Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/846

 826 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

may be replied that, if an author indulges himself in psychology, he may fairly be asked to do it correctly, and that, if the distinctions for which we are contending are correct, a neglect of them will ultimately be followed by confusion. We shall find an illustration of the last point in certain of Mr. Patten's other doctrines.

After the considerations advanced in the previous paragraphs it is hardly necessary to say that we cannot assent unhesitatingly to Mr. Patten's assertion that races differ more in their motor reactions than in their sensory ideas. It would be practically impossible to prove this assertion, supposing it were true, and inferentially, on the basis of the grounds just canvassed, we are confident that it is not true. The only warrant for the statement is the fact that we see races acting indifferent ways. Whether their sensations are alike or not is a matter of sheer speculation. But, unless our notions of the psychological antecedents of movements are intrinsically erroneous, we can feel speculatively assured that races are as diverse in sensory experiences as in any others.

Mr. Patten's doctrine that character depends upon habitual motor response belongs in the same general category with the matters just mentioned, although the author may expect to meet a less extended range of sympathizers upon this point, while to not a few of his readers the proposition will seem to furnish an instructive illustration of put- ting the cart before the horse.

In order to get his machinery agoing Mr. Patten introduces us to our old psychological friends pleasure and pain, but under the aliases of "pain economies" and "pleasure economies." It appears that a pain economy is the name for a condition in which men are principally engaged in avoiding pain, while a pleasure economy is one in which the chief occupation is seeking pleasure. Primitive conditions are more richly represented under the pain economy, civilized societies tending to monopolize the pleasure economy. It must grieve the pains- taking critics of hedonism, whose contentions are distinctly relevant as against the view here presented, to hear an enlightened man like Mr. Patten setting down these principles as blandly as though no one had ever questioned them. But, anyhow, this is the point at which Mr. Patten begins to make his environment efficacious in the development of classes, the only genuine classifications being, he assures us, based on psychic characteristics. Wealth and social position, which are typical of prevailing classifications, do not represent psychic conditions, and are therefore superficial.