Now, the suggestion to attempt an applied 
 science of sociology, beginning with the two 
 above propositions, does not extend to a philo- 
 sophy of sociology in the sense of an explana- 
 tion of final causes, or beliefs, or phenomena. 
 What is suggested is very much less than this, 
 however involved in some philosophy. 
 
20 Applied Sociology 
 
 The " fact " or " reality " which is suggested 
 as the basis of sociology is the ordinary, every- 
 day, common-sense " reality," the phenomena 
 of things and actions as they appear to us in 
 daily life under investigation, analysis, or use. 
 It is in the world of fact in which we reside 
 and with which we deal, and concerning phe- 
 nomena of that world, that this science is 
 proposed — a science of sensible phenomena, 
 not a philosophy of noumena or " things in 
 themselves." Our relations with this world 
 are through the senses, and the facts and real- 
 ity here intended are such as are sensible, such 
 as applied sciences, as distinguished from 
 theology or metaphysics, take for their several 
 provinces. 
 
 That sensible " facts " are final truths, that 
 the senses are final arbiters of ultimate " real- 
 ity," is a proposition finding in its way many 
 obstacles, some of which have been lately set 
 forth in Mr. Balfour's chapter on "The Philo- 
 sophic Basis of Naturalism," in Foundations 
 of Belief . If you concede that these and sim- 
 ilar difficulties are an insuperable barrier to 
 that philosophy which he terms " Naturalism," 
 this does not do away with sensible existence 
 as a phenomenon of the bulk of human life, or 
 
A Science of Fact 21 
 
 impeach the vakie of those applied sciences by 
 which it is studied and dealt with by human- 
 ity ; does not forbid a science of phenomena 
 which are "facts" and "realities" of the same 
 order and in the same sense that humanity it- 
 self is a fact or a reality to itself Whether 
 we are "all leaning against a pillar of shad- 
 ows " is no part of the discussion herein pro- 
 posed. The suggestion is to establish a science 
 of the sensible phases of social growth, a physi- 
 cal sociology, which shall take note of, state 
 the apparent laws of and indicate the public 
 and private action In which, as a whole, all 
 may concur, however ardent may be the dis- 
 putes over particular Incidents. Disputes, In- 
 deed, occur in other applied sciences, such as 
 chemistry and biology. It is not wonderful that 
 the outposts of a scattered advance line should 
 bring back different and sometimes divergent 
 information, to be sifted and utilized, however, 
 in the more accurate maps and surveys which 
 those behind them are soon able to verify. 
 Whatever the divergence In views. It is only a 
 question of time or place when disagreement 
 will be exchanged for unanimity as to all those 
 phenomena which are in their nature sensible 
 and not impossible although difficult of ap- 
 
2 2 Applied Sociology 
 
 proach or inspection, whether they be distant 
 worlds, evasive aurorae, secret processes of life 
 in plants, animals, and mankind, or the com- 
 plex relations of men in a community. 
 
 But this is not true of whatever is not sensi- 
 ble, — of the mysterious power behind laws of 
 gravitation, behind the secret of life, behind 
 the existence at all of phenomena sensible by 
 the human organism. Only the phantoms of 
 imagination rise when man would call up the 
 vast spirits who swing the world through its 
 orbit, or would question the dsemons of indi- 
 vidual lives. Such powers, spirits, daemons, 
 are insensible ; their truth, their reality, their 
 facts are of an altogether different order from 
 the facts, the reality, the truth that may be the 
 subject-matter of applied science. And so this 
 question arising in limine, as to whether man 
 is to be treated in sociology as partly spiritual, 
 must, as above suggested, be restated to find 
 whether it admits of an answer " in fact " as 
 that word has now been defined ; and if not, 
 then the question eliminates itself from soci- 
 ology as an applied science. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FIRST QUESTION RESTATED 
 
 THE question is not at all as to whether 
 man is partly a spiritual being, — that 
 broad question is not raised, nor its 
 affirmative, even by implication, doubted, nor 
 its negative affirmed ; although in Chapter 
 VII. the relation of the theory herein stated 
 to that question will be suggested. No more 
 than in sciences of biology, chemistry, and poli- 
 tics are we searching even for an explanation 
 of " things in themselves," to use a rather 
 unhappy but accredited phrase ; but we are 
 looking only for a plan of administration, for 
 a set of rules of practice, for a right and prac- 
 ticable method of treatment. If, as a result 
 of the question, animism shall appear to be 
 out of place in sociology as an applied sci- 
 ence, this will be but parallel to a similar 
 result in other applied sciences, as will be 
 noticed at more length hereafter. 
 
 The question, then, may be restated thus : 
 23 
 
24 Applied Sociology 
 
 What conclusions are possible from sensible 
 existence as to the individual being part spirit- 
 ual and part physical ? Has the individual 
 any appreciably immaterial self so universally, 
 identically, and sufficiently comprehended as 
 to be capable of being unanimously dealt with 
 by other individuals ? What is a human being 
 as a unit, an individual, so far as and not a 
 whit further than human knowledge at present 
 can understand and unanimously agree to deal 
 with him ? 
 
 Now discussion of this question is, shunning 
 controversy with Realist or Nominalist, dis- 
 cussion of the ideas entertained concerning 
 man and his nature. 
 
 So far as an idea has as its cause or proto- 
 type a sensible correlative thing, or action, or 
 relation of things and actions, or a valid con- 
 clusion of reason as in mathematics and logic, 
 it represents what may be dealt with as reality, 
 phenomenal or physical, i. e., subjected to 
 treatment by applied science. But so far as 
 an idea is purely what may be termed an im- 
 agination-idea, — that is, an idea without any 
 certain correlative-in-fact appreciable by the 
 senses or by reason, — it represents but an 
 hypothesis, assumption, figment. 
 
The First Question Restated 25 
 
 Now a mere hypothesis arising out of im- 
 agination-ideas has often been a spar, a plank, 
 upon the sea of the unknown, assisting to 
 reach substantial terra firnia in many sciences ; 
 hypothesis may or may not be finally demon- 
 strated to have correlatives-in-fact, be brought 
 within the domain of the senses and of reason, 
 and so be proven fit for actual use. Until 
 such demonstration, hypothesis should be only 
 tentatively a premise in a science of fact. 
 
 The facts of many sciences are gradually 
 recruited from what, when made first, are un- 
 demonstrable assumptions. For instance, the 
 existence of an eether is still an assumption 
 not yet fully demonstrated, but according with 
 sensible facts as to electricity or light. The 
 Ptolemaic theory and the hypothesis of phlo- 
 giston have been each abandoned, and the 
 sciences of chemistry and astronomy thereby 
 modified and, so far as dependent on these 
 premises, overthrown. So if, after having 
 built up a science of sociology by applying 
 logic to facts agreed upon, these facts should 
 be discredited or enlarged, the science would 
 be modified or destroyed accordingly. 
 
 All science may be regarded as a sort of 
 hand-to-mouth feeding of what has been called 
 
26 Applied Sociology 
 
 a " hunger for truth " seeking to widen the 
 boundaries and possibilities of human life. 
 Certainly, no one would offer contributions 
 toward any phase of social science except ten- 
 tatively. The late Brown-Sequard is said to 
 have retracted one of his own theories in 
 medicine, to which twenty years of acceptance 
 might seem to have given a prescriptive right, 
 except that in science there are no such things 
 as statutes of limitation. Indeed, the very 
 truth that the bounds of humanity are gradu- 
 ally widening shows that " points of view " 
 must change. For instance, having learned 
 much through Darwin's statement of natural 
 selection, we may still learn through Weis- 
 mann's criticism. Partisans of neither may be 
 content to know that both original cell and 
 environment are equally essential to that grad- 
 ual, progressing development which, on any 
 terms, they are glad to be assured of ; to know 
 that a cell including all species potentially 
 demands, as does a seed, its fitting nurture 
 to enable it to grow into variations or trans- 
 mit its growth. Leaving hypotheses of its 
 "how" and "why" to specialists, but receiv- 
 ing their main conclusion, evolution may be 
 availed of as an established premise, as a 
 
The First Question Restated 27 
 
 promise of social as well as personal progress, 
 the best method of which is a practical problem 
 for an applied science of sociology. 
 
 But, to return, all mere imagination-ideas, 
 all mere assumptions, are to be excluded in 
 answering the above question. If a point is 
 reached where fact as such is absent, there is 
 to be no bridging of the chasm by any ima- 
 ginary cable. Realization of hypothesis must 
 be had before attempting to cross on it, some 
 mere temporary fording-place higher up the 
 stream being safer. 
 
 That there is not, as is true, complete agree- 
 ment as to all facts asserted by the senses 
 or logic, is no excuse for piling the Ossa of 
 useless hypothesis upon the Pelion of disputed 
 facts and rolling " upon Ossa the leafy Olym- 
 pus " of logomachy. 
 
 Not only are positive imagination-ideas unre- 
 liable, but often negative imagination-ideas as 
 well. Thus, nothing is more common than to 
 deny the possibilities of what is named mat- 
 ter ; although the possibilities of that matter, 
 constituting the material universe and in- 
 cluding the purity of the diamond, the color of 
 the rainbow, the lightsomeness of hydrogen, 
 the instability of nitrogen, the sounds of music. 
 
28 Applied Sociology 
 
 the perfume of flowers, are, perhaps, beyond 
 even the reach of imagination. It is difficult 
 to find any idea of existence, of perfection, 
 of beauty, that will not fall short of what this 
 same matter occasionally exhibits to us. 
 Even the Scripture speaks of that which is 
 sown in corruption as being raised an incor- 
 ruptible body. Yet matter is commonly spoken 
 of as dead, inert. Who knows that ? What 
 sense perceives that ? What reason offers it 
 as a logical conclusion ? Evolution does not 
 find it so, in its long look back to the cells from 
 which life unfolds in endless transformations. 
 That what matter is is unknown is no logi- 
 cal premise for its inability. The inability 
 of matter is an imaginary assumption, an im- 
 aginary negative idea. 
 
 Now, to either eliminate or make answer to 
 this question, whether man has a comprehen- 
 sible spiritual nature directly accessible to human 
 treatment and with which social science founded 
 on fact can deal, evidently it is necessary to see 
 how far the ideas concerning such imma- 
 terial ego have correlatives- in-f act which are 
 comprehensible and sensible. And we natu- 
 rally turn to question the sciences of the day. 
 
 We have, following a common classification. 
 
The First Question Restated 29 
 
 a science of the stellar universe in astronomy ; 
 of the earth in geology ; of the composition of 
 bodies in chemistry ; of relations in mathema- 
 tics ; of life in biology, which, as the science 
 of living things, includes zoology, the science 
 of animals, anthropology, the natural history of 
 man, and anatomy and physiology as sciences 
 of structure ; and many other sciences of sub- 
 divisions, all of which are based upon physical 
 facts and human reason, and deal with things 
 perceived by or affecting the senses. From 
 any or all of them it may be admitted to be, at 
 present, impossible to either negative or affirm 
 the proposed question. From sciences of mind 
 and duty, as psychology and ethics, which are 
 hypothetical and deal chiefly with imagination- 
 ideas, no answer, can logically be expected. 
 
 In fact, then, no answer to the present 
 question has been given. But in the nature of 
 things as at present constituted, can an answer 
 be given ? Are any conclusions possible from 
 the sensible facts of sensible existence, not only 
 as to the individual being part physical and 
 part spiritual, but as to the nature of the 
 spiritual ? 
 
 Suppose we go back to the medium of human 
 intercourse and the vehicle of human thought. 
 
30 Applied Sociology 
 
 Philology has somewhat explored the origin 
 and nature of human speech, of language, 
 spoken and written. Suppose we ask it what 
 is the intrinsic value of words as signs ; what 
 words stand for ; why some words stand for 
 ideas having as correlatives-in-fact sensible 
 things, actions, and relations, and others merely 
 for imagination-ideas which are without such 
 correlatives. 
 
 If, as must ex necessitate 7'ei be true, language 
 can express all that we can know of everything 
 which concerns us, from birth to immortality 
 or annihilation, what are the present possibili- 
 ties and limits of language ? Is it, itself, out- 
 side of and far beyond humanity, so that some 
 of its possible formulas may contain and render 
 comprehensible superhuman truths, facts, theo- 
 ries ? Or is language itself but a purely hu- 
 man manufacture of signs for human only, 
 and so, frequently, for only partial and limited 
 activities, conceptions, accomplishments ? Does 
 it confer a superhuman power, or merely enable 
 a particular use of existing human powers ? Is 
 it, in short, parallel and coterminous with or 
 divergent from and infinitely more extended 
 than human capacity ? 
 
 There can be but one answer. Language, 
 
The First Question Restated 31 
 
 speech, words, cannot serve us beyond the 
 Hmits of human finity. Human signs can re- 
 present or stand for only what humanity can 
 signify or express. 
 
 What facts or reaHty, then, can and does 
 humanity signify and express by means of 
 spoken and written words, and especially by 
 the words which express ideas of the super- 
 sensible, of animism, of spirituality ? What 
 was the origin of such words ? Did they 
 originate in any correlatives-in-fact, sensible by 
 the human organism ? 
 
 These are precise questions, involving, not 
 whether there be any correlatives-in-fact behind 
 such ideas as are expressed in such words 
 (such possibility is discussed post. Chapter 
 VII.), but, what was the origin of such words? 
 Did they spring out of what was sensibly 
 demonstrated and tangible, or out of what 
 was mysterious and intangible ? And this can 
 be discovered only by tracing out the origin 
 and import of the words which express ideas 
 of spirituality, of animism, of the supersensible. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ANSWER INHERENT IN THE NATURE OF 
 LANGUAGE 
 
 (a) What Words Are 
 
 LANGUAGE springing out of human life, 
 we study human Hfe in studying this 
 audible expression of it, while in search 
 of a different method of treating a certain class 
 of questions hitherto the prey of imagination, 
 the sport of hypotheses, the victim of assump- 
 tions not infrequently conceived in prejudice 
 and enforced in partisanship. 
 
 Explanation of some of the Valhalla conflicts 
 and unsatisfactory results of all controversy 
 and discussion resides in the absence of a 
 common understanding of the signification of 
 words. Each man's individuality makes his 
 vocabulary individual and colors his greater or 
 less facility in using an imperfect instrument, 
 and this is a serious handicap in reaching after 
 truth by discussion. This is observed upon by 
 
 32 
 
The Answer 33 
 
 Lewes, Physical Basis of Mind, p. 363 ; Whit- 
 ney, Language, etc., p. 20 seq. But what we 
 are here concerned with is a far more serious 
 matter, namely, the imperfection of words for 
 use in appHed science arising from their ex- 
 pressing not only facts and ideas of facts, but 
 also ideas destitute of sensible correlatives-in- 
 fact. Unless a fact is truthfully expressed by 
 a word, discussion by means of the word is 
 discussion of no known reality, but of a mere 
 ejaculation ; not fact, but assumption ; not hu- 
 manity and its environment, but only variously 
 significant sounds mistaken for definitions. 
 
 How is it possible to arrive at sensible or 
 concrete truth if truth-processes are applied to 
 non-existing or misconceived subjects, or are 
 unprovided with a sufficient vehicle for the 
 conveyance of truth ? Like other streams, 
 that of language must run clear before it is 
 serviceable in applied science. 
 
 For instance, in some kinds of discussion — 
 perhaps metaphysic, as such — the assumption 
 or hypothesis of distinct constituent mental 
 faculties may be allowable. But so surely as 
 that hypothesis is taken as a statement of fact 
 for practical use, so surely is the tossing about 
 of its terms of phraseology — Will, Emotion, 
 
34 Applied Sociology 
 
 Judgment, Understanding, et id omne genus — 
 chiefly a mere playing at mimes with words, 
 somewhat as do other jugglers, who will con- 
 vert what you suppose to be an ^g^ into a 
 walking-stick, as you suppose, before your 
 eyes. Words which convey either false or 
 hypothetical meanings are capable subjects of 
 like jugglery. To avoid the result of the use 
 of such words in dealing with the sensible rela- 
 tions between the human organism and the ex- 
 ternal world, requires careful attention. 
 
 Of course, the task of defining some words 
 by other words suggests " lifting oneself by 
 one's own waistband." However, many words 
 have a clear, definite meaning, which makes 
 their use possible in discussing the possible sig- 
 nifications of more recondite words, whose use 
 in applied science is futile in proportion as the 
 signification is vague. Consequently, some- 
 what more than obtaining a common meaning 
 is here essential ; namely, to find the inherent 
 limitations which the nature of the human or- 
 ganism imposes upon its speech as in itself a 
 phenomenon. And to do this, some well-known 
 facts need to be briefly recalled to remind us 
 that language is the vocally expressional mani- 
 festation of social human activity. 
 
The Answer 35 
 
 Physically, a word is a sound. The vocal 
 organs produce vibrations in the particles of 
 air, which are transmitted to the ear. The 
 motion or vibration is transferred from air part- 
 icle to air particle until it reaches the ear, by 
 virtue of the elasticity of the air in which 
 waves known as sound-waves are generated. 
 Thus vibrations of the air being impressed 
 upon the ear produce the sensation of sound. 
 The differences in sounds, by which they are 
 distinguishable, are recognized by the organs 
 of hearing because of peculiar characteristics of 
 each sound, which progress from the source 
 of sound until they become too enfeebled to 
 produce any effect. The air particles do not 
 travel but simply vibrate, and the different dis- 
 tinguishing features of sound arise from differ- 
 ences in the vibrations of the air particles. 
 Thus differences in pitch are due to differences 
 in the rate of vibration, so that the greater the 
 number of vibrations in a given time, the 
 higher is the pitch of the resulting sound. 
 For instance, the ordinary pitch of a man's 
 voice in speaking arises from about 128 vibra- 
 tions per second ; the ordinary pitch of a wo- 
 man's voice, from about 256 vibrations. The 
 extent of the path traversed by the air particle 
 
36 Applied Sociology 
 
 in its to-and-fro motion gives rise to differences 
 in loudness of a sound ; that is, the greater the 
 amplitude of vibration, the louder is the result- 
 ing sound. Vibrations whose amplitude does 
 
 not exceed y,o-ro,o-oo" °^ ^'^ ^""-^^ ^^^ audible. 
 The peculiarity which characterizes the instru- 
 ment producing the sound, usually called " qual- 
 ity " or " timbre," is due not to the rate or to 
 the amplitude of vibration, but to what is called 
 its form ; that is, the particular manner in 
 which the air particle varies its velocity from 
 instant to instant. Some sounds, particularly 
 articulate speech, depend upon all these three 
 characteristics, viz., quality, loudness, and pitch. 
 It thus appears how, through the medium of 
 the air, the vibrations of some resonant body, 
 as for instance the organs of speech, impress 
 themselves upon a listening ear ; and if one 
 would follow the further physical operations, 
 he may trace further the mechanism of the ear 
 and the movements or changes which are by 
 or through it communicated to the brain or 
 entire nervous organization, and so perceive 
 how, from the simplest ejaculation up to the 
 most complex sentence, the purpose and re- 
 sult of a word is to express something by 
 the utterer. 
 
The Answer 37 
 
 Now, the use here proposed of the facts of 
 philology is one which perhaps philologists 
 themselves would not consider within their 
 own province. The details of the natural his- 
 tory or growth of language from its ejacula- 
 tory or onomatopoetic origin up to the prose 
 or poetry of the great masters of expression 
 do not need attention in this connection so 
 much as the general truth that such was its 
 origin and that it increased as brain power 
 increased, the quantity, and character in modu- 
 lation and articulative differentiation of the 
 words progressing from mere noise to quality 
 or timbre, in the instinctive effort to give ap- 
 propriate expression to varying impressions 
 upon the utterer ; until language became the 
 vehicle, the audible vocal means of communi- 
 cation of ideas, thoughts, feelings, and sensa- 
 tions, between individuals. 
 
 Now, of what was language in its beginning, 
 and of what is it to-day, the expression ? 
 
 A sufficient answer to this subordinate ques- 
 tion, for the purpose of the theory herein at- 
 tempted only in outline, may be had from some 
 quotations. Thus it is said by Professor 
 Whitney, in Language and the Study of 
 Language : 
 
38 Applied Sociology 
 
 " Speech, we know, is composed of external, audible 
 signs for internal acts, for conceptions, — for ideas, taking 
 that word in its most general sense." " We have seen 
 that the final perfection of the noblest language has been 
 the result of a slow and gradual development, under the 
 impulse of tendencies and through the instrumentalities 
 of processes which are even yet active in every living 
 tongue ; that all this wealth has grown by long accumu- 
 lation out of original poverty ; and that the actual germs 
 of language were the scanty list of formless roots repre- 
 senting a few of the most obvious sensible acts and phe- 
 nomena appearing in ourselves, our fellow-creatures, and 
 the nature by which we are surrounded." — Pp. 398, 403. 
 
 And so Max Miiller, in Lectures on the Sci- 
 ence of Langiiage, says : 
 
 " After we had explained everything in the growth of 
 language that can be explained, there remained at the 
 end, as the only inexplicable residuum, what we called 
 roots. These roots formed the constituent elements of 
 all languages." " What, then are these roots ? In our 
 modern languages roots can only be discovered by sci- 
 entific analysis, and, even as far back as Sanskrit, we 
 may say that no root was ever used as a noun or verb. 
 But originally roots were thus used, and in Chinese we 
 have fortunately preserved to us a representation of that 
 primitive radical stage which, like the granite, underlies 
 all other strata of human speech." " Roots, therefore, 
 are not, as is commonly maintained, merely scientific 
 abstractions, but they were used originally as real words." 
 —Pp. 356-8. 
 
The Answer 39 
 
 Romanes, in Mental Evolution in Man, as- 
 serts : 
 
 " As we thus trace language backwards, its structure 
 is found to undergo the following simplification. First 
 of all, auxiliary words, suffixes, affixes, prepositions, 
 copulas, particles, and, in short, all inflections, agglutina- 
 tions, or other parts of speech which are concerned in the 
 indication of relationship between the other component 
 parts of a sentence, progressively dwindle and disappear. 
 When these, which I will call relational words, are shed, 
 language is left with what may be termed object-words 
 (including pronominal words), attributive-words, action- 
 words, and words expressive of states of mind or body, 
 which, therefore, may be designated condition-words 
 Roughly speaking, this classification corresponds with the 
 grammatical nouns, pronouns, adjectives, active verbs, 
 and passive verbs ; but as our regress through the history 
 of language necessitates a total disregard of all gram- 
 matical forms, it will conduce to clearness in my exposi- 
 tion if we consent to use the terms suggested. 
 
 " The next thing we notice is that the distinction be- 
 tween object-words and attributive-words begins to grow 
 indistinct, and eventually all but disappears : substan- 
 tives and adjectives are fused in one, and whether the 
 resulting word is to be understood as subject or predicate 
 — as the name of the object or the name of a quality — 
 depends upon its position in the sentence, upon the tone 
 in which it is uttered, or, in still earlier stages, upon the 
 gestures by which it is accompanied. Thus, as Professor 
 Sayce remarks, ' the apposition of two substantives (and, 
 a fortiori, of two such partly or wholly undifferentiated 
 
40 Applied Sociology 
 
 words as we are now contemplating) is the germ out of 
 which no less than three grammatical conceptions have 
 developed, — those of the genitive, of the predicate, and 
 of the adjective.' 
 
 " While this process of fusion is being traced in the 
 case of substantives and adjectives, it becomes at the 
 same time observable that the definition of verbs is grad- 
 ually growing more and more vague, until it is difficult, 
 and eventually impossible, to distinguish a verb at all as 
 a separate part of speech. 
 
 " Thus we are led back by continuous stages, or 
 through greater and greater simplifications of language- 
 structure, to a state of things where words present what 
 naturalists might term so generalized a type as to include, 
 each within itself, all the functions that afterwards sever- 
 ally devolve upon different parts of speech. Like those 
 animalcules which are at the same time but single cells 
 and entire organisms, these are at the same time single 
 words and independent sentences. Moreover, as in the 
 one case there is life, in the other case there is meaning ; 
 but the meaning, like the life, is vague and unevolved : 
 the sentence is an organism without organs, and is gen- 
 eralized only in the sense that it is protoplasmic. In 
 view of these facts (which, be it observed, are furnished 
 by languages still existing, as well as by the philo- 
 logical record of languages long since extinct) it is im- 
 possible to withhold assent from the now universal 
 doctrine of philologists, — 'language dimishes the farther 
 we look back in such a way that we cannot forbear con- 
 cluding it must once have had no existence at all.' 
 
 " Taking its origin from the ground of gesture-signs, 
 
The Answer 41 
 
 when it first begins to sprout into articulate utterance, 
 there is absolutely no distinction to be observed between 
 ' parts of speech.' 
 
 " With the dawn of self-consciousness, however, pre- 
 dication begins to become truly conceptual ; and thus 
 enters upon its prolonged course of still gradual develop- 
 ment in the region of introspective thought. 
 
 " Whether we look to the psychogenesis of the indi- 
 vidual or to that of the race, we alike find a demonstrable 
 continuity of evolution from the lowest to the highest 
 level of the sign-making faculty. 
 
 " All the stages of ideation which we have seen to be 
 characteristic of psychogenesis in a child are thus re- 
 vealed to us as having been characteristic of psycho- 
 genesis in mankind."— pp. 312, 314, 322-5, 354. 
 
 Using these quotations to indicate the origin 
 of language, and remarking that whether the 
 "bow-wow" or onomatopoetic, the "pooh- 
 pooh " or interjectional, or the " ding-dong " 
 or instinctive theory, be the better estabHshed 
 is immaterial and irrelevant for present pur- 
 poses,* let us next, as Mr. Romanes suggests, 
 p. 269, " consider the kind of meanings which 
 
 * It may be that the "ding-dong" theory, so far as it asserts a 
 condition of impression and response between man and his environ- 
 ment, has not been sufficiently studied, or its inherent truth separated 
 from its apparent error. See post p. 
 
42 Applied Sociology 
 
 roots convey." He then refers to the 1 2 1 roots 
 into which Max Muller analyzes the Sanskrit 
 language, agrees with Muller that the list might 
 be greatly shortened, and notices that many 
 of these express ideas far beyond the capacity 
 of primitive man and " do not bring us within 
 any measurable distance of the first beginnings 
 of articulate speech" (p. 273). 
 
 Mr. Romanes observes, p. 274, that this list 
 is composed exclusively of verbs, and, in a 
 note, p. 275, and again, p. 275, seq., he shows 
 that the evidence preponderates in favor of 
 nouns and pronouns as earlier than verbs 
 which seem to require "a greater effort of 
 abstraction," although probably roots at first 
 stood for what we term the parts of speech. 
 
 But, moreover, he observes, p. 273, how 
 these roots 
 
 " serve to show in a most striking manner that the ideas 
 represented, although all of a general character, are 
 nevertheless of the lowest degree of generality. Scarcely 
 any of them present us with evidence of reflective 
 thought as distinguished from the naming of objects of 
 sense-perception, or of the simplest forms of activity 
 which are immediately cognizable as such." 
 
 As Professor Sayce remarks, as quoted by 
 Mr. Romanes, p. 352, "we may be sure that 
 
The Answer 43 
 
 it was not the ' ideas of prime importance ' 
 which primitive man struggled to represent, 
 but those individual objects of which his senses 
 were cognizant." 
 
 Now, the point which interests us here is 
 this, — that even the historical roots of the Sans- 
 krit do not, and their far more distant ances- 
 tors of course did not, indicate or express any 
 ideas other than such as had sensible correla- 
 tives-in-fact. Language originally expressed 
 no animistic ideas. 
 
 Whether Mr. Romanes is right in his further 
 views, ch. xvi., as to the transition from brute 
 to man and from inarticulate expression to 
 articulate, is immaterial to the discussion in 
 hand, in which we wish to know of what was 
 language in its beginning, and of what is it 
 to-day, the expression. 
 
 And it appears that linguistic science has 
 established that, in its beginning, it was the 
 vocal expression only of ideas having corre- 
 latives-in-fact, of impressions made upon the 
 utterer by his environment of physical things 
 and forces, and but little different from, even 
 if it did not imperceptibly develop from, the 
 vocal expression made by brutes. Now of 
 what is language to-day the expression ? — 
 
44 Applied Sociology 
 
 Evidently, of all that it originally expressed, 
 with an enormous increase in the quantity and 
 character of the expression made possible by 
 the progressing evolution of higher types of 
 human individuals capable of coming into 
 wider contact with nature and with them- 
 selves. 
 
 But it is now also expressive of what is 
 termed abstract thought, of ideas not depend- 
 ing upon physical counterparts, and of all that 
 comes from what we term imagination, when 
 exercising the power of forming mental images 
 destitute of and not depending upon physical 
 realities. 
 
 Miiller says, speaking of Locke's observa- 
 tions upon language two hundred years ago : 
 
 " Thus the fact that all words expressive of immaterial 
 conceptions are derived by metaphor from words ex- 
 pressive of sensible ideas was for the first time clearly 
 and definitely put forward by Locke, and is now fully 
 confirmed by the researches of comparative philologists. 
 All roots, i. e., all the immaterial elements of language, 
 are expressive of sensuous impressions, and of sensuous 
 impressions only ; and as all words, even the most abstract 
 and sublime, are derived from roots, comparative philo- 
 logy fully indorses the conclusions arrived at by Locke. 
 This is what Locke says (iii. 4, 3) ; 
 
 " ' It may also lead us a little toward the original of 
 all our notions and knowledge, if we remark, how great 
 
The Answer 45 
 
 a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas ; 
 and how those, which are made use of to stand for ac- 
 tions and notions quite removed from sense, have their 
 rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are 
 transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to 
 stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of 
 our senses : e.g., to imagine.^ apprehend, comprehend, adhere, 
 conceive, instil, disgust, disturbance, tranquillity, &c., are 
 all words taken from the operations of sensible things, 
 and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its 
 primary signification is breath ; ajigel, a messenger ; and 
 I doubt not, but if ive could trace them to their sources, 
 we should find, in all languages, the names which stand for 
 things that fall not under our senses to have had their first 
 rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some 
 kind of guess, what kind of notions they were and whence 
 derived, which filled their minds, who were the first 
 beginners of languages ; and how nature, even in the 
 naming of things, unawares suggested to men the orig- 
 inals and principles of all their knowledge ; whilst, to 
 give names, that might make known to others any opera- 
 tions they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that 
 come not under their senses, they were fain to borrow 
 words from ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that 
 means to make others the more easily to conceive those 
 operations they experimented in themselves, which made 
 no outward sensible appearances ; and then, when they 
 had got known and agreed names, to signify these in- 
 ternal operations of their own minds, they were suffi- 
 ciently furnished to make known by words all their other 
 ideas, since they could consist of nothing but either of 
 outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward opera- 
 
46 Applied Sociology 
 
 tions of their minds about them ; we having, as has been 
 proved, no ideas at all, but what originally came either 
 from sensible objects without, or what we feel within 
 ourselves from the inward workings of our own spirits, 
 of which we are conscious to ourselves within.' " — Vol. 
 ii-, P- 355- 
 
 And Miiller further observes : 
 
 " We may use the names of material objects to express 
 immaterial objects, if they can be rationally conceived. 
 We can conceive, for instance, powers not within the 
 ken of our senses, yet endowed with a material reality. 
 We can call them spirits, literally breezes, though we 
 understand perfectly well that by spirits we mean some- 
 thing else than mere breezes. We can call them ghosts, 
 a name connected viith. gust, yeast, gas, and other almost 
 imperceptible vapors." — P. 363. 
 
