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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 , LIBRARY 
 
 Class Book 
 
 \^>o 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Volume 
 
 _ 
 
 wnowY 
 
 Of 
 
The 'Dualism of Fact 
 and Idea in Its Social 
 Implications :: :: :: 
 
 Vy 
 
 ERNEST LYNN TALBERT 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC STUDIES 
 
 ISSUED UNDER 'CUE DIRECTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF 
 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 
 NUMBER 2 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 
 1910 
 
 i 
 
 } 
 
The Department of Philosophy of the University of Chicago issues 
 a series of monographs in philosophy, including ethics, logic and 
 metaphysics, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. The successive 
 monographs are numbered consecutively with a view to their subse¬ 
 quent publication in volumes. These studies are similar to the series 
 of Contributions to Philosophy , but do not contain psychological papers 
 or reprints of articles previously published. 
 
THE DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 IN ITS SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS 
 

 \ 
 
 *. 
 
THE DUALISM OF FACT AND 
 IDEA IN ITS SOCIAL 
 IMPLICATIONS 
 
 ERNEST LYNN TALBERT 
 
 1 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 19 10 
 
\s»o 
 
 T \\ 
 
 i 
 
 Copyright 1910 By 
 The University of Chicago 
 
 Published February 1910 
 
 
 \ 
 
 v 
 
 i 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. 
 
 * 
 
 I 
 
II CTITZ 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 Summary... 
 
 I. Characteristics of Functional Logic. 
 
 1. A Statement of a Method of Dealing with New Problematic 
 Situations 
 
 2. The Relative Character of “Fact” and “Idea,” Due to 
 
 A. Dependence upon a Specific Emergency 
 
 B. Attainment of a Definite Purpose 
 
 3. The Biological, Practical, and Organic Bearings of the Work 
 of Thinking 
 
 4. The Insistence upon the Concrete Universality, Necessity, and 
 Hypothetical Aspects of Judgment 
 
 5. The Social Nature of Impulse and Endeavor 
 
 II. General Social Implications of the Dualism of Fact and 
 Idea.. 
 
 1. The Professions Emphasize the Idea; the Occupations Empha¬ 
 size the Fact 
 
 a) Conservatism 
 
 b ) A Standard 
 
 c ) Consistency 
 
 d) Universality 
 a) The Negative 
 
 B. The Occupations Stand for j b ) The Particular 
 
 c) The Novel 
 
 C. Origin of the Distinction in Primitive Society 
 
 a) Psychological Differences 
 
 b) Social Grouping 
 
 2. The Rationalist in Philosophy Emphasizes the Idea; the Em¬ 
 piricist Emphasizes the Fact 
 
 A. Illustration from the History of Ancient and Modern Phi¬ 
 losophy 
 
 B. Correlation of Professional and Occupational Attitudes with 
 Rationalism and Empiricism 
 
 C. Danger of Undue Stress Laid upon Either Standpoint 
 
 5 
 
 \ 
 
 A. The Professions Stand for 
 
 9 
 
 11 
 
 15 
 
 o 37130 
 
 J 
 
6 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 III. The Systems of Hegel and Marx as Embodiments of the 
 
 Social Implications of Logical Method .... 20 
 
 1. Hegel 
 
 A. His System an Elaboration of the Idea 
 
 B. His Absolute Teleological Dialectic 
 
 C. Its Seeming Remoteness from Human Purposes 
 
 D. Its Idealization of the Existent and the Profession 
 
 2. Marx 
 
 A. His Use of the Groundwork of Hegelian Thought 
 
 B. His Economic Dialectic 
 
 C. Eulogy of the Occupation 
 
 D. Employment of Empirical Assumptions 
 
 E. The Sources and Fallacy of His Materialism 
 
 3. Criticism of the Logical Methods of Hegel and Marx 
 
 A. Fixation of Historical, Shifting Elements 
 
 B. Ignoring of the Problem at Hand 
 
 C. Appeal to Means External to the Existing Process 
 
 IV. Interaction of Fact and Idea as Illustrated by the Changes 
 
 in Marxian Doctrines .28 
 
 1. Doctrine of Unlimited Concentration of Industry 
 
 2. Doctrine of Increasing Misery 
 
 3. Socialist Doctrine of the State 
 
 V. Transition from the Hegelian-Marxian Theory to Recent 
 
 Opportunism. 37 
 
 1. The Three Stages 
 
 A. The Absolute Teleological 
 
 B. The Scientific and Mechanical 
 
 C. The Method of the Working Hypothesis 
 
 2. Evidences of Opportunism in the Present Views of the Revision¬ 
 
 ists 
 
 3. Modem Sociology as an Attempt to Synthesize Fact and Idea 
 
 VI. Logical Method as Employed in Recent Solutions of Social 
 
 Problems.42 
 
 1. The Trade Agreement 
 
% 4 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A. Situation Creating the Problem 
 
 B. Results Secured 
 
 2. The Consumers’ Label 
 
 A. Conditions Setting the Problem 
 
 B. Significance of Results Achieved 
 
 3. The Social Settlement 
 
 A. Its Interpretation of the Profession and the Occupation 
 
 B. Its Contribution to the Concept of Democracy 
 
 C. Its Control of Social Crises 
 
 D. Its Logical Value 
 
 VII. Conclusion—Logical Method and Democracy . . . 51 
 
 The Method of a Progressive Democracy, Which Must Recognize 
 the Contributions of All Its Members, Identified with the Con¬ 
 structive, Hypothetical, Logical Procedure 
 
 
/ 
 
 V 
 
 t 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 The aim of this thesis is as follows: 
 
 1. To state the general method of solving a definite problem as defined by 
 that type of logical theory for which thought is practical, constructive, and 
 purposive. 
 
 2. To suggest philosophical and social implications of the dualism of 
 “fact” and “idea” within a problem. The implications are that emphasis 
 of the “fact” is the philosophical attitude of empiricism, and the social 
 attitude of the “occupation;” the emphasis of the idea is the philosophical 
 attitude of rationalism, the social attitude of the “profession.” 
 
 3. To show how the features of logical method and the corollaries of 
 theoretical and practical attitudes serve to explain and to criticize the stand¬ 
 points of Hegel and Karl Marx. Hegel is regarded as a rationalist, an 
 idealizer of the “profession,” and the established; Karl Marx adopts the 
 general rationalistic framework, but uses it to denounce the “profession” 
 and the conventional, and to support the supremacy of the “occupation.” 
 At the same time he seeks to incorporate the empirical into his system and 
 incurs the logical difficulty of fixating the “fact.” 
 
 4. To illustrate the failure of the Marxian logical formulas in the light 
 of succeeding events. 
 
 5. To describe the change in theory and practice resulting thereby. 
 
 6. To indicate the possibilities of the constructive attitude applied to 
 some present social problems, by outlining factors in the situations pro¬ 
 ducing them, and the means adopted for their solution. 
 
 7. To relate the constructive logical method to the theory of 
 democracy. 
 
 9 
 
I. CHARACTERISTICS OF FUNCTIONAL LOGIC 
 
 That thought is teleological, reconstructive, and “ practical ” is an ancient 
 doctrine; but reinforced and enriched by the contributions of modern 
 biology and psychology, one school of logicians has given the purposive 
 element of thinking a fresh significance. Whatever shortcomings may 
 exist in the standpoint of the “experimental” or “instrumental” type of 
 logical theory considered from the angle of the metaphysician’s conception of 
 the ultimate nature of thought, it remains true that a suggestive attempt 
 has been made to explain daily processes of solving concrete difficulties in a 
 manner more immediately understandable and applicable than the deduc¬ 
 tive subsumptive method of the formal logic. What has been lost of sym¬ 
 metry and certitude has been compensated for, in the view of the instru¬ 
 mentalists, by the illumination coming from a flexible working method of 
 interpreting and acting upon new situations. 
 
 A noteworthy feature of the scanty literature of the functional logic, 
 so called, is its insistence upon the relative, shifting, and historical character 
 of “fact” and “idea” within the bounds of a definite emergency . 1 It is 
 contended that any real crisis calling for an escape from contradiction and 
 uncertainty is due to a failure of the habitual way of acting or thinking 
 to function adequately under the pressure of new stimuli. The starting- 
 point of a logical problem is always an “objective situation” within which 
 reflective thought works. This situation can be explained biologically 
 as structure needing adaptation to novel demands; psychologically, as an 
 old response needing mediation. The temporary moving equilibrium is dis¬ 
 turbed by constant shifting of interest and attention: the old habit fails, 
 and doubt, uncertainty, and tension ensue; the breaking-up of habitual 
 response is signalized by the emergence of a more or less intense conscious¬ 
 ness of the strain. The best words to characterize consciousness are recon¬ 
 structive activity. Within the reconstructive process, treated logically, 
 arises a bifurcation into “fact,” the given, the “data,” and “idea,” the 
 tentative “meaning.” The initial facts are not immutable; the problem 
 comes to consciousness because they need to be interpreted and acted upon; 
 there is a projecting of possible plans of action and a selection of the uni¬ 
 versal which serves as most adequate control, and a “testing,” a verifica- 
 
 i The following is an interpretation of the opening chapters in Studies in Logical 
 Theory. 
 
12 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 tion in application. The subject of the judgment denotes stimulus, the 
 coming to focus of perceptual elements inconsistent with previous habit; 
 the predicate represents the appropriate response. The judgment is 
 hypothetical because under the dominion of definite conditions, and it 
 finds its test of adequacy, of universality, in the resumption of blocked-up 
 movement, in comprehension and control of all the elements entering into 
 the problem. 
 
 Some features essential to the discussion which follows may be pointed 
 out: 
 
 1. It is important to note the place assigned to reflection in the logical 
 procedure. The results of biology and anthropology are utilized: mind 
 has developed in intimate connection with fundamental racial necessities. 1 
 Thought is a'“tool,” a “means of manipulation,” an economizing, directing 
 activity, not an implanted instinct; it is an analytic and synthetic instru¬ 
 ment designed to co-ordinate and evaluate when instincts, ways of acting, 
 conflict. 2 In one sense, intellect is degraded as compared with the formal 
 logician’s description of “pure reason.” The judgment is not regarded 
 as a “necessary” coalescence of ideas: in the eyes of the experimentalists 
 the predicate is not “given”: it is earned. Reason is not pure in the 
 ascetic sense of abhorring sense-data: following Hegel, the plea is that 
 categories develop with the process of thinking in response to opposition: 
 they are re-formed by means of the conflict. 
 
 From another point of view, thought is assigned an enviable position, 
 in organic relation to will and feeling. Thinking is a mediation of impulse, 
 and the “personal equation,” sympathy, imagination, and interest are 
 involved as factors determining any concrete result. Moreover, this type 
 of logic can recognize the vast role of the “group consciousness,” the 
 individually unconscious. Consciousness is not merely individual. It is 
 social from beginning to end, although passing through the variation of 
 the individual; reflection is therefore a focusing activity utilizing the 
 unconscious and habitual within a social medium. The significance 
 of thought is that it controls the immediate direction of change in a most 
 economical manner, secures a balancing of impulsive tendencies and con¬ 
 sequently a more correlated expenditure of effort. 
 
 2. A clean-cut division between a world of fact and a world of meaning 
 is not accepted: the distinction is valid only as a historical one existing 
 during a definite emergency. For the disciples of the new logic there is no 
 brute world of scientific fact, mechanism, and causation confronted with a 
 
 1 Tufts, Garman Studies, pp. 28 ff.; Jerusalem, Gedanken und Denker, pp. 138 ff. 
 
 2 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, Vol. I, chap. i. 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF FUNCTIONAL LOGIC 
 
 13 
 
 teleological, spiritual world of meanings: science, fact, data, for them serve 
 to state the conditions under which purposive conduct must go on; the 
 means are an integral part of the end, and change with the problem at 
 hand. 
 
 3. The test of the successful solution of a problem is not a reference 
 back to the facts unchanged; neither is it an appeal to a law, a predicate, 
 already made and controlling. The test is a part of the whole activity— 
 the initial facts becoming suffused with “meaning,” and the universal 
 which served to direct a previous reaction becoming reconstructed in 
 order to fit into a wider situation. 
 
 4. Corresponding to an active belief in the general related character 
 of the physical universe (the presupposition of the physical scientist), the 
 experimental logician thinks that one who attempts to apply intelligence to 
 the control of social conditions assumes belief in “the essentially social 
 character of human impulse and endeavor,’’ 1 his object being, not to con¬ 
 vert naturally egoistic propensities into social ones, but to allow the social 
 nature of human activity to express itself under favorable conditions. 
 
