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Title: Introduction to the Science of Sociology
Author: Park, Robert Ezra, 1864-1944, Burgess, E. W. (Ernest Watson), 1886-1966
Language: English
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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI
INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY
_By_
ROBERT E. PARK AND ERNEST W. BURGESS
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT 1921 BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All rights Reserved
Published September 1921
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected. Footnotes have been
moved to the end of the chapters. Italicized letters, such as (_a_),
have been changed to unitalicized (a) for easier reading.
PREFACE
The materials upon which this book is based have been collected from a
wide range of sources and represent the observation and reflection of
men who have seen life from very different points of view. This was
necessary in order to bring into the perspective of a single volume the
whole wide range of social organization and human life which is the
subject-matter of a science of society.
At the same time an effort has been made to bring this material within
the limits of a very definite series of sociological conceptions which
suggest, at any rate, where they do not clearly exhibit, the fundamental
relations of the parts to one another and to the concepts and contents
of the volume as a whole.
The _Introduction to the Science of Sociology_ is not conceived as a
mere collection of materials, however, but as a systematic treatise. On
the other hand, the excerpts which make up the body of the book are not
to be regarded as mere illustrations. In the context in which they
appear, and with the headings which indicate their place in the volume,
they should enable the student to formulate for himself the principles
involved. An experience of some years, during which this book has been
in preparation, has demonstrated the value to the teacher of a body of
materials that are interesting in themselves and that appeal to the
experience of the student. If students are invited to take an active
part in the task of interpretation of the text, if they are encouraged
to use the references in order to extend their knowledge of the
subject-matter and to check and supplement classroom discussion by their
personal observation, their whole attitude becomes active rather than
passive. Students gain in this way a sense of dealing at first hand with
a subject-matter that is alive and with a science that is in the making.
Under these conditions sociology becomes a common enterprise in which
all members of the class participate; to which, by their observation and
investigation, they can and should make contributions.
The first thing that students in sociology need to learn is to observe
and record their own observations; to read, and then to select and
record the materials which are the fruits of their readings; to
organize and use, in short, their own experience. The whole organization
of this volume may be taken as an illustration of a method, at once
tentative and experimental, for the collection, classification, and
interpretation of materials, and should be used by students from the
very outset in all their reading and study.
Social questions have been endlessly discussed, and it is important that
they should be. What the student needs to learn, however, is how to get
facts rather than formulate opinions. The most important facts that
sociologists have to deal with are opinions (attitudes and sentiments),
but until students learn to deal with opinions as the biologists deal
with organisms, that is, to dissect them--reduce them to their component
elements, describe them, and define the situation (environment) to which
they are a response--we must not expect very great progress in
sociological science.
It will be noticed that every single chapter, except the first, falls
naturally into four parts; (1) the introduction, (2) the materials, (3)
investigations and problems, and (4) bibliography. The first two parts
of each chapter are intended to raise questions rather than to answer
them. The last two, on the other hand, should outline or suggest
problems for further study. The bibliographies have been selected mainly
to exhibit the recognized points of view with regard to the questions
raised, and to suggest the practical problems that grow out of, and are
related to, the subject of the chapter as a whole.
The bibliographies, which accompany the chapters, it needs to be said,
are intended to be representative rather than authoritative or complete.
An attempt has been made to bring together literature that would exhibit
the range, the divergence, the distinctive character of the writings and
points of view upon a single topic. The results are naturally subject to
criticism and revision.
A word should be said in regard to chapter i. It seemed necessary and
important, in view of the general vagueness and uncertainty in regard to
the place of sociology among the sciences and its relation to the other
social sciences, particularly to history, to state somewhere, clearly
and definitely, what, from the point of view of this volume, sociology
is. This resulted finally in the imposition of a rather formidable essay
upon what is in other respects, we trust, a relatively concrete and
intelligible book. Under these circumstances we suggest that, unless the
reader is specially interested in the matter, he begin with the chapter
on "Human Nature," and read the first chapter last.
The editors desire to express their indebtedness to Dr. W. I. Thomas for
the point of view and the scheme of organization of materials which have
been largely adopted in this book.[1] They are also under obligations to
their colleagues, Professor Albion W. Small, Professor Ellsworth Faris,
and Professor Leon C. Marshall, for constant stimulus, encouragement,
and assistance. They wish to acknowledge the co-operation and the
courtesy of their publishers, all the more appreciated because of the
difficult technical task involved in the preparation of this volume. In
preparing copy for publication and in reading proof, invaluable service
was rendered by Miss Roberta Burgess.
Finally the editors are bound to express their indebtedness to the
writers and publishers who have granted their permission to use the
materials from which this volume has been put together. Without the use
of these materials it would not have been possible to exhibit the many
and varied types of observation and reflection which have contributed to
present-day knowledge of social life. In order to give this volume a
systematic character it has been necessary to tear these excerpts from
their contexts and to put them, sometimes, into strange categories. In
doing this it will no doubt have happened that some false impressions
have been created. This was perhaps inevitable and to be expected. On
the other hand these brief excerpts offered here will serve, it is
hoped, as an introduction to the works from which they have been taken,
and, together with the bibliographies which accompany them, will serve
further to direct and stimulate the reading and research of students.
The co-operation of the following publishers, organizations and
journals, in giving, by special arrangement, permission to use
selections from copyright material, was therefore distinctly appreciated
by the editors:
D. Appleton & Co.; G. Bell & Sons; J. F. Bergmann; Columbia University
Press; George H. Doran Co.; Duncker und Humblot; Duffield & Co.;
Encyclopedia Americana Corporation; M. Giard et Cie; Ginn & Co.;
Harcourt, Brace & Co.; Paul B. Hoeber; Houghton Mifflin Co.; Henry Holt
& Co.; B. W. Huebsch; P. S. King & Son; T. W. Laurie, Ltd.; Longmans,
Green & Co.; John W. Luce & Co.; The Macmillan Co.; A. C. McClurg & Co.;
Methuen & Co.; John Murray; Martinus Nijhoff; Open Court Publishing Co.;
Oxford University Press; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Rütten und Loening;
Charles Scribner's Sons; Frederick A. Stokes & Co.; W. Thacker & Co.;
University of Chicago Press; University Tutorial Press, Ltd.;
Wagnerische Univ. Buchhandlung; Walter Scott Publishing Co.; Williams &
Norgate; Yale University Press; American Association for International
Conciliation; American Economic Association; American Sociological
Society; Carnegie Institution of Washington; _American Journal of
Psychology_; _American Journal of Sociology_; _Cornhill Magazine_;
_International Journal of Ethics_; _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_;
_Journal of Delinquency_; _Nature_; _Pedagogical Seminary_; _Popular
Science Monthly_; _Religious Education_; _Scientific Monthly_;
_Sociological Review_; _World's Work_; _Yale Review_.
CHICAGO
June 18, 1921
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
PAGE
I. Sociology and "Scientific" History 1
II. Historical and Sociological Facts 6
III. Human Nature and Law 12
IV. History, Natural History, and Sociology 16
V. The Social Organism: Humanity or Leviathan? 24
VI. Social Control and Schools of Thought 27
VII. Social Control and the Collective Mind 36
VIII. Sociology and Social Research 43
_Representative Works in Systematic Sociology and Methods of
Sociological Research_ 57
_Topics for Written Themes_ 60
_Questions for Discussion_ 60
CHAPTER II. HUMAN NATURE
I. Introduction
1. Human Interest in Human Nature 64
2. Definition of Human Nature 65
3. Classification of the Materials 68
II. Materials
A. The Original Nature of Man
1. Original Nature Defined. _Edward L. Thorndike_ 73
2. Inventory of Original Tendencies. _Edward L. Thorndike_ 75
3. Man Not Born Human. _Robert E. Park_ 76
4. The Natural Man. _Milicent W. Shinn_ 82
5. Sex Differences. _Albert Moll_ 85
6. Racial Differences. _C. S. Myers_ 89
7. Individual Differences. _Edward L. Thorndike_ 92
B. Human Nature and Social Life
1. Human Nature and Its Remaking. _W. E. Hocking_ 95
2. Human Nature, Folkways, and the Mores. _William G. Sumner_ 97
3. Habit and Custom, the Individual and the General Will.
_Ferdinand Tönnies_ 100
4. The Law, Conscience, and the General Will. _Viscount Haldane_ 102
C. Personality and the Social Self
1. The Organism as Personality. _Th. Ribot_ 108
2. Personality as a Complex. _Morton Prince_ 110
3. The Self as the Individual's Conception of His Rôle.
_Alfred Binet_ 113
4. The Natural Person versus the Social and Conventional Self.
_L. G. Winston_ 117
5. The Divided Self and Moral Consciousness. _William James_ 119
6. Personality of Individuals and of Peoples. _W. v. Bechterew_ 123
D. Biological and Social Heredity
1. Nature and Nurture. _J. Arthur Thomson_ 126
2. Inheritance of Original Nature. _C. B. Davenport_ 128
3. Inheritance of Acquired Nature: Tradition. _Albert G. Keller_ 134
4. Temperament, Tradition, and Nationality. _Robert E. Park_ 135
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Conceptions of Human Nature Implicit in Religious and
Political Doctrines 139
2. Literature and the Science of Human Nature 141
3. Research in the Field of Original Nature 143
4. The Investigation of Human Personality 143
5. The Measurement of Individual Differences 145
_Selected Bibliography_ 147
_Topics for Written Themes_ 154
_Questions for Discussion_ 155
CHAPTER III. SOCIETY AND THE GROUP
I. Introduction
1. Society, the Community, and the Group 159
2. Classification of the Materials 162
II. Materials
A. Society and Symbiosis
1. Definition of Society. _Alfred Espinas_ 165
2. Symbiosis (literally "living together"). _William M. Wheeler_ 167
3. The Taming and the Domestication of Animals.
_P. Chalmers Mitchell_ 170
B. Plant Communities and Animal Societies
1. Plant Communities. _Eugenius Warming_ 173
2. Ant Society. _William E. Wheeler_ 180
C. Human Society
1. Social Life. _John Dewey_ 182
2. Behavior and Conduct. _Robert E. Park_ 185
3. Instinct and Character. _L. T. Hobhouse_ 190
4. Collective Representation and Intellectual Life.
_Émile Durkheim_ 193
D. The Social Group
1. Definition of the Group. _Albion W. Small_ 196
2. The Unity of the Social Group. _Robert E. Park_ 198
3. Types of Social Groups. _S. Sighele_ 200
4. _Esprit de Corps_, Morale, and Collective Representations
of Social Groups. _William E. Hocking_ 205
III. Investigations and Problems
1. The Scientific Study of Societies 210
2. Surveys of Communities 211
3. The Group as a Unit of Investigation 212
4. The Study of the Family 213
_Selected Bibliography_ 217
_Topics for Written Themes_ 223
_Questions for Discussion_ 224
CHAPTER IV. ISOLATION
I. Introduction
1. Geological and Biological Conceptions of Isolation 226
2. Isolation and Segregation 228
3. Classification of the Materials 230
II. Materials
A. Isolation and Personal Individuality
1. Society and Solitude. _Francis Bacon_ 233
2. Society in Solitude. _Jean Jacques Rousseau_ 234
3. Prayer as a Form of Isolation. _George Albert Coe_. 235
4. Isolation, Originality, and Erudition. _T. Sharper Knowlson_ 237
B. Isolation and Retardation
1. Feral Men. _Maurice H. Small_ 239
2. From Solitude to Society. _Helen Keller_ 243
3. Mental Effects of Solitude. _W. H. Hudson_ 245
4. Isolation and the Rural Mind. _C. J. Galpin_ 247
5. The Subtler Effects of Isolation. _W. I. Thomas_. 249
C. Isolation and Segregation
1. Segregation as a Process. _Robert E. Park_ 252
2. Isolation as a Result of Segregation.
_L. W. Crafts and E. A. Doll_ 254
D. Isolation and National Individuality
1. Historical Races as Products of Isolation. _N. S. Shaler_ 257
2. Geographical Isolation and Maritime Contact. _George Grote_ 260
3. Isolation as an Explanation of National Differences.
_William Z. Ripley_ 264
4. Natural versus Vicinal Location in National Development.
_Ellen C. Semple_ 268
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Isolation in Anthropogeography and Biology 269
2. Isolation and Social Groups 270
3. Isolation and Personality 271
_Bibliography: Materials for the Study of Isolation_ 273
_Topics for Written Themes_ 277
_Questions for Discussion_ 278
CHAPTER V. SOCIAL CONTACTS
I. Introduction
1. Preliminary Notions of Social Contact 280
2. The Sociological Concept of Contact 281
3. Classification of the Materials 282
II. Materials
A. Physical Contact and Social Contact
1. The Frontiers of Social Contact. _Albion W. Small_ 288
2. The Land and the People. _Ellen C. Semple_ 289
3. Touch and Social Contact. _Ernest Crawley_ 291
B. Social Contact in Relation to Solidarity and to Mobility
1. The In-Group and the Out-Group. _W. G. Sumner_. 293
2. Sympathetic Contacts versus Categoric Contacts. _N. S. Shaler_ 294
3. Historical Continuity and Civilization. _Friedrich Ratzel_ 298
4. Mobility and the Movement of Peoples. _Ellen C. Semple_ 301
C. Primary and Secondary Contacts
1. Village Life in America (from _the Diary of a Young Girl_).
_Caroline C. Richards_ 305
2. Secondary Contacts and City Life. _Robert E. Park_. 311
3. Publicity as a Form of Secondary Contact. _Robert E. Park_ 315
4. From Sentimental to Rational Attitudes. _Werner Sombart_ 317
5. The Sociological Significance of the "Stranger." _Georg Simmel_ 322
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Physical Contacts 327
2. Touch and the Primary Contacts of Intimacy 329
3. Primary Contacts of Acquaintanceship 330
4. Secondary Contacts 331
_Bibliography: Materials for the Study of Social Contacts_ 332
_Topics for Written Themes_ 336
_Questions for Discussion_ 336
CHAPTER VI. SOCIAL INTERACTION
I. Introduction
1. The Concept of Interaction 339
2. Classification of the Materials 341
II. Materials
A. Society as Interaction
1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of Society. _Ludwig Gumplowicz_ 346
2. Social Interaction as the Definition of the Group in Time
and Space. _Georg Simmel_ 348
B. The Natural Forms of Communication
1. Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction. _Georg Simmel_ 356
2. The Expression of the Emotions. _Charles Darwin_ 361
3. Blushing. _Charles Darwin_ 365
4. Laughing. _L. Dugas_ 370
C. Language and the Communication of Ideas
1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals. _C. Lloyd Morgan_ 375
2. The Concept as the Medium of Human Communication.
_F. Max Müller_ 379
3. Writing as a Form of Communication. _Charles H. Judd_ 381
4. The Extension of Communication by Human Invention.
_Carl Bücher_ 385
D. Imitation
1. Definition of Imitation. _Charles H. Judd_ 390
2. Attention, Interest, and Imitation. _G. F. Stout_ 391
3. The Three Levels of Sympathy. _Th. Ribot_ 394
4. Rational Sympathy. _Adam Smith_ 397
5. Art, Imitation, and Appreciation. _Yrjö Hirn_ 401
E. Suggestion
1. A Sociological Definition of Suggestion. _W. v. Bechterew_ 408
2. The Subtler Forms of Suggestion. _Albert Moll_ 412
3. Social Suggestion and Mass or "Corporate" Action.
_W. v. Bechterew_ 415
III. Investigations and Problems
1. The Process of Interaction 420
2. Communication 421
3. Imitation 423
4. Suggestion 424
_Selected Bibliography_ 425
_Topics for Written Themes_ 431
_Questions for Discussion_ 431
CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL FORCES
I. Introduction
1. Sources of the Notion of Social Forces 435
2. History of the Concept of Social Forces 436
3. Classification of the Materials 437
II. Materials
A. Trends, Tendencies, and Public Opinion
1. Social Forces in American History. _A. M. Simons_ 443
2. Social Tendencies as Social Forces. _Richard T. Ely_ 444
3. Public Opinion and Legislation in England. _A. V. Dicey_ 445
B. Interests, Sentiments, and Attitudes
1. Social Forces and Interaction. _Albion W. Small_ 451
2. Interests. _Albion W. Small_ 454
3. Social Pressures. _Arthur F. Bentley_ 458
4. Idea-Forces. _Alfred Fouillée_ 461
5. Sentiments. _William McDougall_ 464
6. Social Attitudes. _Robert E. Park_ 467
C. The Four Wishes: A Classification of Social Forces
1. The Wish, the Social Atom. _Edwin B. Holt_ 478
2. The Freudian Wish. _John B. Watson_ 482
3. The Person and His Wishes. _W. I. Thomas_ 488
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Popular Notions of Social Forces 491
2. Social Forces and History 493
3. Interests, Sentiments, and Attitudes as Social Forces 494
4. Wishes and Social Forces 497
_Selected Bibliography_ 498
_Topics for Written Themes_ 501
_Questions for Discussion_ 502
CHAPTER VIII. COMPETITION
I. Introduction
1. Popular Conceptions of Competition 505
2. Competition a Process of Interaction 507
3. Classification of the Materials 511
II. Materials
A. The Struggle for Existence
1. Different Forms of the Struggle for Existence.
_J. Arthur Thomson_ 513
2. Competition and Natural Selection. _Charles Darwin_ 515
3. Competition, Specialization, and Organization. _Charles Darwin_ 519
4. Man: An Adaptive Mechanism. _George W. Crile_ 522
B. Competition and Segregation
1. Plant Migration, Competition, and Segregation. _F. E. Clements_ 526
2. Migration and Segregation. _Carl Bücher_ 529
3. Demographic Segregation and Social Selection.
_William Z. Ripley_ 534
4. Inter-racial Competition and Race Suicide. _Francis A. Walker_ 539
C. Economic Competition
1. Changing Forms of Economic Competition. _John B. Clark_ 544
2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests.
