Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/496

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mcgee] THE TREND OF HUMAN PROGRESS 437

tions : Sociology; (4) activities expressing thought, or languages : Philology ; (5) activities for organizing knowledge, or philoso- phies : Sophiology. These activities and sciences have already

been defined at length ' ; accordingly nothing more than a brief

« 

outline of the sciences, with special reference to trend of activital development, seems now to be required.

Esthetology, — The pleasurable activities appear to arise nor- mally with an exuberance proportionate to intelligence ; and in demotic organization they appear to pass from person to per- son and from group to group, in a contagion beginning in ap- preciation and maturing in imitation, with a degree of rapidity also varying directly with intelligence. The conspicuous feature of the pleasure instinct, as expressed in individual experience and in the records of tradition and literature, is the constant out- reaching from the commonplace into the ideal, or the novel, or at least the unusual — that is, the key-note of the instinct is the insatiable hunger of humanity for better things. So the savage eye is caught by the gleam of the stars, by the glory of the sun, by the glitter of the gem, by the glint of light from distant peak or lake, as well as by brilliant color and definite shape ; and his crude ideas are laxly spun into a pervasive mythology or more closely woven into growing concepts of grace and beauty. So, too, the barbaric eye is caught by the brilliant and remote, and idealization grows apace in the expanding mind, while the highly cultured harmonize colors and forms, and reach out among other races and nations for new motives ; and in each stage the other sense organs combine with the eye in finding fresh ideals and bringing them into the permanent possession of the group. Now, the pleasure instinct, like all other things human, grows by exer-

1 Vice-presidential address before the Anthropological Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, entitled "The Science of Humanity" (Proceedings of the A. A. A. S., vol. XLVI, 1897, pp. 293-324 ; American Anthropolo- gist, vol. x, 1897, pp. 241-272 ; Science^ vol. vi, 1897, pp. 413-433, and Scientific American Supplement, vol. XLIV, 1897, pp. 18068-18070, 18083-18084, and 18121) ; also in the Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897, pp. xv-xviii.

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