 Summarizing the chief tendencies of this school of logical theory, it may 
 be said that according to the experimentalists the need for thought traces 
 back to an “objective situation” which has become tensional and problem¬ 
 atic. Thought is a reconstructive activity; it is “reality advancing” in 
 nature; it is forward looking, and does work. The predicate or hypothesis 
 represents simplification, control, and universality. One may hypostatize 
 either the “facts” and consider them changeless, or the supposedly immu¬ 
 table and transcendent “idea.” In the former case, there is no satisfactory 
 explanation of the way in which universals can be derived from the hand¬ 
 ling of facts, however skilful the manipulation; the start is made from per¬ 
 ceptual data, but the constructive predicate process is skipped. Since 
 hypothesis-making is discouraged, the universal, as with Mill, 2 must be 
 somehow already there, in “laws of nature;” the immediate organic 
 interrelation of hypothesis and fact is not realized, and finally meaning 
 remains separate from the process of judging. In the latter case, truth is 
 something already fixated; and universality, necessity, and self-evidency 
 are not convincingly correlated with the concrete act of judging; 3 if 
 changeless validity resides in a system of relations already categorized, 
 there is some difficulty in explaining the manifestly constructive character 
 
 1 Mead, American Journal 0} Sociology, Vol. V, p. 370. 
 
 2 System of Logic, Book III, chaps, iii-iv; Book III, chap, xiv, sec. 4; Ashley, 
 Studies in Logical Theory, pp. 160 ff. 
 
 3 Sigwart, Logic, Vol. I, pp. 27, 28; cf. Bradley, Logic, p. 10. 
 
14 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 « 
 
 of our thinking and how variations from the habitual copy the transcendent 
 truth. Unity is attained by sacrificing manyness. 
 
 These three conceptions taken from logical method, viz.: (i) the present 
 concrete universality of judgment, (2) the immediate value of thinking for 
 the control of conditions, and (3) the interrelation of fact and idea within a 
 problem, will be employed to interpret and criticize the logic underlying 
 important social problems and the means adopted for their solution. Pre¬ 
 liminary to the discussion, some general implications of the logical dualism 
 of fact and idea must be considered. 
 
IT. GENERAL SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE DUALISM 
 
 OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 The implications are twofold. Emphases of the function of fact and 
 idea embody themselves in the philosophical and social attitudes known 
 as empiricism and rationalism. Again, these attitudes are correlated 
 with concrete functions which groups perform in carrying on the activities 
 of an organized society. The object of this section is to relate the logical 
 standpoints to social interests and their theoretical expression. 
 
 i.. Broadly viewed, empiricism is the emphasis of the individual fact; 
 rationalism, the emphasis of the universal idea. For the present pur¬ 
 pose empiricism may be defined as the tendency to shun all species of 
 postulated and necessary principles: it is hostile to all that is innate 
 and a priori—to vested interest, prejudice, and dogma. Rationalism 1 is 
 a tendency to guard achieved universals, rigid standards of truth, and the 
 organized in every sphere: the reality of the One, the unification of con¬ 
 sciousness, the soul, the state, and the church, are its themes. 
 
 2. The ground of the struggle between the upholders of the fact and 
 the defenders of the idea in society may be stated in terms of the difference 
 of interest in the “occupations” as compared with the “professions.” 
 By occupations are meant those daily interests which engage the attention of 
 men, which serve their physical wants, and, as much as may be, their 
 intellectual needs, but which are not of superior prestige and are not, for the 
 time being, protected and fostered by the community to any such degree as 
 are the professional interests. The latter represent a worked-out technique, 
 the solidification of mind, as it were. They are social concepts organized 
 into a machinery of public activity and sheltered by all the laws and con¬ 
 ventions of the group concerned. The professional classes are, of course, 
 the “leisure” ones—not necessarily in the sense that full service is not 
 performed, but in the sense that the time, discipline, and acquisition of 
 specialized knowledge and dexterity involved in apprenticeship are com¬ 
 pensated for by special prerogatives, social esteem, and exemption from 
 
 1 Rationalism is a term of varied content. It may mean the attained universal, 
 or the process of reaching a new universal; one is reason as authority, the other reason 
 against authority. Lecky ( Rationalism in Europe , Vol. I, p. 16) and Benn ( History 
 of Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 421) confine themselves to the 
 latter meaning. Usage (3) distinguished in the article “Rationalism,” in Baldwin's 
 Dictionary corresponds with the meaning adopted above. 
 
 15 
 
i6 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 the monotonous activities which engage a great deal of the attention of the 
 more unspecialized and less socially recognized and protected occupational 
 modes of life. The distinction is itself a shifting one historically. For 
 example, the manufacturing class raised to importance by the inventions 
 ushering in the industrial revolution, was at first an “occupational” interest 
 which had to fight its way against the semi-feudal “professional” prestige of 
 the English landlords. Now, the subordinate partners in the complex 
 economic organization which has developed in all industrially advanced 
 countries—the working class, the Fourth Estate—are striving for recog¬ 
 nition, and opposed to them stand the hierarchy of those who occupy con¬ 
 trolling and sanctioned places in the “capitalistic” system of production 
 and distribution. This contrast is important in its bearings on the Marxian 
 criticism of modern society, discussed in the succeeding section. 
 
 That the occupational classes become dissatisfied, and direct attention 
 to the “facts” of their lot, that they become more or less united dissenters 
 from the established usages of a conventionalized state and its “professional ” 
 retainers, is as certain as the universal reaction of the vested interests in the 
 way of upholding strenuously the sacredness of the subjective and objective 
 norms upon which their supremacy is based. The underlying reason for 
 the struggle runs back to the psychological and social origin of specialized 
 activities. It will be remembered that mind was defined as a superior 
 method of controlling departures from the usual, a selective agent for 
 securing control of environment. In primitive times, the exigencies of 
 communal living were the driving forces determining the direction of social 
 change, and attention was directed to the bridging-over of the crises inevi¬ 
 table in the precarious state of early peoples; the crafty medicine man, the 
 intrepid hunter, and the old “wise” man w r ho remembered tradition were 
 rewarded according to their natural endowments and acquired aptitudes, 
 because of their superior ability to deal with unexpected happenings or to 
 conserve the useful communal customs. 1 With the accumulation of 
 resources, conquest of weaker tribes, the rise of a court and a political and 
 religious hierarchy, there appeared a definite stratification of classes, and 
 universally similar results followed. The professional groups kept apart 
 from the common ranges of activity, except on extraordinary occasions, 
 threw around themselves the cloak of ceremony and taboo, and rested on 
 their superior acquisitions of skill and knowledge; while the “lower” strata 
 were bound down to routine, deprived of the opportunities of initiative, 
 and forced to perform the unillumined labor making possible the leisure 
 of the official groups. Wherever this situation exists, a twofold misfortune 
 
 1 Cf. Thomas, The Medicine Man and the Professional Occupations. 
 
IMPLICATIONS OF DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 17 
 
 appears: the significance of the whole life is lost, both to the professional 
 keepers of the “idea,” and to those who represent the factual unorganized 
 “matter.” The professional groups, absorbed in perfecting and preserv¬ 
 ing technique and established norms, become isolated from the common 
 life. The normal freedom of contact is broken. The “dispossessed” 
 gain, sometimes in stolidity, sometimes in passionate revolt, and at all 
 times in strong distrust of that mode of reasoning the misuse of which they 
 observe in the professional groups above them. 1 They feel dumbly the 
 facts of their unlovely destiny, facts which to them are without meaning. 
 To the professional group, conversely, thought—the idea—is a thing for 
 itself, not for active reconstruction of the entire society. 2 
 
 3. Philosophy has many aspects, but out of its possible functions may 
 be distinguished two which are relevant to this discussion: (a) It is a 
 reflective statement of the meaning of individual and communal experience, 
 a summing-up and idealization of what is regarded as most worthful. 3 ( b ) 
 In addition to its idealizing function, which is necessarily prone to accept 
 and rationalize the existent, it has a democratic and active interest in the 
 future: it pleads for a remaking of the real on the score of possible irration¬ 
 ality. It is a negation of the established values. 
 
 To separate absolutely the two functions is not justifiable; yet the 
 history of philosophy seems to warrant, in the large, a distinction between 
 types of philosophical attitudes. The first embodies the animus of the 
 rationalist and the “professional” interest; the second, the animus of the 
 empiricist and the “occupational” interest. A consideration of certain 
 features of Greek and modern philosophical development will serve to 
 expand the position taken, as well as to give background for a treatment 
 of Hegel and of the embodiment of the two attitudes in the theory and 
 social circumstances characteristic of his time. 
 
 Abstracting from other aspects, Greece affords an example of the 
 rationalistic and professional interest come to philosophical expression. 4 
 The dialectic of intellect at first used as a means of social interpretation 
 and reform lost contact with actual problems as the city state decayed. 
 Plato, realizing the instrumental function of the idea, hypostatized it, and 
 
 1 Cf. the evidence collected in Ward, The Ancient Lowly. 
 
 2 Of course, this description is a generalized one, simply suggesting how an initial 
 functional “division of labor” becomes non-functional. 
 
 3 McTaggart confines philosophy to this office ( Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 
 P- 195 )- 
 
 4 Cf. Dewey, Significance 0} the Problem 0} Knowledge; and “ Some Stages of 
 Logical Thought,” Philos. Rev., Vol. IX, pp. 465 ff. 
 
i8 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 in his psychology of classes, reserved it for the philosopher kings. ' With 
 Aristotle, despair of reviving the political greatness of Athens led to a 
 further specialization of intellect; thinking became a fascinating pursuit 
 for its own sake, and the magnanimity of the philosopher could not conceal 
 disdain for the artisan and the slaves by nature. The “ occupational ” 
 interests after Socrates did not find adequate expression, as they did in the 
 modern empirical development. 
 
 The plain historical account of the English empiricist was largely 
 motived by human interests. Innate ideas stood for hereditary privileges, 
 violation of rights, and uncriticized concepts. The liberals, the Utilitarian 
 reformers, used the logic of the fact: they were protesters, and to serve 
 their purposes simplified unduly the individual and society. They were 
 better destroyers than builders, and found it easier to observe the unfor¬ 
 tunate facts than to organize and put meaning into them. As a whole, 
 they took the anti-professional stand, although it is true that when their 
 demands were incorporated into the social technique, the possessors of 
 the privileges secured became in turn the conservative and professional 
 groups. 
 
 On the continent, where the sway of Greek rationalism, Roman organi¬ 
 zation, and scholastic doctrine was more marked, reflective thought linked 
 itself to the structure of control and to the sacredness of an organized con¬ 
 sciousness and institutions. The rationalist denied that chaotic sensations, 
 however associated, could explain the depths of the inner life. Individual¬ 
 ity, consciousness, could not be resolved into the impulsive reaction and 
 mechanical sequences of the empiricists. For the rationalist there was 
 always present a more inclusive Self, a universalizing something, whether 
 in existing secular institution or in transcendent spiritual forces, which 
 served as a standard of reference for the fleeting moment. The individual 
 could always escape from his isolation and find support and consolation 
 in a system of relations, a realm of ideas, which although lying outside his 
 fluid states of consciousness, yet gave permanence and validity to them. 
 Hence arose a certain detachment from the practicality of daily experience, 
 a refined form of scholastic other-worldliness, and, on the whole, from 
 Descartes, an interest in one phase of social control, the religious. In the 
 course of a suggestive study, 1 Bush remarks: “Was it not inevitable that, 
 not nature and man as humanly experienced, but the soul, the world and 
 the deity as metaphysically conceived, should be the theme of ‘modern 
 philosophy’ ? -Why be surprised that the metaphysics based on the con¬ 
 cept of consciousness seems to have more to do with some other world than 
 
 1 Essays, Philosophical and Psychological (James Memorial Volume), p. ioi. 
 
IMPLICATIONS OF DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 19 
 
 with this one ? It is the pride of idealism that, instead of guiding the work 
 of actual knowledge, instead of throwing helpful light on the technique 
 of discovery, this type of philosophy issued in religious metaphysics.” 
 The rationalist asserted the value of order, of the general, of the sequence 
 of “psychical heredity” as opposed to the caprice of variation, and was 
 thus admirably fitted to serve as the exponent of an organized society with 
 its established usages, professional functions, and regulating norms. 1 
 
 It is not presumed that this brief characterization of the “professional” 
 attitude in Greek and modern continental thought as opposed to the empir¬ 
 ical development represents anything more than one tendency: and the 
 cross currents and innumerable combinations of individualistic and ration¬ 
 alistic tendencies in the various thinkers make anything more than a com¬ 
 posite picture impracticable. There is no attempt, of course, to minimize 
 the supreme value of the continental probing into the mysteries and com¬ 
 plexities of consciousness; the philosophical significance of its analysis is 
 not denied when one insists upon the fact that philosophical reflection is 
 one phase of a vaster social experience. The main thing, which writers from 
 other points of view have often noted, is to detect the connection between 
 the logician who treats the predicate idea as already formulated—the 
 
 type of thought insistent upon the philosopher king’s exclusive possession 
 
 \ 
 
 of real insight—and the high value placed upon those professional activities 
 in society which partake of organization and consistency of working. This 
 tendency of thought may become anti-social and reactionary in so far as it 
 contends, in whatever guise of dogma, divine right, or vested interest, that 
 the already formulated is permanent and “given” for all time because it 
 seems universal, necessary, and self-evident. Its purity of thought and 
 sacredness of institution may be secured by sacrificing more inclusive 
 ideas and controlling devices. Similarly, the harking-back, on the part of 
 the empiricist, to initial “facts,” a supposedly unchangeable subject of 
 the judgment, may lead to a static universal outside the reconstructive 
 process. This is the logical flaw r in all revolutionary and atomistic atti¬ 
 tudes—adherence to chosen facts and their partial meanings and a con¬ 
 sequent overlooking of the control value of the existing formulation, or 
 at least the right of such formulation to enter into the new reconstruction. 
 