_Adam Smith_ 550
3. Competition and Freedom. _Frédéric Bastiat_ 551
4. Money and Freedom. _Georg Simmel_ 552
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Biological Competition 553
2. Economic Competition 554
3. Competition and Human Ecology 558
4. Competition and the "Inner Enemies": the Defectives, the
Dependents, and the Delinquents 559
_Selected Bibliography_ 562
_Topics for Written Themes_ 562
_Questions for Discussion_ 563
CHAPTER IX. CONFLICT
I. Introduction
1. The Concept of Conflict 574
2. Classification of the Materials 576
II. Materials
A. Conflict as Conscious Competition
1. The Natural History of Conflict. _W. I. Thomas_ 579
2. Conflict as a Type of Social Interaction. _Georg Simmel_ 582
3. Types of Conflict Situations. _Georg Simmel_ 586
B. War, Instincts, and Ideals
1. War and Human Nature. _William A. White_ 594
2. War as a Form of Relaxation. _G. T. W. Patrick_ 598
3. The Fighting Animal and the Great Society.
_Henry Rutgers Marshall_ 600
C. Rivalry, Cultural Conflicts, and Social Organization
1. Animal Rivalry. _William H. Hudson_ 604
2. The Rivalry of Social Groups. _George E. Vincent_ 605
3. Cultural Conflicts and the Organization of Sects.
_Franklin H. Giddings_ 610
D. Racial Conflicts
1. Social Contacts and Race Conflict. _Robert E. Park_ 616
2. Conflict and Race Consciousness. _Robert E. Park_ 623
3. Conflict and Accommodation. _Alfred H. Stone_ 631
III. Investigations and Problems
1. The Psychology and Sociology of Conflict, Conscious
Competition, and Rivalry 638
2. Types of Conflict 639
3. The Literature of War 641
4. Race Conflict 642
5. Conflict Groups 643
_Selected Bibliography_ 645
_Topics for Written Themes_ 660
_Questions for Discussion_ 661
CHAPTER X. ACCOMMODATION
I. Introduction
1. Adaptation and Accommodation 663
2. Classification of the Materials 666
II. Materials
A. Forms of Accommodation
1. Acclimatization. _Daniel G. Brinton_ 671
2. Slavery Defined. _H. J. Nieboer_ 674
3. Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner.
_Matthew G. Lewis_ 677
4. The Origin of Caste in India. _John C. Nesfield_ 681
5. Caste and the Sentiments of Caste Reflected in Popular Speech.
_Herbert Risley_ 684
B. Subordination and Superordination
1. The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination.
_Hugo Münsterberg_ 688
2. Social Attitudes in Subordination: Memories of an Old Servant.
_An Old Servant_ 692
3. The Reciprocal Character of Subordination and Superordination.
_Georg Simmel_ 695
4. Three Types of Subordination and Superordination.
_Georg Simmel_ 697
C. Conflict and Accommodation
1. War and Peace as Types of Conflict and Accommodation.
_Georg Simmel_ 703
2. Compromise and Accommodation. _Georg Simmel_ 706
D. Competition, Status, and Social Solidarity
1. Personal Competition, Social Selection, and Status.
_Charles H. Cooley_ 708
2. Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types.
_Robert E. Park_ 712
3. Division of Labor and Social Solidarity. _Émile Durkheim_ 714
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Forms of Accommodation 718
2. Subordination and Superordination 721
3. Accommodation Groups 721
4. Social Organization 723
_Selected Bibliography_ 725
_Topics for Written Themes_ 732
_Questions for Discussion_ 732
CHAPTER XI. ASSIMILATION
I. Introduction
1. Popular Conceptions of Assimilation 734
2. The Sociology of Assimilation 735
3. Classification of the Materials 737
II. Materials
A. Biological Aspects of Assimilation
1. Assimilation and Amalgamation. _Sarah E. Simons_ 740
2. The Instinctive Basis of Assimilation. _W. Trotter_ 742
B. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures
1. The Analysis of Blended Cultures. _W. H. R. Rivers_ 746
2. The Extension of Roman Culture in Gaul. _John H. Cornyn_ 751
3. The Competition of the Cultural Languages. _E. H. Babbitt_ 754
4. The Assimilation of Races. _Robert E. Park_ 756
C. Americanization as a Problem in Assimilation
1. Americanization as Assimilation 762
2. Language as a Means and a Product of Participation 763
3. Assimilation and the Mediation of Individual Differences 766
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Assimilation and Amalgamation 769
2. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures 771
3. Immigration and Americanization 772
_Selected Bibliography_ 775
_Topics for Written Themes_ 783
_Questions for Discussion_ 783
CHAPTER XII. SOCIAL CONTROL
I. Introduction
1. Social Control Defined 785
2. Classification of the Materials 787
II. Materials
A. Elementary Forms of Social Control
1. Control in the Crowd and the Public. _Lieut. J. S. Smith_ 800
2. Ceremonial Control. _Herbert Spencer_ 805
3. Prestige. _Lewis Leopold_ 807
4. Prestige and Status in South East Africa. _Maurice S. Evans_ 811
5. Taboo. _W. Robertson Smith_ 812
B. Public Opinion
1. The Myth. _Georges Sorel_ 816
2. The Growth of a Legend. _Fernand van Langenhove_ 819
3. Ritual, Myth, and Dogma. _W. Robertson Smith_ 822
4. The Nature of Public Opinion. _A. Lawrence Lowell_ 826
5. Public Opinion and the Mores. _Robert E. Park_ 829
6. News and Social Control. _Walter Lippmann_ 834
7. The Psychology of Propaganda. _Raymond Dodge_ 837
C. Institutions
1. Institutions and the Mores. _W. G. Sumner_ 841
2. Common Law and Statute Law. _Frederic J. Stimson_ 843
3. Religion and Social Control. _Charles A. Ellwood_ 846
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Social Control and Human Nature 848
2. Elementary Forms of Social Control 849
3. Public Opinion and Social Control 850
4. Legal Institutions and Law 851
_Selected Bibliography_ 854
_Topics for Written Themes_ 862
_Questions for Discussion_ 862
CHAPTER XIII. COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR
I. Introduction
1. Collective Behavior Defined 865
2. Social Unrest and Collective Behavior 866
3. The Crowd and the Public 867
4. Crowds and Sects 870
5. Sects and Institutions 872
6. Classification of the Materials 874
II. Materials
A. Social Contagion
1. An Incident in a Lancashire Cotton Mill 878
2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages. _J. F. C. Hecker_ 879
B. The Crowd
1. The "Animal" Crowd 881
a) The Flock. _Mary Austin_ 881
b) The Herd. _W. H. Hudson_ 883
c) The Pack. _Ernest Thompson Seton_ 886
2. The Psychological Crowd. _Gustave Le Bon_ 887
3. The Crowd Defined. _Robert E. Park_ 893
C. Types of Mass Movements
1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush.
_T. C. Down_ 895
2. Mass Movements and the Mores: The Woman's Crusade.
_Annie Wittenmyer_ 898
3. Mass Movements and Revolution
a) The French Revolution. _Gustave Le Bon_ 905
b) Bolshevism. _John Spargo_ 909
4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism.
_William E. H. Lecky_ 915
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Social Unrest 924
2. Psychic Epidemics 926
3. Mass Movements 927
4. Revivals, Religious and Linguistic 929
5. Fashion, Reform, and Revolution 933
_Selected Bibliography_ 934
_Topics for Written Themes_ 951
_Questions for Discussion_ 951
CHAPTER XIV. PROGRESS
I. Introduction
1. Popular Conceptions of Progress 953
2. The Problem of Progress 956
3. History of the Concept of Progress 958
4. Classification of the Materials 962
II. Materials
A. The Concept of Progress
1. The Earliest Conception of Progress. _F. S. Marvin_ 965
2. Progress and Organization. _Herbert Spencer_ 966
3. The Stages of Progress. _Auguste Comte_ 968
4. Progress and the Historical Process. _Leonard T. Hobhouse_ 969
B. Progress and Science
1. Progress and Happiness. _Lester F. Ward_ 973
2. Progress and Prevision. _John Dewey_ 975
3. Progress and the Limits of Scientific Prevision.
_Arthur J. Balfour_ 977
4. Eugenics as a Science of Progress. _Francis Galton_ 979
C. Progress and Human Nature
1. The Nature of Man. _George Santayana_ 983
2. Progress and the Mores. _W. G. Sumner_ 983
3. War and Progress. _James Bryce_ 984
4. Progress and the Cosmic Urge
a) The _Élan Vitale. Henri Bergson_ 989
b) The _Dunkler Drang. Arthur Schopenhauer_ 994
III. Investigations and Problems
1. Progress and Social Research 1000
2. Indices of Progress 1002
_Selected Bibliography_ 1004
_Topics for Written Themes_ 1010
_Questions for Discussion_ 1010
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See _Source Book for Social Origins_. Ethnological materials,
psychological standpoint, classified and annotated bibliographies for
the interpretation of savage society (Chicago, 1909).
CHAPTER I
SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES[2]
I. SOCIOLOGY AND "SCIENTIFIC" HISTORY
Sociology first gained recognition as an independent science with the
publication, between 1830 and 1842, of Auguste Comte's _Cours de
philosophie positive_. Comte did not, to be sure, create sociology. He
did give it a name, a program, and a place among the sciences.
Comte's program for the new science proposed an extension to politics
and to history of the positive methods of the natural sciences. Its
practical aim was to establish government on the secure foundation of an
exact science and give to the predictions of history something of the
precision of mathematical formulae.
We have to contemplate social phenomena as susceptible of
prevision, like all other classes, within the limits of
exactness compatible with their higher complexity.
Comprehending the three characteristics of political science
which we have been examining, prevision of social phenomena
supposes, first, that we have abandoned the region of
metaphysical idealities, to assume the ground of observed
realities by a systematic subordination of imagination to
observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased
to be absolute, and have become relative to the variable state
of civilization, so that theories, following the natural course
of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them; and, thirdly, that
permanent political action is limited by determinate laws,
since, if social events were always exposed to disturbance by
the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine,
no scientific prevision of them would be possible. Thus, we may
concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social
philosophy on this one great attribute of scientific
prevision.[3]
Comte proposed, in short, to make government a technical science and
politics a profession. He looked forward to a time when legislation,
based on a scientific study of human nature, would assume the character
of natural law. The earlier and more elementary sciences, particularly
physics and chemistry, had given man control over external nature; the
last science, sociology, was to give man control over himself.
Men were long in learning that Man's power of modifying
phenomena can result only from his knowledge of their natural
laws; and in the infancy of each science, they believed
themselves able to exert an unbounded influence over the
phenomena of that science.... Social phenomena are, of course,
from their extreme complexity, the last to be freed from this
pretension: but it is therefore only the more necessary to
remember that the pretension existed with regard to all the
rest, in their earliest stage, and to anticipate therefore that
social science will, in its turn, be emancipated from the
delusion.... It [the existing social science] represents the
social action of Man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was
once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and
even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their
respective sciences.... The human race finds itself delivered
over, without logical protection, to the ill-regulated
experimentation of the various political schools, each one of
which strives to set up, for all future time, its own immutable
type of government. We have seen what are the chaotic results
of such a strife; and we shall find that there is no chance of
order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like
all others, to invariable natural laws, which shall, as a
whole, prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the
limits and character of political action: in other words,
introducing into the study of social phenomena the same
positive spirit which has regenerated every other branch of
human speculation.[4]
In the present anarchy of political opinion and parties, changes in the
existing social order inevitably assume, he urged, the character, at the
best, of a mere groping empiricism; at the worst, of a social convulsion
like that of the French Revolution. Under the direction of a positive,
in place of a speculative or, as Comte would have said, metaphysical
science of society, progress must assume the character of an orderly
march.
It was to be expected, with the extension of exact methods of
investigation to other fields of knowledge, that the study of man and of
society would become, or seek to become, scientific in the sense in
which that word is used in the natural sciences. It is interesting, in
this connection, that Comte's first name for sociology was _social
physics_. It was not until he had reached the fourth volume of his
_Positive Philosophy_ that the word sociological is used for the first
time.
Comte, if he was foremost, was not first in the search for a positive
science of society, which would give man that control over men that he
had over external nature. Montesquieu, in his _The Spirit of Laws_,
first published in 1747, had distinguished in the organization of
society, between form, "the particular structure," and the forces, "the
human passions which set it in motion." In his preface to this first
epoch-making essay in what Freeman calls "comparative politics,"
Montesquieu suggests that the uniformities, which he discovered beneath
the wide variety of positive law, were contributions not merely to a
science of law, but to a science of mankind.
I have first of all considered mankind; and the result of my
thoughts has been, that amidst such an infinite diversity of
laws and manners, they are not solely conducted by the caprice
of fancy.[5]
Hume, likewise, put politics among the natural sciences.[6] Condorcet
wanted to make history positive.[7] But there were, in the period
between 1815 and 1840 in France, conditions which made the need of a new
science of politics peculiarly urgent. The Revolution had failed and the
political philosophy, which had directed and justified it, was bankrupt.
France, between 1789 and 1815, had adopted, tried, and rejected no less
than ten different constitutions. But during this period, as Saint-Simon
noted, society, and the human beings who compose society, had not
changed. It was evident that government was not, in any such sense as
the philosophers had assumed, a mere artefact and legislative
construction. Civilization, as Saint-Simon conceived it, was a part of
nature. Social change was part of the whole cosmic process. He proposed,
therefore, to make politics a science as positive as physics. The
subject-matter of political science, as he conceived it, was not so
much political forms as social conditions. History had been literature.
