$6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
have fashioned the master-key which a multitude of men have tried to apply in different ways to unlock the social mysteries. No more significant recent work can be named in this field than that of Ammon, Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen?
But these more general aspects of the universal environment condition are, after all, merely preliminaries to the more particu- lar aspects of the same facts, which are of increasing interest to the practical sociologist in proportion as they emerge in the details of the everyday life of living men. Whether we ever succeed or not in generalizing the historic influence of environ- ment upon the course of civilization, we know enough about it to be without excuse if we neglect the influence of environment upon ourselves and our neighbors. Hardly a program for the improvement of present life omits today the environment ele- ment ; and many of the most reasonable programs make environ- ment the chief practical consideration. From the ideals of art leagues, that would make our cities externally beautiful, to the plans of criminologists, who would furnish reformatory methods and post-reformatory opportunities favorable to habits of indus- try, we are learning to be suspicious of all theories of progress which do not rest hard upon readjustment of external surround- ings. This is the point of departure of our modern charities, our social settlement policies, our educational theories, our devices for applying religion. People who are zealous for the prestige of religion are apt to misunderstand and misrepresent this calculation upon the influence of the external. At the recent International Congregational Conference in Boston (1899) some of the English theologians are reported to have sneered at Professor Graham Taylor's plea for more attention to the present welfare of laborers, as an attempt to substitute "physical evolu- tion" for improvement of men from within. This was probably the utterance of ignorance more than of cant. It must be admitted, of course, that there has been a vast amount of unwise glorification of improved environment, as though it were an end
'First German ed. t Fischer, Jena, 1895. French transl. of second ed., Fonte- moing, Paris, 1900.
