Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/194

 180 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

stop if they conformed to a rigidly schematic program ; or where they would stop if our mental processes occurred in the lineal and serial order in which we have to represent them in speech. In fact, each advance of our knowledge of men in association makes new requisitions upon physiology and psychology for closer knowledge of individuals ; and this more intimate physi- ology and psychology in turn reopens doctrines about associa- tion and proposes new inquiries for sociology. In any given inquiry, however, the psychologist, as such, takes association as the known and fixed factor, in order to pursue investigation of his undetermined subject-matter the mechanism of the indi- vidual actor. The sociologist, as such, on the contrary, takes the individual for granted and pursues investigation of his undetermined subject-matter, viz., associations. The individual accepted by the sociologist as his working unit is the human person endowed with interests which manifest themselves as desires for health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and Tightness. To the best of our present knowledge all the things that occur in human associations are functions of these factors in individuals multiplied into the variable factors of external conditions which make up one portion of each individual's environment. Now, the descriptive task of sociology, or the task of " descriptive sociology," is to furnish a true account of real men in their real relations with the other men with whom they associate. We pass then to more specific indication of the individual desires :

(a] The health desire. Men are first and generically splendid animals. Human capacities mark the human type as fit for the most intricate correlations of physical function ; for superior economy of physical energy ; for exquisite harmony of physical action ; and for corresponding eagerness of physical enjoyment. Theories or appreciations of life derived from this perception exclusively have tended to the perversion of life manifested in the later Dionysia at Athens or in the Saturnalia at Rome. On the other hand, theories of life which go to the other extreme of denying and repudiating the normality of physical excellence, with its appropriate gladness, have tended to the opposite