 1 Cf. Moore, Jour. Philos. Psych, and Sci. Methods, Vol. VI, pp. 291 ff. 
 
III. THE SYSTEMS OF HEGEL AND MARX AS EMBODI¬ 
 MENTS OF THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF 
 LOGICAL METHOD 
 
 The social implications of logical attitudes are admirably displayed in 
 the philosophy of Hegel and its reaction, the socialistic system of Marx 
 and his followers. Hegel touched the goal of continental rationalism, 1 
 for by reason of its comprehensiveness, its symmetry, and its self-consistent 
 unfoldment, there appeared no secure place in his view for the variational, 
 the untried and experimental; since whenever a presentation became con¬ 
 scious at all, it was in the clutches of necessary and relentless laws of spirit. 
 There was nothing of the looseness and tentative character of English 
 empiricism: the implicit and immanent Idea must maintain its absolute 
 supremacy. The world to Hegel was one of meaning, and since meaning 
 is relation, that which is organized and ordered must have inner justification 
 and sacredness. To attain a definite present purpose implies want, dis¬ 
 satisfaction, the maladjustment of the habitual and customary; and since 
 for Hegel it is the supreme purpose to attain a coalescence of existence and 
 meaning in a sole reality, that incompleteness which besets our phenomenal 
 world of baffled endeavor and experimental science is hard to reconcile with 
 the eternal perfection of a self-perpetuating organization, the Absolute 
 Idea. 2 At least, it seemed to the enthusiasts for a positive union of reflective 
 attitude and social welfare that Hegel had reduced a world of struggling 
 men to a march of unreal categories. 3 The man in whose writing and 
 
 1 Certainly there was no severer critic of the mediaeval and Spinoza type of ration¬ 
 alism than Hegel. Yet his perfected idealism was a form of rationalism in that the 
 evolution of reality was taken to be a self-unfolding of mind. The first and funda¬ 
 mental concepts and laws which earlier rationalism had set up to be deductively employed 
 as revelations of truth, Hegel regarded as incomplete stages of the realization of the 
 immanent Idea which guarantees the teleological process. By including all temporal 
 and phenomenal moments within the sweep of reason, of relation, he, of course, was 
 able to incorporate science and historical sequence within the absolute self; the empir¬ 
 ical became in varying degree “illusion.” Cf. conclusion to the article, “ Rationalism,” 
 in Baldwin’s Dictionary; James , Hibbert Journal, October, 1908, p. 71; Windelband, 
 Die Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, Vol. II, p. 302. 
 
 2 Logic, chap. i. 
 
 3 For the post-Hegelian reaction, cf. Rae, Contemporary Socialism, chap, iv; 
 Wallace, article “Hegel” in Enc. Brit.; Hoffding, The History 0} Modern Philosophy , 
 Vol. II. pp. 266 ff.; Engels, Feuerbach, The Roots 0} the Socialist Philosophy, pp. 52 ff.; 
 Seligman, Economic Interpretation of History, chaps, ii and iii. 
 
 20 
 
SYSTEMS OF HEGEL AND MARX 
 
 21 
 
 “propaganda” the post-Hegelian reaction worked out most concrete social 
 effects was Karl Marx, the leader and inspirer of one of the significant 
 popular movements of modern times . 1 The socialist standpoint as a 
 world-philosophy rests upon a logic of social reform and offers, in contrast 
 with the Hegelian system, a point of approach to an interpretation of many- 
 sided social problems. The pertinent points of analogy and contrast may 
 be distinguished as follows: 
 
 1. There is in each an insistence upon friction and antithesis as essential 
 moments in the journey to synthesis . 2 Both Hegel and Marx profess to 
 think in teleological terms: the Hegelian logic of reality is guided and 
 drawn by the immanent force of the complete Form, the Notion, just as 
 the war of the classes in Marxian phrase must lead by inner necessity to 
 the goal of the co-operative commonwealth after the bitter antithesis of 
 capitalist and laborer. 
 
 2. In each system lurks an element of fatalism . 3 The Absolute after 
 all does not depend upon finite struggle and achievement , 4 and the material 
 dialectic of economic environment seems to arise spontaneously from the 
 soil. In Hegel thought as the sole reality is portrayed in its reconstructive, 
 teleological character, but without organic intimacy with human purposes; 
 laws, arts, religion, and institutions come into being somehow as realizations 
 of the deeper Idea, just as in the Marxian inversion of the spiritual dialectic 
 they are epiphenomena of an evolving economic substratum . 5 The 
 sweep and inevitableness of the evolution resembles the close-knit sym¬ 
 metry and impressiveness of the rationalistic standpoint: there -is an 
 imputed end controlling the functions of society, an organization (so 
 vividly appreciated by Hegel) not dependent upon the chance desire of 
 the wayward individual. Whether or not one wills it, the economic evolu¬ 
 tion goes on; the advance of the machine industry is given an impersonal 
 and cosmic character; there is rigid necessity of the present capitalistic 
 
 1 Stein, Die sociale Frage, pp. 288 ff.; Wallace, Lectures and Essays, chap, viii; 
 Hoffding, Ethik, pp. 303 ff.; Ritchie, Natural Rights, , p. 276; Barth, Philosophie 
 der Geschichte als Sociologie, pp. 270 ff.; Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy, 
 pp. 280 ff. 
 
 2 Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, pp. 271 ff. 
 
 3 Russell, German Social Democracy, chap, i; Veblen, Quart. Jour. Economics, 
 Vol. XX, p. 580. 
 
 4 Logic, p. 352. 
 
 5 Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy, p. 60. Representative utterances of Marx 
 are found in Capital (translation, London, 1901) Preface, pp. xxviii ff., and Misere 
 de la philosophie (Paris, 1896), p. 143. Cf. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 
 for an elaboration of the Marxian position. 
 
22 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 regime, and the inner contradictions of the system prepare the way for the 
 succeeding stage in the social dialectic. 1 
 
 3. Although from the standpoint of the Absolute Teleology with its 
 predetermined culminating point, both systems appear quietistic* and 
 fatalistic, from another standpoint they are both revolutionary. Hegel 
 could only free himself from radicalism by assuming that the previous 
 self-determinations of the Idea in history found peace and satisfaction in 
 the organization of the Prussian government. It is not true to say, as have 
 over-zealous critics, that Hegel indiscriminately eulogized all the arrange¬ 
 ments of the bureaucratic society of his day: yet it is true that he was so 
 much the son of his own time that devices that were not entirely rational 
 were pronounced real. However that may be, the restless triads of Hegel’s 
 logic do not create the impression of conservatism as regards the solution of 
 any problem, because there is advanced no convincing assurance that any 
 final synthesis will ever obviate the necessity of further reconstruction. 
 As already observed, Marx cast his social philosophy in the forms of the 
 Hegelian trinitarian process, and notwithstanding the certitude of inevitable 
 transition from the negative moment of capitalism to the synthesis in 
 socialism, and the consequent futility of human choice as a really effective 
 force, the practical consequence was a war-cry—the oppressed were to 
 throw off their chains by denouncing the bourgeoisie , by securing political 
 power and thus entering upon the classless society. How such “propa¬ 
 ganda” and energy could appreciably affect the predetermined dissolution of 
 the present capitalistic moment of the dialectic was not clearly explained. 
 In both systems are the same antinomies between our human purposes and 
 a final purpose. The human purposes constantly reach out to richer and 
 wider regions of conquest; the final purpose which our human endeavors 
 “copy” is attained in an Absolute Self or an Absolute Society. 2 
 
 4. The distinction already made between the profession and the occupa¬ 
 tion forms one feature of the thought of Hegel and a major motive in the 
 Marxian indictment of society. Hegel took a view of the prerogatives 
 
 1 Capital, p. 512. 
 
 2 The mixture of fatalism and “ propaganda ” to achieve immediate converts is a 
 basis for one type of religious attitude which Mohammedanism has found useful; and 
 the inability to copy an Absolute purpose and identify it with a concrete purpose was 
 the basis of Hegelian mysticism in which “contradictions” were transcended. 
 
 Jaures points out the religious fervor of Marx in showing the inexorable dissolution 
 of the capitalistic regime. Marx also had a few racial and temperamental traits 
 similar to the Hebrew prophets of woe. For personal characteristics cf. Liebknecht’s 
 Memoirs oj Marx. Cf. Russell, op. cit., p. 7, for a statement of the religious character 
 of socialism; also Le Bon, Psychology of Socialism, pp. 85 ff. 
 
SYSTEMS OF HEGEL AND MARX 
 
 2 3 
 
 and value of the philosopher and the ruling classes which, in spite of the 
 eighteenth-century wave of democracy, allied him with the Platonic- 
 Aristotelian standpoint. It is the business of the thinker to exhaust the 
 meaning of the Real. 1 A statement, characteristic of one side at least 
 of his teaching, is found in his Philosophy of Religion : 2 
 
 Philosophy forms in this connection a sanctuary apart, and those who serve 
 in it constitute an isolated order of priests who must not mix with the world, and 
 whose work is to protect the possessions of Truth. How the actual present-day 
 world is to find its way out of this state of disruption, and what form it is to take, 
 are questions which must be left to itself to settle, and to deal with them is not the 
 immediate practical business and concern of philosophy. 
 
 Following out his conviction of the supreme function of pure reason, in 
 his Philosophy of Right he estimates the classes in the community accord¬ 
 ing to their degree of reflective ability: the “substantial” class follow a way 
 of life needing but little reflection and slightly modified by subjective voli¬ 
 tion; 3 the “industrial” class, involved in more complex relationships, 
 develop a sense of individuality and a desire of freedom, while the fully 
 reflective class are concerned with the universal interests of society, must 
 be free from the direct task of providing for themselves, and should be 
 rewarded and protected by the state. 4 The utility of the prince and con¬ 
 stitutional monarchy in effecting the predominance of the reflective and 
 administrative orders is fully recognized. 5 
 
 Marx, and the socialists generally, to offset the eulogy of the professional 
 and administrative classes, saw the rising strength and possibilities of the 
 mass of workers brought into prominence by the industrial revolution— 
 men who had hitherto counted little in the active control of the state. Their 
 labor seemed to him of immense significance: far greater indeed than that 
 of the professions. These—churchman, lawyer, professor, philosopher, 
 and state official—Marx considered “ideologists,” worshipers of a non¬ 
 functional reason, a sheltered parasitic group who strive to continue the 
 capitalistic era of exploitation. 6 Instead of idealizing and entrenching the 
 
 1 Philosophy of Right, Preface. 
 
 2 Vol. Ill, p. 151. 
 
 3 Dyde’s translation, p. 200. 
 
 4 Philosophy of Right, p. 202. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 278. 
 
 6 Cf. the eloquent denunciation in the first section of the Communist Manifesto. 
 Joseph Dietzgen, whom Marx called the philosopher of the socialist movement, develops 
 this phase of the Marxian doctrine. Cf. his Philosophical Essays, pp. 226 ff., and the 
 Positive Outcome of Philosophy, passim. 
 
24 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 customary norms, he used his Hegelian schema to give to the Fourth 
 Estate a sense of historical position, a consciousness of occupational func¬ 
 tion, which hitherto had belonged to the professional estates. He strove 
 to enlarge the sphere of effective political persons and it is not strange that 
 Labor became the capitalized word of his system. The meaning of the 
 world was to be no longer the exclusive possession of the philosopher of 
 reason in whose eyes the rational and real mirrors the Absolute and justifies 
 the permanence of the already established; instead, the workingman was 
 set in the center of the historic drama—the workingman, who by his 
 strategic position is destined to objectify the final co-operative and syn¬ 
 thetic stage of the social process. Thus the “occupational” interests 
 become meaningful; monotonous toil, insufficient wage, “exploitation” 
 by the capitalist, diligence through the discipline of the machine in¬ 
 dustry, are the very means by which the workers achieve a “class con¬ 
 sciousness,” ability to co-operate, and political power; ancient territorial 
 wars are outdone by the war of profession against occupation, of “ bour¬ 
 geoisie ” against “proletariat.” 
 
