THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY IQ5
the two kinds of valuation that we actually pass upon the knowl- edge element in conduct. Knowledge as a means of maintaining the standard of life is practically demanded by everybody. Knowledge as vision of the meaning of life, and of what the standard of life should be, is needed by everybody, but is in far less general demand. The largest concrete conception which the human mind can represent in detail is the persistence and the expansion of the life-process of which we find ourselves to be parts. We have a vague conception of this system of relations as in its turn an incident in a greater cosmic process, or a stage in the progress toward a "far-off divine event." This, however, shapes itself in our imagination as little more in detail than we discover actually or potentially in the social process. The latter includes all the reality which we have the means of thinking specifically. Accordingly our valuations of knowledge tend to scale up and down from the meaning of the nearest details of our individual lives, at the one extreme, to the largest correlations of the total life-process, past, present, and future, at the other. It is necessary to the integrity of the social process that the whole process shall reduce itself in my knowing to that kind and measure of apprehension which enables me to be my particular kind of cog in the whole process. It is essential to the complete integrity of my individual self that in my knowing the conditions and contents of the whole social process shall be constantly arranging themselves more in accordance with objective fact, and constantly expanding toward juster and completer comprehension of the all within which I perform a part. The whole social process thus realizes itself through the intelligence of the individual, while the individual process, in its intellectual phase, realizes itself through progressive representation of the whole social process. 1
(e] The beauty desire. Frank confession of incompetence to discuss this portion of the subject will excuse failure to give it proportionate emphasis. The theorem which this section is developing is that the actions of all men of whom record is preserved have betrayed impulses which may be traced to six implicit interests, or to six more manifest derived desires. We
1 Cf. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, May, 1900, p. 801.