 Of course, many more, and perhaps more 
 apposite, quotations might be made from 
 writers who have traced out the development 
 of language from its merely sensuous to its 
 metaphorical significations ; but this volume, 
 intended to be chiefly suggestive rather that 
 either controversial or exhaustive, has no space 
 for further quotation. Enough has perhaps 
 been offered to bring out what we are here 
 concerned with, namely, the true character 
 of language and the fact that its words can 
 
The Answer 47 
 
 e'x.acily and truthfully express only ideas hav- 
 ing rational or sensible correlatives-in-fact. 
 
 And in order to sum up its origin, progress, 
 and inherent limitations, which show the utter 
 impossibility, in the present stage of humanity, 
 that words should express facts or ideas of fact 
 concerning anything but what is sensibly within 
 the reach of humanity as at present constituted, 
 the evolution of this condition and character 
 of language may be, for present purposes, con- 
 sidered somewhat as follows, upon authority, 
 as a deduction of reason and as a conclusion 
 from historical data ; it being, of course, under- 
 stood that the period covered is representable 
 by aeons, and that no perspective is intended 
 but only the baldest of conclusions. 
 
 In the slow progress of man's evolution, after 
 physical states of hunger, cold, fright, desire, 
 etc., and familiar acts and objects had found 
 vocal expression or representation, more com- 
 plex physical states, produced by action and 
 reaction within the utterer himself, struggled 
 for expression. Powers, causes, origins, in- 
 visible and insensible, not apparent as physical 
 facts, impressed the utterer ; resultant modes 
 of nervous action gave birth to expression 
 responsive to such action. 
 
48 Applied Sociology 
 
 In addition, therefore, to words indicating 
 visible things, visible actions and conditions, 
 came words which sought to express physical 
 conditions of the utterer, whose causes might be 
 wholly uncomprehended or falsely compre- 
 hended, representing reactions in the physical 
 organism of the utterer otherwise intangible 
 or invisible. Long use of words thus origin- 
 ally evoked followed, until they not only ex- 
 pressed a physical fact or state but also an 
 imagined noumenon. That is, in language, as 
 expressing a state of the physique, there has 
 come to be tacitly postulated not only its state 
 but the imagined cause or source of it as a 
 distinct part or faculty or entity. That the 
 utterer is impressed is thus postulated as a 
 sensation ; his internal response to it, as feeling 
 and consciousness ; his external, audible re- 
 sponse, as language ; and, finally, it is a common 
 expression that this activity originates in some 
 immaterial spiritual faculty or essence other 
 than the mere physique. A word may be very 
 far from a true definition. As Mephistopheles 
 told Faust's student, a word may serve one in 
 the absence of knowledge or facts. Thus such 
 words contain, by accretion of erroneous mean- 
 ings, half-truths and positive untruths, and 
 
The Answer 49 
 
 when thus impregnated with error they should 
 be corrected for scientific use to represent 
 whatever is sensibly known, particularly in case 
 of uncomprehended phenomena whose real na- 
 ture cannot safely be assumed. Only thus can 
 language keep pace with human discovery and 
 progress. 
 
 Current definitions define in a circle. Thus, 
 language is defined as " human speech," 
 "sounds expressive of thought," "the expres- 
 sion of ideas," and speech is said to be "the 
 language of articulate sounds" ; thought, " the 
 act of thinking," etc., and thinking, " the use 
 of thought." 
 
 But back of such definition lies the fact that 
 conceptions, thoughts, ideas, are always accom- 
 panied by internal physical processes, and that 
 language and words are articulate sounds ex- 
 pressing these processes. 
 
 We may now answer the question proposed 
 a few pages back : Of what is language the 
 expression ? Having explored a little the 
 head waters of the stream of language to 
 find its origin and its essence, and possibly 
 seen some reason for its present turbidness in 
 the vague beginnings of human expression 
 where language commenced, we reach a gen- 
 
50 Applied Sociology 
 
 eralization, which may be expressed in this 
 proposition : 
 
 The words out of which are built the great 
 systems and beliefs and axioms of humanity 
 are not always definitions and frequently not 
 expressions of sensible reality, but are merely 
 physical expressions of physical states, articu- 
 late 7'esponses to impressions generated in our- 
 selves and by our environment ; this articulation 
 of impressions or suppositions being, in the 
 last analysis, the audible reactions between man 
 and his environment. 
 
 From the history of language, " the rooted 
 assumption, governing opinion even when not 
 openly upheld or consciously made, that con- 
 ceptions have real natural names, and that in 
 a state of nature these will somehow break 
 forth and reveal themselves under favoring 
 circumstances," appears to be wholly false. — 
 Professor Whitney, in Enc. Brit. " Philology," 
 p. 766. 
 
 And it further appears from the same source, 
 that except so far as ejaculation or vocal sound 
 is made in mediate or immediate response to a 
 known or definite existence ; except so far as it 
 expresses an idea having a known correlative-in- 
 fact, — it is wholly devoid of any exact meaning ; 
 
The Answer 51 
 
 and if it were used again would still be without 
 such meaning. So far, therefore, as articulate 
 sounds grew into names of realities or actual- 
 ities, or of ideas thereof, discussion by means 
 of such names may be considered discussion 
 of sensible things or ideas of sensible things ; 
 and if by any logical process further facts as 
 to such things can be reached, the names of 
 such conclusions or ideas are names of actu- 
 alities, or ideas of actualities. The history 
 of language shows, however, an automatic 
 tendency of the human organism to make 
 explanations or assign origins for what did 
 not make disclosure of its source ; and where 
 explanation was not plainly found in experi- 
 ence and so there were no facts to go by, im- 
 agination came in to provide an origin and 
 cause. Thus, language has come to contain 
 words which stand for sensible things, rela- 
 tions, or actions ; for sensible facts reached 
 by the senses or reason concerning such 
 things, actions, or relations ; and for corre- 
 sponding ideas : and words which stand for 
 no sensible reality, but only for suppositions, 
 suggestions, or ideas, destitute of sensible cor- 
 relatives-in-fact. In the development of lan- 
 guage many words become hermaphrodite, so 
 
52 Applied Sociology 
 
 to speak, or capable of use to express either 
 ideas having correlatives-in-fact or imagination- 
 ideas. And from this double use it happens 
 that the language of to-day is permeated with 
 uncertainty, assumption, and error. It seems 
 to clearly follow that, to exclude erroneous or 
 unprovable conclusions, it is proper to elimi- 
 nate from such words so much of that which 
 in common acceptation they have come to im- 
 port as does not actually represent such facts 
 or ideas as alone can serve as premises for 
 any science founded upon fact and not upon 
 hypothesis. 
 
 These observations apply to that class of 
 words which imply or assert various phases of 
 animism. 
 
 Students of sociology, dealing speculatively, 
 as hitherto has been the universal fashion, 
 with human organism as being not only a 
 physical body but also a spiritual ego, have 
 not only dealt with physical facts but with 
 assumed spiritual facts ; and so have drawn 
 conclusions not only of physical fact but also 
 of spiritual fact. Thus, in treatment and con- 
 clusion, sociology has not been either a purely 
 physical science of fact nor yet a purely 
 speculative or metaphysical science. What- 
 
The Answer 53 
 
 ever of certainty has been established in the 
 domains of the physical has been neutral- 
 ized by the interwoven spiritualistic theories, 
 as to which certainty or unanimity is to-day 
 impossible ; and this suggests that the failure 
 of sociology to keep pace with the develop- 
 ment of the physical sciences may be traced to 
 the fact that it has attempted to be a universal 
 science, not only of the physical but of the 
 spiritual as well — an attempt involuntary but 
 not surprising in view of the tool with which 
 sociology has worked, — language, — which has 
 itself brought into sociology not only asser- 
 tions of fact but also many pure assumptions. 
 Other physical sciences in their inception 
 suffered from the same source ; but as these 
 in their natural development gradually became 
 sciences exclusively of fact, — hypothesis being 
 used but tentatively, — they soon escaped from 
 many of the uncertainties with which they 
 started. They unwittingly propounded much 
 the same question which we see now lying at 
 the threshold of sociology, and silently elimi- 
 nated that question. Chemistry, astronomy, 
 and kindred sciences were tacitly conceded to 
 be not spiritual or animistic sciences but sci- 
 ences within physical and understood limits ; 
 
54 Applied Sociology 
 
 because whether acids or stones or stars were 
 dependent upon some spiritual essence was not 
 a question which the science of their physical 
 condition, action, and general laws required to 
 be answered. 
 
 Does not sociology yet await a similar treat- 
 ment, a recasting of the meaning of words, a 
 winnowing process to throw away assumption 
 and garner fact ? 
 
 And now to illustrate how this may be 
 brought about, let us take a word which im- 
 ports not only ideas which have correlatives-in- 
 fact, but, perhaps more broadly than any other, 
 also imports imagination-ideas which are unnec- 
 essarily made the premises for conclusions 
 which must be equally imaginative ; which 
 premises and conclusions are quite aside from 
 sensible facts. 
 
 This word is "consciousness," representing, 
 as used in its primary, fundamental meaning, 
 how we are brought into knowledge or appre- 
 hension of our own existence and of the exis- 
 tence of an environment ; a meaning which 
 does not, for instance, include any judgment 
 such as is included in the meaning of the word 
 " conscience," which implies not conscious- 
 ness abstractly but consciousness of some 
 
The Answer 55 
 
 special, limited subject-matter and the passing 
 of judgment upon its qualities of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 What we here wish to get at is, not what 
 consciousness may take note of but whatever 
 it takes note of — what it is in itself. How 
 far can the ideas the word expresses be shown 
 to have correlatives-in-fact capable of appre- 
 hension and statement ? Must we dismiss it 
 as standing for only mystery ? Must we refer 
 it to some wholly supersensible cause ? Or 
 can we, on the contrary, put our finger upon 
 its physical if not its final character, and learn 
 what constitutes that which we call " conscious- 
 ness," so far as that is sensible and not 
 supersensible ? 
 
 Perhaps a preliminary glance at some of the 
 ordinary definitions of this word may be 
 useful. 
 
 (b) "■Consciousness" and Kindred Words 
 
 The Latin consciencia, or conscio, "to be 
 privy with," or " to know with," includes no 
 definition of the subject which" knows." 
 
 The derivative word " conscience " has come 
 to imply some idea of right and wrong as a 
 
56 Applied Sociology- 
 
 moral standard, as asserted by Whewell quoted 
 in Webster's Dictionary. 
 
 The Greek, Sanskrit, or Hebrew is said to 
 have no word which impHes more than the 
 nous of Aristotle. 
 
 But the imagination-idea of a supersensible 
 ego, from whatever dim and remote origin 
 derived, when elaborated to include a moral 
 and responsible alter ego or " man within," 
 directing and controlling the physical man, is 
 expressed in the derivatives of the Greek and 
 Latin words. The scholastic philosophy seems 
 partly chargeable with the present conceptions 
 of what is called "consciousness," as arising 
 not at all in the body but in this supersensible 
 ego. 
 
 Among modern lexicographers and meta- 
 physicians, the word "consciousness" seems 
 to import or assume not merely the physique 
 and the supersensible ego but also a condition 
 of this duplex entity in which an external or 
 internal stimulus makes the physical part or 
 organism respond to and reflect impressions 
 made upon it. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton, exponent of a spirit- 
 ual philosophy ; religious teachers in behalf 
 of natural or revealed religion ; Comte, Kant, 
 
The Answer 57 
 
 Schopenhauer, in behalf of more or less nega- 
 tive systems of metaphysic ; Darwin and 
 Romanes in applying evolution to solve ques- 
 tions as to the development of intelligence and 
 its variations of phase and degree, — might all 
 agree to its having the latter import. 
 
 Hamilton said, " Consciousness cannot be 
 defined," because "the notion of consciousness 
 is so elementary that it cannot be resolved into 
 others" (Bowen's Ed., 125-6). Explanations — 
 by those not satisfied to think with him that, 
 although we " may be fully aware ourselves 
 what consciousness is," definition is entirely 
 inexpressible — have been variously phrased ; 
 for instance : 
 
 "To say that I am conscious of a feeling is 
 merely to say that I feel it. To have a feeling 
 is to be conscious, and to be conscious is to 
 have a feeling. To be conscious of the prick 
 of a pin is merely to have the sensation." — 
 James Mill, Htcman Mind. 
 
 But this only puts off, one step, the real 
 question ; for what is it " to have a sensation " ? 
 
 Others have relied wholly on the supersen- 
 sible. 
 
 " The mom.ent the first train of conscious 
 intelligence is introduced, we have a set of 
 
58 Applied Sociology 
 
 phenomena which materialism can in no wise 
 account for." — J. Fiske, Evolutionist, p. 282. 
 
 The Century Dictionary gives the following, 
 among other definitions : 
 
 Cofiscious : (i) "In the act of feeling, or en- 
 dowed with feeling." (2) " Aware of one's 
 self " ; " capable of attributing one's sensa- 
 tions," etc. (5) " Aware of an object, (a) of 
 an internal object, feeling," etc. 
 
 Consciotisness: ( i ) " State of being conscious ; 
 of being aware of one's mental acts or states." 
 
 Hamilton named self-consciousness "the 
 state of being aware of one's self." " The 
 power by which we apprehend the phenomena 
 of the internal." 
 
 But, not to multiply illustrations, " conscious- 
 ness" and "self-consciousness" are now words 
 which are universally conceded to imply an 
 object and a subject, and to signify the subject 
 as in the act of being aware either of itself as 
 an object, or of another object, and of attitudes 
 and complexities and combinations of such 
 objects. 
 
 The "being aware," or " apprehending," is 
 by the theologian and the non-materialistic 
 metaphysician thought of as a distinct act per- 
 formed by or distinct state of activity of a 
 
The Answer 59 
 
 subjective, active, immaterial intelligence, dis- 
 tinct from the body. Thus, in their view, 
 consciousness is an act or state of an immate- 
 rial ego. 
 
 Historically, the word " consciousness," and 
 its synonyms in other languages, seem in their 
 first use to have expressed only the knowledge, 
 not the nature, of that which knows ; next, the 
 same meaning as "feeling" ; then a definition 
 of the utterer, as endowed with a supersensi- 
 ble ego, distinct from the physical body. And 
 it is at this point that metaphysics, or, as 
 Lewes phrases it, metemperics, properly be- 
 gins. Whether the faculty called " atten- 
 tion " is spiritual or not has been called " the 
 pivotal question of metaphysics " by Mr. James, 
 in his Psychology, (p. 448). 
 
 Naturally it follows that if an uncompre- 
 hensible mind or ego be predicated, its act 
 as constituting consciousness may be called 
 indefinable, and Mr. Sully may well say 
 {E71C. Brit., vol. viii., p. 770), "All the laws 
 of physical evolution can never help us to 
 understand the first genesis of mind," — mean- 
 ing by "mind" this immaterial ego. An 
 unknown, viewless, imperceptible act, by an un- 
 known, viewless, imperceptible actor, may be 
 
6o Applied Sociology 
 
 well considered as beyond accurate compre- 
 hension, and so of exact definition. We can 
 deal with it in its religious signification or by 
 what is termed " faith." Yet the middle 
 ground of mental philosophy or metaphysics, 
 where neither religion nor science greatly pros- 
 pers, has often been explored not only by meta- 
 physicians but by physicists and publicists, in 
 the light of what is supposed to be contained 
 in the word and similar words ; and not infre- 
 quently with the same fortune attending the 
 use of all " dark lanterns." The words " mind," 
 " consciousness," and " self-consciousness " 
 have been taken to contain axiomatic spiritual 
 truths which have been made premises for use 
 in sociology and jurisprudence, as well as in 
 theology and metaphysics. 
 
 Now, if the first two are to be sciences of 
 things wholly physical, these premises are out 
 of place. In the two latter sciences, they are 
 in place ; but even systems of metaphysics, rest- 
 ing upon such assumed verbal premises treated 
 as axiomatic definitions of some noumena which 
 the words "mind" and "self-consciousness" 
 strive to express (viz., that the one premise 
 " mind " is " an active intelligence aware of 
 itself," and the other premise, "self-conscious- 
 
The Answer 6i 
 
 ness," is " an act or state " of the first), evi- 
 dently depend for their uniformity (when 
 correct in all else, as ratiocination, logic, etc.) 
 upon the commonness of understanding of 
 these words as premises ; and so, of course, 
 differ as these premises are modified by what 
 different writers include in the word " mind " 
 and impute to its " self-consciousness," since 
 hardly two metaphysicians can be found, each 
 of whom intends exactly the same as and no 
 more than his fellow by " mind " and " self- 
 consciousness." 
 
 Such, baldly, being the prevalent, vague 
 ideas signified by " consciousness," what cor- 
 relatives-in-fact of these ideas, so far as hu- 
 man vision goes, can be found in the sensible 
 facts of sensible existence ? What are the 
 physics of consciousness ? 
 
 (c) The Physics of " Consciousness" 
 
 There are three factors involved, namely, 
 things and actions ; ideas of things and actions ; 
 and signs (language) for things, actions, and 
 ideas of things and actions. The capacity 
 named " imagination " produces ideas also of 
 fictitious things and actions, which either do 
 not exist at all, or not as imagined, or are 
 
62 Applied Sociology 
 
 without proof. A science of sensible fact can- 
 not, of course, deal with such fictitious things 
 and actions, or with ideas of them, but only 
 with actual things and actions, and with ideas 
 which have correlatives-in-fact. 
 
 For instance, the correlatives-in-fact of ideas 
 expressed by the words " the senses," " the 
 five senses," are not hypothetical. The groups 
 of cells capable of automatic activity and of 
 being affected by and responding to excitations 
 enabling the action and reaction between the 
 human organism and the ocular, aural, and 
 tactual phases of nature are sensible actuali- 
 ties. 
 
 Now let us glance at a familiar set of 
 phenomena. 
 
 The physical organism which becomes sensi- 
 ble of a. thing — for example, an orange — in- 
 cludes an eye, a nervous system and brain, and 
 the whole individual as a complex unit existing 
 within the air for breath and as a medium of 
 sound (Helmholz, Enc. Brit., "Acoustics"), 
 and within what is termed the aether as a me- 
 dium of light (Huggens, Enc. Brit., " Light "). 
 
 Light falls upon the orange, is reflected to 
 the eye, is caught upon the retina, an impres- 
 sion is made upon the brain, whereby the 
 
The Answer 63 
 
 form, size, and color of the orange affect the 
 individual, causing some unseen activity. 
 Nerves of smell and taste are excited, and, in 
 turn, prompt lifting the orange to smell and 
 eat it, thus communicating other effects to and 
 exciting a further activity in the brain. 
 Squeezing the orange moves the air-particles 
 and communicates through the ear a sound, 
 while nerves of touch convey through the 
 nerves other impressions to the brain. In all, 
 the organism has been acted upon through 
 five different avenues by this orange, and has 
 itself acted in turn, in what we term sensation 
 appropriate to each of the five senses, and also 
 has exercised such brain activity as thought 
 and memory, formed an idea of the orange, 
 and finally exhibited muscular movement, cul- 
 minating in vocal expression of all or some 
 of this action. (Huxley, Lay Sermons, 
 " Descartes," 325.) 
 
 The entire sensible action and reaction be- 
 tween the organism and the orange is the sum 
 of these nervous, cerebral, and muscular im- 
 pressions and responses, finally expressed in 
 the act of saying that we are conscio2is that we 
 see, taste, touch, hear, and smell, remember, 
 think about, desire, etc., the orange. 
 
64 Applied Sociology 
 
 If each and all of these relations be elimi- 
 nated, consciousness of the orange, and its 
 idea, are eliminated. Restore them — all or 
 part — and consciousness is restored pro tanto. 
 We cannot know that we taste without tast- 
 ing ; we cannot taste without knowing that 
 we taste. The two phenomena are physically 
 identical. And so of the other senses. Thus 
 the physical facts of consciousness of an object 
 and the formation of ideas of and concerning 
 the object, include impressions upon and re- 
 sponses by the senses, nervous system, and 
 brain. 
 
 The organism of the sensitive plant is af- 
 fected in one way by an object, but the 
 organism of a man in many. Plant " irritabil- 
 ity " is an illustration of the lowest terms of 
 consciousness. The plant perceives, so to 
 phrase it, that is, acts in response to the object, 
 in only one way. But a human being per- 
 ceives an orange by five bodily senses ; forms 
 an idea of it ; and these five, or some of them, 
 excite other actions of the body, — the hand is 
 seen as it raises the orange, the jaws move in 
 eating it, the sense of hunger comes into play, 
 and just as the smell suggested how it would 
 taste, so its taste and sight may excite memories 
 
The Answer 65 
 
 — prior brain and nervous action reproduced 
 — until we pass from consciousness of the 
 orange itself into forgetfulness of the orange, 
 and into consciousness of a memory, i. c, 
 a nervous condition previously a part of our 
 experience. It is now possible to remember, 
 describe, study, investigate, and reason about 
 the orange by means of the idea of the orange, 
 — the permanent or renewed brain condition 
 caused by it, — and in so doing many subordi- 
 nate ideas, each having a correlative-in-fact, 
 are formed. 
 
 So far, we have been looking at facts — at an 
 actual object and ideas of it and its actualities. 
 
 But now the brain action called imagination 
 may begin. We may imagine that the orange 
 melts at 100° ; for we can form an idea of a 
 melting orange, and can state it as an hy- 
 pothesis. This idea, as an idea, is as readily 
 formed as the true ideas of the orange itself. 
 It is, like those, an image, caused by and 
 composed of an activity of the brain, of a 
 thing and an action. We can learn whether 
 this idea be true or not, by experiment. As 
 an idea, it is like other ideas, and the con- 
 sciousness of it is like consciousness of ideas 
 of reality. In both cases the consciousness 
 
66 Applied Sociology- 
 
 consists in the brain activity constituting and 
 concerned with the idea. It is evident, then, 
 that the nature of consciousness of a real 
 thing, action, or idea of such thing or action, is 
 not different from the nature of consciousness 
 of an idea of a fictitious thing or action. Our 
 bodies and their environment, as sensible act- 
 ualities, produce the brain action which we sub- 
 divide as perception, ideation, ratiocination, 
 etc., all of which may be included within the 
 word "consciousness." 
 
 Now what is this consciousness ? The word 
 stands for, is a sign for, an Idea of something 
 real, or imagined, or partly both. 
 
 Has this idea of consciousness, like the 
 idea of the orange which tastes sweet, a cor- 
 relative-in-fact ? Or, like the idea of an orange 
 melting at ioo°, has it no correlative-in-fact ? 
 Or has it a correlative-in-fact in part and not 
 in part, like an idea of an orange which tastes 
 sweet and melts at ioo° ? 
 
 The possibility of an insensible correlative- 
 in-fact is discussed in Chapter VII. 
 
 Let us treat consciousness as we have 
 treated the orange, and ask. What correlative- 
 in-fact can be found for the idea of conscious- 
 ness ? It at once appears that what we name 
 
The Answer 67 
 
 — the ideas expressed by the word — " con- 
 sciousness " includes the action and reaction 
 between the individual and externals ; the 
 complex actions of many interrelated physical 
 bodily organs, originating under various influ- 
 ences in the complexity of relations possible 
 to the numerous and complex cells — matter 
 organized to be capable of new movements — 
 of the organized individual. These myriad 
 movements and the entire range of physical 
 human activities, from a single impression on 
 through all ramifications and effects, culminate 
 in sounds called speech, a vibration of the air, 
 which communicates to some listening ear 
 what has been the effect upon the individual. 
 These sounds set in motion another set of 
 impressions upon this second individual. Now 
 all this is sensible phenomena. 
 
 A proposition may therefore be roughly 
 stated : 
 
 Consciousness, so far as comprehensible, is 
 physical activity of the human organism. 
 
 The sensible correlatives-in-fact of the ideas 
 expressed by the word " consciousness " are 
 physical responses to physical impressions ; the 
 possible sum of certain cerebral reactions, of 
 objective and subjective activities ; the possi- 
 
68 Applied Sociology 
 
 ble aggregate of responses of neurotic seats of 
 impressionability to impressions extraneous 
 or automatic, including the impression of dif- 
 ferences which the unlikeness of impressions 
 produces. I feel, and I say "I feel"; my 
 feeling and my saying so — i. e., the bodily move- 
 ments of which "feeling" and "saying so" 
 consist — are physical responses by cell and 
 nerve and muscle to impressions. I think, 
 and I say " I think," and of this action the 
 same is true. 
 
 " Speech," and the internal movements of 
 feeling and thinking, are both demonstrably 
 physical ; without any physical impression, 
 internal or external, there is no correlative-in- 
 fact of the word " consciousness." To some 
 actual physical impression through the senses 
 upon the brain, a response arises in the brain 
 and discharges itself in sensation, feeling, mem- 
 ory, or thought, and the word naming this 
 impression and response is " consciousness." 
 
 This shows where consciousness is bounded. 
 We can respond only when impressed ; and 
 what cannot excite the proper activity can 
 no more engender consciousness than light 
 can give sight to the eyeless fish of subter- 
 ranean waters. And an organism that could 
 
The Answer 69 
 
 physically do everything that an individual 
 can "do would be physically conscious ; would 
 be an individual, as Descartes said ; " a giant 
 with one idea," as Coleridge said of an en- 
 gine (Crabb Robinson, p. 186, vol. ii.). Nor 
 would it be, necessarily, a Frankenstein. If 
 it were a complete physical reproduction of 
 a given individual and placed in a precisely 
 similar environment, it would be, physically, 
 the double of such individual both passively 
 and in its action ; and its activity of sense 
 would be properly termed "consciousness." 
 
 Why or how this activity whose sum-total 
 is expressed by consciousness occurs, is not 
 here in question. 
 
 It is not necessary to comprehend either the 
 author or the essence, origin, or limits of what 
 is generally termed force — sometimes " change 
 in relation " of matter — to say that the activity 
 commonly termed " consciousness " can be 
 descriptively defined so far as what physically 
 occurs, and not why this occurs, any more 
 than such comprehension is necessary to de- 
 scriptively define the exercise of any of the 
 senses. We need only the general ideas which 
 have certain correlatives-in-fact, viz., first, 
 that force (whatever its essence) acts upon 
 
70 Applied Sociology 
 
 matter, or, if preferred, that matter changes 
 its relation with matter ; and second, that 
 what we name "consciousness" is accompa- 
 nied by, physically made up of, and consists 
 in, movements of matter undergoing changes 
 of relation. As the reasoning of Clerk Max- 
 well, the poetic rapture of Milton, and the 
 imagination of Kepler are, together with their 
 physical expression, impossible without and 
 accompanied by a series of complicated, inter- 
 related physical activities ; so consciousness 
 at a given moment is the sum of manifold, 
 myriad, interwoven, correlated physical activi- 
 ties. Outside of this there is no sensible cor- 
 relative-in-fact to the word " consciousness." 
 
 It is of a faint, dull quality, a mere sensitive- 
 ness, or is of wider scope, according to the 
 number and quality of the organs and functions 
 involved, ranging from the low-grade nerve 
 of the sensitive plant up to the manifold ego of 
 a Goethe. 
 
 Thus, the correlatives-in-fact of the ideas 
 expressed by the word " consciousness " are a 
 series of correlated physical actions, in which a 
 multiplicity of causes produces a multiplicity 
 of results, from the lowest grade of sensation 
 to the highest form of emotion. It is limited 
 
The Answer 71 
 
 by the amount of action. It is action. What 
 our language names " consciousness " is, so far 
 as comprehensible, the activity of the matter 
 of which we are made, including the activity 
 called " knowing," and ranging from sensation 
 to language. And consequently human lan- 
 guage is limited by the susceptibility to im- 
 pression and power of response as completely 
 as is the language of the ocean or of the 
 " whispering pines " : and this word " conscious- 
 ness " is but the audible naminaf of certain 
 activities of the organism. The finite sum- 
 total of brain action, as it varies and fluctuates 
 in response to impressions, external or self- 
 engendered, is the sum-total of what the indi- 
 vidual expresses in words as consciousness. 
 
 Nor is this confounding object and subject. 
 It is asked, How does the individual know that 
 it is perceiving an object? How, everywhere, 
 does the individual know that it perceives or 
 feels ? 
 
 The question is apparently unanswerable, 
 and, if so, the physics of consciousness are un- 
 explainable. But in fact the question is only 
 unanswerable because it is zmaskable ; it is 
 really an impossible question. It assumes 
 what is unsusceptible of proof, — that you do 
 
72 Applied Sociology 
 
 know that you perceive or feel as an action 
 over and above the perceiving or feeling. Of 
 course, if you do not know that you see except 
 by seeing, or that you feel except by feeling, 
 the question of how you know that you per- 
 ceive or feel is simply meaningless because its 
 assumed premise fails. 
 
