It is out of these primitive economic activities that systematic industrial and commercial activi ties constituting the modern business economy are developed.
CoOperation in the development of moral thought and activity, including juristic activity, which is the public development of moral ac tivity, has antecedents in both cultural and eco nomic interests. but it also has characteristic stimuli of its own, chiefly injuries and wrongs.
Political cooperation on its public side is the governmental activity of the State. Private po litical cooperation includes all such lawful ac tivities as the functions of political parties, and the conduct of campaigns, and such unlawful activities as insurrections and revolutions. Among the stimuli of political cooperation are superior power, to which enforced obedience is yielded, the impressive power of a strong per sonality manifested in leadership, and danger from foes. These are familiar causes that come readily to mind, but others less obvious are as important. Among them are those definite aims which political action seeks to achieve. They in clude the preservation of the group, its safe guarding, the maintenance of a certain char acter or kind in the population (an aim revealed, for example, in our immigration laws), and cer tain ideals of the preferred distinction or attain ment of the community, as, for example, power, or prosperity and splendor, or justice, or lib erty and enlightenment. Approximate political ends, or means to the attainment of the remoter ends just named, also are stimuli of collective action. Among them are the permanent pos sessions of the community, especially its terri tory, and policies in respect of population, or in respect of the habits, customs, and activities of the people.
Political cooperation itself, as distinguished from its stimuli or causes, is always a policy of some kind. Policies involve social choices, and these involve social valuations. The various ends which political action seeks to achieve are more or less useful to the community and such utilities are variously valued. Highest in value are ranked those objects for which the society exists, namely the concrete living individuals who compose the community, the social type or ideal, and time attainment of the community.
Lower in the scale of values are placed all those political relations and possessions which are but means to the attainment of social ends.
The dominant stimuli of concerted volition are of the utmost importance in their relation to the cohesion, and liberty of a people. A very large number of individuals resemble one another in only a few points, but some such points there always are, and a few stimuli are of such universal influence that they can bind very miscellaneous elements in a common pur pose and action. Men differ widely in their re sponse to the aspects and forces of nature, which appeal to emotion and to intelligence. They are more nearly alike in their response to economic opportunity, although some natures are more ap pealed to by the dangerous and exciting oppor tunities. others by the safe and uneventful ones. There is one stimulus which above all acts upon minds otherwise most unlike. This is the im pressive power of a strong personality. The impassive and the emotional, the dull and the keen, the dogmatic and the critical, all yield to the man of daring and resourceful leadership. Accordingly, we find that highly miscellaneous aggregations of human beings are usually bound together by personal allegiance rather than by agreeing ideas and sympathies. Their social or ganization is authoritative rather than demo cratic.
The character of concerted volition thus varies with the stimuli to which men most easily and in large numbers respond. It is instinctive if the stimuli touch only the Moo-motor processes, as in many of our responses to natural forces. to danger, to menace, o• to injury; obedient if the responses are of the ideo-motor sort and to a power which it is useless to resist, as in the relations of a conquered people to its conquerors; spontaneous if the responses are chiefly ideo emotional and to stimuli more or less sensational or exciting: deferential or loyal if the responses are dogmatically emotional to authority, to be lief, or to dogma; independent and idealistic if the responses are deliberative and to such stimuli as ideals or intelligently made plans.