Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/732

 7l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

cing superior types of vegetable and animal life, and making agriculture and stock raising the chief sources of human sub- sistence. Applied to men individual telesis has the effect of creating artificial inequalities. Obeying the law of nature, it follows the uniform course of that law in producing monopoly, and, as among animals and plants, the weaker are crowded out by the stronger and the few dominate the many. The accident of position is a more potent influence here than on the lower plane and comes to constitute the leading element of strength and fit- ness to survive.

But it is in its application to inanimate objects and natural forces that individual telesis has displayed its chief power. The exercise of this innocent physical indirection has been the main- spring of human progress. It is not cunning, shrewdness, strategy, and diplomacy, but ingenuity that has inspired civiliza- tion. The exercise of ingenuity is invention, and invention is the basis of the practical arts. The systematic search for and discovery of the natural properties of bodies and the constant laws according to which the forces of nature act is science, and this usually has art for its end. The combined effect of science and art constitutes so nearly the whole of the material civiliza- tion of the world that for all ordinary purposes the other factors may be omitted, and we may define civilization as the utilization of the materials and forces of nature. The highest expression of science and art is found in machinery, and the possible improve- ment of machinery renders the productive power of society prac- tically unlimited. Yet we know that there is a limit to the amount of production that society can assimilate. That limit is not one of human ingenuity, neither is it one of capacity to consume. It is a limit to the ability to obtain. The so-called over-production takes place while men are starving, and while thousands desire, want, and even need the very products whose production must be abandoned. This has been the enigma of economists. The explanation lies in the fundamental principle of this paper. It is the natural result of individual telesis acting under the law of nature so far as society at large is concerned.