Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/284 (page 28)
    Social Institutions arising from Deliberate Planning for Efficiency in carrying out Social Purposes The fourth class of social institutions is on a different plane from any of the three hitherto described. In those three it is the desired end, whether the satisfaction of animal appetite, the ful¬ filment of religious emotion, or the carrying out of the humanistic creed, which is the decisive mark of the class. When we come to the most modern of social institutions, we find that they are, for the most part, of the nature of devices or expedients con¬ sciously and deliberately adopted for the purpose of carrying out with greater efficiency, in some par¬ ticular spheres, predetermined general ideals or pur¬ poses, to the nature of which they are themselves indifferent. Thus the purpose falls into the back¬ ground, and it is on the perfection of the machinery used that the mind of man is concentrated. Effi¬ ciency is the sole object, as it is the supreme test, of social institutions of this class, which may be employed in the service of any social ideal or general purpose whatsoever. The special characteristic of social institutions of this class, which may be termed the technical or scientific, is that they are devised and organised according to the teaching of applied science. We may cite as examples such humdrum expedients, seldom thought of as social institutions at all, as the audit of public accounts, or the intro¬ duction of Summer Time. These changes did not