54803 BY LESTER F. WARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The Athenæum Press W3 1X ... The true place which mind fills in the scheme of nature is the most important truth to be learned in the study of philosophy. . . . The true order of development is from the non-psychic to the psychic, and from the less psychic to the more psychic, and not, as is popularly supposed, from the highest toward the lowest manifestations of this property. This great psychic paradox lies at the base of philosophy, and has ever been its fundamental bane. - Dynamic Sociology, II, 76. Le véritable esprit général de la sociologie dynamique consiste à concevoir chacun de ces états sociaux consécutifs comme le résultat nécessaire du précédent et le moteur indispensable du suivant, selon le lumineux axiome du grand Leibnitz: Le présent est gros de l'avenir. — AUGUSTE COMTE: Philosophie Positive, IV, 263. I have sought in this book to set forth two aspects of mind - its cause and its use. since its use is its cause. But these two are really but one, I Since I put the finishing strokes, ten years ago, upon a system of social science which I called Dynamic Sociology my mind at least, if not my pen, has been at work along two lines suggested by the recognized imperfection of that scheme. have been prompted, on the one hand, to build the superstructure higher, and on the other, to lay the foundations deeper. In the first of these directions I have not only been impelled by my own inward sense, but I have been quite strongly urged by others who thought it was my duty to make a direct application of the principles of dynamic sociology to the living issues of the times, and who believed it better that this be done by one who had them in his grasp than left to others who might never fully feel their true significance. In the opposite direction, that of strengthening the foundations, the pressure has been entirely from within, and yet it is to this that I have yielded, partly because it was much stronger, and partly because I realized that it properly belonged to me to do, while the other more properly belongs to that trained army of social economists, now so rapidly increasing, who are studying and teaching by the inductive method. |
