Personality under Ethnic Society Personality under Political Society SOCIETY CHAPTER I SOCIAL ENERGY It was the philosopher Lotze, I believe, who held that a thing is known by its activities. To determine how it acts through and through is, he declared, to arrive at a complete understanding of what it is. It would seem, however, that, contrary to the Lotzean view, the energies of a thing, provided they can be separately determined, furnish a better criterion of its nature than do its mere activities. If, for instance, we could thoroughly test and fully measure its energies, our understanding of society would be comparatively thorough. But this we cannot do as yet with entire satisfaction, and, desirable though a sociology written in terms of energy might be, its complete realization lies largely beyond the horizon of the present in the realm of future effort. Howbeit, nothing hinders and much invites an attempt to subject the energy that human society embodies to whatever analysis and measurement is possible, and so to reveal the materials of sociology. SOURCE OF ENERGY Whence is social energy, is the first and fundamental question. Herbert Spencer traced it to solar radiation.1 1 First Principles (5th Ed.), pp. 189, 190. |