 For if, when I say " I know that I see a green 
 table-cloth," I am merely going on with the 
 action which brings an image upon the retina, 
 affects the brain, and so causes me to see and 
 to say I am conscious of it, my verbal ex- 
 pression of consciousness is but one with or 
 part of the given action, not something over 
 and above it. To illustrate : If a man be 
 made to grasp a red-hot iron, the agony of 
 which excludes all but one form of conscious- 
 ness, every act of every part of him which acts 
 at all is apparently physical, from the pain to 
 the outcry. You say that beyond that is his 
 knowing of the pain and the cry. There is no 
 evidence of any act of " knowing" over and 
 beyond the entire action of the body. The 
 physical action of the hot iron upon the entire 
 body, and the responses by the body made to 
 its impression upon the body, are the same in 
 nature but not in complexity with the impres- 
 
The Answer 73 
 
 sions made upon water by plunging the hot 
 iron into it. The activity or consciousness 
 or responsiveness of the man is infinitely more 
 complex, because the action produced is of an 
 infinitely more complex entity. The actions 
 which are included in the signification of the 
 words "pain," "outcry," are wholly absent in 
 the case of the water. 
 
 Let us here start again and differently, and 
 make the matter clearer by expansion. Re- 
 gard only what physically and discernibly tran- 
 spires. What is it which happens physically 
 to bring about what we term " conscious- 
 ness " ? Unable to fully comprehend, we 
 may thus see that consciousness is — to use 
 a metaphorical expression — the hub of the 
 wheel of the chariot of life ; even though 
 where the tire is, how many spokes run to it, 
 upon what track it is supported, and by what 
 power propelled be hidden in the unseen 
 thrills of the unexaminable nervous system. 
 
 Taking a man as an entity, as we are affected 
 by him and his actions, and as we know him 
 physiologically ; assuming that beyond the 
 knowledge, especially of those who are neither 
 anatomists nor physicians, man's physiology is 
 the same in kind as that part of him which is 
 
74 Applied Sociology 
 
 within the evidence of the senses, — consider his 
 five senses by which he perceives externals and 
 himself and has the power to respond to 
 contact, as a single sense to be termed sense 
 of contact. Whatever affects this sense may 
 be termed inflex ; and the response made by 
 the man may be termed reflex. 
 
 This inflex and corresponding reflex may be 
 the lowest or highest term of consciousness, 
 and may result, or not, in what are termed 
 thought, reason, and imagination, in turn oper- 
 ating as new inffexes and occasioning reflexes. 
 
 Multiply inflexes and so the reflexes, grant 
 their preservation in memory as new internal 
 inflexes, and you have the widest conscious- 
 ness as yet given to humanity. For when the 
 inflexes through the sense of contact are re- 
 sponded to severally, partially, or collectively, 
 and these responses fixed in memory as an 
 echo, or picture, the responses themselves be- 
 come internal inflexes, originating within the 
 nerve-centres, so as to affect these immediately 
 and produce a response or reflex. 
 
 Sensible consciousness, then, is a physical 
 response to physical impressions ; in its low 
 forms comparable to the shrinking of the sen- 
 sitive plant from an object presented ; in its 
 
The Answer 75 
 
 higher forms comparable to the activity of a 
 musically competent person under the har- 
 mony of a large orchestra. 
 
 It may be objected that self-consciousness, 
 including as it does such manifold action and 
 diverse and complex states, cannot be a mere 
 response to stimuli or inflexes. But to see 
 ourselves out of a mirror differs not, in the es- 
 sence of seeing, from seeing one's reflection in 
 a mirror — or, in other words, from seeing any 
 non-ego. And if to see the whole ego be pos- 
 sible, it is no more difficult to see a part, a 
 phase, an aspect of it. The body, as a whole 
 and in parts, is itself sensible to its own 
 senses, just as its environment is thus sensible. 
 
 But it is asked, How do I know that I exer- 
 cise a sense, that I see ? By seeing, or feeling 
 myself see ? — Yes ; some of the senses must 
 be affected by that action of the organism called 
 "seeing." There may be a seeing like to the 
 action of the sensitive plant, in which only that 
 sense is in action, producing not conscious- 
 ness but an activity not communicated to any 
 other sense. To be self-conscious directly 
 through the sense of sight, you must feel your- 
 self see yourself. Self-consciousness does not 
 always exist in dreams, nor when excited or 
 
76 Applied Sociology 
 
 affected by a single stimulus. But self-con- 
 sciousness may accompany exercise of memory 
 recalling the visions of sleep, or such stimulus. 
 
 Consciousness is not necessarily self-con- 
 sciousness. Self-perception in consciousness 
 requires internal or automatic as well as ex- 
 ternal impressions. Turn the senses or the 
 brain upon yourself, and consciousness in- 
 cludes the individual and you get self-con- 
 sciousness. But whether the consciousness 
 be of self or externals, there is a gradual pro- 
 gress from the sensitiveness, or susceptibility 
 to impressions, or capacity for inflex and re- 
 flex, from the sensitive plant upward ; " the 
 simple neurotic processes of the hydra with 
 its dim volition and limited scope of action 
 being developed in a complex manner into pro- 
 cesses which range from simple elaboration of 
 the initial additional agitation of the sensory 
 cell into what we speak of as intelligence and 
 thought" {Enc. Brit., "Physiology," p. 15), 
 and into what we term " consciousness." 
 
 Let us try a third time and differently. The 
 word " consciousness " signifies a state of active 
 physical ability — the momentarily shifting total- 
 ity of certain impressions upon and responses 
 by the human organism, which, in its last 
 
The Answer 'j'j 
 
 physical analysis, is as mysterious as, and no 
 more so than, the spark from flint and steel, 
 the crumbling of a stone under a blow, the 
 yielding of a stationary body to a push, the 
 tremble or vibrations of sound or light or an 
 electric current. Consciousness itself is the 
 same phenomenon as the automatic, sentient 
 activity of the organism in relation with its 
 environment. 
 
 Take all the impressions made at a given 
 moment upon the human organism and its in- 
 ternal reactions, and all the responses to these 
 impressions, and you have what conscious- 
 ness at that moment is, viz., the sum of stick 
 impressions a7id responses ; and its varying 
 phases result from the nature of the applied 
 force and the receptive subject. 
 
 The physical ego, the " I myself," is not only 
 the corpus, — the bundle of impressionable mat- 
 ter, — but this body or bundle plus outside 
 forces. Deprive the body, or bundle, of life, 
 of any impressionability or power to respond, 
 or remove all physical activity and all environ- 
 ment, and the physical ego disappears. Ele- 
 vate it or its environment to a more complex 
 activity, and the physical ego becomes a being 
 of vaster powers. 
 
78 Applied Sociology 
 
 The physical ego is, therefore, in its widest 
 sense, the sum of these subjective and objec- 
 tive activities of the matter of which we are 
 composed. 
 
 In a restricted sense the ego may be called 
 that which has the capability of responding — 
 as we say a match has the capability of burst- 
 ingr into flame when rubbed. In either sense 
 nothing is included — so far as human vision 
 goes — except a unit made up of a complex as- 
 semblage of responding cells and nerves, com- 
 parable to keys of a musical instrument, each 
 appropriately responding to any effective force, 
 or comparable to the blending of matter under 
 the chemical law of combining weight. Ordi- 
 nary flame will not oxidize a metal which rusts 
 at lower temperature ; the forces must be in 
 kind as well as quantity sufficient. So with 
 man ; an effective impression producing a re- 
 sponse supposes only a force and a responsive 
 object. What, intrinsically, the force, the ob- 
 ject, and the response each is, may be as mys- 
 terious as life itself, of which it is part ; but 
 an approximate description of consciousness 
 may thus replace the denials of the possibility 
 of defining it from Hamilton to Spencer, who, 
 so lately as in replying to Mr. Balfour, {Fori- 
 
The Answer 79 
 
 nightly Review, June, 1895, p. 865,) intimates 
 that " it is impossible to understand in what 
 way feeUng is connected with nervous change." 
 
 That what we call "feeling" is "nervous 
 change," and that all the accompanying and 
 consequent activity of the organism from this 
 initial " change " to vocal expression consti- 
 tutes consciousness, does not seem to have 
 been contended for. 
 
 The idea of consciousness, then, has for cor- 
 relatives-in-fact inflex and reflex, the physical 
 action of the body under inflex and reflex, as 
 defined. If the inflex be (because of the un- 
 developed character of the object) slight, the 
 consciousness is of a low order, — as of the 
 sensitive plant, or, still lower, of a blade of grass 
 blown upon by the wind, whose only language 
 is a leaf's rustle. 
 
 But if the inflex be (because of the com- 
 plex development of the object) manifold, the 
 consciousness is of a high order and its ex- 
 pression becomes the prose and poetry of the 
 masters. 
 
 Individual consciousness exists in propor- 
 tion to the capacity to receive impressions, to 
 respond to the manifold external and internal, 
 mediate and immediate, original and secondary 
 
8o Applied Sociology 
 
 impressions from stimuli, including those cre- 
 ated by the responses themselves. The degree 
 of consciousness is measured by the number 
 and nature of stimuli or inflexes, and by the 
 power of response which determines the extent 
 of the reflex. 
 
 A blind man is not conscious of light. No 
 man is conscious of what does not lie within 
 his experience. Without the senses conscious- 
 ness is impossible, as much so as it would be 
 without stimuli. As both are increased, con- 
 sciousness is widened. 
 
 To feel and to be conscious of feeling are 
 connected physical states. But there is neither 
 feeling nor consciousness of it as distinct from 
 the impression and response — the inflex and 
 reflex. Self-consciousness is present much 
 more rarely than supposed ; and, on the other 
 hand, there is a sub-consciousness, unsensed by 
 the organism as being felt because not a reflex 
 of self as a unit or organism. The physique 
 when affected as an entity by its own action 
 responds into all that is included in the physi- 
 cal action of saying, — "We feel," — "We are 
 conscious." Thus we name the physical action 
 which begins in the nerve-centres and extends 
 to and pervades the body as an entity. 
 
The Answer 8i 
 
 This physical consciousness, as the sum of 
 certain activities and not a supersensible ego 
 taking notes thereof, explains the "law of the 
 conditioned " and enforces the relativity of 
 knowledge ; for the finite only, in time or space, 
 in matter or force, has avenues to approach us, 
 to cause perception, to constitute the inflex and 
 evoke the corresponding reflex, so far as our 
 physical life is concerned — the life of which we 
 have definite apprehension or knowledge. 
 
 As Mansel said : " What a thing may be out 
 of ' consciousness ' no mode of ' consciousness ' 
 can tell us " — i. e., what a thing may be which 
 does not affect us cannot be guessed ; for if 
 the inflex is absent, so is the reflex. 
 
 Everything which is in consciousness ar- 
 rives or is created primarily by the sense 
 of contact. Everything which lies outside of 
 consciousness is also outside of the sense of 
 contact, but not, certainly, of reason ; at least 
 to this extent, that between the known and the 
 unknown there is not, necessarily, unlikeness, 
 except as an actinic ray is unlike to a light or 
 heat ray. But the true definition of " the 
 knowable " is, that which affects our sense of 
 contact, or is deducible by reason ; of the un- 
 knowable, that which lies beyond or in another 
 
82 Applied Sociology 
 
 plane from the sense of contact, and is not so 
 deducible. Increase this sense or this reason, 
 and you lessen the unknowable. Diminish 
 either, and the unknowable becomes greater. 
 Thus matter continually organizes into higher 
 forms, or into capabilities of new and greater 
 movement. Its consciousness, meanwhile, is 
 measured by its action ; for it is its action. 
 
 Of course there is nothing novel in the fore- 
 going imperfect enumeration of human activi- 
 ties, or in the suggestion that " consciousness " 
 as a word expresses ideas having correlatives- 
 in-fact, — namely, physical activities of the hu- 
 man organism, — and ideas having no sensible 
 correlatives-in-fact, — namely, the activities of a 
 supersensible ego. Further, it may be doubt- 
 ful whether the word " consciousness " or its 
 earlier synonyms were first ejaculated in re- 
 sponse to and as expressing an idea of the 
 sensible activity of the individual, or in re- 
 sponse to and as expressing an imagination- 
 idea of a supersensible ego. It is clear that 
 the word " consciousness " is made to serve 
 both purposes. It may be the term for the 
 physical action sensibly present ; and in this 
 sense, having this signification, the use of the 
 word enables study and discussion of sensible 
 
The Answer 83 
 
 fact. Or it may be the term for the spiritual 
 action imagined to be present ; and in this 
 sense, having this signification, the use of the 
 word does not enable either study or discus- 
 sion of sensible fact. All that lies within the 
 first of these two significations may be the sub- 
 ject of an applied science. What lies within 
 the latter signification cannot be the subject of 
 an applied science. 
 
 And the reason why all that is known in 
 fact of consciousness is the physical activity 
 involved, and the reason why the supersensi- 
 ble signification of this word is at present 
 quite beyond any human faculty except im- 
 agination or the eye of faith, is, that language 
 itself is but, so to speak, a sixth sense, excited 
 by sensible activity of the senses and the brain. 
 This activity, itself sensible, creates both ideas 
 destitute of sensible correlatives-in-fact and 
 ideas having sensible correlatives-in-fact ; and 
 language is the vocal sign for both classes of 
 ideas. 
 
 So much for this word "consciousness." 
 Similar words out of which, as before remarked, 
 " are built the great systems and beliefs and 
 axioms of humanity," are equally far from 
 being solely " definitions or expressions of 
 
84 Applied Sociology 
 
 sensible reality," but are, also, as physical 
 expressions of physical states, as articulate 
 responses to impressions generated in our- 
 selves and by our environment, the vehicles of 
 many pure imagination-ideas. Take, for ex- 
 ample, the words "intent," "criminality," "re- 
 sponsibility," etc. 
 
 Like the word " consciousness," they may 
 express the sensible reality of sensibly physical 
 things and activities ; and, like it, they also 
 frequently express imagination-ideas destitute 
 of sensible correlatives-in-fact. The class of 
 words referred to asserts various imagination- 
 ideas. The sum total of such imagination- 
 ideas makes up the broad idea of animism ; 
 and the very word animism itself expresses 
 the imagination-ideas concerning a supersensi- 
 ble ego residing in, or controlling, the physical 
 man ; of which ideas the correlatives-in-fact 
 are not sensible. 
 
 Animistic ideas, so far as physical or applied 
 science is concerned, are as nebulous as was the 
 " Johnity of John " — more so, for nothing for- 
 bids that such individuality should be the re- 
 sult of peculiar constituents and combination. 
 The nervous activity of the physical life of 
 a particular human organism might explain 
 
The Answer 85 
 
 John's "Johnity," so far as its physical rela- 
 tions are concerned. And it is wholly illogical 
 to rely upon mere suppositions concerning an 
 imagined noumenon — an hypothetical basis — 
 for an applied science of man in his physical as- 
 pects and relations. 
 
 The physical phenomena signified by " con- 
 sciousness " and kindred words are capable of 
 comprehension, unanimous comprehension, and 
 so may be the subject of treatment at once 
 intelligent and unanimous in a science which 
 is by no means called upon to deny what is 
 beyond its ken, but which aims only to deal 
 with the physical phases of individual and so- 
 cial growth ; a science which shall first define 
 the needs of physical man, and then offer the 
 physical treatment and seek the physical envi- 
 ronment which tends to produce the organism 
 which " injures neither itself nor others," but 
 lives in healthful activity. 
 
 (d) A Working Hypothesis concerning Con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Hypotheses, in analogy with other growths, 
 tend to perish, or blend into others, or ripen into 
 more permanent form. In the last case, verbi- 
 age has been sloughed off, leaving terse proposi- 
 
86 Applied Sociology 
 
 tions the residuum of the diluted descriptive 
 discussion necessary at first to the understand- 
 ing of the hypothesis, or to its comparison with 
 background and surroundings. In the case in 
 hand, while condensation will be aimed at in 
 formulating the hypothesis, some descriptive 
 discussion is unavoidable. 
 
 And first, the action of the human organism 
 enumerated as the five senses, when reduced 
 to its lowest terms, consists in physical move- 
 ments, beginning in the parts which are the 
 attributed seats of the senses, — the ear, eye, 
 mouth, nose, and skin, — and extending through 
 selected paths of the nervous system when- 
 ever an object either presses or causes pres- 
 sure upon such seat. Thus, if the finger be 
 upon a pin-point, with a pressure varying from 
 mere contact to blood-letting, the disturbance 
 in the finger is transmitted along the nerves 
 in impulses varying in intensity from a 
 mere tickle to an acute pain ; and, similarly, 
 immediate contact occurs between an object 
 and the mouth which tastes it or the nose 
 which smells its emanations. In the cases of 
 sight and hearing, the external object, instead 
 of itself striking, causes light-waves or sound- 
 waves to strike the eye and ear. So that in 
 
The Answer 87 
 
 the exercise of these five senses an external 
 immediately or mediately presses upon the 
 physique ; and any of these five forms of sen- 
 sation occur when the physique makes ap- 
 pointed movements responsive to this touch 
 from externals. 
 
 Secondly, language is also a product, a 
 phenomenon, of sense. This more clearly 
 appears in its beginning, — an inarticulate, re- 
 presentative cry ; and, given the exciting cause 
 from blow, or sound, or smell, this cry was a 
 resultant of physical movements extending to 
 the vocal organs, which set in motion air-waves 
 whose impact upon a listening ear completed 
 what is called a "cry" or "word." Except 
 that the cry of primitive man has become mani- 
 fold and articulate, — or, in other words, that 
 speech, at first mere loudness and pitch, has 
 developed timbre or quality, and progressed 
 to the orations of Demosthenes and the 
 declamations of Shakespeare, — language or 
 speech is to-day, as a physical fact, what it was 
 then, viz., a disturbance of air-particles by 
 movements of bodily organs, which movements 
 are induced by some phase of touch. Re- 
 sponsiveness producing speech may therefore 
 be regarded subjectively as a sixth sense ; and 
 
88 Applied Sociology 
 
 so of responsiveness producing thought ; and 
 all these senses may be defined, subjectively, 
 as movements of or in the physique, initiated 
 by pressure exerted by something external to 
 the seat of the given sense. 
 
 Next, what, then, is a word, or speech ? 
 It is, subjectively, a sound-sign (if written, a 
 character-sign) of movements, induced by touch 
 or pressure, in the utterer's physique ; and ob- 
 jectively a sound-sign (if written, a character- 
 sign) conveying to another the existence — or, 
 more accurately, affecting another by the ac- 
 tion — of those movements in the utterer. 
 Without stopping to wonder at the myriad 
 movements, in more than geometrical progres- 
 sion, which the human organism is capable of, 
 and which, apparently, may increase as that 
 organism progresses towards higher develop- 
 ments, it may be noticed that under this view 
 of speech or language, all of its words have 
 the same general origin and are phenomena of 
 homogeneous character, whatever they import ; 
 and consequently, that which they import is, 
 broadly, movements in the human organism. 
 
 It follows that if to-day we wish to get at 
 the meaning of the word " consciousness," we 
 must translate the subjective and objective 
 
The Answer 89 
 
 meanings of it as a " cry," and consider all the 
 action of the organism leading on to the utter- 
 ing of the word and its effect upon a hearer. 
 
 And here we may save time by observing 
 that (shunning controversy with Nominalists or 
 Conceptualists) words stand either for a thing, 
 attribute, or action, or for an idea (in the 
 sense of our mental picture or conception) of 
 the thing, attribute, or action. But whether 
 thought of as expressing the thing or an idea 
 of it, words fall into two broad classes, — those 
 which express sensible, comprehensible things, 
 attributes, or actions (or, if you please, ideas 
 thereof), and those which express insensible, 
 uncomprehensible things, attributes, or actions 
 (or ideas thereof) ; because, in his mysterious 
 relations with the external world, primitive 
 man and his successors have uttered sounds in 
 response not only to evident but also to mys- 
 terious forces, and among them the reactions 
 and automatic movements of his own personal 
 mechanism. To mystery he has made a re- 
 sponse in words as vague as the mystery. 
 Thus speech has come to include these two 
 classes of words. To explain the "mystery" ; 
 to substitute fact for supposition ; to replace 
 ideas having no definite correlative-in-fact with 
 
9° Applied Sociology 
 
 ideas which are the mental picture of sensible 
 existences, — is one aim of all science which is 
 not metaphysics. Even psychology has come 
 to concern itself with the examinable, and to 
 look upon metaphysics as beyond its borders ; 
 yet psychology still appeals to metaphysics for 
 premises or hypotheses. 
 
 With this slender bridge over a wide chasm, 
 let us apply the above-suggested test to 
 obtaining the signification, so far as it has 
 any comprehensible meaning, of the word 
 " consciousness," and so see if some at least 
 discussable hypothesis may not be framed of 
 what that which speech terms ''consciousness" 
 consists in ; thereby opening up a road to vari- 
 ous hoary and supposedly axiomatic principles 
 upon which much political and social science 
 now somewhat too securely reposes. 
 
 But first, in order to get a background for 
 such hypothesis, let us have in view some cur- 
 rent hypotheses. Mr. James, for example, 
 groups three hypotheses which have been of- 
 fered to explain consciousness as: (i) Spir- 
 itual ; (2) Associational ; (3) Transcendental ; 
 which words will explain themselves to the 
 reader, or may be referred to in his first vol- 
 ume, chapter x. Of the first, it is plain, as 
 
The Answer 91 
 
 he suggests, p. 346, that it "explains nothing" ; 
 and also that it leaves the word " conscious- 
 ness " as expressive of merely an idea, notion, 
 or conception having no appreciable correlative- 
 in-fact. Of the second, Mr. James observes 
 that writers on the associational theory, while 
 explicit about what the self is, — 
 
 " are very shy about openly tackling the problem of how 
 it comes to be aware of itself. Neither Bain nor Spen- 
 cer directly touch this problem " (p. 354) ; 
 
 while Mr. Thompson's theory is said to 
 closely resemble Mr. James's own "stream of 
 thought"; of which presently. Of the third 
 or transcendental theory, the " timeless ego " 
 which thinks is certainly not revealed to us 
 as engaged in that act, nor is the method 
 of its self-awareness elucidated ; but, as in 
 the spiritual theory, the words of its nomen- 
 clature, and the very word "consciousness" 
 when one of them, are vehicles of ideas or 
 conceptions utterly destitute of any sensible 
 correlative-in-fact. Psychology, as a science of 
 what occurs, or as " a natural science, an ac- 
 count of particular, finite streams of thought, co- 
 existing and succeeding in turn," as Mr. James 
 describes it, p. 367, gets little lucid exhibition 
 from either of these theories. Mr. James's 
 
92 Applied Sociology 
 
 own starting-point for psychology is what 
 he terms "the stream of thought," a sensible 
 fact. Without committing himself to any expla- 
 nation of this fact, but contenting himself with 
 it as a name for phenomena sensible but inex- 
 plicable, he then proceeds to study its exhibi- 
 tion of itself, and so arrives at many useful, 
 practical deductions, while constructing a 
 tentative science of psychology, in its main 
 aspects the reverse of metaphysical. But 
 upon the question. What is consciousness ? he 
 throws no more light than the various prede- 
 cessors whom he also shows to have left the 
 question unanswered. 
 
 Now this essay is by no means so preten- 
 tious as to offer any final theory upon such a 
 question ; but it seems to the writer that the 
 examination can be carried a little farther back 
 towards the truth, even if the explanation to 
 be suggested shall deal only with physical 
 occurrences, and disclaim any attempt to at all 
 explain the cause of as distinguished from the 
 mode of operation of the phenomena termed 
 " consciousness." But the hypothesis herein 
 sought is not a hypothesis of cause ; and It 
 should be clearly understood that no attempt 
 towards that is herein even contemplated. 
 
The Answer 93 
 
 Coming still nearer to the proposed hypothe- 
 sis of what occurs as distinguished from why it 
 occurs, or, otherwise stated, to a hypothesis to 
 define an actor and the actor's mode of oper- 
 ation but not the force or power which causes 
 either, which actor is represented by the cry 
 or word " consciousness" as carrying on some 
 action, it may be said that the spiritual theory, 
 the associational theory, the transcendental 
 theory, are all statements of what our proposed 
 hypothesis does not postulate, viz., a function 
 of a/' soul " ; an attendant " state " of the brain ; 
 an act of a " transcendental " ego. 
 
 Mr. James's " stream of thought " in which 
 he finds, but seeks not to explain, conscious- 
 ness, leaves the phenomena without hypothe- 
 sis. His view (p. 687) may complete our 
 background — italicizing as needed — 
 
 " According to the assumptions of this book, thoughts 
 accompany the brain's workings, and these thoughts are 
 cognitive of realities. The whole relation is one which 
 we can only write down empirically, confessing that no 
 glimmer of explanation of it is yet in sight. That brains 
 should give rise to a knowing consciousness at all, this is the 
 one mystery which returns, no matter of what sort the con- 
 sciousness and of what sort the knowledge may be. Sensa- 
 tions, aware of mere qualities, involve the mystery as 
 much as thoughts, aware of complex systems, involve it." 
 
94 Applied Sociology 
 
 And after (properly it would seem) continu- 
 ing the division of consciousness into sensa- 
 tional and relating, he says, p. 689 : 
 
 " It is surely no different mystery to feel myself by one 
 brain process, writing at this table now, and by means 
 of a different brain process a year hence to reviember 
 myself writing. All that psychology can do is to seek 
 to determine what the several brain processes are." 
 
 Now it will not be doubted that the sensible 
 and sufficient constituents of the phenomena 
 whose forms and stages speech indicates by 
 such words as sensation, conception, ideation, 
 feeling, remembrance, knowing, and being 
 conscious, as a given sum-total constitute 
 physical consciousness. The totality of the 
 known activities which such words indicate is 
 the sum of certain actions and reactions in the 
 organism and between the organism and its 
 environment. To feel, to know, to think, or 
 to remember, is to exercise a sense, as a 
 sense has been above defined, — go on with 
 certain action under a present or residual stim- 
 ulus. This applies only to what occurs ; why 
 it occurs is resolved into the broader and 
 different question of why life occurs. The con- 
 sciousness consists in action by the organ- 
 ism, not in the separate activity of something 
 
The Answer 95 
 
 which sees this ; in the momentary sum- 
 total of physical inflex and reflex, not in an 
 observer of this. Aside from what is brain 
 and nerve action, there is no sensible con- 
 sciousness ; although it may be that some 
 brain and nerve action does not produce con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 What, then, is the consciousness ? Not, Why 
 are we conscious ? (which involves the unan- 
 swerable question, What is life ?) but. What is 
 the consciousness ? 
 
 A " working " answer is found in the inhe- 
 rent limitations and nature of speech, and the 
 fact that language is dependent upon touch 
 and response, and, when analyzed, is analogous 
 to a sixth sense. It follows that what is 
 signified by and expressed in the word and 
 its synonyms in other languages is physical, 
 active movement of physical matter composing 
 the senses, nerves, and muscles — the shifting 
 totality, from moment to moment, of that 
 movement which is summed up as " life." Con- 
 sciousness and sensation, consciousness and 
 feeling, consciousness and knowing, are one, 
 not several, in their natures ; and are all, 
 as phenomena, the sum of certain activities 
 and movements in and of the organism, which, 
 
9^ Applied Sociology 
 
 from an impression up to and including its 
 expression, follow after such impressions as 
 the senses can respond to. 
 
 Consciousness of thought, sensation, or feel- 
 ing has no separate existence or individual ex- 
 istence. Divorced from touch and response 
 in the exercise of the senses (as they are above 
 broadened), consciousness disappears. The 
 nearest approach that one can make to be- 
 ing in a state of pure consciousness will still 
 leave him sensible of some physical life-action ; 
 which is, indeed, ceaseless until co-ordination 
 of the actions of the brain is lost in death, or 
 in the temporary inanition of nervous centres 
 resulting from the cessation of essential physi- 
 cal movements. When these essential move- 
 ments cease, physical consciousness is no 
 more. 
 
 " Consciousness," as a word, at present sig- 
 nifies a mysterious phenomenon or the idea 
 thereof. This idea is without correlative.s-in- 
 fact ; since the thing signified is imagined, 
 but does not sensibly exist. Eliminate from 
 the idea behind this word all but what is 
 sensible and comprehensible, and we have left 
 the hypothesis, viz. : that which language terms 
 "consciousness" is the shifting totality, from 
 
The Answer 97 
 
 moment to moment, of responsive action of 
 the organism made to external and automatic 
 impressions upon the organism ; the sum total, 
 at any given moment, of the action initiated 
 in the senses and the brain either under re- 
 sponse to a present environment or under the 
 residual influences of a past environment. 
 Perhaps this hypothesis may be made plainer 
 by a further observation : 
 
 The metaphysical conception of " soul " — if 
 that word can be anything more definite than 
 a haphazard name for an unknowable cause, or 
 for a " something unknown which must be at 
 work " — may be not of an immaterial ego which 
 is conscious, but of that individualized force 
 which for a while energizes each human organ- 
 ism and enables it to act upon, and be acted 
 upon by, its environment, producing these phe- 
 nomena of thought, memory, and sense, so far 
 as they are, upon the above hypothesis, physi- 
 cal and sensible. 
 
 But even this conception would be but 
 a phase of thought, which itself consists 
 in physical action ; and so, unless we are, at 
 this point, to cross over into the territory 
 of metaphysics, we have only to take the pro- 
 posed hypothesis of what the correlative-in- 
 
98 Applied Sociology 
 
 fact of the word "consciousness" is, and note 
 how far it affects or includes many similar 
 words, and so go on to apply it in sociology. 
 
 (e) The Physics of '' Intent." 
 
 We have first examined the word " con- 
 sciousness " to find what are its correlatives- 
 in-fact, because it is a name of a phenomenon 
 which includes, or at least is coexistent with, 
 other phenomena, termed "will," "emotion," 
 "judgment," etc. We speak of being con- 
 scious of willing, feeling, judging, etc. ; and 
 the consciousness is generally thought of as it- 
 self a phenomenon, and properly, if taken as a 
 broader term for an activity which includes 
 more particular activities. 
 
 It is now essential to also clear up the cor- 
 relatives-in-fact of whatever of these words we 
 propose to use ; and as later it is hoped to use 
 the word " intent," we may now consider what 
 are the correlatives-in-fact of the idea expressed 
 by the word " intent." 
 
 But it may strike the reader that this is a 
 very vague if not unnecessary question. In- 
 tent, it will be said, is intent, and that is all 
 there is to be said about it ; somewhat as Dr. 
 Johnson is credited with saying, " We know 
 
The Answer 99 
 
 we are free, and that is all there is to be said 
 about it " ; or as the famous Dr. Abernethy is 
 credited with telling his students, " Gentlemen, 
 a stomach is a stomach." 
 
