decades after 1885, when sociology was still almost completely in the formative stage; it was of the type which seeks, in effect, to discover some one social force which will explain all group phenomena. However, it is of interest in this connection to note that in his Principles of Sociology, his earliest book, Giddings made concessions to the interpretation of social behavior in terms of a multiplicity of human-nature forces which, if more fully emphasized in his further explanations, would have classed him with Ward as regards his doctrine of social forces. The following selection displays this tendency, and at the same time shows some appreciation of the conception later to be emphasized by sociologists,22 that the social forces are, as Ward had already suggested, "sociogenetic." The motive forces of political life, as of economic life, are the desires of men, but they are no longer merely individual desires, and they are no longer desires for satisfactions that must come for the most part in material forms. They are desires massed and generalized; desires felt simultaneously and continuously by thousands, or even by millions of men, who are by them simultaneously moved to concerted action. They are desires of what we may call the social mind in distinction from the individual mind, and they are chiefly for such things as national power and renown, or conditions of liberty and peace.23 Giddings makes no systematic use of a list of fundamental and presumably universal categories of social forces, such as we find in the sociologies of Ward and others. In chapter iii, Book IV, of his Principles, he states a doctrine of social values and valuations which resembles considerably the Thomas attitude-value, and which, like the latter tends to preclude any summarization of social factors or forces into a few permanent categories.24 In fact, a basic distinction between the doctrines of Giddings and those of Thomas and some other sociologists lies in the more complete un 22 23 Cf. the discussion of Thomas to be given in a later section of this paper. 24 To be sure, Thomas did explain the attitudes in terms of wishes, and the wishes in terms of four fundamental cravings or desires; but it can be maintained with a show of reason that his doctrine of the attitudes does not readily or logically lend itself to explanation by reference to a short list of universal human-nature forces. willingness of the former to attempt the formulation of any such categories. However, in the following passage from the Principles we find an approach to the statement of general social forces: [The passage is taken from the author's discussion of tradition. He has said that "Tradition is . . . . the integration of the public opinion of many generations," thus probably overstressing a rationalistic conception of the nature of tradition.] The whole body of tradition is differentiated into particular traditions which correspond to the varied interests of life. The primary traditions are: the economic, or the tradition of utilization; the juridical, or the tradition of toleration; the political, or the tradition of alliance, homage and obedience. These primary traditions are the record of experiences of the tangible world. The secondary traditions are: the animistic or personal, the aesthetic, and the religious. They are the record of impressions of an intangible world; a world of personal consciousness, and of the shadows, images, and echoes of tangible things. The tertiary traditions are the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. They are the record of conceptual thought.25 It can readily be shown that the classification of "primary traditions" is by no means the same thing, in content or in intention, as the classification of desires taken as social forces which has been attempted by Ward and by some of those agreeing more nearly with Ward. And yet, there is apparently a similarity of purpose. Giddings seems to have yielded here in so far to the feeling which all sociologists, as well as all other scientists, have had, that in order for the study of a certain field to become scientific, it is necessary that the phenomena of the field in question should be brought under certain general classificatory categories, so that the differences in the concrete phenomena can be explained by reference to deviations in degree-in the case of these categories suggested by Giddings it would be in qualitative content, also of the different categories chosen, from one case to another. The history of Ross's sociological writings displays an interesting series of shifts of viewpoint and conviction with respect to the value of the social-forces concept. If we are to classify him by his latest scientific volumes, he is to be placed with Small as an adherent of the "interest" variant of the social-forces concept, as we shall see in a later section. In the sequence of his writings from * Op. cit., p. 141. 26 his Social Control to his Moot Points in Sociology, however, he seemed to be in process of evolution in his thinking toward the Ward theory of desires. In Social Control, Part I, he treats sympathy, sociability, the sense of justice, and the feeling of resentment somewhat as other writers have dealt with supposedly fundamental and universal human nature tendencies, i.e., as social forces or desires. The first two of these he seems to think of as inborn; the latter two he conceives to be more or less inevitably developed out of inborn traits in the course of the social process. He believes that both sets of factors vary widely in different groups, especially between different culture groups such as tribes and nationalities. At most, he does not make as specific use of a set of categories of desire, interest, or wish, as he does later, in his Foundations of Sociology and in his Principles of Sociology. However, in Social Control, there is a suggestion in the following passages of the conception of desires as social forces: It is impossible to distinguish impulsive desires from those which follow upon a judgment of approval. In the appetites for food, sex, and sleep, and the