character of the responses, the response of the organism to one class of stimuli affecting its response to other classes of stimuli only as it affects the total habits of the organism.14 Whenever, of course, instinctive and habitual responses do not work well, result in faulty adaptations of the organism to its environment, intelligence comes in to reconstruct the activity, that is, to build up new habits. It is evident from this most brief account of the nature of individual activity that the type of response to one set of stimuli does not determine in any fundamental way the type of response to another set of stimuli. However, habits of response to a certain class of stimuli do affect to a certain extent habits of response to all other classes, because individual activity must preserve unity if the life process is to be successfully carried on. If the type of response to one set of stimuli changes, then the habits of response to all other classes of stimuli must change with it, because a new situation has been created to which the organism must adjust itself as a unity. This is, however, simply the doctrine of the unity of personality which modern psychological research has tended to confirm; but this doctrine in no way necessitates the belief that habits of response to one particular set of stimuli (namely the economic) are peculiarly determinative of habits of response to other classes. It is rather a doctrine of the reciprocity and interdependence of all individual activities.

Likewise modern psychology necessitates the conception of human society as a complex of living organisms responding, now this way, now that, to external stimuli in the environment. These stimuli are roughly, but inaccurately, often spoken of as social causes, though they are not causes in a mechanical sense. Just as responses to stimuli given by individuals vary greatly, according to the inner nature of the individual organism, so the responses given by groups of individuals vary according to the hereditary tendencies and habits of the organisms composing the social group. Now these stimuli in the environment which give rise to the activities of society as of individu"See Angell's Psychology, especially chap. iii; also Thorndike's Elements of Psychology, Part II.

als may, of course, by a process of abstraction, be classified into several great groups such as the economic, the reproductive, the political, the religious, and so on. The economic stimuli we may roughly define as those which have to do with the processes of the production and distribution of wealth, that is, the economic stimuli are those which are concerned with economic value. Now there is no reason why the responses of a social group to these economic stimuli, those connected with economic value, should determine the responses to all other stimuli, that is, should determine all other social activities. Modern psychology leaves, in other words, Marx's supposition that the other activities of the social life are determined by the economic, or are simply reflexes of economic processes, without any scientific foundation. It is true that habits of response in the social group to a certain class of stimuli affect to a certain extent habits of response to all other classes. Thus it follows that the economic phase of human social life affects to a very great degree all other phases. This is simply a consequence of the unity of individual personality and of the interdependence of all phases of the social life, that is, of the unity of society. But this is something very different from Marx's theory that the economic element determines all other phases, or conditions them in such a way that their form and expression are fixed. For under the doctrine of social interdependence it is just as reasonable to say that the religious and intellectual phases of the social life, for example, determine the economic, as it is to say that the method of producing and distributing wealth determines the political, the moral, the religious, and other phases of social life.

It is evident that the fallacy in the reasoning of Marx and of those who uphold the "materialistic conception of history" is due to the overabstraction of the economic from all other phases of the social life process. In order to understand that process the geographical, the racial, the political, the religious, the educational, and all other factors must be taken into account as well as the economic. In other words, the social life cannot be interpreted in terms of any one of its phases or in

terms of a single set of causes, but can only be properly interpreted by a synthetic view which shall take into account all the different factors actually found in the social life process. Such a synthetic view can best be obtained, not through taking some specialized phase of human society, such as the method of producing and distributing wealth, but rather through paying attention to the original biological and psychological elements in the social life process. A fundamental interpretation of social evolution is not to be secured, therefore, through economic, nor through political or religious elements, but rather through the original biological and psychological factors. Now the economic in any proper sense of the term can scarcely be said to exist below the human level,15 at least we have no knowledge of economic value emerging in animal society; consequently the problem of social evolution is fundamentally a biological and psychological problem, that is, a sociological one.