It was destined to become a science.[8]
Comte called himself Saint-Simon's pupil. It is perhaps more correct to
say Saint-Simon formulated the problem for which Comte, in his _Positive
Philosophy_, sought a solution. It was Comte's notion that with the
arrival of sociology the distinction which had so long existed, and
still exists, between philosophy, in which men define their wishes, and
natural science, in which they describe the existing order of nature,
would disappear. In that case ideals would be defined in terms of
reality, and the tragic difference between what men want and what is
possible would be effaced. Comte's error was to mistake a theory of
progress for progress itself. It is certainly true that as men learn
what is, they will adjust their ideals to what is possible. But
knowledge grows slowly.
Man's knowledge of mankind has increased greatly since 1842. Sociology,
"the positive science of humanity," has moved steadily forward in the
direction that Comte's program indicated, but it has not yet replaced
history. Historians are still looking for methods of investigation which
will make history "scientific."
No one who has watched the course of history during the last
generation can have felt doubt of its tendency. Those of us who
read Buckle's first volume when it appeared in 1857, and almost
immediately afterwards, in 1859, read the _Origin of Species_
and felt the violent impulse which Darwin gave to the study of
natural laws, never doubted that historians would follow until
they had exhausted every possible hypothesis to create a
science of history. Year after year passed, and little progress
has been made. Perhaps the mass of students are more skeptical
now than they were thirty years ago of the possibility that
such a science can be created. Yet almost every successful
historian has been busy with it, adding here a new analysis, a
new generalization there; a clear and definite connection where
before the rupture of idea was absolute; and, above all,
extending the field of study until it shall include all races,
all countries, and all times. Like other branches of science,
history is now encumbered and hampered by its own mass, but its
tendency is always the same, and cannot be other than what it
is. That the effort to make history a science may fail is
possible, and perhaps probable; but that it should cease,
unless for reasons that would cause all science to cease, is
not within the range of experience. Historians will not, and
even if they would they can not, abandon the attempt. Science
itself would admit its own failure if it admitted that man, the
most important of all its subjects, could not be brought within
its range.[9]
Since Comte gave the new science of humanity a name and a point of view,
the area of historical investigation has vastly widened and a number of
new social sciences have come into existence--ethnology, archaeology,
folklore, the comparative studies of cultural materials, i.e., language,
mythology, religion, and law, and in connection with and closely related
with these, folk-psychology, social psychology, and the psychology of
crowds, which latter is, perhaps, the forerunner of a wider and more
elaborate political psychology. The historians have been very much
concerned with these new bodies of materials and with the new points of
view which they have introduced into the study of man and of society.
Under the influences of these sciences, history itself, as James Harvey
Robinson has pointed out, has had a history. But with the innovations
which the new history has introduced or attempted to introduce, it does
not appear that there have been any fundamental changes in method or
ideology in the science itself.
Fifty years have elapsed since Buckle's book appeared, and I
know of no historian who would venture to maintain that we had
made any considerable advance toward the goal he set for
himself. A systematic prosecution of the various branches of
social science, especially political economy, sociology,
anthropology, and psychology, is succeeding in explaining many
things; but history must always remain, from the standpoint of
the astronomer, physicist, or chemist, a highly inexact and
fragmentary body of knowledge.... History can no doubt be
pursued in a strictly scientific spirit, but the data we
possess in regard to the past of mankind are not of a nature to
lend themselves to organization into an exact science,
although, as we shall see, they may yield truths of vital
importance.[10]
History has not become, as Comte believed it must, an exact science, and
sociology has not taken its place in the social sciences. It is
important, however, for understanding the mutations which have taken
place in sociology since Comte to remember that it had its origin in an
effort to make history exact. This, with, to be sure, considerable
modifications, is still, as we shall see, an ambition of the science.
II. HISTORICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL FACTS
Sociology, as Comte conceived it, was not, as it has been characterized,
"a highly important point of view," but a fundamental science, i.e., a
method of investigation and "a body of discoveries about mankind."[11]
In the hierarchy of the sciences, sociology, the last in time, was first
in importance. The order was as follows: mathematics, astronomy,
physics, chemistry, biology including psychology, sociology. This order
represented a progression from the more elementary to the more complex.
It was because history and politics were concerned with the most complex
of natural phenomena that they were the last to achieve what Comte
called the positive character. They did this in sociology.
Many attempts have been made before and since Comte to find a
satisfactory classification of the sciences. The order and relation of
the sciences is still, in fact, one of the cardinal problems of
philosophy. In recent years the notion has gained recognition that the
difference between history and the natural sciences is not one of
degree, but of kind; not of subject-matter merely, but of method. This
difference in method is, however, fundamental. It is a difference not
merely in the interpretation but in the _logical character_ of facts.
Every historical fact, it is pointed out, is concerned with a unique
event. History never repeats itself. If nothing else, the mere
circumstance that every event has a _date_ and _location_ would give
historical facts an individuality that facts of the abstract sciences do
not possess. Because historical facts always are located and dated, and
cannot therefore be repeated, they are not subject to experiment and
verification. On the other hand, a fact not subject to verification is
not a fact for natural science. History, as distinguished from natural
history, deals with individuals, i.e., individual events, persons,
institutions. Natural science is concerned, not with individuals, but
with classes, types, species. All the assertions that are valid for
natural science concern classes. An illustration will make this
distinction clear.
Sometime in October, 1838, Charles Darwin happened to pick up and read
Malthus' book on _Population_. The facts of "the struggle for
existence," so strikingly presented in that now celebrated volume,
suggested an explanation of a problem which had long interested and
puzzled him, namely, the origin of species.
This is a statement of a historical fact, and the point is that it is
not subject to empirical verification. It cannot be stated, in other
words, in the form of a hypothesis, which further observation of other
men of the same type will either verify or discredit.
On the other hand, in his _Descent of Man_, Darwin, discussing the rôle
of sexual selection in evolution of the species, makes this observation:
"Naturalists are much divided with respect to the object of the singing
of birds. Few more careful observers ever lived than Montagu, and he
maintained that the 'males of songbirds and of many others do not in
general search for the female, but, on the contrary, their business in
spring is to perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing out their full
and amorous notes, which, by instinct, the female knows and repairs to
the spot to choose her mate.'"
This is a typical statement of a fact of natural history. It is not,
however, the rather vague generality of the statement that makes it
scientific. It is its representative character, the character which
makes it possible of verification by further observation which makes it
a scientific fact.
It is from facts of this kind, collected, compared, and classified,
irrespective of time or place, that the more general conclusions are
drawn, upon which Darwin based his theory of the "descent of man." This
theory, as Darwin conceived it, was not an _interpretation_ of the facts
but an _explanation_.
The relation between history and sociology, as well as the manner in
which the more abstract social sciences have risen out of the more
concrete, may be illustrated by a comparison between history and
geography. Geography as a science is concerned with the visible world,
the earth, its location in space, the distribution of the land masses,
and of the plants, animals, and peoples upon its surface. The order, at
least the fundamental order, which it seeks and finds among the objects
it investigates is _spatial_. As soon as the geographer begins to
compare and classify the plants, the animals, and the peoples with
which he comes in contact, geography passes over into the special
sciences, i.e., botany, zoölogy, and anthropology.
History, on the other hand, is concerned with a world of events. Not
everything that happened, to be sure, is history, but every event that
ever was or ever will be significant is history.
Geography attempts to reproduce for us the visible world as it exists in
space; history, on the contrary, seeks to re-create for us in the
present the significance of the past. As soon as historians seek to take
events out of their historical setting, that is to say, out of their
time and space relations, in order to compare them and classify them; as
soon as historians begin to emphasize the typical and representative
rather than the unique character of events, history ceases to be history
and becomes sociology.
The differences here indicated between history and sociology are based
upon a more fundamental distinction between the historical and the
natural sciences first clearly defined by Windelband, the historian of
philosophy, in an address to the faculty of the University of Strassburg
in 1894.
The distinction between natural science and history begins at
the point where we seek to convert facts into knowledge. Here
again we observe that the one (natural science) seeks to
formulate laws, the other (history) to portray events. In the
one case thought proceeds from the description of particulars
to the general relations. In the other case it clings to a
genial depiction of the individual object or event. For the
natural scientist the object of investigation which cannot be
repeated never has, as such, scientific value. It serves his
purpose only so far as it may be regarded as a type or as a
special instance of a class from which the type may be deduced.
The natural scientist considers the single case only so far as
he can see in it the features which serve to throw light upon a
general law. For the historian the problem is to revive and
call up into the present, in all its particularity, an event in
the past. His aim is to do for an actual event precisely what
the artist seeks to do for the object of his imagination. It is
just here that we discern the kinship between history and art,
between the historian and the writer of literature. It is for
this reason that natural science emphasized the abstract; the
historian, on the other hand, is interested mainly in the
concrete.
The fact that natural science emphasizes the abstract and
history the concrete will become clearer if we compare the
results of the researches of the two sciences. However finespun
the conceptions may be which the historical critic uses in
working over his materials, the final goal of such study is
always to create out of the mass of events a vivid portrait of
the past. And what history offers us is pictures of men and of
human life, with all the wealth of their individuality,
reproduced in all their characteristic vivacity. Thus do the
peoples and languages of the past, their forms and beliefs,
their struggles for power and freedom, speak to us through the
mouth of history.
How different it is with the world which the natural sciences
have created for us! However concrete the materials with which
they started, the goal of these sciences is theories,
eventually mathematical formulations of laws of change.
Treating the individual, sensuous, changing objects as mere
unsubstantial appearances (phenomena), scientific investigation
becomes a search for the universal laws which rule the timeless
changes of events. Out of this colorful world of the senses,
science creates a system of abstract concepts, in which the
true nature of things is conceived to exist--a world of
colorless and soundless atoms, despoiled of all their earthly
sensuous qualities. Such is the triumph of thought over
perception. Indifferent to change, science casts her anchor in
the eternal and unchangeable. Not the change as such but the
unchanging form of change is what she seeks.
This raises the question: What is the more valuable for the
purposes of knowledge in general, a knowledge of law or a
knowledge of events? As far as that is concerned, both
scientific procedures may be equally justified. The knowledge
of the universal laws has everywhere a practical value in so
far as they make possible man's purposeful intervention in the
natural processes. That is quite as true of the movements of
the inner as of the outer world. In the latter case knowledge
of nature's laws has made it possible to create those tools
through which the control of mankind over external nature is
steadily being extended.
Not less for the purposes of the common life are we dependent
upon the results of historical knowledge. Man is, to change the
ancient form of the expression, the animal who has a history.
His cultural life rests on the transmission from generation to
generation of a constantly increasing body of historical
memories. Whoever proposes to take an active part in this
cultural process must have an understanding of history.
Wherever the thread is once broken--as history itself
proves--it must be painfully gathered up and knitted again into
the historical fabric.
It is, to be sure, true that it is an economy for human
understanding to be able to reduce to a formula or a general
concept the common characteristics of individuals. But the more
man seeks to reduce facts to concepts and laws, the more he is
obliged to sacrifice and neglect the individual. Men have, to
be sure, sought, in characteristic modern fashion, "to make of
history a natural science." This was the case with the
so-called philosophy of history of positivism. What has been
the net result of the laws of history which it has given us? A
few trivial generalities which justify themselves only by the
most careful consideration of their numerous exceptions.
On the other hand it is certain that all interest and values of
life are concerned with what is unique in men and events.
Consider how quickly our appreciation is deadened as some
object is multiplied or is regarded as one case in a thousand.
"She is not the first" is one of the cruel passages in _Faust_.
It is in the individuality and the uniqueness of an object that
all our sense of value has its roots. It is upon this fact that
Spinoza's doctrine of the conquest of the passions by knowledge
rests, since for him knowledge is the submergence of the
individual in the universal, the "once for all" into the
eternal.
The fact that all our livelier appreciations rest upon the
unique character of the object is illustrated above all in our
relations to persons. Is it not an unendurable thought, that a
loved object, an adored person, should have existed at some
other time in just the form in which it now exists for us? Is
it not horrible and unthinkable that one of us, with just this
same individuality should actually have existed in a second
edition?
What is true of the individual man is quite as true of the
whole historical process: it has value only when it is unique.
This is the principle which the Christian doctrine successfully
maintained, as over against Hellenism in the Patristic
philosophy. The middle point of their conception of the world
was the fall and the salvation of mankind as a unique event.
That was the first and great perception of the inalienable
metaphysical right of the historian to preserve for the memory
of mankind, in all their uniqueness and individuality, the
actual events of life.[12]
Like every other species of animal, man has a natural history.
Anthropology is the science of man considered as one of the animal
species, _Homo sapiens_. History and sociology, on the other hand, are
concerned with man as a person, as a "political animal," participating
with his fellows in a common fund of social traditions and cultural
ideals. Freeman, the English historian, said that history was "past
politics" and politics "present history." Freeman uses the word
politics in the large and liberal sense in which it was first used by
Aristotle. In that broad sense of the word, the political process, by
which men are controlled and states governed, and the cultural process,
by which man has been domesticated and human nature formed, are not, as
we ordinarily assume, different, but identical, procedures.
All this suggests the intimate relations which exist between history,
politics, and sociology. The important thing, however, is not the
identities but the distinctions. For, however much the various
disciplines may, in practice, overlap, it is necessary for the sake of
clear thinking to have their limits defined. As far as sociology and
history are concerned the differences may be summed up in a word. Both
history and sociology are concerned with the life of man as man.
History, however, seeks to reproduce and interpret concrete events as
they actually occurred in time and space. Sociology, on the other hand,
seeks to arrive at natural laws and generalizations in regard to human
nature and society, irrespective of time and of place.
In other words, history seeks to find out what actually happened and how
it all came about. Sociology, on the other hand, seeks to explain, on
the basis of a study of other instances, the nature of the process
involved.
By nature we mean just that aspect and character of things in regard to
which it is possible to make general statements and formulate laws. If
we say, in explanation of the peculiar behavior of some individual, that
it is natural or that it is after all "simply human nature," we are
simply saying that this behavior is what we have learned to expect of
this individual or of human beings in general. It is, in other words, a
law.
Natural law, as the term is used here, is any statement which describes
the behavior of a class of objects or the character of a class of acts.
For example, the classic illustration of the so-called "universal
proposition" familiar to students of formal logic, "all men are mortal,"
is an assertion in regard to a class of objects we call men. This is, of
course, simply a more formal way of saying that "men die." Such general
statements and "laws" get meaning only when they are applied to
particular cases, or, to speak again in the terms of formal logic, when
they find a place in a syllogism, thus: "Men are mortal. This is a
man." But such syllogisms may always be stated in the form of a
hypothesis. If this is a man, he is mortal. If a is b, a is also
c. This statement, "Human nature is a product of social contact," is a
general assertion familiar to students of sociology. This law or, more
correctly, hypothesis, applied to an individual case explains the
so-called feral man. Wild men, in the proper sense of the word, are not
the so-called savages, but the men who have never been domesticated, of
which an individual example is now and then discovered.
To state a law in the form of a hypothesis serves to emphasize the fact
that laws--what we have called natural laws at any rate--are subject to
verification and restatement. Under the circumstances the exceptional
instance, which compels a restatement of the hypothesis, is more
important for the purposes of science than other instances which merely
confirm it.
Any science which operates with hypotheses and seeks to state facts in
such a way that they can be compared and verified by further observation
and experiment is, so far as method is concerned, a natural science.
III. HUMAN NATURE AND LAW
One thing that makes the conception of natural history and natural law
important to the student of sociology is that in the field of the social
sciences the distinction between natural and moral law has from the
first been confused. Comte and the social philosophers in France after
the Revolution set out with the deliberate purpose of superseding
legislative enactments by laws of human nature, laws which were to be
positive and "scientific." As a matter of fact, sociology, in becoming
positive, so far from effacing, has rather emphasized the distinctions
that Comte sought to abolish. Natural law may be distinguished from all
other forms of law by the fact that it aims at nothing more than a
description of the behavior of certain types or classes of objects. A
description of the way in which a class, i.e., men, plants, animals, or
physical objects, may be expected under ordinary circumstances to
behave, tells us what we may in a general way expect of any individual
member of that class. If natural science seeks to predict, it is able to
do so simply because it operates with concepts or class names instead,
as is the case with history, with concrete facts and, to use a logical
phrase, "existential propositions."
