IRLF 
 
Ube 7Hni\>ersits of 
 
 FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 
 
 THE TRANSITION TO AN OBJECTIVE 
 
 STANDARD OF SOCIAL 
 
 CONTROL 
 
 A DISSERTATION 
 
 SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS 
 
 AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 
 
 OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 (DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY) 
 
 BY 
 
 LUTHER LEE BERNARD 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 A 
 
 \ ' 
 
Published March 1911 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION * i 
 
 II. THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 10 
 
 III. THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 29 
 
 IV. THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 44 
 
 V. THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM ... 65 
 
 VI. THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY . . 78 
 
 VII. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 88 
 
 iii 
 
 239387 
 
I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE PROBLEM STATED. SCOPE OF CRITICISM. ORIGIN AND 
 
 FUNCTION OF UTILITARIANISM. LIMITATIONS OF UTILI- 
 TARIANISM. CRITICISM OF CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY AND 
 
 ETHICS. THE NEW VIEWPOINT. CONSEQUENT REVISION 
 
 OF VALUES. PLAN OF TREATMENT 
 
 So much has been written concerning the evils of individual- 
 ism and the mistakes of the hedonistic psychology and utilitarian 
 ethics, without suggesting a satisfactory means of curing these 
 evils or correcting these mistakes, that one is forced to believe 
 that something is wrong with the method of attack. One 
 reason for this failure may be that the significance of utilitarian- 
 ism as a stage in the development of social theory has not yet 
 been rightly comprehended and that we do not adequately fore- 
 see what should be the next step in our social philosophy and 
 policy. This study is an attempt, (i) to throw utilitarianism 
 into perspective with the wider social forces and with the philo- 
 sophical and psychological theory of its time and our time; 
 (2) to show that the main current of present-day social theory, 
 and likewise of ethical theory so far as it is social rather than 
 theological and absolutistic in character, is largely an outgrowth 
 of utilitarianism, or at least may be grouped in close connec- 
 tion with it; (3) to argue that we cannot escape the limitations 
 imposed by a utilitarian ethics and by a hedonistic psychology 
 upon our social policy until we reconstruct our system of social 
 values, until we abandon the individual as the measure of all 
 things social, and fix upon the group, even the widest conceiv- 
 able group possessing solidarity, as the unity which lives, acts, 
 and progresses or deteriorates. Such a change in emphasis 
 obviously involves a reconstruction of our current psychology 
 and ethics ; for these two sciences as now written are essentially 
 individualistic, and hence impotent so far as contribution to a 
 constructive sociology and social policy is concerned. 
 
2 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 Only an outline of the argument can be presented within 
 the present limits, but it can be stated clearly and consistently 
 enough, it is hoped, to make a point of departure, as well as 
 furnish a basis for criticism. The second and third chapters 
 of the study, on "The Neural Correlate of Feeling" and "The 
 Cause of the Act," have been included, because the influence of 
 feeling upon social activity has been and yet is a central problem 
 in the development of social and ethical theory, though the rela- 
 tionship has been but unsatisfactorily worked out. In England 
 it has been an academic problem since the time of Hobbes. 1 
 This problem came particularly to the fore among the utilita- 
 rians and, though somewhat obscured and below the surface, 
 has by no means been wanting to the neo- and idealistic utilita- 
 rians and the other modern ethical individualists who would 
 disclaim utilitarian parentage or connection. It has also, as a 
 problem, divided the attention of the socialistic writers of the 
 nineteenth century, who, quite conceivably, were not able to 
 throw off the prevailing psychology and ethics of their time; 
 though they were checks upon, and largely in contradiction 
 with, their social policy. The greater portion of the critical 
 parts of this study deals with the utilitarians and their succes- 
 sors and predecessors, because they have been the center of 
 modern English and American social policy and social and 
 ethical theory. 2 Short excursions are made into related fields to 
 
 1 Cf. Sidgwick, History of Ethics, 163. 
 
 2 In Germany there has been a different theoretical basis, that of a state 
 philosophy, which was at the same time essentially a moral philosophy (Rechts- 
 philosophie). Cf. Small, The Cameralisms. The hedonistic and utilitarian phi- 
 losophies, however, did enter Germany, largely from the English of Hobbes. 
 Locke, and Hume and their successors, perhaps mainly by way of Helvetius 
 and Rousseau and their contemporaries, through Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, 
 Lotze, and others. Professor Small has also found indications of German 
 contact in the eighteenth century with Hume and his contemporaries. In 
 France, Helvetius took much from Hobbes, while the intellectual connections 
 of Rousseau with Locke are well known. The main current of social theory 
 and policy in France, because of the failure consistently to carry out early 
 democratic declarations, did not get beyond this early hedonism over into 
 the English phase of utilitarianism of the first half of the nineteenth century, 
 except in a partial degree in some of the socialists of whom Fourier and 
 Proudhon are types. The individualism and hedonism of French socialism of 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 give a completer account of the process of thought. No attempt 
 will be made, however, to cover the whole ground, or to give a 
 history of the development of utilitarian ethics. Space permits 
 only the selection of types. 
 
 Utilitarianism, as has been pointed out, 3 was with Bentham 
 and his coworkers and immediate followers mainly a move- 
 ment in social policy. It was essentially a practical reform 
 movement which in the first half of the nineteenth century 
 accomplished great political results in England by way of insist- 
 ing upon equal privileges and democratic recognition for the 
 masses. 4 But all movements of social policy, if they do not 
 grow directly out of a social philosophy which perhaps can 
 never wholly account for them must create a social phi- 
 losophy to justify their existence and interpret their aims to 
 the masses of the people of all degrees. Utilitarianism could 
 choose as the psychological bases of its philosophy either the 
 intuitionalism of the church philosophy, or the empirical 
 hedonism of the free lances, coming down through Hobbes, 
 
 the nineteenth century stands out in strong contrast with the socialism of 
 Rodbertus, Marx, and Engels in Germany, though there was an undercurrent 
 of hedonistic, "utilitarian," and even anarchistic socialism in Germany, as in 
 the case of Weitling, Lassalle, and others. The two types of socialism can 
 also be distinguished in England, though its hedonistic and utilitarian affilia- 
 tions were predominant there, as in Morris, Bax, Ruskin, and others, mainly 
 because there was no distinct Rechtsphilosophie, grown out of a traditional gov- 
 ernmental and social policy (Cameralism'), as in Germany. The intuitionalistic 
 and theological line of thought held somewhat of this latter relation in England, 
 though even it was individualistic rather than social or paternalistic in its view- 
 point. Cf. Small, The Cameralists ; Sidgwick, History of Ethics ($d ed.), chap, 
 iv; Helvetius, De I' esprit, discours iii, esp. pp. 292, 324, 325 (ed. Paris, 1758); 
 Hobbes, Leviathan (ed. Molesworth), 40 ff . ; Biisch, Geldumlauf, Introduction, 
 et passim; Kirkup, History of Socialism; Ely, Modern French and German 
 Socialism ; Spargo, Socialism, chap, ii ; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 
 (3d ed.), II; Wright, The Ethical Significance of Pleasure, Feeling, and Happi- 
 ness in Modern Non-Hedonistic Systems. 
 
 3 Cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 287; Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 361; 
 Sidgwick, History of Ethics, 236 ff. ; Mill, "Bentham," Dissertations and Dis- 
 cussions, I, 355 ff. 
 
 * Bentham's two leading democratic principles were : The "greatest happi- 
 ness of all those whose interest is in question," and Everyone to count for one, 
 and only for one. Cf. Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap, i, sec. i, note. 
 
4 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 Locke, Hume, Helvetius, Hartley, and others. 5 Intuition- 
 alism was aristocratic, just as the church was generally opposed 
 to social reforms. So the democratic-individualistic hedonism 
 of the free thinkers came to be the basis of the utilitarian social 
 policy just as it had earlier been that of the "liberty, equality, 
 fraternity" philosophy of democracy in France and America. 
 In fact, utilitarianism, in common with the democratic phi- 
 losophy of the time, was a more or less conscious demand that 
 each individual should be given a share in the egoistic and 
 hedonic satisfactions which the social system afforded. 
 
 Most thinkers of the present regard the doctrines of utili- 
 tarianism as put forth by Bentham and his immediate follow- 
 ers, like the doctrines of democracy of Rousseau and Schiller 
 and their followers, as overthrown. But the spirit of utili- 
 tarianism still lives and corrupts our social philosophy and policy. 
 Important as were its earlier services, it now exerts an unsalu- 
 tary influence in a democratic era, because it is essentially 
 individualistic; because it aims primarily at democratic egois- 
 tic satisfaction rather than at democratic social conservation; 
 because it is, despite its emphasis upon a democratic distribu- 
 tion of privilege and satisfaction, destructive rather than con- 
 structive. Its influence is still manifest in the reigning social 
 theory and policy. And a more productive and long-sighted 
 social policy and theory cannot be substituted so long as we 
 retain our present individualistic psychology and ethics as their 
 bases. 
 
 At the present time psychology is essentially solipsistic. As 
 a science it recognizes only conscious processes, 6 and centers 
 
 5 Cf. Sidgwick, History of Ethics, 163, 204, 224, 236 ff. ; Locke, Essay Con- 
 cerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV; Helvetius, op. cit.; Hartley, Man; 
 Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, II, 80 ff. ; Martineau, 
 op. cit., Part II, Bk. II, branch i. 
 
 8 Cf. McDougall, Introduction to Social Psychology, 3, 15; also Physio- 
 logical Psychology, i, 2. McDougall, though he first made this criticism, has 
 not pointed out the most effective way in which a new psychology can be 
 written. He lays too much stress upon a theory of the instincts and emotions, 
 which he thereby raises almost to the rank of entities. The more fruitful line of 
 development, it would seem, is in the direction of the study of the cortex 
 and the lower nervous system as a mechanism, i.e., of conduct, in order to get 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 its treatment about a highly sophisticated and unreal self, 7 
 which actually functions only in the most limited sphere of 
 social activity. The significance of the work of the students 
 of "abnormal" psychology and of the psychology of "sugges- 
 tion" and physiological and comparative psychology has not 
 been apprehended by the orthodox psychologists as yet. They 
 have not taken over these data into their conventional text- 
 books. When they do so these treatises will be revolutionized, 
 and the self, the socius, the individual, will be defined in 
 such terms that the sociologist will recognize it. The solip- 
 sistic nature of this self will disappear and the self will come 
 to be viewed as a factor subject to control in an objective 
 social situation. 8 Ethics also is individualistic in its evaluations, 
 limiting the definition of moral activity to include only the field 
 
 at the nature and functioning of all types of activity processes, conscious and 
 unconscious. At all events this would prevent us from making of consciousness 
 a self -sufficient entity, instead of a means to adjustment to nature, as Professor 
 Judd has done. Cf. "The Evolution of Consciousness," Psychological Review 
 (March, 1910), 91 ff. For definitions of psychology bearing out the assertion 
 in the text, see James, Psychology, I, i ; Sully, The Human Mind, I, i ; 
 Wundt, Outlines of Psy. (tr. Judd), 23; Titchener, Outlines of Psy., 6; Stout, 
 Manual of Psy., 4 ; Thorndike, Elements of Psy., i ; Hoffding, Outlines of Psy. 
 (tr. Lowndes), i ; Angell, Psychology, i ; Baldwin, Handbook of Psy. (S. and I.), 
 8; etc. 
 
 7 For definitions and descriptions of this solipsistic self, see Baldwin, op. cit. 
 (S. and L), 67, (F. and W.), 170; Angell, Psy., 396; Hoffding, op. cit., 136; 
 Thilly, Philos. Rev., XIX, 32; Stout, op. cit., 517; Titchener, op. cit., 301 ; Wundt, 
 op. cit., 242; James, op. cit., 291, 293, 301; Sully, op. cit., 481; etc. 
 
 8 G. H. Mead, Journal of Phil., Psy. and Sci. Methods (Mar. 31, 1910), 174, 
 has attempted to remove this solipsistic character of the self of psychology by 
 insisting upon an initially social individual (a conception which, in some form 
 or other, goes back at least as far as the Greek philosophers, and to Adam 
 Smith and his contemporaries among the moderns), stating the matter, however, 
 from the standpoint of consciousness alone and thus from the subjectivistic 
 standpoint of the conventional psychologist. In the same article he rejects the 
 idea that psychology should accept the objective definition of the social object 
 or socius which the social sciences offer. However, the psychologists of the 
 unconscious and relatively unconscious processes and the social psychologists, 
 dealing with the same material, are undermining the artificial and conventional 
 psychology of the highly conscious processes, and will assist in securing the 
 adoption of the objective and social viewpoint in treating of neural and activity 
 processes, whether conscious or unconscious. 
 
6 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 of volition, that is, of conscious choice. 9 This is the old limi- 
 tation which justified retributive punishment, and is wholly 
 apart from the spirit of the most enlightened social practice 
 of the present. Manifestly we need an ethics which will take 
 account of the act, whether consciously or unconsciously per- 
 formed, in relation to' both its remote and immediate social 
 results. In such an ethics ''intention," that is, consciousness 
 of one's tendency to act in a certain direction, will figure only 
 as an aid to prevention. The act will be judged morally, that 
 is, with reference to its social meaning, and treated construct- 
 ively, on the basis of its discoverable causes. Consciousness 
 will not figure as an entity or absolute in this causation, as it 
 does in present ethical theory, but merely as one of the most 
 obvious and effective points at which, by enlisting the addi- 
 tional asset of the individual's attention, we can begin to work 
 more successfully preventively and reformatively and edu- 
 cationally. 10 This is to say that conduct will be judged objec- 
 tively, when it is judged scientifically and socially. 11 
 
 Our present-day psychology and ethics then are essentially 
 of the individualistic type which furnished the basis of the 
 old utilitarian and pseudo-democratic theory. So long as we 
 
 9 Cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 201, 202 ff., 250, as a most recent example. 
 Professor Dewey is responsible for these passages. 
 
 10 This is not to say, of course, that it is not of the greatest importance to 
 bring as many of his activities as possible into the consciousness of the indi- 
 vidual as a means to social control. It is rather a plea for the recognition of 
 the fact that most of our activities are and always must be on a more or less 
 unconscious and habitual basis, and hence of the necessity for a psychology 
 which will make provision for the analysis and control of these activities. Pro- 
 fessor Judd, op. cit., especially pp. 88, 89, has defended the limitation of 
 psychology to the field of consciousness. He appears not to have understood 
 the point at issue. McDougall's demand, which he so strongly criticizes (pp. 
 88, 89), and the one made here, are that psychologists broaden their subject 
 so as to afford a method for bringing all activities directly or indirectly under 
 either individual or social (collectivistic) conscious control. 
 
 11 Cf. an excellent paper by Professor Ellwood, "The Sociological Basis of 
 Ethics," International Journal of Ethics (April, 1910), 314 ff. Professor Ellwood 
 argues here in a general way for an objective and sociological basis for ethics, 
 as does Professor Small, General Sociology, 33 ff., and Part V, and elsewhere. 
 It is doubtful, however, if either has seen all the implications of limiting the 
 scope of moral activity to the field of consciousness and volition. 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 retain them they will hinder the development of a consistent 
 social theory which can be used as a means of justification 
 and communication for the basis of a constructive and crea- 
 tive social policy. But if we rid ourselves of them, evidently 
 it must be accomplished by means of bringing a new view- 
 point into social and ethical science, the objective view- 
 point. The best results were not possible from such an 
 objective criterion, until we collected a considerable fund of 
 accurate information about the working of the social organ- 
 ism 12 or of society as a whole, until we measured and defined 
 a considerable number of social processes, and thus became 
 able to define in a provisional way the socius or social object. 
 Thanks to the work of the social technologists, the social 
 psychologists, and other heretical psychologists (however de- 
 fective parts of their work are), we have already made a 
 beginning in this objective and constructive study of social 
 processes. Men of affairs in government and practical activi- 
 
 12 The term "social organism" will be used more or less in this study to 
 indicate the unitary, vital, and functioning nature of social groups, and here of 
 the largest group which we can characterize as being in some degree a unity 
 of social functions, as possessing solidarity ; and such can now be said of practi- 
 cally all mankind in some aspects of living. This usage must not be confounded 
 with the biological and structural analogy of Spencer and his early continental 
 imitators. The term as here employed is primarily functional in its meaning 
 and is used because it implies a unity of functioning, a mutual dependence grow- 
 ing constantly greater with social development, which cannot be expressed by 
 such an indefinite and non-descriptive term as "social process." To define the 
 "social process" merely in terms of "the interaction of individuals" or 
 socii, is analogous to stopping with the older natural philosophers who, before 
 the formulation of the law of gravitation, accounted for movement in the 
 physical world as the "continual flux of matter," i.e., the interaction of atoms, 
 or of whatever elements the philosophers conceived matter as composed. As the 
 law of gravitation established how matter moves, so must a functional and intelli- 
 gent statement of the social process be in terms of the movement or tendency 
 of that process and not leave it "at loose ends." The Group Struggle theorists 
 state it in terms of increasing co-operation (cf. Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zweck 
 der Politik, sees. 63 ff.), and others define it in terms of growth of specialization 
 and division of function or labor (cf. Durkheim, De la division du travail social, 
 and Pioger, La vie so dale, 42 ff.). The point is the same. It emphasizes the 
 growth in essential or organic unity of the group in the co-operative struggle 
 for survival. It is in this sense that the group is organic, that society is an 
 organism. 
 
8 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 ties have always made large use of the objective method. 
 They have defined or assumed their social objects and have 
 built upon them whether with good or bad results, depend- 
 ing largely upon the validity and accuracy of their defi- 
 nitions and assumptions. It is the function of a valid and 
 accurate social science to make these definitions more definite. 
 In this work a truly functional psychology can be of the 
 greatest service. 
 
 With the coming of this objective treatment of the socius 
 or social object and of the social processes, we may expect revo- 
 lutions in our way of thinking and in our social policy. We 
 may expect social conservation, instead of the individual demo- 
 cratic gratification of utilitarianism and of the old pseudo- 
 democracy, to be the ideal of practice. This conservation will 
 of necessity be in the nature of the strengthening and improve- 
 ment of the whole social organism, of the whole social process. 
 The conscious exertion of individuals must be directed toward 
 the survival, growth, and perfection of the race with all that 
 this implies and toward the development of a scientifically deter- 
 mined and controlled social organization which will contribute 
 to this end. 13 Such an organization of effort presupposes 
 an adequate system of social control, a social control based 
 upon popular will and sanction, but coercive where the con- 
 sciously and scientifically determined ideal for the race is dis- 
 regarded or violated, purposely or accidentally. 
 
 The detail and data for the argument that our traditional 
 and still dominant ethical and social theory remains essentially 
 individualistic and hedonistic (subjectivistic) in viewpoint, and 
 for the necessity of reconstructing this viewpoint with its impli- 
 cations for social control, constitute the body of this study. It 
 
 13 Ellwood, op. cit., 324, says, "The general trend of the development of 
 scientific knowledge of human society is to establish three standards or norms, 
 all of which have ethical implications : social survival, social efficiency, and 
 social harmony." The only one of these three norms which he explains, however, 
 is "survival," which would appear to be the ultimate standard or test of an 
 intelligent social activity. Even if we explain the growth of society as increas- 
 ing co-operation, we must explain co-operation finally in terms of survival. 
 Cf. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution; also Small, op. cit., 38-39. 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 is held that, so long as individualism and subjectivism dominate, 
 as they now do, our psychological and ethical theory, a scientific 
 sociology and a constructive social policy will find themselves 
 constantly opposed and weakened. It is contended that the 
 solution of the problem lies in a change of emphasis from 
 the old individualistic, though democratic, theory of egoistic 
 satisfactions to an objective socially constructive policy. The 
 treatment of the subject has been divided into three gen- 
 eral sections. The first deals with the cause of the act, and 
 attempts to determine what is the actual relation of feeling to 
 the act. The second examines the theory that pleasure or 
 happiness is the end or object of activity in its social relations, 
 including a critical examination of a number of the utilitarian 
 and hedonistic and other theories. The third is concerned 
 with the object of, and the sanction for, a change in the theo- 
 retical criterion of the social control of activity. 
 
II. THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 
 
 FORMER VAGUENESS OF THE TERM FEELING. EARLIER ATTEMPTS 
 
 AT CORRELATION. THEORY OF THE CORRELATE OF FEELING 
 
 MODES. RELATIVITY OF FEELING 
 
 In order to discuss intelligently the problems in this and the 
 following chapters it will be necessary to devote most of the 
 present chapter to an examination of the nature of feeling. 
 
 Even up to the present time most psychologists have pretty 
 generally confounded feeling with sensory and ideational con- 
 sciousness. The older writers used feeling as a general term for 
 all consciousness, 1 and even some of our later psychologists so 
 employ the term either wholly or in part. 2 No fact in modern 
 psychological analysis is more patent than this confusion of 
 feeling and the various forms of sensory and ideational con- 
 sciousness. Though various writers had at different times 
 pointed out that the same sensory processes and especially the 
 
 1 Hobbes, Helvetius, Bain, Spencer may be mentioned as examples. To 
 Hobbes there were only two feelings in this general sense of all mental states 
 mentioned above, appetite, desire, delight, pleasure, or joy, i.e., motion toward 
 an object, on the one hand, and aversion, displeasure, pain, or grief, i.e., motion 
 "fromward" the object, on the other hand ("Leviathan," Works [Molesworth ed.], 
 Ill, 42-43). Of these feelings or emotions, however, he recognizes two classes, 
 those of the senses and those of the mind. To those of the senses he applied 
 the two general terms pleasure and pain, and to those of the mind, the general 
 terms joy and grief. Since the above distinction has no qualitative value 
 (Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, chap, xx), it is 
 plain that Hobbes identified sensational and ideational consciousness. In order 
 to take care of forms of consciousness and activity which would not come under 
 this simple classification he added to this classification such psychical cate- 
 gories as hope, despair, fear, courage, anger, benevolence, ambition, magnanimity, 
 jealousy, curiosity, etc. (op. cit., 43 ff.). This method of providing for special 
 cases is still in vogue, though in much less degree, among psychologists. Cf. 
 McDougall, Introduction to Social Psychology, chap, v ; Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, 
 and Aesthetics, 64 ff. 
 
 2 Gustav Spiller, The Mind of Man (London, 1902), is an extreme example, 
 though traces of such confusion can be found in James, Principles of Psy., 
 Dewey, Psy., and others. 
 
 10 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING II 
 
 same sensory experiences, ideas, and images were not always 
 accompanied by the same degrees of pleasantness and unpleasant- 
 ness, or that the feeling tone might sometimes be one and some- 
 times the other, 3 it was not until the types of sensations had 
 been analyzed and abstracted beyond the traditional five, through 
 the discoveries of neurology and experimental psychology, that 
 it was possible to place the distinction on a scientific basis. 4 The 
 discovery of separate pain sense organs has furthered this dis- 
 tinction. For some writers, however, this further analysis has 
 had the effect of strengthening the confusion in their minds 
 regarding pain and unpleasantness, 5 and it has led others to 
 regard sex sensation as the original and fundamental type of 
 pleasurable feeling. 6 But for the great majority of psycholo- 
 gists these discoveries of separate sense organs have served to 
 bring out more clearly the fact not adequately understood before, 
 that the various sensory and ideational processes are not con- 
 stant and fixed correlates of either pleasantness or unpleasantness. 
 Based on these distinctions the more recent psychologists 
 have come to regard feeling as a separate type of consciousness, 
 as neither sensory, 7 nor ideational. 8 It is variously accounted for 
 by these writers as a functional correlate of the bodily, con- 
 scious, or neural processes, i.e., as indicating that the organism 
 
 * E.g., Spencer, Prin. of Psy. (New York, 1892), I, 287. 
 
 4 Professor Max Meyer, Psy. Rev., XI, 103 ff., claims at least sixteen sepa- 
 rate types of sensations, with possibilities of more. 
 
 5 H. M. Stanley, The Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling (London, 1895), 
 chap, ii, holds that pain was the most primitive form of consciousness. 
 
 * Meyer refers to Lagerborg and others in this connection, Psy. Rev., XV, 
 203 ff. 
 
 7 Stumpf, "Ueber Gefuhlsempfindungen," Zeitsch. filr Psychologic, Bd. 44, 
 S. 1-49, however, regards pleasantness and unpleasantness as sensations. Lotze, 
 Microcosmus (tr. Hamilton and Jones), I, 243, 689, takes a similar view, as does 
 also L. F. Ward at times, Psychic Factors of Civilisation, 38, 42 ff. Titchener, The 
 Psychology of Feeling and Attention, 290 ff., criticizes the views of Stumpf and 
 others, holding the sensational view as does Meyer, op. cit. 
 
 8 Cf. Angell, Psy., 272 ff . ; Judd, Psy., 194; Titchener, Outlines of Psy., 101, 
 108, 114; Ribot, "Sur la nature du plaisir," Revue philosophique, LXVIII, 181, 
 183 ; Meyer, op. cit. 
 
12 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 as a whole is functioning successfully or unsuccessfully; 9 as a 
 sign that the vitality or health of the organism is being built 
 up or lowered; 10 or as connected with the use of stored-up 
 nervous energy in less or greater quantities than the total supply 
 available. 11 All these explanations assume that the feeling 
 processes are the correlates of the whole bodily process, though 
 Marshall makes some exceptions to this view in pointing out 
 that some organ may be functioning "successfully/' i.e., with 
 pleasurable results, when the organism as a whole is not in such 
 a favorable situation. 12 It has also been observed that there 
 may be pleasantness or unpleasantness when the condition of the 
 organism or the nature of the adjustment is exactly opposite 
 what these formulae declare it to be. 13 Again, while there is 
 undoubtedly some correspondence between feeling modes and 
 efficient functioning in a racial sense, there is not necessarily 
 such a correspondence on a habitual or social basis. 14 James 
 Ward appears to have approached more nearly to a true state- 
 ment of the relation when he reduced the correlation to terms 
 of "effective" attention. 15 This statement, however, is indefinite, 
 since consciousness is a variable and relative manifestation de- 
 pendent upon neural processes, and it lacks content, leaving the 
 meaning of the term "effective" ambiguous. Some of the most 
 effective attention, so far as objective adjustment consequences 
 
 9 Meakin, Function, Feeling, and Conduct, 55; Dewey, "Theory of Emotion," 
 Psy. Rev., II, 31; Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, I, 388; Judd, 
 Psy., 196-97. 
 