 5. The nature of a specific logical problem according to the view of 
 the instrumentalists, suggests some limitations to the all-sufficiency of the 
 Hegelian and Marxian attitudes. In general it may be said that both 
 positions fall short because of a false emphasis placed either upon the factual 
 or upon the ideational moment in the interaction of subject and predicate, 
 and a failure to hold fast to the historical and relative ascendency which 
 now one and now the other assumes. There results an imperfect assimi¬ 
 lation of rationalistic and empirical presuppositions and in so far as the 
 organic relation of fact and idea is not grasped, all the consequences of one¬ 
 sided statements of logical procedure, adduced in the previous sections, 
 obtain. In either standpoint there is a dependence upon some kind of 
 “given.” In the Hegelian the given is psychical, the implicit Idea. The 
 facts of the empirical world of science and struggle are soon transcended: 
 only the rational is real, and whether that rationality is of our finding or of 
 another type of consciousness is a moot point in Hegelian interpretation. 
 At any rate, although the process of hypothesis-making is acutely analyzed, 
 we are left with consistency, residing in thought itself, as our test of truth. 
 We begin and end with thought and are never quite sure whether our idea 
 corresponds with or “mirrors the Notion.” Correspondingly, in so far 
 as Marx depends upon the spiritual logic of Hegel to establish the truth of 
 his faith in the Absolute Society we are never quite confident how it is that 
 our empirical purposes are instrumental in leading us thither. But Marx 
 has another weapon in his equipment. For practical purposes of propa- 
 
SYSTEMS OF HEGEL AND MARX 
 
 25 
 
 ganda he uses the empirical presuppositions. 1 The immediately real he 
 derives from two sources: first, the conversion of the dialectic of reason to 
 economic material, and second, the Utilitarian-French reliance upon the 
 manipulation of concrete sense-data, the significance of which he was quite 
 as much unable to explain because given, as were the English liberals. 
 Either position landed him in a difficulty of explaining the immediate 
 problem on its own merits, without appealing to the empirical “laws of 
 nature” 2 or the rationalistic realm of already formulated meaning beyond 
 the act of judgment. The ancient dualism of a world of matter, of fact, 
 and a world of meaning, of idea, confronted him. Hence arose his often 
 criticized “materialism.” It must be repeated that “materialism” may 
 proceed alike from rationalistic and from empirical grounds: one may 
 rely upon psychical givens or factual givens, in so far as there is a cutting- 
 short of the cycle of a complete act and a resting upon one moment of the 
 experience as exhausting the significance of the problem at hand. Mate¬ 
 rialism simply denies the progressive unfolding of meaning in the specious 
 present and may exist within a teleological or a mechanical system, when 
 the functional character of the mechanism and the purpose is lost sight of. 
 
 A proof of the borrowing of empirical postulates of natural rights, 
 hedonistic calculus, and the abstract individual—the devices of the English 
 reformers—is seen in the Marxian conception of human nature. 3 Both 
 
 1 Foxwell, in the Introduction to his translation of Menger’s Right to the Whole 
 Product 0} Labor (London, 1899), overemphasizes the English contribution, pp. xxv ff. 
 For general criticisms of the limitations of the individualistic standpoint, cf. Veblen, 
 Quart. Jour. Economics, Vol. XX, pp. 576, 577, and Vol. XXI, p. 299; Ritchie, Darwin 
 and Hegel, chap, vi, and Natural Rights, pp. 102, 103 and pp. 268-70: Bonar, Phi¬ 
 losophy and Political Economy, pp. 186 ff.; Adamson, Development 0} Modern Phi¬ 
 losophy, Vol. II, pp. 90, 91; Willoughby, Social Justice, chap, v; also Foxwell in 
 Menger, op. cit., Introduction, pp. cvi-cvii. 
 
 2 It is instructive to notice that in Mill, the mechanical conception of empiricism 
 leads to a sympathy with socialism; cf. his Logic, Book VI, chap, xi, sec. 4: “the 
 increasing preponderance of the collective agency of the species over all minor causes 
 is constantly bringing the general evolution of the race into something which deviates 
 less from a certain and preappointed track.” (Italics mine.) 
 
 3 Sombart says, “A word of Pierre Leroux’ seems to me as if coined for Marx: 
 ‘ il etait .... fort penetrant sur le mauvais cote de la nature humaine.’ So it was 
 easy for him to believe in Hegel’s teaching that ‘evil ’ has accomplished all the develop¬ 
 ment of mankind”— Socialism, p. 92. The Marxian ethical view is seen at its baldest 
 in the coarse allegations of bourgeois depravity in the Manifesto: Capital is full of 
 undoubtedly correct evidence of inhuman exspoliation and fraud; cf. chap, xxi, on the 
 “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist;” Simkhovitch in Political Science Quarterly, 
 Vol. XIII, p. 200, considers the Marxian concept of ethics; cf. Masaryk, Grundlagen 
 des Marxismus, p. 490. 
 
26 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 employer and employee “naturally” are dominated by acquisitive propen¬ 
 sities: both are “selfish” and anxious to be protected in their rights and 
 prerogatives; 1 there is no hope that truly ethical and social virtues will 
 spring up until “psychological and material” conditions shall be entirely 
 harmonious for “adaptation of inner and outer.” There is the same diffi¬ 
 culty which Spencer tried to meet: how to evolve a moral individual by 
 adaptation to an environment which, by hypothesis, must evolve separately 
 and build up “representative” ideas and moral dispositions. Of course 
 this is only another way of saying that Marx failed to give prominence to 
 the reaction of active social impulses of the individual upon the environ¬ 
 ing circumstances. He was so impatient of the bourgeois “intellectuals” 
 on account of their refusal to respond to the demands of the radicals that 
 he could see no other explanation than that of “economic interest.” He 
 concluded that those who direct the industrial machinery inevitably develop 
 predatory class virtues because of their individualistic, competitive exploit¬ 
 ing of resources and men: the proletariat, equally self-regarding by nature, 
 are constrained to co-operate with fellow-workers and subordinate private 
 inclination to the welfare of their class. The increasing strength of the 
 proletarian virtues springing from the necessity of group solidarity pre¬ 
 pares for the perfect adaptation of the coming society. 
 
 This view is utilitarian and criticism of it has been a favorite employ¬ 
 ment which needs no addition. From the logical point of view, however, 
 it is sufficient to mark the fallacy of assuming that one can deduce ah 
 extra from a given set of facts a given set of values or meanings. Of course 
 the central point of ethical theory is that it is precisely the re-forming of 
 the material conditions, the revolt against the “cosmic order” which 
 creates the ethical situation. 2 
 
 A summary of the matter from the logical standpoint may be put thus: 
 Hegel and Marx did not make clear to the plain man that the essence of 
 theory, of the hypothesis, is brought out in application, in a constant back 
 and forth reaction of concept and percept. It is development, the activity 
 of response, which puts content into any norm. The unreality in the 
 spinning of the Hegelian categories as well as in the delusive symmetry 
 of the Marxian concepts can be traced back to the omission of that phase 
 of logical method in which the hypothesis is applied. If such application 
 does not take place we must be content with unchanging, ready-made fact, 
 mechanism, laws of nature, or given, necessary ideas. Either there is inex- 
 
 1 Cf. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus , Vol. I, pp. 378 ff., on “The Genesis 
 of the Capitalistic Spirit.” 
 
 2 Huxley, Evolution and Ethics. 
 
SYSTEMS OF HEGEL AND MARX 
 
 27 
 
 orable finality in the mechanism or an inevitable procession of the imma¬ 
 nent notion and its objectification in economic stages. Logically speaking, 
 this is the result when the subject is cut away from the predicate; the copula 
 must then be external to the process of solving the problem. 
 
 How the failure to reconstruct the predicate, the hypothesis, to corre¬ 
 spond with recurring facts has worked in the case of the Marxian theories 
 must now be considered. 
 
IV. INTERACTION OF FACT AND IDEA AS IELUSTRATED 
 BY THE CHANGES IN MARXIAN DOCTRINES 
 
 The purpose of this section is to suggest by reference to typical features 
 of the development of socialist theory and practice that it is not possible to 
 deduce the events of societary evolution conclusively by a logical process. 
 One cannot assume in advance that the facts will follow certain necessary 
 combinations or that the hypotheses will need no remaking: if the subject 
 of judgment is put into motion, as experience demonstrates, the predicate 
 must participate in the struggle and suffer change. 
 
 That the history of economic phenomena has not as yet fully substan¬ 
 tiated the original Marxian formulation of the inevitable trend it is easy 
 to show. 1 New facts have come to light which cannot, without danger to 
 theoretical consistency, be harmonized with original predictions. To 
 prove the assertion, three points are selected for brief treatment: (i) the 
 alleged tendency to large-scale production, (2) the doctrine of increasing 
 misery, and (3) the socialist view of the present state. 2 
 
 It was the claim of the Communist Manifesto* and Capital 4 that there 
 is an inevitable and unlimited absorption of the small manufacturer, trader, 
 and farmer by the monopolistic enterprises. This is attended on the part 
 of the worker by a constant relinquishing of the ownership of his “ tools,” 
 and, on the part of the capitalist, a consequent greater ease of exploiting 
 the “surplus value” produced by labor. 5 Marx supposed that there would 
 be a sharply drawn antithesis between the propertyless “proletariat” and 
 the bourgeois owners of the means of sustaining life. 6 Such opposition, 
 due to the elimination of the petty producer by large scale production, he 
 welcomed, because by this means the issues would be clearly defined, 
 “class consciousness” fostered, and steps taken by which the dispossessed 
 would enter into their rightful inheritance. 
 
 How far have succeeding developments sustained his theory of the 
 
 1 For recent discussions of the departures from strict Marxism sc. Veblen, Quart. 
 Jour. Economics, Vol. XXI, and Simkhovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart., Vol. XIII, pp. 652 ff. 
 
 2 Marx himself did not, as did his followers, say that tomorrow the new society 
 will begin: but he gave an elaborate logical mold into which, in spite of sporadic 
 aberrations, the economic development was assumed to flow. Cf. Liebknecht’s 
 Karl Marx, p. 59. 
 
 3 Manifesto (London), 1888, p. 13. s Ibid., p. 738. 
 
 4 Chaps, xxiv, xxv, esp. pp. 639 ff. 6 Ibid., p. 786. 
 
 28 
 
INTERACTION OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 29 
 
 inevitable trend? At first glance it may seem as if the predictions of 
 Marx and his disciples have come to pass, and it is true that the acuteness 
 of Marx as an economist is proved by his forecast of one line of develop¬ 
 ment, for since his death has come the era of great combinations. Some 
 careful observers, however, have concluded that there are counteracting 
 currents. 1 The testimony of a socialist on this point is relevant. After 
 giving a review of German statistics relating to the growth in size of indus¬ 
 trial plants, Bernstein concludes: 
 
 Notwithstanding continual changes in industrial groups and in their mate¬ 
 rial arrangements, the picture which presents itself to us today does not indicate 
 that large manufacturing establishments continually devour business units of 
 small and moderate dimensions, but this picture simply shows large business 
 establishments growing up by the side of smaller ones. It is only those estab¬ 
 lishments so small as to be called dwarf establishments which are suffering an 
 absolute and relative decline. 2 
 
 If modem society is to break to pieces by reason of the disappearance of the 
 middle classes between the two extremes of the social pyramid, if this breaking 
 to pieces depends upon the absorption of these middle classes by the extremes above 
 and below, then this break-up is no nearer its realization than it was in any earlier 
 period than the nineteenth century. 3 
 
 In his admirable discussion of “Concentration of Production,” 4 Pro¬ 
 fessor Ely contends that 
 
 the size of the business unit of maximum efficiency must depend upon the capacity 
 of the heads of the business unit, upon the nature of the particular business, and 
 upon the progress which, at the given moment, has been made in the methods 
 of organization. Whenever a business outgrows the capacity of one man to main¬ 
 tain unity, the danger point is reached. Men differ greatly in the generalship 
 required for the management of a vast business, and unity is maintained in some 
 businesses far more easily than in others. It is quite possible that with a division 
 of the railways of the United States into suitable geographical areas, each with a 
 large measure of autonomy, a unified management could in a general way be 
 exercised over them all. The size of the business concern in manufacturing 
 over which unity can be exercised is, so far as can now be seen, much smaller; and 
 still smaller is the mercantile establishment over which unified control can be 
 exercised. Vastly smaller in agriculture is the size of the business unit over 
 which unified control can be exercised. With the change from extensive to inten- 
 
 1 Bullock, Quart. Jour. Economics, Vol. XV, pp. 167 ff. For a review of the 
 statistics relating to large-scale production sc. Simkhovitch, op. cit., pp. 658 ff. 
 
 a Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aujgaben der Sozialdemocratie, p. 59. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 65. Cited in Ely, Monopolies and Trusts, pp. 190, 191 
 
 4 Ibid., chap. v. 
 
30 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 sive culture there is apparently a general tendency to divide up large estates, 
 although it is perhaps true that after this change has once been made there is 
 again a very moderate movement in the direction of larger farms. 
 
 In connection with the supposed tendency to “bonanza” farms in the 
 United States the students of economics in the University of Wisconsin have 
 for years pursued investigations, and not one has succeeded in demonstrating 
 any concentration in agricultural production so far as area is concerned, 
 although one student thought that there is a trend toward greater average 
 values. 2 
 
 The general conclusion therefore seems to be that industrial concen¬ 
 tration has many hindering forces, that there is a point of maximum effi¬ 
 ciency relative to particular enterprises, and that the universal trend toward 
 consolidation and monopoly, however great it may be as one phase of 
 economic change, has not corresponded with the early logical statement. 
 
 Similar observation may be made on the doctrine of increasing misery. 3 
 The original formulation based itself in part on a version of the iron law 
 of wages, according to which the worker is treated as a commodity whose 
 labor-power is bought and sold in the cheapest market by the exploiting 
 capitalist: he is paid enough to keep his physical forces intact and to 
 support a family in order that his children may continue the regime of 
 confiscating surplus value. 4 Laws and institutions made by capitalistic 
 masters hedge him in more and more, and, in the midst of accumulating 
 social wealth stolen by private interests, his state, by logical antithesis, 
 increases in precariousness and poverty. 
 
