Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/200

 1 86 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

symbols of wealth we neglect or we delegate the arts of creating wealth, and we grow impotent to appropriate wealth. The mere manipulator of money knows none of the campaigns with nature, the assaults upon intrenched resistance, the defeats, the changes of front, the retreats, the flank movements, the fine strategies against obstinate physical properties, the renewed attacks, the patience, the persistence, the intelligence that conquer things. Ignorant of the conflict, he cannot appreciate the conquest. If we have the money power merely, the victors have emancipated us, but they cannot enfranchise us. In spite of our liberty we are not free.

A partial recognition of these facts is in the tradition of many princely families that the sons and even the daughters must learn some industrial craft. There is also in this con- nection a profounder sanction than is usually asserted for the reinforcement of our school curricula by manual training. The experimental laboratory also has a function apart from scientific discovery, in affording to many men that element of experience in mastering nature without which their life would be seriously unbalanced. Such discipline admits men to actual appropriation of material goods, for which they would else have no adequate sense. Real wealth is not appreciated by men who know nothing intimately of the difficulties of creating wealth. Wealth as the measure and as the realization of man's mastery over things is neither too highly nor too generally valued in our civilization. Wealth as the mere accumulation of things that others have mastered is both too highly and too generally valued. The materialism of our day is deplorable radically as a sign of man's mastery or desire of mastery over man, and of abdica- tion or willingness to abdicate the real lordship of things for this unnatural lordship over persons.

Personality, like any other whole, is the union of all its parts. It cannot be realized by a preference of certain parts which amounts to exclusion of certain other parts. Accordingly we recognize alongside of health this second factor which enters into complete personal realization, viz., that lordship over things which is founded upon direct mastery of natural forces.