 Very well ; but still, what is intent ? What 
 sensible fact occurs in us when we intend ? 
 How much of what is assumed to occur must 
 be eliminated before getting down to what 
 sensibly occurs ? And when one has thought 
 thus far, the suggestion arises that all that 
 sensibly occurs in intent is very like what 
 sensibly causes the phenomena of conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 A physical change occurs in the activities of 
 the matter of which we are made; a disturb- 
 ance in the brain and nervous system induced 
 by some impression, the response to which 
 causes, broadly, " desire " or a tendency to 
 some course of action, which, when actually 
 under way, reveals itself, as does the activity 
 of any one of the senses, by establishing 
 further impressions and producing further 
 activity of reflex, which, broadly speaking, is 
 the correlative-in-fact of consciousness. In- 
 tent, then, is a special activity of the brain 
 induced by some reflex called " desire," which, 
 in turn, has been produced by some inflex 
 
loo Applied Sociology- 
 
 through the senses or the reason. A weaving 
 of the woof and web of life ? — Doubtless. But 
 here we wish to contrast what sensibly exists 
 with what is generally assumed or imagined, 
 viz., a supersensible act of some supersensible 
 ego. 
 
 Now in fact we are not at any time sensible 
 of any supersensible ego, although in sup- 
 plying an attempted explanation of intent a 
 supersensible ego is frequently imagined as in- 
 tending, and hence the word "intent" has 
 come to express an idea of the presence and 
 action of this ego. No more denying here than 
 as to consciousness the existence of a super- 
 sensible ego ; admitting, indeed, that something 
 beyond what is ever sensible must be attrib- 
 uted as the cause of that life which is con- 
 scious and which intends, — we may ask what 
 it is which occurs physically when a man in- 
 tends ; and when that is answered, we have 
 all of the correlatives-in-fact of intent with 
 which a science of the sensible can deal. 
 
 And what we know about intent may be 
 summed up as this, — certain impressions from 
 without affect the senses and produce desire ; 
 certain operations of the brain and nervous 
 system produce another form of desire. In 
 
The Answer loi 
 
 both cases, the organism is put into a certain 
 condition of activity toward some accompHsh- 
 ment or action. A tendency of the organism 
 in a given direction is estabhshed — a physical 
 gravitation toward some end. This physical 
 gravitation and tendency is a fact which is 
 sensible to us, being accompanied by an appro- 
 priate physical condition of the brain and 
 nervous system. " Physics of intent " is there- 
 fore as proper a term as " physics of conscious- 
 ness," to signify certain physical activities whose 
 only names at present are words which also 
 imply an insensible explanation. 
 
 So of all these words which assert an ani- 
 mistic idea it may be said, without special ex- 
 amination, that they carry a twofold meaning. 
 They assert certain sensible facts, to wit, the 
 physical activity of the brain and nervous sys- 
 tem, and they assert that this organism is 
 directed and controlled by a supersensible 
 ego whose various phases are subdivided and 
 named by these words. 
 
 The theologian calls this ego a soul. The 
 metaphysician calls it by various titles, of 
 which " a mind," " the reasoning faculty," 
 "the timeless ego," "the ego," are but a few. 
 And all men admit that there is something ad- 
 
I02 Applied Sociology 
 
 ditional to or dominating the human organism, 
 — some principle of life, at least, — which does 
 not seem to us to find any explanation in mere 
 matter as such. What it is — this mysterious 
 something — no man knows. Yet its presence 
 and function naturally break forth in words 
 and metaphorical terms, forming the class of 
 words we are considering. Into every applied 
 science in its early stages has this vague some- 
 thing intruded itself ; but from those which 
 have become applied or physical, it has been 
 sooner or later eliminated, not by denying its 
 existence, but by recognizing its illusory, in- 
 tangible, un-get-at-able nature, and so eliminat- 
 ing its consideration in applied science. 
 
 In social science this still remains to be 
 done, and it seems, as hereinbefore shown, 
 that the simplest way to do it is to consider 
 what words are ; what they can import ; how 
 chained they are to the capacities of humanity ; 
 and how impossible it is that a physical re- 
 action, viz., an inflex, a reflex, a nervous move- 
 ment, a muscular movement, a vibration of 
 the vocal cords and then a vibration of air- 
 particles producing a word, can signify any 
 insensible cause, or anything more definite 
 than that these physical actions exist. And this 
 
The Answer 103 
 
 physical action, whatever its cause, is itself 
 the phenomenon, so far as we can see, which 
 words and language attribute to something 
 over and above the action. 
 
 Why such phenomena exist is a question to 
 which no approximation to an answer can be 
 made, except through the imagination ; and as 
 men's imaginations differ, from the fetishism 
 of the savage to the Christian revelation or 
 the " higher criticism," so they cannot agree 
 about the nature, laws, or proper treatment of 
 any supersensible ego. 
 
 And, therefore, it may be again and again 
 repeated that so long as social science continues 
 to use these vague names for vague and fre- 
 quently contradictory ideas, so long must it 
 vibrate and sway hither and thither, advancing 
 but by accident if at all. When, as in criminal 
 law, the word "intent" is made a basis of 
 assumptions or premises, how can the con- 
 clusions be accepted as sound ? — Only upon 
 the sanction of authority, itself speaking only 
 upon the sanction of faith and not of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 On the other hand, if the sensible correl- 
 atives-in-fact of intent be made foundation 
 premises, at once a scientific knowledge and a 
 
I04 Applied Sociology 
 
 scientific theory of administration are made 
 possible. And such are the reasons for seek- 
 ing to understand the physics of intent, as 
 well as of consciousness. Reference to the 
 practicability of acquiring such understanding 
 will more properly be found near the end of 
 Chapter IX., in which the question as to the 
 proper procedure under an applied science of 
 sociology, and the practical methods to be pur- 
 sued and the practical results to be expected 
 are generally pointed out, and the sources for 
 more detailed information as to this phase of 
 the proposed science indicated. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ANSWER TO THE FIRST QUESTION AND ITS 
 POLITICAL VALUE 
 
 FOR clearness, and the proper point of 
 view of the phenomenon called language 
 in relation to the present discussion, the 
 chain of argument may be briefly recalled, as 
 follows : 
 
 The progress of humanity has resulted from 
 and consisted in the elevation of the individual 
 to higher planes of life, and the continuous 
 readjustment of society in conformity with and 
 to avoid conflict with the progress of the 
 individual : this elevation and readjustment 
 have come through the increasing freedom of 
 activity of the individual : judging the future 
 from the past, the essentials to further progress 
 2X(t, first, that the individual be provided with 
 chances for and be developed in all his powers ; 
 and, second, that his social relations be framed 
 to aid and restrain interference with this de- 
 
 105 
 
io6 Applied Sociology 
 
 velopment : provision of these essentials is 
 subject to the law of equivalents, which prom- 
 ises success and future progress upon offer- 
 ing the proper price for achievement and 
 sufificient causes for results, thereby inviting us 
 to offer as the price such coin as nature's laws 
 recognize, and to provide adequate, understood, 
 and approved means and methods of human 
 advancement : to this end an applied science 
 of sociology may be attempted, based upon 
 the essentials of individual and social growth, 
 and teaching how to supply them to the extent 
 of human capacity. 
 
 At this point the question arose as to the 
 exact subject-matter of such applied science, 
 which question appeared to depend upon 
 whether any other than the physical side of 
 humanity is now sufficiently within unanimous 
 comprehension and subject to manipulation to 
 be made the subject-matter of such science. 
 
 Waiving the ordinary controversy between 
 spiritualists and materialists, it was thereupon 
 suggested that, inasmuch as we reason and 
 plan concerning any subject-matter by means 
 of our ideas of such subject-matter as expressed 
 in language, this main question (as to whether 
 the suggested science can assume to deal with 
 
The Answer to the First Question 107 
 
 anything beyond the physics of man in society) 
 may be answered by settling whether human 
 language can express any ideas concerning 
 humanity with which we can practically deal, 
 except they be ideas of physical man and his 
 physical environment. Examination into the 
 origin, progress, and significance of human 
 speech showed that animistic ideas and words 
 have no sensible correlatives-in-fact. With no 
 universally accepted criterion of either the na- 
 ture or truth of ?«sensible correlatives, we can 
 neither demonstrate these correlatives against 
 contradiction, nor use them by unanimous con- 
 sent. Consideration of consciousness and in- 
 tent showed that the only correlative-in-fact, 
 the only sensible actuality, behind the ideas 
 expressed by these words is the physical ac- 
 tivity of the human organism when in the state 
 expressed by these words. 
 
 Taking up again the thread of argument, it 
 is, therefore, plain that the origin and nature 
 of language and the consequent limitations 
 upon its possible significations show that words 
 signifying imagination-ideas are not definitions 
 of any sensible reality ; that the ideas behind 
 them have no sensible correlatives-in-fact ; that 
 such words cannot be the media of wholly in- 
 
io8 Applied Sociology 
 
 telligent discussion, since they signify nothing 
 accessible to either comprehension or manipu- 
 lation, nor can such ideas enter into a science 
 dealing with only sensible facts, with ideas hav- 
 ing such sensible facts as correlatives, and with 
 words expressing such facts and ideas. 
 
 A science, like chemistry or biology, con- 
 cerning sensible things and relations cannot 
 be a science of imagination-ideas. Only by 
 distinct and different sciences can humanity 
 study, explain, and profit by these two distinct 
 classes of ideas. Sociology, as an applied sci- 
 ence, must therefore limit its dealings to things 
 sensible and physical, and to ideas of only 
 things sensible and physical, and express itself 
 in words importing only such ideas and their 
 sensible correlatives. What Mr. Disraeli char- 
 acterized as " the rivalry at the bottom of all 
 human affairs " finds no proper place in applied 
 sociology. 
 
 Therefore, to the question engendering this 
 rivalry, encountered in Chapter III. and Chap- 
 ter IV., sociology, as an applied science, can 
 bring no light ; from the sensible facts of which 
 alone it is the scieitce no sensible knowledge is ob- 
 tainable, except as to sensible resjdts ; and there- 
 fore it must deal with social man so far only as 
 
The Answer to the First Question 109 
 
 he is a physique or organism in a material 
 environment. 
 
 Accordingly, applied sociology will eliminate 
 animism from, not belief but administration, 
 by eliminating from such words as " conscious- 
 ness," "intent," etc., all imagination-ideas con- 
 cerning the supersensible ego. 
 
 Freed from such assumption, it has left for 
 subject-matter all that physically occurs in 
 consciousness, or self-consciousness, or in the 
 exercise of sensible activities ; and its first prac- 
 tical effort must be to gain a sufficient de- 
 scription of the individual and the community 
 as sensible entities or subjects, and from that 
 pass to the consideration of what can be done 
 for the progress of society and of its constitu- 
 ent units as constituted, by means (within hu- 
 man comprehension and control) of the proper 
 physical knowledge and apposite treatment of 
 physical man in his social relations. 
 
 It is proposed in later chapters to briefly il- 
 lustrate this as to some of those relations, but 
 before doing so it may be proper to glance at 
 the field open for sociology as a physical or 
 applied science, and its probable political value 
 or usefulness. 
 
 There are two main philosophies of exist- 
 
no Applied Sociology 
 
 ence among the high civiHzations, seemingly 
 antagonistic : 
 
 First : The animistic theory, underlying the 
 various religious creeds, — the theory of an in- 
 sensible, spiritual soul dominating the physical 
 man. 
 
 Second : The materialistic, which denies 
 spirituality, and yet, so far as this writer is in- 
 formed, has never — while frequently, as by 
 Lange and Noire, asserting a something over 
 and above the physical activity of the body — 
 offered any physical explanation of the physical 
 aspects of human consciousness, except as "an 
 attendant state " ; never clearly presented that 
 " state " as not attendant but resultant. 
 
 Ranging exclusively under one or vibrating 
 between these two philosophies, one may find 
 some fitting theory for idiosyncrasies of belief, 
 however exacting. 
 
 Now the purpose of this discussion is to in- 
 dicate that there is place for a working theory 
 that shall conflict with neither of these two 
 philosophies, but upon which all, without sur- 
 render of special beliefs, can harmoniously 
 unite for a given purpose only, viz., to estab- 
 lish a physical science of the physical relations 
 of physical man to society. 
 
The Answer to the First Question 1 1 1 
 
 In a very general way let us illustrate the 
 value of such a theory. Take two phases of 
 life, — education and punishment, or develop- 
 ment and repression, — the alpha and omega of 
 society. 
 
 The purpose and end of education is develop- 
 ment ; the purpose and end of punishment is 
 repression. 
 
 Considering the means and methods of each, 
 observe that those of the first are the more 
 plenteous and accommodating. The growing 
 child is — in favorable surroundings — fostered 
 by sympathy and love, if not always rightly. 
 
 The offender — from the drunkard who dis- 
 gusts, to the murderer who inspires fear and 
 vengeance — is tried, condemned, and impris- 
 oned or hanged. 
 
 Why he is, by what process he became, as a 
 physical being, a drunkard or murderer ; whether 
 anything within the physical power of the state, 
 and if so, what, can, in any or all cases, at any 
 stage of his career neutralize this "why" and 
 turn him into a good citizen, — were for ages 
 unthought-of questions. In general, society 
 educates — develops — children because of love, 
 and punishes — represses — criminals because it 
 abhors them ; and therefore comes to neglect 
 
112 Applied Sociology 
 
 the children of incapable or criminal parents, 
 partly from want of realizing both duty and true 
 social interests, partly from difficulties with fi- 
 nancial and constitutional questions which com- 
 plicate the provision of means and methods. 
 
 Take as an illustration one of the pitifully 
 numerous human tragedies : A child possessed 
 of the ordinary characteristics is born into the 
 world, with the qualities and capabilities of, for 
 instance, the poorer classes of the larger Amer- 
 ican cities, and of no congenital tendency to 
 crime. Not only is his heredity unfavorable, 
 but his infancy is contaminated instead of pro- 
 tected by his environment. His youth is passed 
 in a gradual deterioration. At twenty his de- 
 generation is marked ; his appetites imperative ; 
 his sense of reverence extinct ; his potential 
 cruelty, sensuality, inebriety, sloth, and coarse- 
 ness fully developed ; and his potential hu- 
 manity, self-control, sobriety, enthusiasm, and 
 refinement nearly withered. His few childish 
 aspirations have been strangled ; his emulation 
 turned into envy ; his patience become morose- 
 ness. If he could but see himself, his heart 
 would break to realize what he might have 
 been, and what, in fact, he is. 
 
 Then comes the crisis ; and he finds himself 
 
The Answer to the First Question 113 
 
 in a prison where society for its own self-pro- 
 tection has placed him and out of which he 
 shall never walk except to sit in that fatal 
 chair whose lightning stroke shall blot out the 
 poor life that, by a destiny far beyond his per- 
 sonal control, has lived only to undergo pro- 
 gressing degeneration until he drags down 
 another's life to death and so his own. And 
 yet there are ninety chances out of a hundred 
 — as statistics show — that, if his environment 
 had been healthful, he would have lived and 
 died a respectable citizen. For every such 
 criminal who dies in that chair there are ten 
 or a hundred who occupy the state prisons 
 and die degenerates. 
 
 Still, the pest-nests of crime are largely left 
 to the church and the philanthropist, and al- 
 lowed to turn out every year more victims to 
 injure society and fill the daily papers with 
 these tragedies of existence. Meanwhile, trade 
 has its eye on the muck-rake ; wealth builds 
 itself new palaces ; society, within its walls, 
 blooms with gracious, kindly men and beauti- 
 ful women ; charity is limited to private benevo- 
 lence, or, so far as public, to but a tithe of the 
 needy ; law stops with overt acts of crime ; 
 politics remains a science chiefly of commerce, 
 
114 Applied Sociology 
 
 finance, and the foreign and domestic relations 
 of the prosperous part of the community ; other 
 arts and sciences are taught in a thousand 
 schools, studied in a thousand laboratories, 
 but the art of preserving citizens remains, if 
 not uninvented, at least unapplied. 
 
 Thus one part of the world grows better and 
 more beautiful ; but it remains partly deaf and 
 partly helpless to the cry of these unfortunates 
 who, playing in the city streets, are already 
 doomed by their environment to that fatal 
 chair. That is their destiny. In no Greek 
 play was the progress of Fate more relentless. 
 
 Were it the destiny only of the congenital 
 criminal, society and its lawmakers and gov- 
 ernors might well remain deaf ; since to hear 
 would avail little. But to indirectly create 
 criminals ! To submissively nurture them ! 
 To leave alone prevention ! To hold back 
 and refuse the treatment that will avoid them ! 
 To raise the eyeglass, as at an opera, to read 
 the criminal column, as a libretto ! — than this, is 
 there no higher possibility and duty of practical 
 citizenship, of government, of society as a 
 community ? 
 
 And is it not also quite a different duty from 
 that which springs from principles of morality 
 
The Answer to the First Question 1 1 5 
 
 and religion and rests upon the church ? 
 Single-handed, the church pours out its treas- 
 ure, and marshals its domestic missionary 
 workers, and stands ready to supply that 
 "milk of human kindness" which is so neces- 
 sary in successfully approaching its almoners. 
 
 But something more than " kindness " is 
 wanted. Men and women are not poor and 
 degraded, children are not misgrown, criminals 
 are not vile, morally only. Crime and poverty 
 and degeneration are also largely physical. 
 And with this physicality the state should help 
 the church to contend. 
 
 Yet society as a whole still follows chiefly 
 the animal instincts — love of offspring, indif- 
 ference to strangers, hatred of enemies. The 
 inspiration of theories of education and punish- 
 ment, of development and repression, is still 
 too little removed from the inspiration of the 
 actions of those who are accused of being our 
 "arboreal progenitors." There is too little 
 real difference between a slave-ship and the 
 poverty-stricken byways of great cities — be- 
 tween the real, if unintended, cruelty and error 
 of a dungeon under the Spanish Inquisition, a 
 conclave of apes or savages, and a modern 
 " electrocuting." The only argument for the 
 
ii6 Applied Sociology 
 
 last is, — " Not otherwise can crime be re- 
 pressed and innocence saved " ; as it was of 
 the auto da fd, — " Not otherwise can heresy be 
 repressed and souls saved." Although cruelty 
 has been eliminated from religion because we 
 have progressed far enough to both feel it and 
 see its uselessness, it has not been eliminated 
 from the criminal law, and much less has the 
 positive practical attempt been made, as a 
 part of the administration of gov eminent^ to 
 preserve the citizen, to save the guiltless from 
 crime, to cleanse the environment of the 
 hampered classes, to blot out degeneration as 
 a pestilence in its first beginnings. 
 
 And why not ? Is it not because crime has 
 been regarded even by statecraft as sin, and 
 sin as the work of a spiritual ego, and the 
 spiritual ego as amenable to only moral treat- 
 ment ? 
 
 But if — whatever else is behind it — con- 
 sciousness includes physical action ; if its physi- 
 cal character is found in the physical activities 
 of the man himself, in physical senses and 
 activities making up the man as a whole ; and 
 if affecting these physical senses, or constitu- 
 ents, will affect the man, and so there is a 
 visible, accessible physique with which to sue- 
 
The Answer to the First Question 117 
 
 cessfuUy deal, — a science of physical sociology 
 is at last in sight which shall study how to deal 
 with the guiltless to save him from criminality, 
 and with the criminal to help him and protect 
 society, and how to shape the social agencies 
 which deal with the human being in his social 
 relations. 
 
 Animism as a basis of applied sociology is 
 insufficient, however useful as an adjunct. If 
 any one is curious to read in detail how — while 
 visions of a more exalted spirituality have 
 rather brightened than faded — animism as a 
 subject of human manipulation has faded away 
 before the advance of knowledge and the 
 progress of humanity ; how the ancient gods 
 have deserted the sun and moon and tempest ; 
 how the spirits of flood and fell have been 
 exorcised ; how the Daphne of the forest has 
 become a mere laurel tree, not only in a poet's 
 fancy but in reality ; how what was once 
 termed " the spirit " of nitre or what not, is 
 now named from perceptible qualities ; how 
 witchcraft has been compelled to take its true 
 form, and " possession of devils " become a 
 bodily distemper ; how the "terrors of the un- 
 known " have been converted into evils due to 
 physiological and chemical action ; and how 
 
ii8 Applied Sociology 
 
 from agriculture through many sciences up to 
 and including medicine, " vain imaginings " 
 have given place to a " philosophy of facts," — 
 all this is shown in detail in Dr. Tyler's Prim- 
 itive Culture. 
 
 And the propriety of the proposed change 
 of base for sociology may be confirmed by 
 the testimony of advanced disciples of animis- 
 tic creeds. One instance may be cited : 
 
 Said the late Professor James D. Dana in a 
 letter to Rev. John G. Hall, quoted in The Lit- 
 erary Digest, May i8, 1895, p. (81) 21 : "I 
 find nothing in the belief" — in evolution — "to 
 impair or disturb my religious faith ... it 
 is beginning to be seen more clearly than ever 
 that science can have nothing to say on moral 
 or spiritual questions." 
 
 Why, then, should the science of sociology, 
 the science of man in communities, take sides 
 in that " rivalry " which Mr. Disraeli found at 
 the bottom of all human affairs ? What should 
 concern it, as a science, is that phase and 
 those attributes of humanity which lie outside 
 of questions purely spiritual ; just as chem- 
 istry and biology are concerned with the 
 physical phases and attributes of their subject- 
 matters. 
 
The Answer to the First Question 119 
 
 The science of chemistry or biology is the 
 science of facts. The science of sociology 
 (which is the chemistry and biology of com- 
 munities) should be a science of fact. This is 
 the philosophical deduction from the foregoing 
 considerations. 
 
 But the main practical deduction from these 
 considerations and premises, already hinted at, 
 may be formulated in a distinct proposition : 
 
 The American state, while constitutionally 
 restrained from devising or supporting religious 
 or animistic beliefs or institutions, — religious 
 freedom being one of its foundation stones, — is 
 entitled, and in duty bound, to protect the per- 
 sons of its citizens by sanitary laws from con- 
 tagious physical diseases, and to also protect 
 the bodies of its citizens from such physical in- 
 juries as constitute crimes : and therefore, if 
 much of what has been commonly regarded as 
 moral degeneration or degradation is physical, 
 and if crime is physical, the state has the 
 right to intervene and the power to devise, 
 advocate, and support laws and institutions not 
 only for the prosecution of crime but the sup- 
 pression by physical means of degeneration 
 and degradation. 
 
 If this conclusion is sound, a cogent practi- 
 
I20 Applied Sociology 
 
 cal reason at once appears for transferring the 
 phenomena of degeneration, degradation, and 
 crime from the atmosphere of imagination-ideas 
 into that of ideas having correlatives-in-fact ; 
 from the category of the animistic over to 
 the physical ; from the exclusive domain of 
 the moral law to some jurisdiction of the civil 
 authorities. And this can be done without 
 derogating from — or even approaching a con- 
 troversy with — the authority which religion 
 and morals, in their many phases, exert over 
 the community. 
 
 If we can thus make criminal law and phi- 
 lanthropy sciences of the physique of man, so 
 far as to authorize the state to deal with de- 
 generation and criminality as with physical 
 diseases, not only is there some practical use 
 in the views hereinbefore set forth, but a new 
 hope arises for the practical improvement of 
 the low phases of life in large cities and thickly 
 populated communities, whenever, under the 
 sanction of the laws, the energies and resources 
 of the state shall come to the aid, and benefit 
 by the experiences, of private philanthropists. 
 
 It is thought that it is time to discuss the 
 application of this " philosophy of facts " to the 
 manipulation of man as an individual and so- 
 
The Answer to the First Question 121 
 
 dally ; to criminal law, and make it a science 
 of facts, eliminating rules based upon a jum- 
 ble of scholastic notions, or even upon theo- 
 logical theories, however sacred within their 
 sphere ; and to education and philanthropy, as 
 functions of government, to save the youth of 
 the land from criminality. 
 
 To reverently worship, it is not necessary to 
 clearly comprehend. But to deal with the 
 proper manipulation of man in society it is 
 necessary to clearly comprehend what we are 
 dealing with, as well as not to attempt to deal 
 with what is beyond present comprehension. 
 
 Physicalness, or physicality, is understand- 
 able and can be dealt with, when understood, 
 unanimously ; spirituality is not yet even com- 
 prehensible in any detail, and in its main out- 
 lines is still the subject of partisan dispute ; but 
 proper physical treatment of the physical man 
 must be in harmony with whatever of him is 
 more than physical. 
 
 It is submitted that, with no servility to 
 materialist or churchman, the physical nature 
 and activities of man s physical body may be 
 studied, and — aid from no quarter being re- 
 fused — the true progressive methods of dealing 
 with these attributes, characteristics, and facts 
 
122 Applied Sociology 
 
 of humanity be aimed at, and gradually at- 
 tained. It will involve education in many 
 directions ; deep study, of the human mechan- 
 ism and how to deal with it, of the relative 
 rights of the criminal and society, of how far 
 it is constitutional to tax society for an educa- 
 tion, in its broad sense, as sufficient for the 
 youth of our great cities and communities as 
 was the district school for the hamlets of our 
 Saxon forefathers, in order to so supervise the 
 guiltless as to help extirpate the prisons and 
 their criminals. If we are to shun a repeti- 
 tion of history, we must strike at the physical 
 roots of human degeneracy, and not merely 
 prune the branches ; nor can any greater 
 honor be paid to money than to say that its 
 proper expenditure, if its owners please, may 
 be a true "equivalent" for infantile supervi- 
 sion, schoolhouses, training schools, teachers, 
 and protective and reformatory institutions to 
 partially avoid, and, so far as may be, amend, 
 the criminal, and thus an equivalent for both 
 increasing intelligence and decreasing crimi- 
 nality. This ought to be so ; for wealth is the 
 result of work, and it is really work upon 
 which the progress of humanity, so far as self- 
 dependent, ultimately depends. An American 
 
The Answer to the First Question 123 
 
 ideal of citizenship that would make the state 
 do what individuals have done for philan- 
 thropy, and institute progressive legislation 
 and pay for its experiments, would be as far 
 beyond the ideals of the past in fact as are 
 American institutions beyond their predeces- 
 sors in theory. And no greater inducement 
 to this can be found than the disseminated 
 belief that in dealing with the child and the 
 criminal we are not dealing altogether with un- 
 manageable spiritual essences, but with physi- 
 cal beings organized, and acting, and acted 
 upon by physical laws whose study will permit 
 as practical a science of education, or criminal 
 jurisprudence, or philanthropy, as of chemistry 
 or biology. And such renovation of philan- 
 thropy and law is no more hostile to any faith, 
 religious or sceptical, than has been the 
 modern development of biology or chemistry. 
 
 " Render unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's, and unto God the things that are 
 God's." 
 
 Apply to physical man physical treatment ; 
 and give to religious man freedom to worship 
 undisturbed at whatever altar to him is holy. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ANSWER DEFENDED 
 
 TO the expediency, perhaps to the rever- 
 ence, of the suggestion to make a purely 
 physical science of sociology, eliminat- 
 ing all imagination-ideas from its premises, 
 some dissent may arise. But the reasoning 
 from the nature and possible signification of 
 language, which urges elimination of imagina- 
 tion-ideas from sociology, might, if carried fur- 
 ther than is necessary for the purposes of this 
 essay, be found to accord with the highest ver- 
 ities of metaphysics and religion. 
 
 Even should it follow from this reasoning 
 from the nature of language itself, that the 
 whole fabric of metaphysics, from the point of 
 view of a science of fact, is but an I rem of the 
 desert, an enchanted island, a Fata Morgana, 
 a mystic castle of St. John seen but in a vision 
 of the imagination, — this might not render the 
 science of fact irreverent. 
 
 124 
 
The Answer Defended 125 
 
 Suppose one to take the extreme position 
 and say that metaphysics was built out of the 
 purest hypothesis, whose beginning dates from 
 the first attempt of the first savage who tried 
 to articulate a sound or word which should ex- 
 press his imagined explanation of the fact that 
 his organism was being acted upon and was 
 responding ; that its growth was added to by 
 every new word which expressed an imagina- 
 tion-idea of the cause of this action and re- 
 sponse while savage fears evoked ghosts, 
 created fetishes, and summoned a supernatural 
 agency to account for every mystery, until the 
 savages' descendants had imagined all the 
 myths now entombed in Dr. Tyler's Primi- 
 tive Culture and modern life had bloomed 
 into a thousand forms of mere theory and be- 
 lief, and so say that metaphysics blends with 
 and vanishes with the phantasms of which it 
 was reared, — what is the force of such a propo- 
 sition ? — Only that the realities of metaphysics 
 are of a different order from the realities which 
 are the subject-matter of physical sociology. 
 
 For it does not for a moment follow that 
 because imagination-ideas are no basis of a sci- 
 entific treatment depending upon sensible and 
 understandable facts, of the physical phase of 
 
126 Applied Sociology 
 
 humanity, therefore metaphysics is a delusion 
 and animism a chimera. It is one thing to 
 cease to base social physical science upon 
 imagination-ideas. It would be quite a dif- 
 ferent thing to deny to them a high value in 
 a different order of sciences. The mere fact of 
 their existence is, indeed, a valid premise for a 
 science of metaphysics, since all facts, even the 
 fact that errors are believed, must be the pro- 
 duct of evolution if evolution be the true law 
 of human life. Sociology first arises, as natu- 
 rally as chemistry or biology, in animism. And 
 as animism soon fails in and fades out of such 
 sciences, so it soon appears that neither revela- 
 tion nor metaphysics tells us what to physically 
 do with the body of him who injures others, or 
 what physical steps to take to produce a body 
 that will not injure others. And the same may 
 be said of every agnostic or sceptical philoso- 
 phy which builds its lofty framework of system 
 upon ideals of the unseen world, foundation 
 and spire equally out of sight of all but its own 
 acolytes. 
 
 But this is no hostile criticism of imagina- 
 tion-ideas when used in relation to metaphysics 
 and religion. Physical sociology simply pro- 
 poses to treat human lives physically to secure 
 
The Answer Defended 127 
 
 improved physical results, and so should rest 
 upon ideas having known correlatives-in-fact. 
 If no "body" were to do any physical act, 
 from the simplest gleam of a smile to the most 
 complex unanimous activity of the entire frame, 
 injurious to itself or to another, but if all phys- 
 ical action were proper action, who would 
 doubt that civilization and human progress 
 would be incalculably advanced ? But who 
 would doubt that such civilization would need 
 and be more entitled to the most lofty concep- 
 tions of metaphysics and religion ? 
 
