INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL SURPLUS 551 



THE GENESIS OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL SURPLUS 



BY PROFESSOR ALVAN A. TENNBY 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



LIFE implies surplus energy. No organism can exist for any appre- 

 ciable period without experiencing the fact that its environment 

 is more favorable or more hostile to its life-activities at one time than 

 at another time. Strength that just suffices to resist some special stress 

 thus yields a surplus when that stress is over. Protozoa and men alike 

 are subject to vicissitudes. At times they barely manage to survive. 

 Again their energy exceeds their needs. 



How variations increasing surplus energy are caused no man has 

 definitely shown, though Metchnikoff may yet succeed in proving why 

 the surplus disappears. We merely know that surplus does exist in 

 varying degrees and that its rise and fall depend on measurable facts. 

 We know, too, that the greater the surplus the greater the freedom men 

 have to pursue the higher ends of life or, if they choose, the lower. 



The fact that surplus energy exists and that important consequences 

 result therefrom has been often emphasized. Shiller presented the idea 

 in his discussion of esthetics a century ago, and even Groos, though 

 severely criticizing Spencer for connecting the idea of imitation with 

 the overflow of energy, admits the presence of surplus energy to be 

 "the conditio sine qua non which permits the instincts to be so aug- 

 mented that finally . . . they . . . permit indulgence in merely sportive 

 acts." Patten has even proclaimed a "new basis of civilization" upon 

 the assumption that a social surplus now exists whereby a "pain 

 economy " has been replaced by a " pleasure economy." These writers, 

 however, and others who have dealt with the subject appear to have 

 been interested primarily in demonstrating that certain phenomena or 

 consequences result from an existing surplus. To a limited extent only 

 do they attempt to show upon what conditions the amount of surplus 

 energy in any given case depends. The way appears open, therefore, for 

 a discussion of the clearly marked stages in the increases of surplus 

 energy which have taken place in the evolution of the higher from the 

 lower forms of life and in the evolution of man himself. Such a dis- 

 cussion may be expected to throw light upon at least three problems of 

 more than academic interest. These are the questions: why man in a 

 comparatively brief period of time (as reckoned in geology) has far 

 outstripped competitors; why sociologists should consider psychological 



