Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/15

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME VI JULY, IQOO

NUMBER i

ONE ASPECT OF VICE.

ONE of the hardest problems with which students of philoso- phy have had to grapple since the time of Plato is that of stimula- tion. For them it becomes a question of the relation of the self to the outer world. Evolutionary science knows it under the phrase "organism and environment." In psychology it is the question of the relation of subject and object, or knower and known. Most commonly it is stated as the relation of man to nature. If this problem could be satisfactorily and detailedly solved, the nature of the universe would be laid bare before us ; we should know, in the oft-repeated phrase of Tennyson, "what God and man" are. It is needless to say that that high end is not yet ; but recent years have made worthy contributions to our knowledge, in the light of which the beginnings of the path to even that goal appear.

Briefly put, the question is : How does the outer world affect me ; of what sort must it be that it can affect me ; of what sort must I be that we, so seemingly dissimilar, can enter into this relation? We would study. but one small phase of this great question, that phase of it which has to do not so much with the nature of the terms of this relation as with the occasion and the time of their relatedness.

The human being is an activity ; a current of changes in which wants constantly give place to satisfactions, and satisfac- tions to further wants. From the day of his birth to the day of