Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/25

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY II

In none of these efforts do we find the psychic basis of coer- cion ; or, rather, in none of them do we find that unifying psychic principle which includes alike love, belief, desire, and coercion. Without entering here into the province of the psychologist, we may simply assert that the distinctive characteristic of man is self-consciousness, and that this includes, in an organic whole, all the contributing psychic facts above mentioned. Man is pre- eminently self-conscious, and since he finds in society both the external factor for developing self-consciousness and the field for its manifold exercise when developed, we can assert that the psychic basis of society is nothing less than the entire psychic unity of man, self-consciousness. While psychologists demon- strate in detail this conclusion, we are to trace its social work- ings, here particularly in the single aspect of coercion.

Self-consciousness implies not merely feeling, but, especially, knowledge of self. Such knowledge is, however, at the same time knowledge of others and of the world about. It is the knowl- edge and conviction of an enduring ego, having a past, a present, and a future, in the midst of a changing and passing environ- ment. But this environment contains the essential means of the ego's life and happiness. Wherever there is a permanent scarcity of particular objects which constitute these means, the self-conscious person recognizes his dependence upon them, and these objects then come to have a conscious value to him. In other words, he believes, on account of their scarcity, that they are worthy of acquisition and retention for the sake of the pres- ent and future services they afford him. When man, in his evolution from the animal, reaches this stage, he begins to appro- priate and save certain things which he formerly neglected or destroyed. First are probably fetiches ; then rude tools, mere sticks ; then wild animals, like the dog, which he takes young and domesticates. Here is the first bud of self-consciousness. For centuries he gets no farther than this. But with slow improvement in weapons and tools, and with the resulting increase of population, a new object of appropriation is forced upon him.

There is disagreement among sociologists as to the exact