 "Ribot, op. cit., 180 ft. ; Hoffding, op. cit., 273; Bain, Mind and Body, 59; 
 Spencer, Prin. of Psy., I, 279 (New York, 1876); Titchener, op. cit., 102; 
 Royce, Outlines of Psy., 179. 
 
 11 Marshall, op. cit., 221. 
 
 12 Ibid., 264-65 ; also Meakin, op. cit., 50. 
 
 1S Cf. Angell, op. cit., 275. Cf. Marshall, op. cit., 352. 
 
 ' "There is pleasure in proportion as a maximum of attention is effectively 
 exercised, and pain in proportion as such effective attention is frustrated by 
 distractions, shocks, or incomplete and faulty adaptations, or fails of exercise 
 owing to the narrowness of the field of consciousness and the slowness and 
 smallness of its changes." Art. "Psychology," Encyc. Britannica (gth ed.), XX, 71. 
 Marshall (op. cit., 236, 262), with reservations, and Stout (Manual of Psy., 276), 
 fully, accept this view. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 13 
 
 are concerned, is not particularly pleasurable, as in the labori- 
 ous acquirement of skill in any direction. The most consider- 
 able advance in the theory of feeling, however, was made by 
 Meyer when he reduced the correlation of feeling modes from 
 bodily to neural processes. 16 His general statement, however, is 
 couched in mechanical terms, and his failure to recognize the 
 existence of two fundamental lines of development in the nerv- 
 ous system a fact which must be taken into account in deter- 
 mining internal neural adjustment has made it necessary for 
 him to assume a rather doubtful differential character for pain, 
 bitter, sour, and analogous sensory processes. 17 Consequently 
 these numerous exceptions destroy the unity of his theory. 
 
 All these theories of the correlate of feeling have something 
 of value in them and have expressed partial truths. The earliest 
 statement, going back at least as far as Hobbes among the 
 moderns, 18 and to Aristotle among the ancients, 19 recognizes a 
 more or less stable correspondence between the vital condition 
 of the organism and its feeling modes. The development of 
 accuracy of statement has been one of delimitation and specifica- 
 tion of the terms of correlation, arriving at a consciousness 
 correlate in the formula of James Ward, and at a neural corre- 
 late in that of Meyer. It is proposed here to modify Meyer's 
 statement on the basis of the neurological investigations of 
 Herrick, Sherrington, Parker, and others, using whatever is 
 valuable in the other statements of correlation, in an attempt to 
 secure an adequate functional statement of the correlation of 
 
 16 "The nervous correlate of pleasantness and unpleasantness must be some 
 form of activity in the higher nerve centers, since it is generally admitted that 
 only activities in the higher nerve centers are accompanied by consciousness, and 
 pleasantness and unpleasantness are kinds of consciousness. But while the 
 correlate of sensation is the nervous current itself, the correlate of pleasantness 
 and unpleasantness is the increase or decrease of the intensity of a previously 
 constant current if the increase or decreese is caused by a force acting at a 
 point other than the point of sensory stimulation." "The Nervous Correlate of 
 Pleasantness and Unpleasantness," Psy. Rev., XV, 307. 
 
 17 Cf. "The Nervous Correlate of Attention," Psy. Rev., XV, 365 ff. 
 
 18 Cf. Leviathan, loc. cit., 42. 
 
 19 Spencer, op. cit. } 277, makes this claim for Aristotle. 
 
14 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 feeling modes, and thus to define feeling and to determine its 
 relation to the act. 
 
 In formulating an adequate and functional theory of the 
 neural correlate of feeling it is necessary to take into account 
 the phylogeny of the nervous system. There are, throughout 
 the scale of animal development, two distinct types of physio- 
 logical functions : ( i ) the vegetative or visceral functions, con- 
 nected with the inner working of the bodily mechanism, such 
 as nutrition, circulation, respiration, and (2) the exteroceptive 
 functions, concerned with the adjustment of the organism as a 
 whole to outside or environmental influences. 20 These two types 
 of organic functions, in rising above the purely tropic type of 
 behavior, developed more or less distinct nervous connections, 21 
 and because of the primary importance of quick movement for 
 the preservation of the organism and of the species, the latter 
 type of functions probably developed well-differentiated nervous 
 connections and integrating centers first and specialized them to 
 a greater degree than the former. This exteroceptive nervous 
 system developed in the service of the animal in its reactions to 
 external stimuli. Out of this general type of exteroceptive 
 reaction developed the various peripheral or exteroceptive sense 
 organs, such as those of a cutaneous nature pain, temperature, 
 tactual, chemical, and even the distance receptors, such as the 
 sense organs of sight and hearing. 22 It has been established that 
 the mammalian cerebral cortex has developed mainly in the serv- 
 ice of the distance receptors or higher exteroceptive sense organs 
 of sight and hearing, 23 "which have dominated and set the direc- 
 tion of the evolution of the nervous system in vertebrates." 24 
 Thus the brain becomes in higher animal types the co-ordinating 
 center of processes arising chiefly from peripheral or exterocep- 
 
 20 Herrick, "The Evolution of Intelligence and Its Organs," Science, 
 XXXI, 7. 
 
 21 Herrick, "The Relations of the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems 
 in Phylogeny," The Anatomical Record, IV, 62. 
 
 22 Ibid., 62, 67, 68. 
 
 23 Herrick, "The Relations of the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems in 
 Phylogeny," The Anatomical Record, IV, 61. 
 
 24 Herrick, Science, loc. cit., 8. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 15 
 
 tive stimuli;'" 5 "while the co-ordinating centers of the visceral 
 system are partly peripheral in the sympathetic ganglia and 
 partly in this central nervous system.'"- In the higher and more 
 flexible forms of nervous organization, where the tubular or 
 dorsal nervous organization dominates, 27 the processes of the 
 two systems are capable of close correlation in the higher brain 
 centers. Where complex or conscious control is necessary all 
 the activity tendencies of the nervous system tend to be, and 
 for the most part are, summated in the cortex, which exists for 
 this higher function of correlation rather than as a center for 
 definitely specialized activity. 28 
 
 Two facts of primary importance for the theory of feeling 
 correlates are to be noted in connection with the phylogenetic 
 development of the nervous system or systems. The first is that 
 the sex functions and their nervous connections developed pri- 
 marily as a part of the visceral functions and system. In the 
 lowest animal forms the sex and vegetative functions are very 
 closely related. Parallel with the development of the feeding 
 and other visceral and of the sexual neural processes they got 
 more specialized connections with the exteroceptive nervous 
 system and developed increased powers of correlation with the 
 exteroceptive system in the cortex. 29 But the neural processes 
 of the sex organs have always remained predominantly bound 
 up with the structure and functioning of the visceral or intero- 
 ceptive nervous system. In the second place, the exteroceptive 
 nervous system originated primarily as a means of adapting the 
 
 25 Herrick says, "The cerebellum has been developed from the somatic 
 sensory column of the medulla oblongata as the chief central co-ordinating 
 apparatus of the proprioceptive system." Anatom. Record, loc. cit., 64. See 
 also Sherrington, The Integrative Function of the Nervous System, lecture ix. 
 
 28 Herrick, Anatom. Record, IV, 62. 
 "Ibid., 59. 
 
 as "The essence of cortical function is correlation and a cortical center for 
 the performance of a particular function is a physiological absurdity, save in 
 the restricted sense described above, as a nodal point in a very complex system 
 of associated conducting paths. Those reflexes whose simple functions can be 
 localized in a single center have their mechanism abundantly provided for in 
 the brain stem." Herrick, Science, loc. cit., 15. 
 
 29 Cf. Herrick, Anatom. Record, IV, 61, and Science, XXXI, 8. 
 
1 6 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 organism to its environment, either for separating it from con- 
 ditions which threatened to be unfavorable to it or for bringing 
 it in contact with food, warmth, light, etc. Purely peripheral 
 stimulation, because of the predominatingly skeletal muscular 
 connections of the exteroceptive system, has thus always re- 
 sulted in movement, either of avoidance or of receptivity. The, 
 union of interoceptive or visceral processes with the exterocep- 
 tive or peripheral processes has, from very early stages of 
 development, led to receptive movements, as in the case of 
 inclosure and assimilation of food. 30 This latter type of move- 
 ment will take place more effectively if the connection or corre- 
 lation between the two types of processes (the exteroceptive 
 and the interoceptive processes) is made in the cortex, where 
 sensory stimuli may operate to a greater advantage, especially 
 in the higher forms of animal life. But an equally primitive 
 function of peripheral nervous stimulation, and one doubtless 
 even more important at later stages of development, was dis- 
 turbance of the equilibrium of the organism, looking toward 
 an avoiding reaction. This type of nervous process may, in 
 its origin, be identified in general with that which in higher 
 organisms we find ending exteroceptively in the pain sense 
 organ. The other cutaneous sense organs, with their neural 
 connections, have probably been differentiated off primarily from 
 this primitive type, as have also the distance receptors or higher 
 peripheral sensory processes mentioned above. Taste and odor 
 sense organs have also been differentiated in this way, but they 
 have acquired or have retained a larger proportion of visceral 
 neural connections than the other exteroceptive sense organs 
 have. 31 
 
 30 Cf. G. H. Parker, "The Origin of the Nervous System and Its Appropria- 
 tion of Effectors," Pop. Sci. Mo., LXXV, 56, 137 ; Ludwig Edinger, "The Relations 
 of Comparative Anatomy to Comparative Psychology," Journal of Compar. 
 Neurology and Psychol., XVIII, 437. 
 
 w Cf. Herrick, Anatom. Record, IV, 68. Practical evidence of this is to be 
 found in the familiar fact that odors and tastes have a much more marked 
 effect upon visceral, glandular, and vascular activities than sight, hearing, touch, 
 or temperature have. The odor (and even the sight) of blood also appears 
 frequently to have a tendency to stimulate sexually, because of the close visceral 
 connections. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 17 
 
 The method by which the various types of exteroceptive 
 sensory processes became differentiated from the more primi- 
 tive exteroceptive avoiding processes was by means of lower- 
 ing the threshold of stimulation for the sense organs which 
 receive what are later tactual, temperature, etc., impressions. 
 This lowering of the threshold of stimulation in the sense organs 
 is correlated with the acquisition of more direct neural connec- 
 tion or correlation with the central nervous system than was 
 provided by the primitive exteroceptive reactive apparatus, for 
 definite or selective reactions. But, with the differentiation of 
 primary centers within the brain for these different sense quali- 
 ties, with the development of correlation pathways between the 
 centers, and with the further elaboration of higher correlation 
 centers, this acquisition of more direct connections and of 
 connections with more highly differentiated centers has not 
 destroyed the original neural connections or correlations with 
 the general avoiding centers or processes, as is proven by the fact 
 that an increased stimulation of any peripheral sense organ or 
 exteroceptor other than a pain sense organ will also in higher 
 animal forms give a pain reaction. The avoiding or pain con- 
 nections and correlations of these differentiated processes have 
 simply become relatively more indirect, while the original type of 
 avoiding or pain process has remained unchanged structurally 
 and has retained its original function. 32 This lowering of the 
 threshold of stimulation, and the acquisition of separate connec- 
 tions and correlations for each specific kind of contact or cuta- 
 neous receptors and distance receptors, as distinct from the 
 primary undifferentiated avoiding or pain receptors, has made 
 it possible to have correlations of various exteroceptive nervous 
 processes giving rise to various forms of consciousness in the 
 higher organisms without involving pain, though pain always 
 lies in the background as a possibility of over-stimulation, 
 fatigue, etc. 
 
 If now we apply the general principle of the neural corre- 
 lation of feeling of Meyer to this theory of the structure and 
 
 32 1 am indebted to Professor Herrick for the suggestion of this general 
 structural arrangement. 
 
1 8 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 development of the nervous processes and their correlation of 
 Herrick, Sherrington, Parker, and others, we shall see that the 
 facts are taken care of readily. We find that where nervous 
 processes are correlated, i.e., where on the one hand they 
 supplement each other, at least in the regions of the cortex, we 
 have the feeling mode of pleasantness, and on the other hand, 
 where processes interrupt each other, at least in the cortex, we 
 have the feeling mode of unpleasantness. Feeling, then, as 
 distinct from sensory and ideational consciousness, is the result 
 of the correlation, i.e., the supplementation or interference of 
 nervous processes in such a way as to increase or to diminish 
 the neural activity along a certain or given pathway. Where a 
 nervous process or set is augmented pleasantness is experienced, 
 and where a nervous process or set is weakened or diminished 
 there is unpleasantness. 33 Accordingly both pleasantness and 
 unpleasantness may exist in the same organism at the same 
 time, provided different nervous sets are involved in the adjust- 
 ment process or more than one adjustment is being made. 34 
 
 33 It is not necessary to raise the question here as to when either feeling or 
 sensory consciousness first appeared phylogenetically. The purpose here is to 
 show certain developmental and relational facts of structure and functioning in 
 the correlation of the visceral, exteroceptive, and ideational (free cortical) 
 neural processes, which will serve as a basis for the theory of the neural 
 correlation of feeling modes whenever and wherever in the development process 
 feeling may have appeared. It is not here maintained that the existence of 
 sensory neural processes or receptors necessarily implies sensation, or that 
 correlation (supplementation and interference) of processes necessarily implies 
 feeling at earlier stages of development than that of man. The presumption 
 would be of course that they do. Professor Herrick takes the view that con- 
 sciousness is in a broad sense the function of both cortical and subcortical 
 nervous processes (Science, loc. cit., 17) and that it did not originate as a 
 superimposition upon biological processes, but as a part of the general organism 
 in adjustment or activity (ibid.). But, since we know that almost all ideational 
 and imaginal consciousness comes either directly or indirectly from the exercise 
 of the higher sensory neural processes, and especially from the activity of the 
 distance receptors (cf. Herrick, ibid., 8), the admission of the existence of 
 sensation arising from primitive peripheral and from visceral and sex neural 
 sensory processes and of feeling resulting from the correlation of these and 
 other processes at a very early stage would not involve any high degree of 
 conscious control at such a stage. 
 
 34 Cf. Ribot, op. cit., 1 80; Meyer, Psy. Rev., XV, 315; Angell, Psy., 275; 
 Titchener, op. cit., 108. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 19 
 
 According to the theory of the nervous system here accepted 
 we should expect, from their close phylogenetic connections, that 
 the visceral neural processes, such as those of digestion, circu- 
 lation, respiration, etc., would, when working properly, tend to 
 supplement each other, and consequently that their unimpeded 
 action would, when we are conscious of it, produce pleasant- 
 ness. As a matter of fact we find that such is the case. 35 In 
 the same way sexual neural processes, because of their close struc- 
 tural connection with the visceral or vegetative neural processes, 
 tend strongly to supplement the latter, carrying the correlation 
 into the cortex and involving tactual, temperature, etc., sensory 
 supplementation .from the exteroceptive system, with the result 
 that sexual activity ordinarily is highly pleasurable. But on 
 the other hand the primitive peripheral or exteroceptive neural 
 processes, i.e., the pain sensory neural processes, are so im- 
 planted in the nervous structure phylogenetically that they tend 
 to interrupt the visceral or interoceptive neural processes when 
 they come in contact with them, and even to interrupt the 
 derivative sensory neural processes when the latter run over from 
 their more direct connections or correlations with their own 
 immediate instinctive response centers or cortical correlations, 
 i.e., when stimulation is unduly increased. Consequently stimu- 
 lation of the pain sense organs or strong stimulation of any 
 peripheral sense organ is usually unpleasant. 36 The fundamental 
 inter ruptive nature of the pain sensory neural processes under 
 strong stimulation makes it impossible to secure a correlation 
 of them with higher neural sensory processes or with visceral 
 neural processes and thus to make a high degree of pain pleas- 
 urable. 37 It is because of these two fundamental types of cor- 
 
 35 Digestion tends to increase circulation, as does bodily exercise. Exercise 
 promotes both a strong respiration and a rapid circulation and the result is 
 distinctly pleasurable, if all the processes work normally. 
 
 36 Cases in which slight stimulation of pain sense organs produces apparently 
 a mild degree of pleasantness evidently depend upon the inhibition or assimila- 
 tion of the pain sensory neural processes involved by some visceral or periphe- 
 ral neural set. 
 
 37 This statement of the neural correlation avoids the contradiction which 
 Meyer had to meet (cf. Psy. Rev., XV, 366), to the effect that supplementation 
 
20 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 relation of visceral or vegetative (and sex) and pain sensory 
 neural processes, with their almost invariably pleasant and 
 unpleasant feeling results, respectively, that feeding and sex 
 activities on the one hand and pain sensations on the other have 
 been so stubbornly and almost universally identified with 
 pleasantness and unpleasantness feeling modes. 38 The explana- 
 tion of feeling in terms of neural correlation instead of in terms 
 of sensory or ideational consciousness does away with this con- 
 fusion. 
 
 of pain processes by higher sensory or ideational neural processes may tend to 
 make pain processes the correlates of a high degree of pleasantness. According 
 to the theory here developed, supplementation of pain and visceral (including 
 sex) neural processes by the higher sensory or ideational neural processes could 
 never take place independent of the predominating vegetative or interoceptive 
 neural set, because of the phylogenetic origins and functions of pain and sex 
 processes. So that any interference with or supplementation of either of them 
 would cause it to tend only to have a diminished or increased effect of its 
 customary kind. 
 
 38 Such a confusion of terminology and of thinking exists in practically all 
 our polite literature and in most scientific writing where the relations are involved. 
 Reasons for such confusion are : the fact that vegetative, sex, and pain sensory 
 correlations with the interoceptive and exteroceptive neural processes being 
 among the most primitive and instinctive and hence most closely correlated 
 structurally and functionally, pain and sex sensations and activities more invari- 
 ably correspond to unpleasant and pleasant feeling modes, while the other 
 sensory and ideational neural processes vary more widely; that the higher 
 sensory and ideational neural processes may actually connect up with the lower 
 visceral and exteroceptive neural processes so as to produce the sensations of 
 the latter (as in suggestion) ; the close resemblance between these lower sensa- 
 tions and the feeling modes to which they usually correspond, while the higher 
 sensory and ideational experiences differ radically from the feeling modes with 
 which they instinctively, habitually, or fortuitously occur. Arguments against 
 the validity of such confusion are : just this fact that a variety of sensory 
 experiences occur in connection with apparently the same feeling modes ; the 
 fact that pleasantness and unpleasantness can be experienced in connection 
 with the higher sensory and ideational neural processes and the lower visceral 
 neural processes without calling out any pain or sex or other visceral sensation 
 whatever; and finally the fact that sensations are localized and feeling modes are 
 not. It appears that the similarity must be accounted for on the basis of the 
 close connection of these sensory and activity processes with the feeling corre- 
 lations in their instinctive or phylogenetic origin rather than as a matter of 
 identity. But, even if feeling modes should be demonstrated to be only abstrac- 
 tions from sensory and ideational consciousness, it would not affect this theory 
 of correlation and the resulting theory of the relativity of feeling as a criterion 
 or valuation of activity. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 21 
 
 The feeling modes experienced in connection with the cor- 
 related exercise of the other exteroceptive sensory processes 
 can be explained in terms of the same general nervous corre- 
 lation. The bitter and sour sensory neural processes, the neural 
 processes of the sense organs of the nauseating odors, etc., 
 because of their relation to survival, have been so implanted, i.e., 
 correlated, in the nervous system phylogenetically that when they 
 are excited they tend to interrupt the existing visceral neural pro- 
 cesses or sets 39 and, if the disturbance is very great, to bring 
 the conflict of processes into the cortex and thus to arouse dis- 
 agreeable consciousness. They tend frequently also to inhibit or 
 interrupt the various exteroceptive sensory neural processes, 
 such as those of sight and hearing. In either case the conflict 
 of processes results not only in unpleasantness (where conscious- 
 ness is involved) but also tends to produce a new disposition 
 of the organism and of its organs for the purpose of escape from 
 the stimulus. 40 In a similar manner the sensory neural pro- 
 cesses connected with the sense organs of sweet and those of 
 the various ordinarily pleasing odors, tend to strengthen the more 
 fundamental visceral neural processes and exteroceptive com- 
 binations with them, producing a flow of saliva in the glands, 
 forward or receptive movement, etc. 
 
 In the case of sight and hearing, the nervous processes 
 are not so closely connected with the visceral neural processes, 
 but more closely with the other processes of the peripheral or 
 exteroceptive nervous system. Here we find that sharp and 
 
 30 The nerves of taste and smell have much stronger visceral or intero- 
 ceptive connections than those of sight or hearing have. Cf. Herrick, Anatom. 
 Record, IV, 68. 
 
 140 Smell and taste are by no means infallible guides, in their pleasantness 
 and unpleasantness 'manifestations, especially for many of the odors and chemi- 
 cal combinations or tastes produced in a social or civilized order of technical 
 control, though they are pretty reliable guides in the instinctive or uncultural 
 animal world. Consequently ideational consciousness has to be brought into 
 play to determine when in cultural life we can safely make exceptions to our 
 instinctive reactions on the basis of feeling consciousness arising from smell 
 and taste neural correlations. A similar higher conscious reference is also 
 necessary in connection with sight and hearing and all the other peripheral 
 senses. 
 
22 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 amorphous sounds (noises) and sudden and unharmonious 
 visual impressions tend to inhibit or disturb the nervous sets 
 with which the auditory and visual neural processes are con- 
 nected, even going over into positive pain reactions, as described 
 above, if the stimuli are strong enough. The results are an 
 attempt to escape from the stimulus, on the objective side of 
 behavior, and the feeling mode of unpleasantness on the sub- 
 jective side when consciousness is involved. On the other hand 
 , rhythmical sounds and symmetrical visual impressions tend to 
 result in neural processes which supplement the neural sets with 
 which they are connected and thus to produce receptive or 
 advancing movements and the feeling mode of pleasantness 
 when consciousness is involved. 41 
 
 In the case of the contact receptors, or the cutaneous sense 
 organs, the correlation of neural processes is much more simple 
 and direct. Increase of stimuli more readily leads over into 
 a direct pain response, on the one hand, while correlation of 
 neural processes either by way of supplementation or interrup- 
 tion of other connected neural processes, in the cortex or else- 
 where, takes place more readily and less variantly. For example 
 we may respond to temperature or tactual stimulation either 
 unconsciously, or with the consciousness of both pleasantness 
 and unpleasantness, or even with both unpleasantness and pain, 
 and sometimes with pain and pleasantness, as in a case where 
 we enjoy the warmth of the fire and at the same time -experi- 
 ence pain from overstimulation of some of the temperature 
 sense organs. Similarly, scratching or caressing may be both 
 pleasurable and painful, pleasant alone, or without conscious 
 results whatever. 
 
 41 Wild animals and even human beings are easily disturbed by a sharp 
 sound or a distorted image in the periphery of the retina, while both animals 
 and men may be pacified and even hypnotized by the regular recurrence of 
 sounds or objects (rhythm and regular space movements) provided the recur- 
 rence is not abrupt. The device of providing simple music to increase the labor 
 activity of workers is known to savages and was largely employed by tyrants and 
 others in early times. The fact that we see landscapes, pictures, buildings, etc., 
 in a series of planes is well known to landscape gardeners, architects, sculptors, 
 painters, etc. Cf. Hirn, Origins of Art; Hildebrand, The Problem of Form in 
 Painting and Sculpture (tr. Meyer and Ogden), New York, 1907. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 23 
 
 The same general relationship of support and interference 
 is also true of the ideational neural processes or highest cortical 
 processes. But here the interference and supplementary con- 
 nections appear to be the result of habit or training rather than 
 of heredity unless the cases in which the ideational neural 
 processes arouse the sensory or visceral neural processes 
 through association and thus establish relations with the basic 
 vegetative neural set, with the usual results, can be shown to 
 be hereditary connections. 42 
 
 Thus the neural processes from the primitive visceral pro- 
 cesses and the most primitive visceral and peripheral sensory 
 neural processes (those later recognized as connected with 
 sex and pain sensory consciousness) up through the various 
 forms of exteroceptive sensory processes the contact receptors 
 and the distance receptors of the exteroceptive system, and the 
 inte receptively connected peripheral sensory processes of taste 
 and smell, standing in point of rank between these two to 
 and including the highest ideational neural or cortical processes, 
 furnish a descending scale of hereditary or instinctive correla- 
 tion, i.e., supplementation and inhibition or interference, with 
 the prevailing basic neural sets and processes. Those processes 
 developed latterly in phylogeny appear to be less definitely and 
 irreversibly associated by heredity in this way, till in the higher 
 
 42 Examples of such correlations are, the thinking of food one likes with 
 the imagined sensory appearance of its specific favor and "watering" of the 
 mouth, imaging of a sharp knife inflicting a wound with a dimmed imaginary 
 sensation of pain and stiffening or shuddering or squirming movement of the 
 body, etc. Whether we inherit any such correlations or merely acquire them is 
 still a question in psychology. We certainly have large capacity for breaking 
 up such co-ordinations, as in "getting used" to things. Some others that are 
 unquestionably acquired are our attitudes toward books, people, pets, houses in 
 which we live, various hobbies, etc. Professor Herrick, in speaking of the 
 indefiniteness of the correlations of the higher neural processes in vertebrates, 
 says, "In short, the educational period is limited to the age during which the 
 epigenetic tissue, i.e., the correlation centers whose form is not predetermined 
 in heredity, retains its plasticity under environmental influence. Ultimately even 
 the cerebral cortex matures and loses its powers of reacting except in fixed 
 modes. Its unspecialized tissue originally a diffuse and equipotential nervous 
 meshwork becomes differentiated along definite lines and the fundamental 
 pattern becomes more or less rigid." Science, XXXI, 10. 
 
