Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/423

 REVIEWS 409

phenomena of the same general character as other natural phenomena, only more complex and difficult to study on account of the subtle psychic causes that so largely produce them" (p, 57). Social action is the result of psychic as well as of physical and social forces and con- ditions, and the same principle is extended to sociology which has so long been held in natural science and is beginning to be applied to psychology that only where there is necessity and law can there be science. "All social phenomena are the results of laws" (p. 59). And the fundamental law of natural science is the fundamental law of social phenomena also : the law of action along the line of least resistance.

It is out of such a conception of the social forces that the problem of social mechanics arises, which deals with the dynamic agent (whose action is genetic), carefully to be distinguished from the directive agent (whose action is telic). Into the discussion of social statics and social dynamics we may not enter here. The important point for which the whole discussion stands, in relation to what follows in this review, is that in social mechanics we are dealing with forces which "can be depended upon to produce effects with the same certainty and exactness as do physical forces" (p. 145). This must be borne in mind when the author goes on to state that feeling is the primary social force.

"The dynamic agent," he says, "consists wholly in feeling" (p. 256). "Feeling is a true cosmic force .... and constitutes the propelling agent in animals and man" (p. 99). "In the associated state of man it is the social force" (p. 99). It is the "propelling force of society comparable to the wind that fills the sails or the steam- power that turns the screw of a vessel at sea" (p. 462). "The thinking faculty is not a force. But feeling is a true force and its various manifestations constitute the social forces" (p. 101).

Now, it is evident from such passages that "feeling" is used in a sense different from that current today in psychology. Yet in other respects feeling is treated as though it were in the same category with other mental processes. This conception of feeling as an efficient cause is justified by the principle of "creative synthesis" in accordance with which new forces or principles of action appear upon the scene from time to time in the progress of evolution. This evolution is sympodial in its progress, and the co-operation of physical and psychical and social forces in this process the author calls "synergy." Under cover of such magical phrases, he is able to say "that spiritual