Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/529

Rh experiences and gratifications leads to revision of values and modifies the intensity with which certain aims are pursued. Dormant desires are awakened by intercourse, suggestion and imitation multiply wants, the range of choice broadens, the standard of life develops, new stimulus is supplied to exertion, and the whole man is made over. This revaluation of experiences that comes with living in association reaches farther into human nature than anything we have yet considered and must be deemed one of the most striking consequences of the social state.

When, last of all, desire itself is altered in its fundamental direction, we have the greatest imaginable change of the individual. For the probe of science shows the innermost core of a man to be not his activities or perceptions, not his judgments or thoughts, not his opinions or beliefs, but his feelings. As Professor Ward shows, the part held to be the undying kernel of man—the soul—can be nothing else than "the feelings taken collectively," i. e., the desires, inclinations, preferences, aversions, hatreds, jealousies, hopes, aspirations and longings. It is the feelings that constitute the person and to them all activity, whether of body or of intellect, is strictly subordinate. They make the character, and so long as they are unreached, a man is himself, no matter how he may change in other respects. Let them be modified, and we describe the change with the emphatic word "regeneration." So long as we are invited to observe in social development only such changes as are quite compatible with the feelings that belong to the isolated state, we may well doubt if there be in association anything truly organic. If desires be untouched, social organization is to those who embrace it simply a device, an expedient, a bit of economic tactics; while the social man is the lone man, who has learned to utilize mechanism.

The social evolution I have traced is logical, not chronological. As a matter of fact, there is no stage of development where the feelings are net greatly modified. In view of the discovery that incipient social life often consists, not in working together