Ward pronounced the money-making tendency one of the most useful and at the same time “one of the coarsest and cheapest of all mental attributes.”[XVII-19] It is useful because it is “the spur of all industry and commerce; it provides the leisure which makes intellectual pursuits possible; it encourages exploration, discovery, and invention; it is the basis of all large business undertakings; and it has been an essential force in the development of civilization. Since civilization is so exclusively artificial, money can buy a vast variety of objects of human desire; hence, the possession of money is strenuously sought.
On the other hand, money-making confers a pleasure which after all is sordid.[XVII-21] It often leads to avarice. It has produced a pecuniary inequality of mankind which socially admits of little justification. From a moral viewpoint the great struggle for pecuniary possession has been man’s greatest curse.[XVII-22] Because of it, many infants have opened their eyes as millionaires in a world of boundless plenty; others (equally worthy) have opened their eyes as beggars in a world of abject poverty.
Society becomes divided into two main classes: the industrials and the non-industrials, or parasites. The non-industrials use their cunning in various ways.[XVII-24] The leading non-industrial modes of acquisition are these: robbery, theft, war, statecraft, priestcraft, and monopoly. This list represents the chronological order and history of non-industrial types of acquisition.
Robbery is the coarsest manner of acquisition. Theft represents the lowest order of cunning. Wars of conquest are robbery on so large a scale that they arouse group patriotism. Cunning and treachery in war have given way to strategy. Statecraft has often been characterized by the egoistic attempts of a few shrewd individuals, who have devised means for supplying the wants of the many, and appropriated rich rewards for themselves from “the befriended and grateful community.” Priestcraft as represented by many of the priests of Brahma, Buddha, Osiris, Ormuzd, Mahomet and even Jesus have developed successful modes of acquisition. They have often stood at the gates of death, and for pay guaranteed to the stricken and fearful friends of a departed loved one a safe journey through the perils following death. Monopoly takes cunning advantage of a scarcity of the means of substance, or creates an artificial and false scarcity. Monopoly has organized the fields of transportation, exchange, finance, labor, manufacture.
The non-industrials co-operate better than the industrials and against the welfare of the latter. The industrials, unfortunately, do not understand the principles of co-operation very well and do not have the intelligence to carry them into practical operation. They receive less education than the non-industrials; the years of their industrial apprenticeship are taken from their school days. After their apprenticeship begins, the fatigue of their labor gives them little time or energy for intellectual improvement.[XVII-25] In pronouncing co-operation the product of superior intelligence Ward neglects the rôle played by the gregarious, parental, and related social instincts. Ward sees only part of the truth when he calls competition a natural law, and co-operation artificial. He wisely observes, however, that those who co-operate thrive at the expense of those who compete.[XVII-26] In the same way that individuals co-operate in order to secure their own gain, society must organize to secure the progress of all.
The second primary set of fundamental forces is the reproductive. These operate for the future and for the species. In animals they operate without arousing shame or modesty. Among human beings they are manipulated through the agencies of the reason and the imagination and give rise to the sentiments of shame and modesty.[XVII-27] They are so clouded in secrecy that they arouse dangerous forms of curiosity.
Among animals the choice of mates is largely determined by the females. In fact, among the lowest types of animals there are no males. Among certain higher forms of animal life the male appears as a mere adjunct. But among human beings, male sexual selection developed. This change in sexual selection is one of the differences between the brute and the human worlds. This transition is explained by the fact that the higher a being rises in the scale of development the more sensitive its organs become, and by the correlated fact that the male human being through his reason is able to arouse and satisfy a thousand desires within the female, and thus cause her to look to him for “that protection and those favors which he alone can confer.”[XVII-28]
In the human world the reproductive forces have first produced a crude sexual love, animal in its nature, but far-reaching in its basic implications. Sexual love is an unconscious but dominant factor in courtship. In its refined form, and modified by the addition of genuine but often short-lived affective elements, it becomes romantic love. Romantic love, according to Ward, unfits lovers for the normal pursuits of life. While under its spell they are unable to enjoy anything but each other’s presence. “The man is unfitted for business, the woman for social life, and both for intellectual pursuits. The only spur that can make either party pursue other things, is the sense of doing something that the other desires.”[XVII-29]
In the sense that natural, or sexual, love becomes the basis of romantic love, so romantic love in turn represents the genesis of a still higher form of love, namely, conjugal love. The love of a man for his wife or of a woman for her husband is, however, fundamentally different from romantic love. It is more stable, less disturbing to the normal processes of life, and makes the home and the family socially productive institutions. It often reaches a high state of refinement and develops its beauty of content from the sharing together by husband and wife of great joys and sorrows.
Maternal love, an outgrowth of maternity, manifests startling degrees of courage even among animals. Under the spur of the need for defending her young, a mother will often perform miraculous deeds. In its highest form maternal love manifests a remarkable strength throughout life and an extra-human power of forgiveness.