[Footnote 1: Dewey: Essays in Experimental Logic, p. 200.]
To define our terms means literally to know what we are talking about and what others are talking about. One of the values of discussion is that it enables us more clearly to realize the meaning of the words with which we constantly operate. A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious definition of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly come face to face with another who means by it industrial coöperation and participation on the part of all workers. Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his own becomes clearer by contrast.
"Science," wrote Condillac, "is a well-made language." No small part of the technique of science lies in its clear definition of its terms. The chemist knows what he means by an "acid," the biologist by a "mammal." Under these names he classifies all objects having certain determinable properties. Social science will never attain the precision of the physical sciences until it also attains as clear and unambiguous a terminology. As we shall see in the chapter on science, however, the definitions in the physical sciences are arrived at through precise inquiries not yet possible in the field of social phenomena.
CHAPTER XI
RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY
That the history of the race is an unbroken continuum goes without saying. What this means in the way of transmission of the arts, the sciences, the religion, the ideas, the customs of one generation to the next, we shall presently see. Cultural continuity is made possible by the more fundamental fact of the actual biological continuity of the race. This biological continuity extends back, as far as we can infer from the scientific evidence, unbrokenly through the half million years since man has left traces of his presence on earth. The continuity of life itself goes back to that still more remote time when man and ape were indistinguishable, indeed to that postulated epoch when life as it existed on earth was no more complex than it is as it now appears in the one-celled animal. Evolution has taught us that life, however it started, has been one long continuous process which has increased in complexity from the unicellular animals to man.
The continuity of the human race is a contrivance of nature rather than of man. It is, as it were, a by-product of the sex instinct. Man is endowed natively with a powerful desire for sex gratification, and though offspring are the chief utility of this instinct, desire for reproduction is not normally its primary stimulus. But while the production of offspring may thus be said to be an incidental result of the sex instinct, human reproduction may be subjected to rational consideration and control, according as offspring are or are not considered desirable.
The sense of the desirability of offspring may, in the first place, be determined by social rather than individual considerations. To the group or the state a large birth-rate, a steady increase of the number of births over the number of deaths, may be made desirable by the need of a large population for agriculture, herding, or war. In primitive tribes, superiority in numbers must have been, under conditions of competitive warfare, a pronounced asset. In any imperialistic régime, where military conquest is highly regarded, the maintenance and replenishment of large armies is a factor that has entered into reflection on the question of population.
In cases where a small ruling class is benefited by the labor of a slave or serf class, there is, at least for the ruling classes, a marked utility in the increase in population. It means just so much opportunity for increase of wealth on the part of landowning and slaveholding or serf-controlling classes. In any country, increase in the labor supply means just so much more human energy for the control of natural resources, so many more units of energy for the production of national wealth.
Offspring may come to be reflectively desired by the individual as a means of perpetuating property, family, or fame. A man cannot nonchalantly face the prospect of obliteration, and the biological fact of death may be circumvented by the equally real fact of reproduction. A man's individuality, we have already had occasion to see, is enhanced by his possessions, and if his fortune or estate is handed down he shall not altogether have been obliterated from the earth. Similarly, where a family has become a great tradition, there may be a deliberate desire on the part of an individual to have the name and tradition carried on, to keep the old lineage current and conspicuous among men. A man may think through his children to keep his own fame alive in posterity. At least his name shall be known, and if, as so often happens, a son follows in his father's profession, carries on his father's business, farm, or philanthropies, the individual attains at least some measure of vicarious immortality. His own ways, habits, traditions are carried on.