SEPTEMBER 17, 1897. ] 
activities of higher planes rise above the 
material in their essential character and 
are only incidentally represented by ma- 
terial devices. 
3. The activities of the third class are 
connected with collective relations; and, 
since they grow out of consanguinity or 
family relation, they may be said to have a 
biotic germ. In general, the products of 
these activities originate as customs which 
grade into regulations and later into laws, 
and are perpetuated in tribal, national and 
other institutions. The activities and their 
products are most intimately connected 
with, and indeed form the chief basis of, 
cultural progress. In the first culture stage, 
corresponding to what is commonly called 
savagery, the collective or social relation is 
based on kinship traced in the maternal 
line; in the stage commonly called barbar- 
ism, social relation rests on kinship traced 
through the paternal line, these stages 
forming tribal society. In the third stage 
the social organization passes from patri- 
archy, through feudalism, or an equivalent 
intermediate condition not yet formulated, 
to that stage of individual property-right in 
Jands and goods which is commonly called 
civilization ; and men are now passing into 
the stage characterized by intellectual 
property-right which is commonly called 
enlightenment, the organization in the last 
two stages being essentially non-consan- 
guineal and constituting what is sometimes 
called national society. The several activ- 
ities and activital products belonging to 
this class form the object-matter of a fecund 
science commonly called Sociology, though 
the day of final agreement concerning the 
definition of the term is not yet. 
4, In some measure the activities of the 
fourth class are an outgrowth of those of 
the third, since, although essentially super- 
organic, they may be regarded as a means 
of establishing and maintaining relation ; 
they comprise expression, pantomimic, oral 
SCIENCE. 
429 
and graphic. Like the other activities, they 
arise and expand in a certain order ; begin- 
ning with what is somewhat incongruously 
called gesture-speech and with rudely artic- 
ulate language, they mature in oratory and 
literature ; and it is significant that the lines 
of development, so far as ascertained, run 
counter to those of biotic evolution in that 
they are almost wholly convergent instead - 
of divergent; so that these activities per- 
tain, in every essential respect, to the su- 
perorganic realm of humanity. The prin- 
cipal activities are speech and writing; the 
tangible products are legend and literature; 
but the rich and ever-growing content of 
these products is knowledge. The activi- 
ties of expression and their products are 
commonly combined as the object-matter of 
another science frequently called Philology, 
though in this case, too, there is diversity 
in definition, and also in designation. 
5. There remains a class of elusive and 
protean, yet immeasurably potent, activi- 
ties which come so near the ego and are so 
hard to grasp and difficult to convey that it 
would seem almost hopeless to attempt to 
define them ; they are the essentially intel- 
lectual activities which form the motive 
and burden of expression, and their prod- 
ucts comprise beliefs, opinions, knowledge, 
wisdom and all other purely intellectual 
possessions. ‘These activities also arise in 
a definite order, which is set forth incident- 
ally in earlier paragraphs; and by most 
systematic thinkers they are considered to 
mature in science. The activities and their 
products are so obscure and so diverse that 
they have not been combined and named in 
the vernacular; yet they are by some stu- 
dents regarded as the object-matter of one 
of the broadest of the special sciences, So- 
plhiology.* 
So there are five classes of essentially 
human activities and activital products, each 
*Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Amer- 
ican Ethnology, 1897, page xviii. 