passions of love, jealousy, and revenge, the impulse precedes any imputation of worth. . . . . But there are less imperious desires that wait upon judgments of approval. When not under the spur of the appetites and passions, man shows himself a reasonable being by directing his endeavors toward "goods," i.e., objects which his judgment tells him are causes of pleasure. When his vision is undimmed by the mounting of hot desire, he selects values as the goal of his endeavor. In his reflective moments he reviews the possible experiences that beckon to him and passes upon them various judgments of approval or disapproval, attaches to them different degrees of esteem. As are these valuations, so will be his choices and conduct. Now this habit of letting "I would" wait upon "I approve" gives society a new opening in its struggle with the anti-social man. Can it not persuade him to adopt its valuation of the goods of life? [The thought is expanded in the chapter of which the foregoing are the opening words.-F. N. H.]27 By the time he published his Moot Points in Sociology, in the years 1903-4, Ross had swung around to an outline of social forces very much like that of Ward, though more elaborate. After a critical review of a number of classifications, he proposes the following: **E. A. Ross, "Moot Points in Sociology," A.J.S., Vols. VIII, IX, and X. The desires may be grouped into natural and cultural, the former being present even in natural men, the latter emerging only after man has made some gains in culture. The natural desires may be grouped into— are a) Appetitive. Hunger, thirst, and sex-appetite b) Hedonic. Fear, aversion to pain, love of ease, warmth, and sensuous pleasure c) Egotic. These are demands of the self rather than of the organism. They include shame, envy, love of liberty, of power, and of glory. The type of this class is ambition d) Affective. Desires that terminate upon others: sympathy, sociability, love, hate, spite, jealousy, anger, and revenge e) Recreative. Play impulses, love of self-expression. The cultural desires, which are clearly differentiated only in culture men, f) Religious. Yearning for those states of swimming or unconditioned consciousness represented by the religious ecstasy g) Ethical. Love of fair play, sense of justice h) Aesthetic. Desire for the pleasures of perception, i.e., for enjoyment of the "beautiful" i) Intellectual. Curiosity, love of learning, of knowing, and of imparting 28 In a later paragraph, and with reference in part to the foregoing passage, Ross continues: There are certain huge complexes of goods which serve as means to the satisfaction of a variety of wants. These are Wealth, Government, Religion, and Knowledge. In respect to these the various elementary social forces therefore give off impulses which run together and form the economic, religious, political, and intellectual interests, which constitute in effect the chief historymaking forces. 28 In the opening chapter of Moot Points, Ross had made the following observations, which are at the same time explanatory of his feeling regarding the social-forces concept, and expressive of a line of thought which became more and more emphasized in later American sociology-the thought that the social process is to a large degree a process which generates in itself causal factors and conditions. In other words, the immediate social forces include among their number forces which are generated in the operation of the social process, if indeed there are any other social forces. Suppose that the desires that constitute the springs of human action and the causes of social phenomena resolved into certain basic cravings, each distinct from the others in its object, and each stimulating men to a particular mode of activity in order to satisfy it. Suppose, furthermore, these specific desires never crossed or modified each other and were intractable to the unifying control of any world-view or ideal of life. Suppose, finally, that each craving, or set of cravings, operating on a large scale, generated in society certain appropriate dogmas, creeds, activities, and institutions, which remained separate from and unmixed with the collective manifestations of other cravings. Religious phenomena would then be unalloyed by ethical or political considerations. The forms of the family would be unaffected by industrial changes. The fine arts would run their course heedless of revolutions in the sphere of ideas. . . . The mere statement of the requirements to be fulfilled in order to assure the sovereignty and equality of the special social sciences is a sufficient answer to such claims. Each is not the special field of action of certain impulses. So far as specific cravings exist, they react upon and modify one another, they lie under the empery of the accepted world-view or ideal of life.29 Professor Ellwood is one of the recent contributors to sociological literature who has built more or less definitely upon the fundamental concept of social forces as laid down by Ward, though of course not without modifications. In his Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects he has a stimulating chapter on the "Theory of the Social Forces," in which he discusses at length the claim that psychic factors may be rightly counted as social forces, and concludes that for all practical purposes they may be so counted. He reviews the classifications of Ward and Small, and concludes that no classification of social forces can be made which will be completely satisfactory, whether from the point of view of either end or purpose, or of inborn nature of man, because of the complexity of human nature and the expanding character of the social process. He makes the tentative suggestion, however, that the psychic factors of social phenomena may be classified under three headings: (1) primary forces or impulses, which may be subdivided into original and acquired impulses; (2) secondary forces or feelings, subdivided as to pleasantness or unpleasantness, or according to their attachment to instincts or habits; (3) tertiary forces or intellec "A. J. S., VIII, 767-68. |