24 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 ideational neural processes it is doubtful if there is any but 
 acquired definite correlation at all. Corresponding to these 
 inherited and acquired neural attitudes of supplementation and 
 conflict we have throughout the series a correlation of feeling 
 modes, pleasantness and unpleasantness. Thus we find that 
 pleasantness is usually connected with sex, sweet, etc., sensory 
 and corresponding ideational neural processes, since these pro- 
 cesses, because of their phylogenetic connections, usually sup- 
 plement or strengthen the dominant neural sets. In the same 
 way we ordinarily find unpleasantness associated with pain, 
 bitter, sour, etc., sensory and related ideational neural processes, 
 since these are generally inhibitive of the prevailing neural sets, 
 because of their phylogenetic connections. But this close 
 inherited neural adjustment and its correlative feeling adjust- 
 ment is not definite and fixed. Both inherited and acquired 
 pathways which are either inhibitive of or supplementary to 
 the prevailing set may be modified so that it cannot be said of 
 any one process, however fundamental phylogenetically, that it 
 always and invariably results in either mode of feeling. In 
 the higher and therefore less stable and less hereditary adjust- 
 ments the interchange between interference and co-operation 
 of processes is quite marked, so that in this region (as in a 
 large range of visual and auditory impressions) it becomes 
 quite impossible to foretell what feeling mode will follow the 
 sensory impression, unless one is familiar with the habit 
 acquirements of the person receiving it. 
 
 But with a completer development of the cortex or end 
 segment and as the higher exteroceptive sensory neural pro- 
 cesses (such as those of vision and audition) and finally the 
 higher ideational neural processes 43 are added to the lower 
 exteroceptive sensory and motor, and the visceral, neural pro- 
 cesses (such as the sensory processes of pain and sex connec- 
 
 43 Professor Herrick makes consciousness a part of the general system of 
 biological control. It is significant that the major part of imagery is visual and 
 auditory, graduating down through the other senses to pain, thus verifying 
 Professor Herrick's statement that "the distance receptors .... have domi- 
 nated and set the direction of the evolution of the nervous system in verte- 
 brates" (Science, XXXI, 8). 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 25 
 
 tions and those of circulation, respiration, and digestion), the 
 center of control of the organism is greatly modified. The 
 ideational neural processes exert a large though perhaps not 
 principal control over man, while the visceral and exteroceptive 
 neural processes of various grades are most fundamental in mak- 
 ing adjustments among the lower animals, where the nervous 
 equipment is more nearly limited to these processes. In this 
 way man comes to have a sensory and ideational life largely 
 apart from the lower sensory and vegetative existence. A 
 great deal of visual and auditory and cortical activity goes on 
 without any appreciable connection with the lower nervous dis- 
 positions or sets, i.e., the vegetative, the sex and pain pro- 
 cesses. We engage in conversation, we discuss problems in 
 science, we hear music, view pictures, etc., with but little increase 
 in vascular or respiratory activity and usually with no overt or 
 conscious evidence of pain or organic and sexual neural activity. 
 The explanation of this fact must be that the higher sensory and 
 ideational neural processes are capable of going on without the 
 necessity of neural correlation with the lower exteroceptive and 
 visceral processes. Yet at such times we may have the most 
 vivid feeling experience of pleasantness or unpleasantness. 
 These feelings are certainly aroused in connection with scien- 
 tific work, with viewing a picture or landscape, or viewing a 
 back alley or dump, or with hearing music, quite as much as 
 in connection with exercise, digestion, or sex and pain stimu- 
 lation. 44 Evidently, therefore, we can have interference and 
 supplementation of the higher sensory and ideational neural 
 processes regardless more or less of the lower neural processes. 
 However, even if such correlation is never wholly independent 
 of the lower processes, 45 the connection is often so slight that 
 we may have pleasantness or unpleasantness practically inde- 
 
 44 Meyer thinks that feelings arising from higher sensory or ideational 
 neural co-ordinations are the stronger. Cf. Psy. Rev., XV, 320-21. 
 
 45 Different people appear to vary largely in this respect, some being very 
 emotional and others being in most respects habitually cool and unruffled. For 
 some people all kinds of ideational and even higher sensory activity have marked 
 overt results, in increased respiration, vascular extension (as blushing), etc., 
 while other people experience none of these. Many people cannot, at least with- 
 
26 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 pendent of or in opposition to them. Frequently we experi- 
 ence pleasantness thus aroused when we also have vascular and 
 respiratory depression, or even pains of indigestion, surface 
 pains, etc. In the same way unpleasantness arising from correla- 
 tion of cortical and higher sensory neural processes may be 
 experienced along with strong normal visceral activity. This 
 antithesis is even more marked in the field of pathology. 
 
 Thus it appears that, whether we have to do with feeling in 
 its more primitive aspect of direct or indirect correlation of 
 visceral processes or of visceral with exteroceptive processes, or 
 with feeling in its later evolutionary and functional aspect of 
 correlations of the higher sensory and ideational neural processes 
 more or less independent of the visceral and lower exteroceptive 
 neural processes, such correlation is a purely internal matter. 
 Feeling is a purely personal or individualistic phenomenon. 46 
 
 Feeling is a simple or relatively unreflective form of con- 
 sciousness, serving to make elementary adjustments of avoid- 
 ance and acceptance of a more complex character than those 
 made to direct stimulation and of a less complex character than 
 those made on the basis of reflective or ideational consciousness. 
 Just as feeling is not connected with simple sensation, so also 
 it is at a minimum in the most complex thinking. It is only 
 where we can go no further in thought, or when the think- 
 ing is really ended and the matter is "clear in our minds," 
 when the problem is solved, that we have unpleasantness and 
 pleasantness respectively as correlates of neural processes 
 involved in higher thinking activity. 47 Really complex, i.e., the 
 
 out practice, inhale putrid odors or even look upon blood or a painful per- 
 formance without becoming sick and possibly vomiting. Sharp words some- 
 times, as does fatigue, bring sensations of pain to the surface of the body. 
 Ellis (Studies in the Psychology of Sex) gives an instance of a woman habitually 
 having primary sexual experience upon hearing music. Erotic music and pic- 
 tures and histrionic representations generally have some such effect, usually in 
 a milder degree, as is well known. But the ordinary forms of conversation and 
 the higher forms of reasoning are usually without such visceral, or pain and 
 sex concomitants as would indicate any particular neural connection. 
 46 Judd, Psy., 193, 202. 
 
 47 Cf. James Ward, op. cit.; and Dewey, "Theory of Emotion," Psy. Rev., 
 II, 31. 
 
THE NEURAL CORRELATE OF FEELING 2J 
 
 more sophisticated social, adjustments are not made on the 
 basis of feeling response, just as they are not made on the 
 basis of mere sensory reaction. 
 
 Feeling is also entirely relative as regards its object. 48 In 
 connection with the lower and more instinctive processes, corre- 
 lations are more or less definite and fixed, though apparently 
 never completely and irreversibly so. Pain is usually unpleas- 
 ant; sweet is usually pleasant. But the higher and more 
 habitual or relatively uncontrolled processes enter into less 
 and less definite correlations the higher we go in the extero- 
 ceptive scale, till we reach the stage of highly indefinite 
 cortical correlations. These correlations can be made relatively 
 definite however by fixing habits. As a matter of fact 
 any habitual or instinctive correlation can be broken up or 
 reformed, that is, any act may be made pleasant or unpleasant. 
 The scourge, the sedentary self-torture amid vermin and filth 
 of the Hindu fanatics, or the similar isolation of Stylites on 
 the column, laceration of one's body, etc., may become sources 
 of pleasure; while the taking of savory food, the sound of 
 sweetest music, the odor of roses, or the sexual act may become 
 the agents of the most unbearable unpleasantness. For this 
 reason feeling modes cannot be effective guides to social 
 adjustment and control. In a purely instinctive or static, 
 i.e., habit-controlled, world where, hypothetically, everything 
 remains forever the same, feeling might operate as a success- 
 ful criterion for race adjustment. It might, barring cataclysm 
 and the unexpected, work toward the escape from danger and 
 the reproduction and feeding of the greatest number of indi- 
 viduals not competing or co-operating with each other, except 
 on an animal plane though this may be said to be doubtful. 49 
 But in a world where training must modify instinct, where 
 the cultural and artificial rather than the habitual and "natural" 
 set the standard, in a social and moral world in the best sense, 
 
 48 Cf. Titchener, op. cit., 108. 
 
 48 Cf. S. J. Holmes, "Pleasure, Pain, and Intelligence," Jour, of Compar. 
 Neurology and Psychol., XX, 148-49. 
 
28 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 feeling cannot serve as a guide for the preservation of the 
 individual and much less of society. 
 
 This principle of the relativity of feeling and of its unre- 
 liableness as a guide or measure of values is applicable through- 
 out the present discussion. In a less degree, the same relativity 
 can be predicated of all conscious processes. That no idea, 
 image, or sensory process is always absolutely valid or fixed in 
 content has been pretty well known from the time of Locke. 50 
 That is to say, no subjectivistic criterion is wholly depend- 
 able as a measure of values, and any such criterion is the more 
 dependable the more it is checked up by objective reference, i.e., 
 by sensory experiences and objective controls of as many types 
 as possible. Feeling as the conscious part of mere correlation, 
 i.e., as supplementation and interference of neural processes, 
 is the least able to be so checked up, and is consequently the 
 least reliable of all subjective criteria or evaluations of action 
 in an objective and social world. Thus in the light of a better 
 knowledge of the total biological functioning, the statements 
 of both old and modern psychologists and philosophers to the 
 effect that pleasure is a sign of the health of the organism, of its 
 successful functioning, of the presence of energy, etc., 51 appeal- 
 absolutely inadequate. Feeling indicates only certain internal 
 nervous adjustments on the basis of instinctive or habitual 
 disposition and not gross and inclusive bodily or ofganic adjust- 
 ments. Such views indicate a closer acquaintance with the 
 hypothetical and simplified conditions of instinctive life or of 
 life regulated by the philosopher's logic than with the more 
 complex determinants of human social life. These are facts 
 which the sociology of the future, if it is to be functional, 
 must apply. 
 
 60 Cf. Locke, op. cit., Bk. II, chaps, xxix-xxxii. 
 
 51 Cf. Ribot, Bain, Judd, Titchener, Marshall, etc., above. 
 
III. THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 
 
 NATURE OF THE ACT. THEORIES OF THE CAUSE OF THE ACT. 
 
 THE ACTUAL CAUSE OF THE ACT. FEELING AS CAUSE. THE 
 
 CAUSE OF THE ACT AS RELATED TO THE END OF THE 
 ACTIVITY 
 
 The problem of this chapter is to determine the relation of 
 feeling to the act. Preliminary to discussing this matter in 
 detail it seems necessary, (i) briefly to analyze the act itself 
 and (2) to review the conclusions of a number of representa- 
 tive writers on the relation of feeling to the act. 
 
 Up to the time when Bain formulated the theory of spon- 
 taneity in activity, 1 not much distinction had been made in philo- 
 sophical and psychological discussion between conscious and 
 unconscious activity. It was rather the custom of writers up 
 to that time to ignore all activity except that of which the actor 
 was supposed to be conscious. Their investigations of activity 
 were logical rather than biological and functional. 2 Though 
 Bain was largely influenced in his contribution by the develop- 
 ment of biological knowledge, his successors in mental science, 
 with greater opportunity for such investigation, have not made 
 the advance in this line of thinking that might have been 
 expected of them. The distinction between unconscious and 
 conscious activity is still very inadequately if at all applied to 
 ethical and social science, and has not entered effectively even 
 into psychology, which still continues to be largely logical and 
 
 1 Emotions and Will (3d ed.), 201. For a recent statement of the theory 
 see Jennings, Behavior of the Lower Organisms, 284 ff. 
 
 2 This attitude was probably the result of the old theocratic philosophy 
 which looked upon man as provided either with an infallible and omniscient 
 conscience or with an equally infallible objective revelation which he was sup- 
 posed to be able in some unexplained way to interpret omnisciently. In other 
 words, the philosophy which posited an omniscient and all-conscious deity also 
 posited an omniscient and all-conscious human being as the deity's correlate or 
 alter. 
 
 29 
 
30 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 structural. 3 This limitation of the treatment of the act was a 
 great stumbling-block to the utilitarians and to their prede- 
 cessors and successors. 
 
 To avoid the limitations imposed by such a conception of 
 activity we may be justified, perhaps, in isolating four dif- 
 ferent types of activity with reference to the degree of con- 
 sciousness involved in the conduct. The first is activity from 
 mass impact. The human organism, of course, never reacts 
 exactly like an inanimate object, because its internal capacity 
 for ready adjustment, for breaking shock and controlling the 
 direction of motion, is essentially different. But there are never- 
 theless a very large number of organic movements which are 
 beyond the immediate powers of adjustment by the individuals 
 discounting, of course, the nearly constant influence of 
 gravity. This is, socially considered, the least important type 
 of activity and may for the present be ignored. The second 
 is reflexive and instinctive and habitual activity proceeding from 
 stimuli over which the organism is for the most part in con- 
 trol, but in which consciousness does not enter till after the 
 act, if at all, and consequently cannot be a guide to that act. 
 The third is a subdivision of the second, in which activity is 
 instinctively and reflexively initiated, but in which conscious- 
 ness enters in the midst of the act as a "corrective" to secure 
 more efficient control. The fourth is a type in which the activity 
 is more or less consciously planned and in which the organism 
 consciously seeks stimulus to the activity. It is impossible, how- 
 ever, completely to foresee all the conditions of an act, i.e., 
 to anticipate all the stimuli and to estimate accurately the 
 resistance of the organism to the stimuli. Consequently no 
 previsioned act is ever wholly consciously controlled. 4 The 
 second and third types of activity are by far the most impor- 
 tant individually and socially, while the fourth is of second- 
 ary importance in the matter of maintaining social adjustment 
 and control, though it must always be appealed to in mak- 
 
 8 For further discussion of this point see McDougall, Physiological Psy., i, 2. 
 
 * Woodworth brings this fact out clearly in "The Cause of a Voluntary 
 
 Movement," Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Carman Memorial Volume), 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 31 
 
 ing radical changes or in projecting social ideals. But the 
 larger part of social activity and social conformity is not on 
 this plane. The fourth is really the conscious part of the third, 
 more or less abstracted and adequately controlled. It is this 
 particular fourth type of activity with which the utilitarians 
 and other earlier philosophers dealt, and it is to this type also 
 that modern ethicists and many sociologists insist upon confin- 
 ing themselves. 5 Any complete statement of the social process, 
 i.e., of social adjustments, and hence of the conditions of 
 social activity, must rest upon all four types. The very assump- 
 tion that feeling (as a form of consciousness) alone is the 
 cause of conduct and activity is a negation of all except the 
 last. 
 
 From Hobbes to Meakin, 6 the latest apologist for the 
 hedonic criterion in ethics and in social control, the line of 
 emphasis has not essentially changed among the advocates of 
 feeling as the cause of activity. 7 Hobbes held, in his own termi- 
 nology, that both ideas of activities accompanied by pleasantness 
 and unpleasantness and the feelings themselves are causes of 
 activity. 8 All the other hedonistic psychologists and philosophers 
 explicitly or indirectly emphasize the same relationship between 
 feeling and action. 9 Only a few mention other than conscious 
 
 6 Cf. Dewey and Tufts, op. tit.; Judd, Psy. Rev. (March, 1910), 78, 80; 
 Ward, Psychic Factors of Civilisation, 129-30; Small, General Sociology, 184, 
 as examples. 
 
 9 Function, Feeling, and Conduct (New York, Putnam, 1910). 
 
 7 In considering the various views of the cause of the act based upon a 
 hedonistic criterion, it is necessary to keep in mind the great diversity of 
 meanings which feeling has had in the history of psychology, and also the fact 
 that it is often very difficult to determine whether the conscious process which 
 any particular author has in mind is sensory, ideational, or feeling proper. 
 
 8 Hobbes says that pleasures and pains of sense move us directly to action, 
 since they are "motions" or "endeavours" which proceed from external objects 
 through the sense organs to the heart and there appear as "appetite" and 
 "aversion" (Leviathan, loc. cit., 42). Other motions "arise from the expecta- 
 tion, that proceeds from the foresight of the end, or consequences of things ; 
 whether these things in the sense please or displease." These are pleasures and 
 pains of the mind and likewise impel to action (ibid., 43). 
 
 8 The citations in this and the two following notes are necessarily incom- 
 plete. They embrace, however, as large a number of fields of investigation and 
 
32 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 causes of activity. All however agree that no conscious activity 
 can be caused otherwise than by feeling, though all at different 
 times plainly confuse feeling with sensory and ideational pro- 
 cesses proper. All alike appear to be ignorant of this distinction, 
 though contemporaries of some of the later writers have pointed 
 it out more or less clearly. 
 
 as large a scope of territory as are possible within the limits of space available, 
 keeping in mind, of course, the fact that the main discussion of this study 
 centers around the English and American ethical and social philosophy. For 
 additional citations in convenient form, see Wright, op. cit. 
 
 Helvetius goes a step farther than Hobbes and assumes, besides a world 
 of physical forces, one of mental forces in which pleasure and pain are masters 
 of activity and thought: "[God says to man] Je te mets sous la garde du plaisir 
 et de la douleur: 1'un et 1'autre veilleront a tes pensees, a tes actions; engende- 
 ront tes passions ; exciteront tes aversions, tes amites, tes tendresses, tes fureurs ; 
 allumeront tes desirs, tes craintes, tes esperances ; te devoileront des vierites ; te 
 plongeront dans des erreurs ; et, apres t'avoir fait enfanter mille systemes 
 absurdes et differents de morale et de legislation, te decouvriront un jour les 
 principes simples, au developpement desquels est attache 1'ordre et le bonheur 
 du monde moral" (De I 'esprit, 322). Locke: "That which immediately deter- 
 mines the will .... to every voluntary action, is the uneasiness of desire 
 fixed upon some negative (absent) good," as freedom from pain and "enjoyment 
 of pleasure." And that which moves desire is "Happiness, and that alone" (op. 
 cit., Bk. II, chap, xxi, sees. 33 and 41). Bentham : "Nature has placed mankind 
 under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them 
 alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall 
 do" (op. cit., chap, i, sec. i). Also, "Among all the several psychological 
 entities .... the main pillars or foundations of all the rest the matter of 
 which all the rest are composed .... will be .... seen to be, Pleasures 
 and Pains" These are the "springs of action" ("The Springs of Action," 
 Works [ed. Bowring], I, 211). Bain: "Some pleasure or pain, near or remote, 
 is essential to every volitional effort, or every change from quiescence to move- 
 ment, or from one movement to another" (Emotions and Will [3d ed.], 35)- 
 "Without some antecedent of pleasurable or painful feeling actual or ideal, 
 primary or derivative the will cannot be stimulated" (ibid., 354)' He defines 
 volition as "the operation of pleasures and pains for stimulating activities for 
 ends" (ibid., 315-16). Movements are at first spontaneous and random 
 (Senses and Intellect, 300). Suitable activities are selected and fixed by pleasure, 
 which has become fortuitously connected with them (Emotions and Will, 3 J 5)- 
 Baldwin takes essentially the same view (Handbook of Psychology; Emotions 
 and Will, 301-3). He also has an elaborate classification of motives (ibid., 332). 
 Leslie Stephen: "Pain and pleasure are .... the determining causes of action 
 
 .... the sole and ultimate causes Will is always determined by the actual 
 
 painfulness or pleasantness of the choice at the moment of choosing" (Science 
 of Ethics, 50). The feeling is reflected back from the previsioned act, as it 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 33 
 
 There are two other types of writers only partially or not 
 at all hedonistic, though for the most part individualistic, in 
 their viewpoint who deal with the cause of the act. Those of 
 one class regard feeling as one, and only one, of the factors in 
 determining conscious choice. 10 
 
 were, and becomes the actual motive force (ibid., 54). He regards feeling as a 
 true psychical force (ibid., 57). Lester F. Ward also regards the feelings, 
 especially after memory has made them into desires (Psychic Factors of Civi- 
 lization, 52), as psychic forces (Pure Sociology, 132), and he even terms the 
 science of the operation of these desires "mental physics" or psychics (Psychic 
 Factors of Civilization, 129). This is a terminology which reminds one some- 
 what of Hobbes (op. cit., 42) and of Comte in a more general sense (Positive 
 Philosophy [Martineau's transl.], Bk. VI). Painful and pleasurable sensations, 
 he says further, are respectively the causes of action away from and toward 
 objects (Psychic Factors of Civilisation, 126). He also declares that desire, 
 which he characterizes as "in its essential nature .... a form of pain" (ibid., 
 54), "is the all-pervading, world-animating principle, the universal nisus and 
 pulse of nature, the mainspring of all action, and the life-power of the world" 
 (ibid., 55). Spencer: "The feelings have in common the character that they 
 cause bodily action which is violent in proportion as they are intense" (Prin- 
 ciples of Psy., II, 541). "The emotions are the masters, the intellect is the serv- 
 ant. The guidance of our acts through perception and reason has for its end 
 the satisfaction of feelings" ("Feeling vs. Intellect," Facts and Comments, 38). 
 L. F. Ward, Bain, and others concur in this view. J. R. Angell : "Some such 
 symbols [as agreeableness and disagreeableness] there must be, if consciousness 
 is to steer successfully among new surroundings and in strange environments" 
 (Psy., 273). S. N. Patton: "There is always an endeavor to increase pleasure 
 and to avoid pain if the animal is conscious of these emotions" (Theory of 
 Social Forces, chap, i, sec. i). Jevons bases his theory entirely upon a calculation 
 of pleasure and pain and declares the object of political economy to be to deter- 
 mine the maximum amount of happiness which can be realized in purchasing 
 the greatest possible amount of pleasure with the least possible amount of pain 
 (Theory of Political Economy [3d ed.], 37). Frederick Meakin : "For the ground 
 of choice we are referred, ultimately, to the pleasurable or painful functional 
 act" (op. cit., 37). 
 
 10 Titchener regards attention as the only cause of voluntary action in 
 primitive consciousness, and in his opinion attention was limited to the intrinsi- 
 cally pleasant and unpleasant (Outlines of Psy., 250). With the introduction of 
 action upon representation, or with the appearance of memory, other elements 
 than affection came to operate in psychical causation (ibid., 254 ff.). Thorndike 
 
 declares that "any mental state may serve as a motive One of the most 
 
 artificial doctrines about human nature which has ever acquired prominence is 
 the doctrine that pleasure and pain, felt or imagined, are the only motives to 
 action, that a human being is constantly making a conscious or unconscious 
 calculation of the amount of each which the contemplated act will produce, and 
 
34 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 Those of the other type hold that feeling can never be such 
 a cause. 11 The main value of a study of these views consists in 
 the fact that, (i) it indicates the confusion in which all mental, 
 ethical, and social science has been and yet is, in regard to a 
 criterion for the cause of the act; (2) it points out through 
 
 that his entire behavior is the result of such a life-long complicated series in 
 sums in addition and subtraction. Pleasure and pain do play a leading role in 
 determining action, but the cast of characters includes also percepts, ideas and 
 emotions of all sorts" (Elements of Psy., 284). Lotze : "The pleasure of sense 
 is not only the goal toward which all the activity of living creatures originally 
 moves, but we find that in civilized life also it is the hidden spring of the most 
 various actions" (op. cit., I, 696-97). He adds, however, that conscience is the 
 only absolute guide (ibid., I, 696). Sidgwick recognizes "pleasure" and "pain" 
 as "feelings" which stimulate to actions producing or sustaining the former and 
 removing or averting the latter (Methods of Ethics, 42, 43). However, "A 
 man's conscious [ !] desire is," he thinks, "more often than not chiefly extra- 
 regarding" (ibid., 51), while impulses occur quite regardless of pleasant or 
 unpleasant results (ibid., 53). Thus Sidgwick holds to a teleological statement 
 of unconscious as well as conscious activities. Martineau holds that if one 
 exercises prudential preference he may act with regard to pleasurable or painful 
 effects, but that the springs of action within us [conscience] are the proper 
 moral guides, and they do not take cognizance of pleasure and pain (op. cit., 
 II, 70). 
 