That the chief end of science is descriptive formulation has
probably been clear to keen analytic minds since the time of
Galileo, especially to the great discoverers in astronomy,
mechanics, and dynamics. But as a definitely stated conception,
corrective of misunderstandings, the view of science as
essentially descriptive began to make itself felt about the
beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and
may be associated with the names of Kirchhoff and Mach. It was
in 1876 that Kirchhoff defined the task of mechanics as that of
"describing completely and in the simplest manner the motions
which take place in nature." Widening this a little, we may say
that the aim of science is to describe natural phenomena and
occurrences as exactly as possible, as simply as possible, as
completely as possible, as consistently as possible, and always
in terms which are communicable and verifiable. This is a very
different rôle from that of solving the riddles of the
universe, and it is well expressed in what Newton said in
regard to the law of gravitation: "So far I have accounted for
the phenomena presented to us by the heavens and the sea by
means of the force of gravity, but I have as yet assigned no
cause to this gravity.... I have not been able to deduce from
phenomena the _raison d'être_ of the properties of gravity and
I have not set up hypotheses." (Newton, _Philosophiae naturalis
principia Mathematica_, 1687.)
"We must confess," said Prof. J. H. Poynting (1900, p. 616),
"that physical laws have greatly fallen off in dignity. No long
time ago they were quite commonly described as the Fixed Laws
of Nature, and were supposed sufficient in themselves to govern
the universe. Now we can only assign to them the humble rank of
mere descriptions, often erroneous, of similarities which we
believe we have observed.... A law of nature explains nothing,
it has no governing power, it is but a descriptive formula
which the careless have sometimes personified." It used to be
said that "the laws of Nature are the thoughts of God"; now we
say that they are the investigator's formulae summing up
regularities of recurrence.[13]
If natural law aims at prediction it tells us what we can do. Moral
laws, on the other hand, tell us, not what we can, but what we ought to
do. The civil or municipal law, finally, tells us not what we can, nor
what we ought, but what we must do. It is very evident that these three
types of law may be very intimately related. We do not know what we
ought to do until we know what we can do; and we certainly should
consider what men can do before we pass laws prescribing what they must
do. There is, moreover, no likelihood that these distinctions will ever
be completely abolished. As long as the words "can," "ought," and "must"
continue to have any meaning for us the distinctions that they represent
will persist in science as well as in common sense.
The immense prestige which the methods of the natural sciences have
gained, particularly in their application to the phenomena of the
physical universe, has undoubtedly led scientific men to overestimate
the importance of mere conceptual and abstract knowledge. It has led
them to assume that history also must eventually become "scientific" in
the sense of the natural sciences. In the meantime the vast collections
of historical facts which the industry of historical students has
accumulated are regarded, sometimes even by historians themselves, as a
sort of raw material, the value of which can only be realized after it
has been worked over into some sort of historical generalization which
has the general character of scientific and ultimately, mathematical
formula.
"History," says Karl Pearson, "can never become science, can never be
anything but a catalogue of facts rehearsed in a more or less pleasing
language until these facts are seen to fall into sequences which can be
briefly resumed in scientific formulae."[14] And Henry Adams, in a
letter to the American Historical Association already referred to,
confesses that history has thus far been a fruitless quest for "the
secret which would transform these odds and ends of philosophy into one
self-evident, harmonious, and complete system."
You may be sure that four out of five serious students of
history who are living today have, in the course of their work,
felt that they stood on the brink of a great generalization
that would reduce all history under a law as clear as the laws
which govern the material world. As the great writers of our
time have touched one by one the separate fragments of admitted
law by which society betrays its character as a subject for
science, not one of them can have failed to feel an instant's
hope that he might find the secret which would transform these
odds and ends of philosophy into one self-evident, harmonious,
and complete system. He has seemed to have it, as the Spanish
say, in his inkstand. Scores of times he must have dropped his
pen to think how one short step, one sudden inspiration, would
show all human knowledge; how, in these thickset forests of
history, one corner turned, one faint trail struck, would
bring him on the highroad of science. Every professor who has
tried to teach the doubtful facts which we now call history
must have felt that sooner or later he or another would put
order in the chaos and bring light into darkness. Not so much
genius or favor was needed as patience and good luck. The law
was certainly there, and as certainly was in places actually
visible, to be touched and handled, as though it were a law of
chemistry or physics. No teacher with a spark of imagination or
with an idea of scientific method can have helped dreaming of
the immortality that would be achieved by the man who should
successfully apply Darwin's method to the facts of human
history.[15]
The truth is, however, that the concrete facts, in which history and
geography have sought to preserve the visible, tangible, and, generally
speaking, the experiential aspects of human life and the visible
universe, have a value irrespective of any generalization or ideal
constructions which may be inferred from or built up out of them. Just
as none of the investigations or generalizations of individual
psychology are ever likely to take the place of biography and
autobiography, so none of the conceptions of an abstract sociology, no
scientific descriptions of the social and cultural processes, and no
laws of progress are likely, in the near future at any rate, to
supersede the more concrete facts of history in which are preserved
those records of those unique and never fully comprehended aspects of
life which we call _events_.
It has been the dream of philosophers that theoretical and abstract
science could and some day perhaps would succeed in putting into
formulae and into general terms all that was significant in the concrete
facts of life. It has been the tragic mistake of the so-called
intellectuals, who have gained their knowledge from textbooks rather
than from observation and research, to assume that science had already
realized its dream. But there is no indication that science has begun to
exhaust the sources or significance of concrete experience. The infinite
variety of external nature and the inexhaustible wealth of personal
experience have thus far defied, and no doubt will continue to defy, the
industry of scientific classification, while, on the other hand, the
discoveries of science are constantly making accessible to us new and
larger areas of experience.
What has been said simply serves to emphasize the instrumental character
of the abstract sciences. History and geography, all of the concrete
sciences, can and do measurably enlarge our experience of life. Their
very purpose is to arouse new interests and create new sympathies; to
give mankind, in short, an environment so vast and varied as will call
out and activate all his instincts and capacities.
The more abstract sciences, just to the extent that they are abstract
and exact, like mathematics and logic, are merely methods and tools for
converting experience into knowledge and applying the knowledge so
gained to practical uses.
IV. HISTORY, NATURAL HISTORY, AND SOCIOLOGY
Although it is possible to draw clear distinctions in theory between the
purpose and methods of history and sociology, in practice the two forms
of knowledge pass over into one another by almost imperceptible
gradations.
The sociological point of view makes its appearance in historical
investigation as soon as the historian turns from the study of "periods"
to the study of institutions. The history of institutions, that is to
say, the family, the church, economic institutions, political
institutions, etc., leads inevitably to comparison, classification, the
formation of class names or concepts, and eventually to the formulation
of law. In the process, history becomes natural history, and natural
history passes over into natural science. In short, history becomes
sociology.
Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_ is one of the earliest
attempts to write the natural history of a social institution. It is
based upon a comparison and classification of marriage customs of widely
scattered peoples, living under varied physical and social conditions.
What one gets from a survey of this kind is not so much history as a
study of human behavior. The history of marriage, as of any other
institution, is, in other words, not so much an account of what certain
individuals or groups of individuals did at certain times and certain
places, as it is a description of the responses of a few fundamental
human instincts to a variety of social situations. Westermarck calls
this kind of history sociology.[16]
It is in the firm conviction that the history of human
civilization should be made an object of as scientific a
treatment as the history of organic nature that I write this
book. Like the phenomena of physical and psychical life those
of social life should be classified into certain groups and
each group investigated with regard to its origin and
development. Only when treated in this way can history lay
claim to the rank and honour of a science in the highest sense
of the term, as forming an important part of Sociology, the
youngest of the principal branches of learning.
Descriptive historiography has no higher object than that of
offering materials to this science.[17]
Westermarck refers to the facts which he has collected in his history of
marriage as phenomena. For the explanation of these phenomena, however,
he looks to the more abstract sciences.
The causes on which social phenomena are dependent fall within
the domain of different sciences--Biology, Psychology, or
Sociology. The reader will find that I put particular stress
upon the psychological causes, which have often been deplorably
overlooked, or only imperfectly touched upon. And more
especially do I believe that the mere instincts have played a
very important part in the origin of social institutions and
rules.[18]
Westermarck derived most of his materials for the study of marriage from
ethnological materials. Ethnologists, students of folklore (German
_Völkerkunde_), and archaeology are less certain than the historians of
institutions whether their investigations are historical or
sociological.
Jane Harrison, although she disclaims the title of sociologist, bases
her conception of the origin of Greek religion on a sociological theory,
the theory namely that "among primitive peoples religion reflects
collective feeling and collective thinking." Dionysius, the god of the
Greek mysteries, is according to her interpretation a product of the
group consciousness.
The mystery-god arises out of those instincts, emotions,
desires which attend and express life; but these emotions,
desires, instincts, in so far as they are religious, are at the
outset rather of a group than of individual consciousness....
It is a necessary and most important corollary to this
doctrine, that the form taken by the divinity reflects the
social structure of the group to which the divinity belongs.
Dionysius is the Son of his Mother because he issues from a
matrilinear group.[19]
This whole study is, in fact, merely an application of Durkheim's
conception of "collective representations."
Robert H. Lowie, in his recent volume, _Primitive Society_, refers to
"ethnologists and other historians," but at the same time asks: "What
kind of an historian shall the ethnologist be?"
He answers the question by saying that, "If there are laws of social
evolution, he [the ethnologist] must assuredly discover them," but at
any rate, and first of all, "his duty is to ascertain the course
civilization has _actually_ followed.... To strive for the ideals of
another branch of knowledge may be positively pernicious, for it can
easily lead to that factitious simplification which means
falsification."
In other words, ethnology, like history, seeks to tell what actually
happened. It is bound to avoid abstraction, "over-simplification," and
formulae, and these are the ideals of another kind of scientific
procedure. As a matter of fact, however, ethnology, even when it has
attempted nothing more than a description of the existing cultures of
primitive peoples, their present distribution and the order of their
succession, has not freed itself wholly from the influence of abstract
considerations. Theoretical problems inevitably arise for the solution
of which it is necessary to go to psychology and sociology. One of the
questions that has arisen in the study, particularly the comparative
study, of cultures is: how far any existing cultural trait is borrowed
and how far it is to be regarded as of independent origin.
In the historical reconstruction of culture the phenomena of
distribution play, indeed, an extraordinary part. If a trait
occurs everywhere, it might veritably be the product of some
universally operative social law. If it is found in a
restricted number of cases, it may still have evolved through
some such instrumentality acting under specific conditions that
would then remain to be determined by analysis of the cultures
in which the feature is embedded.... Finally, the sharers of a
cultural trait may be of distinct lineage but through contact
and borrowing have come to hold in common a portion of their
cultures....
Since, as a matter of fact, cultural resemblances abound
between peoples of diverse stock, their interpretation commonly
narrows to a choice between two alternatives. Either they are
due to like causes, whether these can be determined or not; or
they are the result of borrowing. A predilection for one or the
other explanation has lain at the bottom of much ethnological
discussion in the past; and at present influential schools both
in England and in continental Europe clamorously insist that
all cultural parallels are due to diffusion from a single
center. It is inevitable to envisage this moot-problem at the
start, since uncompromising championship of either alternative
has far-reaching practical consequences. For if every parallel
is due to borrowing, then sociological laws, which can be
inferred only from independently developing likenesses, are
barred. Then the history of religion or social life or
technology consists exclusively in a statement of the place of
origin of beliefs, customs and implements, and a recital of
their travels to different parts of the globe. On the other
hand, if borrowing covers only part of the observed parallels,
an explanation from like causes becomes at least the ideal goal
in an investigation of the remainder.[20]
An illustration will exhibit the manner in which problems originally
historical become psychological and sociological. Tyler in his _Early
History of Mankind_ has pointed out that the bellows used by the negro
blacksmiths of continental Africa are of a quite different type from
those used by natives of Madagascar. The bellows used by the Madagascar
blacksmiths, on the other hand, are exactly like those in use by the
Malays of Sumatra and in other parts of the Malay Archipelago. This
indication that the natives of Madagascar are of Malay origin is in
accordance with other anthropological and ethnological data in regard to
these peoples, which prove the fact, now well established, that they are
not of African origin.
Similarly Boas' study of the Raven cycle of American Indian mythology
indicated that these stories originated in the northern part of British
Columbia and traveled southward along the coast. One of the evidences
of the direction of this progress is the gradual diminution of
complexity in the stories as they traveled into regions farther removed
from the point of origin.
All this, in so far as it seeks to determine the point of origin,
direction, speed, and character of changes that take place in cultural
materials in the process of diffusion, is clearly history and ethnology.
Other questions, however, force themselves inevitably upon the attention
of the inquiring student. Why is it that certain cultural materials are
more widely and more rapidly diffused than others? Under what conditions
does this diffusion take place and why does it take place at all?
Finally, what is the ultimate source of customs, beliefs, languages,
religious practices, and all the varied technical devices which compose
the cultures of different peoples? What are the circumstances and what
are the processes by which cultural traits are independently created?
Under what conditions do cultural fusions take place and what is the
nature of this process?
These are all fundamentally problems of human nature, and as human
nature itself is now regarded as a product of social intercourse, they
are problems of sociology.
The cultural processes by which languages, myth, and religion have come
into existence among primitive peoples have given rise in Germany to a
special science. Folk-psychology (_Völkerpsychologie_) had its origin in
an attempt to answer in psychological terms the problems to which a
comparative study of cultural materials has given rise.
From two different directions ideas of folk-psychology have
found their way into modern science. First of all there was a
demand from the different social sciences
[_Geisteswissenschaften_] for a psychological explanation of
the phenomena of social life and history, so far as they were
products of social [_geistiger_] interaction. In the second
place, psychology itself required, in order to escape the
uncertainties and ambiguities of pure introspection, a body of
objective materials.
Among the social sciences the need for psychological
interpretation first manifested itself in the studies of
language and mythology. Both of these had already found outside
the circle of the philological studies independent fields of
investigation. As soon as they assumed the character of
comparative sciences it was inevitable that they should be
driven to recognize that in addition to the historical
conditions, which everywhere determines the concrete form of
these phenomena, there had been certain fundamental psychical
forces at work in the development of language and myth.[21]
The aim of folk-psychology has been, on the whole, to explain the
genesis and development of certain cultural forms, i.e., language, myth,
and religion. The whole matter may, however, be regarded from a quite
different point of view. Gabriel Tarde, for example, has sought to
explain, not the genesis, but the transmission and diffusion of these
same cultural forms. For Tarde, communication (transmission of cultural
forms and traits) is the one central and significant fact of social
life. "Social" is just what can be transmitted by imitation. Social
groups are merely the centers from which new ideas and inventions are
transmitted. Imitation is the social process.
There is not a word that you say, which is not the
reproduction, now unconscious, but formerly conscious and
voluntary, of verbal articulations reaching back to the most
distant past, with some special accent due to your immediate
surroundings. There is not a religious rite that you fulfil,
such as praying, kissing the icon, or making the sign of the
cross, which does not reproduce certain traditional gestures
and expressions, established through imitation of your
ancestors. There is not a military or civil requirement that
you obey, nor an act that you perform in your business, which
has not been taught you, and which you have not copied from
some living model. There is not a stroke of the brush that you
make, if you are a painter, nor a verse that you write, if you
are a poet, which does not conform to the customs or the
prosody of your school, and even your very originality itself
is made up of accumulated commonplaces, and aspires to become
commonplace in its turn.
Thus, the unvarying characteristic of every social fact
whatsoever is that it is imitative. And this characteristic
belongs exclusively to social facts.[22]
Tarde's theory of transmission by imitation may be regarded, in some
sense, as complementary, if not supplementary, to Wundt's theory of
origins, since he puts the emphasis on the fact of transmission rather
than upon genesis. In a paper, "Tendencies in Comparative Philology,"
read at the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis Exposition in
1904, Professor Hanns Oertel, of Yale University, refers to Tarde's
theory of imitation as an alternative explanation to that offered by
Wundt for "the striking uniformity of sound changes" which students of
language have discovered in the course of their investigation of
phonetic changes in widely different forms of speech.
