536 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
with religion, and makes the increase of population constitute the whole of "social evolution."
It is too late now to stem this tide. The claims of a feeling world have come before the bar of rational judgment and been admitted. Those of a cold, unconscious Cosmos must give wa^ except in so far as they may prove helpful in adjusting the others. A pain economy may be tolerated by non-rational beings. The savage and barbaric tribes of men may remain below the zero line. The lowest strata of so-called civilized society will doubtless long continue to vegetate with no hope beyond the preservation of existence under the operation of the ancestral optimism. Pessimism and asceticism will continue to attest the condemnation of reason for the condition of the world. In spite of all this, under science which makes for meliorism, the leveling process will go on, greater and greater numbers will rise above the economic NuUpunkt t and the field of pain economy will shrink as that of pleasure economy expands.
LESTER F. WARD. WASHINGTON, D. C.
