Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/371

 ,; 3 2 ° AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899

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\\ motive a pleasure. A feast is given for pleasure, but the food

still sustains life ; so pleasure and welfare are concomitant. In high civilization many activities are pursued for the pleasure of the people by persons who have welfare as their purpose.

Again, what is conducive to welfare may be productive of pleasure. The housewife in preparing the meal for welfare may have, and usually does have, these double motives. If we neglect the motive of welfare and act only from the consideration of pleasure, pleasure itself may be curtailed or pain may be pro- duced. If the housewife, in catering to pleasure, uses condiments that are unwholesome, pain may be produced, and whether her act in compounding the cake be good or evil in effect will depend on whether she has considered both welfare and pleasure ; only then do her acts become wise.

Motives are many and usually compound, and it requires no small degree of abstraction to discover the elements of motive even in self, while in others, whose minds are expressed in their acts, the task is still more difficult ; for though the motive is best read in symbols of deeds, still, whether it be good or evil is often difficult to say. But every activity is performed for a purpose, and all demotic activities are performed for demotic purposes. We are now classifying activities as demotic activities ; but in classifying them in this manner we must ever remember that altruism is founded on egoism and that a demotic activity has an individual effect on the doer. A man may play the violin for others in order to gain money with which to make a journey of pleasure; thus his motive may be immediate pleasure for others and remote pleasure for himself.

This is a concrete world, and abstractions do not exist in themselves, but only in human consideration as abstracts. Every abstract has its concomitants from which it cannot be dissevered, except in consideration. We may classify motives as motives for pleasure, welfare, peace, expression, and wisdom ; and by abstrac- tion we may consider any one of these motives, although they

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