It seems hard to maintain that the change in a syntactical
construction or in the meaning of a word owes its universality
to a simultaneous and independent primary change in all the
members of a speech-community. By adopting the theory of
imitative spread, all linguistic changes may be viewed as one
homogeneous whole. In the second place, the latter view seems
to bring linguistic changes into line with the other social
changes, such as modifications in institutions, beliefs, and
customs. For is it not an essential characteristic of a social
group that its members are not co-operative in the sense that
each member actively participates in the production of every
single element which goes to make up either language, or
belief, or customs? Distinguishing thus between _primary_ and
_secondary_ changes and between the _origin_ of a change and
its _spread_, it behooves us to examine carefully into the
causes which make the members of a social unit, either
consciously or unconsciously, willing to accept the innovation.
What is it that determines acceptance or rejection of a
particular change? What limits one change to a small area,
while it extends the area of another? Before a final decision
can be reached in favor of the second theory of imitative
spread it will be necessary to follow out in minute detail the
mechanism of this process in a number of concrete instances; in
other words to fill out the picture of which Tarde (_Les lois
de l'imitation_) sketched the bare outlines. If his assumptions
prove true, then we should have here a uniformity resting upon
other causes than the physical uniformity that appears in the
objects with which the natural sciences deal. It would enable
us to establish a second group of uniform phenomena which is
psycho-physical in its character and rests upon the basis of
social suggestion. The uniformities in speech, belief, and
institutions would belong to this second group.[23]
What is true of the comparative study of languages is true in every
other field in which a comparative study of cultural materials has been
made. As soon as these materials are studied from the point of view of
their similarities rather than from the point of view of their
historical connections, problems arise which can only be explained by
the more abstract sciences of psychology or sociology. Freeman begins
his lectures on _Comparative Politics_ with the statement that "the
comparative method of study has been the greatest intellectual
achievement of our time. It has carried light and order into whole
branches of human knowledge which before were shrouded in darkness and
confusion. It has brought a line of argument which reaches moral
certainty into a region which before was given over to random
guess-work. Into matters which are for the most part incapable of
strictly external proof it has brought a form of strictly internal proof
which is more convincing, more unerring."
Wherever the historian supplements _external_ by _internal_ proof, he is
in a way to substitute a sociological explanation for historical
interpretation. It is the very essence of the sociological method to be
comparative. When, therefore, Freeman uses, in speaking of comparative
politics, the following language he is speaking in sociological rather
than historical terms:
For the purposes then of the study of Comparative Politics, a
political constitution is a specimen to be studied, classified,
and labelled, as a building or an animal is studied,
classified, and labelled by those to whom buildings or animals
are objects of study. We have to note the likenesses, striking
and unexpected as those likenesses often are, between the
political constitutions of remote times and places; and we
have, as far as we can, to classify our specimens according to
the probable causes of those likenesses.[24]
Historically sociology has had its origin in history. It owes its
existence as a science to the attempt to apply exact methods to the
explanation of historical facts. In the attempt to achieve this,
however, it has become something quite different from history. It has
become like psychology with which it is most intimately related, a
natural and relatively abstract science, and auxiliary to the study of
history, but not a substitute for it. The whole matter may be summed up
in this general statement: history interprets, natural science explains.
It is upon the interpretation of the facts of experience that we
formulate our creeds and found our faiths. Our explanations of
phenomena, on the other hand, are the basis for technique and practical
devices for controlling nature and human nature, man and the physical
world.
V. THE SOCIAL ORGANISM: HUMANITY OR LEVIATHAN?
After Comte the first great name in the history of sociology is Spencer.
It is evident in comparing the writings of these two men that, in
crossing the English Channel, sociology has suffered a sea change. In
spite of certain similarities in their points of view there are profound
and interesting differences. These differences exhibit themselves in the
different ways in which they use the term "social organism."
Comte calls society a "collective organism" and insists, as Spencer
does, upon the difference between an organism like a family, which is
made up of independent individuals, and an organism like a plant or an
animal, which is a physiological unit in which the different organs are
neither free nor conscious. But Spencer, if he points out the
differences between the social and the biological organisms, is
interested in the analogy. Comte, on the other hand, while he recognizes
the analogy, feels it important to emphasize the distinctions.
Society for Comte is not, as Lévy-Bruhl puts it, "a polyp." It has not
even the characteristics of an animal colony in which the individuals
are physically bound together, though physiologically independent. On
the contrary, "this 'immense organism' is especially distinguished from
other beings in that it is made up of separable elements of which each
one can feel its own co-operation, can will it, or even withhold it, so
long as it remains a direct one."[25]
On the other hand, Comte, although he characterized the social
_consensus_ and solidarity as "collective," nevertheless thought of the
relations existing between human beings in society--in the family, for
example, which he regards as the unit and model of all social
relations--as closer and more intimate than those which exist between
the organs of a plant or an animal. The individual, as Comte expressed
it, is an abstraction. Man exists as man only by participation in the
life of humanity, and "although the individual elements of society
appear to be more separable than those of a living being, the social
_consensus_ is still closer than the vital."[26]
Thus the individual man was, in spite of his freedom and independence,
in a very real sense "an organ of the Great Being" and the great being
was humanity. Under the title of humanity Comte included not merely all
living human beings, i.e., the human race, but he included all that body
of tradition, knowledge, custom, cultural ideas and ideals, which make
up the social inheritance of the race, an inheritance into which each of
us is born, to which we contribute, and which we inevitably hand on
through the processes of education and tradition to succeeding
generations. This is what Comte meant by the social organism.
If Comte thought of the social organism, the great being, somewhat
mystically as itself an individual and a person, Herbert Spencer, on the
other hand, thought of it realistically as a great animal, a leviathan,
as Hobbes called it, and a very low-order leviathan at that.[27]
Spencer's manner of looking at the social organism may be illustrated in
what he says about growth in "social aggregates."
When we say that growth is common to social aggregates and
organic aggregates, we do not thus entirely exclude community
with inorganic aggregates. Some of these, as crystals, grow in
a visible manner; and all of them on the hypothesis of
evolution, have arisen by integration at some time or other.
Nevertheless, compared with things we call inanimate, living
bodies and societies so conspicuously exhibit augmentation of
mass, that we may fairly regard this as characterizing them
both. Many organisms grow throughout their lives; and the rest
grow throughout considerable parts of their lives. Social
growth usually continues either up to times when the societies
divide, or up to times when they are overwhelmed.
Here, then, is the first trait by which societies ally
themselves with the organic world and substantially distinguish
themselves from the inorganic world.[28]
In this same way, comparing the characteristic general features of
"social" and "living bodies," noting likeness and differences,
particularly with reference to complexity of structure, differentiation
of function, division of labor, etc., Spencer gives a perfectly
naturalistic account of the characteristic identities and differences
between societies and animals, between sociological and biological
organizations. It is in respect to the division of labor that the
analogy between societies and animals goes farthest and is most
significant.
This division of labour, first dwelt upon by political
economists as a social phenomenon, and thereupon recognized by
biologists as a phenomenon of living bodies, which they called
the "physiological division of labour," is that which in the
society, as in the animal, makes it a living whole. Scarcely
can I emphasize enough the truth that in respect of this
fundamental trait, a social organism and an individual organism
are entirely alike.[29]
The "social aggregate," although it is "discrete" instead of
"concrete"--that is to say, composed of spatially separated units--is
nevertheless, because of the mutual dependence of these units upon one
another as exhibited in the division of labor, to be regarded as a
living whole. It is "a living whole" in much the same way that the plant
and animal communities, of which the ecologists are now writing so
interestingly, are a living whole; not because of any intrinsic
relations between the individuals who compose them, but because each
individual member of the community, finds in the community as a whole, a
suitable milieu, an environment adapted to his needs and one to which he
is able to adapt himself.
Of such a society as this it may indeed be said, that it "exists for the
benefit of its members, not its members for the benefit of society. It
has ever to be remembered that great as may be the efforts made for the
prosperity of the body politic, yet the claims of the body politic are
nothing in themselves, and become something only in so far as they
embody the claims of its component individuals."[30]
In other words, the social organism, as Spencer sees it, exists not for
itself but for the benefit of the separate organs of which it is
composed, whereas, in the case of biological organism the situation is
reversed. There the parts manifestly exist for the whole and not the
whole for the parts.
Spencer explains this paradoxical conclusion by the reflection that in
social organisms sentience is not localized as it is in biological
organisms. This is, in fact, the cardinal difference between the two.
There is no _social sensorium_.
In the one (the individual), consciousness is concentrated in a
small part of the aggregate. In the other (society), it is
diffused throughout the aggregate: all the units possess the
capacities for happiness and misery, if not in equal degrees,
still in degrees that approximate. As then, there is no social
sensorium, the welfare of the aggregate, considered apart from
that of the units, is not an end to be sought. The society
exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the
benefit of the society.[31]
The point is that society, _as distinct from the individuals_ who
compose it, has no apparatus for feeling pain or pleasure. There are no
_social_ sensations. Perceptions and mental imagery are individual and
not social phenomena. Society lives, so to speak, only in its separate
organs or members, and each of these organs has its own brain and organ
of control which gives it, among other things, the power of independent
locomotion. This is what is meant when society is described as a
collectivity.
VI. SOCIAL CONTROL AND SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
The fundamental problem which Spencer's paradox raises is that of social
control. How does a mere collection of individuals succeed in acting in
a corporate and consistent way? How in the case of specific types of
social group, for example an animal herd, a boys' gang, or a political
party, does the group control its individual members; the whole dominate
the parts? What are the specific _sociological_ differences between
plant and animal communities and human society? What kind of differences
are _sociological differences_, and what do we mean in general by the
expression "sociological" anyway?
Since Spencer's essay on the social organism was published in 1860,[32]
this problem and these questions, in one form or another, have largely
absorbed the theoretical interest of students of society. The attempts
to answer them may be said to have created the existing schools into
which sociologists are divided.
A certain school of writers, among them Paul Lilienfeld, Auguste
Schäffle, and René Worms, have sought to maintain, to extend, or modify
the biological analogy first advanced by Spencer. In doing so they have
succeeded sometimes in restating the problem but have not solved it.
René Worms has been particularly ingenious in discovering identities and
carrying out the parallelism between the social and the biological
organizations. As a result he has reached the conclusion that, as
between a social and a biological organism, there is no difference of
kind but only one of degree. Spencer, who could not find a "social
sensorium," said that society was conscious only in the individuals who
composed it. Worms, on the other hand, declares that we must assume the
existence of a social consciousness, even without a sensorium, because
we see everywhere the evidence of its existence.
Force manifests itself by its effects. If there are certain
phenomena that we can only make intelligible, provided we
regard them as the products of collective social consciousness,
then we are bound to assume the existence of such a
consciousness. There are many illustrations ... the attitude
for example, of a crowd in the presence of a crime. Here the
sentiment of indignation is unanimous. A murderer, if taken in
the act, will get summary justice from the ordinary crowd. That
method of rendering justice, "lynch law," is deplorable, but it
illustrates the intensity of the sentiment which, at the
moment, takes possession of the social consciousness.
Thus, always in the presence of great and common danger the
collective consciousness of society is awakened; for example
France of the Valois after the Treaty of Troyes, or modern
France before the invasion of 1791 and before the German
invasion in 1870; or Germany, herself, after the victories of
Napoleon I. This sentiment of national unity, born of
resistance to the stranger, goes so far that a large proportion
of the members of society do not hesitate to give their lives
for the safety and glory of the state, at such a moment the
individual comprehends that he is only a small part of a large
whole and that he belongs to the collectivity of which he is a
member. The proof that he is entirely penetrated by the social
consciousness is the fact that in order to maintain its
existence he is willing to sacrifice his own.[33]
There is no question that the facts of crowd excitement, of class,
caste, race, and national consciousness, do show the way in which the
individual members of a group are, or seem to be, dominated, at certain
moments and under certain circumstances, by the group as a whole. Worms
gives to this fact, and the phenomena which accompany it, the title
"collective consciousness." This gives the problem a name, to be sure,
but not a solution. What the purpose of sociology requires is a
description and an explanation. Under what conditions, precisely, does
this phenomenon of collective consciousness arise? What are the
mechanisms--physical, physiological, and social--by which the group
imposes its control, or what seems to be control, upon the individual
members of the group?
This question had arisen and been answered by political philosophers, in
terms of political philosophy, long before sociology attempted to give
an objective account of the matter. Two classic phrases, Aristotle's
"Man is a political animal" and Hobbes's "War of each against all,"
_omnes bellum omnium_, measure the range and divergence of the schools
upon this topic.
According to Hobbes, the existing moral and political order--that is to
say the organization of control--is in any community a mere artefact, a
control resting on consent, supported by a prudent calculation of
consequences, and enforced by an external power. Aristotle, on the other
hand, taught that man was made for life in society just as the bee is
made for life in the hive. The relations between the sexes, as well as
those between mother and child, are manifestly predetermined in the
physiological organization of the individual man and woman. Furthermore,
man is, by his instincts and his inherited dispositions, predestined to
a social existence beyond the intimate family circle. Society must be
conceived, therefore, as a part of nature, like a beaver's dam or the
nests of birds.
As a matter of fact, man and society present themselves in a double
aspect. They are at the same time products of nature and of human
artifice. Just as a stone hammer in the hand of a savage may be regarded
as an artificial extension of the natural man, so tools, machinery,
technical and administrative devices, including the formal organization
of government and the informal "political machine," may be regarded as
more or less artificial extensions of the natural social group.
So far as this is true, the conflict between Hobbes and Aristotle is not
absolute. Society is a product both of nature and of design, of instinct
and of reason. If, in its formal aspect, society is therefore an
artefact, it is one which connects up with and has its roots in nature
and in human nature.
This does not explain social control but simplifies the problem of
corporate action. It makes clear, at any rate, that as members of
society, men act as they do elsewhere from motives they do not fully
comprehend, in order to fulfil aims of which they are but dimly or not
at all conscious. Men are activated, in short, not merely by interests,
in which they are conscious of the end they seek, but also by instincts
and sentiments, the source and meaning of which they do not clearly
comprehend. Men work for wages, but they will die to preserve their
status in society, or commit murder to resent an insult. When men act
thus instinctively, or under the influence of the mores, they are
usually quite unconscious of the sources of the impulses that animate
them or of the ends which are realized through their acts. Under the
influence of the mores men act typically, and so representatively, not
as individuals but as members of a group.
The simplest type of social group in which we may observe "social
control" is in a herd or a flock. The behavior of a herd of cattle is,
to be sure, not so uniform nor so simple a matter as it seems to the
casual observer, but it may be very properly taken as an illustration of
the sort of follow-the-leader uniformity that is more or less
characteristic of all social groups. We call the disposition to live in
the herd and to move in masses, gregariousness, and this gregariousness
is ordinarily regarded as an instinct and undoubtedly is pretty largely
determined in the original nature of gregarious animals.
There is a school of thought which seeks in the so-called gregarious
instincts an explanation of all that is characteristically social in the
behavior of human beings.
The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity. It is clear
that the great advantage of the social habit is to enable large
numbers to act as one, whereby in the case of the hunting
gregarious animal strength in pursuit and attack is at once
increased to beyond that of the creatures preyed upon, and in
protective socialism the sensitiveness of the new unit to
alarms is greatly in excess of that of the individual member of
the flock.
To secure these advantages of homogeneity, it is evident that
the members of the herd must possess sensitiveness to the
behaviour of their fellows. The individual isolated will be of
no meaning, the individual as a part of the herd will be
capable of transmitting the most potent impulses. Each member
of the flock tending to follow its neighbour and in turn to be
followed, each is in some sense capable of leadership; but no
lead will be followed that departs widely from normal
behaviour. A lead will be followed only from its resemblance to
the normal. If the leader go so far ahead as definitely to
cease to be in the herd, he will necessarily be ignored.
