Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/552

 534 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Now, what experience is to the individual, culture is to the race. Just as, on the higher levels of individual life, physical and physiological causation retreat in favor of psychic causes, so, on the higher levels of social life, geographic and racial factors lose in significance, and social destiny is determined more by such bodies of organized experience as language, law, morals, religion, the arts and the sciences. There is, in fact, a double reason for affirming that in a civilized people the causes of social phenomena will be essentially psychic. The actions of persons will reflect the influence of that organized embodiment of individual experience we call personality, and they will reflect the influence of that organized embodiment of collective experience we call civilization. In this case an interpretation of social phenomena without reference to the constitution and character of the indi- vidual mind, or to the constitution and character of the social mind, will be unsatisfying. Since, now, the main purpose of sociology is to enable us to understand and to forecast the activities of civilized men, we are justified in insisting that it is chiefly a psychical science. Its causes are to be sought in mental processes, its forces are psychic forces, and no ultimate non-psychic factors should be recognized until it is shown just how they are able to affect motive and choice.

Having made clear the nature of the social forces, let us now consider their classification.

About us we see men impelled by a score of instincts, lured by a hundred goals. Are they all seeking the same thing? "Yes," says the hedonist, "look close, and all aims shrivel to one, the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain."

Considering all the forging it has undergone, it would be strange if human nature were so simple. There are the instincts. Long before our race had wit enough to classify actions as pleasure-yielding and pain-yielding, tree-life and cave-life had equipped it with instincts which are still alive. For example, then were laid down in our nervous apparatus fear reactions, once salutary, but now useless. The dread of the dark, of loud noises, of open places, of clammy objects, of loneliness, cannot now be