Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/192

 178 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ellipsis as follows : First, human individuals are centers of desires for (a] health, wealth, (c) sociability, (d} knowledge, (*) beauty, (/) Tightness. Second, the desires in view of which men act are (a) health, wealth, (*:) sociability, (d~) knowledge, (e) beauty, (/) Tightness. Nothing in our present discussion hinges on this use of the term "defsire," now in the subjective and again in the objective sense. The liberty will therefore be taken for the sake of directness, and our thesis reduces to these algebraic forms : first, the human individual is a variation of the six-fold desires (subjective); and second, the conditions of human satisfaction consist of variations of the six-fold desires (objective).

It may be worth while to guard at the outset against possible misconception of what the foregoing propositions imply. It is not asserted, for instance, that from the moment when the genus homo emerged in the zoological series there was forthwith efficient demand for each of the six desires. It is not asserted that every specimen of the human species manifests all these desires. It is not asserted that men are invariably, or even usually, conscious of all six desires, or that they classify the ends of their actions under these categories. It is not asserted that when men are acting in ways that tend to satisfy some form of these desires they are necessarily conscious of the motive or of the tendency of their conduct. The proposition is primarily that, so far as we are acquainted with the human individual, he does not and cannot get himself into motion, except under the conscious or unconscious impulse of one or more of these desires ; and, moreover, he doe^ not and cannot entertain a desire which is not assignable to a place in this six-fold classification. There may be individuals who have never betrayed a desire for knowl- edge or beauty or Tightness. If so, they must be classified as individuals in whom the life-process has not passed through all its typical forms. No individual has ever been observed with desires having a real content that could not be located within the six divisions specified. Health, wealth, sociability, knowl- edge, beauty, Tightness, exhaust the known demands of the indi- vidual, and at the same time they fill the bounds of the known objective possibilities of the individual.