Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/847

 REVIEWS 827

In examining Mr. Patten's classes we shall find our prophecy of logical disaster confirmed by a practical desertion of the genuine sen- sory and motor distinction. We shall meet with classes whose charac- teristics are defined in terms of activities, comprising both sensory and motor elements, together with certain other factors previously unmen- tioned. I do not remember that Mr. Patten anywhere asserts that his classes are deduced from his sensory-motor premises. But it seems reasonably clear that, if his original position was correct, the differen- tiation into classes should afford the strongest confirmation of it, instead of involving its practical abandonment.

The first class described is that of the dingers, and we are immedi- ately confronted with an account of certain emotional conditions — timidity, shyness, etc. These characteristics are called out in response to an environment with a limited food supply. The people are con- servative and stay at home, instead of going out to search for fatter lands, as might seem the more natural procedure. It does not appear that they possess either peculiar proficiencies or defects in their sensory qualities, and their motor activities do not seem to be stunted save in the direction of travel, adventure, and fighting. It is rather their emo- tional life, which is confessedly both sensory and motor in its consti- tution, that marks them off from others.

Similarly class two, the sensualists, are described as persons with some dominant passion to be satisfied, and their time is spent exploit- ing man and nature in its gratification. To the onlooker it must be admitted that a man of this class might seem more definitely motor than the dinger. But it is the direction of his muscular energies which distinguishes him, rather than the sum total of such energy expended, and both of them seem to have emotional characteristics as their most specific marks.

The third type, the stalwarts, manage to combine " a love of dog- mas and creeds" with "independence in thought and action." We are now frankly involved with a description in which sensory and motor elements are blended beyond the hope of profitable analy- sis.

The fourth and last class, the mugwumps, are apparently the only ones legitimately descended from our sensory and motor ideas. They are strong in sensory analysis and weak in action, especially organized action. But again, when one recalls the amount of trouble the mug- wumps have caused first and last, it seems incredible that they should be described in terms of inactivity, and we are led to see once more