First Laws Of The Science Of Power

( Originally Published 1918 )

WHEN the mind of the West comes to grasp in all its far-reaching applications the fact that the Science of Power in the social integration is the science of directing the collective will over long stretches of time to definite ends through the emotion of the ideal, it will be the first step to a new order of civilization. It is desirable therefore to look in the face some of the controlling facts which lie behind this cardinal position.

In concentrating attention on the subject of Power, it is necessary for me to ask the reader's attention at this point for a matter which is fundamental. From the beginning of knowledge, the human mind has been exercised in seeking the answer to the question What is Truth? Strange as the fact may appear, this question has carried the West into many long eras of stress and violence. Throughout all the changing phases of these perods of development, there has been a position which has never been permitted to present itself in the full light of day to the minds of the combat-ants, namely, that Truth is inseparably related to Power. Men did not consciously allow themselves to consider this most basal of facts that in the science of the developing world, Power is the clue not only to human action but to all the principles of knowledge.

The academic system of ideas and arguments about the nature of Truth which the Western mind had reared for centuries was in reality broken to pieces by bringing into sight the actuality which lay behind a statement that formed the heading of one of the chapters of Social Evolution. This statement was to the effect that in the social integration there is no rational sanction for the conditions of progress. It was the assertion of the essential relationship of Truth to Power, and to Power only, which was expressed in this simple form of words, that constituted the claim to attention. The perception of that relationship sent something like a thrill of re-creation through the dry bones of the philosophies of the West. In the half-articulate period which followed the publication of Social Evolution, the leaders of the new movement in Western thought which took the name of Pragmatism, feeling the connection between Truth and Power that had been brought into view, ventured hot-foot upon definitions of Truth that swept the builders and definers of dialectic systems of Truth into a state of amazed defence. And well it might be so. For pragmatists began forthwith to define Truth in a way in which the conception of Power alone was visible. They proceeded to define Truth as "That which works"; "That which is expedient"; "That which has value" and so on.

The time has come when I must respectfully ask pragmatists to give me that right-of-way which is my due. The beginning of this development has not been with them. These definitions of Truth have a lasting value in the history of know-ledge. But they are in the nature of things tentative and incomplete attempts, the natural product of that period of transition which followed the uncovering of the position which I had brought into view. I must in my own way carry this philosophy of Power to the further issues that are involved in it. I, therefore, ask the reader not to be startled if I proceed to give him the answer to the question What is Truth? and to follow it up by asserting that it is a complete answer and that the development of knowledge two thousand years hence, or twenty thousand years hence, will only have served to establish the conviction that it is the final answer.

I. Truth is the Science of Power.

To this axiom may be added a second equally fundamental :

II. Evolution in all the phenomena of Life follows the line of maximum Power.

When Christ, claiming to be the exponent of Truth, stood before Pilate's judgment seat, apparently a man utterly beaten and defeated, the cultured Roman asked him the question, "What is Truth?" Christ, it is recorded "answered him nothing, " so that Pilate marvelled. The position was complete. Nothing could be added to it. For the true answer was utterly beyond Pilate's comprehension. The centre of the greatest Power system which has arisen in history stood before him and he knew it not. For Pilate did not and could not understand the science of Power as it had passed over from the individual to the social integration.

There have been three stages in the definition of the science of Power in the West. In the first stage of it Newton in the Principia set forth the laws of the material universe in terms of Force. In the second stage Darwin defined the laws of the individual integration in life in terms of Power. The third stage is that in which we are now engaged, in which the laws of the social integration in life are being defined similarly in terms of Power.

To understand the application of the doctrine of Power to the current personal and collective activities of the modern world of civilization, it is desirable to have a firm grasp of a few leading principles. The two most essential matters are (I) to understand the distinction to be made between Force and Power; and (2) to understand the nature of the fundamental difference between the controlling law of the individual integration and the controlling law of the social integration.

Now Force and Power are words continually used loosely and often as interconvertible terms in the West. 1 In this chapter, and in future, they will be used by me strictly in the sense in which they are here defined.

Force or Energy is the characteristic or constituent quality of the material universe. Its modes may be changed, but the quantity thereof in the universe cannot be taken from nor added to.

The distinction between Force and Power is fundamental.

III. Power is the capacity for utilizing Force or Energy by integration that is to say, by organization, so as to produce more intense or higher results in one place than would otherwise be possible.

IV. Power is the characteristic or constituent quality of life as Force is the characteristic or constituent quality of the material universe.

