THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 335
perception which is still wider than the economic formulations. This perception is that every man is a contributing cause of every other contemporary and subsequent man ; and, conversely, that every man is a composite product of every antecedent and con- temporary man. Not only what we may do, but what we may think and what we may be, is partly decided for us not wholly by us. Still further, each elementary desire, shared and shaped by many persons, becomes a modifying factor in the activity of all other persons and in all other situations. That is, the effective desires of people for the chief satisfactions health, wealth, socia- bility, knowledge, beauty, Tightness are in turn modifying con- ditions which help to fix the directions and prescribe the limits of all activity aimed at satisfaction of either of these desires.
We may concede without argument that the health and the wealth interests are essential, while the other interests are dependent. The most pressing problem of society is how to secure these essential conditions for all the members of society. We may, therefore, confine our elaboration of the present propo- sition to its relation with the industrial activities. We may repeat our theorem, then, in a more specific form, namely : The details of men's economic activities are fixed by the status of their own and other people's desires for health and sociability and knowledge and beauty and rightness, in combination with their desires for wealth. We will elaborate this proposition, not chiefly for its own sake, but to illustrate the general fact of "interdependence." We may give full value to the environment condition ; we may admit that in the large the environment deter- mines what the economic activity shall be. At the same time, the character of the man environed and the character of all other men also determine what this economic activity shall be. Our industry cannot vary beyond the limits that are set by the traits of the men who have lived before us and those who live round about us. It is too obvious and familiar for more than passing remark that the physical labor force of any generation depends upon the degree of bodily capacity inherited from the preceding generation. What the bodily resources of our day shall accom- plish is limited by the inherited capital of health and bodily
