THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 189
dealings with men. His attitude is accepted as typical of all right human relations with the real world. Other things being equal, the man who deals directly at some point with nature's physical veracities should become the more complete and gen- uine man from the association. Conversely, exemption from such relation, or reduction of it to mere brute contact, suspends one of the conditions of personal completeness.
The radical and inevitable necessity of mastery over things by somebody, in order that anybody may maintain mere exist- ence, still more in order that anybody may be more than an animal, creates the most effective presumption against any theory of life which views the lordship of things as an accident. Any function which is essential to the existence of the species must be regarded as proper to the individuals of the species until rea- sons for believing the contrary appear. In this case observation of the wealth function discovers, not merely its necessity, but its inherent dignity. We cannot subtract that dignity from any man and regard the remainder as a complete man.
For sociological theory, whether applying to the remote past or to the immediate present ; for social practice, whether that of scholar or artist or moralist, or that of society in treating children or paupers or criminals or defectives, or of democracies in controlling and developing themselves, the individual always and everywhere in question is an agent intensely interested in compelling nature to his own use. We may not treat this inci- dent as a trivial and transient foible of human character. So far as we know, it betrays an essential and permanent trait of human nature. At all events, valid sociological thinking must accommodate in its assumption of the individual some form and proportion of this sort of self-assertion.
(c) The sociability desire. We have appetites for personal intercourse of a purely spiritual sort, without conscious reference to physical contact or material exchange. There are human affinities which nothing but reaction with human beings can satisfy. There are interchanges of stimulus and satisfaction between persons with no more dependence upon nor ulterior reference to any physical conditions than the slight minimum
