Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/104

90 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY oped, does not permit any doubt to come in and qualify in the least the universal law, and we must say, with Immanuel Kant, that "if we could investigate all the phenomena of his [man's] volition (Willkuhr) to the bottom there would not be a single human act which we could not with certainty predict and recognize as necessarily proceeding from its antecedent conditions."

The preservative forces are among the simplest of man's nature. They may be divided into two classes, negative and positive. The negative ones are those that protect him from injury and destruction. Whatever produces pain is shunned, and even if nothing were known about death, every individual would fly from whatever experience had taught him to be productive of painful effects. The mere escape from physical danger and from enemies is only a small part of the effect of this class of forces. In man the most important sociological effects have been the many ways in which it has led him to provide for himself clothing and shelter as a protection from the elements and from a hostile environment in general. The application of all this to the science of sociology is too obvious to require elaboration.

We will therefore pass to the other or positive class of preservative social forces. These have directly to do with the function of nutrition. The fact that every one will seek food is so patent that no one ever stops to reflect upon a possible condition in which this should not be the case. Yet such a condition is easy to imagine. All we have to do is to suppose an individual devoid of taste and whose stomach is incapable of the particular sensation called hunger. This sensation is very different from the ordinary forms of pain, and it would make no difference how painful the sensation of an empty stomach might be, if it did not take this particular form no effort would be put forth to supply its needs. Hunger is a form of desire, and as such impels to the appropriate action for its satisfaction. Ordinary pain, no matter how acute, does not thus impel action. The case is not