Social development : its nature and companions / by L.T. Hobhouse.

  • Hobhouse, L. T. (Leonard Trelawny), 1864-1929.
Date:
[1924]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social development : its nature and companions / by L.T. Hobhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/360 (page 13)
    describe finally how far the End is realised in the facts, or how far appreciation of the End is an operative condition in the actual movement of society. In two previous volumes the writer has dealt with social values, in the first, The Rational Good, with the theory of the ultimate end of human action, in the second. The Elements of Social Justice, with the application of the theory to social relations. The object of the present volume concluding the little series is to deal with the actual nature of social life and the conditions of its development, to bring the fact into comparison with the ideal. The plan of the book is briefly as follows : An Introductory chapter indicates summarily certain great phases of civilisa¬ tion and suggests a broad connection between the growth of knowledge and its applications on the one hand, and the extent and character of social organisation on the other. This suggested correlation is the starting point of the inquiry, which begins in Chapter II with an analysis of Society and in particular of the Communit}^ as the organised basis of social relations. Chapter III examines the conditions governing the life of communities and finds them in the duality of human relations, mutual need crossed by mutual pressure and constraint. Chapter IV dealing with Social Development shows that the social principle of mutual need carried to completion would yield a harmonious develop¬ ment of humanity as a whole which corresponds to the ethical ideal, but that the actual movements of societies reveal partial developments which are not always in harmony with each other or with ethical requirements, as well as periods of mere stagnation, arrest and decay. In the following chapters the conditions of social development are considered under four heads, the Environmental, Biological, Psycho¬ logical and Social proper. Chapter V discusses the first two heads and emphasises the distinction between social and biological change. Chapter VI deals with the factors of impulse, reason and will in human conduct, and Chapter VII with the Root Interests underlying them, and in particular with the Social Interest, the main effect being to show that Social Development is conditioned by the growth of Rational