SOCIAL PROGRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23204, 31 May 1937, Page 2

SOCIAL PROGRESS

LECTURE TO PSYCHOLOGY CLASS

" Social Progress " was the title of Mr C. G. F. Simkin's first address this vear to the W.E.A. class in social psychology. It was necessary, Mr Simkin said, to begin by asking what social progress actually meant. Some people were ir.clined to deny that there had been any social progress, a view which the speaker regarded js false; but even this people would need to join in this part of his inquiry, as it was necessary for them to know lust what they were denying.

It was obvious that socia] progress in some sense involved social change, since there could be no progress without change. Change in itself, however, was not necessarily progress, The idea of social evolution was of more help, for it led beyond mere change to those types of change which fundamentally altered the nature of social life and societv. Even this concept, however, was not entirely satisfactory; for social progress implied not only change, but change for the better, and it was wrong to think of evolutionary changes as being necessarily changes for the better. There was nothing in our knowledge of evolution to Dreclujde a change in the nature of life, arid of social life, for the worse. Social progress must mean an ideal form of socia] evolution. Only some directions in social evolution were coincident with social progress; and these "ouli 1 be defined provisionally as those types of change which meant the development of human personality from lower to higher stages, die growth of life in fulness, richness and intensity. The development of personality, Mr Simkin continued, rested upon a progressive mastery of the physical and socia] conditions of life, and involved two complementary features, the growth of individuality and that of ''sociality." Sociality was the quality whereby social beings became more and more bound together in wider and wider circles of social life, and resulted from the process of ' socialisation." Individuality was the quality which resulted from the process of " individualisation." and by virtue of which man became more developed, more self-conscious, more selfdetermining, more responsible, more rational and more moral. It was fairly obvious that socialisation depended upon the development of individuality. Where individuality was most developed, there we found social relations were most intimate and most extensive. The reverse was less obvious but no less true. Sterility and frustration were the consequences of an undeveloped social life for the individual.

Social progress ,vas thus seen to consist in the growth of a richer, fuller, more self-determining life for the individual, of more intimate, profound and wider relationships between different people, and a growing complexity and specialisation in social institutions and associations. Mr Simkin mentioned some of the signs 01 such progress, and gave a rapid historical survey of various aspects of social life with a view to discovering what progress had taken place in these different spheres.