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energy, the evolution of a civilization involves a lowering of the potential of a people and its eventual replacement by a fresh, unexhausted race. I have elsewhere 1 shown that the race decline which does, in fact, frequently attend social progress is due, not to the lavish expenditure of energy in social achieve- ment, but to needless social mis-selections.
He conceives further that examples, ideas, and commands radiate from the classes and persons of greater energy to those of less energy, this radiation taking the form of the authority and influence the superior exercises over the inferior. It follows that this passage of energy tends to terminate in an equalizing of intensities and a state of equilibrium. Winiarski forgets that, while the communication of ideas does tend to equalize the wise and the simple, the exercise of command does not tend to equalize superior and subordinate and so put an end to itself. It may continue for centuries.
The endeavor to translate desire into physical antecedents shatters on the fact that desires flow out from consciousness, and their objects depend greatly on the contents and processes of the mind. It is true that sexual desire, the craving for exer- cise, and such passions as hope, fear, and anger, reflect the bodily condition, and may easily figure as forms of physiological energy. But the values and ideals, which lure us with equal power in weakness as in health, in old age as in our prime, vary not so much with our bodily condition as with our way of thinking. So long as we think the same of an object we desire it with undiminished intensity. But if we see it in a new light, it ceases to gleam. An ideal, which is a peculiar set imparted to our admiration, a value, which is a peculiar set given to our judg- ment, is to be explained by our experiences. The assurance that my ambition to become an athlete or a raconteur is a mode of biotic energy tells you nothing. What you want is an account of the impressions, ideas, or reasonings which lead me to attach worth to these things.
Desire may or may not be a form of energy. In any case it is certain that a mechanical interpretation cannot help us to pre-
1 " Social Selections," Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1903.
