Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/300

 288 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

association takes place, second in the developing consciousness of the persons engaged in the process this is the human reality, and all knowledge of human conditions is abortive in the degree in which it fails to fill out a complete expression of this reality.

Let us suppose the savage man A, and the savage woman B, of the horde X. Their wants are few. Food is plenty. B supplies it for A, who eats till he is satisfied and treats his food-getter with tolerable gentleness. But the food grows scarce. The horde breaks up into foraging pairs. A and B wander beyond their usual haunts, and encounter the savage man C of horde Y. They had never met before. To an impartial observer there is little to distinguish the savage A from the savage C. Up to date all the ferocity which we associate with the word " savage " may have been dormant in both. In each other's presence new factors of stimulation and response begin to operate. Each wants food. Each wants the woman. Each wants to eliminate the other. Treating the woman as merely a passive factor, we have in action rudiments of the universal process of association, viz., antithesis of individuals, stimulus of one by the other through the medium of common or conflicting wants, self-assertion by the opposing individuals, resulting reconstruction of the individuals themselves. That is, they fight, one prevails, and is transformed from a socially indifferent personality into a master; the other yields, and is transformed from a socially indifferent personality into a slave. The group is changed from a diad into a triad. Both A and B, we may suppose, become subject to C, while the relation of neither A nor B to C is precisely identical with the previous relation of A and B to each other.

This process of individual and group reaction, remaking both the individuals and the groups, extends from the savage group of two or more to the most comprehensive and complex group of groups which ultimate civilization may develop. It is inces- sant. It is perpetually varying. It is the main movement, within which migrations, race-mixtures, wars, governments, constitutions, revolutions, reformations, federations, civilizations, are merely the more or less important episodes, or situations, or factors. This whole process is the supreme fact within the reach