The soundness of this position is emphasized by what is perhaps the greatest discovery in modern social psychology, namely the rôle of imitation in the social life. Tarde and others have shown that on account of the fundamental imitative tendencies of man, examples of social activity and institutions tend to be copied almost regardless of economic conditions in society.16 It is true that where economic conditions are favorable to the imitation of an activity, imitation takes place much more rapidly; but there are many examples of imitation taking place relatively regardless of the favorableness or unfavorableness of economic conditions. If Marx and the economic interpreters of history in general were fully to allow for this factor of imitation what we already know regarding its workings, the "materialistic conception of history" would have to be so stretched

" The statement of Professor Keasbey (translator's Preface to Loria's Economic Foundations of Society, viii) that "economic necessity determined the original forms of social life" can only mean "the necessities of nutrition and reproduction, etc." But this use of the word "economic" in the sense of "biological" is a wholly unwarranted extension of the term. See my article on "The Origin of Society" in American Journal of Sociology, XV, 394.

16 Cf. Tarde, The Laws of Imitation, chaps. v-vii; also Ross, Social Psychology, chaps. viii-xiv. Tarde would apparently concede only a comparatively small determining influence to the purely economic factors in society. Rather he would make economic factors themselves merely modes of social imitation.

and modified that there would be little of value left in it for the sociologist. It is the same way with other psychological factors, such as native reactions like sympathy17 and pugnacity. Indeed when one surveys the course of human social evolution from the standpoint of psychology one can only feel that such a doctrine as the "materialistic conception of history" is the offspring of psychological ignorance; but for such psychological ignorance Marx and his followers should, of course, not be blamed, as the development of modern psychology, and of social psychology in particular, has been wholly since Marx formulated his famous theory. Marx's doctrine is simply one of the many gropings for a scientific conception of social evolution which speculative thought showed previous to the development of modern sci

ence.

Neither can "economic determinism" stand in the somewhat revised and modified form in which we frequently find it among the various socialist and economic writers of today; namely, that one's economic occupation, one's method of obtaining a livelihood, determines his habits of thinking and acting, and so determines the activities of the mass of individuals composing a social group. At first sight this hypothesis, that occupation determines habits of thought and acting, seems quite in accord with modern psychology; but it has two fallacies in it. It is only when the word occupation is used in such a broad sense as to mean life itself that it can safely be said that occupation determines habits of thought. On the contrary it is notorious that one's method of passing one's leisure does more to determine character, frequently, than one's method of earning a livelihood; and this is true not only of the so-called leisure classes, but also of the working classes to an almost equal degree. Their amusements and recreations (which in early youth take up more than half of their total time) determine their habits of thought quite as much as their occupations. Moreover, the word occupation stands only for activities within the lifetime of the individual, while habits of thought are also largely determined by instinctive tendencies and impulses which " Cf. Giddings, Elements of Sociology, chaps. v-xiii.

the individual has received by heredity from the life of the past. The determinism of social activities through prevailing economic occupations of individuals as a sociological hypothesis, therefore, falls to the ground.

As for inductive evidence supporting the "materialistic conception of history" there is none which will stand the test of severe scientific scrutiny. Of the many fields from which the sociologist draws his facts ethnography is certainly one of the most important, but ethnography affords no proof of the contention that other elements of culture vary invariably with the economic element. On the contrary, ethnography affords many examples of the opposite. The Tungus people of eastern Siberia may be cited as one example. While the methods of earning a livelihood among the Tunguses vary all the way from simple hunting and fishing up to the lower forms of agriculture, yet all observers testify as to the remarkable uniformity in character, in religion, and in other elements of culture among these different Tungus groups, apparently regardless of the different methods of production. Everywhere the true Tungus of Siberia is the same gentle, peace-loving, truth-telling, Shaman-worshiping type, no matter what his economic development may be. With each type of economy there does not go a corresponding type of Tungusic character and culture, as should be the case if the economic conception of the social life were true. Many other examples of cases where the economic element varies relatively independently of other culture elements and vice versa might be given. The field of ethnography offers no adequate evidence to support the "materialist conception of history."

History itself, it may safely be affirmed, offers no such evidence. The history of China for the past three thousand years has illustrated, not so much the preponderating influence of economic conditions, as the preponderating influence of ancestor worship. All students of Chinese history agree that this religion, whatever its origin, has been the "master key" to Chinese social life and character. The history of Israel can scarcely even be understood from the economic standpoint, and especially is it impossible to explain the religious development of the Hebrews