 11 Between Martineau's view (mentioned in the preceding note), aside from 
 his criterion of conscience, and the views of Sorley, James, Dewey, Butler, and 
 others there is little difference, aside from terminology and a more complete 
 analysis of the act. All these latter writers hold that the idea must be the immedi- 
 ate or actual cause of the act. Sorley : "We must aim not at pleasure per se but 
 at objects which we have reason to believe will be accompanied by pleasurable 
 feeling" {Ethics of Naturalism, 188). James: "A willed movement is a move- 
 ment preceded by an idea of itself" (op. cit., II, 580). Ideas of pleasure and 
 pain are among these "motor spurs" {ibid., II, 559). James's use of language is 
 sometimes contradictory, and one could in places make out that he argues that 
 "pleasure and pain" are direct causes. This doubtless results from his con- 
 stantly confusing feeling with sensation. Hoffding: "The impulse is essentially 
 determined by an idea, is a striving after the content of this idea," which, however, 
 may refer to pleasure-giving experience (op. cit., 323). Butler long ago main- 
 tained that "all particular appetites and passions are towards external things 
 themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them," and that "there 
 could not be this pleasure, were it not for that prior suitableness between the 
 object and the passion" (Sermon XI). Green takes essentially the same' view 
 {op. cit., 168) as does Dewey (Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 270), though the latter 
 adds that "the anticipation of pleasure in its fulfilment may normally intensify 
 the putting forth of energy, may give an extra reinforcement to flagging effort" 
 (ibid., 271). Marshall holds that "pleasure-pain" may serve to fix the useful 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 35 
 
 illustrations that until recently at least, if not still, feeling modes 
 have been regarded by most writers of importance as the only 
 or the chief causes of the consciously chosen act; (3) that those, 
 like Martineau and Lotze, who thought of the act as properly 
 caused in some other way, were prone to substitute some other 
 more or less individualistic criterion, such as conscience, as the 
 cause, as will appear more clearly in chap, iv when the ends 
 of action are discussed. (4) It is apparent also that some of the 
 older writers, like Hobbes, Helvetius, and Bentham, did not 
 take into consideration any causes other than conscious ones ; 
 nor has this confusion wholly disappeared at the present time. 
 (5) We have also an indication, though incomplete, of how the 
 prevailing social theory until the most recent times has followed 
 the lead of Bentham, Locke, and Hobbes in accepting a hedo- 
 nistic psychological basis. An expansion of this statement will 
 also occur in the following chapters. 12 
 
 adjustments and to eradicate the harmful ones (op. cit., 262), though it is by no 
 means an absolute criterion (ibid., 352). McDougall : "Pleasure and pain are 
 not in themselves springs of action, but at the most of undirected movements ; 
 they serve rather to modify the instinctive processes, pleasure tending to sus- 
 tain and prolong any mode of action, pain to cut it short ; under their prompt- 
 ing guidance are effected those modifications and adaptations of the instinctive 
 bodily movements" (Introduction to Social Psychology, 43). Judd: "It is too 
 abbreviated a form of statement to say in this case that the pleasure of success 
 leads the mind to select the appropriate activity; the fact is rather that the 
 pleasure comes because the selection has been successfully made in a natural 
 way" (Psy., 225). Fite : "The ethical consequence of the functional view is to 
 render it inconceivable that we should choose pleasure as an end, and hence, 
 impossible to set up pleasure as the end to be sought. According to the functional 
 view, the motive power of action is instinct, and it is the object implied in the 
 instinct which constitutes the end. In this system there is no room for the motive 
 of pleasure. Pleasure is simply an abstracted phase of the process of satisfac- 
 tion an indication that the object is being attained in the presence of a diffi- 
 culty. In other words, pleasure is not an active force or function, but a mere 
 phenomenon. The desire for pleasure, if conceivable at all, would be irrecon- 
 cilable with the desire for the object; for since pleasure exists only while suc- 
 cess is deferred, pleasure as such could be prolonged only by sacrificing the 
 object originally sought" ("The Place of Pleasure and Pain in the Functional 
 Psychology," Psy. Rev., X, 643-44). 
 
 12 Also some of the more recent sociologists, who have largely or wholly 
 abandoned the hedonistic criterion, still hold to subjectivistic and individualistic 
 classifications of the springs of action, even though these classifications are for 
 
36 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 What then is the actual part which feeling modes play in the 
 causation of the act? To answer this question properly it will 
 be necessary first to determine what part consciousness of any 
 sort plays in such causation. Woodworth denies that imagery 
 of any kind is necessary to setting off even a voluntary act, and 
 contends that "the complete determinant of a voluntary motor 
 act .... is nothing less than the total set of the nervous sys- 
 tem at the moment." 13 
 
 It is not necessary here to enter into a discussion as to 
 whether consciousness can be non-imaginal, 14 but it must be 
 admitted that the total cause of any act is more than the con- 
 scious part of it. When an idea or image precedes the act, i.e., 
 when the neural pathway or the act runs through the cortex (as 
 it must when there is considerable conflict and impediment to 
 
 the most part mere ornamenta which their authors do not seek or are unable 
 to apply. (Cf. chap, iv, below, and A. F. Bentley, The Process of Government, 
 chap, vii.) 
 
 13 "[No] form of sensorial image of the movement or of its outcome need be 
 present in consciousness in the moment just preceding the innervation. Imagery, 
 kinaesthetic, tactile, visual, auditory, may or may not be present at the launching 
 of a voluntary movement; when present, it seems, in many persons, at least, to 
 be incidental rather than essential to the process." Woodworth, op. cit., 356. 
 
 "Where imagery is lacking, peripheral sensations are sometimes present in 
 the field of attention, but after these cases are abstracted, there still remain a 
 goodly share of the whole number [about one-fifth] .... in whom no sensorial 
 content could be detected." Ibid., 376. 
 
 "The complete determinant of a voluntary motor act that which specifies 
 exactly what act it shall be is nothing less than the total set of the nervous 
 system at the moment. The set is determined partly by factors of long standing, 
 instincts and habits, partly by the sensations of the moment, partly by recent 
 perceptions of the situation and by other thoughts lately present in consciousness ; 
 at the moment, however, these factors, though they contribute essentially to the 
 set of the system, are for the most part present in consciousness only as a 
 background or "fringe," if at all, while the attention is occupied by the thought 
 of some particular change to be effected in the situation. The thought may be 
 clothed in sensorial images rags and tatters, or gorgeous raiment but these 
 are after all only clothes, and a naked thought [ !] can perfectly well perform 
 its function of starting the motor machinery in action and determining the point 
 and object of its application." Ibid., 391-92. 
 
 14 For such a discussion see the above-mentioned monograph by Woodworth ; 
 also Titchener, The Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes (New 
 York, 1910). 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 37 
 
 its overt expression), the act is termed voluntary. Because we 
 are not able to determine the total set of the nervous system, 
 we seize upon its most obvious and immediate sign, the percept 
 or image, and call it the cause, though it is really only the sign 
 of the whole act of which it is but a part. If the process of 
 ideation be a long one, i.e., if the process by which an act finally 
 gets overt expression is modified by a great many inhibitions 
 occupying some appreciable extent of time, we term the sub- 
 jective process thinking, and we speak of the thought as the 
 cause of our activity, while it is only the sign or index of the 
 whole act of which it is a part. 
 
 In the same way it has been customary to speak of feeling as 
 the cause of activity, because we knew little or nothing of its 
 neural correlates and because it is a very immediate experience. 
 Feeling, however, is also but a sign of the whole act, and is even 
 farther removed from the general causal process in its com- 
 pleteness than is the idea. As was above pointed out, pleasant- 
 ness accompanies neural processes which supplement each other 
 or which supplement the more stable, though lower, visceral and 
 vegetative neural processes. Unpleasantness accompanies inter- 
 ference of processes, either of the higher sensory ones with 
 each other or of these with the lower basic sets, when conscious- 
 ness accompanies such nervous activity. Feeling modes then 
 are resultants of internal neural adjustments or of internal 
 neural interferences, which correlation probably is made in the 
 cortex only when feeling is experienced. It is absurd to speak 
 of these feeling modes as the cause of such neural relations, 
 which go over into overt activity as acts in the common usage 
 of that term, unless we do so in the sense that if there had not 
 been such supplementation and interference or inhibition of 
 processes (resulting at times in such feelings and also in more 
 or less corresponding acts) we should have acted differently. 15 
 But this is not an efficient and functional explanation of the act. 
 It would be just as absurd also to say that feeling dictates causa- 
 tive ideas or dictates their recall in memory. The idea, like the 
 act, can be accounted for only on the basis of the whole neural 
 
 15 Cf. Meyer, Psy. Rev., XV, 319. 
 
38 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 set. The feeling mode must be explained in terms of the corre- 
 lation of parts of that set, of processes, with each other. 
 
 However, we can appeal from objective analysis and the 
 experimental method to the evidence of introspection (though 
 this sort of appeal is no longer in the best standing), and we 
 may get a confirmation of the direct or indirect causal nature 
 of feeling. Certainly introspection tells us that we frequently 
 choose activities because we have reason to believe that they will 
 afford pleasantness and avoid others because they usually give 
 unpleasantness. This of course is all on the assumption that 
 the idea of the thing can cause the act, which was discussed in 
 the paragraph immediately preceding. 16 It is generally held, how- 
 ever, that the feeling itself cannot be representative 17 and thus 
 cannot cause the act in the same way as the idea is supposed to 
 be able to do. It is the idea of the act, which it is believed will 
 result in certain feeling modes, that is supposed to be the cause 
 of the representatively or ideationally caused or accompanied 
 act. 18 Introspection, then, tells us that we do frequently choose 
 future activities with reference to whether they will be pleasant 
 or unpleasant. And it also tells us that we perhaps at least as 
 often choose activities without regard for or despite their pre- 
 visioned feeling results. The introspective evidence is as valid 
 in the one case as in the other. 19 
 
 Accepting the introspective account and the introspective 
 terminology, what activities may we say, then, are the result of 
 feeling, in the sense that the perceived hedonic consequences of 
 an act influence our choice of action and ends? It becomes 
 
 19 Cf. also notes 9, 10, and n above, this chapter. 
 
 17 Cf. Angell, Psy., 266-67. 
 
 18 Cf. James, op. cit., II, 580; Thorndike, op. cit.; also Ribot, op. cit., 190: 
 
 "A 1'origine, le plaisir est un effet Plus tard, il devient une cause 
 
 d'action." 
 
 19 This type of case where introspection tells us that we choose the pleasant 
 act and avoid the unpleasant is not different from the supposed type of cases, 
 abstracted by the older philosophers, in which pleasure and pain were spoken 
 of as direct causes, except in the amount of time intervening between the 
 stimulus and the response. In the latter type the choice and the feeling seem 
 to be synchronous. 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 
 
 39 
 
 clear at once, as Marshall points out, 20 that a large number of 
 unforeseen or stubborn circumstances interrupt the course of our 
 mental and neural action and thus cause dissatisfaction. But 
 allowing for these interruptions, in how far yet can we con- 
 sciously seek pleasure and find it? The answer appears to be, 
 In so far as we have the technique and ability for molding all 
 objective social and physical processes and transformations to 
 fit our immediate subjective ends and adjustments. That is, if 
 we make the experience of pleasantness and the avoidance of 
 unpleasantness the end of our endeavors, we can realize this end 
 in so far as we can immediately and in the large control our 
 environment. We must begin first to control our ideational and 
 imaginal processes to this end. But this cannot be done 
 most effectively without also controlling our physiological pro- 
 cesses in the service of both ideation and feeling. Then, in 
 the third place, we must be able to control our immediate 
 environment in the form of material and social conditions, to 
 which end the more narrowly "social" and financial conditions 
 are to some degree essential. And fourthly, and least of all, 
 we must be able to exert an effective though indirect control 
 over the wider societary environment at least enough to make 
 sure of our immediate physiological and narrowly "social" 
 adjustments. 
 
 This method is employed constantly with more or less suc- 
 cess and with varying emphasis upon different details. Eastern 
 voluptuaries and tyrants have tried it and have fairly succeeded 
 at least so long as they could control their adjustments as 
 described above. 21 Artists of all sorts have traditionally been 
 accustomed to withdraw themselves into an esoteric world in 
 which the chief assets of their happiness appear to be their 
 reveries which go along with their "artistic temperaments," the 
 
 20 Op. cit., 350-51. 
 
 21 It has long been a custom of deposed monarchs, politicians, etc., to go 
 into "retirement" and to assemble about them as much of their petty parapher- 
 nalia as possible and to piece out the situation by living on their memories. The 
 Roman emperor Diocletian, who could not control his kingdom, took up cabbage 
 raising and evidently would have been happy if he could have persuaded his 
 rival to grow cabbages also. 
 
40 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 reverence which the unsophisticated have for them, and non- 
 interference from a world of fact. Indeed it has been asserted 
 repeatedly by artists and litterateurs that genius is a lawless 
 thing. 22 Among the most successful devotees of this general 
 method of securing pleasure and avoiding unpleasant experience, 
 however unconscious the devotees may be of the philosophy of 
 the method, are the women and men of fashion and pleasure. 
 These are especially conspicuous in our modern world, where 
 mechanical technique makes possible the accumulation of vast 
 wealth and numerous accessories of personal satisfaction; but 
 they were not lacking to earlier societies. The elaborate func- 
 tions and social ceremonies of Rome were second only in the 
 matter of refinement of adjustments to the social whirl and 
 dissipation in modern Paris or any great European or Ameri- 
 can city. 23 Less striking examples can be found in the men 
 with "hobbies" anywhere, the devotee of a game, the profes- 
 sional gambler, all types of hedonic amateurs, so long as these 
 "hobbies," etc., remain personal penchants. Such satisfaction 
 
 22 Modern society appears quite confused as to whether this is the proper 
 statement or whether it should be, Lawlessness is genius. Perhaps there is not 
 enough difference between the two formulae to argue about. 
 
 23 The details of the practice by which a modern woman of fashion lives 
 a butterfly life of pleasures are too familiar from the literature of the time to 
 require description here. Her thoughts are not arduous, but she takes the 
 utmost care by proxy that there shall be no discord in them. A large part 
 of her time is given to the luxurious care of her body by others and the 
 remainder is divided between her clothes and fashionable functions or personal 
 and sensuous gratifications, involving ceaseless change and inconstancy or 
 anarchy of social purpose. Practically all the ordinary gross stimuli, such as 
 light and color effects, sound, touch, taste, and odor, are carefully controlled 
 for her. Customary morality in many cases drops out, especially in the realm 
 of sexual experience, where social conformity would make inroads upon other 
 pleasurable adjustments. Financial adjustments remain so much on the margin 
 of her experience that they rarely come into her consciousness, except at a 
 crisis in her career. The matter of her more narrowly "social" adjustments, 
 the problem of retaining her prestige and of eliminating her "'inferiors," per- 
 haps disturbs her most. Such a picture has a feeble counterpart in the Greek 
 and Roman courtesans (cf. DeCassagnac, History of the Working Classes, chap, 
 xvii) and in the harems of the East of today. It is an extreme illustration, 
 but it is not untrue to the facts, and is the nearest approach to perfect unin- 
 terrupted self-gratification that the modern and "strenuous" western world can 
 boast. 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 41 
 
 is necessarily individualistic, and the more one's satisfactions 
 become dependent upon a wider and more objective field of 
 control the less invariably is one likely to be satisfied at least 
 under the present social order. 
 
 But the really social individual, in the broader sense, is not 
 the one who acts with individual reference, that is, with the 
 production of subjective or conscious states as his end. The 
 person who attempts to understand the world and to work for 
 efficient social control and expression is the one who operates 
 with reference to social processes in the wide, whose end is the 
 securing of a co-ordinated or social adjustment to nature or to 
 the whole process of life, in whatever terms he may express his 
 intent or in whatever manner he may act. He attempts to dis- 
 cover the conditions of the most effective social life and then 
 to bring these conditions about and to adjust himself to them. 
 The life and growth of the group, often of the broadest group/ 
 not his own individual happiness, not an economy of personal 
 pleasantness and unpleasantness, become his criterion. While 
 the hedonist begins by seeking to control his own mental and 
 bodily processes in the interest of his personal satisfactions, the 
 social individual, the one who has a scientific social criterion 
 of conduct, rather than the socius de facto?* begins with group 
 and race adjustment. As earlier pointed out, his criterion is 
 social conservation rather than individual gratification. It can- 
 not be said of such an individual either that he seeks pleasure 
 or that he finds it in the largest or most constant measure, but 
 that he is effective or functional in a progressively social world. 
 
 This type as such is just emerging. It had its forerunners 
 in all those who caught glimpses of a civic spirit and rebelled 
 against a narrow personal standard. The Stoics, the patriots of 
 all ages, frequently the founders of religions, the advocates of 
 divine right in government, the advocates of the theory of the 
 moral sense and like doctrines, who sought to make authority 
 
 24 All individuals are of course social in the question-begging sense that they 
 exist in a world of people and were born with capacities for adjustment to that 
 world (cf. Mead, op. cit., and Houssay, Rev. philosophique [May, 1893], 475). 
 but this does not necessarily signify that they are constructively or progressively 
 social. 
 
42 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 broader than mere individual whim and pleasure, are examples. 
 But practically all of them remained personal and subjectivistic 
 in their criteria. The self of the individual or of the deity or 
 monarch was the final arbiter. Cases of asceticism or of self- 
 torture of the kind indulged in by St. Simon Stylites were 
 doubtless protests against a hedonistic order but were ineffective 
 because they could not get away from a subjectivistic criterion 
 and fix upon objective social service as a substitute. There was 
 no conception and analysis of society which would permit of 
 this substitution. The nearest approach to the modern type was 
 the patriot who accepted the traditional spirit of his country or 
 city as the inspiration of his cause. This was a collectivistic 
 rather than an individualistic criterion, though not a scientifically 
 determined criterion. The same collectivistic criterion can, of 
 course, in some measure be attributed also to the absolutism of 
 the priestly and political powers. But the modern socius is dis- 
 tinguished from the earlier in so far as he approaches to a scien- 
 tific social criterion of conduct. 
 
 It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the truly 
 social individual, because he does not seek pleasure or happi- 
 ness, never experiences satisfaction. 25 In the first place no one 
 is truly social in an inadequately social world. In an adequately 
 controlled social world the results of seeking to further that 
 control doubtless come more and more .to be pleasurable. That 
 is, one's habitual and conscious attitudes, based upon a knowl- 
 edge of social facts and laws rather than upon mere conformity 
 to the existing social order, regardless of what it may be -on a 
 wider view, on the one hand, and not upon self -gratification on 
 the other hand, come to be less and less interrupted and broken 
 down as the world becomes more completely and scientifically 
 rather than whimsically socially controlled. Again, one may 
 choose his activity with regard to the broader ends or more 
 scientifically determined values of the group or social organism 
 as a whole, because he sees in a particular case that such a 
 
 25 The Stoics, Puritans, and other sects and factions appear to have pushed 
 a general truth to the extreme in assuming that because the righteous or social 
 individual cannot always be happy, it should be his constant endeavor never to 
 be so or not to seem so. 
 
THE CAUSE OF THE ACT 
 
 43 
 
 course will also bring him more personal satisfaction. But, as 
 social life and activities are now organized, at least, such coinci- 
 dence of the wider and more far-reaching social good and his 
 personal satisfaction does not often occur; and perhaps with 
 man as he is still largely a creature of early instinctive adjust- 
 ments to conditions of race survival mainly on the level of the 
 lower co-ordinations and processes such coincidence can never 
 be made complete. 26 The nearest approach to accomplishing such 
 a thing is to control social activity in such a way and to such 
 an extent that the desired habits can replace mere instinct and 
 the fortuitously or wrongly acquired habits now dominant, 
 when these conflict with the desired order. But this is neces- 
 sarily an unpleasant task. It is further true that the conscious- 
 ness of always working in a "good, even if hopeless" cause may 
 react pleasurably upon the actor, and this is doubtless in the 
 majority of cases a great sustaining factor. But if it is too 
 much relied upon it is almost certain to turn one into the self- 
 satisfied and dogmatic reformer who himself becomes a hedonist 
 in the place of a social individual or true socius. 27 
 
 In addition to the conclusions drawn in connection with 
 the discussion of the various theories of the cause of the act, 
 further implications of primary importance which should be 
 carried over from the present and preceding chapters for appli- 
 cation to the subsequent discussion are: (i) that feeling is a 
 purely individualistic and subjectivistic criterion of evaluation, 
 (2) that feeling can be a cause of activity only when mental 
 states or processes rather than objective social results are made 
 the ends of attention and effort, (3) that pleasurable feeling 
 can become attached to any activity regardless of the social or 
 even individual value of that activity, and hence (4) that the 
 sanction or evaluation of feeling upon conduct is worthless as a 
 criterion of the individual or social utility of that conduct. 
 
 26 "No proposition can be more palpably and egregiously false than the 
 assertion that as far as this world is concerned it is invariably conducive to the 
 happiness of a man to pursue the most virtuous career." Lecky, History of 
 European Morals (New York, 1884), 61. Leslie Stephen takes the same view, 
 though an advocate of the doctrine that all activity is caused by feeling. Cf. 
 Science of Ethics, 433. 
 
 27 Cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 303. 
 
IV. THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 
 
 INTRODUCTION. FROM HOBBES TO ROUSSEAU. (l) SELF-GRATI- 
 FICATION AS END. (2) FEELING HARMONIZED WITH CON- 
 TROL. (3) THE TRANSITION TO EMPHASIS UPON SOCIAL 
 
 CONTROL. (4) THE NEC-UTILITARIANS OR SOCIAL ETHI- 
 
 CISTS. (5) OTHER SUBJECTIVISTIC THEORIES. (6) THE 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIOLOGY 
 
 <ft is the task of this chapter to enter into an account of 
 typical views of the end of activity, tracing the line of develop- 
 ment, so far as space will allow, through the various types of 
 subjectivistic criteria in ethical and social writing to the present 
 transition to a functional and objective sociology^ The writers 
 here treated, together with the views they represent, can be 
 classified most conveniently under six^ heads. First are the 
 frankly hedonistic theorists and agitators who regard pleasure, 
 happiness, self-gratification as the legitimate end of all activity 
 and abhor social control accordingly. This type may be illus- 
 trated by William Morris and Nietzsche. Closely related to 
 these theorists in origin and growing up parallel and in close 
 connection with them is another class of men who urge the 
 same end of activity, but who do not conceive of the end as in 
 any way opposed to legitimate and effective social control, but 
 rather as an aid to it. Fourier and Bentham may be used to 
 illustrate this type. Under the pressure of criticism Milr and 
 Spencer and their contemporaries came to modify the bases of 
 their doctrine of pleasure or happiness as the end; and their 
 views furnish the material for the third division. After Mill 
 and Spencer, and even contemporary with them, came a group 
 of writers who may be called neo-utilitarians or social ethicists 
 for lack of better terms. They make prominent the idea of 
 reference to social control, but set up pleasure as the end or 
 good, frequently displaying a poorly reconciled opposition 
 between social morality and hedonic self-realization. These 
 
 44 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 45 
 
 writers constitute the fourth division. In the fifth division are 
 classed the various subjectivistic theories centering about some 
 other criterion than the "seeking of pleasure" and the "avoid- 
 ance of pain," or at least implying such real or pseudo-facts as 
 conscience, the moral sense, inner harmony, reason, self-realiza- 
 tion, maximum activity, as the final objects of reference in 
 activity. The final group of theorists is made up of the tran- 
 sitional sociologists, that is, those thinkers on social questions 
 who were born into the old artificial subjectivism, but who are 
 making the transition to a functional sociology. The line of 
 transition through these types of theory will appear in the 
 development of the chapter. 
 
 Hobbes, the father of modern English psychology and 
 empirical philosophy, was also the unwitting progenitor of the 
 modern democratic movement. On the one hand he started the 
 / anajy^sis of min4 in specific and concrete, almost objective, terms, 
 which was carried on by Locke, Hume, Helvetius, Hartley, the 
 Scottish school, and has lately appeared in the experimental psy- 
 chology and realistic and pragmatic philosophy. On the other 
 hand he gave a fruitful impulse to the discussion of the origin V 
 of__authority in social control, which coming down through 
 Locke, Helvetius, 1 Rousseau, Bentham, Fourier, Schiller, Babceuf, 
 Weitling, Bakunin, and others, has permeated all the modern 
 political and social discussion, though the content of the discus- 
 sion has changed much in the transition. Hobbes stated the 
 thesis that man renounced the state of nature which was also a 
 state of freedom and of war, and accepted civilized life 2 con- 
 
 1 Helvetius almost reproduces Hobbes (without citing him) in some parts of 
 his writings, especially on the genesis of the social contract, his theory of feeling 
 as a means of control, etc. (op. cit., 322 ff.). I am convinced that a further 
 study of Helvetius and his connections will show that he had a much wider 
 influence in spreading the doctrines of Hobbes and his immediate successors 
 than is now generally recognized. 
 
 2 The term civilized peoples, in the sense of socially or state controlled 
 peoples, appears in Helvetius (op. cit., 292, 325) policees peuples, and in the Ger- 
 man at a little later date as polizierte V biker (Professor Small has found the 
 usage in Busch, op. cit.), in each case used in the same sense, of people under 
 coercive or compulsory control as a means to civilization. The same idea 
 occurs again, though in much modified form, in the French school of sociolo- 
 gists in connection with the theory of the social organism (see below). 
 
46 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 tractually as a means of escaping pain and suffering and of 
 adding to his satisfactions. 3 The hedonic motive which Hobbes 
 put forth has furnished the basis of practically all later theories, 
 and has not until very recently been modified. 4 Locke made the 
 first significant transition toward a theory of democracy on the 
 new basis when he made the contract two-sided, 5 while Rousseau 
 went even farther in modifying the terms of the contract so as 
 to make it wholly an expression of the popular will and depend- 
 ent on nothing else. 6 At this point Hobbes's germinal idea had 
 blossomed into the green fruit of democracy, and we need not 
 at this point trace the connection farther. t 
 
 Rousseau, however, reversed one of the principles of Hobbes 
 in giving form to the theory that man made a mistake in coming 
 out of the state of nature, which according to Rousseau was 
 not a state of war as Hobbes had described it, but a state of 
 peace, happiness, and innocence. 7 True to the poetic tradition 8 
 he had his golden age in the past. As the formulator of this 
 view Rousseau became the father of modern philosophic anarch- 
 ism. With the best of evidence the nihilistic doctrines of 
 
 ' Leviathan, loc. cit., chaps, xiii-xiv. 
 
 4 The scattered adherents of a theocratic doctrine of the origin of social 
 control would, of course, accept the hedonic statement of the origin of social 
 control with reservations or reject it entirely (Paley combines the idea of reve- 
 lation and the pleasure and pain motive the "fear of hell" in control. Cf. 
 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Bk. I, chap, vi ; Bk. II, chaps vi-viii ; 
 also Martineau, op. cit., II, 234. Sidgwick classes Paley as a utilitarian because of 
 this attitude. Cf. Hist, of Ethics (ad ed.), 238 ff. Mill strongly resents this 
 characterization. Cf. "Professor Sidgwick's Discourse on the Studies of the 
 University of Cambridge" in Dissertations and Discussions (Boston, 1868), I, 
 150. But the theocratic theorists are negligible. The dominant line of develop- 
 ment of the theory of social control has been, of course, in modern times from 
 the contract theory of Hobbes down to the completest evolutionary and natural- 
 istic statement of the theory of the present. 
 
 6 Cf. Locke's Second Treatise on Government, Bk. II, chap. viii. 
 
 Cf. The Social Contract (transl. Harrington), Bk. I, chaps, vi-vii ; Bk. IV, 
 chap. i. 
 