The original in conduct, that is to say, resistiveness to the
voice of the herd, will be suppressed by natural selection; the
wolf which does not follow the impulses of the herd will be
starved; the sheep which does not respond to the flock will be
eaten.
Again, not only will the individual be responsive to impulses
coming from the herd, but he will treat the herd as his normal
environment. The impulse to be in and always to remain with the
herd will have the strongest instinctive weight. Anything which
tends to separate him from his fellows, as soon as it becomes
perceptible as such, will be strongly resisted.[34]
According to sociologists of this school, public opinion, conscience,
and authority in the state rest upon the natural disposition of the
animal in the herd to conform to "the decrees of the herd."
Conscience, then, and the feelings of guilt and of duty are the
peculiar possessions of the gregarious animal. A dog and a cat
caught in the commission of an offence will both recognize that
punishment is coming; but the dog, moreover, knows that he has
done _wrong_, and he will come to be punished, unwillingly it
is true, and as if dragged along by some power outside him,
while the cat's sole impulse is to escape. The rational
recognition of the sequence of act and punishment is equally
clear to the gregarious and to the solitary animal, but it is
the former only who understands that he has committed a
_crime_, who has, in fact, the _sense of sin_.[35]
The concepts upon which this explanation of society rests is
_homogeneity_. If animals or human beings act under all circumstances in
the same way, they will act or seem to act, as if they had a common
purpose. If everybody follows the crowd, if everyone wears the same
clothes, utters the same trite remarks, rallies to the same battles
cries and is everywhere dominated, even in his most characteristically
individual behavior, by an instinctive and passionate desire to conform
to an external model and to the wishes of the herd, then we have an
explanation of everything characteristic of society--except the
variants, the nonconformists, the idealists, and the rebels. The herd
instinct may be an explanation of conformity but it does not explain
variation. Variation is an important fact in society as it is in nature
generally.
Homogeneity and like-mindedness are, as explanations of the social
behavior of men and animals, very closely related concepts. In "like
response to like stimulus," we may discern the beginning of "concerted
action" and this, it is urged, is the fundamental social fact. This is
the "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide
popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor
Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the
instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that man is a
political animal."
Any given stimulus may happen to be felt by more than one
organism, at the same or at different times. Two or more
organisms may respond to the same given stimulus simultaneously
or at different times. They may respond to the same given
stimulus in like or in unlike ways; in the same or in different
degrees; with like or with unlike promptitude; with equal or
with unequal persistence. I have attempted to show that in like
response to the same given stimulus we have the beginning, the
absolute origin, of all concerted activity--the inception of
every conceivable form of co-operation; while in unlike
response, and in unequal response, we have the beginning of all
those processes of individuation, of differentiation, of
competition, which in their endlessly varied relations to
combination, to co-operation, bring about the infinite
complexity of organized social life.[36]
Closely related, logically if not historically, to Giddings' conception
of "like-mindedness" is Gabriel Tarde's conception of "imitation." If
for Giddings "like response to like stimulus" is the fundamental social
fact, for Tarde "imitation" is the process through which alone society
exists. Society, said Tarde, exists in imitation. As a matter of fact,
Tarde's doctrine may be regarded as a corollary to Giddings'. Imitation
is the process by which that like-mindedness, by which Giddings explains
corporate action, is effected. Men are not born like-minded, they are
made so by imitation.
This minute inter-agreement of minds and wills, which forms the
basis of the social life, even in troublous times--this
presence of so many common ideas, ends, and means, in the minds
and wills of all members of the same society at any given
moment--is not due, I maintain, to organic heredity, which
insures the birth of men quite similar to one another, nor to
mere identity of geographical environment, which offers very
similar resources to talents that are nearly equal; it is
rather the effect of that suggestion-imitation process which,
starting from one primitive creature possessed of a single idea
or act, passed this copy on to one of its neighbors, then to
another, and so on. Organic needs and spiritual tendencies
exist in us only as potentialities which are realizable under
the most diverse forms, in spite of their primitive similarity;
and, among all these possible realizations, the indications
furnished by some first initiator who is imitated determine
which one is actually chosen.[37]
In contrast with these schools, which interpret action in terms of the
herd and the flock--i.e., men act together because they act alike--is
the theory of Émile Durkheim who insists that the social group has real
corporate existence and that, in human societies at least, men act
together not because they have like purposes but a _common purpose_.
This common purpose imposes itself upon the individual members of a
society at the same time as an ideal, a wish and an obligation.
Conscience, the sense of obligation which members of a group feel only
when there is conflict between the wishes of the individual and the will
of the group, is a manifestation, _in_ the individual consciousness, of
the collective mind and the group will. The mere fact that in a panic or
a stampede, human beings will sometimes, like the Gadarene swine, rush
down a steep place into the sea, is a very positive indication of
like-mindedness but not an evidence of a common purpose. The difference
between an animal herd and a human crowd is that the crowd, what Le Bon
calls the "organized crowd," the crowd "in being" to use a nautical
term, is dominated by an impulse to achieve a purpose that is common to
every member of the group. Men in a state of panic, on the other hand,
although equally under the influence of the mass excitement, act not
corporately but individually, each individual wildly seeking to save his
own skin. Men in a state of panic have like purposes but no common
purpose. If the "organized crowd," "the psychological crowd," is a
society "in being," the panic and the stampede is a society "in
dissolution."
Durkheim does not use these illustrations nor does he express himself in
these terms. The conception of the "organized" or "psychological" crowd
is not his, but Le Bon's. The fact is that Durkheim does not think of a
society as a mere sum of particulars. Neither does he think of the
sentiments nor the opinions which dominate the social group as private
and subjective. When individuals come together _under certain
circumstances_, the opinions and sentiments which they held as
individuals are modified and changed under the influence of the new
contacts. Out of the fermentation which association breeds, a new
something (_autre chose_) is produced, an opinion and sentiment, in
other words, that is not the sum of, and not like, the sentiments and
opinions of the individuals from which it is derived. This new sentiment
and opinion is public, and social, and the evidence of this is the fact
that it imposes itself upon the individuals concerned as something more
or less external to them. They feel it either as an inspiration, a sense
of personal release and expansion, or as an obligation, a pressure and
an inhibition. The characteristic social phenomenon is just this control
by the group as a whole of the individuals that compose it. This fact of
control, then, is the fundamental social fact.
Now society also gives the sensation of a perpetual dependence.
Since it has a nature which is peculiar to itself and different
from our individual nature, it pursues ends which are likewise
special to it; but, as it cannot attain them except through our
intermediacy; it imperiously demands our aid. It requires that,
forgetful of our own interests, we make ourselves its
servitors, and it submits us to every sort of inconvenience,
privation, and sacrifice, without which social life would be
impossible. It is because of this that at every instant we are
obliged to submit ourselves to rules of conduct and of thought
which we have neither made nor desired, and which are sometimes
even contrary to our most fundamental inclinations and
instincts.
Even if society were unable to maintain these concessions and
sacrifices from us except by a material constraint, it might
awaken in us only the idea of a physical force to which we must
give way of necessity, instead of that of a moral power such as
religions adore. But as a matter of fact, the empire which it
holds over consciences is due much less to the physical
supremacy of which it has the privilege than to the moral
authority with which it is invested. If we yield to its orders,
it is not merely because it is strong enough to triumph over
our resistance; it is primarily because it is the object of a
venerable respect.
Now the ways of action to which society is strongly enough
attached to impose them upon its members, are, by that very
fact, marked with a distinctive sign provocative of respect.
Since they are elaborated in common, the vigour with which they
have been thought of by each particular mind is retained in all
the other minds, and reciprocally. The representations which
express them within each of us have an intensity which no
purely private states of consciousness could ever attain; for
they have the strength of the innumerable individual
representations which have served to form each of them. It is
society who speaks through the mouths of those who affirm them
in our presence; it is society whom we hear in hearing them;
and the voice of all has an accent which that of one alone
could never have. The very violence with which society reacts,
by way of blame or material suppression, against every
attempted dissidence, contributes to strengthening its empire
by manifesting the common conviction through this burst of
ardour. In a word, when something is the object of such a state
of opinion, the representation which each individual has of it
gains a power of action from its origins and the conditions in
which it was born, which even those feel who do not submit
themselves to it. It tends to repel the representations which
contradict it, and it keeps them at a distance; on the other
hand it commands those acts which will realize it, and it does
so, not by a material coercion or by the perspective of
something of this sort, but by the simple radiation of the
mental energy which it contains.[38]
But the same social forces, which are found organized in public opinion,
in religious symbols, in social convention, in fashion, and in
science--for "if a people did not have faith in science all the
scientific demonstrations in the world would be without any influence
whatsoever over their minds"--are constantly re-creating the old order,
making new heroes, overthrowing old gods, creating new myths, and
imposing new ideals. And this is the nature of the cultural process of
which sociology is a description and an explanation.
VII. SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE COLLECTIVE MIND
Durkheim is sometimes referred to, in comparison with other contemporary
sociologists, as a realist. This is a reference to the controversy of
the medieval philosophers in regard to the nature of concepts. Those who
thought a concept a mere class-name applied to a group of objects
because of some common characteristics were called nominalists. Those
who thought the concept was _real_, and not the name of a mere
collection of individuals, were realists. In this sense Tarde and
Giddings and all those writers who think of society as a collection of
actually or potentially _like-minded_ persons would be nominalists,
while other writers like Simmel, Ratzenhofer, and Small, who think of
society in terms of interaction and social process may be called
realists. They are realist, at any rate, in so far as they think of the
members of a society as bound together in a system of mutual influences
which has sufficient character to be described as a process.
Naturally this process cannot be conceived of in terms of space or
physical proximity alone. Social contacts and social forces are of a
subtler sort but not less real than physical. We know, for example, that
vocations are largely determined by personal competition; that the
solidarity of what Sumner calls the "in" or "we" group is largely
determined by its conflict with the "out" or "other" groups. We know,
also, that the status and social position of any individual inside any
social group is determined by his relation to all other members of that
group and eventually of all other groups. These are illustrations of
what is meant concretely by social interaction and social process and it
is considerations of this kind which seem to justify certain writers in
thinking of individual persons as "parts" and of society as a "whole" in
some other sense than that in which a dust heap is a whole of which the
individual particles are parts.
Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_
transmission, _in_ communication. There is more than a verbal
tie between the words common, community, and communication.[39]
Communication, if not identical with, is at least a form of, what has
been referred to here as social interaction. But communication as Dewey
has defined the term, is something more and different than what Tarde
calls "inter-stimulation." Communication is a process by which we
"transmit" an experience from an individual to another but it is also a
process by which these same individuals get a common experience.
Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and
accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be
somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude
toward your experience changing; otherwise you resort to
expletives and ejaculations. Except in dealing with
commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate,
imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to
tell him intelligently of one's own experience. All
communication is like art.[40]
Not only does communication involve the creation, out of experiences
that are individual and private, of an experience that is common and
public but such a common experience becomes the basis for a common and
public existence in which every individual, to greater or less extent,
participates and is himself a part. Furthermore, as a part of this
common life, there grows up a body of custom, convention, tradition,
ceremonial, language, social ritual, public opinion, in short all that
Sumner includes under the term "mores" and all that ethnologists include
under the term "culture."
The thing that characterizes Durkheim and his followers is their
insistence upon the fact that all cultural materials, and expressions,
including language, science, religion, public opinion, and law, since
they are the products of social intercourse and social interaction, are
bound to have an objective, public, and social character such as no
product of an individual mind either has or can have. Durkheim speaks of
these mental products, individual and social, as representations. The
characteristic product of the individual mind is the percept, or, as
Durkheim describes it, the "individual representation." The percept is,
and remains, a private and an individual matter. No one can reproduce,
or communicate to another, subjective impressions or the mental imagery
in the concrete form in which they come to the individual himself. My
neighbor may be able to read my "thoughts" and understand the motives
that impel me to action better than I understand myself, but he cannot
reproduce the images, with just the fringes of sense and feeling with
which they come to my mind.
The characteristic product of a group of individuals, in their efforts
to communicate is, on the other hand, something objective and
understood, that is, a gesture, a sign, a symbol, a word, or a concept
in which an experience or purpose that was private becomes public. This
gesture, sign, symbol, concept, or representation in which a common
object is not merely indicated, but in a sense created, Durkheim calls a
"collective representation."
Dewey's description of what takes place in communication may be taken as
a description of the process by which these collective representations
come into existence. "To formulate an experience," as Dewey says,
"requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it,
considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so
that it may be gotten into such form that he can appreciate its
meaning." The result of such a conscious effort to communicate an
experience is to transform it. The experience, after it has been
communicated, is not the same for either party to the communication. To
publish or to give publicity to an event is to make of that event
something other than it was before publication. Furthermore, the event
as published is still something different from the event as reflected in
the minds of the individuals to whom the publication is addressed.
It will be evident upon reflection that public opinion is not the
opinion of all, nor even of a majority of the persons who compose a
public. As a matter of fact, what we ordinarily mean by public opinion
is never the opinion of anyone in particular. It is composite opinion,
representing a general tendency of the public as a whole. On the other
hand, we recognize that public opinion exists, even when we do not know
of any individual person, among those who compose the public, whose
private and personal opinion exactly coincides with that of the public
of which he or she is a part.
Nevertheless, the private and personal opinion of an individual who
participates in making public opinion is influenced by the opinions of
those around him, and by public opinion. In this sense every opinion is
public opinion.
Public opinion, in respect to the manner in which it is formed and the
manner in which it exists--that is to say relatively independent of the
individuals who co-operate to form it--has the characteristics of
collective representation in general. Collective representations are
objective, in just the sense that public opinion is objective, and they
impose themselves upon the individual as public opinion does, as
relatively but not wholly external forces--stabilizing, standardizing,
conventionalizing, as well as stimulating, extending, and generalizing
individual representations, percepts.
The collective representations are exterior to the individual
consciousness because they are not derived from the individuals
taken in isolation but from their convergence and union
(concours).... Doubtless, in the elaboration of the common
result, each (individual) bears his due share; but the private
sentiments do not become social except by combining under the
action of the forces _sui generis_ which association develops.
As a result of these combinations, and of the mutual
alterations which result therefrom, they (the private
sentiments) become something else (_autre chose_). A chemical
synthesis results, which concentrates, unifies, the elements
synthetized, and by that very process transforms them.... The
resultant derived therefrom extends then beyond (_deborde_) the
individual mind as the whole is greater than the part. To know
really what it is, one must take the aggregate in its totality.
It is this that thinks, that feels, that wills, although it may
not be able to will, feel, or act save by the intermediation of
individual consciousnesses.[41]
This, then, after nearly a century of criticism, is what remains of
Comte's conception of the social organism. If society is, as the
realists insist, anything more than a collection of like-minded
individuals, it is so because of the existence (1) of a social process
and (2) of a body of tradition and opinion--the products of this
process--which has a relatively objective character and imposes itself
upon the individual as a form of control, social control. This process
and its product are the social consciousness. The social consciousness,
in its double aspect as process and product, is the social organism. The
controversy between the realists and the nominalists reduces itself
apparently to this question of the objectivity of social tradition and
of public opinion. For the present we may let it rest there.
Meanwhile the conceptions of the social consciousness and the social
mind have been adopted by writers on social topics who are not at all
concerned with their philosophical implications or legitimacy. We are
just now seeing the first manifestations of two new types of sociology
which call themselves, the one rural and the other urban sociology.
Writers belonging to these two schools are making studies of what they
call the "rural" and the "urban" minds. In using these terms they are
not always quite certain whether the mind of which they are thinking is
a collective mind, in Durkheim's realistic sense of the word, or whether
it is the mind of the typical inhabitant of a rural or an urban
community, an instance of "like-mindedness," in the sense of Giddings
and the nominalists.
