Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/549

 SOCIAL GENESIS 535

natural forces operating in the direction of their limitation or modification. Such, it is believed, has been the nature of most of the progress thus far attained by society, as it is of all that which has taken place in the animal, vegetable, and inorganic kingdoms of nature." 1

The concluding chapter of that volume (chap, vii) contain- ing over 250 pages, is chiefly devoted to this passive or negative aspect of social dynamics (see p. 456). In the present paper only a few of the most general principles can, of course, be treated. That work, as the name implies, was limited to this class of considerations. This was stated at the close of the volume cited :

"It has therefore been the movement rather than the status of society, which it has been sought to explain, the causes of social phenomena and social progress rather than the condition of society itself. The status, or condition, of society is to be learned by the consideration of the indirect, or functional, effects of what have been denominated the social forces. The study of the indirect effect of the preservative forces of society would lead to an acquaintance with the nature of the objects which have been employed by man as means of subsistence a subject only touched upon in this chapter, because, if legitimate, manifestly too large for the limits of the work. The consideration of the indirect, or functional, results of the reproductive forces would lead to a discussion of the most important of all social institu- tions, the family a subject which has already been ably treated by many writers. Still less could we afford to attempt a survey of the wide field of aesthetic art, the deep currents of human morals, or the intellectual condition of mankind in past ages, as would be required by a consideration of the indirect effects of the non-essential forces. These indirect, or consequential, results constitute what I have called the objects of nature, for securing which the desires and passions of men have been developed by the law of natural selection. As already remarked, they have no necessary or real connection with the object o] ;;/,///, which is to

1 Dynamic Sofiology, Vol. I, pp. 56-57.