THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 22$
association as a process involves something in addition to analy- sis of what has actually taken place, or what is occurring. It extends to perception of what is coming to be in course of this occurring. Here we must leave the solid ground of certainty and venture into the dangerous region of inference. Yet no knowledge is worth having unless it is convertible into forecast of the future. What we want to know of the social process first of all is whether it is likely to continue beyond us. Are there indications of what the process will amount to if it does so con- tinue ? Do we get any light from the process, so far as it has gone, about the elements in the process which are best worth promoting ? Does the process reveal anything about the means available to direct and develop the process? In other words, do we discover in human attainments and achievements details and tendencies which impress us as good and desirable in them- selves ? Do we conclude that the future human process must be a tragedy of sequestrating those goods to the uses of a few, or that it will be a widening epic of the advance of the many toward the same attainments and achievements and enjoyments? At this point is the critical position in our whole attitude toward the social process. Is it to us a process of the advance of all men toward all the goods that seem good for any men, or is it a perpetual process of the preferment of some at the cost of others? Do the good things that men discover, and think, and perform, belong forever to select men, or are they merely samples of the things which the continuance of the social process will procure for the general typical man ?
It is not essential to an exposition of the concept "social process " that this question should be answered here, but so much must be compressed into this outline that a theorem of which no demonstration can be presented may be ventured gra- tuitously, viz. : If we are justified in drawing any general conclusions whatever from human experience thus far, it is safe to say that the social process tends to put an increasing proportion of individuals in possession of all the goods which have been discovered by the experi- ence of humanity as a whole, and that all social programs should be thought out with a view to promotion of this tendency.
