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 712 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

substances. But not only in the manufacture of the tool but in its use, either in manufacturing other useful things or in carrying on any of the arts of life, the telic faculty is brought into requi- sition.

The sociological significance of all this lies in the corollary that only a rational being can practice economy. There is no true economy in the operation of the law of nature. It is a sort of trial-and-error process and involves enormous waste. I have endeavored to formulate what may be called the law of biologic economics, with the result that while "every creation of organic nature has within it the possibility of success," that success is only secured through the " multiplication of chances." 1

True economy, on the contrary, is necessarily telic. Instead of going in all directions for the sake of being sure of ultimately finding the one only advantageous direction, it first looks over the ground, discovers the desired path, and pursues that and no other. This saves the expense of trying to go in all the impos- sible directions with the resultant failure. Yet this last is nature's method. Not only must we conceive the effort as proceeding from the center of a circle, but we must usually conceive it as proceeding from the center of a sphere. This is the principle that underlies the paradox upon which I have so often insisted that the artificial is superior to the natural. 2 At a later date the principle was more fully expanded in the following form :

A closer analysis shows that the fundamental distinction between the animal and the human method is that the environment transforms the animal while man transforms the environment. This proposition holds literally almost without exception from whatever standpoint it be contemplated. It is, indeed, the full expression of the fact above stated that the tools of ani- mals are organic while those of man are mechanical. But if we contrast these two methods from our present standpoint, which is that of economics, we see at once the immense superiority of the human over the animal method. First consider the economy of time. It has taken much longer to develop any one of the organic appliances of animals, whether for war or industry, than is represented by the entire period during which man has possessed any arts, even the simplest. Look next at the matter of efficiency. Not one of

1 Psychic Factors, p. 250.

" American Anthropologist, Vol. II, Washington, April 1889, p. 121.