Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/520

 504 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Taking the expression " the race " in the sense of " others," or "the rest of humanity," it may be stated that, in general, the race is a matter of supreme indifference to the individual, whose affections are confined within a circle of small radius, when com- pared with the entire field of human life ; and, in the great major- ity of cases, the race is the individual's greatest enemy. Indeed, it is the antagonism between the individual and the race that con- stitutes the fierce struggle for existence, and to which are due almost all the sufferings and miseries of our species, as of other species. We are not justified in judging human affairs through the spectroscope of sentimentalism, which leaves out the power- ful actinic rays of " animal passion." The sentimentalist and other theorists are usually not soldiers in the field, and their exceptional views and feelings are not faithful representations of man's nature. The majority of human beings are perpetually struggling with other human beings — that is, with the race at large — and it is in the essence of the human constitution that whoever is prevented by others from earning a comfortable liv- ing and leading a happy life should wish for the diminution, rather than the increase or prosperity, of his competitors. It is the race that compels the laboring man to work for a miserable salary, to live on unwholesome food and in unhealthful quarters, support- ing a numerous family for whom he is unable to provide the most urgent necessaries of life; it is the race that throws him out of employment, lands him on the road to vice and crime, and leads him to the penitentiary or to the gallows ; it is the race that dis- courages the young girl, and, withdrawing the bread from her mouth, offers to her lips the poison of prostitution ; it is the race that causes and fosters all the miseries, the unutterable suffering, and the degraded condition of nine-tenths of its very individu- als. Why, then, insist on the supposed truth that the preservation of the race is, or ought to be, a desideratum ? And are we appeal- ing either to reason or to feeling when we say that such and such sacrifices should be made for the preservation of the race at large ?

In what precedes I have aimed at presenting some features of life as they offer themselves to impartial observation, without