However, an idea that gets possession of even one individual so that he will formulate and defend it cannot be said to have failed. It takes its part in the larger discussion, and, however contumeliously rejected, it will leave some impress upon the ideas that are accepted. And the stone that the builders reject may prove to be the cornerstone of to-morrow’s edifice.
Educated men are often alarmed by the spread of superficial doctrines which have a timely appeal to passion or interest, and seem likely to sweep the people off their feet and into disaster. It is normal in the history of the United States, or of any country where there is some freedom of speech, that there should be a numerous party of radicals advocating some social or economic heresy like populism, free silver, revolutionary socialism, anarchism, or the like. And indeed we sometimes narrowly escape being swamped by these waves of unreason.
But if the doctrine is really superficial it is likely to prove transient. As time goes on people have opportunity to experiment with it, usually on a small scale, and if they are fairly intelligent and their social condition not desperately bad this gives rise to a sounder judgment. In the meantime the particular situation which gave impetus to the doctrine is likely to have changed, as the free-silver agitation, for example, was undermined by the increased production of gold and the advent of higher prices.
Another way by which unwise propositions tend to be eliminated is what may be called cancellation. The multitude of frothy schemes that secure a following might well discourage us did we not reflect that they are as antagonistic to one another as they are to good sense, so that the net resultant may be zero. If we have, on the one hand, extreme anarchists who would break down all discipline, we have, on the other, collectivists who would take away all freedom. It is in the very nature of error to lack adaptability to the rest of life, so that it cannot well form large wholes. The saying that no combination of wise men could resist a combination of all the fools does not show much insight at the best, and may be answered by saying that those who combine effectively cannot be fools, since they are meeting one of the most exacting tests of intelligence.
We cannot assert, however, that harmful ideas are necessarily eliminated and that only the beneficial survive. All that we can say with confidence in this direction is that social organisms are subject to a struggle, and in order to survive have to exhibit a certain measure of efficiency, or power to meet the struggle. If they have a long life it shows that ideas and practices injurious with reference to the struggle have been kept within limits. If we go beyond this and assert an onward and upward tendency in life we must, I think, rely finally upon faith rather than demonstration to support our belief.
Much that has shown a vigorous power of survival all through history we believe to be harmful, as, for example, drink, prostitution, and many forms of superstition. Scarcely anything has swept over the world more triumphantly than the tobacco habit, which, to say the least, is under suspicion. Professor Keller reminds us that there are such things as harmful mores, and he instances a number of customs relating to marriage that are clearly of this kind.[[78]] The scruples of the people of India about killing poisonous snakes result in an immense increase of these animals, and of human deaths. Many of the ancient beliefs surviving in backward parts of our own country regarding the sowing of crops only when the “sign of the moon” is favorable, and the like, are of a similar nature.
The fact that extremes of riches and poverty, subjection of women and domination of one class over another have existed throughout history is no proof that such conditions are innocuous, but merely that they have not been so destructive as to prevent survival. And, in general, we may say of the social system that comes down to us from the past that, while as a whole and in its longer tested parts it has proved capable of life, we have no reason to think that this life is of the highest kind practicable.
In a time of rapid change the struggle of ideas becomes both more intense and more confused. The social whole is in somewhat the position of a man who has been thrown out of his old occupation and is trying to establish himself in a new one: many questions press upon him at once, while the rules and habits he has been used to go by do not suit the changed conditions. In a more settled time there are traditional beliefs which serve as accepted standards of judgment—as the Scriptures or the writings of the Fathers have served in the history of the church. But in our own period—though we are no doubt too much in it to judge truly of its character—it seems that hardly any authority remains, that we have to create the law as well as make decisions under it.
The effort of intelligence to find a rational course in such a time results in a somewhat anarchic conflict of diverse interpretations. Extreme views of many sorts are urged, and there is no accredited arbiter to decide among them.
“And a vast noise of rights, wrongs, powers, needs,