be taken rather in the direction of mitigating or removing these than in that of increasing or extending the positive enjoyment of life. So long as there is pain to be relieved, the attempt to heighten pleasure seems a sacrilege. The social intellect should, therefore, first and foremost, grapple with the whole problem of reducing the social friction. Every wheel in the entire social machinery should be carefully scrutinized with the practiced eye of the skilled artisan, with a view to discovering the true nature of the friction and of removing all that is not required by a perfect system. With regard to the method by which all this may be made practicable a final word may be indulged in. Before any such sweeping social regeneration as that which is here hinted at can be inaugurated a great change must be wrought in the whole theory of legislation. It must be recognized that the legislator is essentially an inventor and a scientific discoverer. His duty is to be thoroughly versed in the whole theory and practice of social physics, He is called upon to devise "ways and means" for securing the true interests and improvement of the people for whom he is to legislate. This obviously cannot be done by existing methods. A public assembly governed by parliamentary rules is as inadequate a method as could well be conceived of for anything like scientific legislation. Imagine all the inventors in the country assembled in a hall acting under the gavel of a presiding officer to devise the machines of the future and adopt the best by a majority vote! Or think of trying to advance scientific discovery by a general convention! Scientific associations there are, usually for the reading of papers setting forth the discoveries made by the members in their laboratories, and there would be no objection to this class of legislative assemblies. But in the latter case as in the former, the real work, the thought, research, observation, experimentation, and discovery of laws and principles of nature must be done elsewhere, under appropriate conditions, in the great field or in the private cabinet. X It may at first glance seem absurd to propose that legislation be done in any such way, but a little reflection will show that it is not only not absurd, but that there is at this moment a strong tendency in all enlightened countries toward its adoption. It is a well known fact that at the present time the greater part of the real legislation is done by committees. The members of legislative committees are carefully chosen with reference to their known fitness for the different subjects intrusted to them. These committees really deliberate. They investigate the questions before them, hear testimony and petitions, and weigh evidence for and against every proposed measure. This is truly scientific and leads to the discovery of the principles involved. Unless biased by partisan leanings they are very likely to reach the truth and report practical and useful measures. The body to which these committees belong respect their decisions and usually adopt their recommendations. The other members usually know very little about the merits of the questions, or at least, not having studied them, they defer to the superior judgment of those who have. Committee work is, therefore, the nearest approach we have to the scientific investigation of social questions. It is on the increase, and is destined to play an ever increasing rôle in national legislation. There is one other important way in which the social intellect is being applied to human affairs. The' theory is that the executive branch of government merely administers national affairs. This is a great mistake. A very large part of the real legislation of a country is done by the executive branch. The various bureaus of government are in position to feel the popular pulse more sensitively than the legislature. The officers charged with their administration become identified with certain industries and are appealed to by the public to adopt needed reforms. After stepping to the verge of their legal authority in response to such demands, whereby much real legislation is done not contemplated by those who framed the laws under which these bureaus were established, they finish by making recommendations of the rest to the law-making power. This latter usually recognizes the wisdom of such recommenda'tions and enacts them into laws, thus ever enlarging the administrative jurisdiction of government. Such legislation is in a true sense scientific. It is based on a knowledge both of the needs of the public and of the best means of supplying them It has been subjected to thoughtful consideration and mature judgment. It is a method that is being every year more and more employed, and its results are usually successful and permanent. History furnishes the statesman an additional basis for legislation. It is now possible to acquire a knowledge of the industrial history of nations, not complete, it is true, because so much was lost during the period when history was supposed to relate exclusively to the operations of the state and those who stood at its head, but sufficiently full to serve as a valuable guide to the legislator. No man should consider himself qualified to legislate for a people who is not conversant with the history of modern nations at least, with their various systems of finance, revenue, taxation, public works, education, land surveying, patent and copyright law, military and naval equipment, general jurisprudence and constitutional, statute, and