Chapter XVIII

, is largely an interpretation of society in terms of increasing co-operation. Professor Hobhouse has defined social progress as the development of the principle of union, order, co-operation, and harmony among individuals. He has described a certain mutual interest, similar to Giddings’ consciousness of kind, which has served to keep individuals together, from the lowest groups of savages to the highest civilized groups.[XXI-21]

The social process, as Professor Cooley analyzes it, is not a series of futile repetitions or brutal and wasteful conflicts, but an eternal, onward growth which produces increasingly humane, rational, and co-operative beings. While the element of conflict is useful in that it awakens and directs human attention and thus leads to activity, it is limited by a superintending factor of co-operation and organization to which the contestants must adjust themselves if they would succeed.[XXI-22]

The discussions in this and the preceding chapter have shown that the natural trend of evolution is away from a pitiless competitive and destructive social process, and toward a tempered, productive, and co-operative process. Of course, there are reactionary movements from time to time which halt the co-operative trend. On the other hand, the development of reason gradually eliminates the more brutal effects of conflict. Conflict, however, will always remain, as far as can now be seen, an essential factor in the processes of individual and societal growth. Through rational controls, it will operate in the direction and interest of the co-operative spirit. In the old social order, hate and the spirit of conflict have ruled. The spirit of co-operation has often been utilized only for selfish purposes. In the coming social order love and the co-operative spirit will direct, while the spirit of conflict will play a vital but secondary rôle.

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