Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/663

 SOCIAL CONTROL. XII.

SOCIAL VALUATIONS. I.

FROM the great and fruitful truth established by Lester F. Ward that human desires are the springs of conduct and the true causes of social phenomena it follows that a scientific con- trol of man will be one that modifies his desires. And hence in all the modes of control I have described we do, in fact, see society in some way crossing, blocking, weakening, or supple- menting these central forces of human life.

A desire, however, is not an original datum. It is necessary to distinguish impulsive and imitative desires from those which follow upon a judgment of approval. In the case of the appe- tites for food, drink, sex, and sleep, and the passions, such as love, envy, jealousy, and revenge, the impulse precedes any imputation of worth, or is, at least, proverbially uninfluenced by it. When one ventures to ascribe real worth to the objects of such desire, his estimate is so manifestly due to the radiance with which yearning invests its dear object that the pessimist may well be pardoned for denying it any validity.

Such desires arise as spontaneously as the sap mounts or the tree puts forth buds. But there are desires less insistent and imperious that wait upon rather than precede judgments of approval. The blind outward surging toward this or that is not the type of the pursuit of knowledge or aesthetic enjoyment or personal excellence. When not under the spur of the appetites and passions, man shows himself a reasonable being by direct- ing his endeavors toward "goods," i. e. t objects which his judg- ment tells him arc the causes of pleasure. With vision no longer dimmed by the mounting of hot desire, he selects valves as the goal of his endeavor. In his reflective moments he

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