ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the scientific knowledge of social life or its departments is not the same as scientific knowledge of any other phenomena; and therefore the basis of science which the wise man may claim for his social judgments is not as reassuring as the phrase implies. And as most societies are chiefly composed of people who are neither sociologists nor social philosophers, it would seem to follow that the decisions of any democracy can be nothing more than the outcome of innumerable competing masses of unenlightened prejudice. For change is now increasingly motived by the conception of a better social state, presented to the minds of agents who are growingly conscious of their power to realize that better state if they will, and to make themselves prepared for its realization. For the spiritual force of the true individual, who is the reality in every social unit, has a practically limitless power on the higher levels of life.