 It is not now held even by the socialists that such is irretrievably the 
 case. Historians of popular movements note the fact that periods of protest 
 are not times of direst poverty, but times of comparative prosperity, intelli¬ 
 gence, and keen comparison of the status of classes. 5 There is a general 
 recognition that at least no such clean-cut formulation as Marx and George 
 gave to the matter is tenable, 6 even though one is keenly alive to undoubted 
 maladjustments and inequalities, and to the well-known fact that the 
 burden of our economic system presses most heavily upon those least able 
 
 * Op. cit ., pp. 194, 195. 
 
 2 Op. cit., p. 193; cf. Sombart, Socialism, p. 159; Thompson, Constructive Pro¬ 
 gram 0} Socialism, pp. 63 ff.; Capital, pp. 512 ff. 
 
 3 Manifesto, p. 13. 
 
 4 Capital, pp. 627 ff. 
 
 5 Rogers, Economic Interpretation of History, p. 81. 
 
 6 Cf. Jaures, Studies in Socialism, p. 161; Ashley, Progress of the German Working 
 Classes, p. 140. 
 
INTERACTION OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 31 
 
 to bear it. A recent investigation of the material prosperity of the work¬ 
 ing class in the United States, published in Adams and Sumner’s Labor 
 Problems ,' 1 comes to this general conclusion: 
 
 While the data upon this subject are imperfect and tentative, they establish 
 a strong probability that the proportion of wealth in the hands of the wealthy 
 is astonishingly, if not alarmingly, great; but they also indicate with less certainty 
 that the distribution of wealth is becoming less, rather than more, unequal. 2 
 
 In the course of the study, the following points are indicative of the 
 complexity of the problem and the futility of dogmatic assertion: (a) It 
 is extremely difficult to estimate at different historical periods the amount 
 of real, as compared with nominal, wages, and the comparative standards of 
 life, (b) It is fairly evident that in the last hundred years wages have 
 increased, hours of work diminished, sanitation improved, and a general dis¬ 
 tribution been made of articles of dress and household conveniences such as 
 the mediaeval nobility would have envied. ( c ) But the strain of “ speed¬ 
 ing up” of the machine has intensified, accidents have multiplied, and 
 mental and nervous diseases show the inability of men racially inured to 
 hunting and outdoor activities to adjust themselves to a “high gear” 
 standardized civilization. ( d ) It is demonstrated that concentration of 
 wealth may be coincident with a wide distribution of goods to the wage¬ 
 earning groups. 
 
 All in all, the question is not one which lends itself easily to hasty 
 judgment or prediction of certain future tendencies; it demands patient, 
 continued study and judicious application of remedial measures. 
 
 The early socialist view of the modern state illustrates a character¬ 
 istic painting in bold colors which allow insufficient room for delicate 
 light and shade; as usual, the Marxian indictment contains partial truth 
 needing qualification and enlargement. Here again there has been a 
 gradual change of attitude: the early era of hostility and no compromise 
 with the industrial masters has merged into one accompanied by greater 
 willingness to detect, in the midst of undoubted opposition of interest 
 between “capitalistic” politics and “proletarian” aspirations, some positive 
 co-operative aspects in the already organized system. 3 This attitude is 
 said to be not only perceptible among the “revisionists,” but to be notice¬ 
 able also among the orthodox Marxians, as shown by recent attention to 
 
 1 Chap. xiii. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 535. 
 
 3 Kampffmeyer, Changes in the Theory and Tactics 0} the Social Democracy 
 (Chicago, 1908), pp. 24 ff; Jaures, op. cit. p. 33. 
 
32 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 the claims of militarism and national patriotism: the Manifesto declared 
 the workers to be an international brotherhood and without a country. 1 
 
 It is proposed in the following discussion to state the position of Marx 
 in relation to the conditions out of which it emerged and to emphasize, in 
 the light of advancing needs, the limitations of the extreme socialist view 
 generated by German surroundings, as well as the limitations of the extreme 
 individualism characteristic of the “American spirit.” Marx considered 
 the political system in which he was born and persecuted 2 a close corpora¬ 
 tion, selfishly managed in the interest of semi-feudal landlords and corrupt 
 bourgeoisie , and pursuing belligerent, military methods in war and industry. 
 The state was an arbitrary concern exploiting weaker peoples for its eco¬ 
 nomic advantage and employing its norm, its laws, its police, to repress 
 the legitimate demands of the workers. 3 All the professions, the “intel¬ 
 lectuals,” were parasitic growths, drawing sustenance by observing and 
 propagating the “ruling ideas” which emanated from basal economic inter¬ 
 ests. 4 Under the pressure of self-preservation, the state sanctioned predatory 
 practices in industry, the rights of private property and anti-social accumu¬ 
 lation, and, as in all wars of conquest, was careless of human life, unless 
 its interests were endangered by failure to attend to the urging of humani¬ 
 tarian motives. Against the artificiality of the capitalist political organiza¬ 
 tion, he sets the synthetic state of socialism. War, national patriotism, class 
 virtue, and predatory conquest abroad and at home will be eliminated when 
 the economic conditions calling out anti-social conduct are removed. Private 
 property in the means of production—which are, antithetically, even now 
 social and co-operative in their internal organization—is the substantial 
 basis of the higher life of the bourgeoisie ; with the destruction of exploita¬ 
 tion, the function of priest, lawyer, soldier, and “ideological” philosopher 
 
 1 Cf. Kampffmeyer, op. cit., chap, iii; Veblen, Quart. Jour. Economics, Vol. XXI, 
 pp. 319 ff. 
 
 2 A good narration of his career is found in Rae, Contemporary Socialism, chap. iv. 
 
 3 Manifesto, p. 9. 
 
 4 The corollary of the original Marx-Engels position is to welcome misery and dis¬ 
 asters of the “contradictory” capitalist system, agitate, and wait for its dissolution; 
 suffrage and parliamentary representatives can do little; the theory and tactics have 
 gradually come around to the position that the democratizing and socializing of the 
 present order can be brought about by means of cautious reform activity of the working 
 class through divers means: it is not necessary for capitalistic contradictions to become 
 acute that a spontaneous explosion may occur. This is in part a return to, in part an 
 advance over, Lassalle’s view of the creative and transitional function of the state. 
 Cf. Kampffmeyer, op. cit., p. 11; for the oscillations and opposition of opinion and 
 practice in such leaders as Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky, and Von Vollmar; sc., op. 
 cit., chap. i. 
 
 1 
 
INTERACTION OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 33 
 
 will disappear, since all the professions are in one way or another sub¬ 
 servient to an essentially vicious system. The future political organiza¬ 
 tion will be, not a state, but a civil society, 1 an industrial copartnership, 
 managing and distributing economic resources, and, presumably, foster¬ 
 ing the requisite psychological and moral attitudes which thoroughgoing 
 co-operation will engender. The military and predatory controlling 
 machinery of the bourgeoisie will vanish; expropriators will be expropri¬ 
 ated, and all who are now divided into “proletariat” and “bourgeoisie” 
 will be forced to a standard of labor, of service rendered to society. 
 
 To secure perspective for his view one should call to mind the influence 
 upon Marx of the French radicals, 2 the transforming of Hegelian idealism 
 into the “humanism” of Feuerbach, and the reaction of his impetuous 
 Hebrew nature against the Prussian administrative system. The “set” 
 given by the Hohenzollerns toward benevolent despotism, restriction of 
 free thought, and political participation, was distasteful to him, and the 
 halting reforms initiated by Stein would not satisfy those who had felt the 
 European revolutionary impetus. Moreover, there was the dawning 
 economic revolution in Germany attended by a vast increase of wealth, 
 which Marx considered drained from peasant and factory laborer, concen¬ 
 trated in an idle aristocracy and in harsh official hands, and used to support 
 the hierarchy and the standing army. 
 
 Hegel, to some extent, served to give philosophical idealization to this 
 situation. He praised the prince 3 and the constitutional monarchy, 
 treated war as an ethical necessity 4 (the stage of antithesis), explained the 
 rationality of the stratification of classes, 5 and discountenanced public 
 opinion as a vague chaotic imitation of the unification of reason in the 
 reflective and ruling members of the state. 6 The value of his emphasis 
 upon finding one’s freedom in the organic state and the sanity of his judg¬ 
 ment and historical insight are not the points in question: he was a son of 
 his own time, as he admitted. 
 
 These characteristics of the political system—its military basis, its 
 boast to do good for the people, its grudging vouchsafing of “rights,” its 
 Platonic class division, its surveillance of press and university, its indis¬ 
 position to recognize the contributions of all members of the community— 
 drove Marx to the extreme of not expecting any good from the semi-feudal 
 capitalistic structure of his time. And the flavor of charity in the upper 
 
 * Rae, op. cit., p. 141. 
 
 2 Cf. Wundt, Ethik, Vol. I, pp. 507 ff. 
 
 3 Philosophy 0} Right, p. 283. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 332. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 275. 
 6 Ibid., p. 322. 
 
34 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 circles, of granting favors, of conferring old-age pensions and industrial 
 insurance, is the reason why the strict socialists will not admit that the 
 public ownership of railways and assumed devotion to the poor is genuine 
 socialization. The state socialism of Bismarck 1 proceeds, in their opinion, 
 on the assumption that reform can only come from the top, from the pro¬ 
 fessional thinker and administrators, whereas the socialist idea is that the 
 new society must build from the bottom—must be an achievement won 
 by immanent forces working out in the “proletariat.” 2 
 
 In the insistence that the state after all must be an organized expression 
 of general co-operation the Marxian socialists are undoubtedly right, 
 but in refusing to admit the positive and sympathetic motives existing in 
 the present state, they are undoubtedly declining to see “facts” which 
 belie their theory. The present state is both quasi-military and co-opera¬ 
 tive. It is true that an emergency, such as a revision of the tariff, calls 
 out the industrial warriors, each calling for “protection” irrespective 
 of the common good, and it is true that there is “exploitation” in public, 
 as well as in private, business. But there are also social impulses working 
 in both; and the problem really vital is to find ways and means to facilitate 
 such sympathetic activity. The fallacy of the socialist is to suppose that 
 the social attitude is present in the bottom sections only of the social pyra¬ 
 mid; that of the elite is to assume that no contribution can come from the 
 irresponsible “people.” 
 
 A further consideration to be noted is that even if we grant the predatory 
 basis of capitalistic political organization, one means of changing its char¬ 
 acter to that of co-operation is by continually increasing its sphere and 
 eliciting responsibility and the social attitude, even at the cost of some 
 preliminary failure. 3 The situation in America illustrates this side of 
 the problem. Instead of starting out on the continental theory that govern¬ 
 ment should work for the non-effective people, America, reacting against 
 England, took the stand that government was in its essence a necessary evil 
 
 1 Cf. Dawson, Bismarck and State Socialism, chap. iii. 
 
 2 The Manifesto claimed that the protelariat was the only revolutionary class; 
 recent socialist opinion denies this (Thompson, Constructive Program of Socialism, p. 9). 
 
 3 “To be afraid to extend the functions of government may be to lose what we have. 
 A government has always received feeble support from its constituents as soon as its 
 demands appeared childish or remote. Citizens inevitably neglect or abandon civic 
 duty, when their government no longer embodies their genuine desires.”—Jane 
 Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, pp. 112, 113. Professor Ely insists upon the truth 
 that additional responsibility calls out devotion to the common good and greater 
 efficiency. This he forcibly applies to the problem of municipal ownership of 
 public utilities. 
 
INTERACTION OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 35 
 
 and should be restricted to narrow “police functions.” 1 Our extensions 
 of constitutional powers have always been excused on the score that each 
 extension was “implied” in the original demarkation. It is a well-known 
 fact that today any assumption of new responsibilities is decried because it 
 transgresses “freedom.” Such freedom is found on examination to mean 
 freedom from such oppressive government as George III typifies, and which 
 colored the views of our political builders. The individualistic critics of 
 this persuasion forget that practically we have long outgrown the early 
 conception, and notwithstanding the anti-social element still present in 
 our political system, the beneficent activities centering in our national and 
 state capitols and city halls bear witness to the fact that government is 
 also social, educational, and ethical. The problem of the enlargement 
 of governmental activities is not correctly stated, therefore, if we ask: 
 Shall we put additional duties upon a state, which is to perform benevolent 
 services for the people whether they co-operate or not (as in Germany) ? 
 Neither should we ask: Shall we give up our “liberties” and add to legiti¬ 
 mate police functions of government the control of health or industry, for 
 example (the conventional American way) ? Both statements of the ques¬ 
 tion ignore the vital fact that the positive co-operative state is here, because 
 social impulses are already operating in so far as people live a community life, 
 and that the real problem, again, is to find more fruitful outlet for capacities 
 now existing: this may mean a giving-up of honored state activities. The 
 individualist, who objects to social control because he imagines he is sacri¬ 
 ficing freedom, attains a further lessening of real freedom because he has 
 thrown away the necessary mechanism and laws through which freedom 
 is attained. Conversely, the socialist who shuns the corrupt capitalistic 
 state is throwing away the only obvious means of attaining a possible co-oper¬ 
 ative commonwealth, and has to console himself by recourse to a predeter¬ 
 mined economic evolution. Says Jane Addams: 
 
 While the state spends millions of dollars and employs thousands of servants 
 to nurture and heal the sick and defective, it steadfastly refuses to extend its 
 kindness to the normal working man. The socialists alone constantly appeal 
 for this extension. They refuse, however, to deal with the present State, and 
 constantly take refuge in the formulae of a new Scholasticism. Their orators 
 are busily engaged in establishing two substitutes for human nature which they 
 call “proletarian” and “capitalist.” They ignore the fact that varying, imperfect 
 human nature is incalculable, and that to eliminate its varied and constantly 
 
 1 Cf. a fine characterization of the weakness of the individualistic notion, and the 
 possibilities of an investigatory, deliberative, and constructive governmental organi¬ 
 zation when society becomes conscious of itself, in Ward, Psychic Factors in Civiliza¬ 
 tion, pp. 319 ff. 
 
