Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/353

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 339

chiefly determined by economic, but by social conditions on both sides. The present status of the labor and capital question is an indication of our social conceptions much more than it is an exhibition of inevitable economic reactions. In short, the kind of economic activity that any society may carry on depends not alone on its physical habitat and the economic quality of its members ; it depends upon the social wants of its members and of its neighbors. What it can do industrially depends upon what itself and the rest of the world want socially.

It would be equally possible to treat the present division of our subject by showing various classes of interdependencies between a society as a whole and neighboring societies. The method followed thus far may, however, be continued with equal advan- tage through the discussion. We are considering, namely, the dependence of the business element in a society's activities upon the desires either within or without the society that are not pri- marily economic. We may repeat the thesis, then, in this form : The economic activities of individuals or groups are conditioned by the status of the knowledge interest in themselves and in their neighbors. In his Development of English Thought Professor Patten has elaborated the thesis that national thinking is the product of the nation's economic activities. He is quite right if he organizes his generalization into harmony with its converse, namely, a nation's economic activity is a product of the nation's thinking. Otherwise the generalization is a half-truth that hardly needs to be exposed. The world was just the same essentially six thousand years ago that it is today ; electricity would have run along a wire in Adam's time just as it does at present if opportunity had offered ; steam expanded just as forcibly in Noah's day as it does now; lyddite would have exploded just as terrifically while the Hebrews were making bricks in Egypt as it did on the Tugela or before Pekin ; the sun would have printed a picture on a plate just as distinctly in Solomon's palace as in a modern photographer's parlors. The reason why Adam did not talk to his wife and children over a telephone, the reason why the ark was not propelled by triple