Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/495

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��436 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s„ I, 1899

Demonomy

The somatikos, with its dominant cerebral organ, is the mechanism of the human activities and at the same time an essential constituent of the collective human unit. While the human groups are many and diverse, they are conveniently com- bined in two categories: first, the natural or consanguineal or kinship group in which the unit is the ethnos; and second, the artificial or essentially social group in which the unit is the demos. The ethnos, or ethnic group, is the homologue of the varietal or specific group of animals; it is the dominant group in lower sav- agery, but its influence on human life wanes upward, to prac- tically disappear in enlightenment except as retained in the structure of the family. The demos is the product of intelligence applied to the regulation of human affairs ; it has no true homo- logue among animals ; its importance waxes as that of the ethnos wanes from savagery through barbarism and civilization and thence into enlightenment.

The nature of the human activities in every stage is affected by the degree of development from the primeval ethnic condition toward the more advanced demotic condition ; yet so many of the lines of human activity arose in the ethnic stage (to subdivide and ramify later) that the classification of activities must be broad enough to comprehend the two primary categories of collective units. At the same time, since the activities gained typical development only in the demotic condition ; and, since their classi- fication is framed especially to fit that higher condition, it is ap- propriate to characterize the activities as demotic, and to combine them in a system already known as Demonomy.

Five great groups of activities have been defined, and each of these has been arranged as the object-matter of a special science. The activities and special sciences are (1) activities giving pleas- ure, or arts : Esthetology ; (2) activities promoting welfare, or industries : Technology ; (3) activities uniting men, or institu-

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