 7 Cf. Discours siir I'origine de I'inegalite, especially the Preface. Morellet 
 (Le code de la nature, 1755) expresses about the same view, in a more crude 
 way. 
 
 8 Rousseau was not, of course, a scientist, but a popularizer and a senti- 
 mentalist. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 47 
 
 Bakunin, which have both directly and indirectly so strongly 
 influenced modern pseudo-social and literary writing, and hence 
 popular thinking, have been traced back to him. 9 Socialism 
 also as a part of the general modern democratic movement owes 
 much to Rousseau. 10 It is to the more anarchistic and to the 
 socialistic variants which are traceable to Rousseau that the first 
 group of examples in this chapter belongs, while the other 
 groups, with a partial exception for the second, come for the 
 most part within the limits of the more conventional movement 
 of democracy. 
 
 I. JWilliam Morris takes happiness and democratic gratifica- 
 tion to be the criterion of the end of life and action, 11 and for 
 its attainment all social revolution or change must occur. 12 Gov- 
 ernment stands in the way of the attainment of this end. 13 He 
 rebels even at the idea of a coercive public opinion, 14 and holds 
 that pleasure from the satisfaction of natural desires is the proper 
 guide to conduct. 15 Crime does not require punishment, for 
 "In a society where there is no punishment to evade, no law to 
 triumph over, remorse will certainly follow transgression." 
 His ideal of life is a non-coercive communism where the love of 
 
 9 Cf. Graham, Socialism New and Old, 67-68. Ibsen confesses to inspira- 
 tion from Bakunin, and G. B. Shaw asserts his discipleship to Ibsen. Cf. 
 The Quintessence of Ibsenism. 
 
 10 Graham, op. cit., 59 ff. 
 
 "" News from Nowhere (Boston, 1890), 80. M Ibid., 128. 
 
 13 Ibid., 104. Also: "It would be possible for us to contend with and rob 
 each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining from strife and rob- 
 bery. That is, in short, the foundation of our life and happiness." Ibid., no. 
 
 14 Ibid., 82. 
 
 15 In describing how the old order failed, Old Hammond said: "[Most 
 crimes] were the result of the laws of private property, which forbade the 
 satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the 
 
 general visible coercion which came of those laws Again, many violent 
 
 acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused 
 over-weening jealousy and the like miseries [also based on the man-made idea of 
 woman as property]. That idea has of course vanished with private property, 
 as well as certain follies about the "ruin" of women for following their 
 natural desires in an illegal way, which was, of course, a convention caused 
 by the laws of private property." Ibid., 112. 
 
 u lbid. f 114. 
 
48 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 work will be a sufficient bond. 17 His ideal of "real learning" 
 is "knowledge cultivated for its own sake the Art of Knowl- 
 edge, in short^' 18 
 
 Nietzsche in a way returns to the basic principle of Hobbes, 
 
 i'n declaring that the focus of all activities and ends is in a 
 lesire to escape suffering, "in a longing for stupefaction of pain 
 hrough emotion." 19 This suffering is age-long, generally ' 
 recognizable in the feeling of guilt which has its origin in "a 
 bit of animal psychology no more." The relief from this 
 unpleasant feeling is the exercise of the instinct of the will to 
 power.' 2 ' 1 The ascetic priesthood have always studied to repress 
 this "instinct" and to deepen the feeling of guilt, thus robbing 
 mankind of happiness. 22 Modern science is the ally of the 
 priesthood in this theft of happiness. 23 The only hope for 
 humanity is in breaking away from both, in exalting the egoistic 
 blond beast, and then the hobgoblin "morality will die." He 
 looks for this transformation within the next two hundred 
 years. 24 
 
 II. Charles Fourier was in large measure the prototype of 
 theorists like William Morris and was a follower of Rousseau 
 and Helvetius, especially in so far as the doctrine that pleasure 
 
 17 Ibid., 127. Also: ". . . . Those more enlightened men who were then 
 [under the old order] called Socialists, although they well knew, and even stated 
 in public, that the only reasonable condition of society was that of pure com- 
 munism (such as you now see around you), yet shrunk from what seemed to 
 them the barren task of preaching the realization of a happy dream." Ibid., 145. 
 
 "Ibid., 97. 
 
 19 A Genealogy of Morals (transl. Hausmann, New York, 1897), 176. Plato, 
 Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, all regarded pleasure as cessation 
 of pain or discomfort, as does Nietzsche here. Cf. Wright, op. cit., VI, 72-91. 
 
 20 Ibid., 196. Elsewhere he explains the origin of this "feeling" differently: 
 "The feeling of guilt .... and of personal obligation has .... its origin in 
 the oldest and most primitive personal relationship which ever existed the 
 relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and debtor." Ibid, 82-83. 
 
 21 Ibid., 1 88 ff. Technically, Nietzsche does not make feeling or happiness 
 the end of action, but substitutes the criterion of will to power. But since he 
 understands by pleasure a feeling of increased power and by pain a feeling of 
 diminished power, his criterion resolves itself finally into a simple hedonistic 
 subjectivistic statement of the end of activity. (Cf. Werke, XIII, 254, 271 ff. ; 
 XV, 323, 33i if.) 
 
 22 Genealogy of Morals, 190 ff. Ibid., 214-15. 2 * Ibid., 225. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 
 
 49 
 
 is the end of action is concerned. -However, he believed in a 
 form of social control, meager in scope though the control was 
 to be./ For him the law of happiness is to social science what I 
 the law of gravitation is to physics. 25 He held that the instincts | 
 and impulses are naturally good and that the way to happiness 
 is to follow them. 26 Therefore it is necessary to study these ) 
 impulses or attractions coming from nature instead of the arti- I 
 ficial duties recommended by the philosophers. 27 He recognizes 
 that to follow the lead of our sensuous appetites (to which he 
 mainly refers) 28 may get us into trouble, but that is only because 
 our social organization is such as it is, and with the proper social 
 reorganization this disturbance would be removed. Hence the 
 necessity for instituting the system of the phalanstery. 29 One 
 of the incidents of the change in social control which he urges 
 
 25 Cf. Theorie des quatre mouvements, 107 (ad ed., (Euvres, Paris, 1846). 
 Compare Helvetius, op, cit., 322 ; also Lester F. Ward, Psychic Factors of 
 Civilization, 55, 94, and Dynamic Sociology, I, 486-87. 
 
 26 "L'attraction passionnee est 1'impulsion donnee par la nature ante- 
 rieurement a la reflexion, et persistante malgre 1'opposition de la raison, du 
 devoir, du prejuge, etc." Nouveau monde industriel et societaire, (Euv. (26. 
 ed.), 47. 
 
 "Le monde savante est tout imbu d'une doctrine appelee MORALE, qui est 
 mortelle ennemie de 1'attraction passionnee. La morale enseigne a rhomme a 
 etre en guerre avec lui-meme, resister a ses passions, les reprimer, croire que 
 Dieu n'a pas su organiser sagement nos ames, nos passions ; qu'il avait besoin 
 des lemons de Platon et Seneque pour apprendre a distribuer les caracteres et les 
 instincts. Imbu de ces prejuges sur 1'imperitie de Dieu, le monde savant 
 etait inhabile au calcul des impulsions naturelles ou attractions passionnees, que 
 la morale proscrit et relegue au rang des vices." Ibid., 125 (quoted from Gide, 
 Charles Fourier: (Euvres choisies, n). 
 
 "Les passions qu'on croit ennemies de la concorde ne tendent qu'a cette 
 unite dont nous les jugeons si eloignees." Gide, op. cit., 12. 
 
 27 "Tous ces caprices philosophiques, appeles des devoirs, n'ont aucun rap- 
 port avec la nature ; le devoir vient des hommes, 1'attraction vient de Dieu ; or, 
 si Ton veut connaitre les vues de Dieu, il faut etudier 1'attraction, la nature 
 seule, sans aucune acception du devoir qui varie dans chaque siecle, tandis que la 
 nature des passions a etc et restera invariable chez tous les peuples." Theorie 
 des quatre mouvements, 107 (from Gide, op. cit., 10). Compare on the matter 
 of duty G. B. Shaw, Quintessence of Ibsenism (New York, 1904), 44-45. 
 
 23 See his classifications, Nouveau monde industriel et societaire (OSuvres, 
 he. cit.), 47 ff. 
 
 29 Ibid. , 99 ff. See also Gide, op. cit., 13. 
 
50 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 is that women should be sexually free at the age of eighteen/ 10 
 The wide influence of Fourier after his death is well known. 
 In 1841 Considerant lectured at Dijon, 31 on the prospects of 
 Fourierism and "there was loud and prolonged applause among 
 an enthusiastic audience." 
 
 Bentham was much less radical and visionary than Fourier. 
 His line of theoretical descent is direct from Hobbes down 
 through Locke and Hume, both of whom held to the theory that 
 the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain constitute the 
 ends of activity. 33 From them also he got his empirical phi- 
 losophy and largely his practical bent of mind which led him to 
 seek to apply his principles in common-sense legislation, or 
 rather to seek a philosophy of motivation to. justify and explain 
 his practical measures. He desired exactness. Though less 
 influenced by continental than by English thought, he and 
 Fourier held much the same views about happiness. 3 * "'though 
 Bentham regards "pleasure and pain" as constituting the sole 
 motives of life, 35 he recognizes that they need some social con- 
 trol, some selection and direction, and in this he advances beyond 
 Fourier and his type of thinkers. 36 As a guide to such selection 
 
 30 Cf. Theorie des quatre mouvements, loc. cit., 197. 
 
 81 The Academy of Dijon had given Rousseau a prize in 1750. 
 
 88 Kaufmann, Utopias, 82. 
 
 33 Cf. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, chap, xx ; 
 and Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. II, Part III, sec. 3. 
 
 "Fourier says of Bentham: "Je n'ai vu qu'un ecrivain civilise" qui ait un 
 peu approche de la definition du vrai bonheur; c'est M. Bentham, exige des 
 realities et non des illusions : tout les autres sont si loin du but, qu'ils ne sont 
 pas dignes de critique." Nouveau monde industriel et societaire, loc. cit., 348. 
 
 35 "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign 
 masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought 
 to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the 
 standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are 
 fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we 
 
 think The principle of utility (greatest happiness or greatest felicity) 
 
 recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the 
 object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law." 
 Prin. of Morals and Legislation, i. 
 
 36 "Pleasures, then, and the avoidance of pains are the ends which the legis- 
 lator has in view. It behoves him, therefore, to understand their value. Pleasures 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 
 
 5 1 
 
 he makes an elaborate classification of pleasures and pains on 
 the ultimate basis of intensity of feeling, 37 and later of the 
 different degrees of susceptibility of different people. 38 Aside 
 from his hedonistic doctrine he takes a fairly objective and 
 scientific view of the causation and social value of the act. 39 His 
 theory of feeling is for him only a method; his object is social 
 control and betterment./ 
 
 IIIJ The significant additions made to the theory of utili- 
 tarianism by John Stuart Mill 40 are ( i ) that he develops the 
 concept of quality in happiness, 41 by which term he understands 
 pleasure and the absence of pain; 42 (2) that he emphasizes less 
 the negative side of avoidance of suffering, thus giving the 
 impression of a higher conception to his theory; (3) that he 
 conceives the happiness which is desirable to be not that of the 
 individual alone, but primarily that of society or of the greatest 
 number; 43 and (4) that he justifies this wider reference of the 
 principle of happiness on the grounds of an acquired conscience 
 and the development of the social feelings of mankind. 44 It is 
 in these additions that we find him preparing the way for the 
 
 and pains are the instruments he has to work with ; it behoves him, therefore, to 
 understand their force, which is again, in another point of view, their value." 
 Ibid., 1 6. 
 
 37 /&tU, 16 ff. ss lbid., 21 . "Ibid., 35. 
 
 *> The justification for making a separate division for Mill and Spencer as 
 representatives of a tendency of thought may be doubted. They have their 
 place because they represent a radical transition in social and ethical theory. 
 Both had encyclopedic minds, such as transitional periods require of their 
 leaders. Mill's, because of his training, was a mirror for all the information 
 and theory of the past toward which he always turned sympathetically. Even 
 his arguments for the emancipation of women and for greater liberty are 
 platonic on the one hand and Eighteenth Century on the other. Spencer's train- 
 ing in natural science and his wealth of ill-digested, but modern, social facts 
 on the other hand, led him to look resolutely to the future and frequently to 
 deny his obvious indebtedness to the past, to formally espouse the doctrine of 
 evolution which he endeavored to apply to ethics and sociology, arriving how- 
 ever in the main only at classification. Both were in fact utilitarians ; the one 
 an apologist for the utilitarian theories on old logical grounds, and the other 
 unconsciously giving them a new lease of life through the application of bio- 
 logical and sociological arguments and analogies. 
 
 41 Utilitarianism (nth ed.), n ff. 
 
 ., g. "Ibid., 16, 24. "Ibid., 25, 41. 
 
52 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 socio-ethicists and neo-utilitarians to be considered in the next 
 section.J 
 
 Spejocer maintained that the utilitarian criterion, greatest' 
 happiness, either for the individual or for the group, is unmeas- 
 urable, 45 and asserts that happiness, the legitimate end of action, 
 must be sought indirectly by fulfilling the social conditions of 
 (i) equal justice, (2) negative beneficence, (3) positive benefi- 
 cence, and (4) pursuance of individual happiness or pleasure. 46 
 'liis main contribution, however, is that he modified the original 
 utilitarian principle, making society the constant term in adjust- 
 ment and the individual the relative. 47 In this practical negation 
 of his happiness standard he gives a distinct impetus to an objec- 
 tive and social as opposed to an individualistic criterion. In his 
 Principles of Ethics, however, he reaffirms this hedonic cri- 
 terion, 48 and finally brings in sympathy or sympathetic grati- 
 fication to harmonize the opposition between social control and 
 hedonic self -gratification or realization.^ To support his theory 
 
 45 Social Statics (American ed.), 8 ff. 
 
 "Ibid., 33 ff. 
 
 * 7 "The social state is a necessity. The conditions to the greatest happiness 
 under the state are fixed. Our characters are the only things not fixed. They, 
 then, must be moulded into fitness for the conditions. And all moral teaching 
 and discipline must have for its object to hasten this process." Ibid., 35. It 
 would not be impossible however to put a similar construction upon the teachings 
 of Bentham and other utilitarian writers, especially if they had possessed an 
 adequate conception of the essentially unitary nature of society which they 
 did not. 
 
 48 " .... No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable 
 state of feeling called by whatever name gratification, enjoyment, happiness. 
 Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable 
 element, of the conception. It is as much a necessary form of moral intuition 
 as space is a necessary form of intellectual intuition." Op. cit. (American ed.), 
 I, 46. 
 
 48 Ibid., I, 255. This method of extending the conception of the content of 
 pleasurable experience had also been practiced at a much earlier date by those 
 moralists who sought in the feelings a criterion of evaluation of activities which 
 would relieve them of the necessity of reference to religious or political 
 absolutism as criteria, and who were at the same time unable to conceive of an 
 objective social criterion. Cf. Hartley, "Of the Six Classes of Intellectual 
 Pleasures and Pains," Observations on Man (4th ed.), Part I, chap. iv. See also 
 Wright, op cit., 31 ff. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 53 
 
 he resuscitates the principle that pleasantness and unpleasantness 
 accompany useful and harmful actions respectively, 50 but clothes 
 the statement in evolutionary language. 51 To this he adds the 
 principle that pleasure can be made to accompany any activity 
 not inconsistent with the maintenance of life, 52 and concludes 
 that sympathy and altruism will ultimately be made pleasur- 
 able by society, hence happiness or pleasure will be the effective 
 as well as the natural guide. 53 He emphasizes the view that the 
 emotions or feelings (used by him indifferently) "are the 
 masters, the intellect the servant," 54 a principle later made so 
 much of by Lester F. Ward. 'In Spencer we see, distinctly, 
 signs of the future as well as of the past. Through him utilita- 
 rianism ceased to be merely logical and became "evolutionary/' 
 thus getting a new lease on life. Spencer marks the second 
 stage in an acute transition of which Mill was the first stagex 
 
 IV. Contemporary with and subsequent to Spencer, a new 
 school of ethicists arose, which may be called the sqciaLschool, 
 and which has acted as a sort of link between the old utilita- 
 rianism and other types of subjectivism on the one hand and 
 the rising school of sociology on the other/ In fact, Spencer 
 himself belongs to this school, and was in no small sense its 
 founder, as he has been to a considerable extent a contributor to 
 most recent related disciplines. The guiding principle of this 
 whole school may be found in Leslie^Stephen as well as another, 
 when he traces morality ba(^Jo_^cial_onditions. 55 And he 
 does this despite the fact that he holds to the Benthamite doc- 
 trine that "conduct .... is determined by feeling," even by 
 
 50 Cf. chap, iii, above. 
 
 51 Cf. Principles of Ethics, I, 79; and Prin. of Psy., I, sec. 124, 279, 280 ff. 
 Prin. of Ethics, I, 186. 3 Ibid., I, 302. 
 
 54 "Feeling versus intellect" in Facts and Comments (American ed.), 38, 43. 
 
 85 "Morality .... is a product of the social factor ; the individual is 
 moralized through his identification with the social organism [cf. Spencer and 
 the modern French organicists] ; the conditions, therefore, of the security of 
 morality are the conditions of the persistence of society ; and if we ask from 
 the scientific point of view what these conditions are, we can only reply by 
 stating that the race is dependent upon the environment ; by tracing, so far as 
 we are able, the conditions under which it has been developed, and trying to 
 foresee the future from the past." Science of Ethics, 454. 
 
54 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 present feeling and not by mere representation. 56 Like Spencer 
 he assumes the agreement of social and of individual welfare, of 
 life and happiness, but finds the assumption difficult to recon- 
 cile with the facts; 57 so, like Spencer again, he bridges the 
 chasm by the introduction of altruism and sympathy. 58 
 
 According to Green also "the true good is, and in its earliest 
 form was, a social good," in which self and others are not to be 
 distinguished. 59 This good is not a succession of pleasures but 
 of objects which, when realized, contribute equally to the satis- 
 faction of the "permanent self" and of society. 60 Though of a 
 different intellectual derivation, he is, however, strongly influ- 
 enced by the prevailing utilitarian ideas, and his disagreement 
 with the utilitarians on the subject of feeling appears more 
 imagined than real. 61 Sidgwick, however, finds two ends or 
 goods, "Happiness and Perfection or Excellence of human 
 nature meaning here by 'excellence' not primarily superiority 
 to others, but a partial realization of, or approximation to, an 
 ideal type of human perfection." 62 In a criticism of Spencer, 
 
 58 Ibid., 42, 47. He is closer to Bentham on this point even than Mill is. 
 He says: "Pain and pleasure are the sole and ultimate causes [of activity]." 
 Ibid., 50. 
 
 "Ibid., 432. 
 
 58 "Therefore it may be, or rather plainly is, necessary for a man to acquire 
 certain instincts [.sic'], among them the altruistic instincts, which fit him for 
 the general conditions of life, though in particular cases they may cause him 
 to be more miserable than if he were without them." Ibid., 433. 
 
 59 Cf. Prolegomena to Ethics, sec. 232. Ibid., sees. 234 ff. 
 
 61 "According to our theory the human perfection identified with ultimate 
 good is a 'state of desirable consciousness,' though not simply a state of pleasure ; 
 and pleasure is anticipated in the attainment of the desired end, though it is not 
 the end desired." Ibid, (explanatory analysis), sec. 364. Again: "According 
 to Mr. Sidgwick's theory, on the other hand, desirable consciousness is the same 
 as pleasure, and his Universalistic Hedonism (differing from the older Utilita- 
 rianism) seems to rest on the position that reason pronounces ultimate good to 
 be desirable consciousness or pleasure, and, further, universal pleasure." Ibid., 
 sec. 365. The difference here seems to be merely formal. All this is essentially 
 the same old subjectivistic philosophy in which the emphasis was always upon 
 mental states instead of upon objective results. 
 
 63 Methods of Ethics, g. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 55 
 
 however, he appears to reduce the two ends to one. 63 H. 
 Rashdall, a student of both Green and Sidgwick, takes an eclec- 
 tic position, adopting the happiness end of the latter, 64 and 
 making the combined social and intuitional reference of the 
 former the criterion for selection among impulses contending 
 for satisfaction. 65 
 
 Two contemporary social ethicists, who may be classed as 
 neo-utilitarians, are Frederick Meakin and Professor Dewey. 
 Meakin takes very frankly the view that pleasure or the idea of 
 experience which is pleasurable is the sole motive in conscious 
 choice. 66 From this view he makes a quick transition to the 
 idea of the essentially social nature of morality, 67 and bridges 
 the chasm with the social instinct [sic] which "pervades all our 
 instincts," but which he cannot quite conceive of as innate. 68 
 This contradiction throws him back upon a long discussion of 
 the question, "Does morality demand of the individual uncom- 
 pensated [in the sense of unpleasurable feeling] sacrifice?" 6 
 The possession of a candid mind leads him ultimately to take 
 refuge in religious values and something more than temporal 
 reward to avoid an affirmative answer. 70 Except for this final 
 refuge his theory does not differ essentially from that of Spen- 
 cer or Stephen. 
 
 Dewey on the other hand stands with Green in denying 
 that pleasure can be the cause of an act, 71 and distinguishes 
 happiness from pleasure, making the former a social matter 
 rather than individual. 72 But social interests are something 
 
 63 He says : "We both agree that the greatest happiness of the aggregate 
 of persons affected by actions is the ultimate end." Ethics of Green, Spencer, 
 and Martineau, 278. 
 
 "Theory of Good and Evil, II, 60; I, 100. " Ibid., I, 100, 180. 
 
 68 Op. cit., 90 and chap. x. Meakin may be taken as the most consistent 
 modern exponent of utilitarian theory. 
 
 67 Ibid., chaps, xi and xiv. 
 
 88 Ibid., 131. 70 Ibid., chap, xxviii. 
 
 69 Ibid., chaps, xxiii ff. 71 Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 269-71. 
 
 72 "The genuinely moral person .... will find his happiness or satisfaction 
 in the promotion of these [associational] activities irrespective of the particular 
 pains or pleasures that accrue." Ibid., 298. 
 
56 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 broader than sympathy, which he regards as "a genuine 
 natural instinct," and by means of which he finds himself unable 
 to reconcile the contradiction which had troubled earlier writ- 
 ers. 73 "What is required is a blending, a fusing of the sympa- 
 thetic tendencies with the other impulsive and habitual traits 
 of the self." 74 With "sympathy transformed into a habitual 
 standpoint" the self becomes moral, 75 and the persons who have 
 most of this are happiest, or at least have the "best" happiness. 76 
 He assumes that all men love happiness in the sense that 
 they wish to realize their desires, 77 and he also assumes the 
 identity of "true" individual happiness with the social happiness 
 as the condition of their realizing their desires for happiness. 78 
 On this basis he enters in conclusion a plea for a voluntary 
 democracy. 79 Thus Dewey also stands on practically the same 
 ground as do Spencer, Stephen, and Meakin, and like them 
 diverges only formally from John Stuart Mill. 
 
 V. Contemporary with the various writers mentioned here 
 were also a number of other writers who held to various other 
 
 73 Ibid. See also sees. 3 and 4, this chapter. 7 * Ibid., 299. 
 
 Ibid., 300. Is this different from the "good will" of Kant? 
 
 78 "To those in whom it [the moral interest] is the supreme interest it 
 brings supreme or final happiness. It is not preferred because it is the greater 
 happiness, but in being preferred as expressing the only kind of self which the 
 agent fundamentally wishes himself to be, it constitutes a kind of happiness with 
 which others cannot be compared. It is unique, final, invaluable." Ibid., 301. 
 Also : "Regard for their final happiness (i.e., for a happiness whose quality is 
 such that it cannot be externally added to or subtracted from) demands that 
 these others shall find the controlling objects of preference, resolution, and 
 endeavor in the things that are worth while." Ibid. } 302-3. 
 
 In the first of the above excerpts, Dewey appears to be confused oetween 
 "most" and "best", as well as to have given up the individualistic test of prag- 
 matism. In the second, he leaves us to guess what are the things "worth while," 
 nor does he tell us who selects them. If the individual selects them, they never 
 agree for different people, and if some social authority selects them the admission 
 of this fact disrupts his autonomous theory of ethics and of democracy. 
 
 "Ibid., 274. 
 
 78 Ibid., 301-2. This second assumption is the one which gave Spencer, 
 Stephen, and others so much difficulty. 
 
 79 "There is no way to escape or evade this law of happiness, that it resides 
 in the exercise of the active capacities of a voluntary agent ; and hence no way 
 to escape or evade the law of a common happiness, that it must reside in the 
 congruous exercise of the voluntary activities of all concerned." Ibid., 304. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 57 
 
 subject! vis tic criteria than that of feeling, though in various 
 instances they accepted feeling as the force impelling to action. 80 
 All of these doctrines are essentially intuitionalistic rather 
 than empirical, (i) Perhaps the most generally accepted of 
 all of them has been that of reason as an underived criterion, 
 and to this principle in some of its forms Kant, Green, Cud- 
 worth, Clark, Calderwood, 81 and others were adherents. (2) 
 Conscience or the innate moral sense was accepted as criterion 
 by such men as Hume, Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Butler, 
 Lecky, Lotze, Martineau, and Westermarck. 82 (3) Closely 
 allied to this is the harmony view of S. H. Hodgson, 83 Fichte, 
 and others. (4) A similar theory is the self-realisation doctrine 
 of Paulsen, Mackenzie, 84 Bradley, W. G. Sumner, and which is 
 held to in some form and degree by a large number of social 
 and ethical writers. (5) Another view which has had some 
 acceptance is the "moral principle of maximum activity" empha- 
 sized by Simmel, 85 Nietzsche, and others. This view, which 
 makes mere action the end, has had a considerable vogue in 
 recent polite literature especially of the type of Browning. 
 
