Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/727

 INDIVIDUAL TELESIS 71 1

on this point. In the domain of plant life we were already beyond the range of feeling and out of the moral world. In the domain of non-living matter we are no longer fettered by the complicated and subtle laws of life. The work of molding such products is therefore much simpler, but, as already remarked, the principle is the same. It is remark- able, when we reflect upon it, how easily nature is man- aged by intelligence. We have perfect passivity combined with absolutely uniform laws. It is only necessary to know the nature of matter and the laws according to which physical phe- nomena take place. As Comte insists, we need not know the causes of things, but only their laws. We need not ask the question why, but only the question how. This question was early asked and, for the simpler laws of matter, was correctly answered.

Probably the first inventions were tools. Man is a tool- employing animal. Few have ever reflected that no animal ever uses tools, much less makes them. It is not proved that the most sagacious creatures ever increase their power to do anything by the aid of inanimate bodies within their reach, such as sticks or stones. They work upon such objects but they do not work with them. This is because a higher telic power is required in doing this than they possess. They are unable to see that the use of a club wielded, as by an ape, with the hand would greatly increase the force of a blow they might wish to inflict upon an enemy. Alleged cases of such action may be found in the books, but, so far as I am aware, none of them are authentic. Still, if such cases have been observed, this simply denotes that there are creatures below man that possess the rudiments of a telic faculty an incipient intellect and this I am not dis- posed to dispute. Tools were among man's first necessities, perhaps primarily as weapons of defense, but also as means of obtaining subsistence. Clothing and shelter even of the sim- plest kind could scarcely be obtained without them, agriculture was well-nigh impossible in their absence, and every form of art presupposes the means of modifying and transforming material