Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/535

 UTILITARIAN ECONOMICS 5 2 I

purely incidental, unintended, and apart from the general scheme of nature. I have further shown that this mere incident has been made the end of the creature, an end wholly distinct from the end of nature, producing activities that sometimes coincide with those involved in evolution, sometimes run parallel with and independent of them, sometimes deviate widely from them, and sometimes more or less directly conflict with them. I have traced many of these abnormal influences and shown what remarkable aberrations they have wrought in the world. Indeed, I have gone much farther than this. In carefully defining the nature of the social forces, I have shown that they consist in social wants, and have classified these. My primary classification was into essential and non-essential, and the former of these great classes was further subdivided into those relating respectively to the preservation and the perpetuation of life. It is clear that the economic view does not specially embrace the non- essential social forces, and it is equally clear that of the essential forces it is chiefly or wholly centered on those of preservation. What especially bears on the present question is the fact that my subdivision of the preservative social forces was into positive and negative, the former seeking pleasure, the latter avoiding pain. 1

In elaborating this classification in my earlier work, I went over the whole ground somewhat exhaustively, and dwelt much longer on the preservative forces than on any of the other groups. Still, although I considered it from its economic aspect, I did not view it as an economist von Pack, and the chief value of Dr. Patten's contribution is just this strictly economistic attitude. In'a review of his essay* I have stated that he does not seem to realize the far-reaching character of the principle, and has failed to seize the opportunity to broaden and deepen it in the interest of social science. In the present paper I shall attempt to explain the meaning of that statement, and to indicate some of the important corollaries that flow from it, u

> Dynamic Sociology, Vol. I, p. 472.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. I, No. 5, March, 1806, p. 639.