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 238 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

moves, whether men consent or not. If it were practicable to enter into greater detail at this point, we might easily show that what we have said about the unconscious phase of human inter- ests, as contrasted with specific desires, lends itself to a theory of ends that are not immediate and visible, but many steps removed, and so not consciously proposed by all or many of the members of society. For instance, to take the classic American illustration, the colonists in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century wanted "redress of grievances" from the mother- country. That meant certain specific things, which they plainly stated. To get redress of grievances they adopted a series of concerted measures committees of correspondence, continental congresses, non-intercourse agreements, insurrection. But these steps did not avail. To get the specific things that all wanted, it became necessary to strike for another thing, independence, that none wanted. Having obtained independence, it soon became apparent that another thing, which few wanted, was the only alternative with loss of what had been gained. Accord- ingly the colonies founded that other thing, nationality. Now, there is a use of the conception of ends, in which independence and nationality may be said to have been the " ends " of Ameri- can activities from the beginning. That is, they were consum- mations which the logic of events must bring to pass, whether any individual could foresee them or not. In this sense every stage of development through which men and nations pass in reaching more complete life is an "end" of all previous stages, and human experience is a scale of means and ends, regardless of men's thoughts about the meaning of their acts. This is the sense in which we think of all life as being a preparation for some undefined end "that far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves."

The conception of ends thus indicated has a place in social philosophy, but our present business is with a much more restricted concept. In a word, human associations always have reasons for existence as associations, and those reasons are conscious ends for the association, in a way which differs somewhat from that in which they are ends for the individuals in the association.