unwritten law. It will, of course, be said that very few legislators are thus informed, and this is true, but these few will be the ones who will do most to shape the action of the state and will furnish examples to all who aspire to play a leading part in the political drama. Again there is the statistical method. No one will deny that this is rapidly becoming a leading factor in legislation. Statistics are simply the facts that underlie the science of government.They are to the legislator what the results of observation and experiment are to the man of science. They are in fact the inductions of political science, and the inductive . method in that science is of the same value that it is to science in general, its only true foundation. There is no great state at this day that does not make an effort to collect statistics; in most of the leading nations of the world this is now done on an extensive scale. A census, which a short time ago was merely an enumeration of the population of a state, now means an exhaustive inquiry into its entire vital, industrial, and commercial condition. In this and many other ways governments furnish to their legislators the most important facts required to guide them in the adoption of the measures needful for the prosperity of the people. There are many other ways in which the tendency toward scientific legislation is steadily growing, and, without indulging in any undue optimism on the subject, the fact may be considered established that no revolution is necessary in the character of society in order to bring about the gradual transformation required to realize all that has been foreshadowed in this chapter. The machinery already exists for the needed reformation and all that is necessary is that it be under the control of the developed social intellect. The quality of statesmanship is increasing, More thought is being devoted to the deeper questions of state and of society than ever before, and the signs of healthy progress are unmistakable. A modern Solon, paraphrasing the oft-quoted saying1 of the ancient one, has defined a statesman as "a successful politician who is dead." He doubtless intended to rebuke the tendency of every age to vilify public men while they are living and canonize them after they are dead. And it would be well if, not only those who stand at the helm of the ship of state at any given period, but also the achievements of this directive social intellect in guiding that ship into smoother waters, were looked at from the standpoint of some remote future date and estimated in the light of the history which is being made. 1 Εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσει τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητεῖς ὄλβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἀξιός ἐστι· πρὶν δ ̓ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχέειν, μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄλβιον ἀλλ ̓ εὐτυχέα. SOLON: Herodotus, I, 32, p. 15. Λόγος μέν ἐστ ̓ ἀρχαῖος ἀνθρώπων φανεὶς, SOPHOCLES: Trachiniæ, I. CHAPTER XXXVIII. SOCIOCRACY. To distinguish this general movement in the direction of regulating social phenomena from all other facts in human history, and at the same time to avoid all objectionable terms and express the conception in its widest sense, it may be appropriately denominated Sociocracy. It is too late now to object to this new term on the ground of its hybrid Græco-Latin etymology, since the Greek language is known to be deficient in a proper root for its first component, and several kindred terms are already in common use by the best authorities. It means something quite distinct from Democracy, which points, as this term does not, decisively towards a definite form of organization. The term Socialism, too, which might seem akin to it, aside from its unpopularity, has by far too great definiteness, and looks too much to fundamental change in the existing status of political institutions. All of these forms of social organization stand opposed to other existing forms, while Sociocracy stands opposed only to the absence of a regulative system, and is the symbol of positive social action as against the negativism of the dominant lassez faire school of politico-economic doctrinaires. It recognizes all forms of government as legitimate, and, ignoring form, goes to the substance, and denotes that, in whatever manner organized, it is the duty of society to act consciously and intelligently, as becomes an enlightened age, in the direction of guarding its own interests and working out its own destiny. — Penn Monthly, Vol. XII, Philadelphia, May, 1881, p. 336. But the other branch of social dynamics, that which embraces the influence of those active or positive forces heretofore described, necessarily connects the study of these forces with the art of applying them, which is a distinctly human process, and depends wholly on the action of man himself. This art may be very appropriately named Sociocracy, although it is the same that has been sometimes called politics, giving to that term a much wider range than that now usually assigned to it. We have, therefore, besides social statics, negative and positive social dynamics, all of which classes are necessary to constitute sociology a true science. Dynamic Sociology, I, 60. We know that by precisely these means man has artificially modified the results of the operation of law in all other sciences, even down to biology, and there can be no longer a doubt of the same power over sociological |