Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/288

 PRIVATE BUSINESS IS A PUBLIC TRUST.

is strife in every civilized country today between men who declare that justice demands social reorganization, and men who maintain that present order is essentially good. Neither of these parties is wholly right or wholly wrong. To a certain extent social order is deliberately invented as the expression of men's intelligence about social needs. Until human needs become stationary and invariable it can hardly be expected that knowledge about perfect methods will quite catch up with the demand. Assertions about perfect systems of social order are meanwhile largely gratuitous. We may nevertheless look in the direction of improvement by taking account of any neglected factor in the problem of social arrangement.

Without inquiring now what further tests are necessary, I shall point out two principles which men must learn to apply more precisely before there can be approximately stable social order. The present social system, or the reorganizations that may follow each other in its place, will be justified or condemned according to their success in providing for at least these two postulates of human association.

The first of these principles is the essential similarity of all human beings in capacity for happiness. Equality of capacity is not alleged. It is not asserted that men are alike in the assortment of their desires, or in the methods of seeking satisfaction. It is asserted, however, that there is no principle of desire potent in prince or plutocrat that is not latent in pauper or peasant. Abnormal children are born in palace and in hovel alike—children who could not be developed into symmetrical maturity in any environment which we know how to arrange. On the other hand, thousands of people are surrounded by influences which make the development of normal infancy into all-round manhood well nigh impossible, while other thousands are encompassed