Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/48

 36 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

know or care that each and all of them are phases of a complex situation. Few of us see that the importance of the technical results, and even the possibility of getting results, depends in a considerable degree upon correct perceptions, or at least instincts, of the relation of these details to the whole situa- tion within which they must be adjusted. In order to insure broader outlook, and more steady vision, we need to work upon general surveys of the situation, and to chart their significant features in a way that will exhibit their relative prominence in the social process. Then there must be a quota of thinkers who will help us to take our bearings from these chief landmarks.

As a hint of the sort of result we shall reach, it may be said that the strategic point in our present situation is that at which interests and opinions collide upon the theory and practice of dividing social opportunity. The distinctive feature about our present situation is its exposure of the poverty of our concept democracy. The problems of today are not, in the strictest sense, economic. The economic problems proper are in principle solved. The economic theorists are simply more perplexed than ever over the correct way to formulate what has been accom- plished. The sciences by application of which the resources of the earth are to be appropriated are in our possession. The rest of the subjugation of nature is merely more and more detail in applying what we already know. But the unsolved problem is : How shall these resources be shared? Who shall have them, and on what terms? What part shall these material goods play in determining individual men's relative opportunity to get on in gaining health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and right- ness satisfaction?

To anticipate still further, it may be predicted that the next principal stage in the social process will be essentially intellectual and ethical. It will come about through assimilation of more positive ethical perceptions, and through adoption of technical social devices in accordance with the same.

In particular, we are already far advanced in challenging, if not already in revising, crudities in prevalent conceptions of property rights. The principal factors producing this change