Passive, or negative, progress is represented by the social forces operating in their natural freedom, subject only to general evolutionary laws.[XVII-4] Active, or positive, progress is represented by the social forces guided by conscious human purposes. Social statics deals with the nature of social order; social dynamics treats of the laws of social progress. Social dynamics concerns itself with two types of studies. One line analyzes and describes what is going on in society under the influence of natural laws--this is pure sociology. It is pure diagnosis; it has nothing to do with what society ought to be. It describes the phenomena and laws of society as they are.[XVII-5] The other procedure discusses the application of human purpose to the natural social forces--this is applied sociology. It studies the art of applying the active, or positive, forces to the natural evolution of society. This method is distinctly a human process and “depends wholly on the action of man himself.” Applied sociology treats of social ends and purposes. Pure sociology describes the spontaneous development of society; applied sociology deals with the artificial means of accelerating the spontaneous processes in society.[XVII-6] Pure sociology treats of achievement; applied sociology, of improvement. But applied sociology is not social reform; “it does not itself apply sociological principles, it seeks only to show how they may be applied.” It lays down principles as guides to social action. The carrying of these principles into social and political practice is social reform. The distinction is now clear between natural and artificial progress.[XVII-7] The former is a blind growth; the latter, a purposeful manufacture. One is a genetic process; the other, a teleological process. One is characterized by increasing differentiation; the other, by a process of calculation. Artificial progress is considered superior to natural progress. Ward was a monist. He believed in the absolute unity of nature, from the revolutions of celestial orbs to the vicissitudes of social customs and laws.[XVII-8] He held that “life is a property of matter,” and naïvely declared that “it is simply the result of the movements going on among the molecules composing a mass of protoplasm.”[XVII-9] Psychic phenomena are “the relations which subsist among the material molecules of the brain and nervous system and between these and the material objects of the outside world....” Since mind is relational, it is immaterial, but it has matter for its basis. Relations, however, constitute the properties of matter, and hence mind, as well as life, is a property of matter.[XVII-10] The logical length to which Ward goes in supporting his monistic doctrine is in itself a proof of his error.