36 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 changing elements is to face all the mistakes and miscalculations which gather 
 around the “fallen man” or the “economic man” or any other of the fixed norms 
 which have from time to time been substituted for expanding and developing 
 human life. In time “the proletarian” and “the capitalist” will become the 
 impedimenta which it will be necessary to clear away in order to make room for 
 the mass of living and breathing citizens with whom self-government must 
 eventually deal. 1 
 
 The history of factory legislation, public control of natural monopolies, 
 public care of dependent and defective, public education, old-age pensions, 
 and the thousand remedial devices proceeding in part at least from active 
 popular demand does not substantiate either the early plea of Spencerian 
 individualism, or the socialistic opposition to the “patchwork” concessions 
 of a predatory bourgeois state. Certainly the state has not yet come to 
 consciousness of its positive function, yet there is no need of minimizing the 
 ultimate validity of present extensions of its activity and of assuming either 
 that they transgress original natural rights and eternal limits of the political 
 sphere, or that they are merely anticipatory regulations preparing for a 
 N?w Jerusalem whose structure and functions are now known in detail. 
 Either position is a patent example of the extreme empirical and rationalistic 
 fallacy of trying to derive the meaning of immediate conditions outside the 
 process of solving the present problem, of resting upon chosen “facts” 
 or given £< ideas.” 
 
 The reaction of evolving experience upon old concepts illustrated above 
 by the complexities of industrial concentration, distribution of economic 
 and social goods to the masses, and functions of government serves to show 
 the emptiness of logical formulation in advance of the changing conditions, 
 and enforces once more the prime necessity of a persistent restatement of 
 the problem. 
 
 1 Newer Ideals 0} Peace , p. 86. (Italics mine.) 
 
 
V. TRANSITION FROM THE HEGELIAN-MARXIAN THEORY 
 
 TO RECENT OPPORTUNISM 
 
 It will make for definiteness to give a schematic summary of the general 
 transition from the early logical method to the later, together with further 
 evidences of the reconstruction of doctrine by the “ revisionists.” 
 
 1. The Hegelian system was formulated under the influence of roman¬ 
 ticism, continental liking for systematization, an immature science, and 
 dawning interest in social evolution. Hegel advocated an immanent, 
 Absolute Teleology; his advance was a firm grasp of the process of friction, 
 of antithesis, of unfolding of meaning implicit in the elements constituting 
 a problem; his defect, a failure to connect the dialectic of reason with a 
 workable application of hardly won truth to immediate, practical ends, 
 and a consequent idealization of already attained valuations. To offset 
 his logic of the Idea and his minimizing of the democratizing value of new 
 facts and scientific invention, the Left reduced the march of history to 
 material fact and economic evolution determined by invention, i. e., the 
 “tools,” the technique of production. It retained, however, the logical 
 inevitableness and consistency characteristic of the rationalistic animus, 
 and, to match the exaggerated claims of the possessors of reason, the 
 “professional” estates, magnified the counterclaims of the dependent occu¬ 
 pational classes, the “proletariat.” The Marxian theory is at once fatal¬ 
 istic and revolutionary; it assumes an unchanging validity in its catego¬ 
 ries—the materialistic interpretation of history, the class struggle, surplus 
 value, inevitable exploitation, and ultimate victory of the proletariat. What¬ 
 ever present contradictions appear are explained away after the rational¬ 
 istic manner: they are “appearances,” “illusions,” in no wise affecting the 
 real trend. 
 
 2. The next stage in the development of method shows the influence 
 of exact scientific research and an appreciation of its tentative procedure. 1 
 The students of primitive life do not obtain indubitable evidence of any 
 inevitable and predetermined drift. Although it may be said that Hegel 
 stated in abstract phraseology the general process of the origin of species, 
 
 1 No caution is needed that a sharp line cannot be drawn. The Marxian of today 
 is the “revisionist” of tomorrow: and conservative revisionist becomes an “impossi- 
 bilist” the day after. Leaders, e. g., Liebknecht, are combinations of not altogether 
 compatible attitudes, like all statesmen forced to compromise. 
 
 37 
 
38 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 yet his Absolute Teleology is not reconcilable with a cumulative impact of 
 environment, a mechanical sequence of cause and effect and a more or less 
 blind selective agency of nature. 1 In so far as this mode of thought is 
 invoked to explain social growth a confession of inability to state the matter 
 in strict logical and teleological terms follows. Geographical and climatic 
 peculiarities, racial endowment, heredity, occupation, “psychical tradition,” 
 and a hundred other factors must be taken into account; there can be 
 no rigid determination by inevitable economic forces in a foreseen direction 
 simply because the economic is an abstraction from a complex of mutually 
 conditioning forces in a particular social group. By no straining can the 
 Marxian doctrine be made to harmonize; it is true that the socialists wel¬ 
 come biological and anthropological literature because it appears on the 
 surface to confirm their doctrines, but in so far as the logic of the scientific 
 method is grasped they modify their original assumptions. 2 The attempt 
 of Kautsky (astrict Marxian), for example, to find support for the doctrine 
 of periodic revolution from De Vries’ mutation hypothesis is more ingen¬ 
 ious than convincing. 3 It is evident that the utilitarian and empirical 
 element of the Marxian system is most adapted to welcome the mechanical 
 view of the scientists, but in so far as the amalgamation takes place, the 
 logical, teleological, and inevitable drawn from Hegelian sources is dropped, 
 and the initial concepts so attenuated as to be hardly recognizable. The 
 cleavage within the socialist ranks between orthodox Marxian or “impos- 
 sibilist,” and “opportunist” or revisionist, is due to the influence of scientific 
 investigation, in conjunction with the vast difference in the conditions with 
 which the socialists must cope when they start to work out their problems 
 in the various countries of the world. 4 
 
 3. The third step in the conception of method owes its origin to more 
 recent contributions of biology and psychology. Even in early forms of 
 life there is an “accommodation” and active “attitude” which selects 
 just what response to make to stimuli; and in psychology, the frequency 
 of the words “function,” “attention,” and “concrete end” is indicative 
 of the dynamic and reconstructive nature of consciousness. How this 
 
 1 Cf. Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, p. 56. 
 
 2 Cf. Dietzgen, Philosophical Essays, pp. 314 ff. 
 
 3 Kautsky, The Social Revolution, p. 16. 
 
 4 On the revisionists sc. Bernstein, V orausetzungen des Socialismus and Zur. 
 Geschichte und Theorie des Socialismus; Jaures, op. cit., chap, xiii; Kampffmeyer, 
 op. cit., passim; Brooks, The Social Unrest, pp. 309 ff.; Ensor, Modern Socialism, esp. 
 Introduction; Hobson, The Social Problem; Spargo, Socialism; Sombart, Socialism 
 and the Social Movement, esp. chap, iv; Ashley, Progress of the German Working 
 Classes, pp. 139 ff.; Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, pp. 217 ff. 
 
FROM HEGELIAN-MARXIAN THEORY TO OPPORTUNISM 39 
 
 view affects the theory of logical method has been suggested in the intro¬ 
 ductory section. It may pertinently be reasserted that, in contrast with the 
 former views, the instrumentalist attitude does not admit either a fixed 
 teleology or a fixed mechanical sequence, a fixed unchanging purpose or 
 equally unchanging facts. In any definite problem the facts are necessary 
 means to the end and called for by the problem. The instrumentalist 
 is satisfied with a method which can preserve a teleology implicit in daily 
 experience, a method of immediate control and constant attainment of 
 purpose. One may say, therefore, that he possesses a working theory 
 which is not liable to the weakness of Hegelian-Marxian Absolutism— 
 that of dissipating attention from the next thing to be done. Neither is 
 it liable to the infirmity of an exclusive devotion to chosen facts. Admission 
 must instantly be made, however, that some revisionists are fully alive to 
 the implications of the experimental method; and no statement of the 
 evolution of the theory and practice of social reform would be adequate 
 without considering some of the many modifications achieved by them. 
 The following are representative: 1 
 
 1. They rebuke a worship of Marx, Engels, or any socialist document, 
 claiming that the best disciple is the expander of the doctrine. 
 
 2. They evince an enthusiasm and belief in the permanent value of 
 reforms less ambitious than a complete overhauling of the whole social 
 edifice. The questions of milk supply, tuberculosis, municipal ownership, 
 the referendum, public parks, industrial education, and a score of others 
 are treated on their merits; significant, too, is the favorable attitude to 
 co-operative experiments and trade unions. Certainly the socialist plat¬ 
 forms have always contained “immediate demands;” the basal change is 
 an assertion of the real worth in themselves of the remedial measures, 
 not simply as a preparation for a future regime. In fact, there is consider¬ 
 able hesitancy to venture any predictions of what society is to be, or to set up 
 definite criteria of distributive justice. 
 
 3. They do not propose to convert all the means of production and 
 distribution into common ownership. Those sufficiently developed and 
 concentrated to be used in common, those which are monopolistic, and 
 found by experience to be dangerous if privately owned, are the chosen 
 candidates for public ownership. They do not wish to destroy private 
 industry or initiative. What they insist upon is not centralization as an 
 end per se but economical management and just distribution. Voluntary 
 local enterprises are advocated. 
 
 1 Cf. Thompson, Constructive Program, chap, i; Jaures, op. cit., chap, xiii; Kampff- 
 meyer, op. cit., passim. 
 
40 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 4. Not revolution, but evolution, is the recent cry. The belligerency 
 of the class-struggle doctrine is materially softened, and there is a recogni¬ 
 tion of the fact that socialism is not limited to wage-earners. The “intel¬ 
 lectuals” are notdooked upon with suspicion. 
 
 5. They admit that each nation has its appropriate type of socialist 
 movement. In democratic countries with legislative bodies and pro¬ 
 portional representation, socialism must adopt theories and programmes 
 radically different from those fitted to monarchial and partly feudal societies. 
 
 6. While protesting against an uncritical eulogy of “love” as a solvent 
 of social ills, they transcend the cynical Marxian version of innate depravity 
 by insisting upon the essential goodness of human instincts and the possi¬ 
 bility of making adverse economic conditions a stimulus to moral activity 
 nowA 
 
 The list could be extended indefinitely; it is enough to indicate that a 
 folk movement constituting the storm center of popular aspiration has 
 passed through its utopian and dogmatic childhood to constructive maturity: 
 it is dynamic and progressive. 
 
 It has already been intimated that a consideration of the socialist 
 standpoint in its numerous mutations is important because it presents in 
 sharply drawn outline the direction toward which social movement seems 
 to be hurrying, from the standpoint of those who hitherto have not been 
 heard distinctly. 2 From any angle it is extremely suggestive that a groping 
 popular protest should take its rise from the structure of a philosophical 
 system summing up a long period of idealistic reflection, and that it should 
 attempt to incorporate the findings of modern evolutionary science into 
 its rationalistic framework. That the Fourth Estate should arrive at a 
 world-view is a conquest, irrespective of the tenability of its doctrines; 
 and that daily work should be regarded as the going-out point of political, 
 ethical, and religious values is prophetic of the time when society shall 
 become so conscious of human values that it can patiently survey all its 
 “facts,” however uncomfortable, and formulate its constructive measures 
 without the omission of one factor essential to the solution of its problem. 
 Just as Hegel presented a world-view from the standpoint of the “idea” 
 
 1 In this there is a return to the point of view of the Utopians as well as to that 
 stream of socialistic tendency initiated by Maurice and Kingsley and continued with 
 modifications, by Ruskin, Morris, and others whose interest is ethical and artistic. 
 It should be noted that, in this discussion, the stress is laid on the really basal social¬ 
 ism, Marxism, and its deflections. 
 
 2 Ritchie and Brooks assert that the logical goal of Trade Unionism is socialism. 
 Observers hostile to socialism admit that the logic underlying lesser devices of social 
 amelioration has some likeness to the various species of socialistic thought. 
 
FROM HEGELIAN-MARXIAN THEORY TO OPPORTUNISM 41 
 
 and the reflective and protected “profession,” and as Marx gave his message 
 of the “fact” and the proletarian “occupation,” so may a self-conscious 
 society be willing to use both contributions as means to the enlargement 
 and deepening of the common life which progressively comprehends and 
 synthesizes all interests however apparently irreconcilable. The Hegelian- 
 Marxian teleology stripped of its metaphysical bias, emphasizes the neces¬ 
 sity of hypotheses, predicates, constructive plans, which shall be compre¬ 
 hensive and universal, and the Utilitarian counting of sensational “points” 
 asserts the futility of leaving out any vital fact. 
 
 Modern sociology has arisen from an awareness of this double need, 
 and the part which the socialist philosophy has played as a stimulus to its 
 development has often been discussed. 1 Sociology attempts to supply a 
 philosophical background, a generalized view of the social process, and at 
 the same time to construct a “social technology” which utilizes all the 
 evidence drawn from whatever source. It combines devotion to the “fact” 
 with attention to constructive purposes. It is necessary at this juncture to 
 show how the attempted solution of any social problem involves the elements 
 of the socialist philosophy, and to show, from the sociological point of view, 
 what diverse interpretations and reconstructions may be made of so-called 
 immutable “facts” and unchanging “ideas.” 
 
 1 Small and Vincent, Introduction to the Study of Society, chap. ii. 
 
VI. LOGICAL METHOD AS EMPLOYED IN RECENT 
 SOLUTIONS OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The object of this section is to treat three examples of the employ¬ 
 ment of the constructive method of social reformation: (i) the trade 
 agreement; (2) the consumers’ label, and (3) the social settlement. In 
 the case of each we shall consider the elements of the “objective situation,” 
 whether practical or theoretical, which set the problem, and the results 
 secured by its technique of securing equilibrium. 
 
 1. The conditions producing the trade-union movement are familiar. 
 In general, these conditions go back to one cause, the existence of the wage 
 system made necessary by the age of machinery. The effects of the wage 
 system with its minute division of the industrial processes are as follows: 
 (a) a precariousness of “tenure of office” on the part of both employer 
 and employee due to competition and shifting of demand; ( b ) a consequent 
 subjection, especially of the workingman, to impersonal economic forces; 
 (c) an inequality in relative power of enforcing claims arising from wages 
 or conditions of work; ( d ) a necessary division of status. In general, the 
 workingman feels that he is destined to belong to his “class” during his 
 whole life; 1 ( e ) a difference of psychological attitude between master and 
 man, that of the former being individualistic, that of the latter, collectiv- 
 istic; (/) a disposition on the part of the worker to demand a progressive 
 raising of his standard of living. 
 
 It is the peculiarity of modern economic processes that they underly 
 and condition all our realizable values. One can state this without assent¬ 
 ing to the Marxian doctrine, which was founded under peculiar historical 
 exigencies, and constructed without regard to a social psychology admitting 
 the reaction of the socius upon presented copies. Nevertheless, the sociolo¬ 
 gist recognizes that so immediate and vital are the economic interactions 
 that a control of their workings for the purpose of safeguarding the welfare 
 of the community and the imperatives of morality and justice, is an essential 
 and difficult achievement. The logic underlying our adjustment of the 
 social income is, of course, the utilitarian and hedonistic. In its inception 
 it represented the explanation and animus of the rising English capitalist 
 entrepreneur, and his hostility to the “professional” aristocracy and to a 
 control of industry by the state. Its insistence upon private property and 
 
 1 Mitchell, Organized Labor , Preface, p. ix. 
 
 42 
 
LOGICAL METHOD IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 43 
 
 “rights”—once democratic—has now become the support, defended on 
 legal and moral grounds, of those who manage the economic disposition 
 of things; and its transplanted ideals of privilege have taken on in the 
 eyes of the workingman, the color of a static “professionalism.” 1 
 
 Over against the commander of industry has appeared the vast group 
 of those whom the machine industry has driven at once to dependence 
 and to mutual union, in order to equalize the conflict. The concepts of 
 the labor union—collective bargaining and the standard of life—reveal an 
 antithesis to the norms of the employers. Although the unionist proclama¬ 
 tion of purpose may be couched in the phraseology of the traditional self- 
 interest, it in fact assumes a different variety of psychology and economics. 
 Instead of starting with particular units whether in the shape of increments 
 of pleasure or economic men, the unionist considers first the total life, 
 interests, economic and social, of his group in relation to the life-interest of 
 competing groups. The competing group may be that of the employer or 
 of other workmen. He tries to consider himself as a factor within an organic 
 changing society. The wages which he receives cannot be looked upon as a 
 mathematically exact reward for individual services. There are no indivi¬ 
 dual services in modern society. His wages become, therefore, a recognition 
 of the value to society of the work which must be done collectively. His 
 work is imbedded in a complex social process, and to make society recog¬ 
 nize the ethical and social nature of co-operative endeavor is as much the 
 function of the trade union as to formulate mathematical schedules of 
 prices. 2 There is bargaining, but it is collective, and conditioned by the 
 standard of life. The problem of the union leader is to insist upon the 
 co-operative group ideal in order to offset the dominantly hedonistic- 
 individualistic, and economic standpoint of the employer. At times the 
 leader calls a strike, reverting to military and clan tactics, but more and 
 more if conflict is entered upon and justified, it is under the shelter of 
 the Hegelian doctrine of no unity without negation. Developments in the 
 last decade warrant the conclusion that the first phase of the theoretical 
 
 1 Veblen, Theory of Business Enterprise. ? 
 
 2 The term “collective bargaining” usually refers simply to the fact that the schedule 
 of wages applies impartially to each man in a group. There is another use which has 
 been ignored by writers who denounce restriction of output and the unionist opposition 
 to piecework. The term may apply also to a regard for the interests of the working 
 class as a class within a state. Too much work cannot be done by the exceptional man 
 because it injures the health of the others who must keep up with the pacemaker. 
 Future generations of workers would suffer, and disease increase. From this point of 
 view the trade union is performing a work which the state will probably take over in 
 the future. Cf. Hoff ding, Ethik, pp. 283 ff. 
 
44 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 and practical reaction on the part of the wage-earners against a military 
 industrialism—that of self-regarding impulse and violence—is merging 
 into the era of discussion, compromise, and definite organization of the 
 means of securing agreement. Professor Commons describes the elaborate 
 system of representation and conference now in successful operation between 
 longshoremen and dock managers, and between mine operators and laborers. 
 He comments as follows: 
 
 Philanthropists have long been dreaming of the time when capital and labor 
 should lay aside the strike and boycott and should resort to arbitration. By 
 arbitration they understand the submission of differences to a disinterested third 
 party. But the philanthropists have overlooked a point. Arbitration is never 
 accepted until each party to a dispute is equally afraid of the other: and when they 
 have reached that point, they can adopt something better than arbitration, namely, 
 negotiation. This distinction was clearly brought out at the notable conference 
 on arbitration held at Chicago, in December, 1900, under the auspices of the 
 National Civic Federation. All the speakers were men of practical experience, 
 and they agreed that arbitration is impossible without organization, and that two 
 equally powerful organizations can negotiate as well as arbitrate. This higher 
 form of industrial peace—negotiation—has now reached a formal stage in a half- 
 dozen large industries in the United States, which, owing to its remarkable like¬ 
 ness to parliamentary government in the country of its origin, England, may well 
 be called constitutional government in industry. 1 . . . . 
 
 The most comforting feature of these negotiations is the matter-of-fact way 
 in which each side takes the other. There is none of that old-time hypocrisy on 
 the part of the employers that their great interest in life is to shower blessings upon 
 their hands: and there is none of that ranting demagogy on the part of the work¬ 
 men about the dignity of labor and the iniquity of capital. 2 . . . . 
 
 The most important result of these trade agreements is the new feeling of 
 equality and mutual respect which springs up in both employer and employee. 
 After all has been said in press and pulpit, about the “dignity of labor,” the only 
 “dignity” that really commands respect is the bald necessity of dealing with 
 labor on equal terms. With scarcely an exception the capitalist officials who 
 make these agreements with the labor officials of these powerful unions testify to 
 their shrewdness, their firmness, their integrity, and their faithfulness to contract. 
 Magnificent generalship is shown in combining under one leadership the mis¬ 
 cellaneous races, religions, and politics that compose the miners or the dock 
 laborers of America. The labor movement of no other country has faced such a 
 problem. 3 
 
 This example of mediating a conflict by means of periodic agreement, 
 necessarily somewhat mechanical, presents encouraging features. There 
 
 1 Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, p. 1. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 4. 3 Ibid., p. 12. 
 
LOGICAL METHOD IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 45 
 
 is freedom from adamant compulsion of one party over the other. The 
 norms of employer and employee meet and are adjusted on the high plane 
 of intelligence and workability. 1 
 
 2. The circumstances demanding a “label” on goods to be consumed, 
 i. e., a sign of a prescribed “standard” observed in the history of their 
 production, are, like those creating the trade agreement, due to the com¬ 
 plexities and maladjustments of our mechanical industries. Specifically, 
 the deplorable situation symbolized by the “sweatshop,” allied with the lack 
 of thought and responsibility on the part of the consumers which ends in 
 devotion to fashion, bargain sales, and cheapness without regard to the 
 welfare of the original producer and sales clerk, are more immediate causes. 
 
 On the theoretical side, both the classical and the socialist formulation 
 of the reaction of individual upon industry are now defective, because 
 the milieu in which they arose has disappeared. The rising power of the 
 “proletariat” sharply set off from despotic bourgeois leaders, seemed 
 to Marx and his followers a cosmic force stimulated by an economic sub¬ 
 stratum. The employer was moved by no sympathetic motives, and the 
 workers were promised “a world to gain.” Production went on auto¬ 
 matically: the consumer accepted according to iron laws, and protest and 
 reaction were epiphenomena in no wise affecting permanently the inevitable 
 outcome. It has also become fairly clear that the statement of the classical 
 political economy, even when modified by the Austrian theory of marginal 
 utility, is better able to explain a hypothetical regime of economic harmony 
 than one of reconstruction. Its logic is of the fact. Professor Clark 
 contends that in a competitive “state of nature” perfect adjustment and 
 satisfaction are inevitable. But the difficulty is that ours is a dynamic 
 society in which economic desires are continually being modified and con¬ 
 ditioned by growing intellectual and spiritual demands. The lack of 
 racial and historical perspective, the inability to explain an expanding valua¬ 
 tion typified by the complex of interests known as the standard of life, 
 on the basis of quantitative calculation of “wants” of the pleasurable kind, 
 are unsatisfactory qualifications when a definite criterion of choice and the 
 possibility of progress are the questions asked. For reasons advanced in 
 various connections, neither the logic underlying the socialist economics 
 nor the classical hedonism offers an adequate account of how individual 
 and group valuations can modify the so-called impersonal mechanism 
 of our industrial system: neither takes into consideration sufficiently 
 the fact that our desires, our interests, are progressive and social in their 
 inmost nature. 
 
 1 Small, General Sociology, pp. 35 7 fif. 
 
46 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 The label is a device which, at least partially, secures an organic contact 
 between manufacturer, worker, and consumer, each of whom, in our 
 modern complicated economic technique, is more or less separated from 
 the others. The trade-union label and the consumers’-league label indicate 
 that after more or less investigation the goods in question are pronounced 
 worthy of choice, not simply on the ground of “pleasure,” but because 
 they are made under sanitary and humane conditions of work, under com¬ 
 pliance with law, and for fair wages. 1 The label is a method of dealing 
 with an objective situation by considering the sweat shop as a problem to 
 be solved by the long-circuit way of intelligence and balancing of essential 
 factors, instead of the short-circuit plan of denouncing the depravity of 
 those immediately involved; it shows that a degree of control may be 
 secured by adequate comprehension of the sum of conditions operating 
 to produce goods needed by society. More specifically, in so far as the 
 label has been successful, it has had the following effects: 
 
 a) It has allowed the employer scope to express his humane interest 
 
 in his employees. He has been willing to make his factory a decent place 
 in which to work and to give his employees a wage sufficient to maintain 
 a good life. If the conditions imposed seem to disregard his “freedom” 
 and prerogatives, it has elevated the level of competition by guaranteeing 
 a body of customers who will check the impulse to buy in the cheapest 
 market when cheapness conflicts with the common wealth; thus sanity and 
 an enlightened self-interest may agree. * 
 
 b) For the worker the benefits are obvious. The label, as employed 
 by the trade unionist, is a peaceful and effective instrument for attaining 
 his ideals, a method far superior to the boycott and strike which necessarily 
 involve misunderstanding, friction, and waste. 
 
 c) The consumer has, to a degree, remade the so-called impersonal 
 economic machinery: he has paid a price which will insure cleanliness, 
 the carrying-on of the life-process for both manufacturer and worker, and 
 has checked the universality of mere cheapness and the assumed right of 
 the employer to run his business unmolested by the society which largely 
 presents him with his tools and education. The struggle has been shifted 
 to a higher plane. 
 
 3. Most impressive, perhaps, of all instruments for understanding and 
 interpreting social movement is the modern social settlement. Its general 
 characteristic is well known—a group of people identifying themselves 
 intellectually and sympathetically with a community, and striving to work, 
 
 1 Kelley, Ethical Gains through Legislation, chap, vi; Mitchell, Organized Labor , % 
 
 chap, xxxiii. 
 
