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Boucaud. 2 frs. 50. LIBRAIRIE E. NOURRY, Paris: Les Prophètes d'Israël et les Religions de l'Orient. Par A. Causse. BY W. E. CAMPBELL. Y social progress we understand a change for the better in our social condition. In a little book of three hundred pages, Professor Urwick discusses the possibilities of such a change in so lucid and comprehensive a manner, that I venture to call at tention to his argument. Every individual leads a life which, though one in itself, may be thought of under five different aspects. Every community of ordinarily civilized beings has likewise an existence which may be thought of in the same way. These five aspects (or universes as the author has named them) of individual or social existence, may be set down as follows: I. Material; 2. Vital; 3. Human; 4. Social; 5. Spiritual. In accordance with these categories, the individual may be defined as a spiritual, social, personal, living, material being. In the same way the community may not incorrectly be spoken of as having a kind of existence which is at once material, living, human, social, and spiritual. But though they are similar in these five different ways, certain important differences must be noticed between the life of the individual and the existence of the community. The nature of the community is not identical with that of the individual; the one is not really coextensive with the other; the former does not explain the latter. For instance, the com Copyright. 1914. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE VOL. XCVIII.-46 IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. munity is never a single, definitely physical body in the sense that the individual, say John Smith, is a single definitely physical body. Again John Smith has a soul which altogether transcends both in its nature and destiny any form of spiritual existence which the community may possess. "The community is a thing among things, a group among groups-just as is a forest, or a star-cluster, or an ant hill; but it is not an organism, in spite of having organic characteristics, nor is it a seat of feeling or thinking mind, in spite of having a mental side—a side of increasing importance." These five aspects of individual or social existence are the names, as it were, of five different levels in the single battlefield of existence upon which both the individual and his community are striving for the life yet more abundant—sometimes in alliance, and sometimes in opposition to each other. There is, first of all, the material level, a crass conglomeration of unfeeling things and forces by which both the individual and the community are affected; to which they are sometimes in bondage, or of which they are sometimes in partial control. This level is the least important, and this in spite of all arguments advanced to the contrary from the region of purely material science. Second, there is the vital level, the universe of things that live and grow and alter and die according to strictly natural laws. Third, there is the human or personal level, the universe of thinking and feeling men and women, each in pursuit of definitely selfish ends; a universe of self-regarding, self-directing, self-enhancing mankind. It is the level where John Smith is fighting for himself in quite a candidly selfish way. Fourth, there is the level of social intercourse and achievement. This, like the previous one, is a universe of conscious thought and feeling, but thought and feeling at a higher and less self-regarding level. At this stage John Smith is not quite wholly absorbed in the success of his own affairs. At any rate, in many cases, he conceives his own interests and those of his community to be one and the same. And, lastly, there is the spiritual level, on which John Smith attains to a really supernatural view of life. At this height he fights for what is good in himself and in the community, and against what is bad in the community and in himself. We are now in a position to ask how the individual (how John Smith) and the community act and re-act upon each other at each and all these five different levels of their intercourse; what problems confront them, and what solutions of these problems are at all possible? Let us acknowledge at once that no merely natural science or philosophy is sufficiently comprehensive or profound to deal in any adequate way with John Smith and the community of which he is a member. But this should not discourage us from making the fullest use of whatever natural science or philosophy there may be. One important point, however, should be rescued from confusion before we proceed further. It has been proclaimed with great authority, and for a very considerable length of time, that man is subject to nature, implying thereby that man is inferior to nature. As a logical inference from this, it has further been proclaimed that man is subject to the community, thereby implying that man is inferior to the community. Both these statements are untrue. Man is not inferior to nature; neither is man inferior to the community. The fact that a lion sometimes devours a man, is no sufficient proof of the absolute statement that man is inferior to the lion. Man is superior to the lion on account of those mental qualities which he possesses, and which the lion does not; and man can always claim this superiority in spite of his obvious physical disadvantages. Now just as a man has that in him which makes him superior to a lion in a sense quite absolute and final, so also man has that in him which makes him superior to both nature and the community in an absolute and final way. John Smith may indeed be subject to nature and the community on account of some particular weakness of his; but in so far as he is a man-alive, human, spiritual, and free he is not, nor can ever be, subject to either in an absolute sense. Having once acknowledged that man, in the highest reaches of his personal being, is superior both to nature and the community, we must now be prepared to allow that in so far as he had to live within a community, and according to nature, he must learn to obey both natural and social law. "In other words, whatever else he may be, he still remains a thing among things, an animal among animals, a mind among minds, a social unit among social units, subject to all the laws of things, animals, minds, and society." This, of course, is but a thumb-nail sketch of Professor Urwick's argument. Space will not allow us to make detailed observations upon every section of this genuine piece of work. Many a materialistic fallacy is here laid to rest in its parent dust; the mind of the reader is gradually awakened to the moral importance of every stage in our human and social life. As we follow our author's vision, we see man himself coming back once more to man's most honorable estate; we see him walking upright under heaven, a free and immortal personality created in the likeness of God. And all this is brought home to us in an atmosphere deliberately cleared by reasonable persuasion. There is no heat of religious intolerance; there is no bitterness of political passion; there is nothing but the calm and disinterested witness of a man whom we feel to be looking out on life from a moral and mental height. Professor Urwick points out in his first chapter that a merely physical and materialistic interpretation of human life has been pushed too far-" the usual result," he adds, "of the discovery of a real influence previously neglected." In the second chapter he discusses the exact sense in which society may be held to be a kind of organism. We must be very careful, he tells us, when applying organic terms to the social process, to define the exact sense in which we use those terms. Strictly speaking, society is not an organism at all, though it is undoubtedly organic in some of its aspects. It may be likened to an organism in so far as it has a definite arrangement of its parts, which we may call its structure. Again it may be likened to an organism in so far as it has a meaning, a purpose, and an action consequent upon this definite structure, and this we may call its function. And, lastly, its parts are interdependent, as, for instance, the governing, the food-producing, and the defensive parts of any nation. But before we can apply the term "organic" with absolute propriety to the social process, we must consider certain other qualities implied by its use. In an organism proper we may notice: (1) that changes are always taking place; (2) that these changes " are always determined from within by the life properties of the organism and its special needs, as well as by the environment in which it lives;" (3) that these changes follow an invariable order of growth, maturity, and decay which ends in death. Society certainly does possess the first of these qualities; it is always undergoing a process of change. But the second quality, while true of organisms, is not true of societies—a society does not change from within, according to some pre-established law of its being. And, third, the changes which take place in any society do not follow the invariable rules of organic growth, maturity, and decay. "It is one of the shallowest social generalizations to predict old age or decrepitude of any society......the life of a society may be constantly renewed-and is so renewed indefinitely." |