Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/355

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 341

ruinous policies of intercourse. 1 At present Americans hardly need to be informed that between two societies which are in contact the decisive factor may be the mental content of each group respecting the other. If the Americans knew the Filip- inos and the Filipinos the Americans as well as Americans and any European nation know each other, there would have been no bloodshed in the process of organizing a permanent government and restoring order and industry.

Emerson's aphorism, "No man can be heroic except in an heroic world," is an overstatement of an under-apprehended truth. No man can be his best in a world unappreciative of that best. No group can be its best in a world not correspondingly at its best. A worldly-wise man shows some, but not all, of his wisdom when he dilutes it with folly in dealing with fools. Societies must perforce conform their economic policies to the state of knowledge in the other societies that make up their area of contact.

We repeat, then, our leading proposition in this section, namely : Interdependence is a constant condition within which human association occurs. We are illustrating this proposition through one of the many series of ways in which it is exempli- fied. We are observing that the conduct of any society with respect to any of its elementary desires is conditioned by the status of that society and of other societies with reference to each of the other elementary desires. We come to the beauty- desire. It is, of course, impossible to show that the beauty-desire has exerted as strong inter-societary influence as some of the other factors, because it is not true. It is true, however, that this factor has always exerted a subtle and pervasive influence ever since there has been human intercourse. For a generation we have been pursuing in the United States a policy of tariff pro- tection, ostensibly in the interest of home manufactures. At the same time, the fact that the love of beauty as applied to the arts is so much more advanced in Europe than in America has given to many kinds of European manufactured goods a prestige that carries them over our tariff obstructions. The reputation


 * Cf. MACAULAY'S Essay on Warren Hastings.