LOGICAL METHOD IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 47 
 
 not for, but with, the inhabitants, for the purpose of furthering the benefi¬ 
 cent forces implicit in social contact. 1 A satisfactory account of all the 
 ramifications of its mediatory function would carry us far afield; only a 
 few features germane to phases of the social question previously touched 
 upon can be considered. 
 
 a) With reference to the stratification of society into the conservative, 
 the favored by birth and training, and the unenlightened “ masses,” the 
 social settlement has made a distinct contribution. It recognizes that, 
 in so far as the holders of the ancient “idea” seclude themselves from the 
 sweep of evolving needs, and fail to amalgamate their ideals and practices 
 in correspondence thereto, the Marxian indictment has weight^' But 
 the settlement feels that the more universal element existing in professional 
 service—the element which carries one beyond “economic determinism,” 
 traditional obedience to family, and “class” virtue—needs but a chance 
 to manifest itself. It is significant that in England and in America, the 
 settlement has struck root deepest where the “educated,” the college man 
 and woman, feel most keenly the need for democratizing their acquisitions; 
 it has aimed to be a point of contact with humanitarian impulses needing 
 concrete unimpeded expression; ministers, lawyers, and teachers have 
 always been conspicuous in its activities. There is in modern society 
 an over-intellectualization of the few 3 and an under-liberalization of the 
 many, notwithstanding the greatness of our “common” schools. 
 
 There is at present a general disturbance of consciousness and failure of 
 ideals among ourselves, indicated by the failure of many, indeed of most, to 
 command the leisure and access of copies which would develop their character¬ 
 istic powers. 4 
 
 The few suffer from overspecialization, an accumulation of “ideas” 
 without active outlet, at the same time that the practical occupations of 
 the many are unillumined by the glow of meaning. 5 More serious than 
 this is the chasm which accumulation of wealth by individualistic and anti- 
 
 1 Mead, University o} Chicago Record, Vol. XV, pp. 108 ff. 
 
 2 James, Talks to Teachers, p. 297; Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, Vol. II, pp. 
 282, 283. 
 
 3 Hoff ding, Ethik, pp. 317 ff. 
 
 4 Thomas, Am. Jour. Sociology, May, 1908, p. 736. Lester Ward enforces the 
 judgment that in capacity for development there are no marked differences answering 
 to present social grouping. {Pure Sociology, pp. 447 ff., and pp. 662 ff., and Applied 
 Sociology, passim .) 
 
 s Jane Addams, Philanthropy and Social Progress, chap, i; Hobson, The Social 
 Problem, chap. xiv. 
 
 \ 
 
48 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 social methods has produced between conspicuous, irresponsible leisure 
 and deadening daily toil. It is the conviction of the settlement that the 
 professions should be “socialized” and the occupations “professionalized.” 
 
 b) Consequently the settlement has been insistent upon that sort of 
 education which serves to connect the intellectual inheritance of the past 
 with the needs of the present, so that what Ruskin and Morris and Marx 
 preached in various ways—the fundamental significance of labor—may be 
 realized. Believing that the values of life proceed from the necessities of 
 daily activity, it seeks to take as its point of departure the occupational skill 
 of the artisan, the dexterities of the immigrant, in order that imagination, 
 interest, and meaning may transform barren work injo educative activity. 
 
 We apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life 
 through his vocation. We easily recognize the historic association in regard 
 to ancient buildings. We say that “generation after generation have stamped 
 their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them until they have 
 become the property of all.” And yet this is even more true of the instruments 
 of labor, which have constantly been held in human hands. A machine really 
 represents the “seasoned life of man” preserved and treasured up within itself, 
 quite as much as an ancient building does. At present, workmen are brought in 
 contact with the machinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present 
 set of industrial implements had been newly created. They handle the machinery 
 day by day without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. Few of the 
 men who perform the mechanical work in the great factories have any compre¬ 
 hension of the fact that the inventions upon which the factory depends, the instru¬ 
 ments which they use, have been slowly worked out, each generation using the 
 gifts of the last and transmitting the inheritance until it has become a social 
 possession. This can only be understood by a man who has obtained some idea of 
 social progress. We are still childishly pleased when we see the further sub¬ 
 division of labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby, 
 and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product long 
 enough to really focus it upon the producer. Theoretically, “the division of 
 labor” makes men more interdependent and human by drawing them into a 
 unity of purpose. “If a number of people decide to build a road, and one digs 
 and one brings stones and another breaks them, they are quite inevitably united 
 by their interest in the road. But this naturally presupposes that they know 
 where the road is going to, that they have some curiosity and interest about it, and 
 perhaps a chance to travel upon it.” 1 
 
 c) The social settlement has probably served to interpret democracy more 
 than has any other institution. The common conception is that America 
 
 1 Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, pp. 209-11. Cf. Ward, Dynamic 
 Sociology, Vol. II, p. 538. 
 
LOGICAL METHOD IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 49 
 
 has a closely woven pattern of government and that all the energy needed 
 * is to induce immigrants to come to our shores, accept the constitution, 
 
 and adopt our ideals ready made. Miss Addams shows the futility of this 
 rendering, and describes the readjustments in theory and practice which 
 the needs of municipalities, especially the presence of foreign peoples in 
 our cities, force upon our traditional interpretation. According to her 
 argument, the blight of militarism and group prejudice has unsettled 
 social practice and judgment even to the degree of condoning child labor 
 because of the assumed necessity to protect business interests and an 
 attendant necessity of a fixed status for “working people;” and, in its 
 exclusiveness, America fails to incorporate the gifts of the immigrant— 
 his skill, his art, his loyalty. But by means of a kindly back-working, 
 because of the hard necessities of intergroup give-and-take, of unemploy¬ 
 ment and simple charity, Miss Addams thinks, there is developing a cos¬ 
 mopolitanism, a socializing of impulse, which will more and more trans¬ 
 mute the old military virtues of daring, self-sacrifice, and emulation into 
 positive social virtues expressing themselves in the pride of workmanship 
 and struggle against evil. The war for land and “preservation of honor” 
 will be succeeded by the war for sanitary tenements, sane politics, and 
 abolition of disease. The democracy based upon a revolt from despotism 
 and eighteenth-century concepts will be reinterpreted and beautified by the 
 reaction of new facts upon old ideals. The state will lose its negative 
 and military character, and become positive and co-operative because 
 embodying the genuine desires and not the fears of the citizens constituting it. 
 
 d) By reason of intimate knowledge of civic relationships, because of 
 sympathy with its neighborhood, the social settlement is admirably fitted 
 to allow conflicting impulses and interests to secure equilibrium in times 
 of crisis. The efficiency of its technique revealed itself on the occasion of 
 a supposed attempt to assassinate the chief of police of one of our large 
 American cities. The newspapers, backed by the sentiment of the con¬ 
 stituency whom they served, blazoned forth the “facts.” A Russian Jew— 
 an “anarchist”—gained entrance to the house of the chief with brutal 
 intent. The officer in self-defense shot the malefactor. The community 
 was urged to arise and stamp out lawlessness and anarchism. The police 
 should prohibit all meetings and repress and arrest; there were the plain 
 4 “facts” and there was the written “law.” The police, backed by the 
 
 newspapers, announced that there would be no investigation: it was a 
 clear case. The socialists insisted that it was the old trick of the author- 
 •>. ities to uphold “capitalism” and property. The Russian Jewish popula¬ 
 
 tion was thrown into consternation and bitterness because of the Russian 
 
So 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 methods of the police and the stigma which race hatred attached to a whole 
 group because of the offense of one of its members. 
 
 It is not necessary to follow out the story; the pertinent point is that the 
 social settlement was the only sane instrument in the whole city to fiffd out 
 the meaning of the crisis and reveal it to the immigrant and the whole 
 community. In the process of effecting its purpose it was compelled to 
 incur the criticism of press, socialist, Jewish population, and the public 
 in general, and its degree of success or failure was measured by the ease 
 with which it could control the conditions. 1 But, instead of violent impulse 
 and brutal force, it attempted to employ the constructive reaction of investi¬ 
 gation and intelligence. 
 
 The distinguishing trait, therefore, of the social settlement is that it is 
 a mediatory device, that it has no predetermined formulas to work by, 
 that it is a creator of values. It does not represent simply the interests 
 of the conservative, the business men, and the cultured; neither does it 
 defend without regard to social stability, the demands of “the poor lower 
 classes.” Because, ideally, it represents no vested interests, no exclusively 
 “bourgeois” or “proletarian” virtues, it occupies a strategic point in 
 interpreting new experience in the light of old, and old valuations in the 
 light of the changing. Its resident “workers” are in a peculiar measure 
 implicated in the reorganization which they effect in the community; 
 there is nothing of the aloofness of lawgiver and administrator; its aim 
 is that of applying intelligence to the control of social interaction. Its 
 achievements reveal the flexibility and constructiveness of the instrumental 
 method, the nature of which in relation to social problems it has been the 
 endeavor of this thesis to state. 
 
 1 Jane Addams, Charities and the Commons, May, 2, 1908, pp. 105 ff. 
 
VII. LOGICAL METHOD AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 A review of the general tenor of the discussion may appropriately be 
 put in terms of a conception of democracy. During the past century the 
 static, romantic, and individualistic view of democracy inherited from 
 radical English and French thinkers has been reconstructed to square 
 with the rich development of historical and evolutionary science. It has 
 been seen that controlled change is the only criterion of stability, that life 
 is an endless process of becoming in which structure and function, the 
 group and the individual, habit and attention, are necessary interacting 
 and mutually conditioning elements. Whether society is conceived as an 
 “organism” or as an “organization,” it remains certain that no association 
 can be entirely rational and worthy in which the contributions of all its 
 constituents are not recognized as factors in the solution of its problem. 
 That the past generation has seen the rise of a social psychology drawing 
 its material from the evolution of the animal series, of the child, and of the 
 race, coincidently with a wholesome enthusiasm for a constructive sociology, 
 is not of merely speculative interest: it is one manifestation of the dawn 
 of intense awareness of the meaning of social evolution. It is democracy 
 come to know itself. There can persist no dogma, no institution, no 
 privileged group exempted from the searchlighLof sane investigation and 
 possibility of transformation. A periodic taking of stock, an intellectual 
 pessimism, a disbelief in the absolute and enduring office of the established 
 custom and authority, is the only guarantee of social order which the theory 
 of a constructive democracy can tolerate. No panacea can obviate the 
 need of specific treatment, and all the apparently remote and academic 
 discoveries of specialized science and theoretical speculation find their 
 excuse for being in a turning-back and application to that social medium 
 in which they arise. A society which has become self-conscious cannot 
 leave out of account anything which the honest conviction of its members 
 has contributed, for it is the constant assertion of the worth of unique experi¬ 
 ence which secures that co-ordination through progressive reconstruction, 
 which distinguishes a dynamic civilization. 
 
 Again from this angle follows the contention that a problem of what¬ 
 ever kind cannot be solved unless within the point of crisis there be allowed 
 the free play of investigation, reconstruction, and control. A conclusion of 
 this kind will satisfy neither the extremist nor a society whose keepers of 
 
 5i 
 
52 
 
 DUALISM OF FACT AND IDEA 
 
 order have as yet not realized the implications of a tolerant, positive view 
 of democracy. The state has recognized the duty of educating the young, 
 secluding the unsocial, and caring for the weak and unfortunate. But it 
 has not embodied in its working theory and technique the meas'ure of 
 truth and justice which exists in the world-views proffered by the many 
 varieties of radicalism. The present analysis of the assumptions of typical 
 social protests does not warrant the conclusion that society is rushing 
 toward any predetermined goal; it does confirm the opinion of many writers 
 that the state is losing a notable opportunity if it fails to adjust itself to 
 undercurrents which have become international. The fervor and practical 
 energy which is now concentrated and driven against social stability could 
 become a mighty upbuilding force if directed by a state willing to give 
 more intelligent heed to the elements of truth which exist in the midst 
 of the vagaries of radicalism. 
 
 Certainly it is not true that the state has been entirely blind to the 
 demands of popular protest; the remarkable contemporaneous record of 
 improvement in Australia, Germany, Belgium, England, and the United 
 States testifies to a transformation of the theory and practice of democracy 
 which the future historian will see in clearer perspective than is possible 
 for us. It may reasonably be hoped that the widespread interest in the 
 as yet inchoate study of sociology and its application in social technology 
 may be symbolic of the conviction that if human experience is to grow 
 richer and more meaningful, it must be by virtue of purposive thinking 
 applied to the uses of living. 
 
 The distinctive features of the constructive method of experimental 
 logic are consonant with the evolutionary view of democracy to which the 
 Anglo-Saxon world is committed. To state the logic of democracy necessi¬ 
 tates an analysis of the process of solving a definite problem. The main 
 characteristics already formulated are the concrete universality of judg¬ 
 ment, the immediate value of purposive thought for the control of recurring 
 crises, the rejection of a non-functional Absolute whether of fact or idea, 
 and the fundamentally social nature of impulse and endeavor. Democracy, 
 then, as a logical method, signifies the continued use of a constructive 
 hypothetical procedure in the solution of social problems. A progressive 
 democracy is based upon the conviction that the constant factor persisting 
 in the midst of change is not immutable entities of any kind, but a function— 
 a furthering of the life-process by ceaseless interpretation and redirection. 
 

 
 J 
 
 1 
 
 c.v