are sometimes called "fructifying causes." They are pregnant with future consequences. Static actions leave matters in the same state after as before their performance. Dynamic actions create a new state.... Charity work is chiefly static,[1] and supplies only temporary and ever-recurring wants. The highest philanthrophy consists in such deeds as tend to diminish the number of indigent persons and thus to render charity unnecessary.
Professor Joseph Le Conte formulated the relations in question in the following language, which expresses in general the things upon which I think I am in agreement with Professor Ward. He said:
Society may be studied as a complex system of interrelated parts, acting and reacting on one another by mutual dependence and mutual help; perfectly adjusted to produce eternal peace, prosperity, social order, and good government. This is social statics, or we may study it in its onward movement, and the laws of that movement. From this point of view we perceive that the equilibrium is never perfect; peace, contentment and rest is never complete, nor ought to be; for society is ever struggling to reach a higher plane with wider outlook. The equilibrium is continually disturbed a little in order to be readjusted on a higher plane, with more complex interrelation of all its parts. This is social dynamics, social development, social progress. It is social evolution.[2]
With this explanation of Professor Ward's position, let us return to the previous question which he so summarily dismisses. My own work in studying and teaching societary relations was guided at the outset by Comte's classification. I soon found
- ↑ I cannot refrain from calling attention to this illustration of a fault of which few sociologists are free. I do not claim innocence when I testify against others. Here the term "static" which is under discussion as the sign of a scientific category, is suddenly transferred to service as an attributive of phenomena of social practice. The category "static" has been treated as consisting of "phenomena of function." The epithet "static" as applied to charity, means here "palliative," "pragmatic," "non-progressive," "dealing with symptoms not conditions." Obviously the concepts in the two cases are not identical. The one may include the other, but that does not justify the substitution of the one for the other in a close argument. Here is a case typical of numerous others, in which we need increased precision in the use of words. I am not taking exception to the proposition quoted, but simply to the terms in which it stated.
- ↑ The Monist, July 1895, p. 483.