V. Life in all its forms is a process of integration that is to say, of organization, of Force or Energy.

The mind which brought us to the fundamental law of evolution in life as Newton brought us to the fundamental law of the material universe was Darwin's. Darwin and Herbert Spencer gave us the first law of evolution in life in stating the principle which is summarized in the expression survival of the fittest, or, in another form, natural selection. Both these formula have been radically criticized. "To say that to survive is to be the fittest is merely to tell us that to be the fittest is to survive. To say that life progresses by natural selection is merely to tell us that life progresses in the manner in which it does progress." So the criticism has run. Something essential is said to be missing.

As a matter of fact, both formula are lacking in an essential element. The axiom or law of progress which supplies what is missing in Darwin's conception and which expresses the characteristic meaning of integration in life so as to bring that meaning into line with the principles set out in Book I. of Newton's Principia must be put as follows :

II. Integration in life follows the line of maximum Power.

The principle of the survival of the fittest or natural selection coming to us from Darwin and Spencer is, it will be observed, a less complete expression of this law of maximum Power.

The feature of life is its two phases of integration governed by quite different applications of the law of maximum Power. First, there is the Individual Integration. ' It was practically with the Individual Integration alone that Darwin was concerned. His conception did not in any real sense extend to the higher or Social Integration. The distinctive governing principle of each of these two phases of evolution may be set out as follows:

VI. In the Individual Integration evolution follows the line of maximum Power through the self-assertion of the individual. The centre of gravity in the process is in the life of the individual, i. e., it is in the present.

The highest form of Power in the individual integration is that which Darwin described, namely, the highest survival efficiency of those units which are successful in the struggle for their own lives and interests. But ----

VII. In the Social Integration evolution follows the line of maximum Power through the entire subordination of the lives and welfare of the individual units to a survival efficiency in the social integration which is projected beyond that of the lives and welfare or even the consciousness of the existing units. The centre of gravity in the process is beyond the individual, i. e., it is in the future.

The highest form of Power in the social integration is that which produces the highest efficiency in securing this type of subordination. I have elsewhere defined this as Projected Efficiency.

As we scrutinize closely this statement of the difference between the principles of Power in the individual integration and in the social integration, we have unveiled before us the cause of all the fundamental and deep-seated confusion and conflict in the standards of the modern West. Almost the entire effort of the Western mind to apply Darwinism to the collective standards of the world has been an effort to apply to the affairs of civilization the principles of Power in the individual integration conceiving them to be the principles of Power in the social integration. It is evident that the Western mind therein is up against an impossible task. For Power as expressed through the forms of the social integration is immeasurably greater than Power expressed through the forms of the individual integration of which Darwin gave us the laws. The principles upon which Power rests in the social integration will therefore be the winning principles in the world.

The ascendant and winning quality in the era of the individual integration has been Reason. It may be defined as follows:

VIII. Reason is the highest form of the sum of the Self-Regarding emotions. It is the principal expression of that capacity in mind by which the individual senses the sequences through which Power is related to Force. It is the chief human organ of the science of Force.

Even where reason carries us into the highest regions of practical science, or of thought, or of speculation, its achievements all remain applications of those winning or survival qualities acquired by mind in sensing the relations of Force to Power in the environment out of which man has emerged in the past. On the other hand ---

The ascendant and winning quality in the era of the social integration is the Emotion of the Ideal. This quality may be defined as follows:

IX. The Emotion of the Ideal is the highest form of the sum of the Other-Regarding emotions. It is the principal expression of that ultra-rational capacity in mind through which the individual senses the sequences through which individual Power is related to social Power in higher integration. It is the chief human organ of the science of Power.

When these two statements (VIII and IX) are carefully scrutinized and compared, it will be perceived that there is a far-reaching significance in the different manner in which Power is transmitted by heredity in the social integration as compared with the individual integration. This may be expressed as follows:

X. In the individual integration the heredity through which Power is transmitted is in the individual. It is passed from one generation to the next with protoplasmic continuity. Great change on a large scale is rare and is usually only slowly established.

It is on this kind of heredity that the attention of science has been almost exclusively concentrated in the past. As contrasted with it we have in the social integration the following principles:

XI. In the social integration the heredity through which Power is transmitted is in the cultural inheritance. 1 It is independent of protoplasmic continuity. The transmitting agent is the emotion of the ideal. Transforming change on a universal scale can be established quickly, i. e., within the lifetime of a single generation.

The foregoing axioms carry us to new horizons in Western thought and action. They form the foundations of the science of Power. We have to turn now to their practical applications applications of immeasurable significance in the future of civilization.