rial advance of the society--develops
the industrial arts, extends and improves the business organizations,
augments the wealth; but that it raises the value of individual life, as
measured by the average state of its feeling, by no means follows. That
it will do so eventually, is certain; but that it does so now seems, to
say the least, very doubtful.

The truth is that a society and its members act and react in such wise
that while, on the one hand, the nature of the society is determined by
the natures of its members; on the other hand, the activities of its
members (and presently their natures) are redetermined by the needs of
the society, as these alter: change in either entails change in the
other. It is an obvious implication that, to a great extent, the life of
a society so sways the wills of its members as to turn them to its ends.
That which is manifest during the militant stage, when the social
aggregate coerces its units into co-operation for defence, and
sacrifices many of their lives for its corporate preservation, holds
under another form during the industrial stage, as we at present know
it. Though the co-operation of citizens is now voluntary instead of
compulsory; yet the social forces impel them to achieve social ends
while apparently achieving only their own ends. The man who, carrying
out an invention, thinks only of private welfare to be thereby secured,
is in far larger measure working for public welfare: instance the
contrast between the fortune made by Watt and the wealth which the
steam-engine has given to mankind. He who utilizes a new material,
improves a method of production, or introduces a better way of carrying
on business, and does this for the purpose of distancing competitors,
gains for himself little compared with that which he gains for the
community by facilitating the lives of all. Either unknowingly or in
spite of themselves, Nature leads men by purely personal motives to
fulfil her ends: Nature being one of our expressions for the Ultimate
Cause of things, and the end, remote when not proximate, being the
highest form of human life.

Hence no argument, however cogent, can be expected to produce much
effect: only here and there one may be influenced. As in an actively
militant stage of society it is impossible to make many believe that
there is any glory preferable to that of killing enemies; so, where
rapid material growth is going on, and affords unlimited scope for the
energi