 But further : What is the significance of the 
 existence of imagination-ideas as a fact ? Are 
 their correlatives-in-fact all unreal ? Are these 
 ideas false or traceable back to what is wholly 
 sensible, rational, and physical ? 
 
 No : because in all that the senses or the 
 reason can sensible-ize or rationalize we find 
 nothing which explains the existence of sensible 
 and rational existences. Rational and sensi- 
 ble existences compel an exercise of imagina- 
 tion ; and inasmuch as within the scope of a 
 sufficient imagination their cause or explana- 
 tion would be found, it follows that the imagina- 
 tion-idea of something behind and producing all 
 actualities is not only justifiable but necessary. 
 
128 Applied Sociology 
 
 and therefore, although in an unknown sense, 
 true. Therefore, upon the premises of this 
 essay, there is something of which our only 
 idea is imaginary ; or, to transpose the sen- 
 tence, the imagination-idea of a cause of 
 sensible existence does have some actual cor- 
 relative which could explain the why and how 
 of existences themselves sensibly and rationally 
 demonstrable and so demanding a correlative- 
 in-fact to the idea of the cause of their exist- 
 ence. Some imagination-ideas, then, even 
 more than ideas arising from sensation or 
 reason, have correlatives-in-fact, although of 
 unknown nature, character, or scope. 
 
 This necessity of a correlative-in-fact de- 
 monstrates that an imagination-idea, as such, 
 is not always wholly a supposition, hypothesis, 
 figment, except as to the true form of its cor- 
 relative, which cannot be now sufficiently or 
 unanimously understood to be practically dealt 
 with in a practical science ; and so the cause 
 of humanity suffers while men debate. There- 
 fore, physical sociology leaves the true form 
 of the correlatives-in-fact which imagination- 
 ideas must have to the metaphysician and the 
 theologian. 
 
 But still, if the above discussion is sound ; 
 
The Answer Defended 129 
 
 if " consciousness " and " thinking " are names 
 for processes or certain activities of the brain ; 
 and if (somewhat as the luminosity of mat- 
 ter in combustion is a state as distinguished 
 from centemporaneous oxidizing as a process) 
 " idea " and " thought " are names for contem- 
 poraneous states of the brain as distinguished 
 from " consciousness " and " thinking " as names 
 of its action (which conditions may come again 
 and again to the same brain, and be reproduced 
 also in another brain) ; and if there can be no 
 thought save as a response to some inflex, 
 no consciousness without an actual object, 
 no thinking without an external impulse set- 
 ting in motion reflex or responsive action, — 
 then it follows that the brain action called 
 " thought " never arises without an inflex to 
 cause it, either mediately or immediately ; that 
 an idea not caused by any inflex is impossible ; 
 and hence that all ideas are responses to im- 
 pressions from actuality and so are either exact 
 truth or else truth so interwoven with other 
 truths as never to have gained proportion or 
 distinctness. 
 
 No inflex (no impression which causes a 
 reflex) can arise without a cause. This fact 
 becomes a premise for metaphysics, viz. : Imag- 
 
13° Applied Sociology 
 
 ination-ideas have actuality as their cause, 
 although their blending frequently produces a 
 non-exact idea of this actuality, and although 
 we have no criterion of exactitude. 
 
 The imagination-ideas of " a first cause," 
 infinity, the aether, as ideas, must therefore 
 have actuality as their cause ; must be true in 
 general, although in outline inexact. They 
 represent impressions and responses, inflexes 
 and reflexes. They therefore represent facts, 
 however inexactly. 
 
 If the brain does not respond except as im- 
 pressed, the fact that it does respond proves it 
 to have been impressed ; and this proves that 
 that which impressed it was capable of so doing 
 and so was existent. It follows that the hu- 
 man being has as much right to believe in " a 
 first cause " as in a sixpence. The organ- 
 ism responds in more detail — by eye and ear — 
 to the impression of the sixpence. The re- 
 sponses to the impressions made by the sensi- 
 ble object which gives the reflex of a sixpence 
 are more definite than to the impressions which 
 give the reflex or thought of "a first cause." 
 The idea of "a first cause" is the reflex from 
 many inflexes. So is the idea of the sixpence. 
 Inflexes from sight and touch are absent in 
 
The Answer Defended 131 
 
 the first. But negative inflexes are as true as 
 positive inflexes. Many impressions teach us 
 that nothing physically sensible can exist with- 
 out a cause. The inflex from these impres- 
 sions gives the reflex, the idea, of either a 
 self-originating world or a self-originating " first 
 cause " of it. The latter does not contradict ex- 
 perience — the first does. How any cause could 
 be self-originating we have no inflex. We never 
 have an inflex except within the limit of our 
 faculties. We thus have the idea of "a first 
 cause " — but, as our faculties are limited, not a 
 complete, all-embracing idea. The hoiv of the 
 beginning is not an inflex ; but powers and 
 attributes, in part, are inflexes. Perhaps even 
 this how will become an inflex when the 
 powers of consciousness — as defined — are en- 
 larged. But the impossibility of the original 
 nebula, whence came the world and its deni- 
 zens, coming into existence of itself, is an idea 
 which comes from multiplex inflexes ; and if 
 all inflexes come from actuality, this idea of 
 such impossibility must be true. Yet we have 
 the fact, the inflex, of the existence of the 
 world and its denizens. Now begins the rea- 
 sonine action ; beeinnino- with an inflex which 
 produces a reflex, which acts again as an inflex. 
 
132 Applied Sociology 
 
 To this mediate inflex we have as a reflex the 
 idea of " a first cause " ; to a similar inflex, the 
 idea of infinity. 
 
 Aside from revelation, this is one way in 
 which mankind has derived and expressed its 
 idea of a Deity. Nor can there be any inflex 
 to show the impossibility of a correlative-in- 
 fact of this idea ; although there are, also, no 
 inflexes of the whole mystery. Therefore 
 this reflex — this idea — is at present an ulti- 
 mate thought of mankind, as other infini- 
 ties — of time and space — are ultimate thoughts. 
 We see — get an inflex from actuality of — a 
 part of space and a period of time. We say 
 that — it is a reflex that — nothing interrupts 
 the expansion of time or space into infinity ; 
 although we have no reflex as tQ the con- 
 crete whole of such infinity. Nothing within 
 us responds to any impressions of infinity 
 whether of time or of space. So of " a 
 first cause." We see a result — the universe. 
 All the impressions it makes upon us and 
 what we call our knowledge about it pro- 
 duce, as a reflex, an idea of the impossi- 
 bility of the universe being self-creative unless 
 there be asstimed in it something which is 
 not disclosed by any inflex producing a re- 
 
The Answer Defended 133 
 
 flex of such an assumption. Hence arises 
 as a reflex an imagination-idea of some- 
 thing greater than the universe and which 
 caused and sustains it ; and the sanction for 
 this idea is as compelHng as the sanction 
 for the idea of a sixpence. What that " some- 
 thing greater than the universe " is, except as 
 to certain essential capabilities of it, the human 
 organism cannot yet understand. It strikes 
 us, it impresses us, according to our different 
 capacities for responsiveness or the extent of 
 our consciousness of such necessary attributes. 
 The savage has a glimmering consciousness — 
 Goethe, Savonarola, Tennyson, Cardinal Man- 
 ning have a wider consciousness — of the attri- 
 butes essential to it. And all of these, from 
 their several points of view, believe that they 
 are severally right. Hence arises divergence 
 in religions and creeds. And hence, also, and 
 of course, divergence in systems of ethics, 
 morals, aesthetics. 
 
 Sometime the light that shines through the 
 prism of life and shows these different creeds 
 as the prism shows colors may all come through 
 the re-formed prism of consciousness. Some- 
 time, if evolution is true and He who works 
 by it as a rule, or, as we say, law, means it to 
 
134 Applied Sociology 
 
 accomplish so lofty a result. Meanwhile, how- 
 ever wildly coveting the truth that is beyond 
 us, we must be satisfied with this — to faithfully 
 utilize the knowledge which we have ; not wrap 
 our knowledge of physical man in a napkin of 
 superstition, or even faith, and lay it away until 
 we have more knowledge. 
 
 Now consider these imagination-ideas once 
 more, from the standpoint of language being 
 a physical response to physical impressions. 
 
 If every subjective word names something 
 occurring in the organism, then such word 
 must involve the something which occurs. All 
 that does sensibly occur to constitute conscious- 
 ness or intent is an activity of bodily organs as 
 a tout ensemble. Hence " consciousness " and 
 "intent" are words expressing the subjective 
 activity which occurs — are names for those 
 occurrences. 
 
 Now with this activity of the organism 
 alone can humanity be siire of dealing rightly. 
 In it, no doubt, exists that brain activity called 
 " imagination," which gives us fictitious ideas — 
 fictitious because, although some of them may 
 hereafter as heretofore become demonstrable, 
 until this occurs we can only use the fact that 
 humanity has such imagination-ideas, for the 
 
The Answer Defended 135 
 
 purpose of affecting its beliefs and enthusi- 
 asms. Thus sociology can deal with the dis- 
 cernible, tangible correlatives-in-fact of ideas, 
 and with the fact that there are imagination- 
 ideas with correlatives-in-fact not yet compre- 
 hensible ; and, in so dealing, it denies nothing 
 of spirituality. 
 
 The imagination-idea of a source or origin of 
 spiritual force in all its individuality of action 
 is thus left by physical sociology where it 
 finds it. The nature or mode or essence of 
 its origin being wholly beyond the present 
 accurate perception of living organisms or 
 persons, its study and administration are left 
 to the different creeds, which present varying 
 forms of this idea and construct varying sys- 
 tems ; in all which is present a central idea of 
 an originating force, together with radiating 
 subordinate ideas of life and duty harmonious 
 with such central principle. 
 
 And returning suddenly from this broad 
 generalization to the specific reform herein 
 argued for, it may be urged, in closing this 
 chapter, that it is not only permissible but a 
 d^ity — in order that humanity may advance all 
 along the line — to eliminate from physical sci- 
 ences the doubt and controversy that oppose 
 
136 Applied Sociology 
 
 unanimous conceptions of spirituality ; that it 
 is a plain duty to refuse to postpone establish- 
 ing a practical system of law or education or 
 philanthropy until it be unburdened by such 
 controversy ; a plain duty not to insist that 
 theologic belief shall be first universal ; a plain 
 duty not to refuse to apply what we may all 
 know as to the material bodies and actions of 
 men until agreement is reached upon the spe- 
 cific nature of that force — be it soul or other- 
 wise — which is the secret of existence. 
 
 While the church fosters spirituality, and 
 metaphysics pushes ratiocination in pursuit of 
 supersensible verities, the social physical rela- 
 tions of men in society require physical systems 
 of criminal law, charity, and the preservation 
 of the citizen. 
 
 Nor need it be feared lest the views herein 
 suggested lead to fantastic vagaries ; for not 
 only are they in no way anti-religious, but they 
 are meant to stop short of being quixotic. 
 
 It may be asked, for instance. Why not ex- 
 tend this beautiful physical theory into the 
 homes of the people, and by statute extinguish 
 petulance at the breakfast table, lovers' quar- 
 rels, lawsuits, and elopements ? An answer, in 
 good faith, is plain — Because no intellect is 
 
The Answer Defended 137 
 
 comprehensive enough or knows how to 
 phrase such a statute. From the time that 
 ^schylus and Euripides represented the work- 
 ing out of tragedy in the play between indi- 
 viduality and environment personified as Fate, 
 down to the last story in which George Eliot 
 or Hardy or others copy their classic forbears, 
 omitting Fate as a character but supplying 
 its terrible role with an unpersonified law of 
 cause and effect, imaginative literature has 
 played over the surface of life like a lambent 
 flame, seeking causes, revealing here and there 
 an outline, here and there universal truth, here 
 and there a blending and weaving of antagon- 
 istic forces. 
 
 Such literature has been and may long con- 
 tinue to be a favorite form in which to present, 
 illustrate, and study human life ; but of the 
 whole of life, various phases or parts may, nev- 
 ertheless, be capable of enough comprehension 
 to justify a specific treatment ; for we know 
 that vaccination usually prevents small-pox 
 and that wholesome bodies exert wholesome 
 activities. 
 
 The theory herein suggested, if rightly com- 
 prehended, will not appear to apply to mys- 
 teries of personality, but only to the broad, 
 
138 Applied Sociology 
 
 specific fact that nine tenths of civilized hu- 
 manity will develop into normal men and 
 women, if given a healthful environment. 
 Doubtless the higher the development, the 
 greater the possibility of tragedy. Doubtless 
 the most highly gifted physical, moral, and in- 
 tellectual organisms are exposed to the great- 
 est damage from unfortunate idiosyncrasies of 
 individuality or environment. But with such 
 problems as these, it would be ungenerous to 
 suggest that this essay has anything to do. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TRUE USE OF IMAGINATION-IDEAS IN PHYSICAL 
 SOCIOLOGY 
 
 IN Chapter VII. it has been observed that 
 the great imagination-ideas of humanity 
 must have some correlative-in-fact, how- 
 ever incomprehensible by and unknowable to 
 human beings, and that, therefore, sciences by 
 which various hypotheses are sought to be 
 made into explanations are of a true value, 
 although they should be viewed as theoretical 
 and not permitted, while their hypotheses are 
 superphysical, to be made the basis of practical 
 administration or use in sociology. 
 
 No definite intimation has been so far made 
 as to what practical use may be made of im- 
 agination-ideas in the practical science under 
 discussion. 
 
 But it does not follow because imagination- 
 ideas are not a proper basis for, that they 
 therefore have no part in the practice of, an 
 applied science. On the contrary, if it is a 
 
 3 39 
 
HO Applied Sociology 
 
 verifiable physical fact that an imagination- 
 idea is an actual product of an apparently 
 physical brain, then the imagination-idea has 
 a physical basis and is a phase of physical- 
 ity. It is also a fact that such ideas pass 
 from one brain to another and thus bring 
 about results. It therefore follows that a pro- 
 duct of one physical brain may be communi- 
 cated to another physical brain, may become 
 a mode of motion of that brain, and so exer- 
 cise an influence of vast scope upon its new 
 possessor. 
 
 Here we find the physical value of imagina- 
 tion-ideas and the true relation to be fostered 
 between ideas-of-fact and imagination-ideas in 
 sociology. Ideas-of-fact constitute the true basis 
 of the assumptions in which sociology should 
 assert itself. Imagination-ideas are stimulants 
 and incentives to cause the physical activity to 
 exert itself in conduct which injures neither 
 its own organism nor the organism of another. 
 Imagination-ideas, as the vehicles of great en- 
 thusiasms and firm beliefs, and as constituting 
 guides and incentives to useful conduct, give 
 rise to sciences of ethics, aesthetics, psychology, 
 and, in a plane distinct from that of the sciences 
 of fact, reach and modify the physical man. 
 
Imagination-Ideas 141 
 
 In determining how far mankind in social 
 relations may be made its subject-matter, phys- 
 ical science should confine itself to what can 
 be sensibly known. 
 
 In determining what will affect the individ- 
 ual, it will include those imagination-ideas of 
 which, outside of the fact that they do affect 
 and modify him and his physical exhibition of 
 himself, it knows nothing exactly ; because 
 they have no sensible correlatives-in-fact. 
 
 It excludes such ideas in defining the ob- 
 jects of sociology, only to bring them back 
 again to assist its undertakings ; because the 
 effect of them in fact can be noted, as well as 
 the effect of a drug or of a straight-jacket. 
 
 Before illustrating the possibility of such 
 practical dealing with humanity by aid of a 
 physical sociology, it only remains to state the 
 question as to its province and functions. As 
 previously remarked, the first question was 
 with regard to the limits of the proposed 
 science and its relation to the fundamental 
 question as to animistic ideas. 
 
 That having been answered, the second 
 question remains. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE SECOND QUESTION STaTED 
 
 THE first question whicli arose under the 
 suggestions growing out of the general 
 point of view set forth in the opening 
 chapters, namely, as to whether a science of 
 fact should attempt to deal with the spiritual 
 aspects of humanity, having been answered, we 
 are at once, in taking up the thread of thought, 
 face to face with this question, viz. : 
 
 If sociology as an applied science is to deal 
 with physical as distinguished from spiritual 
 man, how and where is it to start ? In its first 
 setting out, what shall it turn to ? 
 
 In general, the first attempt at an applied 
 science of sociology must be to repeat in mat- 
 ters of detail the thought processes by which 
 animistic views of social science as a whole 
 come to be excluded ; to free the various 
 branches or subdivisions of sociology from the 
 premise or assumption, derived from imagina- 
 
 142 
 
The Second Question Stated 143 
 
 tion-ideas, that the supersensible ego is at all 
 the subject-matter for their consideration or 
 manipulation. 
 
 Next, although the first purpose of the pro- 
 posed science is iconoclastic, its main and re- 
 lated purpose is not iconoclastic but creative, 
 that it may not merely destroy old images but 
 replace them. It may then take a "new de- 
 parture " toward a practical outcome. 
 
 Having dislodged old and faulty assump- 
 tions, the business of applied sociology as a 
 theory is to replace these with new assump- 
 tions, and, as rapidly as may be, follow this by 
 a readjustment of practice to theory, making 
 use of such deductive and inductive proofs as 
 may speedily show either the uselessness or 
 advantages of the changes proposed. And 
 before specific formulae can be made complete 
 in the various phases of social life which physi- 
 cal sociology may " take for its province," 
 further facts, of course, will be essential. At 
 the besfinnino' of this discussion, it was observed 
 that proper facts for use as premises or foun- 
 dations are essential to any science which 
 would not be founded upon hypothesis or im- 
 agination-ideas ; and it is equally true that, 
 while facts enough seem to be at hand to war- 
 
144 Applied Sociology 
 
 rant an applied, as distinct from a theoretical 
 or fnetempirical, science of sociology, yet it 
 may well be that, in various subdivisions, fur- 
 ther facts are necessary to enable the sufficient 
 statement of assumptions sufficiently demon- 
 strated to be termed sensible or matter of fact, 
 and so also sufficient to take the place of those 
 hypothetical assumptions abandoned as insuf- 
 ficient. 
 
 This indicates that, in pursuit of a general 
 plan founded upon a general conclusion, special 
 branches or subdivisions of social science re- 
 quire to be specialized and special assumptions 
 established as foundations. 
 
 That renewed study of the human organism, 
 perhaps along new lines, is specially essential, 
 is evident. Medicine and surgery have al- 
 ready furnished the foundation, so far as the 
 individual is concerned. To seek to more 
 definitely establish the physical activities and 
 changes which accompany the exercise of 
 thought, emotion. Intent, consciousness. Is but 
 to follow on after the labors of Harvey in dis- 
 covering the circulation of the blood, Jenner 
 concerning vaccination, Pasteur In relation to 
 organic growths, Charcot as to hypnotism, and 
 the many modern specialists who have estab- 
 
The Second Question Stated hS 
 
 iished the physical relations between the acts 
 of the human organism as a whole, both nor- 
 mal and abnormal, and the condition of its 
 members and nervous system. 
 
 Perhaps only specialists know to what suc- 
 cess scientific psychology, as it is termed, has 
 been carried. 
 
 It is not too much to say that every action 
 now termed mental or emotional has been 
 shown to not only include a physical activity 
 of the unseen brain and nervous system, but 
 also to communicate itself to and so affect 
 the accessible parts of the body as to be 
 capable of detection, measurement, and state- 
 ment. 
 
 If one's finger be placed in the proper in- 
 strument, it will record not only the normal 
 nervousness of movement, but, if meanwhile 
 the brain exert itself to perform any task of 
 thought or feeling, the instrument will dis- 
 tinctly record also the story of the perform- 
 ance of that task. 
 
 So the normal sensitiveness, activity, and 
 heat attending the normal brain activity may 
 be measured and compared with the abnor- 
 mal. So the physical individuality of a person 
 may be plotted and then depicted from the 
 
146 Applied Sociology 
 
 special characteristics of size, strength, color, 
 and form, through the special characteristics 
 of the quality or timbre of voice, the delicacy 
 of perceptions, the responsiveness of various 
 sense- or nerve-centres, on to the conflict in 
 which contending motor-forces discharge them- 
 selves along the lines of least resistance in 
 strict harmony with the mathematical law as 
 to the parallelogram of forces. 
 
 Based upon such investigation and its reve- 
 lations, we have already the plotting of the 
 curves of criminal organizations, and an ap- 
 proximate picture of the criminal as a physical 
 organism. Indeed, physical organism is " sub- 
 dued to what it works in like the dyer's hand " ; 
 and if no flaming color tell its story, yet the 
 telltale organism will give up its secrets when 
 questioned in proper form and method. It is 
 but a question of time and opportunity for 
 experiment to obtain such physical tests of 
 the human organism as shall enable the formu- 
 lation of a system of diagnosing the physical 
 conditions which attend much of the mental 
 and emotional activity of normal citizens, and 
 those which attend the abnormal activity of 
 their abnormal fellows. The physics of what 
 is now termed " consciousness," and what is 
 
The Second Question Stated 147 
 
 now termed " intent," in this way admit of 
 study, comprehension, and practical treatment. 
 And this, of course, ought to be borne in mind 
 in estimating the possibiUty and utihty of an 
 apphed science of sociology.* 
 
 But applied sociology is not to be understood 
 as another name for a science of medicine. 
 Social man, not individual man, is its main 
 subject-matter. Yet it is because individual 
 man is what he is physically, that his social 
 relations and environment need to be and can 
 be dealt with, studied, and renovated. Hav- 
 ing by study of the individual learned his 
 requirements, sociology must show how to 
 bestow them, by attacking existing theories, 
 so far as vicious or inefficient, and by pre- 
 senting new theories where the old are swept 
 away. 
 
 In Chapter VI. the political significance of 
 some of the conclusions of applied sociology 
 was suggested. And when much that is now 
 
 * whoever desires more light upon this practical phase of the re- 
 sults which are expected from the proposed science may find it in the 
 laboratory of the Bureau of Education at Washington, of Harvard 
 University, and other colleges, and, among others, in the following 
 publications : Fear^ by Prof. Mosso, of Turin, Italy ; Thinkings 
 Feeling and Doing, by Prof. Scripture, Yale University ; and Educa- 
 tion and Patho-Social Studies, by A. MacDonald, Bureau of Educa- 
 tion, Washington, D. C. 
 
148 Applied Sociology 
 
 called the crime or the sin of a supersensible 
 ego shall be recognized as largely preventable 
 or curable idiosyncrasy of the human organ- 
 ism, then the work, the function, of applied 
 sociology will be to formulate the methods 
 and means by which, under the particular 
 form of government of any people, the entire 
 rising generation may be protected from the 
 degradation and degeneration of unhealthful 
 environment, assisted against an unhealthful 
 heredity, and guaranteed a healthful education ; 
 and the degenerates of the older generation 
 may be so treated as to protect society without 
 also preventing their own reformation. 
 
 A short definition of one chief object of ap- 
 plied sociology, so far as it relates to commu- 
 nities, would be this : The preservation of the 
 citizen by eliminating the physical causes of 
 degradation which grow out of environment 
 in thickly settled communities. And beyond 
 this chief purpose, it goes without saying that 
 the general well-being of communities will fur- 
 nish many problems only less important. 
 
 Although this second question as to the 
 practical procedure under the suggested sci- 
 ence is one which naturally arises, its scope 
 may depend upon investigation ; upon what 
 
The Second Question Stated 149 
 
 may be disclosed in an attempt to answer it in 
 all of its phases. 
 
 Therefore, having indicated this second 
 question, and the nature of the answer to it, 
 any attempt to show precise limits or to dis- 
 cuss in detail its various phases is omitted. 
 
 The argument in favor of the attempt to 
 work out and get the benefits of an applied 
 science of sociology may be given more syllo- 
 gistic form ; thus : 
 
 Normal man — that is, the average civilized 
 citizen— does not exert his activities to injure 
 himself or others, either by his thinking pro- 
 cesses or by the physical action which follows 
 them. The activity of both his brain and 
 hand is not injurious, but, as opposed- to in- 
 jurious, useful. This indicates that organs 
 and senses of the normal individual are fitted 
 to such useful action. 
 
 But, out of all individuals, some do exert an 
 injurious activity, both in thought and deed ; 
 which indicates that their organs and senses 
 are fitted to injurious activity. 
 
 It follows that between these two classes of 
 citizens there must be a difference of organism. 
 
 Now, the outcome or culmination of any 
 given organism from youth to age is gradual. 
 
ISO Applied Sociology 
 
 Starting with the normal environment, accord- 
 ing as it tends to call for and develop activity 
 of the good or of the bad senses and organs, 
 the growing organism constantly modifies it- 
 self, until its activity, both of thought and word, 
 becomes distinctly, and as a unit, either injuri- 
 ous or useful. In other words, if the normal 
 grows by the development of good qualities, 
 you get one result ; and, if it grows by the de- 
 velopment of bad qualities, you get another 
 result. 
 
 If environment largely causes the outcome, 
 it is of overwhelming importance ; and there- 
 fore, so far as the community is able by practi- 
 cal means to affect the environment of any or 
 all of its citizens, it ought to do so. 
 
 Now, those citizens who represent the av- 
 erage are already in a substantially favorable 
 environment, although, frequently, peculiar 
 temperaments or organisms do not find the pe- 
 culiar environment which is healthful to them, 
 and so there are many cases of individual fail- 
 ure ; but the hampered classes, who are in an 
 unhealthful environment in the plainest physi- 
 cal matters of shelter, food, and occupation, are 
 the classes to be very greatly affected by a 
 change of environment. Wherever there is a 
 
The Second Question Stated 151 
 
 want of food, clothing, shelter, and useful oc- 
 cupation, there it is certain that the environ- 
 ment is unfavorable, dangerous, and awaiting 
 physical renovation. 
 
 This is plain, and offers to the normal com- 
 munity the following problems, which are of a 
 perfectly practical nature, however difficult of 
 perfect solution, viz. : 
 
 (i) How to eliminate, so far as possible, the 
 evidently vicious from the environment of the 
 normal citizen. 
 
 (2) How to place the vicious under healthful 
 repression. 
 
 (3) How to provide, especially for the 
 younger members of the community, a health- 
 ful environment in respect of food, shelter, and 
 occupation. 
 
 The successful working out of these prob- 
 lems may be attempted with the certain assur- 
 ance that if they be successfully worked out, 
 there will be a corresponding benefit to the 
 community. Moreover, so far as applied soci- 
 ology indicates the grounds for relying upon 
 a physical treatment of man in communities, 
 and justifies and calls for the extension of 
 political supervision over what is so evidently 
 within the reach of law and public administra- 
 
152 Applied Sociology 
 
 tion, and promises success in results, it also 
 calls for a study and theory of details (already 
 well under way, as above pointed out), in order 
 to not only act upon its own premises and con- 
 clusion, but also to point out the practical steps 
 that are to be taken in order to this accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Without further elaboration of the answer 
 to the second question, some subdivisions of 
 social science may be now examined in the light 
 of the theory and suggestions already set forth. 
 Criminal law, education, and public philan- 
 thropy may be taken to illustrate the possibility 
 of an applied science of sociology, under which 
 these branches may be made to depend upon 
 sensible fact instead of, as at present, upon fact 
 and assumption inextricably interwoven. And 
 the three concluding chapters will attempt to 
 furnish such illustration. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE SUGGESTIONS IN CRIMINAL 
 LAW 
 
 TO apply the foregoing views to criminal 
 law as one of the institutions to be 
 included in social science, consider, — 
 First, The principles or assumptions upon 
 which that law rests and is administered ; 
 Second, How far these principles or assumptions 
 are based upon the imagination-idea of a super- 
 sensible ego, and what consequences result 
 from such a basis ; Third, Whether new princi- 
 ples or assumptions, based upon ideas having 
 correlatives-in-fact, can be formulated, which 
 promise more adequate means and methods in 
 criminal law as a social institution. 
 
 j First. 
 
 The present principles and assumptions of 
 
 criminal law have their own natural history. 
 
 And doubtless in tracing this, the sentiment 
 
 Melius est petere fojites qiia7n sectari rivulos " 
 
 153 
 
154 Applied Sociology 
 
 {Co. Liu., 305 b.) would favor a special study 
 of original sources. But, for the purposes of 
 this essay, the easily accessible works of vari- 
 ous scholars,* although not specially directed 
 to the present precise investigation, sufficiently 
 indicate both the origin and nature of these 
 assumptions. 
 
 Among the underlying ideas as to crime 
 brought by the Normans in 1066 to mingle 
 with the ideas of the English, must have been 
 vestiges of the Roman theory that a private 
 injury is to be followed by private vengeance 
 or penalty, and, when of sufficient gravity, by 
 sacral atonement and public punishment ; while 
 a wrong to the state, as treason, is subject to 
 state vengeance ; both public and private in- 
 juries being thought of as committed against 
 both gods and men. (^Enc. Brit., xx., 675.) 
 
 The Normans must also have shared with 
 
 * Vol. vi., p. z'&T,Enc. Brit.; Dr. "Sr-armtr, Deutsche Rec htsge- 
 schichte , Nouvelle Rev. Hist., 1888 ; Bracton ; V\\i^, Hist. Crime; 
 Blackstone, Com., vol. iv. ; Pollock & Maitland, Hist. English 
 Law ; Harv. Law Rev., vii., Nos. 6, 7, 8 ; Prof. Stephen, Com. 
 on Laws of England ; Early Hist, of Malice Aforethought, 
 Maitland, 8 Law Mag. and Rev., 4th Series, p. 406; Criminal Lia- 
 bility of the Hundred, 7 id., p. 367 ; Sir J. F. J. Stephens's Hist. 
 Eng. Crim. Law, vol. iii. ; Crime and Freewill, Tyndall, 12 L. J., 
 pp. 602, 654 ; Cause and Cure of Crime, DuCane, L. Quar, Rev., 2, 
 327 ; Hqljnies, 'J'he Common Law, 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 155 
 
 the German tribes some ideas of bloodfeud and 
 wergild — of private vengeance and the com- 
 pensation which may sometimes be a substitute. 
 
