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 326 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

which numerousness of persons is taken for granted. Be this as it may, we should seriously limit our perceptions of the facts within which the social process takes place if we failed to take notice of certain implications of this primary fact of multiplicity.* The Germans have the proverb, "One man is no man." Probably the fact which this aphorism expresses to most people is that without cooperation we fail to get the utmost use of our- selves. This is certainly true, but it is not the elementary truth. The mere existence of other people beside self is a condition which qualifies the conduct of the self. DeFoe pictured one of the mainsprings of social action when he portrayed the work- ings of Crusoe's mind on discovering the footprints in the sand. Henceforth Crusoe was in contact once more, not merely with nature, but with nature plus man. The problem of life was now more involved, more uncertain, more formidable ; but at the same time more hopeful and inspiring. There is now more to lose and more to gain, and more to stimulate personal effort to avoid the loss and secure the gain. The story of the frontiersman who abandoned his claim and moved on into the wilderness when another settler squatted within six miles of his location, because he "wanted breathing room," is a piece of American humor; it nevertheless rests on a permanent psychological basis. The mere presence of other people is in the first instance a constraint. Whether or not all want the same piece of ground, or the same routes of travel, or the same material things, the fact that the many people exist is a bar to the free action of each. The Hebrew story of Cain, the tiller of the ground, unable to live comfortably by the side of Abel, the keeper of sheep, portrays a constant feature in human relationships. The popular saying, "No house was ever big enough for two families," is merely a partial report of the profounder fact that the world is not big enough for two persons, until a process of adjustment accom- modates each to the other. If the persons number more than two, the adjusting process is much more imperative and more difficult. Multiplicity of persons, therefore, is a condition in

'On the effect of the element of number see GIDDINGS, "Exact Methods in Sociology," Popular Science Monthly, December, 1899, especially pp. 153 sq. On quantity as quality see RATZENHOFER, Sociologische Erkenntniss, pp. 88, 90.