 VI. It is necessary, finally, to relate the beginnings of func- 
 tional sociology to the general line of development which has 
 been under consideration. Sociology as a theoretical discipline 
 has so far been largely classificational, placing major emphasis 
 
 80 Cf. Wright, op. cit., 43 ff. 
 
 81 "Reason itself supplies the principles of rectitude, which cannot be reached 
 by induction from experience, as all rules of expediency are." Philos. Rev. (July, 
 1896), 338. 
 
 82 VThat the moral concepts are ultimately based on emotions either of 
 indignation or approval, is a fact which a certain school of thinkers have in 
 
 vain attempted to deny Men pronounced certain acts to be good or bad 
 
 on account of the emotions those acts [instinctively] aroused in their minds, 
 just as they called sunshine warm or ice cold on account of certain sensations 
 which they experienced, and as they named a thing pleasant or painful because 
 they felt pleasure or pain." Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, I, 4. 
 
 83 "Volitions, therefore, when judged practically, are judged by the antici- 
 pated harmony or discord which they tend to produce in the character of the 
 agent." Mctaphysic of Experience, 66. 
 
 84 "If we have any rational end at all it must consist in some kind ot 
 realization of our nature as a whole." Introd. to Social Philosophy, 255. 
 
 86 Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft (Berlin, 1892), Bd. I, S. 388. 
 
58 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 upon the so-called psychical "social forces." Hobbes, it was 
 seen, 86 had a classification of the "appetites" and "aversions" 
 and various supplementary mental subdivisions, which may be 
 termed social, as well as individual, forces. Fourier made an 
 elaborate though crude classification of the passions or 
 "social forces" to which he desired to give free play in solving 
 the problems of society. 87 Spencer devoted most of his atten- 
 tion to collecting and classifying real or pseudo facts about 
 primitive society, and very little to a theory of the application 
 of those facts to present social problems. That he was not 
 unmindful of the practical demand, however, is shown by his 
 classification of the criteria for action in Social Statics, referred 
 to above. 88 His final criterion, however, reduces itself to happi- 
 ness, or satisfaction of the emotions or feelings, as end, in 
 which arrangement the intellect plays the role of "servant." 
 
 Lester F. Ward's first book, Dynamic Sociology, was prac- 
 tically an amplification of this ultimate criterion of Spencer, 
 with a great deal of emphasis upon the efficiency of the "serv- 
 ant." 89 The views of both Spencer and Ward, as well as of 
 other earlier writers, as to the nature of the "social forces" or 
 conscious ends of social activity are thus seen to be subjectivistic 
 and individualistic, quite in keeping with the spirit of their 
 times and of the philosophy from which they learned. Accord- 
 ing to Ward, "The problem of social science is to point out 
 in what way the most complete and universal satisfaction of 
 human desires can be attained, and this is one with the prob- 
 
 88 Cf. above, chap iii ; also Leviathan, loc. cit., 41 ff. 
 
 87 Cf. chap, iv, sec. n. " Chap, iv, sec. 3. 
 
 69 In this book Ward classifies the social forces as follows : A. Happiness, 
 the ultimate end of connation ; B. Progress ; C. Dynamic Action ; D. Dynamic 
 Opinion ; E. Knowledge ; F. Education, the initial means of securing the ulti- 
 mate end. Cf. Dynamic Sociology, II, 108-9. In his latest work he rearranges 
 this classification somewhat, but the idea is essentially the same. The later 
 classification is: I. Physical Forces (function bodily) i. Ontogenetic Forces 
 (i) positive, attractive (seeking pleasure); (2) negative, protective (avoiding 
 pain); 2. Phylogenetic Forces (i) direct, sexual; (2) indirect, consanguineal. 
 II. Spiritual Forces (function psychic) i. Sociogenetic Forces (i) moral 
 (seeking the safe and good) ; (2) aesthetic (seeking the beautiful) ; (3) intel- 
 lectual (seeking the useful and true). Pure Sociology, 261. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 59 
 
 lem of the greatest happiness." 90 He appraises happiness in 
 terms of the number and rank of the wants satisfied. His 
 definition and placing of sociology show clearly his intellectual 
 ''inheritance" from Comte and even from Hobbes. 91 
 
 Winiarski has gone to the metaphysically ridiculous in 
 attempting to establish an identity between biologic energy 
 and feeling consciousness, thus reducing "egoism" and "altru- 
 ism" to actual social forces, akin to the physical forces, which 
 will enable us to formulate an exact science of sociology. 92 He 
 quotes liberally from English and American and other writers 
 closely connected with the movement outlined here. 93 
 
 Ross, in formulating his own classification of the "social 
 forces," 94 makes a semi-apology for differing somewhat from 
 Ward. 95 He, like the other classificationists of this group, is 
 
 80 Psychic Factors in Civilisation, 74. Again: "The problem of dynamic 
 sociology is the organisation of happiness." Dynamic Sociology, II, 156. 
 
 w "Considering activities as motions, the forces producing those motions are 
 the desires, and we have a science which may be called mental physics or 
 psychics. It constitutes the dynamic department of psychology and may also 
 be called the dynamics of mind 
 
 "i. The object of Nature is Function; 2. The object of Man is Happiness; 
 3. The object of Society is Action 
 
 "Treating human action as social motion, the forces producing this motion 
 are the desires, and we have a science which may be called social physics. It 
 constitutes the dynamic department of sociology or dynamic sociology in the 
 primary sense of that term, the department which treats of the social forces." 
 Psychic Factors of Civilization, 129, 130. Compare Hobbes, op. cit., 41 ff., and 
 Comte, Positive Philosophy, he. cit., Bk. VI. 
 
 92 "L'egoisme et 1'altruisme sont les deux manifestations elementaires de 
 1'energie biologique, comme 1'attraction et la repulsion le sont de 1'energie 
 
 cosmique L'energie biologique est dirigee dans chaque individu et dans 
 
 chaque groupe d'individus par la tendance au maximum de plaisir ou de bon- 
 heur possible." Rev. philosophique, XLV, 352-53. Winiarski, even more than 
 Ward, is reactionary and is included here merely as illustrative of a type 
 which tends to survive. 
 
 83 His chief inspiration appears to have come from Edgeworth's mathematical 
 applications to social subjects. Cf. ibid., 353. 
 
 94 In outline, the classification is : I. Natural Desires (o) appetitive, (&) 
 hedonic, (c) egotic, (d) affective, (e) recreative; II. Cultural Desires (/) re- 
 ligious, (g) ethical, (/t) aesthetic, (*') intellectual. Cf. Foundations of Sociology, 
 169. 
 
 Ibid., 167. 
 
60 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 convinced that "the cornerstone of sociology must be a sound 
 doctrine of the social forces," 96 which he, like the others, 
 regards as essentially and ultimately psychic. 97 He distinguishes 
 desires and interests as referring to conscious or' individual and 
 to social activities respectively, 98 certainly a step in the right 
 direction. One among the many writers who do not see this 
 difference is Stuckenberg, 99 whose classification of the "social 
 forces" does not otherwise differ greatly from that of Ross. 
 
 Ratzenhofer also has failed to make this elementary dis- 
 tinction and consequently classifies the various motives and 
 desires under terms which are purely abstractions. 100 His 
 view of the expansion of the more general from the more 
 special interests is not unlike the metaphysical derivation of 
 the later writer Winiarski mentioned above. 101 
 
 In Small's classification of the "social forces" the "interests" 
 are also in effect abstractions or forms, 102 but beneath these 
 forms lurk the original "social forces," the concrete conscious 
 desires and impulses. Even here, where the form of the clas- 
 sification has a social reference, the content is lodged in the 
 individual consciousness as the source of activities. 103 In other 
 words, one of the most objective of all these classifications of 
 
 86 Ibid., 181. 
 
 91 Ibid., 160-61. 98 Ibid., 168. 
 
 98 Stuckenberg' s classification is: I. Fundamental, (i) economic, (2) po- 
 litical; II. Constitutional, (3) egotic, (4) appetitive, (5) affectional, (6) recrea- 
 tive; III. Cultural, (7) aesthetic, (8) ethical, (9) religious, (10) intellectual. Cf. 
 Sociology, I, 207. 
 
 100 He classifies under the term interests as follows: (i) race, (2) physio- 
 logical, (3) egotic, (4) social, (5) transcendental (Sociologische Erkentniss, S. 
 54 passim). 
 
 101 Op. cit., Rev Philosophique, xlv, 363 ff. 
 
 102 The terms in the classification are : Health, Wealth, Sociability, Knowledge, 
 Beauty, Rightness. Cf. General Sociology, 198. He defines the interest: "In gen- 
 eral, an interest is an unsatisfied capacity corresponding to an unrealised condition, 
 and it is predisposition to such rearrangement as would tend to realize the indi- 
 cated condition Human interests, then, are the ultimate terms of calcu- 
 lation in sociology. The whole life-process, so far as we know it, whether 
 viewed in its individual or in its social phase, is at last the process of developing, 
 adjusting, and satisfying interests." Ibid., 433-34. 
 
 103 ". . . . These interests .... are the motors of all individual and social 
 action." Ibid., 435. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 6 1 
 
 the "social forces" does not get away from final subjectivistic 
 reference. Like the others, it is finally subjectivistic and indi- 
 vidualistic. 104 "In the beginning/' he says, "were interests," 105 
 implying that these internal impulses and desires are the funda- 
 mental and original facts in social life. Almost immediately, 
 however, he introduces the factors of physical and social environ- 
 ment into the situation and mentions them in advance of the 
 interests; 106 and a little farther on he appears to forget the 
 matter of subjective social forces altogether in urging a concrete 
 analysis and classification of the whole social process. 107 The 
 explanation is, of course, that he is divided between two systems 
 or methods of sociology, the logical subjectivistic-individualistic, 
 coming over from his contact with the earlier social and ethical 
 theorists like Mill, Green, Spencer, and Ward, and an objective 
 method derived from his actual observation of and participation 
 in the social process. The problem of harmonizing the two 
 methods does not present itself as urgent, for it has been the 
 custom of the subjective classificationists, their classifications 
 once achieved and proven logically satisfactory, to pigeon-hole 
 them and to appeal to objective common-sense methods when 
 they had really practical work to do. 108 
 
 It is perhaps significant that an economist of great reputa- 
 
 101 In a public lecture before the University of Chicago, May 13, 1910, Pro- 
 fessor Small declared that "human valuations are the efficient social forces." 
 He further stated that the valuations of men are to be compared with gravity 
 in the physical world, though they cannot be measured as accurately as the 
 latter, because they shift centers. 
 
 105 General Sociology, 196. 
 
 108 "All men, however, from the most savage to the most highly civilized, act 
 as they do act, first, because of variations in the circumstances of their environ- 
 ment, both physical and social ; second, because of variations and permutations of 
 their six elementary interests." Ibid., 197-98. 
 
 lor "p os itive knowledge of the social process must depend upon the use of 
 methods which avoid both of these vices [limited induction and the a priori 
 method]. It is necessary, on the one hand, to analyze concrete conditions. It is 
 necessary, on the other hand, t.o interpret each and every concrete condition by 
 locating it perfectly in the whole social process." Ibid., 226. 
 
 108 De Greef also has a classification of social elements or forces (cf . Intro- 
 duction a la Sociologie, II, 15), a classification, though based upon an abstrac- 
 tion, which avoids some of the worst errors of subjectivism. 
 
62 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 tion, who welcomes the psychological method for economics 10 
 and whose intellectual connections with the modern development 
 of the demand for democratic satisfaction is well known, 11( 
 should also put forth a "theory of motivation" or classification 
 of the subjective "social forces" as the prime movers to action. 111 
 It is perhaps not less significant that he further concludes that 
 the egoistic forces or motives can operate legitimately only when 
 modified, suffused, and controlled by the ethical or non-egoistic 
 motive, 112 which of course is nothing more than social control 
 in some form or other. In this view Wagner does not differ 
 essentially from Mill and the various other socio-ethical writers 
 who took their cue from Mill and his contemporaries. 113 
 
 McDougall has professedly abandoned the metaphysical and 
 logical methods of formulating a classification of the "social 
 forces," 114 and has constructed a theory of instincts and corre- 
 sponding emotions with derivative sentiments to serve as the 
 natural or genetic basis of a social theory or social psychology. 115 
 No other problem, except that of actually analyzing all the fac- 
 tors in the social situation, is of equal importance with deter- 
 mining the original equipment of social or human beings. But 
 that McDougall has failed in doing this, that he has made his 
 instincts predominantly out of acquired activities, can scarcely 
 be denied; so that practically his classification is scarcely an 
 
 109 Wagner, Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie, 3 Aufl., I Bd., S. 15. 
 
 110 Ibid., S. 38 ff. Also, Rede iiber die sociale Frage. 
 
 id. t 87. 
 ., 119. 
 
 113 For a characterization of the hedonistic economists see Gide et Rist, 
 Historic des doctrines economiques depuis les Physiocrats jusqu'e nos jours, 
 592 ff. Of a similar type of thinking, in general, is Giddings' fourfold classifi- 
 cation of the subjective elements of goodness as criteria for conduct of life. 
 He says, "The ideal good is the rational happiness that is compounded of virtue 
 and pleasure, of integrity and the continuing expansion of life [self-realization]." 
 Principles of Sociology, 407. Also S. N. Patten's theory of the evolution from 
 a pain economy to a pleasure economy belongs to the same general type of 
 theory. Cf. Theory of Social Forces. 
 
 m Introd. to Social Psychology, 15. 
 
 115 A less complete classification of this type was put forth by H. R. Marshall 
 in 1894. Cf. Pleasure, Pain, and Aesthetics, chap. ii. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY 63 
 
 advance upon the older subjectivistic logical classifications. All 
 alike are subjectivistic, stopping with consciousness, real or 
 imaginary, and covering up the real and objective sources of 
 stimulation to activity. 116 
 
 Thus has been traced in outline in this chapter the develop- 
 ment of social and ethical theory from Hobbes to the present 
 time. Hobbes started the discussion both as to the origins of 
 activity and as to the basis of the control of that activity, in 
 the individual and the group. It appears that the answer to the 
 former question has not greatly varied in the dominant line of 
 theory to the present day, though recently there is a sign of 
 change consequent upon a better analysis of nervous activity 
 and conscious processes. The latter problem was treated and 
 answered in various ways by such writers as Locke, Rousseau, 
 and others mentioned above. Through Rousseau the theory of 
 authority or control went over into three related schools, that 
 of the radical democracy, the modern individualistic socialism, 
 and philosophic anarchism. The straight line of development of 
 this idea, however, was rather through Locke, Hume, and 
 Bentham and the latter's school of jurists, as was detailed above, 
 with a measure of influence, however, from the various other 
 schools, as for instance in the case of eighteenth-century French 
 influence upon Mill. This has been the most effective and 
 practical line of development, and hence the one to engage our 
 attention here. This line of theory, like the others, has been 
 uniformly subjectivistic. Until recently it was hedonistic, even 
 among our earlier functional sociologists, such as Spencer and 
 Ward. But even with Spencer and Ward there is a perceptible 
 movement away from the old hedonistic criteria. 117 Their sub- 
 sidiary classifications, or the addition of other elements as second- 
 ary to the plainly hedonic, were beginnings of a movement away 
 from both the hedonic and the otherwise subjectivistic criteria. 
 
 118 Cf. also Williams, "Outline of a Theory of Social Motives," Amer. 
 Jour, of Sociology, XV, 741. 
 
 117 Ward is, in a sense, a reactionary in that (as pointed out above) he 
 developed to its limits Spencer's hedonistic criterion. But his emphasis upon 
 the social value of knowledge entitles him to a place in the transition. 
 
64 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 It was the admission of other social forces into the classifications 
 which had begun to appear with a further analysis of social 
 life. Ross discounts the hedonic element and Small drops it 
 entirely in his non-hierarchical classification, and the content 
 becomes predominantly objective. But the application which 
 they demand for these classifications is still primarily subjec- 
 tivistic. It has been difficult in the early stages of a social 
 science to depart from the models of the old subjectivistic and 
 individualistic philosophy. 
 
 However, the old philosophy will not suffice for the founda- 
 tions of a new functional sociology. Consequently the answers 
 to Hobbes's two questions must be in other terms. ^Ve can no 
 longer attribute the cause of the act or intrust the regulation of 
 social control to the individual's consciousness primarily, but we 
 must trace both back finally to the social and physical environ- 
 ment. To develop this point more fully will be the purpose of 
 the next chapter. 
 
V. THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY- 
 CRITICISM 
 
 (l) CRITICISM OF THE VIEWS DISCUSSED IN THE PREVIOUS 
 
 CHAPTER. (2) CHIEF OBJECTIONS TO THE HAPPINESS 
 
 CRITERION. (3) ERROR OF THE CLASSIFICATIONISTS 
 
 In the previous chapter the line of development in social and 
 ethical theory was sketched briefly and the close connection 
 between modern neo-utilitarian ethics and the rising functional 
 sociology was pointed out. It was found that, while latterly 
 the trend has been away from the hedonistic criterion of happi- 
 ness, the criterion of the end of action with these theorists is 
 still a subjective one, i.e., it makes the individual and his 
 mental processes, his individual choice, the determinant of what 
 his conduct shall be in a social world. The purpose of the 
 present chapter is (i) to criticize briefly the various views 
 discussed in some detail in the previous chapter, (2) to sum- 
 marize the chief and most weighty objections to the happiness 
 criterion, and (3) to indicate the essential error of the sub- 
 jectivistic classifications which play so large a part in the theory 
 of modern sociology. 
 
 I. Morris and Nietzsche were taken as types of the branch 
 of social theory which subjects all forms of social control to 
 the test of individual gratification, the latter as representative of 
 the anarchistic view of the naturalness of society, formulated 
 most effectively in modern times by Rousseau, and the former 
 as representative of the more individualistic and dominant 
 socialism, also largely traceable to the pronouncements of Rous- 
 seau. Whether happiness could be realized in the absence of 
 control, as they assume it could, is not a primary question here. 
 It is the task of this study to point out the anti-social implica- 
 tions of the happiness criterion of activity or conduct. Both 
 the men mentioned here conceive of social control as incom- 
 patible with happiness, and happiness is their end. Morris' 
 
 65 
 
66 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 assumption that remorse will of itself take care of transgres- 
 sion [of the happiness of others?] is naive and is contradicted 
 both by psychological analysis of the human instinctive and 
 emotional equipment and by all our knowledge of ordinary 
 life. Remorse is itself the creature of social control. Equally 
 unjustified is his assumption that people naturally like to work, 
 at least at things of social value. 1 His idea of education is 
 likewise esoteric and unpractical, as was his theory of industry 
 as a whole. Nietzsche also lacks a practical and scientific 
 knowledge of the original or innate equipment of individuals, 
 as is shown in particular by his use of the term "instinct," 
 which he applies to practically any habitual tendency to activity. 
 His account of reactive movements is metaphysical and untrue 
 to fact in the extreme. 2 The evolutionary value of morality is 
 entirely lost to him. 3 
 
 The same lack of information regarding matters of human 
 nature and social facts comes out also in connection with the 
 happiness criterion and the nonsensical "analyse de 1'attraction 
 passionee" of Fourier. 4 
 
 x The so-called "instinct of workmanship" (cf. Veblen, "The Instinct of 
 Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor," Amer. Jour, of Sociology, IV, 187), 
 which some of our pseudo-sociological writers have made so much of, merely 
 represents a tendency of the organism to be active. It guarantees nothing as to 
 the object or objects of that activity. Prize-fighting, professional gambling, 
 tramping are, from an individualistic standpoint, as effective methods of corre- 
 lating these tendencies to activity as any other. To get useful social results 
 there must be social control, and often coercive control, certainly resulting in 
 different activity effects from those Morris considered valuable. 
 
 a He characterizes the contradiction between the psychological and his own 
 interpretations as follows: ". . . . The difference is fundamental: in the one 
 case [that of the view attributed to the psychologists] the guarding against 
 further injury is intended ; in the other [his] the object is to narcotise some 
 torturing, secret pain which grows intolerable, by means of a violent emotion of 
 any kind, and to remove it, for the moment at least, from consciousness." 
 Genealogy of Morals, 176. Compare Ward, Psychic Factors of Civilisation, 55. 
 This view is hopelessly sophisticated and intellectualistic and even the view 
 which he attributes to the psychologists is more intellectualistic than the logical 
 psychologists themselves hold. 
 
 3 He received his training in classical archaeology and the classical languages 
 and was accordingly a litterateur, very much as was Rousseau. 
 
 * Cf. Nouveau monde industriel et societaire, 47 ff. A typical statement of his 
 is: "L'etat societaire, en donnant a chaque le plus vaste develloppement, 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM 67 
 
 Bentham, on the other hand, had a practical and relatively 
 social end. 5 He hoped to secure democratic satisfaction, i.e., 
 the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and he assumed 
 that individual happiness, which he regarded as identical with 
 pleasure, is also social happiness. In other words, he could con- 
 ceive of no social end as apart from the happiness or pleasure 
 of individuals. He avoided the problem of the individual and 
 social detriment of some pleasures by assuming a highly 
 sophisticated calculation of present and future values or utili- 
 ties of pleasures (all of which he regarded as being of the 
 same quality) quite regardless of the unconscious nature of 
 most of our activity, 6 and of the fact that retribution does not 
 always fall logically upon the delinquent, and further that the 
 chief factor in playing the game of getting the maximum 
 pleasure is one of shifting upon others the consequences of 
 destructive activity. 
 
 Mill's introduction of the idea of quality in feeling or hap- 
 piness and his substitution of the happiness of society for that 
 of the individual as the ultimate criterion, have been generally 
 admitted to be a practical negation of the happiness standard; 7 
 because the measure of quality is ultimately social and objec- 
 tive, and a distinction between the happiness of the individual 
 and that of society has meaning only when it is recognized that 
 there is an antithesis between individual gratification and social 
 life. The introduction of a social "instinct," or of acquired 
 social feeling, to remove the contradiction between individual 
 and social happiness is in itself an admission of the primary 
 efficiency of social control over individual preference in deter- 
 mining activity or conduct. 
 
 The same fundamental criticism may be made of Spencer 
 
 I'essor en tous degres est assure d'en voir naitre des gages de concorde generate, 
 et des ralliements entre les classes les plus antipathiques, riches et pauvres, 
 testateurs et heritiers," etc. Ibid., 333. 
 
 5 Cf. introductory chapter. 
 
 * Cf . reference to Thorndike, chap, iii, note 10, above. 
 
 'Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 227; Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 89; 
 Green, op. cit., 168 ff. ; Martineau, op. cit., II, no; Bradley, Ethical Studies, 
 106 ff. ; Rashdall, op. cit., I, 36; Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 279-80. 
 
68 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 and of the other neo-utilitarians whose views were analyzed 
 from this standpoint in section iv of the previous chapter. 
 Their views differ essentially only in the form of statement, 
 which has been growing less logical and more evolutionary. 
 Spencer assumes the biological and racial identity of the pleasur- 
 able and the useful, of the unpleasant and the harmful, an 
 assumption which a slight experience in life negates, both in its 
 application to the individual and to the race. 8 Dewey makes a 
 distinction between pleasure and happiness, which is unjustified 
 both by common usage and by his own treatment. He also 
 admits that the "greater" happiness will not follow from moral 
 (social) activity, but claims that happiness from such a source 
 is the best. 9 He does not answer the question, "Whose best?" 
 which would get him into difficulty. That it is not the indi- 
 vidual's best is evidenced, first, by the fact that it is chosen as 
 a result of some degree of social coercion or control, as a means 
 to adjustment to a situation, and, second, that it is not the 
 "greater happiness." The admission that it is society's best 
 would be the same old implied confession that social good or 
 survival and not individual happiness is the ultimate working 
 criterion. The assumption by Dewey and others that the happi- 
 ness of the individual is identical with that of the group, when 
 the end of action is a social one, is based upon two other assump- 
 tions, ( i ) that the democratically free individual 10 can know 
 all the social values and uses of an activity, and (2) that if he 
 did know all the social values and uses he would frequently 
 choose to his own disadvantage (from the standpoint of feel- 
 ing), since we cannot truthfully assume that the world is a 
 perfect harmony of forces and interests, i.e., that there is no 
 necessity for individual adjustment. 11 The former assumption 
 is an impossibility; the other an improbability. Only a social 
 organization in some degree compulsory has ever assured social 
 welfare and survival, and it is not likely that any other can. 
 
 8 Cf. Sidgwick, Ethics of Green, Spencer, and Martineau, 162 ff . ; Marshall, 
 op. cit., 352. 
 
 9 Cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 301. 10 Cf. ibid., 301, 303-4. 
 
 11 Cf. Lecky, op. cit., 61 ; Stephen, op. cit., 433. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM 69 
 
 This same fundamental confusion, it was seen, went over 
 also into the theories of the early sociologists like Spencer, 
 Ward, and their followers. 
 
 The secondary group of writers mentioned in section v of 
 the preceding chapter were introduced for the purpose of illus- 
 trating the contention that the subjectivistic criterion is not 
 alone limited to the setting-up of happiness as the end of activity. 
 When such criteria as reason, conscience, harmony, self-realiza- 
 tion, or maximum activity are used, in actual practice or living 
 the individual must go back of these criteria and find some more 
 ultimate criterion, in self -gratification or pleasure, conformity 
 to custom, the will of the deity, political authority, public 
 opinion, or finally the most complete scientific knowledge of 
 social phenomena or processes possible. It may be a mixture of 
 all these; but there is no assurance that it will not be the first, 
 i.e., the individual's pleasure. When it becomes the last as it 
 rarely, if ever, does it ceases to be individualistic and becomes 
 constructively social. Among the non-hedonistic writers men- 
 tioned above, however, it was and could be only individualistic, 
 because they had neither the conception of an objective social 
 analysis for purposes of control, nor did they have the means 
 for making such an analysis and for formulating a system of 
 social control on such a basis. Thus subjectivism in any form, 
 as a criterion, depends upon a failure to comprehend the organ- 
 izing, compelling, and final nature of the life of the social 
 process or organism the continued and compulsory existence 
 of the group as a social unity. This failure was also found to 
 exist in large measure, at least on the side of theory, among 
 the sociologists. The reason for this will be discussed more 
 fully in section iii of this chapter and in the following chapter. 
 