A similar usage of the word "mind," "the American mind," for example, is
common in describing characteristic differences in the attitudes of
different nations and their "nationals."
The origin of the phrase, "the American mind," was political.
Shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century, there began
to be a distinctly American way of regarding the debatable
question of British Imperial control. During the period of the
Stamp Act agitation our colonial-bred politicians and statesmen
made the discovery that there was a mode of thinking and
feeling which was native--or had by that time become a second
nature--to all the colonists. Jefferson, for example, employs
those resonant and useful words "the American mind" to indicate
that throughout the American colonies an essential unity of
opinion had been developed as regards the chief political
question of the day.[42]
Here again, it is not quite clear, whether the American mind is a name
for a characteristic uniformity in the minds of individual Americans;
whether the phrase refers rather to an "essential unity of opinion," or
whether, finally, it is intended to cover both the uniformity and the
unity characteristic of American opinion.
Students of labor problems and of the so-called class struggle, on the
other hand, use the term "psychology" in much the same way that the
students of rural and urban sociology use the term "mind." They speak of
the "psychology" of the laboring class, the "psychology" of the
capitalistic class, in cases where psychology seems to refer
indifferently either to the social attitudes of the members of a class,
or to attitude and morale of the class as a whole.
The terms "class-conscious" and "class-consciousness," "national" and
"racial" consciousness are now familiar terms to students although
they seem to have been used, first of all, by the so-called
"intelligentsia", who have been the leaders in the various types of mass
movement to which these terms apply. "Consciousness," in the sense in
which it is here used, has a similar, though somewhat different,
connotation than the word "mind" when applied to a group. It is a name
not merely for the attitudes characteristic of certain races or classes,
but for these attitudes when they are in the focus of attention of the
group, in the "fore-consciousness" to use a Freudian term. In this sense
"conscious" suggests not merely the submergence of the individual and
the consequent solidarity of the group, but it signifies a mental
mobilization and preparedness of the individual and of the group for
collective or corporate action. To be class-conscious is to be prepared
to act in the sense of that class.
There is implicit in this rather ambiguous popular usage of the terms
"social mind" and "social consciousness" a recognition of the dual
aspect of society and of social groups. Society may be regarded at the
same time from an individualistic and a collectivistic point of view.
Looking at it from the point of view of the individual, we regard as
social just that character of the individual which has been imparted to,
and impressed upon, him as a result of his participation in the life of
the group. Social psychology, from Baldwin's first studies of the
development of personality in the child to Ellwood's studies of the
society in its "psychological aspects" has been mainly concerned with
the investigation of the effects upon the individual of his contacts
with other individuals.[43]
On the other hand, we have had, in the description of the crowd and the
public by Le Bon, Tarde, Sighele, and their successors, the beginnings
of a study of collective behavior and "corporate action." In these two
points of view we seem to have again the contrast and the opposition,
already referred to, between the nominalistic and realistic conceptions
of society. Nominalism represented by social psychology emphasizes, or
seems to emphasize, the independence of the individual. Realism,
represented by collective psychology, emphasizes the control of the
group over the individual, of the whole over the part.
While it is true that society has this double aspect, the individual and
the collective, it is the assumption of this volume that the touchstone
of society, the thing that distinguishes a mere collection of
individuals from a society is not like-mindedness, but corporate action.
We may apply the term social to any group of individuals which is
capable of consistent action, that is to say, action, consciously or
unconsciously, directed to a common end. This existence of a common end
is perhaps all that can be legitimately included in the conception
"organic" as applied to society.
From this point of view social control is the central fact and the
central problem of society. Just as psychology may be regarded as an
account of the manner in which the individual organism, as a whole,
exercises control over its parts or rather of the manner in which the
parts co-operate together to carry on the corporate existence of the
whole, so sociology, speaking strictly, is a point of view and a method
for investigating the processes by which individuals are inducted into
and induced to co-operate in some sort of permanent corporate existence
which we call society.
To put this emphasis on corporate action is not to overlook the fact
that through this corporate action the individual member of society is
largely formed, not to say created. It recognized, however, that if
corporate action tends to make of the individual an instrument, as well
as an organic part, of the social group, it does not do this by making
him "like" merely; it may do so by making him "different." The division
of labor, in making possible an ever larger and wider co-operation among
men, has indirectly multiplied individual diversities. What
like-mindedness must eventually mean, if it is to mean anything, is the
existence of so much of a consensus among the individuals of a group as
will permit the group to act. This, then, is what is meant here by
society, the social organism and the social group.
Sociology, so far as it can be regarded as a fundamental science and not
mere congeries of social-welfare programs and practices, may be
described as the science of collective behavior. With this definition it
is possible to indicate in a general and schematic way its relation to
the other social sciences.
Historically, sociology has had its origin in history. History has been
and is the great mother science of all the social sciences. Of history
it may be said nothing human is foreign to it. Anthropology, ethnology,
folklore, and archaeology have grown up largely, if not wholly, to
complete the task which history began and answer the questions which
historical investigation first raised. In history and the sciences
associated with it, i.e., ethnology, folklore, and archaeology, we have
the concrete records of that human nature and experience which sociology
has sought to explain. In the same sense that history is the concrete,
sociology is the abstract, science of human experience and human nature.
[Illustration: FIG. 1]
On the other hand, the technical (applied) social sciences, that is,
politics, education, social service, and economics--so far as economics
may be regarded as the science of business--are related to sociology in
a different way. They are, to a greater or lesser extent, applications
of principles which it is the business of sociology and of psychology to
deal with explicitly. In so far as this is true, sociology may be
regarded as fundamental to the other social sciences.
VIII. SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH
Among the schools which, since Comte and Spencer, have divided
sociological thinking between them the realists have, on the whole,
maintained the tradition of Comte; the nominalists, on the other hand,
have preserved the style and manner, if not the substance, of Spencer's
thought. Later writers, however, realist as well as nominalist, have
directed their attention less to society than to societies, i.e., social
groups; they have been less interested in social progress than in
social process; more concerned with social problems than with social
philosophy.
This change marks the transformation of sociology from a philosophy of
history to a science of society. The steps in this transition are
periods in the history of the science, that is:
1. The period of Comte and Spencer; sociology, conceived in the grand
style, is a philosophy of history, a "science" of progress (evolution).
2. The period of the "schools"; sociological thought, dispersed among
the various schools, is absorbed in an effort to define its point of
view and to describe the kinds of facts that sociology must look for to
answer the questions that sociology asks.
3. The period of investigation and research, the period into which
sociology is just now entering.
Sociological research is at present (1921) in about the situation in
which psychology was before the introduction of laboratory methods, in
which medicine was before Pasteur and the germ theory of disease. A
great deal of social information has been collected merely for the
purpose of determining what to do in a given case. Facts have not been
collected to check social theories. Social problems have been defined in
terms of common sense, and facts have been collected, for the most part,
to support this or that doctrine, not to test it. In very few instances
have investigations been made, disinterestedly, to determine the
validity of a hypothesis.
Charles Booth's studies of poverty in London, which extended over
eighteen years and were finally embodied in seventeen volumes, is an
example of such a disinterested investigation. It is an attempt to put
to the test of fact the popular conception of the relation between wages
and welfare. He says:
My object has been to attempt to show the numerical relation
which poverty, misery, and depravity bear to regular earnings
and comparative comfort, and to describe the general conditions
under which each class lives.
If the facts thus stated are of use in helping social reformers
to find remedies for the evils which exist, or do anything to
prevent the adoption of false remedies, my purpose is answered.
It was not my intention to bring forward any suggestions of my
own, and if I have ventured here and there, and especially in
the concluding chapters, to go beyond my programme, it has been
with much hesitation.
With regard to the disadvantages under which the poor labour,
and the evils of poverty, there is a great sense of
helplessness: the wage earners are helpless to regulate their
work and cannot obtain a fair equivalent for the labour they
are willing to give; the manufacturer or dealer can only work
within the limits of competition; the rich are helpless to
relieve want without stimulating its sources. To relieve this
helplessness a better stating of the problems involved is the
first step.... In this direction must be sought the utility of
my attempt to analyze the population of a part of London.[44]
This vast study did, indeed, throw great light, not only upon poverty in
London, but upon human nature in general. On the other hand, it raised
more questions than it settled and, if it demonstrated anything, it was
the necessity, as Booth suggests, for a restatement of the problem.
Sociology seems now, however, in a way to become, in some fashion or
other, an experimental science. It will become so as soon as it can
state existing problems in such a way that the results in one case will
demonstrate what can and should be done in another. Experiments are
going on in every field of social life, in industry, in politics, and in
religion. In all these fields men are guided by some implicit or
explicit theory of the situation, but this theory is not often stated in
the form of a hypothesis and subjected to a test of the negative
instances. We have, if it is permitted to make a distinction between
them, investigation rather than research.
What, then, in the sense in which the expression is here used, is social
research? A classification of problems will be a sort of first aid in
the search for an answer.
1. _Classification of social problems._--Every society and every social
group, _capable of consistent action_, may be regarded as an
organization of the wishes of its members. This means that society rests
on, and embodies, the appetites and natural desires of the individual
man; but it implies, also, that wishes, in becoming _organized_, are
necessarily disciplined and controlled in the interest of the group as a
whole.
Every such society or social group, even the most ephemeral, will
ordinarily have (a) some relatively formal method of defining its aim
and formulating its policies, making them explicit, and (b) some
machinery, functionary, or other arrangement for realizing its aim and
carrying its policies into effect. Even in the family there is
government, and this involves something that corresponds to legislation,
adjudication, and administration.
Social groups, however, maintain their organizations, agencies, and all
formal methods of behavior on a basis and in a setting of instinct, of
habit, and of tradition which we call human nature. Every social group
has, or tends to have, its own culture, what Sumner calls "folkways,"
and this culture, imposing its patterns upon the natural man, gives him
that particular individuality which characterizes the members of groups.
Not races merely but nationalities and classes have marks, manners, and
patterns of life by which we infallibly recognize and classify them.
Social problems may be conveniently classified with reference to these
three aspects of group life, that is to say, problems of (a)
organization and administration, (b) policy and polity (legislation),
and (c) human nature (culture).
a) Administrative problems are mainly practical and technical. Most
problems of government, of business and social welfare, are technical.
The investigations, i.e., social surveys, made in different parts of the
country by the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York City, are
studies of local administration made primarily for the purpose of
improving the efficiency of an existing administrative machine and its
personnel rather than of changing the policy or purpose of the
administration itself.
b) Problems of policy, in the sense in which that term is used here,
are political and legislative. Most social investigations in recent
years have been made in the interest of some legislative program or for
the purpose of creating a more intelligent public opinion in regard to
certain local problems. The social surveys conducted by the Sage
Foundation, as distinguished from those carried out by the New York
Bureau of Municipal Research, have been concerned with problems of
policy, i.e., with changing the character and policy of social
institutions rather than improving their efficiency. This distinction
between administration and policy is not always clear, but it is always
important. Attempts at reform usually begin with an effort to correct
administrative abuses, but eventually it turns out that reforms must go
deeper and change the character of the institutions themselves.
c) Problems of human nature are naturally fundamental to all other
social problems. Human nature, as we have begun to conceive it in recent
years, is largely a product of social intercourse; it is, therefore,
quite as much as society itself, a subject for sociological
investigation. Until recent years, what we are now calling the human
factor has been notoriously neglected in most social experiments. We
have been seeking to reform human nature while at the same time we
refused to reckon with it. It has been assumed that we could bring about
social changes by merely formulating our wishes, that is, by "arousing"
public opinion and formulating legislation. This is the "democratic"
method of effecting reforms. The older "autocratic" method merely
decreed social changes upon the authority of the monarch or the ruling
class. What reconciled men to it was that, like Christian Science, it
frequently worked.
The oldest but most persistent form of social technique is that
of "ordering-and-forbidding"--that is, meeting a crisis by an
arbitrary act of will decreeing the disappearance of the
undesirable or the appearance of the desirable phenomena, and
the using arbitrary physical action to enforce the decree. This
method corresponds exactly to the magical phase of natural
technique. In both, the essential means of bringing a
determined effect is more or less consciously thought to reside
in the act of will itself by which the effect is decreed as
desirable and of which the action is merely an indispensable
vehicle or instrument; in both, the process by which the cause
(act of will and physical action) is supposed to bring its
effect to realization remains out of reach of investigation; in
both, finally, if the result is not attained, some new act of
will with new material accessories is introduced, instead of
trying to find and remove the perturbing causes. A good
instance of this in the social field is the typical legislative
procedure of today.[45]
2. _Types of social group._--The varied interests, fields of
investigation, and practical programs which find at present a place
within the limits of the sociological discipline are united in having
one common object of reference, namely, _the concept of the social
group_. All social problems turn out finally to be problems of group
life, although each group and each type of group has its own
distinctive problems. Illustrations may be gathered from the most
widely separated fields to emphasize the truth of this assertion.[46]
Religious conversion may be interpreted from one point of view as a
change from one social group to another. To use the language of
religious sentiment, the convert "comes out of a life of sin and enters
into a life of grace." To be sure, this change involves profound
disturbances of the personality, but permanence of the change in the
individual is assured by the breaking up of the old and the
establishment of new associations. So the process by which the immigrant
makes the transition from the old country to the new involves profound
changes in thought and habit. In his case the change is likely to take
place slowly, but it is not less radical on that account.
The following paragraph from a recent social survey illustrates, from a
quite different point of view, the manner in which the group is involved
in changes in community life.
In short, the greatest problem for the next few years in
Stillwater is the development of a _community consciousness_.
We must stop thinking in terms of city of Stillwater, and
country outside of Stillwater, and think in terms of
_Stillwater Community_. We must stop thinking in terms of small
groups and think in terms of the entire community, no matter
whether it is industry, health, education, recreation or
religion. Anything which is good will benefit the entire
community. Any weakness will be harmful to all. Community
co-operation in all lines indicated in this report will make
this, indeed, the Queen of the St. Croix.[47]
In this case the solution of the community problem was the creation of
"community consciousness." In the case of the professional criminal the
character of the problem is determined, if we accept the description of
a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_, by the existence among professional
criminals of a primary group consciousness:
The professional criminal is peculiar in the sense that he
lives a very intense emotional life. He is isolated in the
community. He is in it, but not of it. His social life--for all
men are social--is narrow; but just because it is narrow, it is
extremely tense. He lives a life of warfare and has the
psychology of the warrior. He is at war with the whole
community. Except his very few friends in crime he trusts no
one and fears everyone. Suspicion, fear, hatred, danger,
desperation and passion are present in a more tense form in his
life than in that of the average individual. He is restless,
ill-humored, easily roused and suspicious. He lives on the
brink of a deep precipice. This helps to explain his passionate
hatred, his brutality, his fear, and gives poignant
significance to the adage that dead men tell no tales. He holds
on to his few friends with a strength and passion rare among
people who live a more normal existence. His friends stand
between him and discovery. They are his hold upon life, his
basis of security.
Loyalty to one's group is the basic law in the underworld.
Disloyalty is treason and punishable by death; for disloyalty
may mean the destruction of one's friends; it may mean the
hurling of the criminal over the precipice on which his whole
life is built.
To the community the criminal is aggressive. To the criminal
his life is one of defense primarily. The greater part of his
energy, of his hopes, and of his successes, centres around
escapes, around successful flight, around proper covering-up of
his tracks, and around having good, loyal, and trustworthy
friends to participate in his activities, who will tell no
tales and keep the rest of the community outside. The criminal
is thus, from his own point of view--and I am speaking of
professional criminals--living a life of defensive warfare with
the community; and the odds are heavy against him. He therefore
builds up a defensive psychology against it--a psychology of
boldness, bravado, and self-justification. The good
criminal--which means the successful one, he who has most
successfully carried through a series of depradations against
the enemy, the common enemy, the public--is a hero. He is
recognized as such, toasted and feasted, trusted and obeyed.
