strictly social phenomenon of a collective struggle for existence, demonstrated, once for all, that in the last analysis sociological explanation is psychological interpretation. Bagehot, rather than Tarde, was the true founder of the so-called psychological school. Physics and Politics is one of those rare, excessively rare, books that the critic who has some sense of moral responsibility may daringly call original. As sociology, the chapters on the "Preliminary Age" and "Nation Making" forestall Les lois de l'imitation. As psychology, the chapter on "The Uses of Conflict" more than foreshadows some of the brilliant generalizations that we associate with the name of William James. And he would be a remarkable writer indeed who, desiring to set forth the social interplay of instinct, habit, and reason, could put it all so luminously as Bagehot has put it in the chapter on "Government by Discussion."

It is a fair presumption that work of such enduring influence upon theory has not yet spent its practical power in suggestion. It is reasonable to think that, were we now to re-examine it, we might find it still an unexhausted fund of wisdom, as of correlated knowledge. It may afford us guidance today, not less than it did yesterday, for a rational criticism of public policy. To that possibility, it may be well to give attention.

The problems of public policy do not become simpler with advancing civilization. To speak for the moment of our own nation, the questions that vex us are of bewildering variety and complexity: questions of territorial expansion and of rule over alien peoples; questions arising out of race conflict within our older continental domain; questions of the restriction of immigration, of the centralization or the distribution of administrative authority, of the concentration or the diffusion of economic power. Well may the skeptic ask if any science of human relations, however wide its generalizations, can offer even presumptive answers to questions so far-reaching and so diverse. Yet every citizen, whether he be instructed or ignorant, is expected to help answer them.

Before we admit that the objection is fatal, let us remember that an overshadowing question has still to be named, and

that when one question overshadows all others the relative values. of the others are determined. That question is the world-old query-older than science, older than any record of history-the question, "Is it War or Peace?"

After ten thousand years of so-called progress, is reason still so ineffective against instinct that only minor issues can be removed from fields of battle to arenas of intellectual conflict? Must sovereignty-the ultimate social control—forever prove and declare itself in government by slaughter, or may international relations also be brought under government by discussion? By this "previous question" of world-politics every question of domestic politics is qualified. With war a possibility, the restriction of immigration is one problem; with war made impossible it would become an entirely different problem. A further democratizing of the social order, which might be safe if world-peace were assured, may be fraught with peril if the greater nations are again to challenge one another's right to live. It is not an accident that international socialism is unalterably opposed to militarism under every guise and pretense.

These considerations might be dismissed as academic if it were certain that war must indefinitely continue. Happily that is not the fact. Utopian and wholly ineffective not longer ago than the generation of Fox and Penn, opposition to war has become organized and determined. The antagonism of nearly ten millions of socialistic voters is formidable. The best professional and business intellects of the world are ranging themselves on the side of peace. Funds with which to wage aggressive attack upon eradicable causes of war have been provided.

It is true that public appreciation of Mr. Carnegie's gift has been qualified by skepticism. There are sincere and able men who doubt if the cessation of war should be desired. They exalt its disciplinary value, believing that the world yet needs a measure of sacrifice, of daring, of endurance and of superiority to materialistic aims which only war can give. A larger number of men, also sincere and able, reject every defense of

war as invalid, but are incredulous when ways and means of disarmament are proposed.

It is precisely upon these two interpellations, namely, the desirability of world-peace and its possibility, that the verdict of sociology may rightly be demanded and should carry weight. And as a sort of preliminary report, the conclusions of Spencer and of Bagehot assuredly deserve a profoundly respectful consideration.

As all students of Spencer know, his most important sociological generalizations pertain to the characteristic differences between what he calls the militant and the industrial types of society. His theory of social causation is stated mainly in terms of war-habit and peace-habit. And, like Mr. Carnegie, who was his loyal friend, Mr. Spencer looked upon war as the most monstrous of social ills, as the most formidable obstacle to the complete evolution of man. Mr. Bagehot, on his part, believed that in government by discussion we have an agency attained through immeasurable effort and suffering for the inhibition of hasty action, for the subordination of brutal passion to a reasonable expediency, for the final settlement of disputes by reason instead of force. Surely, then, we should ask these scouts of inductive social science whether in their opinion the cessation of war at the present stage of social evolution is a thing to be desired, and, if it is, by what policies the consummation may be attained.

