Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/608

 592 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

duct. In this field there is scarcely a degree of advance from Confucius to Samuel Smiles. Under the guidance of the idle curiosity, on the other hand, there has been a continued advance toward a more and more comprehensive system of knowledge. With the advance in intelligence and experience there come closer observation and more detailed analysis of facts. 6 The dramati- zation of the sequence of phenomena may then fall into some- what less personal, less anthropomorphic formulations of the processes observed; but at no stage of its growth at least at no stage hitherto reached does the output of this work of the idle curiosity lose its dramatic character. Comprehensive gen- eralizations are made and cosmologies are built up, but always in dramatic form. General principles of explanation are settled on, which in the earlier days of theoretical speculation seem in- variably to run back to the broad vital principle of generation. Procreation, birth, growth, and decay constitute the cycle of postulates within which the dramatized processes of natural phe- nomena run their course. Creation is procreation in these ar- chaic theoretical systems, and causation is gestation and birth. The archaic cosmological schemes of Greece, India, Japan, China, Polynesia, and America, all run to the same general effect on this head. 6

Throughout this biological speculation there is present, ob- scurely in the background, the tacit recognition of a material causation, such as conditions the vulgar operations of workday life from hour to hour. But this causal relation between vulgar work and product is vaguely taken for granted and not made a principle for comprehensive generalizations. It is overlooked as a trivial matter of course. The higher generalizations take their color from the broader features of the current scheme of life. The habits of thought that rule in the working-out of a system of knowledge are such as are fostered by the more impressive affairs of life, by the institutional structure under which the community lives. So long as the ruling institutions are those of blood-relationship, descent, and clannish discrimination, so long the canons of knowledge are of the same complexion.

5 Cf. Ward, Pure Sociology, esp. pp. 437-48.
 * Cf., e. g., Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap. 8.