Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/172

 158 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

manner in which capacities are exercised, and the ends toward the attainment of which efforts are directed.

But, it may still be asked, do not the forms of development sought by men differ so radically from those striven for by members of the lower living world as to necessitate methods that are essentially distinct ? At first sight it would seem so, for, as we have already seen, one of the prime characteristics of the ethical regime is at once to put an end to many forms of competition which reign supreme in the realm of lower life. Yet, when we look at the matter closely, we find that in reality that for which ethical man seeks is not necessarily to check the competitive process, but rather to fix, as criteria of fitness for survival, characteristics different from those established by purely biological laws. The aim is thus not so much to check the stream of competitive energy as to direct it into different channels. The " struggle for existence " still remains, and through it development is secured, but the weapons used are changed, and the tests of superiority altered to meet the requirements of the new forms of development desired. This is a point which has been made very plain in the article by Pro- fessor Dewey from which we have already quoted. Competition still persists, but it is no longer one simply for life, or based upon the mere physical, or lower intellectual, attributes. In the human world the struggle becomes one, the conditions of which are moralized by the presence of sympathy, ideas of justice, and in general those ideals of personal perfection which man's devel- oped mentality discloses to him. The bare struggle for exist- ence, to be sure, still goes on to a very considerable extent among the lower wage-earning classes, and this, unfortunately, often approximates in severity, cruelty, and wastefulness the competition of the sub-human regime. But above these classes, as the higher stages of social life are reached, the competition is modified by the conditions of which we have spoken. And even as to the lower classes, the effort of much modern legislation is, while not destroying competition, to raise its moral plane by the enactment of laws regulating the conditions under which, and the persons by whom, certain forms of more arduous and