Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/191

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY.

V. THE ASSUMPTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY (continued).

RESUMING our account of the individual assumption, 1 we have to set in order certain commonplaces which are so obvious that all kinds of social theorists have usually treated them with silent contempt. Our purpose in this part of the discussion is not to propose psychological, and still less metaphysical, solu- tions. We shall simply schedule, with scant illustration, certain components of the real individual which are to be reckoned with whenever we try to understand human affairs. Psychological analysis and metaphysical hypothesis have their own competence with respect to these elements, but all sane social theory must first accept certain crude facts as part of its raw material, and the constant significance of these facts is not likely to be set aside by any sort of subsequent criticism.

In general, then, the human individual, when considered as sentient, and not in his merely passive relations as a parcel of matter, acts always with reference to ends which may be classi- fied in six groups. For the sake of convenient reference we may press a single term into service as a group-name in each instance. Speaking somewhat roughly and symbolically, we may say that all the acts which human beings have ever been known to perform have been for the sake of (a] health, or wealth, or (c} sociability, or (W) knowledge, or (^) beauty, or (/) Tightness, or for the sake of some combination of ends which may be distributed among these six. 2 The individual as we know him is an insatiate demand for satisfactions included within these groups. The individual as we know him manifests no demands for satisfactions which may not be placed within one or more of these groups. Without affecting profitless pre- cision in use of terms, we may promote our purpose by double

1 Vid. above, Vol. VI, p. 65.

" Cf. SMALL AND VINCENT, Introduction to the Study of Society, pp. 174 sq.

177