Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/547

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY $2g

Another error consists in identifying these causes with needs rather than wants. Usually need means what we think people ought to want. But it is what people actually desire that con- trols their behavior and directs their social activity. The follies and frivolities of people, their vanities, lusts, and vicious inclina- tions, cannot be left out of the reckoning in a theory of society as it is, or even of society as it might be.

Some would lend the needs theory a philosophic basis by interpreting need as "requisite for survival," as that which helps one live, work, compete, reproduce. They argue that those who do not desire the useful will in the long run be eliminated. Since natural selection is constantly trimming down wants to make them square with needs, all the principal social activities can be looked upon as "functions." Here the fact is overlooked that man has climbed out of the cock-pit, and his life is now, on the whole, a struggle for happiness rather than for bare exist- ence. Because they multiply up to the limit of the food supply, animals pass their lives in providing for their needs. A living is all they get. If a people breeds a la Malthus, it too will be absorbed in supplying its needs. But foreseeing man underbreeds, and so wins elbow room, gains a margin of energy which is soon claimed by new wants. Property is a stockade which keeps the wolf of hunger at bay and permits the owner indulgences and gratifications that have no bearing on survival. Had no such space been cleared, how could the higher interests and pursuits have come into being?

In the presence of the great recurrent social activities the needs theory looks plausible. Of course, family life, industry, government, and warfare can be looked upon as welfare activities. It is even possible to give to religion, law, morals, education, and art a functional interpretation and to ignore the specific non- essential cravings that in these spheres seek their satisfaction. But the theory breaks down when confronted with those dynamic activities which, because they are occasional, must rank as luxuries and not as necessities. Such are the expansion of the Arabs incited by Mahomet, the monastic movement, the Crusades, the Renaissance, the wars of religion, the proselyting conquests of