Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/372

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powell] TECHNOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INDUSTRIES 321

cannot exist apart. Every activity, when performed, involves all of the concomitant effects. The world is concrete, but the method of consideration is often abstract.

Industries are classified as substantiation, construction, me- chanics, commerce, and medicine.

SUBSTANTIATION

Certain activities of welfare are fundamental thereto, because they are necessary to life. We must breathe air, we must drink water, we must eat food, we must seek shelter from the elements, and we must wear clothing. In the pursuit of these necessities of life, human activities are employed even in the primordial stage of savagery. Four of these necessary activities are pur- sued by the lower animals — they seek water, food, and shelter for their young and sometimes for their companions — but artificial clothing is not worn by them. Activities pursued for the welfare of self and others are industries.

The natural kinds fundamentally necessary to man are found by experience to be air, water, rocks, plants, and animals.

Air is necessary at every minute of life, and it is so abundant that man is not required to produce artificial air, though as civil- ization advances he finds it necessary to provide for its purity.

Water also is abundant. Man does not find it necessary to produce water from its elements, but he does find it necessary to produce it at the place where it is needed and to provide for its purity.

Minerals are found to be useful to man primarily, perhaps, for shelter ; soon they are found useful as tools, and he engages in their production by quarrying and mining.

Plants are found to be useful to man as food in all its varieties, as sap, leaves, bark, roots, seeds, and fruits. Plants are also use- ful to man in providing shelter, and various parts of the plant are used in the construction of houses by human devices. Plants are also found useful to man in fibers as clothing.

AM. ANTH. N.S., X — 21

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