The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... theory is in a sort of hopeful fatalism, of which current literature is full. In this view, progress is the result of forces which work slowly, steadily and remorselessly, for the elevation of man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine and pestilence, the want and misery which fester in moder n civilization, are the impelling causes which drive man on, by eliminating poorer types and extending the higher; and hereditary transmission is the power by which advances are fixed, and past advances made the footing for new advances. The individual is the result of changes thus impressed upon and perpetuated through a long series of past individuals, and the social organization takes its form from the individuals of which it is composed. Thus, while this theory is, as Herbert Spencer says--'radical to a degree beyond anything which current radicalism conceives, ' inasmuch as it looks for changes in the very nature of man; it is at the same time ' conservative to a degree beyond anything conceived by current conservatism, ' inasmuch as it holds that no change can avail save these slow changes in men's natures. Philosophers may teach that this does not lessen the duty of endeavoring to reform abuses, just as the theologians who taught predestinarianism insisted on the duty of all to struggle for salvation; but, as generally apprehended, the result is fatalism--'do what we may, the mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our aid or our hindrance.'" Some years after this was written I had a curious illustration of The Study of Sociology"--Conclusion. of the other seems to be such as might result from the abandonment of a noble purpose--from a turning from the thorny path which an attack upon vested wrongs must open, to embrace the...