Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/819

 COLLECTIVE TELESJS 803

of each national autonomy. Still, international action of certain kinds is already becoming quite extensive and is destined to increase with the progress of civilization. Hence, when I speak of collective social action it is to be taken in the sense of national action, or at least of action on the part of nations, although a considerable number may have taken the same action. Thus defined and restricted, there remains no other essential difference between individual and social action. It also includes, however, the action of subordinate governing bodies, states, municipalities, towns, etc., deriving their powers from the general government.

It was seen that telic progress consists essentially in the process called invention, which presupposes the perception of the relations of objects and a knowledge of their properties, i. *., of the uniform laws of the phenomena they present. Invention materializes itself immediately in art, and art is the basis of civ- ilization. It is customary to say, and most people believe, that art precedes science, but this is because altogether too narrow and special a meaning is given to the word science. Science is simply a knowing, and this is all that the word etymologically implies. Art is exclusively the product of the knowing faculty. It is wholly telic. As I have shown, the simplest of all arts, that of wielding a stick, is impossible without a knowledge of the physical principle which makes it effective. To judge from some of the discussions of this (jucstion it might be supposed that most of the simpler arts were the result of pure accident ; that they had merely been blundered upon without any thought or knowledge. If this were so we should find animals in the possession of arts. But this is not the case. Every art is tin- product of thinking, knowing, reasoning, no matter how feeble these powers may be. ! i empiricism and science there

is only a difference of degree. The faintest exercise of the telic or intellectual faculty is, in M> far, science.

The exactly intermediate step between individual tclesis and social telesis is an organization of individuals into a limited body. Such organizations are always for some specific purpose,