 Both at Rome and in the German forests, 
 the injurious deed seems to have been wholly 
 weighed by its result upon the injured party, 
 his family, or representative. Both deed and 
 result are physical. No more than at Rome 
 does intention seem to have been among the 
 Germans a sine qua non or even a constituent 
 of crime. Roman or German thought did not 
 attempt to trace back the deed and its result, 
 but, from dwelling on these, passed forward 
 to revenge and not backward to study them. 
 
 It would seem, then, that the underlying 
 idea of crime and its retribution brought by 
 the Normans to England represented an act 
 injurious to an individual, and either venge- 
 ance or remuneration therefor taken by his 
 representatives ; or an act injurious to the 
 community, for which the community took 
 vengeance (Tacitus speaks of the tribe putting 
 offenders to death) and perhaps compensa- 
 tion ; which public or private injuries might 
 also involve such impiousness as to demand 
 the sacrifice of the doer of the injury, the 
 intention not being at all considered. 
 
156 Applied Sociology 
 
 What were the ideas as to crime among the 
 English at this epoch ? 
 
 If equal authorities differ as to whether old 
 English law came from Germany or was of 
 Celtic origin, that is here immaterial ; because, 
 whether Germanic or Celtic, the ideas enter- 
 tained by the inhabitants of England of a 
 crime were very like the ideas entertained by 
 the conquering Norman. 
 
 Traces of public fines, corporal and capital 
 punishment, redress to the person wronged, 
 or, if slain, to his kindred — wergild, and blood- 
 feud in default — are found among the Anglo- 
 Saxons. In the time of Alfred, bloodfeud can- 
 not begin until compensation of wergild has 
 been denied, and later the slayer's term for 
 making such payment is fixed at twelve months. 
 For small offences compensation may be made 
 of '^ bdt to the injured and a wite to the king" 
 (Pollock & Maitland, i., 14 ; ii., 449). 
 
 Decrees by the ancient English kings prove 
 that punishment by the state is awarded, 
 ranging from death in cruel forms to mutila- 
 tion, flogging, and slavery. Outlawry follows 
 some of the worst crimes ; and the rate of 
 compensation and the crimes which are emend- 
 able fluctuate. 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 157 
 
 Bloodfeud and wer£-z/d gra.dua\\y yield to this 
 state jurisdiction, which, however, is still feeble. 
 Prisons being almost and reformatories quite 
 unthought of, the criminal cannot be held, 
 and may conceal himself ; therefore outlawry 
 makes the criminal's head a "wolfe's head," — 
 caput lupinum, — and not only is his estate, but 
 himself, a forfeit, — the legal prey of whoever 
 will find and slay him. Mere procedure is not 
 here in question ; but the Norman ordeal by 
 battle seems rather matter of proof than of 
 punishment, as adopted in England. 
 
 The twelfth century is said to have wit- 
 nessed a simplification of the criminal law. 
 Life and limb are at the king's mercy in the 
 case of some crimes "with wide definitions" ; 
 money penalties, or damages, assessed by in- 
 quest or jury, appear in place of a fixed bdt 
 and wite ; while outlawry becomes a process 
 to hold the accused. Then, wilful homicide 
 becomes always a capital crime, and wer- 
 gild begins to fade. The word "felony" ap- 
 pears as including "a certain gravity in the 
 harm done and a certain wickedness in the doer 
 of it . . . the word is also being used to 
 signify the moral guilt which deserves a pun- 
 ishment of the highest order" (Pollock & 
 
158 Applied Sociology 
 
 Maitland, ii., pp. 465, 466). It includes wound- 
 ing, and many injuries punishable with death or 
 mutilation. Later, the wounded party is found 
 waiving the crime and suing for damages, and 
 so getting a bdt not of fixed amount. 
 
 It is said that arson is one of the first felo- 
 nies in which intention is prominent (Pollock 
 & Maitland, ii., 491). Hale, P. C, i., 547; 
 Blackstone, iv., 220; Stephen, iii., 188 ; Coke's 
 Inst., — show indictments malitia prcscogitata. 
 But vengeance is still apportioned to the ex- 
 tent, not the animus of the injury. Thieving 
 is a curse of the age ; hence theft, a grievous 
 felony, is punished by beheading, drowning, 
 tying to a stake below high water, burying 
 alive, and mutilation ; and treason, which in- 
 cludes flight from battle, cowardice, or betrayal 
 of one's lord, by drawing, hanging, disem- 
 bowelling, beheading, and quartering. 
 
 Mr. Wigmore remarks : " About the twelve 
 hundreds the responsibility was still absolute 
 and irrespective of personal blame in pro- 
 ducing the harm" {Harv. Law Rev., vii., p. 
 442). And M. Girard presented a general 
 view in saying {Nouv. Rev. Hist., 1888, p. 
 38) : " He who regards himself as offended 
 against, takes vengeance for the offence as he 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 159 
 
 will and as he can . . . recognizing only 
 the brute fact that he has suffered. . . . 
 He does not concern himself with the intent 
 of the doer." 
 
 Mr, Wigmore, agreeing with M. Girard, 
 after grouping the sources of harm as aris- 
 ing from (a) personal deeds, (b) animals, (i) 
 or inanimate things, concludes that up to about 
 the year 1200 "the responsibility was still ab- 
 solute, and irrespective of personal blame in 
 producing the harm." A homicide by misad- 
 venture forfeits his goods and pays a fine to 
 the king, even if his life is spared, and other 
 harm-doers by accident make compensation 
 to the injured. And In a note {Harv. Law 
 Rev., vii., p. 318), Mr. Wigmore criticises Dr. 
 Brunner's assumption that the old Germans 
 " without discussion treated the unlawful in- 
 tent" etc., by saying : " The primitive Germans 
 did not ' presume ' or ' impute ' an unlawful in- 
 tent ; they simply did not think of the dis- 
 tinction at all. To feel the need of such an 
 element, and to ' impute ' or ' presume ' it, 
 would be the mark of a later stage of develop- 
 ment." 
 
 Thus, before the Norman invasion, and 
 for some time after, the views entertained of 
 
i6o Applied Sociology 
 
 the proper retribution for such injurious acts 
 as are termed crimes called for vengeance 
 upon the doer — whether man, beast, or " beam " 
 from a house ; compensation in lieu of venge- 
 ance ; failing either, outlawry of the criminal 
 man : and established varying rules as to the 
 method of proof ; the form of the vengeance, 
 both public and private ; the character of the 
 compensation ; and the extent and use of the 
 outlawry. Of these general ideas, the central 
 assumption is that the physical fact of injury — 
 the overt physical act and the physical result — 
 is that which is to be revenged, punished, or 
 paid for, without heed to intention (Pollock & 
 Maitland, ii., 468-9, 473). 
 
 But by the year 1466, a felony is usually 
 alleged aniino /clonic ; whereby it would seem 
 that intentio7i, or whatever emotion the Latin 
 word felonico signified, had then become a con- 
 stituent of the crime. It may be that felonico 
 had reference to the grade of the crime merely. 
 
 When first does legal history show attention 
 to questions as to intention ? and when do any 
 words appear in legal documents implying that 
 intention is an ingredient of the crime ? 
 
 Sir James F. J. Stephen in his History of 
 Criminal Law, iii., 43, finds the first statu- 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law i6i 
 
 tory recognition of " malice aforethought," 
 malice prepense, in a statute of 1389. Professor 
 Maitland, agreeing with him that "it is but grad- 
 ually that malice has come definitely to mean 
 a motive " {Law Mag. and Rev., viii., p. 422), 
 mentions that in 1 270 Warenne made oath as to 
 his fracas with Alan — "q7iod non ex pnscogitata 
 malitia factum fuerat" etc. {id., p. 410) ; that 
 " prcemeditatus assulhis " appears in the old 
 form of words for wager of battle {id., 42 1) ; that 
 a Scotch statute of 1369 says, " prcscogitafam 
 malisiam" {id., 422). He then remarks on " the 
 utter incompetence of ancient law to take note 
 of the mental elements of crime. Of this in- 
 competence there is plenty of other evidence. 
 Our earliest authorities have little in- 
 deed to say of intention or motive. When they 
 do take any account of intention or motive, 
 then we may generally suspect that some ec- 
 clesiastical influence has been at work." He 
 instances mens rea from St. Augustine {id., p. 
 426). 
 
 It is pretty plain that, by the common law, 
 up to about 1200, intention was no essen- 
 tial element of crimes, of those injurious acts 
 which were either revenged or paid for in be- 
 half of the injured party. As Maitland sug- 
 
1 62 Applied Sociology 
 
 gests, while bloodfeud is lawful there would 
 be no source of a suggestion that killing a 
 man involves any evil intention. Later on, 
 without being historically accurate as to the 
 date, comes a time when the intention is first 
 thought of as having a good deal to do with 
 the character of the act as criminal. Perhaps 
 the thought arose in distinguishing secret from 
 open murder. Indictments and court docu- 
 ments come to use words imputing not only 
 intention but malicious intention ; trials are 
 had Involving such questions ; sentences are 
 passed affirming the existence of intention ; 
 and gradually the whole criminal law is di- 
 rected at only such acts as are done intention- 
 ally ; until we reach such statements as these : 
 
 " Malitia pracogitata means evil intended beforehand, 
 . . . the dictate of a wicked, depraved, and malignant 
 heart."- — Stephens, Com. Laws of £ng., iv., p. 69. 
 
 " . . . to render a person liable to punishment he 
 must have a guilty intention, or, as it is called in Eng- 
 lish law, malice." — Enc. Brit., vi., 588. 
 
 " All the several pleas and excuses which protect the 
 committer of a forbidden act from the punishment which 
 is otherwise annexed thereto, may be reduced to this 
 single consideration, the want or defect of will. . . 
 Indeed to make a complete crime cognizable by human 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 163 
 
 laws there must be both a will and an act. . . . An 
 overt act . . is necessary in order to demonstrate 
 
 the depravity of the will before a man is liable to punish- 
 ment. And, as a vicious will without a vicious act is no 
 crime, so, on the other hand, an unwarrantable act, with- 
 out a vicious will, is no crime at all." — Blackstone, Com., 
 iv., ch. ii., 21. 
 
 " As punishments are therefore only inflicted for the 
 abuse of that free will which God has given to man, it is 
 highly just and equitable that a man should be excused 
 for those acts which are done through unavoidable force 
 and compulsion." — Id., 27. 
 
 The common law as to crime at first regarded 
 only the physical act performed and the physi- 
 cal consequences of the act. It took no account 
 of will, intent. Gradually, the idea of an evil 
 will and intent crept into the law, and finally 
 became an essential ingredient of crime. 
 
 A very early phase was that the physical 
 thing doing the injury be devoted to compen- 
 sation ; hence, the theory of deodands. 
 
 Then, the man who causes an injury shall 
 suffer by bloodfeud or wergild, by vengeance 
 taken upon his person, or by compensation 
 paid in atonement, if the injury be private ; by 
 state punishment, if public ; and by sacral 
 atonement, if the act be impious. 
 
 At a later stage, the man who " lies in wait " 
 
164 Applied Sociology 
 
 to cause an injury shall suffer, the distinction 
 being rather misty and perhaps taken to avoid 
 liability for pure accident. 
 
 Finally, the man who does an injurious 
 act inalitia prcecogitata shall suffer for it. 
 Malitia prcecogitata involving intent and 
 malice, at first may have included only fore- 
 seeing both the overt act and its resulting in- 
 jury ; but soon a malicious intention comes 
 to be presumed from proof of the corpus 
 delicti. Hence, unless it be shown that the 
 doer was non compos or a child ; unless there 
 be something affirmatively to show that the 
 accomplishment of an injury by means of the 
 act was not foreseen, was not a purpose, — 
 the doing of the naturally injurious act itself 
 proves malitia prcscogitata, and a crime is 
 made out. 
 
 When the criminal law reaches this stage, 
 its form becomes fixed and so remains down 
 to our day. 
 
 It is a "far cry" from the views of our half- 
 savage ancestors who destroyed a thing or a 
 man who had killed or wounded a neighbor, 
 to the charge of a nineteenth-century judge 
 telling a jury that intention to kill, wound, or 
 steal is a prerequisite to any liability under 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 165 
 
 the criminal law. This is not merely a ques- 
 tion of year-books and rolls ; for it involves 
 the origin of one of the basic, causal thoughts 
 of human nature, as well as the history of its 
 transfer from some original source into the 
 criminal law. 
 
 Nor is it enough to say that in its first use 
 rnalitia prcBcogitata and its synonyms served to 
 discriminate a crime from an accident, or the 
 act of a sane man from that of one incapable of 
 cogitation at all. For even if that be true, it 
 does not explain what the intention which 
 must be present consists in when it is present. 
 
 Therefore, it is necessary to trace out the 
 meaning of the word. Beginning with the early 
 law, the desire for vengeance or bloodfend, 
 reimbursement or wergild, arises as the natural 
 feeling of partially civilized men. When those 
 men come together to form general laws, it is 
 not wonderful that, from time to time, they 
 merely change the method without abandon- 
 ing their former reasons or ends in view. 
 The community does what the friends of the 
 injured would do. 
 
 Until more subtile views of man and his 
 springs of action prevail, those men can but 
 go round and round in the same circle. 
 
1 66 Applied Sociology 
 
 Thus, the criminal law develops no farther 
 than humanity itself. Only when reason has 
 seemed to confirm the suggestions of the imag- 
 ination and the emotions, do social conditions 
 improve. The fruition of freedom was once 
 but the dream of a slave ; the brotherhood of 
 man, the vague thought of a mystic. Natu- 
 rally, criminal law is at first but the manifesta- 
 tion by the community of the blind impulse 
 of its individuals. Not until reason has begun 
 to work with the idea that a man is something 
 finer than a beam, that something besides the 
 mere physical act which injures is concerned in 
 a crime, does that same reason substitute finer 
 ideas of retribution. And if, at a given epoch, 
 we can discover what are the controlling ideas 
 with which the community deals with man as a 
 criminal, we shall there discover the source of 
 the assumptions and principles underlying the 
 criminal law of that epoch. Some such source 
 for and explanation of inalitia pracogitata 
 must be found in the general ideas of the 
 people who invented such phrase. 
 
 The above quotation from Blackstone, that 
 punishments "are only inflicted for the abuse 
 of that free will which God has given to man, 
 . . . an unwarrantable act, without a vicious 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 167 
 
 will, is no crime at all," indicates these general 
 ideas. There is no obscurity as to what ideas 
 the words " intent," " will," " free will," " vicious 
 will," broadly import. The history of opinions 
 or of general philosophy need only be referred 
 to here to prove that the ideas attached to 
 the above words are distinct themselves, how- 
 ever curiously indistinct in their correlatives. 
 
 The intellect which knows ; the inmd which 
 conceives, judges, reasons, and intends ; the 
 wz7/ which chooses ; and the heart which feels, 
 — are but names for ideas about the various 
 faculties of what has long been thought of as 
 the spirittcal part of a human being. Under 
 this mode of thought, mind is not a physical 
 but an immaterial faculty. Of the mind, Jona- 
 than Edwards said, " The will is plainly that 
 by which the mind chooses something." Inten- 
 tion is thought of as a state of mind. It is 
 clear that the viciotis free wz7/ which constitutes 
 the criminal intent is thought of and written of 
 by Blackstone, mouthpiece of the law, as the 
 act of the spiritual part of the human being. 
 
 And from, at latest, some time in the fif- 
 teenth century a crime has been thought of as 
 an injurious physical act caused and accompa- 
 nied by a vicious free will — that is, a joint act by 
 
1 68 Applied Sociology 
 
 the spiritual and physical parts of man, acting 
 as a unit. This spiritual part is not thought 
 of as any portion of the body, but as its spirit. 
 Animism, the theory of an immaterial ego or 
 spirit permeating natural forces and vivifying 
 humanity, has come into the criminal law. The 
 mind, the will, are names for the activity of 
 this spirit in man. Theologic sects give vary- 
 ing form to this general theory. Controlling 
 the religious orders, it becomes the current 
 belief of all men. 
 
 This will be assented to without aid of dic- 
 tionaries or philosophies. To state here in 
 detail how Christianity branched into sects, 
 and sects formulated creeds ; how the Greek 
 idea of the Logos associated itself with Chris- 
 tian faith ; how one after another the mediaeval 
 and modern philosophies unfolded, all, how- 
 ever, having as a central principle this theory 
 of the dual nature — the mingled physicality 
 and spirituality — of man, — would be an at- 
 tempt, by one wholly unequal to the task, to 
 write a history and not a mere handful of sug- 
 gestions. 
 
 But it is in this theory of the dual nature of 
 man that the criminal law as defined by 
 Blackstone finds its basic assumption — that 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 169 
 
 what is called crime is the product of the 
 superphysical part, the mind, the will, of man. 
 
 And now, remembering that the word 
 " crime " in law does not include all viciousness, 
 but only certain exhibitions of it, under such 
 definitions as the state prescribes, and using 
 the word here to designate acts of such nature 
 as have been considered proper subjects for 
 prosecution and punishment, we are ready to 
 answer the first inquiry, and formulate, suffi- 
 ciently for present purposes, the principles or 
 assumptions upon which criminal law reposes 
 to-day : 
 
 (i) That crime arises from the voluntary, 
 responsible, and free will or intent of the super- 
 sensible part of man called his soul or mind. 
 
 (2) That physical punishment of the crimi- 
 nal by mere suffering is a right of society, 
 both as a retribution to the criminal and a 
 protection to society by controlling him and 
 intimidating others. 
 
 (3) That punishment may rightly extend to 
 deprivation of life, which in some cases is (ac- 
 cording to Sir M. Hale) even necessary. 
 
 (4) That society is not, as a condition pre- 
 cedent to exerting such right, under any obli- 
 gation, to the offender. 
 
lyo Applied Sociology 
 
 Second. 
 
 How far are these assumptions of the crim- 
 inal law based upon imagination-ideas ? 
 
 Few words need be wasted to show that 
 such is their basis ; for quite evidently the idea 
 of a supersensible ego as the originator of 
 malitia prtBcogitata, malice, vicious will, is the 
 same imagination-idea of the same ego assumed 
 as the originator of consciousness. 
 
 In their application, are they logical or illog- 
 ical, just or unjust, adequate or inadequate ? 
 
 Their logic has been assailed in various cur- 
 rent objections. 
 
 Their positive wrong and injustice appear 
 in the practical administration of the law. 
 
 Their inadequacy is traceable to the useless- 
 ness of imagination-ideas, destitute of correla- 
 tives-in-fact, for a foundation of criminal law 
 as a science of the sensible facts of one phase 
 of social development. 
 
 To elaborate these statements a little : 
 
 These current objections to the logic of the 
 law's assumption of a supersensible ego arise 
 among men widely separated in political, re- 
 ligious, and social beliefs — among logicians, 
 necessitarians, and evolutionists, to whom it 
 appears impossible that a responsible, super- 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 171 
 
 sensible ego can be attributed to insane, de- 
 mented, idiotic, and weak-minded persons, and 
 impossible that normal persons, under normal 
 conditions, should injure either themselves or 
 others, and so with them criminal action does 
 not occur. Yet, eliminating these two extreme 
 classes, there remain only those who are abnor- 
 mal and in a normal environment, and those 
 who are normal but in an abnormal environ- 
 ment ; in which view this assumption of such 
 ego is illogical, and so unsound and practically 
 useless. 
 
 Again, believers in predestination, to whom 
 crime is a legal phrase for sin, who attribute it 
 to an abnormal state although they admit no 
 escape from it except by election of powers 
 outside of themselves, must feel that free will 
 in crime is logically impossible. 
 
 Again, it is a growing belief among evolu- 
 tionists that the man of to-day is intellectually 
 and morally chained to all his antecedents, 
 except so far as released from such of these 
 as have been neutralized or overcome by 
 growth of higher faculties ; and while it is 
 questioned whether the congenital criminal is 
 a sporadic and accidental savage born into 
 civilization, or a degeneration in type from civil- 
 
172 Applied Sociology 
 
 ized progenitors, yet in either view he is abnor- 
 mal, and so abnormal action, aside from any ac- 
 tion of any supersensible ego, must characterize 
 his activities. 
 
 The second and third assumptions that pun- 
 ishment, as such, of man by man, and even 
 unto death, is right, have long encountered a 
 prejudice ; and a sentiment against punish- 
 ment as mere vengeance is not overlooked by 
 Blackstone (iv., p. ii). 
 
 Statistics, so far as taken, carry to many 
 minds a weighty refutation of the efficacy of 
 extreme punishments. (See A. J. Palm on the 
 Death Penalty, Am. Journal of Politics for 
 December, 1892.) 
 
 As to the fourth assumption, the precedent 
 obligation of the community to its criminals is 
 attracting much attention. Many arguments 
 have been made in support of the proposition 
 in Enc. Brit., vi., p. 585, that while prison man- 
 agement and punishment are important, " the 
 preservation from guilt of the great majority who 
 are yet guiltless is of an importance infinitely 
 higher." (See L. O. Pike, Hist, of Crime in 
 England^ Some theorists say that statistics 
 support this obligation by indicating that, for 
 the same expenditure, a greater protection can 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 173 
 
 be obtained from educational and reformatory 
 institutions than from whipping-posts, ducking- 
 stools, drawing and quartering, hanging, or 
 electrocuting. Over $1,000,000 is said to 
 have been the cost in Germany of the seven 
 hundred criminal descendants of one criminal 
 woman born in i 740. 
 
 In next referring to the grave injury and 
 wrong flowing from these assumptions, it may 
 be conceded that, when first imported into the 
 law, the idea of malitia pracogitata was an 
 advance ; that it relieved the involuntary or 
 excusable slayer from a retribution undeserved 
 but inexorable. If so, this is not the only in- 
 stance in which the justice of an earlier age 
 has become the injustice of its successor, or 
 In which the truth of one age has afterwards 
 become a falsehood. 
 
 But from about Blackstone's time these 
 assumptions are chargeable with — 
 
 (i) The killing of innocent persons, the 
 destroying of innocent lives, preventing the 
 regeneration of many more lives, and, inci- 
 dentally, disgracing, discouraging, and produc- 
 ing the degeneration of very many more. 
 
 (2) The assumptions possess no varying 
 adjustability to varying types of criminals, 
 
174 Applied Sociology 
 
 but only to varying degrees of the injuries 
 committed. Their criminality is always the 
 same in kind, — the sin of the supersensible 
 ego, — but the punishment is graded by the 
 degree of injury to the victim. From this it 
 happens that a criminal by occasion, who, in 
 an excess of rage produced by an exceptional 
 environment or sense of danger or desire to 
 escape detection of some lesser crime, kills 
 another, is hanged for it exactly as is a con- 
 genital criminal whose nature it is to kill, 
 who may have committed many murders. It 
 is irrelevant that statutes attempt to correct 
 this ; for such statutes grow, not out of these 
 assumptions but out of humane sentiments. 
 
 (3) These assumptions ignore any cure of the 
 criminal, unless by moral means. The crucifix 
 and the prayer-book are their only restoratives, 
 and are not offered as and are not of any 
 earthly use. It is irrelevant here to answer 
 by pointing to ordinary reformatory institu- 
 tions, or even to Elmira. Such institutions 
 are no defence for assumptions by which they 
 are wholly ignored, but rather the reverse, 
 rather so many proofs that crime should be 
 dealt with as a physical phenomenon ; for they 
 are so many products of that scientific philan- 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 175 
 
 thropy which, even without direct attack, 
 seems to be gradually undermining and de- 
 stroying these old assumptions, together with 
 the horrible Bastilles of which they laid the 
 foundation stones. 
 
 (4) The assumptions take no thought and 
 make no provision for the prevention of crime, 
 except by fright, terror, fear, to be excited in 
 uncaught criminals by killing or imprisoning 
 those who are caught. No doubt there are 
 far too many criminals in the community to 
 make it safe to withdraw terrorizing. But no 
 further preventive is suggested by these as- 
 sumptions, except that, so far as crime is sin, 
 the church and morality are expected to meet 
 it with instruction and reproof. Of crime as a 
 result of physical constitution and environ- 
 ment, the church and morality theoretically 
 know nothing. The hardened criminal fails 
 to comprehend the reproof and treats the 
 danger as incidental to his pursuit, which 
 constantly returns him for a fresh sentence. 
 Thus the prisons " devour and cast up again," 
 scarcely diminishing the shoals of offenders. 
 
 But although these assumptions have been 
 thus variously attacked, they are still the 
 classical foundations of criminal law. Error, 
 
176 Applied Sociology 
 
 since Paracelsus called his attendants to see 
 him drink the " elixir of life," and, as it chanced, 
 also to die from the poison ; error, since witches 
 were pressed or burned to death " for their own 
 eternal good " ; error, not only of entire systems 
 and special tenets, but interwoven with truth 
 and there shining as a base-metal strand in the 
 woof and warp of royal vestments, — error re- 
 treats perhaps as slowly from the law as from 
 any other human institution. The law re- 
 ceives most suspiciously and reluctantly, and 
 yields ever more conservatively than it receives. 
 Opposed alike to novelty and to change, " it is 
 a backward suitor, but an indulgent husband." 
 Fearful of rights which show no precedent, 
 impervious to wrongs which time has hal- 
 lowed, laden with responsibilities broad as 
 life itself is broad, the law is most conserva- 
 tive in relinquishing error and in embracing 
 truth. That it has thereby shunned many a 
 quagmire, detected many a false light, and 
 stood fast against many an onslaught of 'ism 
 and 'ology on the road of human progress. Is 
 true. Better no change than a bad one. If 
 what is herein suggested be, in whole or part, 
 but the changed form of some insinuating, 
 many-headed error, then no one more than 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law i77 
 
 this writer will be grateful for a perception 
 more piercing than his own. 
 
 To him it seems that, besides the above 
 grounds of dissatisfaction with these assump- 
 tions, the preceding argument made against 
 the use of imagination-ideas in sociology and 
 illustrated from consciousness leads to the 
 abandonment of imagination-ideas in law as 
 an applied science, and that such argument in- 
 volves, logically, not only their dismission but 
 also (as shown later) the foundation of other 
 assumptions to replace them. 
 
 That is, — to repeat a little, — the fundamental 
 assumptions of criminal law are, like similar 
 prevalent assumptions in sociology, vague and 
 arbitrary so far as they make an immaterial, 
 spiritual ego the source, in the one case of 
 consciousness, in the other of nialitia prcB- 
 cogitata, and consequently are unadapted and 
 inadequate to, and inefficient equivalents for, 
 the protection of society or the reformation of 
 criminal man. 
 
 From this point of view, these old assump- 
 tions are erroneous and unverifiable as to 
 what the law calls nialitia prcscogiiata, mahce 
 aforethotight, or vicious will ; because — 
 
 (i) There is and can be no sensible proof 
 
178 Applied Sociology 
 
 of any free will about it, in the old sense of 
 the phrase. 
 
 (2) There is no proof of anything volun- 
 tary about it, as coming from any supersensi- 
 ble, metaphysical ego. 
 
 (3) There is no proof of any responsibil- 
 ity about it, in the sense that a supersensible, 
 immaterial ego caused it and could have es- 
 caped or avoided it. 
 
 (4) As these assumptions are based upon 
 imagination-ideas which have no sensible cor- 
 relatives-in-fact, they cannot be made the sen- 
 sible premises for any conclusions as to what 
 results — retribution, control, correction — 
 should follow upon the commission of injurious 
 acts. They arise in superstition, act in dark- 
 ness, convict without reason, punish without 
 discrimination, fail to protect society, ignore 
 reform of the criminal, and, by their false 
 theory that crime arises from a supersensible 
 ego, hamper or prevent the state from apply- 
 ing its secular energies to its prevention and 
 extirpation. 
 
 Third. 
 
 What has applied or physical sociology to 
 offer in place of those old assumptions ? 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 179 
 
 So far as consciousness is physical, malitia 
 prcecogitata, criminal malice, will, or intent, is 
 also physical ; a disposition of the organism 
 toward the activity termed "criminal" result- 
 ing from a parallelogram of inflexes producing 
 a particular reflex ; a residual reflex leading to 
 such activities after various concomitant in- 
 flexes, so far as equal, have neutralized or bal- 
 anced each other. 
 
 From a physical standpoint, the growth into 
 or away from the criminal status may be re- 
 garded somewhat as follows : Take any given 
 subject — say a boy of fifteen, of ordinary in- 
 stincts, passions, senses, and little education. 
 We must begin with what he has got, what he 
 is, at the time we take him. Now, suppose 
 that his physical inclination to use words of 
 truthfulness, to do acts of honesty, and to 
 exercise bodily temperance are exactly equal 
 to his physical inclination to the profit obtain- 
 able by a lie, or by theft, or the enjoyment of 
 what has been called " the love of a fuddle." 
 If all his associates are liars, thieves, and 
 drunkards, the latter inclination will be grati- 
 fied, encouraged, intensified, and the resulting 
 acts practised by him. Nothing will oppose, 
 everything will inflame, the tendency to lie, 
 
i8o Applied Sociology- 
 
 steal, and drink, as physical acts. In the 
 course of a few years, the easiest activity of 
 the man will be to lie, steal, drink. His brain 
 and senses will so act. To induce him to ab- 
 stain will require re-forming the structural con- 
 dition which he had at fifteen years. Until 
 that is done, the physical acts of this organized 
 being will be lying, theft, and drunkenness. 
 This is not deniable. 
 
 Now, if at fifteen all his associates are truth- 
 ful, honest, and temperate, his inclination to 
 be the same will increase. In the course of 
 a few years, the physical action of the man 
 will not permit him to lie, steal, or drink ; and 
 if he reaches a mature age and is subjected to 
 no sudden and extraordinary temptation, he 
 will be an honest, truthful, temperate man — 
 that is, he will abstain from the physical acts 
 of lying, thieving, and drinking — and continue 
 so from force of habit. 
 
 Now, of course, this simple instance is not 
 offered as a fair type of either environment or 
 of individuality. It is too simple. The ordi- 
 nary boy of fifteen is already unequally dis- 
 posed to injurious or uninjurious acts. His 
 environment is scarcely ever one of uniform 
 or even continuous character, but temptation 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law i8i 
 
 or prudent examples and counsels come to him 
 in various proportions. 
 