 II. The main reasons why happiness or pleasure cannot be 
 considered the legitimate or efficient end of activity, either by 
 the individual or by groups of individuals, may be summarized 
 as follows: 
 
 Many sources of individual and social pleasure are abnormal, 
 i.e., hurtful individually and socially. The drink habit, prosti- 
 tution, the "fashions" are striking examples of such hurtful 
 
70 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 pleasures. Any kind of an activity, regardless of its social or 
 individual values, may become pleasurable. 12 In some types of 
 sexual perversion murder is essential to the completest indi- 
 vidual satisfaction. 13 
 
 All candid utilitarians and neo-utilitarians have fallen back 
 upon the social or moral as the ultimate guide in life and 
 society, 14 and have failed to bridge satisfactorily the chasm 
 between the two criteria of pleasure or happiness and the socially 
 useful or moral. 
 
 The instincts are not social. There is no "social instinct." 
 Instincts are inherited reactions, i.e., inherited neural connec- 
 tions in the lower or subcortical parts of the nervous system, 15 
 which serve to adjust the individual to the most elementary 
 situations in his environment. Anything so complex as a con- 
 scious social adjustment must be brought about by a learned 
 reaction. Hence "instinct" cannot be used to reconcile the dis- 
 agreement between the happiness and the social-morality criteria. 
 
 Sympathy is instinctive only in the sense that imitation is 
 instinctive that there are tendencies in all individuals with a 
 uniform or similar neural equipment to react to the same things 
 in much the same way, whether the stimulus is received simul- 
 taneously from an object equally disconnected from two or more 
 persons or is received in series, i.e., is received by one through 
 another. Such "sympathetic" or "imitative" reactions may also 
 be acquired as habits. But the "sympathy" which takes care of 
 a new social situation is a matter of reflection. 16 Likewise the 
 concept "instinctive sympathy" is inadequate to reconcile the 
 disagreement between these conflicting criteria. 
 
 The argument that the happiness criterion is efficient if we 
 consider sufficiently the consequences of our choices (granting 
 that such consideration is possible) breaks down because acts 
 
 12 Cf. chap. ii. 
 
 18 Cf. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (English transl., New York, 1906), 
 526-7. 
 
 14 Cf . chap, iv, sees, iii and iv. 
 
 15 Cf. Herrick (Science, XXXI, 10) on the plasticity of the cortical processes. 
 
 16 Cf. chap. iii. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM 71 
 
 are not logically retributive and because no one lives long 
 enough to reap all the consequences of his acts. In a static 
 society in which all the members were "charter" members with 
 an infinite lease of life and infinite knowledge, the retributive 
 test might be efficient. 
 
 Nor can we make the qualitative distinction effective as a 
 guide, because the "more useful acts" or "better" happiness, indi- 
 vidually and socially considered, are so because the present or 
 contrasted activity, though not necessarily unpleasant, is out of 
 social adjustment. Readjustment means the breaking-down of 
 neural co-ordinations or internal adjustments and hence is an 
 unpleasant process. 17 All progress, individual and social, in- 
 volves more or less immediate suffering to those concerned. 
 The happy individuals and the happy groups are, to use an old 
 saw, those whose annals are brief. 
 
 But even in a hypothetically static group the individual could 
 not unreservedly follow the dictates of happiness or pleasure. 
 Education, if it trains in actual and functional social adjust- 
 ments, necessarily involves unpleasant internal adjustments and 
 habit acquirements. 18 There are those who claim the contrary 
 but they have not made good their claim. 
 
 The same objection holds against the view that happiness or 
 pleasure can guide one to socially effective functioning in a 
 democracy. There is everywhere an objective social world to 
 which adjustments (often unpleasant personally) must be made. 
 Adjustment to physical and vital conditions is the first 
 necessity of social as well as of individual life. Mental states 
 or conscious processes come in only as a means to these adjust- 
 ments, either directly or remotely. If the conscious processes 
 are made ends in themselves and consequently become opposed 
 to individual and social survival-adjustments, the end becomes 
 abnormal. 19 
 
 Society as it now exists, and as it must always exist if it 
 remains cultural, is largely based upon the self-sacrifice of the 
 individuals to the future. Society is made possible by an accu- 
 
 17 Cf. chap. ii. 18 Cf. chap. in. "Ibid. 
 
72 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 mulation of unconsumed utilities, and any individual who would 
 consume all the resources available without replacing them in 
 equal or greater amounts is regarded with disapprobation and 
 considered a parasite or criminal. 
 
 The fact that feeling is relative to its object led Spencer 
 to believe that "instinctive" and acquired sympathy could be 
 made pleasurable, and hence that pleasure could be made an 
 efficient guide to action. But social sympathy is only a method, 
 and hence involves internal disruptions and readjustments for 
 the sake of external adjustments, and when effective, i.e., when 
 it leads to control of the situation in the interest of another, 
 when it is not wholly subjective, and thus merely the feeling ac- 
 companiment of a realized or potential reaction similar to that of 
 the fellow socius stimulated as pointed out above it is likely to 
 result in the more unpleasantness and inconvenience the more 
 experienced. 
 
 It may be urged that in an ultimate perfect state of society 
 there will not have to be unpleasant adjustments, and that the 
 pleasant and the socially useful activities tend to merge. 20 But 
 this is presupposing an ultimate statical condition which the 
 facts of individual and social life do not justify us in assuming. 
 Life must always be a continual adjustment, though the more 
 we secure a scientific control of the physical and social environ- 
 ment the less radical and unpleasant adjustments are likely to be. 
 
 III. When it is remembered how ideas grow up, it is not 
 surprising that the first attempts at a functional sociology 
 a sociology beginning to deal with the concrete problems of 
 social control or social functioning should still follow after 
 the old subjectivistic both democratic hedonistic and ethical 
 individualistic writers on psychology and ethics, and thus 
 should be in large measure classificational rather than actually 
 functional. When Fourier made his famous and absurd classi- 
 fication he suffered from an almost total poverty of actual social 
 facts. It was not till after Spencer and the ethnologists, the 
 practical social workers, statisticians, etc., had got together a 
 
 20 Cf. Meakin, op. cit., chap, xxvii. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM 73 
 
 large mass of data that anything but an a priori sociology was 
 possible. But the mere presence of facts does not solve a prob- 
 lem. The problem must be stated and the facts bearing on it 
 must be focused. The very fact that the mind attacks a problem 
 means, usually, that an adjustment to the situation is being made 
 in a round-about way. Only familiarity with a situation makes 
 direct action possible. The early sociologists neither understood 
 their problem clearly, nor, as a consequence, were they able to 
 relate their facts correctly. As a result they sought a method 
 a method which would at once state their problem and solve it. 
 Influenced by tradition and by their own training, they began 
 by culling from the a priori and subjectivistic conclusions of 
 the previous psychological and ethical writers, and these cullings 
 they made into classifications of the so-called "social forces," 
 with which they believed themselves able to explain all social 
 phenomena. The origin and types of these classifications were 
 illustrated in the preceding chapter. 21 
 
 The constant aim of the most accurate, complete, and objec- 
 tive classifications of the "social forces" and few classifications 
 have been any of these adequately so far is to point out: (i) 
 how the individual acts or behaves, the organs he uses and how 
 he uses them when stimulated in known or unknown ways, and 
 (2) how a group acts or behaves, the types of control which 
 are exercised over individual activities or behaviors, in known 
 or unknown ways. In the individual these may be instinctive 
 or acquired (habitual) behaviors; in the group they may have 
 grown up unconsciously through custom, or they may have been 
 consciously legislated into existence, or taken on through pres- 
 sure of public opinion, or as a result of scientific investigation. 
 
 Those of the former type have been called "social forces" 
 and traced back to the individual consciousness and lodged there 
 
 21 There were, of course, some early attempts at explaining social phenomena 
 on a more or less objective basis, made by such men as Buckle and other 
 anthropogeographers and "economic" interpretationists. But their interpreta- 
 tions broke down because of insufficient data as well as because of the unwar- 
 ranted assumption of certain impossible mental or subjective consequences fol- 
 lowing from environmental influences. 
 
74 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 by the subjectivistic classificationists, because the individual is 
 usually conscious of his socially most conspicuous acts, and 
 when he is not thus conscious, consciousness is logically inferred 
 or assumed. 22 Thus a crude sociology stops at the sacred pre- 
 cincts of consciousness, and there in the forms of consciousness 
 ends its search for the "social forces." It is only recently that 
 we have come to think of consciousness as other than ultimate, 
 as caused and as merely a factor in adjustment. 
 
 With the same subjective emphasis and understanding, the 
 social behaviors have also by analogy been called "social forces," 
 when they were abstracted from the homogeneous social situa- 
 tion and were observed to be carried on through or by indi- 
 viduals. The distinction here was not at first clear, as appeared 
 in the preceding chapter, where "desires" and "interests" were 
 seen to be constantly confused in the classifications. Mere 
 forms of activity though they are, there is more reason for 
 terming the latter type of behaviors "social forces" than the 
 former, because they inevitably go behind the individual con- 
 sciousness to some extent and at least co-ordinate loosely the 
 most general types of social processes or activities. 
 
 The most accurate possible classifications of the kinds 
 instanced in the preceding chapter, if assumed to be essential 
 at all, mark only the most elementary stage in the analysis of 
 social phenomena, in the statement and solution of social prob- 
 lems. Our social sciences, as distinct from pure technologies, 
 have so far, however, dealt chiefly with such classifications. 
 For a long time economics was practically a logic of the hypo- 
 thetical interplay of whatever subjective "forces" the theorist 
 might feel himself inclined or compelled to recognize. Though 
 German economists of the practical school have in large degree 
 rescued this science from its former subjectivistic trend, Eng- 
 lish and American economic writers are as yet by no means 
 convinced. To show that sociology and ethics have been and 
 
 22 This assumption of the conscious nature of all activities is necessary to 
 any doctrine of thoroughgoing hedonism or subjectivism, as has been indicated 
 earlier in this study. 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM 75 
 
 are handicapped in a similar manner was the primary purpose 
 of the preceding chapter. 
 
 As we pass from an introspective to an experimental and 
 biological psychology, and thus come to analyze the conditions 
 of consciousness and to see how it functions in mediating 
 adjustments to our social and physical environments, we go 
 back of the mere forms of consciousness in our study of social 
 causation and control. Under such conditions, our search for 
 "social forces" undertakes to account objectively for the func- 
 tioning processes, (i) of the individual and (2) of the group. 
 In social practice we entered this stage when we ceased treat- 
 ing disease on the demonistic basis or attempting to cure 
 national ills by public prayer. But that the scientific spirit has by 
 no means mastered us as yet is evidenced by the fact that in our 
 criminological practice we do not ordinarily seek to reform or 
 "cure" the offender so much as to retaliate in an unprofitable 
 manner. Likewise our ethics is still written on this subjec- 
 tivistic and retaliative basis of limiting morality to the scope of 
 consciousness or intention. 23 
 
 The subjective "social forces" of these classificationists are 
 only forms of consciousness by which the subject recognizes 
 more or less efficiently the presence of personal activities, of 
 stimuli-response processes; while their more objective "social 
 forces" are only abstractions by which we symbolize and present 
 to ourselves more or less perfectly the objective social pro- 
 cesses. They are not forces; at the most they are partial 
 indices of social "forces" or processes. Nor have they con- 
 stant equivalents; for conscious processes and our statements 
 of social processes have at different times different activity 
 equivalents. They are qualitative rather than quantitative 
 indices. They merely invite to always further analysis and 
 re-analysis of the objective social situation; and it is on the 
 basis of these analyses that all our problems are to be compre- 
 hended and effectively solved. When a situation is once ade- 
 quately analyzed, when the forces lying back of the forms of 
 
 23 Cf. Introduction. 
 
76 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 consciousness or the abstracted and generalized types of social 
 and individual activity, are understood, the method of the solu- 
 tion of the problem is simply that of the application of common 
 sense. The only mystery there is about the treatment of social 
 problems is that which we make by being content to stop with 
 the forms of consciousness in our analysis. We talk about the 
 riddle of personality as an impregnable barrier to an adequate 
 understanding of social conditions, because we are attempting 
 to work out a logic of forces and activities from the kaleido- 
 scopic presentations of our conscious processes. 
 
 The problem, then, before sociologists is to push farther 
 back the analysis of objective phenomena. Sociology cannot 
 retain the solipsistic character of a solipsistic discipline and 
 attain to the efficiency of a true science. As psychology retreats 
 from its introspective analysis of the solipsistic self, and as 
 ethics gives up mere intention as the criterion of morality, so 
 sociology must turn from a subjectivistic classification of 
 "social forces" and study the functioning of objective social 
 processes as they operate in individuals and groups. It is 
 even fitting that the "science of society" should lead the move- 
 ment and make the demand upon related sciences for new 
 materials and a new method. Already much practical work 
 has been done among sociologists, economists, and political 
 scientists. History, however, is still largely subjectivistic, giv- 
 ing its attention in the main to what is reputed to have been 
 in the minds of certain men in certain abstracted situations. 
 
 To recapitulate, the prevailing tendency in social theory 
 and practice almost since the time of Hobbes has been toward 
 democratic gratification. As opposed to the view and practice 
 which it supplanted, that of aristocratic gratification, it is an 
 obvious improvement. But we are now beginning to see that 
 this tendency is only a stage in social and ethical development, 
 and that as an ideal it is inadequate for our needs. The sub- 
 stitute which we seek for it in turn is democratic social con- 
 servation. The question arises, How may we attain it? 
 Obviously only by changing our measure of values from the 
 subjectivistic individual criterion where it now rests to the 
 
THEORIES OF THE END OF ACTIVITY CRITICISM 77 
 
 .social criterion of the good and development of society as a 
 whole, the survival and growth of the largest unified group, 
 based upon the completest possible scientific and objective 
 analysis of the conditions of social activity in the individual and 
 the group. The history of the development of this conception 
 and the exposition of the method by which it must be realized is 
 the subject of the next chapter. 
 
VI. THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 
 
 DEMAND OF SOCIAL PRACTICE FOR A NEW SOCIAL THEORY. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY OF THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 
 
 THEORY OF THE SOCIAL ORGANISM AND INDIVIDUAL LIB- 
 ERTY. DEMAND FOR OBJECTIVE SOCIAL ANALYSIS AS A 
 
 MEANS TO SOCIAL CONTROL. THE FUNCTION OF THE 
 
 ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 
 
 The old subject! vistic and highly intellectualistic classifica- 
 tions of the social forces with their attendant implications of 
 individualistic reference and the practical negation of objective 
 social control have proved highly unsatisfactory. The ideal of 
 democratic satisfaction as a sufficient criterion for social action 
 is gradually being repudiated and another ideal of democratic 
 conservation is steadily growing. We have seen the trend away 
 from the purely individual and hedonic reference of the socio- 
 logical classifications of Spencer and Ward, to classifications 
 with a mainly objective reference, as in the cases of Small, 
 Ratzenhofer, and De Greef, where chiefly the wording and 
 minor applications betray the subjectivistic origins. But the 
 present trend is to avoid all classifications whatever from the 
 purely psychical or independently volitional side, and to launch 
 out into an objective analysis of social facts as they operate in 
 people and in groups, in order to bring these facts under control. 
 This is a clear sign that sociology is becoming a science of 
 definite and reasonably dependable social facts, i.e., of society, 
 instead of an introspective mental discipline based on the solip- 
 sistic assumption of independent psychical causation. 1 Social 
 practice has been, in the main, objective in its application and 
 reference, and is becoming more so a fact which has called for 
 a social philosophy which can explain and justify current social 
 practice. The demand for such an explanatory and communi- 
 
 1 See, by way of contrast, Ward, Psychic Factors of Civilization, 55, 129; 
 Small, op. cit., 435 ; Ross, op. cit., 160-61 ; Judd, op. cit., Psy. Rev., March, 1910. 
 
 78 
 
THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 79 
 
 catory social theory has become imperative and is being acceded 
 to, though somewhat reluctantly. This reluctance is due both to 
 the deterring influence of contrary traditions and to the insuffi- 
 cient and poorly co-ordinated data on which to base methods 
 of procedure. 
 
 The line of development in sociological theory which has 
 done much toward laying an objective foundation for a theory 
 of social control or activity has been the one commonly known, 
 at least in its later development, as the theory of the social 
 organism. This theory has had its main development in France. 
 Hobbes, however, speaks of the state (society) as an immense 
 man. 2 He had a conception of compulsory or organic social 
 unity, though it was determined by his theory of political abso- 
 lutism. But Comte appears to have been the first writer to have 
 a really functional conception of the fundamental nature of the 
 social unity. He was strongly impressed with the necessity of 
 some means of co-ordinating or controlling social action in 
 order to bring it to the greatest efficiency. Out of this appre- 
 ciation grew his mystical and autocratic, and not at all scien- 
 tific, view of humanity as an ever-growing and perfecting whole, 
 in which the individual merges and becomes a factor in the 
 eternal human and social process, thus, and thus only, achieving 
 immortality. 3 This view was the center of his doctrine of the 
 religion of humanity, and aside from its mystical and emotional 
 setting may be said to presage an important later scientific 
 conception. 4 
 
 Herbert Spencer, under the influence of the biological dis- 
 coveries of his time, took up Comte's idea of the unity of the 
 group or society and clothed it in a biological analogy, thus 
 rendering it concrete if not conclusive. 5 The French and Rus- 
 
 2 Leviathan, Introduction. 
 
 3 Cf. "Theory of the Future of Man," System of Positive Polity, IV (transl. 
 Congreve), chap. i. 
 
 * Saint-Simon, like Plato, had earlier put forward a social program which 
 involved this idea of the essential or organic unity of society, but in his mind 
 it was primarily a political unity (cf. L'organisateur and Systeme industriel). 
 
 5 Cf. "The Social Organism," Essays Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 
 I, 265 ff. 
 
8o AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 sian writers in particular were impressed by Spencer's analogy 
 and, under the enthusiasm for its concreteness, for a while lost 
 sight of its value as a symbol in attempting to establish the 
 biological nature of society in detail. 
 
 Paul von Lilienfeld took as his thesis the view that society 
 is a living organic natural product. 6 De Greef takes a similar 
 position, introducing, however, the idea of the "superorgan- 
 ism." 7 This modifying concept of the superorganism was later 
 somewhat more extensively developed at the expense of the 
 biological analogy. 8 Worms limits the term social organism 
 much more closely than the older writers 9 did, applying it only 
 to nationalities, which have permanence of functioning. 10 
 Pioger drops the analogy between man and the cell, in the 
 organism, and compares the former in his activities, rather, to 
 a drop of blood circulating in the body. 11 He does not find 
 human society so fundamentally different from insect and ani- 
 mal societies, as most writers had; a much exaggerated and 
 over-estimated intelligence being the sole distinguishing factor. 12 
 The present tendency among French sociologists seems to be to 
 
 6 "Die menschliche Gesellschaft ist, gleich den Naturorganismen, ein reales 
 Wesen, ist nichts mehr, als cine Fortsetzung der Natur, ist nur ein hoherer 
 Ausdruck derselben Krafte, die alien Naturerscheinungen zu Grunde liegen." 
 "Die Menschliche Gesellschaft als realer Organismus," in Gedanken iiber die 
 Socialwissenschaften der Zukunft, I Vorwort. 
 
 7 Cf . Introduction a la Sociologie, II, 12 ft'. 
 
 8 Cf. Pioger, La vie sociale, chap. ii. 
 * E.g., Novicov. 
 
 10 Cf. Organisme et societe t 31 ff. u Op. cit., 38. 
 
 12 "En realite I'homme suit sa voie dans la societe dont il fait partie absolu- 
 ment comme la fourmi remplit son role dans sa fourmiliere, comme 1'abeille 
 dans sa ruche : la seule difference, c'est que dans la societe humaine il y a 
 des individus qui presentent une merveilleuse adaptivite que nous appelons 
 1'intelligence et a laquelle nous nous obstinons a attribuer exclusivement la 
 marche de 1'humanite, comme si, en realite, nous pouvions vraiment pretendre 
 
 que c'est la raison qui nous mene II est temps d'abandonner nos 
 
 illusions a ce sujet: le determinisme ne perd pas plus ses droits en evolution 
 
 sociale qu'en evolution organique ou physique Nous comprendrons ainsi 
 
 combien sont illusoires nos preventions a croire que nous faisons ou pouvons 
 refaire la societe. Pas plus que nous ne pouvons pretendre pouvoir refaire 
 nos organes, pas plus nous ne pouvons changer la structure sociale." Ibid., 
 39-40. 
 
THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 8 1 
 
 base the theory of the compulsory or essential unity of society 
 upon the principle of the division of labor or of social functions, 
 an explanation destined to be of the greatest value in the future 
 development of social science and practice. 13 
 
 Novicov was one of the first among sociologists to see the 
 necessity of applying the theory of evolution to social facts in 
 the interest of a science of sociology. 14 He pointed out in 1897 
 that the prevailing classifications based upon sex, economic, 
 juridical, ethnic, etc., phenomena are discrete, non-exclusive, and 
 anarchistic. At the same time he urged the organic view of 
 society as the only substitute capable of securing unity of activity 
 in social matters. 15 He sees no hope for a science of sociology 
 until the subjectivistic criteria can be eliminated. 16 Pioger also 
 argues against the prevailing disunity of the object of attention 
 in sociology and social practice. 17 
 
 The critics of the organic view of society, in pointing out 
 the absurdities of the biological homologies, which even the 
 
 13 Durkheim, De la division du travail social; and Pioger, op. cit., 42 ff. 
 
 4 "La theorie de 1'evolution est d'abord formulee par les naturalistes, 
 
 puis generalisee par les philosophes Des lors la sociologie devient pos^ 
 
 sible, et, en peu d'annees, elle va acquerir une importance de primier ordre." La 
 politique Internationale (Paris, 1886),' u. 
 
 13 Cf. Conscience et volonte sociales, 2-3. Also : "Ainsi quelle est 1'utilite de 
 1'organicisme ? Elle peut se resumer ainsi : la theorie organique creera un mode 
 de penser particulier dans la sociologie: un mode realiste, positif. Elle nous 
 debarrassera, une fois pour toutes, des methodes abstraites. Au lieu de cette 
 affirmation generate, on peut dire aussi que la theorie organique nous delivera 
 de ramorphisme, de la metaphysique et du conservatisme." "La theorie orga- 
 nique des societes," Annales de I'Institut international de sociologie (1898), 188. 
 
 16 "Elle [sociologie] ne pourra se constituer en science exacte que si sa 
 generalisation derniere cesse d'etre une affaire d'appreciation personnelle. 
 
 Elle se constituera quand elle aura une generalisation rationelle La 
 
 porte est ouverte a 1'arbitraire, a la fantaisie et a I'empirisme. Chacun arrive 
 avec son petit systeme personnel et on ne voit pas pourquoi celui de Jean 
 doit etre plus mauvais que celui de Paul." Conscience et volonte sociales, 9-10. 
 
 17 "C'est, en effet, une grande illusion de s'imaginer qu'on peut avoir des 
 idees justes sur la morale, la politique, la propriete, le droit ou la justice, 
 sans avoir besoin d'approfondir la notion meme de ce qu'est une societe. C'est 
 a peu pres comme les 'gens du monde' qui s'imaginent naivement avoir des 
 idees precises sur leur sante et leurs maladies sans avoir appris la biologic, sans 
 se douter de leur ignorance." Op. cit., 30. 
 
82 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 earlier writers did not generally regard as primary and which 
 have long been practically abandoned, have neglected the essen- 
 tial idea and purpose of this theory. This purpose was not ever 
 except in certain aberrations to prove that society is a living 
 animal, but to prove that society is necessarily a living unity. 
 The real contribution of the theory is that it gave an objective 
 basis for the analysis and correlation of social phenomena in 
 the service of social control or functioning. The subjectivistic 
 and individualistic sociologists have objected that this view 
 destroys freedom and individual initiative. Sociology as a 
 science of social control, as a functional science, must doubtless 
 work toward limiting irresponsible activity or freedom in 
 pointing out and preventing the deleterious social effects of 
 such activities. Lilienfeld, however, maintains that the more 
 efficiently man is developed socially the greater his capacity for 
 freedom becomes. 18 True freedom of activity cannot be realized 
 in irresponsibility of action or under presumably purely sub- 
 jective or personal initiative, but only where all the conditions 
 of activity are uniform and thoroughly controlled, 19 where the 
 individual is not subjected constantly to unexpected stimuli and 
 impulsions which he cannot guard against. Where there is true 
 freedom there must be foresight of the results of the activity, 
 and the individual must be able to guide himself according to 
 the laws and principles of control which a science of social phe- 
 nomena makes clear to him. The essential motive of the organic 
 theory of society, at least in its later development, has not been 
 to reduce the freedom of individuals, except where that freedom 
 is anti-social. At its best it has been to present a conception 
 
 18 "Der Mensch kann frei, nach seiner Willkiir, so oder anders handeln, 
 aber nicht unbedingt, sondern mehr oder weniger abhangig von den physi- 
 schen, durch die Umgebung gesetzten Bedingungen. Je hoher der Mensch aus- 
 gebildet ist, desto mehr erweitert sich das Gebiet der Freiheit, und desto 
 zweckmassiger und vernunftiger werden gleichzeitig seine Handlungen." 
 Op. cit., 348-49. 
 
 19 ". ... As a certain atmospheric pressure is essential to the proper aera- 
 tion and circulation of the blood, so a certain weight of social opinion is 
 necessary to the complete expression of the nature of the individual, that is, 
 to the freest volitional action." Meakin, op. cit., 208. 
 
THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 83 
 
 of society, or of group life, as the necessary and compelling 
 unity of functions. This conception, it was expected, would 
 replace the old unscientific and subjectivistic criteria of activity 
 with a scientific and objective criterion and would supply the 
 individual with the necessary facts for guiding his consciously 
 chosen activities, as well as select his activities for him when he 
 is incapable of choosing them in a social way himself, because 
 of either defectiveness or delinquency. 
 