Sentiment, doubtless, and the abhorrence of suffering move most of those who are participating in peace efforts now. Mr. Spencer shared these feelings, but he did not rest his case against militarism upon sentiment alone. His faith was in the improvability of man, the final and superlative product of cosmic evolution. He saw that improvement involves adaptation to conditions on which life depends, and ever nicer adjustments of differing interests. He believed that improvement consists in an expanding sympathy of man for man, a continuing differentiation of powers, a better and always better co-ordination of life-activities and therewith an ever-deepening joy of living. It has proceeded through a social process. In this process war has played a great and recurring part. In breaking down the

barriers that separated primitive men, in bringing savage camps together into tribes, in hammering tribes together into nations, war was inevitable and it was useful. Nevertheless, war achieves results through frightful cost and waste. It is incompatible with those more delicate processes of evolution which we associate, or should associate, with high civilization. This is a point of such fundamental importance, and the Spencerian demonstration of it is so complete and so irrefutable, that we may well linger for a moment to note wherein the demonstration consists.

Evolution is simple or compound.

Simple evolution is swift, direct and business-like. It occurs whenever a group of units of any kind, from white-hot iron to the professors of a faculty, discharge energy promptly and without indirection. Let the heated iron be cooled with least possible waste of time and in the most economical way. The molecules will draw together. Integration, the initial process in evolution, will quickly be completed. There will be no secondary, no incidental changes. Close crystallization will uniformly characterize the mass. There will be no differentiation. The product will be a bar of iron contracted, instead of expanded; nothing more. Let professors attend strictly to the business of teaching, withholding no energy that can freely be discharged upon the environing student mind. Let there be no day-dreaming and no sauntering, no dallying with research by the way, nor idle discussion of the cosmic, or the social, order. As before, there will be integration. The units of the mass will get together. There will be no disturbing differences of opinion, no disquieting differentiations of aptitude or ability. The product will be a coherent, standardized, teaching force, dependable to turn out standardized Masters of Arts and intellectually pasteurized Doctors of Philosophy, at a minimum unit cost.

Compound evolution is slow, tortuous, uncertain, halting, and unbusiness-like to the last degree. Energy, instead of discharging itself in a straightforward way, goes maundering about in crooked currents and incalculable eddies. Some Quixotic mind imagines that it would be interesting to trifle with the cool

ing bar of iron. He interferes with the simplicity of its habits, with the honest promptitude of its crystallization, exposing it to charcoal fumes, hammering it on an anvil, thrusting it now and again into boiling oil, reheating it in his forge and hammering it some more. Very slowly its molecules draw together. They arrange themselves in strange, fibrous shapes, no two alike. Infinitely minute changes work their way upon and through that iron bar. It integrates, but it also differentiates. It becomes tense, pliant, elastic, vibrant. It sings, when you strike it, with a clear full note, and the Quixotic workman, touching it lightly with one last tap of his hammer, no longer calls it a bar of iron; it has become a Damascus blade. Quixotic faculties there have been, teaching effectively but not too much; not incoherent and not anarchistic, though united by little else than a common interest in intellectual pursuits and a kindly thoughtfulness of man for man. Their energy has freely been given to their chief task, instruction; but some of it, unguarded, has escaped into by-ways of science or creative thought. Exposed to the play of many forces, not always equal or alike, members of such faculties have become different from one another. They have become individuals, each with his own view of life and its problems, each with his own distinctive work and record of achievement. Some of them have become absent-minded and detached, some absorbed in researches which neither colleague nor intrusive tourist could fully comprehend. This compound evolution of the loosely integrated faculty has, therefore, been scandalously irregular, and costly withal. It has made the business man thank God that he, at least, is not as these professors are. And yet, because of it, and by means of it, and chiefly through its very irregularity and freedom, have those discoveries been made which have multiplied the business man's thousands and millions into billions of ingots of good red gold. Through and by means of it students have been tempered and tested as well as taught, and sent forth into life to be leaders of men. Above all, this idling compound evolution, seemingly so loose and irresponsible, has sustained the pristine faith of man, which happily shall live when every other faith is dead,