But now under what condition alone can the changed characters of citizens work changes in their institutions? The condition is that their changed characters shall display themselves in changed actions. To except that the society will evolve further while they remain passive, is to expect that it will evolve further without cause. Each man in whom dissatisfaction is aroused by institutions which have survived from a less civilized past, or whose sympathies make certain evils repugnant to him, must regard his feelings thus excited as units in the aggregate of forces by which progress is to be brought about; and is called on to expend his feelings in appropriate deeds. An analogy will best show how there may be reconciled the two propositions that social evolution is a process conforming to natural laws, and yet that it results from the voluntary efforts of citizens.
It is a truth statistically established, that in each community, while its conditions remain the same, there is a uniform rate of marriage: such variations in the prices of food, serving to show that so long as the impediments to marriage do not vary the frequency of marriages dose not vary. Similarly, it is found that along with an average frequency of marriages there goes an average frequency of births. But though these averages show that the process of human multiplication presents uniformities, implying constancy in the action of general cause, it is not therefore inferred that the process of human multiplication is independent of people’s wills. If anyone were to argue that marriages and births, considered in the aggregate, are social phenomena statistically proved to depend on influences which operate uniformly, and that therefore the maintenance of population dose not depend on individual actions, his inference would be rejected as absurd. Daily experience proves that marrying and the rearing of children in each case result from the pursuit of exclusively private ends. It is only by fulfilling their individual wills in establishing and maintaining the domestic relations, that citizens produce these aggregate results which exhibit uniformities apparently independent of individual wills. In this instance, then, it is obvious that social phenomena follow certain general courses; and yet that they can do this only on condition that social units voluntarily act out their natures. While everyone holds that, in the matter of marriage, his will is, in the ordinary sense of the word, free; yet he is obliged to recognize the fact that his will, and the wills of others, are so far determined by common elements of human nature, as to produce these average social results; and that no such social results could be produced did they not fulfil their wills.
Similarly, then, with these changes constituting progress, which are desired by the philanthropic. Though higher institutions will evolve in conformity with general laws, when the natures of citizens permit; yet they will do this only in proportion as each citizen manifests in action, that nature to which they are the correlatives.
But now instead of these reasons for passivity which may thus be met, there come from some, other reasons for passivity more difficult to meet. Admitting that social evolution can result only if the natures of citizens issue in appropriate conduct, and that therefore those who have human progress at heart must use fit means, some will put the question – What are fit means? Impressed by the evidence that legislative acts, and deeds prompted by benevolence, prove in multitudinous cases injurious rather than advantageous, they hesitate lest they should work evil instead of good. They ask how the apparently beneficial but really mischievous measures, are to be distinguished from measures that are essentially and permanently beneficial. Let us listen to one of them.
“When goldsmiths, and mercers, and fishmongers, and traders of other kinds, severally formed guilds for the protection and regulation of their respective businesses, they would have thought insane the prophecy that centuries afterwards the guilds would be composed of men unconnected with these businesses, who would spend the vast funds accumulated chiefly in gigantic and luxurious feasts. Those who in past times founded schools for the poor, never dreamt that the funds they bequeathed would be perverted to the use of the rich; nor could they have believed that by providing what was then thought good education they would eventually hinder the spread of better education.” How do I known that an agency which I aid in establishing to achieve one end, will not similarly be turned in future to some other end? Or that what now seems to me a benefit, will not eventually prove an evil by standing in the way of greater benefit? Am I told that in future, more control and better judgment will prevent corruptions and perversions? I cannot hope it. Even now I see recurring, mischiefs of the same nature as have before occurred under like conditions. For instance, there are signs that again in Ireland, the steps taken to meet distress are working evils akin to those worked during the distress of 1847, when the relief-system fostered ‘an organized combination to discourage the cultivation of the soil, and to persuade the people that if they leave it untilled the Government and Parliament will forever be obliged to maintain them’ (Debates, February 19, 1847); and when a landlord, responding to the request of his tenants for seedwheat, but doubting their intentions, had the 800 stones he bought ‘steeped in a solution of sulphate of iron and then announced that they might have it, but they, finding they could not eat it, would not take a grain;’ (Times, March 26th, 1847). Every day brings examples of the ways in which measures work these unexpected results: instance the evil which has come along with the good promised by State-telegraphy. Just nothing that within the metropolis telegraphy has been doubled in price that a lower uniform rate might be given for all places – observing, too, that as the telegraph-wires extended into remote districts yield miserably small returns, it results that the more populous places are taxed for the benefit of the less populous; I pass to the fact which chiefly strikes me. Improvement in telegraphy has been arrested since State purchase of the telegraphs. As Dr. Charles Siemens, the highest authority points out, before this change England led the way in telegraphic inventions; but since this change telegraphic inventions come to us from America, where telegraphs do not belong to the State, and are here introduced not at all or with difficulty after great delay. And further proof is now furnished by the Times (May 27, 1880), which tells us that its chief difficulty in establishing Parliamentary reporting by telephone, has been the opposition of the Post-office.