The Gratification Element

IN PURSUING the study of human society, one gathers his facts-all the facts-that seem to him relevant to the subject. It is a cheap and shallow comment upon that process to say that the collector must always select his facts upon the basis of some preconceived philosophy. This is one of the meretricious methods by which metaphysicians try to bolster up the declining reputation of their once supremely acclaimed profession. The only selection a genuine scientist makes is one dictated by plain common sense. The geologist collects facts about rocks, not about taxation; he even neglects coral islands as a hunting-ground for data about coal deposits. He does not look for facts he likes, but those he wants. Naturally enough, being human, he sighs when he encounters instances that puncture his theories; but he collects them all the same. He has to, if he is intellectually honest. Explaining facts away, or interpreting them to mean what they do not has never been the way of the genuine scientist. Having accumulated a mass of data, he must needs classify them before he can handle them, and presently he has a bundle of economic instances, another of religious ones, and so on. Again naturally, he labels the pigeon holes of classification by current names, like "Economic," which have grown up to cover currently useful categories. He does not "choose" them. Nobody chose them. Everybody chose them. They are there and have a recognized meaning. This generality about "choosing" should be stated somewhere, and it is naturally prefatory to what follows. When Sumner had collected a great many facts about society's evolution and life, he adopted two grand categories of classification. They are the same that prevail in the world of organisms, namely, self-maintenance and self-perpetuation. Behind them, in both the organic and "superorganic" realms, lie the natural forces or impulsions of hunger and sex-love. And behind religion, another category, there lies-or, at any rate, lay, in the primitive time-a special kind of fear, identified recognizably, if not exactly, as ghost-fear. There may be some quarrel over these terms. That is considered elsewhere. At present they are introduced by way of making a point that lies outside controversy as to their accuracy. Sumner found, naturally, plenty of facts that fell at once into two or more of the foregoing categories or lay somewhere between them. So might one find, in seeking to classify correspondence, letters that are not solely on business, or love, or social matters. It is a phenomenon of all classifications, as of all evolution, that here are no sharp lines of distinction, but only shadings through zones of transition. There is nothing sensible to do in the case except to classify items where they seem best to belong, namely, with other items most like them, reserving the right to shift them indefinitely as further light arrives. But Sumner found a considerable bulk of instances that could not be assigned forthwith to hunger, love, or fear of the supernatural. They did not belong under plain maintenance, like food and shelter, nor did they go back to perpetuation via sex-relations. They had, in many cases, no religious tinge at all, or it was slight and incidental. But they all ministered to positive self-gratification, or to its negative aspect, relief from sheer boredom. Though connectible with maintenance, they lay over and above it, or either of the other categories, demanding a separate major rubric, side by side with the others. *The forces or motives behind self-gratification are evidently something over and above, and less crucial than, hunger, love, or fear. On running over the cases that fall under the category, one is immediately impressed with the presence of vanity as a motivating factor; it may be selected as the representative or file-leader, of a composite set of motives, the rest being of a more physical nature. At the same time, the term "vanity" is taken to cover a group of shadings that run off into ambition, self-respect, desire for approval, and a number of others. Face-saving, protean of form, goes back to self-consciousness and vanity. The term is loose and is not defended here with any ardor; perhaps some technical label should be invented to cover the sprawling composite of motive behind self-gratification. "Hedonism" might do, except that philosophy has established prior claim. For the moment, however, one can aoprehend what it