Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/352

 THE SOCIAL WILL.

Is IT simply one more evidence of human conceit that at the present time thought about anything whatsoever, and the expression of thought, seem to involve greater difficulty and complexity than ever before ? About this seeming there cer- tainly can be no doubt. The thinker has to be so subtle and so versatile now, so gifted with all the arts of human skill. As if a trickster, he must keep so many balls in the air at once ; as if a horseman, he must drive so many steeds; he must find the single resultant of so many forces and counter-forces. In the past, when men had only to do what was set before them, and express the simple thoughts that a simple life engendered, all this doubting and balancing, this strenuous effort and wearing suspense of our time, were plainly quite unknown. The past, I say, at least appears to have been very simple and easy and natural ; but the present was ever a more perplexing, uncompromising maze ?

And when one turns to society and inquires about its nature, and tries to solve some of the mysteries of its activity, one's envy of the thinkers and writers of years gone by knows no bounds. And yet why look back ? All too soon the past will be ours, the past and the ease of it. Our fathers and forefathers have gone to their reward, and ^this, perhaps, if the difficulties they seem to have escaped were, after all, really theirs, is to be measured by the envy that we feel. Moreover, we of today can hardly expect great assistance in our troubles from the ease, the relative ease, the apparent ease, of their activity. Living and thinking may be hard today, but today, not yesterday, we are living and thinking.

So, without more ado, with full intent of care and effort how- ever difficult, and, above all, with the sobriety and seriousness of independence, what is the social will ?

This exacting question falls at once into two parts, giving in consequence two fundamental questions instead of one : What is society f and What is will? and, although division of a sub-

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