Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/824

 808 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

higher degree to the legislator. Adjustment is the exclusive province of legislation, and laws, when framed according to these principles, would be such adjustments and nothing else. The execution of the laws is the resultant social art. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to see how widely this scheme would differ from the corresponding features of the present regime. It is still easier to see its immense superiority. As was shown in the last paper, the essence of telic action consists at bottom in making natural forces do the desired work instead of doing it ourselves. This is exactly what is needed in society. The desires, passions, and propensities of men are bad only in the sense that fire and lightning are bad. They are perennial natural forces, and, whether good or bad, they exist, cannot be removed, and must be reckoned with. But if society only knew how, it could utilize these forces, and their very strength would be the measure of their power for good. Society is now spend- ing vast energies and incalculable treasure in trying to check and curb these forces without receiving any benefit from them in return. The greater part of this could be saved, and a much larger amount transferred to the other side of the account.

The principle that underlies all this is what I have called "attractive legislation." 1 But it is nothing new or peculiar to society. It is nothing else than the universal method of science, invention, and art that has always been used and must be used to attain telic results. No one tries to drive back, arrest, curb, and suppress the physical forces. The discoverer tells the inventor what their laws arc ; the inventor sees how they may be made useful and contrives the appropriate apparatus ; the man of busi- ness organizes the machinery on a gigantic scale, and what was a hostile element becomes an agent of civilization. The effort is not to diminish the force, but usually to increase it, at least to concentrate and focalize it so as to bring the maximum amount to bear on a given point. This is true direction and control of natural powers. So it should be in society. The healthy affec- tions and emotions of men should not be curbed but should be

1 Dynamic Sociology (see index); Psychic Factors, p. 306.