Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/506

 490 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

off, an unmistakable recognition of the truth that, in actual life, the inferior have to submit to the dictates of the superior, simply because the superior are the stronger. When my house is pulled down against my consent, that a railway may be built, I am coerced, by actual or possible force, to sacrifice my well-being and prosperity, as I understand them, to the well-being and pros- perity of others (not of the race), as they understand them ; and if anyone wish to "justify" the sacrifice, he must do so by hold- ing that will and might make right, or else he must reject the legitimacy of the action in question. The theory that the race is to be preserved and improved is obviously inapplicable here, as in every other case; for I, together with others who find themselves in the same circumstances in which I am placed, may ask my opponents why they should be considered as the exclusive representatives of the race, or, rather, as being themselves the race, and why their prosperity, and not ours, should be identified with the prosperity of the race ; and, whatever answers may be given to these questions, the answers cannot, with- out reasoning in a circle, be based on the " ultimate postulate" of the preservation of the race. This postulate, therefore, cannot be accepted as sufficiently ultimate to make it the foundation of morality, whether private or public. Should it be said to me that the well-being and preservation of the species refers to its con- tinued existence in the future, and that the happiness of present generations is to be partly sacrificed to the happiness and exist- ence of future generations, I can rejoin by asking whether this proposition is to be taken as an a priori truth or as an experiential fact. In the former case I shall again ask, Why? and in the lat- ter case I shall say that experience does not seem to teach any- thing of the kind. I am not aware of any general line of conduct that men follow for the exclusive benefit of future genera- tions. It is, of course, unreasonable to ask for proof of a proposition that is expressly presented as a postulate ; but a postulate cannot be accepted unless it agrees with all the facts of experience and the deductions of reason, and these requirements are not fulfilled by the race-preservation postu- late.