250 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of names according to the degree of intellectual power called forth and to the nature of the being acted upon, but there is not the slightest difference in the essential quality of the mental act. We may distinguish five ascending grades of this act which will be sufficient for the present purpose. These are, (i) low or ordinary cunning, largely aided in animals by hereditary instincts; (2) sagacity, such as is manifested by the most intelligent domes- tic animals, and also by the less developed human beings ; (3) shrewdness, best exemplified in business transactions; (4) strat- egy, as practiced in war; and (5) diplomacy, characterizing the intercourse of nations with one another. This group of intellec- tual actions, since it involves more or less pain, temporary at least, in the feeling beings exploited, represents the moral aspect of the principle under discussion and may be called moral indi- rectio?i.
The other form of indirection, viz., that in which the intellect, or directive agent deals with inanimate or insentient objects form- ing obstacles to the satisfaction of desire, appears only to a limited degree at any stage below the human. At least animals exercise it only by avoiding such obstacles, and never by modi- fying them. But man, at ail stages at which we know him, and doubtless almost from the beginning of his strictly human career, has always and everywhere sought with more or less success to modify his environment and to adapt it more completely to his needs. The principle involved is in all respects the same as that by which he has thwarted the will of animals and his fellow men. In a certain sense he may be said to be engaged in deceiving nature or exploiting the inorganic world. In circumventing the will of animals and men he is making use of all the knowledge he possesses of psychic forces. In modifying the inanimate environment he in like manner makes use of his knowledge of physical forces. It is the same faculty employed in the same way only on another class of objects.
The objects being inanimate and insentient their manipulation can cause no pain and therefore no moral considerations are involved. Such action is innocent or unmoral (amoral or anethical)^
