Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/22

 8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

challenge to accept. In both cases they stimulate to expression an activity hitherto unexpressed. In both cases a great need is served.

In these and similar ways, too numerous for detailed state- ment, society offers stimulus which frees the tension of highly charged nerve centers ; and these forms of stimulus are laid hold of by the seemingly busy man as well as by the idler. Even the ordinary occupations in which brain works with hand do not exhaust. Even here there is an overplus of energy which is expended in such ways. Devised forms of stimulus are necessary here over and above those which seem to be more essential.

But there are conditions of society in which demand is made more unequally in which the human agent does not by any means function so completely; and here the need for artificial stimulus is greater still. The common laborer is endowed by nature as a plan-maker. He functions as a manual laborer. His work is planned by others. He executes their plans. Even if his work demanded some thought at first, it speedily becomes habitual and requires but a minimum of mental energy for its discharge. He leads a narrow life of habits. His work does not demand thought. It is not sufficiently his own to fill up his feelings. His home life is narrow, and he soon discovers, hope- lessly narrow. If he originally thinks to mend it, he soon dis- covers the hopelessness of the task, and settles into a state of sordid apathy with regard to it. The opportunity to think or to feel deeply is denied to him in his work ; indirectly, this fact denies it to him in his home. Here his responsibilities are nar- rowed to the minimum of handing over a part of his wages on pay-days. The responsibility of domestic care settle upon the shoulders of his wife. The home is for her a little world full of variety. For him it is a place into whose life he does not pene- trate sufficiently to be absorbed thereby; and since a race of perverse scorners and thoughtless questioners have taken away from him the consolations of religion, he is no longer seriously occupied with the pleasures of a projected hope. Work, home, and church have ceased to call- forth his best energy. One