Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/775

 A THEORY OF SOCIAL MOTIVES 761

level of an instinctive shrewdness which we call deceit. This principle has a wide range. Thus children at a certain age, realiz- ing their powerlessness before adults, often become deceitful. Westerniarck points out that members of the primitive tribe, truthful to each other, are deceitful in their relations with other tribes.^*^ Huntington says the natives of Central Asia develop deceitfulness in their relations with foreigners.^^ I have seen servant girls become tricky before tyrannical mistresses. Sumner points out that the fear of their masters felt by Roman slaves made them "malignant, cunning and hypocritical." The trickery and intrigue resorted to in Russia, both by the revolutionists and by the secret police, is "almost incomprehensible to the American mind."^2 A probable explanation of the deceitfulness of negroes*^ is that it is due partly to their proximity to the primi- tive state in which successful deceitfulness toward hostile tribes was praised and partly to their inferior position as slaves recently and servants today. Thomas says that if woman is more deceit- ful than man it is because, not being able to cope with him in physical contests, she has had to rely on her cunning.** Thus in the cognition of the forceful mood, we meet again the three levels. First, there is the attention to data out of which leading ideas are developed. The farmer generalizes from data what will be his day's work, the scientist what will be the proposition with which he will start. Then the associative process in connec- tion with this leading idea is stimulated by giving it an emotional setting. Thus, some writers say they write better under pressure. Farmers work better if they take a "stint." Then comes the third level in which, if hard pressed, individuals tend to resort to deceit. This theory of the relation of cognitive processes to degrees of inequality has been included in this paper on method in order to point out that the sociological question as to whether equality or inequality is desirable depends on which kind of


 * Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, II, p. 87.

''■Pulse of Asia, p. 31.


 * "The Story of Eugene Azeflf," McC lure's Magazine, January, 1910.


 * • Hatcher, John Jasper, p. 97.


 * Sex and Society, p. 232.