 And yet, if the simple example is the truth, 
 as cannot be doubted by any one, then a prin- 
 ciple is established by it ; and although in the 
 complex life of a complex individuality the 
 problem is a hundredfold more complex, yet, 
 theoretically, all the antagonistic personal and 
 external forces will balance or modify each 
 other in the same way as in the simple ex- 
 ample. The outcome will depend upon the 
 parallelogram of the various forces. 
 
 As, according to the law of equivalents, 
 every result requires not an unfixed but a 
 fixed proportionate cause, the causes which 
 produce a saint or a sinner must be equivalent 
 to the given result. 
 
 " Every man has his price " is a maxim 
 founded on fact, even if there be some men 
 to whom it would never apply. The possibil- 
 ities of the most saintly natural character may 
 be obliterated by an environment sufficiently 
 overpowering. Whether a thoroughly abnor- 
 mal character — a born or congenital criminal — 
 can by training from infancy be moulded into 
 an honest, normal man, perhaps the world 
 does not to-day know ; and it may find that it 
 
1 82 Applied Sociology 
 
 is possible only by a successful surgical opera- 
 tion, producing a change of physique. 
 
 And in the case: of a great criminal, whose 
 biography is a tale of " blood and lust and 
 crime," science finds an organization in some 
 parts like to that of cannibals and savages, 
 attributes his acts to an organization endowed 
 with and ruled by only primal instincts of 
 savagery, and so refuses to look upon him as 
 endowed with all the discriminating percep- 
 tions and pure emotions of normal men, which 
 his supersensible ego viciously thwarts and 
 denies ; refuses to regard him as stamping out 
 these normal qualities by an exercise of free 
 will, but regards him as entirely destitute of 
 them. And while this view is not at first sight 
 as easy of acceptance when a high capacity is 
 present, — where, as we say, the man is " smart," 
 — yet, on second thought, it would seem that 
 to explain the criminality of such person by 
 free will is less easy than in the case of a fool. 
 
 It may be that a congenital criminal is, like 
 some animals, untamable. But however this 
 may be as to the congenital criminal, the phys- 
 ical activities of the ordinary person will, as a 
 rule, be exercised as they are taught to be and 
 will result in such physical action as injures 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 183 
 
 neither himself nor another, or the reverse, 
 according to which variety of actions he is 
 made to practise from childhood to mature 
 years. 
 
 Doubtless, a different view is interwoven 
 with the prevailing theologic notions of the 
 day, which would treat crime as sin punishable 
 by law, and impute to humanity " the unshaken 
 conviction that sin is forever, while man is 
 man, the outcome of an exercise of the power 
 of self-determined will." 
 
 This may be so ; but whence came the 
 "self" which has such a "will" toward sin? 
 Unless self-engendered, it can have no respon- 
 sibility as the author of a sinful will. A man 
 may have a self-determining will ; but does 
 not the character of its determinations depend 
 upon what kind of " self " it is ? 
 
 Only a theologian, if anybody, is competent 
 to combat the above dictum in its strictly theo- 
 logic sense ; and this is a layman's query. But 
 the moment such dictum is taken out of the- 
 ology and offered as the basis of practical 
 criminal laws, of physical dealing with crimi- 
 nals, that moment the physician, the prison- 
 reformer, the statistician, the publicist, may 
 gome forward with a staternent of the ess^n- 
 
184 Applied Sociology 
 
 tials of actual procedure, which does not 
 include, even if it does not deny, such dictum. 
 Scientific men have another way of looking 
 at the will : 
 
 " If, then, our organisms, with all their tendencies and 
 capacities, are given us without our being consulted, 
 and if, while capable of acting within certain limits in 
 accordance with our wishes, we are not masters of the 
 circumstances in which motives and wishes originate, if, 
 finally, our motives and wishes determine our actions, 
 in what sense can these actions be said to be the result 
 of free will?" — Professor Tyndall, Birmingham Ad- 
 dress, The Law J^ournal (Oct. 13, 1877), xii., 602. 
 
 A more specific sentence from an article by 
 S. A. K. Strahan, M.D., in the Weshninster 
 for June, 1895, p. 664, may be quoted. The 
 article is entitled " What to Do with our 
 Habitual Criminals," and the author says : 
 
 " Our treatment of criminals is founded upon the 
 erroneous supposition that the root of all crime is vol- 
 untary viciousness, and that it is possible, therefore, to 
 terrorize the law-breaker into living a law-abiding life. 
 If we would once recognize the perfectly established 
 fact that a very large part of the crime committed is the 
 outcome of inherited vicious temperament, and beyond 
 the will of the individual, we would be in a fair way to 
 the establishment of a new prison system which would 
 be as economical and beneficial to society as it would 
 be humane." 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 185 
 
 Now on this old question of " free will " it is 
 still impossible to have unanimity. Two op- 
 posite views are expressed in the first two of 
 these three quotations. And yet, if the law is 
 to determine whether a supersensible ego exists 
 as a cause of crime, it must take sides with 
 either the theologian or his opponent. But, as 
 was remarked early in this discussion, the 
 time has come when social science should no 
 longer take sides upon any question of spirit- 
 uality. Here it may be repeated as to crimi- 
 nal law as a subdivision of sociology, that it 
 should be a science of the known and not of 
 the unknown, of fact and not of hypothesis, as 
 these words have already been defined. 
 
 The third of the above quotations comes 
 nearer to a practical suggestion : Eliminate 
 from criminal law its animistic assumptions ; 
 make it a science of sensible facts only ; in its 
 administration, confine it to dealing only with 
 the physical man, in which it may, of course, 
 have all the aid which theories of religion, 
 ethics, or aesthetics can contribute. 
 
 To illustrate : A man is tried for killing 
 another. There is no occasion to inquire as 
 to spiritual intent ; whether there was any free 
 will about it ; whether it was voluntary in the 
 
1 86 Applied Sociology 
 
 sense of wilful ; or whether there was any moral 
 responsibility about it. The necessary inqui- 
 ries are, Was the act committed ? If yes, was 
 it a normal act ? 
 
 If the tribunal find that it was purely in 
 self-defence, it was normal ; if it was purely 
 accidental, it was normal ; and so on. 
 
 If it was not normal, there remains the 
 main question, How far was it below the nor- 
 mal ? — I. e., was it the act of a congenital crim- 
 inal, a lunatic, a robber, a drunkard, or of one 
 smarting from a special wrong ? 
 
 When all such necessary and proper inquiries 
 have been exhausted, the status of the indicted 
 will be clear, the cameo of his act cut clearly by 
 his personal mechanism upon the surface of his 
 life. 
 
 To the tribunal by which sentence is imposed 
 can then be submitted a description of the 
 criminal, his heredity, his antecedents, his age, 
 physique, temperament, the circumstances of 
 the overt act constituting the crime, and so a 
 problem proposed to this tribunal, under such 
 general powers as may be from time to time 
 entrusted to it, something like this : What is 
 the proper disposition of this person? Is it 
 safe to society to allow him to go at large ? 1$ 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 187 
 
 there any special treatment likely to reform 
 him personally ? 
 
 That the burden of dealing individually with 
 so many criminals necessitates treating them 
 to a great extent in classes is, so far as this 
 essay goes, a question of detail, as is the ques- 
 tion of how far capital punishment should be 
 ever inflicted, and how far compensation for 
 the injury may be made a feature of the treat- 
 ment. If the general scheme herein suggested 
 be ever thought worthy of trial, its exploiting 
 will require many other lines of investigation. 
 
 Although not strictly in point, a curious il- 
 lustration of how men, without preserving the 
 ancient bloodfeud or wergild, have been led to 
 impose a liability for injurious acts without 
 calling in the offending intent of a superphys- 
 ical ego, is furnished from the law as to inju- 
 rious acts, mostly below the grade of crimes, 
 called torts, in which " intention to violate 
 another's rights, or even the knowledge that 
 one is violating them, is not in English law 
 necessary to constitute the wrong of trespass 
 as regards either land or goods." Even in 
 wrongs to the person, reputation, or estate, it is 
 only ''generally speaking" that injury is "wil- 
 ful or wanton " ; it may include merely " what 
 
1 88 Applied Sociology 
 
 the Greeks called v/3pts." While the ancient 
 Anglo-Saxon law enumerated the injuries en- 
 titling the victim to compensation, modern law 
 imposes, as a duty, "to avoid causing harm to 
 one another." (Pollock on Torts, pp. 9, 12, 18, 
 21, 22.) 
 
 So accordant is it with an inherent sense of 
 justice, or so evident is it that the well-be- 
 ing of mankind demands that he who injures 
 another shall make it good, aside from any 
 presence or absence of intention, that we have 
 here in the modern law of torts a suggestion 
 of a system of law as entirely independent as 
 was ancient criminal law of this assumption of 
 a malicious intent of a guilty superphysical ego. 
 
 Professor Pollock (p. 1 2) comments upon the 
 liabilities under the law of torts, and their 
 "want of intelligible relation to any moral con- 
 ception " ; this liability being for acts only, 
 without reference to any question of intent. 
 Perhaps the commentators of the future will 
 wonder that, at the close of the nineteenth 
 century, a mere imagination-idea — that a ma- 
 licious intent arises from a guilty superphys- 
 ical ego — should have condemned men to 
 death, and will class the delusion with witch- 
 craft. 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 189 
 
 Now this deductive theory as to the neces- 
 sity of providing different assumptions as the 
 basis of criminal law may be supported by 
 induction. Within a comparatively few years, 
 a theory has thus arisen that crime is largely 
 the result of heredity and environment, the 
 idea of criminal man being emphatically 
 changed, not by reversion to the savage idea 
 of blind revenge upon the doer of an injury, 
 but by exchanging the intermediate notion 
 that crime is the product of a responsible free 
 will for an idea that the individual, here as 
 elsewhere, is the result of his personality plus 
 his environment ; that his original character is 
 wholly and his environment largely the result 
 of causes over which he had no control ; that 
 the circle of his freedom, if such a word be 
 proper at all, lies only in the very restricted and 
 very varying sphere within which his intellect 
 or common sense may, but only according to 
 its nature, exert itself ; and that, therefore, 
 both for the protection of society and the im- 
 provement, if possible, of the criminal, such 
 treatment is required as will neutralize the 
 elements of his character which prompt, and 
 the environment which favors, the commission 
 pf crime, such treatment involving an examina- 
 
igo Applied Sociology 
 
 tion of the environment and the physical, 
 emotional, and intellectual make-up of the in- 
 dividual, with a view to correction if possible, 
 and, if not, to repression by imprisonment or 
 otherwise. 
 
 The Italians have reached some such theory 
 as this by induction, which may greatly assist 
 to formulate a new set of assumptions for a 
 system of correction, development, and re- 
 pression, upon principles which shall sweep 
 within the proper jurisdiction of the secular 
 authorities much that has been heretofore 
 thought to belong rather to the domain of 
 religion and moral law. 
 
 The deductions made in this essay are sup- 
 posed to generally harmonize with and support 
 the inductive logic under which Professors 
 Lombroso and Ferri have inaugurated a system 
 for dealing with crime. 
 
 To attempt a summary of their work would 
 not be here in place ; but as some of their 
 expressions seem to accord with that material- 
 istic philosophy which the sciences of sociology 
 and criminology should not depend upon any 
 more than upon the theologic notions pre- 
 viously referred to, it may be in point to quote 
 from Criminal Sociology, by Professor Ferri ; 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 191 
 
 deprecating, however, the use of these mere 
 quotations as the basis of any criticism upon 
 his theory as a whole. 
 Professor Ferri says : 
 
 " No doubt the idea of a ' born criminal ' is a direct 
 challenge to the traditional belief that the conduct of 
 every man is the outcome of his free-will, or at most of 
 his lack of education, rather than of his original physio- 
 psychical constitution." — P. 2. 
 
 " Human actions, whether honest or dishonest, social 
 or antisocial, are always the outcome of man's physio- 
 psychical organism, and of the physical and social atmos- 
 phere which surrounds him." — P. 52. 
 
 " No crime, whoever commits it, and in whatever 
 circumstances, can be explained, except as the outcome 
 of individual free-will, or as the natural effect of natural 
 causes. Since the former of these explanations has no 
 scientific value, it is impossible to give a scientific ex- 
 planation of a crime (or, indeed, of any other action of 
 man or brute) unless it is considered as the product of a 
 particular organic and psychical constitution acting in a 
 particular physical and social environment." — Pp. 54, 61. 
 
 He illustrates how different crimes against 
 
 o 
 
 the person are directly traceable to physical 
 malformations, and affected by conditions — as 
 when Phylloxera diminished the wine crop and 
 thereby lessened the yearly assaults ; and those 
 against property, to varying social conditions 
 
192 Applied Sociology 
 
 and necessities, even such as unusual severity 
 of the weather (pp. 77-79). Observing that, 
 in France, judicial repression and criminality 
 have increased together (p. 91), he still per- 
 ceives that immunity from punishment would 
 demoralize the public conscience (p. 109), and 
 looks not to an abrogating but an amending 
 of the criminal law. He remarks : 
 
 " Social hygiene comes in as criminal so- 
 ciology proves the causes of crime" (p. 135). 
 " Legislators need proof that crime is not an 
 outcome of free-will, but a natural phenom- 
 enon" (p. 140). 
 
 This last sentence expresses the matter too 
 strongly, as it seems to the writer ; for the 
 whole reasoning of this essay is based upon 
 the impossibility, shown or illustrated from the 
 nature of language itself, of proving or dis- 
 proving, or comprehending, in fact, the spiritu- 
 ality of man. If this is true, then no " proof" 
 can be made to legislators, even if their preju- 
 dices would accept it, that " crime is not an 
 outcome of free-will." 
 
 But, eliminating that question, confining 
 criminology to the physical phases of crime, 
 proof can be made to legislators that crime is 
 so bound up with the physical development 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 193 
 
 and environment of the criminal that when 
 you treat those you treat him ; that crime is ac- 
 companied by a physical condition or disease ; 
 that it is pestilential in that it is contagious ; 
 that a normal person may be seduced by en- 
 vironment to degradation ; that a degraded 
 person may be raised from degeneration to 
 health ; and that, in so far as these things are 
 true, the state can take jurisdiction of much 
 hitherto left to the charge of the church, the 
 moral law, and the efforts of private philan- 
 thropy. 
 
 It all comes back, as the writer thinks, to 
 this : The question of spirituality is not to be 
 passed upon by but eliminated from physical 
 sociology, and from criminal law as a sub-di- 
 vision. 
 
 This conclusion has been reached in this 
 essay by deduction. But Professor Ferri's 
 induction confirms the conclusion that criminal 
 law should be a physical science, although he 
 seems not to eliminate the question of spirit- 
 uality and free will, but to say there are no 
 such things. But, surely, such a conclusion 
 would be as repugnant to the logic of physical 
 science as would the opposite conclusion of a 
 theologian, 
 
194 Applied Sociology 
 
 Perhaps Professor Ferri does not mean to 
 deny spirituality ; his use of the word psychical 
 would imply rather assertion than denial. But 
 however this may be, great support to the the- 
 ory of this essay would come from his findings 
 of fact. 
 
 Professor Lombroso is widely known not 
 only as the founder of a subdivision of science, 
 but an elaborator of its details ; as one who 
 has constructed a non - animistic science of 
 criminology, not by the logic of deduction but 
 by induction. He has endeavored to differen- 
 tiate criminals, by classes of individual pecul- 
 iarities, from ordinary individuals, and the 
 connection thus established between human 
 structure and human action, between the mis- 
 shapen body and its injurious activities, is 
 well-nigh a demonstration even to the most 
 incredulous. He has progressed so far already 
 as to define, by their increasing physical devi- 
 ation from a physical standard, various classes 
 of criminals as follows : 
 
 The occasional criminal ; 
 
 The criminal from passion ; 
 
 The born criminal ; 
 
 The morally insane ; 
 
 The epileptic, 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 195 
 
 All degrees of physical variation may be 
 found between the two extremes, and the 
 inference from his investigation is that from 
 the highest normal physical type of man or 
 woman to the lowest degradation from that 
 type there is a physical scale, which to a suffi- 
 cient perception would perfectly represent the 
 grades of human organism ; in other words, 
 there are individuals in the community rep- 
 resenting such scale. 
 
 It is a tribute such as the founder of a novel 
 theory does not always live to hear which is 
 paid to Lombroso in the Revue Scientifique^ 
 Paris, October 26, 1895 : 
 
 " Almost everybody is, at the present time, in accord 
 with him on the point that the criminal is an abnormal 
 person whose responsibility must be considered from 
 another point of view than that to which we had become 
 accustomed in former times, that he is really in some 
 degree of an unbalanced mind." 
 
 And the same review suggests that from this 
 new conception of the criminal will be brought 
 about a change of ideas and of customs re- 
 garding the administration of criminal juris- 
 prudence. 
 
 Now, one man is convinced by deductive 
 reason ; another man readily yields to proof 
 
19^ Applied Sociology 
 
 by induction. Both united bring about as 
 near a demonstration of truth as is permitted 
 to human faculties. 
 
 It has been argued in these pages with what 
 may seem to be iteration of old matter (al- 
 though used to a different conclusion), that 
 the reason for making social science physical, 
 or at least non-animistic, is that the old ani- 
 mistic assumptions are insufficient, inaccurate, 
 and non-equivalent assumptions. It has been 
 attempted to show in what these animistic 
 assumptions are inaccurate and why they are 
 non-equivalent, viz., the impossibility of obtain- 
 ing, or of expressing in language, any accurate, 
 understandable idea of that spiritual ego whose 
 activity has been named "consciousness"; 
 whose deflections from moral standards are, 
 under the present criminal law, held to consti- 
 tute crimes ; whose activities are sought to be 
 guided by present schemes of education ; but 
 the ideas concerning whose nature and capa- 
 bility have not as yet inspired the half of 
 society which grows, enriches itself, and rules, 
 with a sufficient spirit of philanthropy, or even 
 a sufficient desire for self-protection, to provide 
 adapted means and methods for social progress. 
 
 To those who are in accord with this argu- 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 197 
 
 ment and to those who accept the conclusions 
 in one phase of sociology from the theories 
 and experiments of Professors Ferri and Lom- 
 broso, it is no wonder that the physical or non- 
 animistic sciences have progressed very rapidly 
 and the animistic sciences have stood almost 
 still for the last fifty years. 
 
 Difference in the nature of their premises 
 and in the method of their procedure easily 
 explains the difference in result. It is not 
 true, merely because humanity tends towards 
 religion almost as visibly as a physical body 
 tends to fall under the law of gravitation, that 
 a guide for the manipulation of what is purely 
 physical and of this world Is to be found in 
 religion or in religious theories or beliefs. 
 The instruction of Him whom the Christian 
 religion recognizes as its greatest teacher, to 
 discriminate between the province of Csesar 
 and of God, should be followed. It has been 
 and is erroneously supposed that sociology is 
 indissolubly connected with a spiritual life, 
 which is looked forward to after this life is 
 over. It may be true, and certainly there is no 
 purpose in denying, that there is a connection ; 
 but it does not therefore follow that, in the 
 words of the old hymn, " Religion is the chief 
 
198 Applied Sociology 
 
 concern of mortals here below," or that you 
 can manage the child, the criminal, or the 
 citizen, or formulate the laws of social progress 
 by simply theorizing about the undiscoverable 
 action and nature of that superphysical ego 
 which is called the human soul. 
 
 The work of Professors Ferri and Lom- 
 broso is here referred to for two purposes : 
 First, to support the conclusions discussed in 
 this essay ; secondly, to remind the reader 
 that there is a different path to these conclu- 
 sions as to criminal law from that followed in 
 this essay, which, indeed, may be thought by 
 many of those interested in these questions to 
 be a safer path than the one herein followed. 
 The question of "paths," as such, is unimport- 
 ant. The important thing is to learn how 
 society may progress, how reach a new van- 
 tage-ground, how formulate a practical plan 
 for the safe developing of that portion of the 
 community which ought to be developed at 
 all, and for the correction and repression of 
 that portion which, representing the forces of 
 evil, as evil appears to us, stands as a perpet- 
 ual bar to progress and a constant menace to 
 the perpetuity of such progress as the world 
 is making. 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 199 
 
 Other literature, specified in the bibhog- 
 raphy in Mr. MacDonald's Abnormal Man, 
 furnishes statistical support to the same gen- 
 eral conclusions, which may be fortified by the 
 results at Elmira, now accessible in print. 
 
 Effect of Ass2i7nptwns upon Adequacy of 
 Means and Methods. 
 
 Excluding the sporadic reforms attributable 
 to occasional reformers ; excluding also the 
 present earnest search for proselytes by quasi- 
 scientific or medico-philosophical enthusiasts 
 as to prison reform and kindred subjects, — it 
 may be said that the terrible history of crimi- 
 nal punishments for five hundred years is the 
 natural history of the present error-encrusted 
 assumptions of the criminal law as a system. 
 Once establish by common consent that a 
 criminal is a thing accursed, an embodied 
 evil ''will" a stalking ''malice" an incarnate 
 "spirit" of hate and cruelty and murder, and 
 no further search is needed to explain the 
 sentiment which has applauded his doom, — 
 whether to hanging, drawing, and quartering ; 
 or to decapitation ; or to exile on death-laden 
 barques, sailing to equatorial hells ; or to lin- 
 gering madness at the prison wheel ; or to the 
 
200 Applied Sociology 
 
 stiller death by starvation within horrible dun- 
 geons. No thanks to these assumptions that 
 a slowly rising human pity has substituted the 
 swifter noose or chair, the cleaner prison-house, 
 and the striped jacket, although accompanied 
 by weakening toil or curdling idleness. Within 
 twenty years, in the United States, pits in the 
 ground have been thought good enough for 
 him to whom those " assumptions " have been 
 made to apply ! 
 
 In chapter i. of Rationalism in Europe, Mr. 
 Lecky summarizes the history of witchcraft, the 
 belief that an evil spirit possessed a person 
 and that such person killed or injured others. 
 It does not clearly appear why the person 
 possessed was deemed punishable for this for- 
 cible dispossession of himself — whether it was 
 because his own soul was supposed to have 
 become the prey of and in league with the 
 powers of darkness, or, his own soul absent, 
 that an evil spirit had occupied the body. 
 But, however that may be, it is plain that the 
 belief and consequent action — the burning, 
 pressing, torturing, of thousands of victims — 
 was a product, an outgrowth, of humanity as 
 much as were cannibalistic idolatry, the brazen 
 arms of the Carthaginian idol, and the supersti- 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 201 
 
 tious rites whose fires illumine the slowly mov- 
 ing panorama of the early world's religions. 
 
 How singularly like the nature of the as- 
 sumptions of the criminal law was the nature 
 of those assumptions of witchcraft ! Barring 
 their supposed supernatural powers, the witches 
 were only criminals, their acts of murder 
 and mayhem like acts of criminals, although 
 thought to have been aided by an unholy 
 magic to powers which the mere criminal 
 lacks. How singularly like the origin of the 
 belief in the maliiia pi^cscogitata of the crimi- 
 nal was the origin of the belief in the witch 
 character ! 
 
 At witch trials, witnesses swore to the com- 
 mission of certain acts ; and the law, founded 
 upon false assumptions, assigned the presence 
 of a bad spirit as the cause of those acts. It 
 received this idea from theologic notions, as it 
 did also the similar idea of criminal malice, to 
 which it still assigns a spiritual source at trials 
 for murder or arson. It tells the jury that if 
 they find an act of killing by one not exempt 
 and who knew he was committing the act, 
 then the actor was an intentional, responsible, 
 free moral agent and punishable with death 
 therefor. 
 
202 Applied Sociology 
 
 Is the sporadic, occasional taking of life by 
 savage, or degenerate, or abnormal persons, 
 ever reason for its repetition by humanity in 
 all the deliberation of legislative, judicial, and 
 executive action ? And even if in the case of a 
 human "wild beast" this is defensible, should 
 it be upon an imagination-idea that the mur- 
 der was the act of a responsible, free soul 
 which might have abstained if it had so willed, 
 and did not so will, but, "with malice afore- 
 thought," became a "criminal"? 
 
 Professor Ferri observes that education and 
 not savage punishment made an end of witch- 
 craft. {Criminal Sociology, p. 83.) 
 
 So will education make an end of crime as 
 now viewed by the law. The similar belief 
 upon which it purports to rest is also a fantasy. 
 To the growth which is part of evolution, we 
 owe progressing ameliorations of society ; and 
 soon society will admit that a criminal as con- 
 ceived by these old assumptions of the crim,inal 
 law has no more existence than had a witch as 
 conceived by Sir Matthew Hale. 
 
 In spite of the survival of these assumptions, 
 prison reform and criminal reform are being 
 to-day earnestly fought for by a small party of 
 crusaders, who find at last a public frame of 
 
Suggestions in Criminal Law 203 
 
 mind ready to listen, and to pity as they 
 hear. 
 
 But why not attack the means and methods 
 of these assumptions by also attacking and out- 
 rooting the assumptions themselves ? Why 
 permit the continuance of this inconsequence 
 between these assumptions of the past and 
 attempted practices of the present ? Why not 
 replace these assumptions with principles, 
 based upon which, as a foundation, criminal 
 law would itself become the fountain from 
 which the modern state as well as the private 
 philanthropist would draw the right and the 
 duty to apply adequate means and methods 
 for the protection of society and the repression 
 — when possible, the regeneration — of the 
 criminal ? 
 
 Were this substitution accomplished, society 
 as a whole would be committed to the ade- 
 quate means and methods which this small 
 body of social reformers has slowly forced into 
 experimentation. Denying no creed, ques- 
 tioning no rehgion, quenching no hope, but 
 based upon physical possibilities of dealing 
 with the physical organism of physical man, 
 criminal jurisprudence would become not only 
 a reformed procedure for determining the ex- 
 
204 Applied Sociology 
 
 istence and degree of that abnormal physical 
 state called criminality, but a reformed public 
 system of practical dealing with the hygienic, 
 educational, and ethical necessities of those 
 convicted of crime. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE SUGGESTIONS : PUBLIC 
 EDUCATION 
 
 ONE who is ready to concede the justice 
 of the criticisms herein suggested as 
 to the current assumptions underlying 
 the criminal law, the utility of their re-forma- 
 tion, and even the generalizations leading to 
 such criticism and rebuilding, may yet doubt 
 how far public education is susceptible of im- 
 provement by enlarging its physical basis, and 
 may not have considered whether attention to 
 the fact that it has such a basis is a reason for 
 extending its advantages so that it may be 
 more universal and so be made to benefit those 
 whom at present it hardly reaches at all. 
 
 For while from the premises the conclusion 
 is logical and necessary that to a large extent 
 primary education properly falls within phys- 
 ical limits ; and while it is at present largely 
 carried on within those limits, — yet it is also 
 
 205 
 
2o6 Applied Sociology 
 
 evident that many children never get any 
 benefit from it, because of their position in 
 life. 
 
 It may well be that no such overturning is 
 reasonable in education as in criminal law. 
 They are very unlike. We do not find as the 
 foundation of education assumptions so spe- 
 cific, so crystallized into set phrases, as are 
 those upon which the criminal law has been for 
 long years avowedly based. One reason of this 
 difference is, probably, that the criminal law is 
 a differently conducted institution from educa- 
 tion. The law operates upon individual cases. 
 Each case requires a repetition of specific for- 
 malities, and is thus a specific, distinct asser- 
 tion of the truth of the specific assumptions 
 under which the criminal is judged. 
 
 Public primary education, on the contrary, 
 simultaneously operates upon many individuals 
 in large masses. Its raison d'itre and the 
 premises from which it is concluded to be nec- 
 essary are usually out of sight, except in some 
 general formulas which are rather statements 
 of its general advantages than definitions of its 
 subject-matter. The law says the particular 
 criminal was guilty of malitia prcecogitata. Edu- 
 cation says that general intelligence is essential 
 
Public Education 207 
 
 to the well-being of individuals and the pros- 
 perity of the state. 
 
 It is in order to consider how far a greater 
 attention to the largely physical character of 
 primary education may make it possible and 
 practical for the state to extend its advantages 
 to those whom it does not now reach. What is 
 education ? — Admittedly the " leading forth " 
 or symmetrical development of the growing 
 human being. If public, it cannot be sectarian. 
 Special systems of religion or morals are alien 
 to it. It must follow broad lines, endorsed by 
 unanimous consent. What it aims at and 
 seeks to reach is : 
 
 First : A sound and healthy digestive and 
 muscular body, of which the essentials are 
 proper air, nourishment, exercise, rest ; which 
 intelligent hygienic, dietetic, and sanitary sci- 
 ence can deal with. 
 
 Second : A body that will not injure itself. 
 
 What is physically essential to producing 
 such a body ? — That it be subjected to such 
 impressions upon its senses as will arouse the 
 self-preservative instincts, not only as to " can- 
 dle flames " but everything else ; or, in other 
 words, that to it be communicated, until inter- 
 woven with all its structural activities, the facts 
 
2o8 Applied Sociology 
 
 of what self-action and what external agents 
 will cause detriment to the person as a whole ; 
 and that, during this novitiate, the person be 
 watched and guarded from injury. 
 
 Third : A body that will not injure others. 
 
 What is physically essential to producing 
 such a body ? — That it be subjected to such 
 impressions upon its senses and nervous or- 
 ganism as will arouse the emotional instincts — 
 the responses — which we describe as pity, sym- 
 pathy, justice ; or, in other words, that to it be 
 communicated, until interwoven with all its 
 structural activities, the facts of the similarity 
 of structure and purpose between itself and 
 others, of the community of its interests with 
 those of others, of the equality of its interests 
 with those of others. 
 
 Fo2i7'tIi : The healthful exercise of all the 
 powers which reside in and emanate from the 
 brain as the organ of thought and reason. 
 
 And what are the essentials to developing 
 this healthful exercise ? 
 
 At the risk of tediousness, it will be neces- 
 sary to speak more minutely here, and to resort 
 to our early illustration of the orange and fol- 
 low in some detail what the organism as a 
 physical structure must be made to do. Let 
 
Public Education 209 
 
 us say that a young child is to be taught, or 
 made to acquire the capacity of, arithmetical 
 calculation. The purpose is to enable the 
 rapid succession from inflex to reflex, and from 
 reflex acting as a new inflex to further reflexes, 
 in relation to a certain class of facts whose 
 complexity soon becomes too intricate for 
 manual and even visible exhibition. 
 
