Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/109

 THE SOCIAL FORCES 95

like the animal, lives chiefly in the present, and does not suffer the acute pains which a developed imagination enables the more refined organizations to represent in advance to the mind.

But most important of all is the growing sense of good v.hich equally characterizes the progress of intelligence. Not merely does man more and more value life and shrink from pain, but he progressively enhances his estimate of enjoyment, and properly so. This is to him the only good, and having been developed as a correlate of function it is safe in the long run to trust it as the expression also of universal or cosmical good or, if any prefer, of divine good. It has served this purpose well thus far, and upon those who deny it this function rests the burden of proof. What specially concerns the sociologist is the fact that with the development of the race more and more attention has been devoted to attaining the satisfactions of life, until these become in the most advanced societies the real if not the avowed ends of existence.

To the credit of mankind be it said, moreover, that in all peoples at all developed, the lower satisfactions come gradually to constitute only a subordinate part of the object of existence, and more and more effort is expended in attaining those satis- factions which, though not essential to self-preservation or race continuance, possess for all elevated natures a far higher value. An ascending series of these was drawn up in the fifth paper, and their increasing worthiness is unaffected by the proof there presented that the amount of satisfaction obtained is greater at each step as we rise in the scale. It is moreover remarkable that this series, arrived at from the strictly psycho- logical point of view, as an attempt to analyze the subjective qualities of the mind should harmonize so closely with the clas- sification which the sociologist must make of the social forces.

LESTER F. WARD. WASHINGTON, D. C.