438 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
cise (save where sporadically suppressed by inaction) to the extent that each generation enjoys a richer heritage than any that went before, so that pleasure increases cumulatively, under a law no less definite than that general law of cumulation of knowledge of which it is a special expression. Man may be defined as the animal who laughs ; it was with the advent of his kind that smiles and laughter came to be on earth ; but the instinct and the means of happiness have continued to multiply with the passing generations, and to spread from people to peo- ple in a lightsome leaven permeating the primevally leaden lump with the natural germs of sympathy and affection ; and in civili- zation and enlightenment the instrumentalities of pleasure are increased and multiplied to a number and potency hardly less than those of material welfare.
It is the property of pleasure to spring spontaneously in the human mind and to spread irrepressibly by normal impulse, the most powerful in human faculty ; it is the quality of pleasure to warm sympathy and enkindle unity, and thus to prepare the way for the blending first of culture and then of blood throughout the realm of humanity ; and the efficiency of pleasure, like that of the other activities, increases progressively with the cumulative growth of human knowledge.
Technology. — The industrial activities are the pillars of indi- vidual and collective welfare ; they are manifestly inherited from a lowly ancestry, whose representatives sought food and shelter for self and kind with an avidity sharpened into cunning and refined into intelligence as the generations passed ; yet, with the growth of intelligence in the human realm, the activities have ramified widely and risen to new planes far above the reach of the beast. Primarily, industries and pleasures are antithetic, since the former pertain especially to the ego, while the latter spread spontaneously from the ego outward ; the activ- ities of the one class are essentially centripetal, those of the other essentially centrifugal ; the initial tendency of the indus-
�� �
