Before the actual publication of Dynamic Sociology in 1883, Lester Frank Ward, the "father" of American sociology, tentatively entitled the manuscript, "The Great Panacea" (1). Although Ward later rejected this title, the perspective which it symbolized permeated all of his later works and defined the focus of American sociology for several decades. I n the preface to Dynamic Sociology, this perspective was made explicit:
Just as Comte could complain that the philosophy of Hobbes, Locke, and Voltnire was negative, so it may now be maintained that the school of RIill, Spencer, and Fislte is also negative. From the purely statical stage of the former, the latter has only advanced to the passively dynamic stage, which recognizes only the changes wrought by nature, unaided by art; but, before the science of society can be truely founded, another advance must be made, and the actively dynamic stage reached in which social phenomena shall be contemplated as capable of intelligent control by society itself in its own interest (2). Today, Ward is best remembered for this facet of his theories. Dynamic Sociology appeared a t a time when the Spencerian doctrine of Laissez Faire dominated most social thought. On the other hand, Ward's belief that the human mind could rationally direct social evolution through social telesis was to become a dominant force in American sociology. As Harry Elmer Barnes has written: