VI. THE RISE OF PRESENT-DAY SOCIAL THEORIES AND SOCIAL REFORM 1. The Historical Background.— Before 1850 the new industrial order had thoroughly taken hold only of England but had af fected France to a considerable degree. The other European countries were little affected by the Industrial Revolution until the last third of the century. When the new industrialism came to these states it produced a wider following for the programs of reform. Again, the first half of the century was spent by the proletariat and their champions in groping about feeling their way, in formulating impracticable pro grams and in discovering successful methods of organization and achievement. After 1850 this preliminary training began to bear fruit in successful proletarian movements in both the political and the economic fields. Further, the mad rush for wealth tended to slow down to some degree and even the capitalistic classes became more resigned to the coming of a moderate restriction of their absolute indus trial freedom. Finally, the Darwinian biology made any static outlook upon social and eco nomic problems absurd and preposterous.
2. The Effect of the German Philosophy of the The political philosophy of both economic liberalism and utilitarianism had been built up about the thesis of the pre-eminence of the individual, and the state was locked upon as merely the "communal policeman" Aside from the protection of life and property and the erection of public works the chief function of the state was represented as being the abolition of restrictive legislation previously enacted. The notion of the state as the chief instrument of social reform was wholly repulsive to this school and a new doctrine of the state was es sential before extensive reform legislation could be given a respectable theoretical founda tion. This new theory of the state was found in the doctrines of the German Idealist political philosophers, particularly Hegel. Here was discovered a notion of the state which was wholly reverent, took the community as the starting point of political reasoning and be lieved the individual capable of finding per fection only as a member of the state. This
view was brought over into England by T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet. Prof. Ernest Baker thus summarizes the nature and significance of this transformation in polit ical philosophy: "Not a modification of the old Benthamite premises, hut a new philos ophy was needed; and that philosophy was • VO. 25 - 12 provided by the idealist school, of which Green is the greatest representative. That school drew its inspiration immediately from Kant and Hegel, and ultimately from the old Greek philosophy of the city-state. The vital relation between the life of the individual and the life of the community, which alone gives the in dividual worth and significance, because it alone gives him the power of full moral de velopment; the dependence of the individual, for all his rights and for all his liberty, on his membership of the community; the cor relative duty of the community to guarantee to the individual all his rights (in other words all the conditions necessary for his and, therefore, for its own, full moral development)— were the premises of the new philosophy. That philosophy could satisfy the new needs of social progress, because it refused to worship a supposed individual liberty which was proving destructive to the real liberty of the vast ma jority, and preferred to emphasize the moral well-being and betterment in and through the community. Herein lay, or seemed to lie, a revolution of ideas. Instead of starting from a central individual, to whom the social system is supposed to be adjusted, the idealist starts from a central social system, in which the in dividual must find his appointed orbit of duty.* This philosophy laid the foundation for state activity, but it carried with it certain exaggera tions and dangers which Professors Dewey and Hobhouse have recently revealed.