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

  • Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse
Date:
[1924]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

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

    18/360 page 14
    Will. The interaction of mind and mind is then examined in Chapter VIII and the sense in which a common will can be asserted and the steps by which it advances are distinguished. The effort of Mind, it is argued, is towards a harmony of which it becomes more clearly aware in pro¬ portion as its thought advances in articulation and scope, the movement of thought being related to social life through religious and ethical ideas on the one hand and industrial applications on the other. The factor of Interaction, which is the Social Factor proper, is considered on its own account in Chapter IX with special reference to the action of the existing order upon the new generation and the conditions of the maintenance and change of Institutions. The actual structure of society is conceived as the tentative or partial solution of the problem of living together under the conditions of the environment, and Development as the effort after a better solution. In the two following chapters this view is tested by a comparison of the development of thought with that of social organisation, in which the rough general statements of the Introductory sketch are analysed as far as the requirements of a general survey permit. In Chapter X we consider the development of thought and its expression in Ethics and Religion. In Chapter XI we deal with a number of fundamental institutions and find that they, in fact, exhibit a development corresponding in vital points with the development of thought. We have, however, to accept the fact that the development is incomplete, and in the present state of the w'orld in danger of arrest. Never¬ theless, the broad effect of the comparison set out in Chapter XII is to justify the view that the development of society in its completeness is conditioned by the available fund of moral wisdom. This brings us to the question of Social' Determinism, and it is argued in Chapter XIII that a scien¬ tific view of society far from reducing the will to impotence reveals the wills of men as true causes of social change, and their intelligent co-operation as the sole cause on which progress can, for a permanence, depend. The conception of automatic progress is dismissed but it is contended that the conditions of social life reviewed as a whole show the
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image