 To illustrate, merely, let us say that we be- 
 gin by showing him some cents, side by side, 
 and teach him that the words " one," " two," 
 " three," etc., signify one, two, three, etc., facts. 
 Thus he gets the Impression of number. We 
 similarly cause the impressions signified by 
 the words " addition," " subtraction," " multi- 
 plication," and "division," as related to facts. 
 Thereafter his brain can reproduce and use 
 at will such dealing with such relations of 
 facts. When the text-book has been concluded, 
 the brain has become accustomed, more or 
 less readily, to go through the states and 
 changes which may be summed up as " arith- 
 metic." It is a classification of one kind of 
 work which the brain can accomplish by Its 
 own physical activities. Whatever else Is 
 present, physical activity of brain structure Is 
 sensibly present. The illustration might be 
 
2IO Applied Sociology- 
 
 duplicated from other branches of education ; 
 but for present purposes further illustration is 
 unnecessary, if the one given is understood ; 
 for the total of such instruction is, principally, 
 to enable and accustom the brain powers to 
 busy themselves about proper subject-matters, 
 so that when the novitiate of education is over, 
 the pupil will be ready, able, and willing as a 
 physical entity to continue his useful activity 
 in all his relations during his life. 
 
 The general subject of education with its 
 many technicalities is such as it behooves or- 
 dinary writers to be shy of, as far as either 
 criticism or eulogy is concerned ; for the former 
 is likely to wound, the latter to offend, some 
 of the various theoretical or practical advocates 
 of special systems. Yet between the practical 
 criminal jurisprudence or code that would em- 
 body the theories hereinbefore attempted, and 
 the practical philanthropy which would advo- 
 cate a protective system for all the youth of 
 the land, lies the question of training which 
 is to be the ally of the former and the means 
 of the latter. And in what must be here said 
 of education, as such, it will be sought to avoid, 
 as it has been in the previous discussion, views 
 which may be useless because of their antago- 
 
Public Education 211 
 
 nism to existing theories on this subject ; the 
 object being rather to draw from all systems 
 than to raise a controversy with any. 
 
 In its physical aspects, one purpose of all 
 education is to assist in the building up of 
 what is frequently termed " character," whose 
 visible exhibition is seen in the bearing and 
 action of the individual as he moves in and 
 affects surrounding society. " Character " is, 
 while the name of much else, the abstract term 
 for the exhibition made by the physical entity 
 which constitutes the man or woman. Now, 
 the object is to produce a given " character," 
 or, in other words, a healthful physical person, 
 which will injure neither itself nor others but 
 exercise all its powers in useful and happy 
 activity. Public education, however much 
 more it may do in providing a more special 
 culture, must do as much as this as a founda- 
 tion. And the question asked in this essay is. 
 Upon what theory may this much be accom- 
 plished by state aid, not in some cases but 
 universally ? 
 
 Now, upon the views hereinbefore set forth, 
 it is plain that a considerable part of the prob- 
 lem is concerned with purely visible physical 
 factors. To make a healthful physique is a 
 
212 Applied Sociology 
 
 physical process accompanied with preventive 
 sanitary measures. To impress upon that 
 physique, through the medium of the senses, 
 the consciousness of its own necessities and 
 the like necessities of others, is largely a 
 physical process ; and the activity to be pro- 
 vided for it is also largely physical activity, 
 whether of the muscles only or of the brain tis- 
 sue. Now such primary physical education is 
 in harmony with and not antagonistic to the 
 existing system of public education. All sys- 
 tems of education include, perhaps under more 
 abstract or metaphorical terms, the above- 
 mentioned four objects by their appropriate 
 physical means. To the success of all meth- 
 ods of education, this physical protection and 
 manipulation of the infant and youthful human 
 being is an essential ; for if any one of these 
 four purposes be not accomplished, there nec- 
 essarily results an imperfect, weak physique, 
 or a self-destructive physique, or a physique 
 destructive to others, or an idle, and so useless, 
 member of society. 
 
 Now, if this be true, manifestly all infants 
 and youthful children require, as the price of 
 their proper development, a supervision and 
 training in these four fundamental prerequi- 
 
Public Education 213 
 
 sites of good citizenship. So far as any exist- 
 ing schools and institutions fail to bestow 
 these, they may well be broadened accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 But, as intimated above, no examination as 
 to how far any of these schools or institutions 
 need such broadening or reformation Is here 
 at all intended. It is as to the needs and now 
 unsatisfied requirements of a class of children, 
 and the feasibility of the state attempting to 
 meet these needs, that we wish to invite con- 
 sideration, — a class which signally needs the 
 above-mentioned fourfold development, but 
 which at present is not receiving it because 
 largely deprived of the advantages of that part 
 of it which is administered in healthy, happy 
 homes, and also of that part which public 
 schools now bestow upon those who receive 
 their benefits. The chief purpose of this chap- 
 ter is to introduce the following chapter upon 
 public philanthropy, by showing that certain 
 fundamental necessities to and characteristics 
 of future good-citlzenship are bound up with an 
 education that consists in physical training, not 
 Oftly of muscles but of brain, in physical ma- 
 nipulatio7i of the physical hitmari organism, tm- 
 tilit becomes stich a physical entity as naturally 
 
214 Applied Sociology 
 
 exercises its developed powers along the lines of 
 useful activity. 
 
 From such showing a further conclusion 
 becomes irresistible, — that not only should 
 the child of well-to-do parents be thus devel- 
 oped, but the unfortunate offspring of the 
 poverty-stricken or degraded among us should 
 be made the object of state solicitude. For, 
 if the way to make the child a good citizen 
 involves physically developing him into such a 
 healthful man as injures neither himself nor 
 others but naturally turns his activities into 
 useful occupations, and meanwhile protecting 
 him from a pestilential environment, then a 
 broader duty is bestowed upon government in 
 matters hitherto left largely to moral agencies 
 such as the state has nothing to do with, a 
 more pressing obligation put upon property- 
 holders, and a theoretical basis for a public 
 scheme of practical philanthropy brought 
 plainly into view. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE SUGGESTIONS IN PUBLIC 
 PHILANTHROPY 
 
 PUBLIC philanthropy, as here intended, 
 refers not so much to the animus in 
 which the many assist the few as to the 
 methods and means by which the assistance is 
 rendered. And the question for discussion is, 
 whether a more practical basis for a broaden- 
 ing and extending of its scope and benefits 
 may not be established under the principles 
 and sanction of a system of applied sociology 
 as hereinbefore suggested ; or, otherwise stated, 
 whether these principles of applied sociology 
 do not bring within the scope of governmen- 
 tal administration phases and conditions of 
 poverty, misfortune, and degeneration hith- 
 erto largely left to private benevolence, char- 
 itable associations, and the church. 
 
 In previous chapters the following deduc- 
 tions from the belief in human progress under 
 the laws of evolution have been suggested : 
 
 215 
 
2i6 Applied Sociology 
 
 (i) That the individual must be developed 
 in all his powers ; 
 
 (2) That he must be restrained from bar- 
 ring the progress of his fellows ; 
 
 (3) That for securing this development and 
 repression, society may deal with the sensible 
 facts of physical existence, and thereby build 
 up an applied science of sociology ; 
 
 (4) That applied sociology cannot make 
 animism a premise or take sides as to its truth 
 or any of its phases ; 
 
 (5) That applied sociology may recognize 
 the existence of imagination-ideas or animistic 
 ideas, and use them as incentives and means ; 
 
 (6) That crime, degradation, and degenera- 
 tion are not products of normal individuals 
 and are largely susceptible to physical treat- 
 ment, prevention, and cure ; 
 
 (7) That both the restoration of the crimi- 
 nal and the preservation of the guiltless are so 
 largely physical processes, and so analogous to 
 the treatment of the sick and the warding off 
 of disease and pestilence as to bring both 
 within the power and duty of the state. Since 
 government, in its modern meaning, was made 
 for man, and not man for government, its ex- 
 isting functions are sacred only so far as they 
 
Public Philanthropy 217 
 
 further the ends of progress, and may properly 
 be broadened or restricted whenever the state 
 may properly assume to do what it has not yet 
 assumed, or may properly be relieved of any 
 hitherto assumed duty. 
 
 Now society is to-day confronted with a 
 condition. We have come to believe that the 
 law of progress demands the development of 
 the individual — all individuals. And yet 
 nothing " under the canopy " is more evident 
 than that, of a large and increasing number of 
 the community, it is the fact that the indi- 
 vidual is not being thus developed. Here, 
 then, we reach a condition of antagonisms of 
 theory and practice. We have determined 
 what should be done. We see plainly that what 
 should be is not being done. 
 
 Why not ? " What lets ? " In Mr. Arnold's 
 poetical phrase, " Brothers, the Darkness lets." 
 That is, although the state, or society, has 
 seen and realized the use of a public system of 
 education, it has not advanced much beyond 
 that in the way of enabling and compelling the 
 hampered classes to receive its benefits except 
 through private philanthropy. A partial ex- 
 planation of why, with manifold machinery for 
 elevating the race, — churches, schools, missions, 
 
2i8 Applied Sociology 
 
 clubs, trades-unions, brotherhoods, and associa- 
 tions of so many colors that society may be com- 
 pared to a chameleon slowly crawling into the 
 sunlight, — so large a section remains in dark- 
 ness, is this : There is no adequate public pro- 
 vision for and management of this " large and 
 increasing class which is not being developed." 
 Under old civilizations, theory regarded the 
 lower strata of society as slaves ; under our 
 civilization the theory has changed, but practi- 
 cal system has only partially embodied it. The 
 classes who sway the community admit the 
 " equal rights " of the hampered classes, but 
 they have not yet developed all the practical 
 results of the admission and supplemented 
 theory with system. So far as theory goes, 
 it is not surprising that a Frenchman should 
 have struck the key-note of the modern rela- 
 tion of wealth to want. M. Casimir-Perier, 
 Prime Minister of France, was quoted, p. 4, 
 The World, May 19, 1894, as saying: 
 
 " We must reform our morals at the same time as our 
 laws. Those who enjoy a superfluity must form a larger 
 idea of their social obligations and resign themselves to 
 assuming a somewhat heavier portion of the public 
 charges in order to relieve those who buy bread for their 
 families with a daily wage." 
 
Public Philanthropy 219 
 
 The children of the hampered classes need 
 and are entitled to a scheme of management, 
 a system of public philanthropy, analogous to 
 the system of education. Of course, only an 
 outline of such a scheme, sufficient to illustrate 
 its scope, is possible within present limits. But 
 this statement is hazarded : 
 
 Communities will yet realize the need and 
 the possibility of a public system of philan- 
 thropy ancillary to the public system of educa- 
 tion and to a more enlightened system of 
 criminal law. And such system will deal with 
 the physical side of life, at least until more is 
 known of its other side. 
 
 Let us come to the point : How are poor, 
 submerged, hampered children to become 
 healthy adults and useful citizens, who will in- 
 jure neither themselves nor the community ? 
 In this question are involved the interests, 
 selfish and patriotic, personal and family, finan- 
 cial and moral, of all citizens, from the lowest 
 to the highest. Now, according to the views 
 above set forth, the preservation of the citizen 
 may be attended to, and better secured than at 
 present, by physical methods neither doubtful 
 nor incalculable in results. 
 
 For the relief and development of this ham- 
 
2 20 Applied Sociology 
 
 pered class of the rising generation and the 
 consequent improvement of society, it may 
 almost be said, given the confidence of the 
 community, that only one thing is now lacking, 
 — money to pay the necessary bills. How 
 small a thing is that, thanks to the modern in- 
 crease of wealth ! To every child, from the 
 time that it leaves its mother's arms, and in 
 some cases before that, a physical supervision 
 and physical education, as hereinbefore de- 
 fined, may be assured. 
 
 Recurring to previous chapters : 
 
 First: The child must be physically nurtured; 
 
 Second: The child must be trained into a 
 being that will not injure itself, that will not 
 injure others, that will be able to exercise all 
 the force of all its individual powers. 
 
 How ? Practically what is proposed ? 
 
 In the first place, no provision beyond a 
 sufficient school system need be made for that 
 fortunate portion of the community which loves 
 and is able to train its children. 
 
 In the second place, a proper commissary 
 department, including necessary lodging-places, 
 food supply, and opportunities for receiving 
 the necessary training, must be supplied, and 
 a force analogous to teachers or supervisors be 
 
Public Philanthropy 221 
 
 appointed, whose duty it shall be to see to it 
 that every child not thus fortunate in its birth 
 shall be provided with sufficient food, clothing, 
 lodging, compelled to live in conditions of 
 bodily health, and be subjected to such an 
 environment as to develop its powers. 
 
 The practical details and difficulties of this 
 do not fall within the limits of this essay. 
 The proposition is that they can be met ; that 
 the brains that have, on a smaller scale, dis- 
 pensed private benevolence in the Peabody 
 fund, in founding colleges and various institu- 
 tions, in managing the public-school system, 
 children's aid societies, reformatories such as 
 those at Elmira and Concord, and college 
 settlements like Andover House, can admin- 
 ister and execute the extension of existing 
 public and private beneficences which is here 
 advocated. This is not the place to discuss 
 how state supervision shall be informed and 
 mollified by the personal interest felt by indi- 
 viduals in gaining a personal interest in and 
 hold upon those whom they aid ; or how far 
 the state shall simply provide the funds to 
 broaden the usefulness of such institutions as 
 children's aid societies. New classes of insti- 
 tutions — places for proper training of very 
 
222 Applied Sociology 
 
 young pupils, and manual training for advanced 
 pupils — will be needed beyond the provision 
 of lodging and food. For the younger chil- 
 dren the training needed is more passive than 
 active — the providing of a healthful environ- 
 ment rather than the imparting of knowledge. 
 Universities might well be open to such of 
 the graduates from lower schools as display, 
 under proper examination, a capacity to follow 
 a higher training Avith profit to themselves and 
 to the state ; in order that the state lose no 
 material for any function of citizenship. 
 
 To enable all this may or may not require a 
 state board or various municipal boards of 
 philanthropy, together with the machinery 
 of returns and reports. The cost per capita 
 must be found and funds be provided accord- 
 ing to the sum thus shown to be needed, as 
 in the case of the public schools. Private be- 
 nevolence would lend great assistance at the 
 inception of such a scheme. 
 
 This suggestion of a basis for a scheme of 
 physical philanthropy fully accords with the 
 physical requirements of the growing genera- 
 tion. Learn, supervise, and minister to the 
 physical needs and capabilities of its members, 
 and ninety per cent, will become good citizens. 
 
Public Philanthropy 223 
 
 It strikes at the most prolific source of crime 
 and degeneration. It fights the neglect which 
 leaves a normal child to become, by an unfa- 
 vorable environment, an "abnormal man." It 
 interposes another safeguard between citizens 
 and criminality, similar to the common-school 
 system. With such as do become abnormal, 
 criminal law may deal, as hereinbefore dis- 
 cussed. No doubt prisons, almshouses, hospi- 
 tals, and similar institutions will not be speedily 
 eliminated. Congenital criminals — but one- 
 tenth of the entire body of criminals — will still 
 trouble society's repose and laugh at efforts 
 toward their own renovation. But there will 
 be fewer criminals by contagion, by idleness, by 
 environment, as these sources are sapped and 
 eliminated. Perhaps congenital criminals may 
 be diminished by laws relating to marriage. 
 Nor would the outlay seriously prejudice the 
 community. A nation that proposes $80,000,- 
 000 for harbors can spend yet more for the 
 men and women who own them. It costs 
 about one hundred dollars per year for each 
 child boarded at state expense, and about one 
 hundred and ninety dollars for each inmate of 
 children's homes supported by the community. 
 If this be multiplied by the number of chil- 
 
224 Applied Sociology 
 
 dren requiring supervision and support, it will 
 make a sum equal to but a small yearly per 
 cent, upon the real and personal property 
 whose protection and accumulation would thus 
 be gradually increased. Financially speaking, 
 this expenditure would, in a few years, increase 
 the wealth-producing class and diminish the 
 cost of courts, jails, and hospitals. A normal, 
 able-bodied workingman earns his support, at 
 least, by labor which helps the community, 
 instead of costing the state money and depriv- 
 ing it of his labor, as does the criminal. 
 
 At this point, many grave questions arise, — 
 socialism ; natural idleness ; inability of the 
 willing and able to always find remunerative 
 employment ; periodical disturbances, turning 
 the scattered few who are idlers by nature into 
 an army of the idle by constraint ; criminals 
 and sloths, who are not confined to the ham- 
 pered classes ; paternalism, which is neither 
 democratic nor healthy ; and other similar 
 troublesome questions. In reply, it may be 
 said that the revising of criminal law, the 
 elaboration of education, and the establish- 
 ment of a system of public philanthropy, as 
 so many applied sciences of fact, are not of- 
 fered as a nostrum or cure-all ; yet these la- 
 
Public Philanthropy 225 
 
 bor questions, finance questions, socialist ques- 
 tions, would all lose some bitterness if a part 
 of the wealth of the country be thus turned 
 to the benefit of its hampered classes. 
 
 It may, however, reasonably be asked, What 
 more than the present broad and growing 
 systems of "charities and corrections" is de- 
 manded ? Doubtless their sufficient practical 
 extension would approximate what is herein 
 suggested ; doubtless, without reference to 
 theories, the physical needs of the poor and 
 unfortunate are to-day being studied as never 
 before. But these systems as they exist seem 
 incapable of sufficient extension unless their 
 logical premises can be altered and extended. 
 
 The prevailing systems of criminal law and 
 of public aid or charity are to try criminals 
 under the old assumptions of the law and to 
 punish them, and to deal out charity to such 
 cases as "either apply for it, or are found by a 
 force of officers inadequate to detect all cases 
 of necessity. And just as crime is thought of 
 as the sin of a supersensible ego, so poverty 
 and degradation are also thought of as largely 
 its product, while the development and growth 
 of the child is also thought of as the growth 
 of this supersensible ego, instead of as the 
 
2 26 Applied Sociology 
 
 growth of a physical body and brain whose fu- 
 ture physical action will, in ninety cases in a 
 hundred, depend upon whether it is developed 
 in health, cleanliness, duty, and proper activ- 
 ities, or in the miasma of an environment of 
 unwholesome food, air, dress, occupation, and 
 companionship. And it is evident that the su- 
 persensible ego of the child cannot be publicly 
 treated in either law or philanthropy : first, 
 because it cannot be comprehended ; and, sec- 
 ondly, because it cannot be made the subject 
 of unanimous but only of various and partisan 
 treatment. 
 
 The theory of the criminal law is erroneous 
 and needs revision. The theory of the system 
 of charities is not only too restricted, but it 
 also shares in the error of the assumptions of 
 the criminal law and exaggerates the moral 
 and belittles the physical needs of those whom 
 it would serve. Moreover, it is not compre- 
 hensive enough. Every degraded child is a 
 cause of many other degradations ; and, until 
 there is complete supervision of an entire 
 community, those who are left free to do 
 so scatter the seeds of poisonous growths so 
 rapidly that, while the numbers of those aided 
 increases, the number needing aid also in- 
 
Public Philanthropy 227 
 
 creases with the population. The scheme or 
 theory of charities and the state's relation 
 thereto need to be broadened until the aim 
 be that no child be allowed to grow up in 
 any but a healthful environment ; for " one 
 sinner destroyeth much good." The purpose 
 of philanthropy should be to extirpate certain 
 physical sources of degeneration completely. 
 But this will not become its purpose until its 
 animistic premises are eliminated ; until it is 
 admitted that degeneration and poverty are 
 largely physical evils and subject to physical 
 treatment, and this treatment made the duty of 
 society, and of the state as its representative. 
 
 And when the physical possibilities of phys- 
 ical supervision and treatment are fully ap- 
 preciated, so that they become a part of and 
 the assurance of the success of public philan- 
 thropy, then the consequent extension of the 
 present practical administration of what is now 
 spoken of as "charities" may reach the am- 
 plification which the true interests of the state 
 demand. 
 
 Two questions may be alluded to as likely 
 to arise in the practical realization of the 
 proper extension of charities as thus baldly 
 outlined. One is this : What right has the 
 
228 Applied Sociology 
 
 state " by force and arms " to compel the par- 
 ent to submit to any deprivation of authority 
 over or use of the child ? And the other is : 
 What right has the state to demand from the 
 whole body of citizens, or from the whole tax- 
 able property of all citizens, the funds neces- 
 sary to such supervision and such training- 
 places ? 
 
 It is always, according to an ancient maxim, 
 " the first step which costs." The first step 
 has, in fact, already been taken. The funda- 
 mental right of the state was implied, at least, 
 when the right to compel some education and 
 the right to tax for it were established. 
 
 " 1672. Under the authority of colonial 
 laws," Boston's " selectmen ordered parents to 
 put their children out to service, or to indent 
 them out ; and if they did not, the authority 
 had power to take them from their parents for 
 that purpose." (Quincy, Hist. Boston, p. 6.) 
 
 The further supervision as above outlined is 
 matter of degree merely, and the degree of edu- 
 cation or taxation is only a matter of discre- 
 tion. If, therefore, society as a whole thinks 
 that the public-school system should now, in 
 the light of progressing civilization, be ex- 
 tended because the field for its usefulness 
 
Public Philanthropy 229 
 
 has been extended by the natural growth of 
 altruistic sentiment and by the increased im- 
 portunity of the subjects of its aid, the same 
 justification is to be pleaded for such ex- 
 tension as was urged for its commencement. 
 There is no hard-and-fast limit to the princi- 
 ple. If society may educate at all ; if it may 
 control the parental use of the growing child 
 at all, — it can only be in a representative gov- 
 ernment, upon the ground of the greatest 
 good of the greatest number ; and what or 
 how much that greatest good requires is a 
 question but of discretion. 
 
 The right of the state to see to the educa- 
 tion of its minor citizens is established : and if 
 physical supervision will ward off criminality ; 
 if degeneration can be arrested, as can yellow 
 fever, by physical means, — then the right of 
 the state to extend it as suggested herein is 
 also undeniable, and, in so far as it is essential 
 to the well-being of the state. It is not merely 
 a right but a duty. Perhaps no further answer 
 to the question as to the right of the state 
 need be attempted than that which seems to 
 accord with a well-established public sentiment. 
 
 But some reader of these pages may be by 
 birth and by training a conservative, having 
 
230 Applied Sociology 
 
 little sympathy with reforms simply as such, 
 and disposed to the theory enunciated by Mr. 
 Lecky, that argument, as such, avails little, and 
 only when its appropriate civilization dawns 
 will any reform make much progress. In view 
 of the overpowering proof of possibilities in 
 the light of the theory of evolution, one may 
 believe in this possibiHty of practically acceler- 
 ating social progress, and ask if the " appropri- 
 ate civilization " has not dawned ? 
 
 To such as are thus sceptical of new 'ologies 
 and 'isms, some aid and comfort may arise from 
 a less popular view of the social conditions of 
 the day, which, not denying the above pre- 
 sentation of the right of the state, may derive 
 such right from less popular considerations. 
 The popular view is founded upon an assumed 
 right of the individual to " life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness " and to all that assists the 
 accomplishment of this, including state action 
 and aid. Another view involves the same 
 result, but bases it upon a different premise, — 
 the premise of the interest of the strongest. 
 
 From time immemorial communities have 
 been ruled by the class which is the strongest, 
 and although in a representative government 
 power resides in the voters and shifts frequently. 
 
Public Philanthropy 231 
 
 yet, within the bounds of the constitution, 
 the party in power is supreme. In the North- 
 ern States, how long was it before antislavery 
 principles became dominant ? And to-day 
 prohibition is, in some communities, firmly 
 established ; in others, as Massachusetts (ex- 
 cept so far as license is prohibition), repudiated. 
 Now what is. In fact, the arbiter? The right 
 and wrong of it ? — No ; for the minority which 
 believes in prohibition has no proof that the 
 majority is right. The practical arbiter with 
 us, as with our predecessors, is not anything 
 else than the right of the strongest. 
 
 Therefore, practically, if the dominant sen- 
 timent of the majority of voters favors the 
 establishment of such supervision and pro- 
 tection of the young by such system of philan- 
 thropy as has been above baldly pointed out, 
 there is no way of stopping it. 
 
 The remaining question is, Wzll the strongest 
 favor it ? And this may probably be answered 
 by considering whether it is their interest to do 
 so. It is as clearly their interest as it is the 
 interest of a new community to have lynch 
 law rather than none, to have a swift and 
 certain ^method of dealing with those who 
 steal mining claims, or run off horses. Ev- 
 
232 Applied Sociology 
 
 ery kindly, altruistic sentiment of pity or fair 
 play ; every religious and humanitarian in- 
 terest ; every patriotic sentiment ; every par- 
 ental and family instinct desiring personal 
 aggrandizement, the safety of wealth, the 
 permanency of free institutions, — favors and 
 demands it. Every selfish instinct that con- 
 cerns itself with merely a permanent field for 
 the making of material wealth ; and every fear 
 — whether it haunt philanthropists or capital- 
 ists, or those who favor a single tax, or those 
 who have yet more socialistic tendencies — that 
 corporate power may gradually repress and 
 finally deny to the poor and humble their true 
 share of civilization, must look to proportional 
 elevation of all ranks of the community as the 
 main safeguard. And, finally, that great under- 
 current that carries forward modern civilization 
 and produces all of these classes, and yet is 
 more than any of them ; that trend of progress 
 which is as natural and as certain now as when 
 the first atoms obeyed the law that fashioned 
 them into matter ; that growth toward loftier 
 ends and wider horizons of thought and action, 
 — all this may be descried as tending to the 
 development of the practical physical philan- 
 thropy herein advocated. 
 
Public Philanthropy 233 
 
 In conclusion, then, of this subdivision of 
 this discussion, it is submitted that philanthro- 
 py may be broadened upon the basis of this 
 physical treatment of physical man ; that it 
 teaches what to do with the criminal and what 
 to do with the young to prevent his becoming 
 criminal ; that it shows how this may be practi- 
 cally accomplished ; that it is legal upon the 
 same general principles upon which the public- 
 school system rests ; that, under representative 
 government, it is within the power of the ma- 
 jority, and that every reason favors this major- 
 ity In taking the necessary action. 
 
 This conclusion, it should be observed, also 
 rests upon premises set forth in the first part 
 of the discussion. The principles and con- 
 clusions there found are, it is perhaps needless 
 to say, assumed as the foundation of these sug- 
 gestions of a physical philanthropy, although 
 not again specially referred to. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 THIS essay presents some deductions from 
 premises which happen to impress the 
 writer as both reasonably sound and 
 potentially fruitful. If these premises are 
 sufficient and these deductions true, there may 
 probably be other lines of thought, conducting 
 to similar conclusions, which may better har- 
 monize with the ratiocination of other minds 
 or with the different points of view, tempera- 
 ments, or mental processes of differently con- 
 stituted searchers after truth. 
 
 " For every worm beneath the moon 
 Draws different threads, and late and soon 
 Spins, toiling out his own cocoon." 
 
 But, however that may be, when all the lines 
 are drawn together the prominent propositions 
 which may be seen to have taken concrete 
 form and approximated concrete dimension in 
 the foregoing discussion are these : 
 
 234 
 
Summary 235 
 
 All men, without regard to antagonisms of 
 religious belief, may unite in the recognition 
 of facts which the physical senses of all men 
 establish. 
 
 All men may agree to postpone, as a pres- 
 ent basis for the practical political action of 
 the state in regard to philanthropy and crimi- 
 nal law, theories or beliefs which fluctuate and 
 vary as the imagination-ideas of men vary. 
 
 All men may agree that, whatever else may 
 be or must be included in that which is at- 
 tempted to be expressed by words such as 
 " consciousness," " intent," etc., a physical ac- 
 tivity of physical constituents is evidently in- 
 cluded ; and that study and treatment to secure 
 the proper action of these constituents — the 
 action which injures neither the actor nor his 
 fellows — are in harmony with and approved by 
 codes of morality the most abstract and aspira- 
 tions of rehgion the most exalted. 
 
 All men may agree, then, that the physics 
 of " consciousness " and " intent " and " malice " 
 are one with the physics of the living being ; 
 and so agree that these modes of action are 
 chained up with and improve with the pro- 
 gressive elevation of the human organism ; 
 and so agree that, from the infant just becom- 
 
236 Applied Sociology 
 
 ing receptive to impressions, to the criminal 
 with many a congenital or acquired deformity, 
 humanity is capable of physical manipulation ; 
 and that one price for its at least partial re- 
 generation is an adequate and adapted physical 
 treatment in criminal jurisprudence, education, 
 and philanthropy. 
 
 All men may agree that criminal jurispru- 
 dence should, as a purely social institution, be 
 reorganized upon the basis of the sensibly 
 physical qualities and capabilities of the organ- 
 ism with which it is to deal, and so as to in- 
 clude not merely the safety of society but also 
 all possible reformation of criminal man. 
 
 All men may agree that education can profit- 
 ably concern itself more than it does at pres- 
 ent with the physical development by physical 
 means of the physical organism which " thinks " 
 and "wills" and "feels" and "is conscious" 
 not only spiritually but also physically. 
 
 And, finally, all men may agree (" the signs 
 of the times " in the growth of altruism, the 
 sense of justice, the perception of the real 
 community of interest of all fellow-citizens of a 
 state, point to a day when all men will agree), 
 not only individually but by political action and 
 state institutions, to strive to anticipate the 
 
Summary 237 
 
 physical causes of degeneration, vice, and 
 crime, and, by enlarging the theories which 
 establish and the practices which pay for the 
 public-school system, to insure an uncontami- 
 nated infancy and a protected youth to those 
 whom the fortune of life has hampered and 
 begirt with an environment favorable only to 
 degeneration, by establishing, as another and 
 perhaps most potent state institution, a public 
 system of philanthropy or protective training. 
 And while fostering physical development 
 of the child, physical repression and regenera- 
 tion of the criminal, if not all men, yet the 
 major part may still agree that " imagination- 
 ideas " — which, as light from the sun and color 
 through the rainbow, emanate from humanity 
 in beliefs and aspirations the most exalted — 
 constitute a high sanction of human progress, 
 and are the true reflections of the divine hope 
 that, vivifying humanity, prompts it to work 
 out an appointed destiny in a faith as old as 
 Epictetus, — Wvxdpiov si fiaardZov vExpov. 
 
 " For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for 
 a span ; 
 A little soul for a little holds up this corpse which is 
 Man." 
 
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