Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/718

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

have been taken by the production of as many successively more and more energetic products, whose respective forms of energy are represented by their properties, and which by the different activities manifested, produce different classes of phe- nomena and constitute different kinds of causes producing effects in different degrees. The following table was drawn up to exhibit all these aspects of the subject :

PRODUCTS

DIFFERENTIAL ATTRIBUTES

PROPERTIES

ACTIVITIES

PHENOMENA

CAUSES

Man . .

Intellect

)

Final

Animals

Feeling

1

Psychic

Conative

-

Molar

i

Plants \

)

Life

Vital

Protoplasm. . )

N

Organic Compounds ... 1

}

Efficient

1

Inorganic Compounds. . ^

Elective Affinities

1

^

Molecular Y

Physical

Chemical Elements J

Universal Ether

Wave Motion

\

-

This table results from an attempt "to arrange these several products of evolution in their ascending order of development, assigning to each the particular property by which it is dis- tinguished from all below it," and to exhibit in the remaining three columns the kind of activities belonging to each product, the class of phenomena it manifests, and the nature of the cause through which it produces effects. "The universal ether is placed at the bottom of the scale as representing the most dif- fuse form of matter with the least power, when not concentrated, of producing effects. Next come the chemical elements, which form a class, although they might themselves be arranged in an ascending series. The inorganic compounds naturally follow the elements, and the same remark applies to them. The organic compounds differ from the inorganic still less than the latter differ from the elements, but they belong above them,