Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/555

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY 537

The principle of economizing any requisite that is limited in quantity material resources, time, energy, etc. can be observed even in our mode of gratifying the higher cravings. The law of parsimony is operative when the devotee seeks to become en rapport with his deity by a minimum of pious exercises, when the sportsman expends just enough effort to win the points in the game, when the student seeks out the teachers and texts that put him most quickly in possession of the coveted knowledge, when the philanthropist takes as his motto " Help the poor to help themselves," when the parent rears the least number of offspring that will insure him the domestic pleasures.

Coming now to actual classifications, we will consider those of Small, Ratzenhofer, Ward, and Stuckenberg.

Professor Small classifies human cravings as desires for health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and -Tightness. This grouping appears to be defective at a number of points. Hunger and love are specific demands, and not a desire for health. Health, moreover, when people do begin to care for it, is valued, not as an end, but as a sine qua non of all satisfactions whatso- ever. As for the desire for wealth, it is secondary, depending upon the intensity of those cravings which cannot well be satis- fied without the aid of material goods or services, The "lord- ship over things" which Professor Small advances as a primary motive to acquisition gratifies an egotic desire. It does not differ in principle from the lust of lordship over persons (power) or lordship over men's attention (notoriety) or lordship over men's admirations (glory) or lordship over men's judgment (influence). Under sociability are lumped together desires so diverse as the craving for companionship, and the eagerness for appreciation, the one affective, the other egotic.

Ratzenhofer has employed the word interest for the force, whether vital or psychic, which calls out any activity. The term is wide enough to include function, tropism, reflex, and blind impulse, as well as conscious desire. He distinguishes

a) The race interest, t. e., the impulses which center in the reproductive

functions. ff) The physiological interest, i. <?., hunger and thirst.