 The strictly biological theory of society failed because from 
 its very nature it could never get beyond the stage of analogy in 
 analyzing situations. It served to illustrate the essential unity 
 of society, but it could not describe the functionings of the 
 social processes with sufficient accuracy to bring those activities 
 under effective social conti*ol. This necessity for a completer 
 analysis of social phenomena has been emphasized strongly by a 
 number of writers and especially in this country by Lester F. 
 Ward and Albion W. Small. To Ward belongs the honor of 
 having emphasized first in an adequate manner the necessity for 
 discovering the facts of human society and of making them 
 generally known through a system of elaborate instruction. 20 
 This emphasis has justly given Professor Ward a chief place 
 among the leading sociologists. The great defects of his work, 
 however, are that it, like all the sociological output contemporary 
 with it, was done from an individualistic standpoint, and that 
 the importance and necessity for an objective criterion of social 
 control was not appreciated. Moralists of all times have dis- 
 cussed the question whether knowledge of the right necessarily 
 leads to doing the right, 21 and the protagonists of this theme 
 have never been able to convince the doubters. Nor can they 
 ever do so. Activity is the result of the set of the whole nervous 
 system (merely including the immediate stimulus) 22 and not of 
 the mere ideational processes alone. Consequently there is always 
 likely to be more or less dissimilarity between knowledge and 
 conduct. It is at this point that Ward's theory of the sufficiency 
 
 20 Cf. Dynamic Sociology, II, chaps, xiii-xiv. 
 
 21 Cf. Plato, Republic, book iv. 
 
 22 Cf. chap, iii, and Woodworth, op. tit. 
 
84 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 of research and instruction breaks down, as any theory of sub- 
 jective control must break down. Education, though it involves 
 a certain amount of objective social control, is not alone effect- 
 ive. It is, however, one of the most powerful adjuncts to social 
 control if it is of a functional and social nature. 
 
 Professor Small, likewise, has insisted strongly upon the 
 analysis of social phenomena as well as upon closer co-operation 
 among the social sciences in this work. In speaking of the 
 conditions of society, he says, "Life is an affair of adjusting 
 ourselves to material, matter-of-fact, inexorable nature." 23 But 
 his conception of what constitutes social analysis is not in the 
 last analysis, seemingly, so much the discovery of the concrete 
 facts of the working of the social processes as a kind of subjec- 
 tive analysis and co-ordination of real or imagined psychical 
 processes in the individual. 24 He conceives of social problems 
 as entanglements of persons with certain interests or conscious 
 processes to be satisfied. 25 "Sociology accordingly involves first 
 of all a technique for detecting, classifying, criticizing, measur- 
 ing, and correlating human interests." 2G Professor Small's 
 actual analysis of situations, however, is usually of the objective 
 kind. 
 
 23 General Sociology, 408. "Every social question, from electing a pope 
 down to laying out a country road, is in the last analysis a question of what 
 to do in the face of the grudging soil, and the cruel climate, and the narrow 
 space, of the region from which we get our food." Ibid. 
 
 24 Cf. ibid., 433-34; and Amer. Jour, of Sociology (March, 1907), 647. 
 
 25 "Social problems are entanglements of persons with persons, and each 
 of these persons is a combination of interests developed in certain unique pro- 
 portions and directions. All study of social situations must consequently be 
 primarily a qualitative and quantitative analysis of actually observed mixtures 
 of interests." General Sociology, 436. 
 
 26 Ibid., 437. This limitation of the problem of sociology to a study of 
 human experience (ibid., 184), thus making the object of attention for it an 
 isolated metaphysical entity on the analogy of the psychologist's solipsistic self, 
 instead of making it coincident with the study of human activity or function- 
 ing, has also been shared by others. Cf. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpre- 
 tations, Introd. ; Tarde, Laws of Imitation (transl. Parsons), 3: "Socially, 
 everything is either invention or imitation" ; Davis, Psychological Interpreta- 
 tion of Society, 199; etc. 
 
THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 85 
 
 The more fruitful tendency among sociologists, the line of 
 activity which is making good the failure or omission of the 
 organic analogists, has been in connection with the concrete 
 analysis of social conditions. For a long while the ethnologists 
 and anthropologists had a predominating influence in the de- 
 velopment of sociology. Both Spencer and Letourneau wrote 
 their sociologies from this standpoint, and the more recent works 
 of Westermarck and Hobhouse in the field of social ethics have 
 largely followed this lead. But, besides the relative simplicity 
 and non-cultural nature of primitive society, there are numerous 
 other limitations to this method which have prevented it from 
 being generally adopted. Of more importance is the actual 
 analysis of present-day social conditions, such as has been under- 
 taken by the host of writers on the structure and functioning of 
 particular contemporary groups and institutions. And most 
 important of all are the various more or less technical studies 
 in social psychology, anthropogeography, immigration, of the 
 labor question, of housing conditions and reform, in vital statis- 
 tics, in public education, in criminology, philanthropy, etc. It is 
 from the direct and co-ordinated application of these facts to 
 human conditions, and not from logical classifications of real or 
 pseudo-mental processes or "social forces," nor from working 
 over the solipsistic categories of a subject! vistic psychology and 
 ethics, that a valid sociology and social practice must be built up. 
 
 Much, however, of this objective analysis of social phe- 
 nomena has been unsatisfactory. The findings of the investi- 
 gator with a bias are always open to suspicion, and time is 
 always necessary to the verification and testing of facts. An 
 intelligible analysis and scientific evaluation of social phenomena 
 cannot be made without constantly keeping in mind two things, 
 (i) the perspective of social development, and (2) the unitary 
 nature of society. Most errors in the analysis of social con- 
 ditions, as well as in prescriptions for social ills, are due to dis- 
 regard for one or both of these principles. The two principles 
 are themselves closely related, the idea of the unitary nature of 
 society depending upon a perspective of social development, just 
 
86 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 as the idea of the unity of species comes only with the idea of 
 evolution. 
 
 While we must reject the theory of the biological nature of 
 society, it is necessary, however, to recognize its fundamental 
 contribution the emphasis upon the unitary character of society 
 and its sanction of objective analysis and control. Man's bio- 
 logical evolution, notably in connection with prolonged infancy, 
 makes a social organization necessary to his existence. All insti- 
 tutional and cultural life is essentially based upon such organi- 
 zation and often upon the strictest social control. The plea to 
 live according to nature or to conform our social institutions to 
 "natural" laws has no meaning, unless we wish not only to 
 undertake a difficult or impossible return to a non-cultural ani- 
 mal existence, but also to undergo reversion in our individual 
 physiological and organic constitutions. The social problem is 
 not the elimination of the artificial from social life, but its con- 
 trol, its subordination to the service of social ends and activities. 
 Such a control can be obtained only on the basis of a scientific 
 analysis of social phenomena. The analysis of the individual is 
 only one of the phases of such analysis, while the analysis of 
 conscious processes and wants or interests as "social forces" is 
 only a still further subdivision of the analysis of the individual, 
 and is co-ordinate with the analysis of his habits, instincts, 
 physiological structures, digestive capacity, etc. 27 The problem 
 of social analysis and of the determination of the "social forces" 
 is a much more complex, and also a much more fruitful, task 
 than the subjectivistic sociologists have appreciated. Only by 
 replacing and supplementing analogy and subjective classifica- 
 tion with concrete social facts can we hope to have a true science 
 of society, or sociology. 
 
 * Subjective factors, however, cannot be disregarded; for the character 
 of the social process depends in large measure upon the mental attitudes of 
 individuals and, with the development of a more adequate and scientific social 
 control, will depend in an increasing degree upon these attitudes. Therefore 
 the psychic factors must be analyzed not as independent phenomena but 
 always with reference to the fact that they are relatively modifiable incidents 
 of the general objective social process and with the purpose of utilizing them 
 in the service of a broader social control. 
 
THE ORGANIC OR UNITARY VIEW OF SOCIETY 87 
 
 The farther such an analysis proceeds, that is, the more we 
 are able to go beyond the na'ive conception of mere states of 
 consciousness as the sole or only worthy content of social life 
 and to abstract away from this consciousness social facts and 
 processes with objective reference and connection, just so much 
 the more we have a science of society. The less the reference \ 
 is to persons conceived as mental processes, as organisms exist- 
 ing for hedonic or egoistic satisfactions, and the more the refer- 
 ence is to the society as a functioning group of persons in 
 activity, the more the measure of social values ceases to be the 
 individual and becomes the satisfactory functioning of the most 
 efficient group of which he is a member. The more such a view 
 grows the less is the attention upon self-satisfaction, i.e., upon 
 the production of adjustments guided by relative feeling values, 
 and the more it is upon providing a controlled and relatively 
 constant environment for social life and activity. Under such 
 a condition the emphasis necessarily ceases to be upon democratic 
 gratification and falls upon democratic conservation. Likewise') 
 the social organization becomes in a sense compulsory, for only/ 
 where there is relatively complete co-ordination of activitiesj 
 based upon scientific analysis of social phenomena can art 
 effectively constant environment be maintained. But the basis 
 of this control, which is coercive where necessary upon certain 
 refractory members of the group, is not merely custom, individual 
 whim, or the "tyranny of public opinion," but the findings of"" 
 science, i.e., the analysis of social phenomena. 28 The rapidity 
 with which such a compulsory social control can be established 
 depends upon the rapidity with which an objective social analy- 
 sis proceeds. The conception of the unitary and organic nature 
 of society can be of great service in furthering such an analysis, 
 because it provides a new and effective standard for co- 
 ordinating facts and for directing research. 
 
 28 Cf. Ellwood, op. cit., 325. 
 
VII. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 
 
 I. The chief conclusions which have been formulated or 
 implied in the foregoing discussion may be restated as follows. 
 
 It appears that the prevailing type of sociology, especially 
 that which has developed in America and England, is a part of 
 the general movement for Herpnrratir gratifiratinp which had its 
 greatest vogue in the nineteenth and the second half of the 
 eighteenth centuries. It, however, is the particular outgrowth 
 of the less radical wing of that movement, known as utilitarian- 
 ism, and it developed under the influence of a growing analysis 
 of social phenomena, especially in the field of ethnology. This 
 sociology, like the preceding and contemporary utilitarianism 
 and neo-utilitarianism in ethics, has been and is prevailingly 
 subjectivistic and individualistic both in content and in form. 
 The other wings of the general democratic movement are those 
 of anarchism and hedonistic socialism, which have in various 
 ways affected sociology but which, under the influence of an 
 increasing objective analysis of social phenomena, are now 
 passing out of vogue in their extreme forms. The other types 
 of sociology of importance are those represented by the biologir 
 cal and organic viewsjjf society and by the "practical" sociolo- 
 gists those who aim at a concrete and objective analysis of 
 social phenomena for the sake of social control in some par- 
 ticular field of social activity. 
 
 Through the whole range of the development of social theory 
 so far there appears to have been a more or less constant move- 
 ment toward an objective statement of social problems. 
 Hobbes's philosophy was a protest against the subjective and 
 noumenal character of Scholasticism. Locke pointed out, in his 
 own terminology, the relativity of subjective presentations or 
 criteria, iBentham's professed and real purpose was to obtain 
 a constant and scientific experimental basis for regulating morals 
 and legislation, under which regulation every one should be 
 
 88 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 89 
 
 equal in privileges./ At his time whatever unitary nature was 
 attributed to society was thought of as imposed from without, 
 by divinity, sovereign, or popular institution, and not as spring- 
 ing from the internal conditions of human social life. Conse- 
 quently, he did not undertake an objective social analysis, but 
 attempted a subjective analysis of feeling consciousness, and 
 upon this analysis he based his social theory and policy That 
 his classification was not adequate to the purpose is, in the light 
 of what has been said above, to be expected. His followers, y 
 Mill, Spencer, the social or neo-utilitarian ethicists, and the 
 early sociologists have constantly extended the analysis and have 
 modified the criterion, till at last its hedonistic character is 
 largely destroyed or disguised, though its subjectivism remains. 
 
 'It has been extremely difficult for even the later ethicists 
 and sociologists, with their subjectivistic philosophic bias, to 
 arrive at the idea that society is a self -existent, an organic and 
 self -perpetuating unity, 1 that it is not the creature of deities, 
 sovereigns, parliaments, public opinion, acting as genuine or 
 quasi-independent entities, but that it as a unity creates these 
 as incidents and forms of its existence. Likewise they have not 
 readily grasped the fact that an adequate social analysis must 
 be primarily an analysis of this social unity, rather than of the 
 variable and indefinite phenomena "mind" and "feeling," which 
 are merely phenomena and forms of the greater social wholej 
 
 VHuman society is not merely isolated psychical phenomena, 
 as the subjectivistic and solipsistic sociologists appear to have 
 thought. It is not primarily interaction of mind with mind, 
 but co-ordinated adjustment or coadaptation of men to physical, 
 biological, and social environment, in which mental phenomena 
 play their part and no more. The analysis of mental phenomena 
 in isolation cannot serve as a practical working basis for social 
 practice and controlj 
 
 Objective social analysis is being made in some fields more 
 rapidly than it is being incorporated in a general theory of 
 social action and control. 
 
 1 Sumner has come closest to this idea in America, although he has been 
 hindered by certain individualistic preconceptions. Cf. Folkways. 
 
QO AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 The theorists of the social organism gave form to the 
 organic or unitary view of society basing the theory finally 
 upon the necessity of a division and specialization of functions 
 among the members of the group in order to meet the increas- 
 ing demands of population upon food supply and they sanc- 
 tioned in theory the demand of social practice for objective 
 analysis. They provided a social criterion based upon the rela- 
 tively permanent needs of society instead of upon the change- 
 able wants, interests, or feelings of the individual. 
 
 Only a unitary or organic view of society devoid, of 
 course, of the biological homologies and analogies, which have 
 previously been merely incidental to it in a na'ive stage of 
 development can furnish an adequate basis for analysis of 
 social phenomena and for the communication and application of 
 the findings of this social analysis, -so long as the individual is 
 regarded as the measure of social values or is regarded as one 
 of two poles, of which society is considered the other antago- 
 nistic pole, there can be no effective and convincing argument 
 for social conformity and co-operation^ 
 
 'Subjectivistic sociology, ethics, and psychology have con- 
 trived to perpetuate the pre-evolutionary conception of man as a 
 being of a different order from the animal world. A functional 
 sociology must drop this fiction and study man as essentially a 
 product of the physical, biological, and social conditions in 
 which he functions. Man's superior mental equipment must 
 undoubtedly be regarded as a superior means of adjustment, on 
 the basis of varied co-ordinated functioning, but not as a legiti- 
 JLJ --mate means to anarchistic self -gratification/ 
 
 It appears that the possession of knowledge is not a sufficient 
 preparation for adequate social functioning. The idea is not 
 compulsory, because it is not representative of the total equip- 
 ment for action. Hence, social control cannot be individually 
 r determined, but must proceed from a controlled environment 
 which provides the individual with a uniform and constant 
 source of stimuli. 
 
 TSocial control, moreover, cannot be based upon a subjectivis- v 
 tic criterion, because the individual cannot know the whole social 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 91 
 
 process, i.e., foresee all possible stimuli; also because feeling is 
 wholly relative to the objective circumstance producing it and is 
 not efficient individually or socially as a criterion of choice. 
 Feeling can easily be regulated socially through the control of 
 habit formations, and thus pleasant feeling may be made to cor- 
 respond to any useful social activity which is supported by public 
 opinion and organized society^ 
 
 Society regarded as an organism or essential unity must be 
 considered as in some degree compulsory and coercive, 2 but only 
 in the sense in which the social organization controls the physi- 
 cal, biological, and social environment in which the individual 
 functions. This control, to be adequate, must be on the basis of 
 the completest possible scientific analysis of social phenomena, 
 and must be exercised by a democratic or by some other flexible 
 control. The compulsion or coercion which the group normally 1 
 employs is justified on the ground that the social organization \ 
 selects the better activity, socially considered, when the indi- 
 vidual will not or cannot. If the social analysis is unreliable or 
 if the administration of control is open to question, there will be 
 a constant reference back from the group to the individual, as 
 the center of social values, which will result in a more adequate 
 analysis and control socially. 
 
 As a matter of fact, group control with coercion has always 
 
 2 The terms compulsion or coercion are made to refer, in this study, to 
 any method or means by which society, as the greater functioning unity, 
 secures conformity and co-operation, either of a conscious or unconscious sort, 
 in carrying on the organic or unified social process. If a highly conscious 
 system of social education is found feasible and if it operates more effect- 
 ively than the harsh and milder forms of autocratic and traditional control 
 as doubtless it would under a system of scientific social control it will gradu- 
 ally supplant the other forms. In fact, it is not conceivable that efficient and 
 permanent social control or adjustment can be attained through education, 
 except on the basis of a scientific and objective analysis of social phenomena 
 or processes. The primary purpose of education, even, is to provide for the 
 developing socius those stimuli to thought and action which are deemed most 
 valuable in shaping his character. Education becomes thereby a method of 
 social control which is always in some degree compulsory and coercive. The 
 important thing, in this as in other forms of control, is to preserve, by what- 
 ever means necessary, the unity and apportionment of social functions and thus 
 to preserve the cultural gains of civilization. The contention here is that the 
 method will be more effective if scientifically determined. 
 
Q2 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 been the prevailing form of social control. Such controls have 
 variously been based upon mythological, theological, and meta- 
 physical categories, and sooner or later they have always broken 
 down, because they were not based on an adequate social analysis. 
 
 A complete scientific social control cannot be expected to 
 become operative at once, of course, but where a social fact is 
 established it should become as obligatory as the laws of astron- 
 omy or physics. The wilful disregard of the laws of health, of 
 social hygiene, of public morality, should have as little tolerance 
 as a wilful disregard of the law of falling bodies when the opera- 
 tion of this law has social consequences of equal importance. 
 
 The social organization, or the group, is the social object of 
 primary importance, while the individual is secondary, constitu- 
 tive, and contributory. Society is relatively constant, while the 
 individual is relatively modifiable. 3 In fact, man with his intelli- 
 gence, language, arts, is the product of group life, of the neces- 
 sity for co-ordinate adjustment to environment to a much greater 
 extent than the group is the product of inherent psychic charac- 
 teristics of people. Even animal life is largely group life. 
 
 With such an objective and scientific basis of social control 
 replacing the old subjective criteria of activity, we may look for 
 a policy of democratic conservation instead of one of democratic 
 gratification, for an ideal of social service in the place of a reign 
 of hedonism. 
 
 II. Some of the more important implications of this organic 
 or unitary view of society need to be mentioned briefly. 
 
 Such a view does not imply the rule of an elite in any objec- 
 tionable sense. So far, all groups which have survived have 
 been controlled either by an autocrat or by an elite. The medi- 
 cine men, the patriarchs, the old men, chiefs, tyrants, kings, oli- 
 
 3 Robert Owen expressed this idea, possibly in somewhat extreme form, 
 a century ago : "The character of man is, without a single exception, always 
 formed for him ; .... it may be, and is chiefly, created by his predecessors ; . . . . 
 they give him, or may give him, his ideas and habits, which are the powers that 
 govern and direct his conduct. Man, therefore, never did, nor is it possible he 
 ever can, form his own character." A New View of Society (3d ed.), 91-92. 
 See also, Spencer, Social Statics, 35. This idea is coming to be basic in scientific 
 social technology. 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 93 
 
 garchies, popular assemblies composed of demagogues and poli- 
 ticians, at different stages of development and in different places, 
 have always ruled. There has never been, and it is not conceiv- 
 able that there ever will be, a pure democracy of very consider- 
 able proportions, in which every man is equally free and capable 
 in forming his opinions and in expressing his activities. Experi- 
 ence is leading us in the United States toward the adoption of the 
 policy of centralized administration by experts, who are made 
 directly responsible to the people. Every social organization must 
 be coercive to the extent necessary for efficiency or it must break 
 down. A social organization based upon a scientific analysis 
 and control of social phenomena in the broadest sense involves 
 the rule of an elite in no greater degree than is implied in the 
 responsible direction of administrative details by experts, instead 
 of more or less irresponsible control and exploitation by pro- 
 fessional politicians. If we could conceive of a society in which 
 all the individuals were equally informed on all social matters 
 and all absolutely sincere, all traces of an elite composed of 
 experts, of aristocrats, or of professional politicians would dis- 
 appear. But that is an impossibility. 
 
 Nor does such a view of society deny the necessity for social 
 change or fail to make provision for it. On the contrary, it 
 prescribes the condition for such change, demanding that all 
 adjustments of individuals to the group shall be made on the 
 basis of a scientific analysis and evaluation of social phenomena, 
 so far as such knowledge is available; and it further makes it 
 obligatory upon the individual to discover such knowledge where 
 it is possible for him to do so. But since the individual cannot 
 discover all the needed facts for himself, it recognizes the neces- 
 sity for having these facts brought to the attention of the 
 individual by the social organization, which must also demand 
 social conformity. Those activities not under a scientific social 
 control and which need adjustment, should be readjusted so far 
 as possible on the basis of scientifically determined knowledge 
 of social facts, which it is the business of the social organization 
 to supply and enforce through whatever agencies are most 
 effective education, investigation, expert service, etc. The 
 
94 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 main emphasis of this view of society is upon the abolition of 
 whimsical, subjectivistic, hedonistic, and thus predominantly 
 anti-social, adjustments and maladjustments, through insistence 
 upon scientific social adjustments so far as a science of society 
 can provide the facts. 
 
 Thus the social organism or organization, intelligently 
 considered, establishes its importance, first, as a means for 
 stimulating analysis and co-ordination of social phenomena for 
 guidance in social control, and, second, as the means to the dis- 
 semination and enforcement of the findings of such investiga- 
 tions. At the present time we have no adequate machinery for 
 the investigation of such facts on a large scale and our sociology, 
 because of its largely subjectivistic reference and emphasis, is 
 almost entirely impotent to direct such investigation. 
 
 Any compulsory organization not supplied with all the facts 
 necessary to a scientific social control must necessarily make 
 mistakes, as all social organizations so far have. Useful activi- 
 ties are liable to be interdicted and harmful ones to be 
 encouraged. The difficulty, however, rests not with control itself 
 when conscientiously administered but with an inadequate 
 social science. The ever-present problem of social science is 
 to discover what adjustments will be most effective in securing 
 social development and the survival of the group and of the 
 individual. 4 
 
 Perhaps the chief advantage of the frank recognition of 
 the inherently compulsory nature of the social unity as here 
 explained, is that it assists in centering the attention upon the 
 organic nature or connectedness of social problems, i.e., of 
 cases of maladjustment. It promotes analysis and leads to 
 the relating of problems to one another, in that it demands 
 a co-ordination of knowledge about the problem with a view 
 to group survival. Under such a grouping, sociology and 
 
 4 To guard against a possible misunderstanding, it seems necessary to say 
 that group or social survival must also include the survival of all those indi- 
 viduals who are capable of social service. It is almost axiomatic that the 
 group must be so constituted as to provide the utmost possible opportunity 
 for the training of individuals in social functions and to utilize their capaci- 
 ties when so trained. 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 95 
 
 social policy cease to be confusions of apparently more or 
 less unrelated problems, many of which conflict in their solu- 
 tions. With all minor social or personal problems thus under- 
 stood as converging in one large and conclusive problem of 
 group survival and growth, each particular problem becomes 
 an attempt to co-ordinate all the activities, thus working toward 
 the abolition of social waste. 
 
 The group which is regarded as the object of attention 
 will always be the most inclusive group which can be made 
 to function as a unity. Hitherto it has been the ambition of 
 most great religions, and of many empires, to treat the world 
 as a 'whole as such a unity. All have failed. With the breaking 
 down of magical, mythological, theological, and metaphysical 
 controls, and with the gradual substitution of an adequate 
 scientific social control, with adequate provision for necessary 
 and scientific change, an adequate world control may be ex- 
 pected. 
 
 A truly scientific control, however, of any group, large or 
 small, cannot be attained till all science and sciences recognize 
 the fundamental problem of social growth and survival. The 
 problems of all the sciences must converge about this one pri- 
 mary pragmatic and functional problem, and their energies must 
 be directed, not by individual whim and interest, but by the 
 demands of the social organism. When such co-ordination of 
 scientific investigation is attained all science from astronomy 
 to sociology will be, for the first time, truly functional and 
 social in its application. 
 
 The final and supreme implication of this view of society 
 is that when a fact is discovered it shall be applied and 
 enforced. The counter plea of "interference with individual lib- 
 erty" should have no weight in court, for individuals have no 
 liberties in opposition to a scientifically controlled society but 
 find all their legitimate freedom in conformity to and further- 
 ance of such social functioning. Society is not yet regarded as a 
 compulsory unity for much more than the suppression of re- 
 bellion, the repulsion of foreign invasion, the punishment 
 of personal (not political) robbery, and the discouragement of 
 
96 AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF SOCIAL CONTROL 
 
 personal violence. Proper scientific analysis of social phe- 
 nomena will disclose other less obvious but even more press- 
 ing problems, as indeed it has already disclosed them. As 
 these are abstracted from the incoherent mass of social phe- 
 nomena the compulsory or functional unity of society also 
 comes into view and means must be found for the coercion 
 of individuals who stand in the way of efficient social function- 
 ing. The chief opposition to such effective social control comes 
 from the old subjectivistic, individualistic, and hedonic dogma 
 of personal liberty and the co-ordinate term self-realization 
 which are mainly pleas for personal license in more attractive 
 forms. 
 
 Thus the advancement of civilization appears to be marked 
 by the growth of the conception of the compulsory and inherent 
 functional unity of society, both for the purpose of furthering a 
 scientific analysis of social phenomena and for enforcing the find- 
 ings of that analysis. The working-out of such a theory in 
 its details, as a means of communicating ideas and informa- 
 tion concerning the character of social activities and as a means 
 of correlating and controlling these activities, is largely yet to 
 be accomplished. In fact, it can be consummated only as the 
 actual concrete social processes are analyzed and evaluated. 
 
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