But always by a little group. They live in a world of their
own, a life of their own, with ideals, habits, outlook,
beliefs, and associations which are peculiarly fitted to
maintain the morale of the group. Loyalty, fearlessness,
generosity, willingness to sacrifice one's self, perseverance
in the face of prosecution, hatred of the common enemy--these
are the elements that maintain the morale, but all of them are
pointed against the community as a whole.[48]
The manner in which the principle of the primary group was applied at
Sing Sing in dealing with the criminal within the prison walls is a
still more interesting illustration of the fact that social problems are
group problems.[49]
Assuming, then, that every social group may be presumed to have its own
(a) administrative, (b) legislative, and (c) human-nature
problems, these problems may be still further classified with reference
to the type of social group. Most social groups fall naturally into one
or the other of the following classes:
a) The family.
b) Language (racial) groups.
c) Local and territorial communities: (i) neighborhoods, (ii) rural
communities, (iii) urban communities.
d) Conflict groups: (i) nationalities, (ii) parties, (iii) sects, (iv)
labor organizations, (v) gangs, etc.
e) Accommodation groups: (i) classes, (ii) castes, (iii) vocational,
(iv) denominational groups.
The foregoing classification is not quite adequate nor wholly logical.
The first three classes are more closely related to one another than
they are to the last two, i.e., the so-called "accommodation" and
"conflict" groups. The distinction is far-reaching, but its general
character is indicated by the fact that the family, language, and local
groups are, or were originally, what are known as primary groups, that
is, groups organized on intimate, face-to-face relations. The conflict
and accommodation groups represent divisions which may, to be sure, have
arisen within the primary group, but which have usually arisen
historically by the imposition of one primary group upon another.
Every state in history was or is a _state of classes_, a polity
of superior and inferior social groups, based upon distinctions
either of rank or of property. This phenomenon must, then, be
called the "State."[50]
It is the existence at any rate of conflict and accommodation within the
limits of a larger group which distinguishes it from groups based on
primary relations, and gives it eventually the character described as
"secondary."
When a language group becomes militant and self-conscious, it assumes
the character of a nationality. It is perhaps true, also, that the
family which is large enough and independent enough to be
self-conscious, by that fact assumes the character of a clan. Important
in this connection is the fact that a group in becoming group-conscious
changes its character. External conflict has invariably reacted
powerfully upon the internal organization of social groups.
Group self-consciousness seems to be a common characteristic of conflict
and accommodation groups and distinguishes them from the more elementary
forms of society represented by the family and the local community.
3. _Organization and structure of social groups._--Having a general
scheme for the classification of social groups, it is in order to
discover methods of analysis that are applicable to the study of all
types of groups, from the family to the sect. Such a scheme of analysis
should reveal not only the organization and structure of typical groups,
but it should indicate the relation of this organization and structure
to those social problems that are actual and generally recognized. The
sort of facts which are now generally recognized as important in the
study, not merely of society, but the problems of society are:
a) Statistics: numbers, local distribution, mobility, incidence of
births, deaths, disease, and crime.
b) Institutions: local distribution, classification (i.e., (i)
industrial, (ii) religious, (iii) political, (iv) educational, (v)
welfare and mutual aid), communal organization.
c) Heritages: the customs and traditions transmitted by the group,
particularly in relation to religion, recreation and leisure time, and
social control (politics).
d) Organization of public opinion: parties, sects, cliques, and the
press.
4. _Social process and social progress._--Social process is the name for
all changes which can be regarded as changes in the life of the group. A
group may be said to have a life when it has a history. Among social
processes we may distinguish (a) the historical, (b) the cultural,
(c) the political, and (d) the economic.
a) We describe as historical the processes by which the fund of social
tradition, which is the heritage of every permanent social group, is
accumulated and transmitted from one generation to another.
History plays the rôle in the group of memory in the individual. Without
history social groups would, no doubt, rise and decline, but they would
neither grow old nor make progress.
Immigrants, crossing the ocean, leave behind them much of their local
traditions. The result is that they lose, particularly in the second
generation, that control which the family and group tradition formerly
exercised over them; but they are, for that very reason, all the more
open to the influence of the traditions and customs of their adopted
country.
b) If it is the function of the historical process to accumulate and
conserve the common fund of social experience, it is the function of the
cultural process to shape and define the social forms and the social
patterns which each preceding generation imposes upon its successors.
The individual living in society has to fit into a pre-existing
social world, to take part in the hedonistic, economic,
political, religious, moral, aesthetic, intellectual activities
of the group. For these activities the group has objective
_systems_, more or less complex sets of schemes, organized
either by traditional association or with a conscious regard to
the greatest possible efficiency of the result, but with only a
secondary, or even with no interest in the particular desires,
abilities and experiences of the individuals who have to
perform these activities.
There is no pre-existing harmony whatever between the
individual and the social factors of personal evolution, and
the fundamental tendencies of the individual are always in some
disaccordance with the fundamental tendencies of social
control. Personal evolution is always a struggle between the
individual and society--a struggle for self-expression on the
part of the individual, for his subjection on the part of
society--and it is in the total course of this struggle that
the personality--not as a static "essence" but as a dynamic,
continually evolving set of activities--manifests and
constructs itself.[51]
c) In general, standards of behavior that are in the mores are not the
subject of discussion, except so far as discussion is necessary to
determine whether this or that act falls under one or the other of the
accepted social sanctions. The political as distinguished from the
cultural process is concerned with just those matters in regard to which
there is division and difference. Politics is concerned with issues.
The Negro, particularly in the southern states, is a constant theme of
popular discussion. Every time a Negro finds himself in a new situation,
or one in which the white population is unaccustomed to see him, the
thing provokes comment in both races. On the other hand, when a
southerner asks the question: "Would you want your daughter to marry a
Negro?" it is time for discussion to cease. Any questions of relations
between the races can always be immediately disposed of as soon as it is
seen to come, directly or indirectly, under the intolerable formula.
Political questions are matters of compromise and expediency.
Miscegenation, on the other hand, is contrary to the mores. As such the
rule against it is absolute.
The political process, by which a society or social group formulates its
wishes and enforces them, goes on within the limits of the mores and is
carried on by public discussion, legislation, and the adjudication of
the courts.
d) The economic process, so far as it can be distinguished from the
production and distribution of goods, is the process by which prices are
made and an exchange of values is effected. Most values, i.e., my
present social status, my hopes of the future, and memory of the past,
are personal and not values that can be exchanged. The economic process
is concerned with values that can be treated as commodities.
All these processes may, and do, arise within most but not every society
or social group. Commerce presupposes the freedom of the individual to
pursue his own profit, and commerce can take place only to the extent
and degree that this freedom is permitted. Freedom of commerce is,
however, limited on the one hand by the mores and on the other by formal
law, so that the economic process takes place ordinarily within
limitations that are defined by the cultural and the political
processes. It is only where there is neither a cultural nor a political
order that commerce is absolutely free.
The areas of (1) the cultural, (2) the political, (3) the economic
processes and their relations to one another may be represented by
concentric circles.
In this representation the area of widest cultural influences is
coterminous with the area of commerce, because commerce in its widest
extension is invariably carried on under some restraints of custom and
customary law. Otherwise it is not commerce at all, but something
predacious outside the law. But if the area of the economic process is
almost invariably coterminous with the widest areas of cultural
influence, it does not extend to the smaller social groups. As a rule
trade does not invade the family. Family interests are always personal
even when they are carried on under the forms of commerce. Primitive
society, within the limits of the village, is usually communistic. All
values are personal, and the relations of individuals to one another,
economic or otherwise, are preordained by custom and law.
The impersonal values, values for exchange, seem to be in any given
society or social group in inverse relation to the personal values.
The attempt to describe in this large way the historical, cultural,
political, and economic processes, is justified in so far as it enables
us to recognize that the aspects of social life, which are the
subject-matter of the special social sciences, i.e., history, political
science, and economics, are involved in specific forms of change that
can be viewed abstractly, formulated, compared, and related. The attempt
to view them in their interrelations is at the same time an effort to
distinguish and to see them as parts of one whole.
[Illustration: FIG. 2
a = area of most extended cultural influences and of commerce; b =
area of formal political control; c = area of purely personal
relationships, communism.]
In contrast with the types of social change referred to there are other
changes which are unilateral and progressive; changes which are
described popularly as "movements," mass movements. These are changes
which eventuate in new social organizations and institutions.
All more marked forms of social change are associated with certain
social manifestations that we call social unrest. Social unrest issues,
under ordinary conditions, as an incident of new social contacts, and is
an indication of a more lively tempo in the process of communication and
interaction.
All social changes are preceded by a certain degree of social and
individual disorganization. This will be followed ordinarily under
normal conditions by a movement of reorganization. All progress implies
a certain amount of disorganization. In studying social changes,
therefore, that, if not progressive, are at least unilateral, we are
interested in:
(1) Disorganization: accelerated mobility, unrest, disease, and crime as
manifestations and measures of social disorganization.
(2) Social movements (reorganization) include: (a) crowd movements
(i.e., mobs, strikes, etc.); (b) cultural revivals, religious and
linguistic; (c) fashion (changes in dress, convention, and social
ritual); (d) reform (changes in social policy and administration);
(e) revolutions (changes in institutions and the mores).
5. _The individual and the person._--The person is an individual who has
status. We come into the world as individuals. We acquire status, and
become persons. Status means position in society. The individual
inevitably has some status in every social group of which he is a
member. In a given group the status of every member is determined by his
relation to every other member of that group. Every smaller group,
likewise, has a status in some larger group of which it is a part and
this is determined by its relation to all the other members of the
larger group.
The individual's self-consciousness--his conception of his rôle in
society, his "self," in short--while not identical with his personality
is an essential element in it. The individual's conception of himself,
however, is based on his status in the social group or groups of which
he is a member. The individual whose conception of himself does not
conform to his status is an isolated individual. The completely isolated
individual, whose conception of himself is in no sense an adequate
reflection of his status, is probably insane.
It follows from what is said that an individual may have many "selves"
according to the groups to which he belongs and the extent to which each
of these groups is isolated from the others. It is true, also, that the
individual is influenced in differing degrees and in a specific manner,
by the different types of group of which he is a member. This indicates
the manner in which the personality of the individual may be studied
sociologically.
Every individual comes into the world in possession of certain
characteristic and relatively fixed behavior patterns which we call
instincts. This is his racial inheritance which he shares with all
members of the species. He comes into the world, also, endowed with
certain undefined capacities for learning other forms of behavior,
capacities which vary greatly in different individuals. These individual
differences and the instincts are what is called original nature.[52]
Sociology is interested in "original nature" in so far as it supplies
the raw materials out of which individual personalities and the social
order are created. Both society and the persons who compose society are
the products of social processes working in and through the materials
which each new generation of men contributes to it.
Charles Cooley, who was the first to make the important distinction
between primary and secondary groups, has pointed out that the intimate,
face-to-face associations of primary groups, i.e., the family, the
neighborhood, and the village community, are fundamental in forming the
social nature and ideals of the individual.[53]
There is, however, an area of life in which the associations are more
intimate than those of the primary group as that group is ordinarily
conceived. Such are the relations between mother and child, particularly
in the period of infancy, and the relations between men and women under
the influence of the sexual instinct. These are the associations in
which the most lasting affections and the most violent antipathies are
formed. We may describe it as the area of touch relationships.
Finally, there is the area of secondary contacts, in which relationships
are relatively impersonal, formal, and conventional. It is in this
region of social life that the individual gains, at the same time, a
personal freedom and an opportunity for distinction that is denied him
in the primary group.
As a matter of fact, many, if not most, of our present social problems
have their source and origin in the transition of great masses of the
population--the immigrants, for example--out of a society based on
primary group relationships into the looser, freer, and less controlled
existence of life in great cities.
The "moral unrest" so deeply penetrating all western societies,
the growing vagueness and indecision of personalities, the
almost complete disappearance of the "strong and steady
character" of old times, in short, the rapid and general
increase of Bohemianism and Bolshevism in all societies, is an
effect of the fact that not only the early primary group
controlling all interests of its members on the general social
basis, not only the occupational group of the mediaeval type
controlling most of the interests of its members on a
professional basis, but even the special modern group dividing
with many others the task of organizing permanently the
attitudes of each of its members, is more and more losing
ground. The pace of social evolution has become so rapid that
special groups are ceasing to be permanent and stable enough to
organize and maintain organized complexes of attitudes of their
members which correspond to their common pursuits. In other
words, society is gradually losing all its old machinery for
the determination and stabilization of individual
characters.[54]
Every social group tends to create, from the individuals that compose
it, its own type of character, and the characters thus formed become
component parts of the social structure in which they are incorporated.
All the problems of social life are thus problems of the individual; and
all problems of the individual are at the same time problems of the
group. This point of view is already recognized in preventive medicine,
and to some extent in psychiatry. It is not yet adequately recognized in
the technique of social case work.
Further advance in the application of social principles to social
practice awaits a more thoroughgoing study of the problems, systematic
social research, and an experimental social science.
REPRESENTATIVE WORKS IN SYSTEMATIC SOCIOLOGY AND METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
I. THE SCIENCE OF PROGRESS
(1) Comte, Auguste. _Cours de philosophie positive_, 5th ed. 6 vols.
Paris, 1892.
(2) ----. _Positive Philosophy._ Translated by Harriet Martineau, 3d ed.
London, 1893.
(3) Spencer, Herbert. _Principles of Sociology._ 3d ed. 3 vols. New
York, 1906.
(4) Schaeffle, Albert. _Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers._ 2d ed., 2
vols. Tuebingen, 1896.
(5) Lilienfeld, Paul von. _Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der
Zukunft._ 5 vols. Mitau, 1873-81.
(6) Ward, Lester F. _Dynamic Sociology._ 2 vols. New York, 1883.
(7) De Greef, Guillaume. _Introduction à la sociologie._ 3 vols. Paris,
1886.
(8) Worms, René. _Organisme et société._ Paris, 1896.
II. THE SCHOOLS
A. _Realists_
(1) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis._ Leipzig, 1898.
(2) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chicago, 1905.
(3) Durkheim, Émile. _De la Division du travail social._ Paris, 1893.
(4) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der
Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig, 1908.
(5) Cooley, Charles Horton. _Social Organization._ A study of the larger
mind. New York, 1909.
(6) Ellwood, Charles A. _Sociology and Its Psychological Aspects._ New
York and London, 1912.
B. _Nominalists_
(1) Tarde, Gabriel. _Les Lois de l'imitation._ Paris, 1895.
(2) Giddings, Franklin H. _The Principles of Sociology._ New York, 1896.
(3) Ross, Edward Alsworth. _The Principles of Sociology._ New York,
1920.
C. _Collective Behavior_
(1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Crowd._ A study of the popular mind. New York,
1903.
(2) Sighele, Scipio. _Psychologie des sectes._ Paris, 1898.
(3) Tarde, Gabriel. _L'Opinion et la foule._ Paris, 1901.
(4) McDougall, William. _The Group Mind._ Cambridge, 1920.
(5) Vincent, George E. _The Social Mind and Education._ New York, 1897.
III. METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION
A. _Critical Observation on Methods of Research_
(1) Small, Albion W. _The Meaning of Social Science._ Chicago, 1910.
(2) Durkheim, Émile. _Les Règles de la méthode sociologique._ Paris,
1904.
(3) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ "Methodological Note," I, 1-86. 5 vols. Boston, 1918-20.
B. _Studies of Communities_
(1) Booth, Charles. _Labour and Life of the People: London._ 2 vols.
London, 1891.
(2) ----. _Life and Labour of the People in London._ 9 vols. London,
1892-97. 8 additional vols. London, 1902.
(3) _The Pittsburgh Survey._ Edited by Paul U. Kellogg. 6 vols. Russell
Sage Foundation. New York, 1909-14.
(4) _The Springfield Survey._ Edited by Shelby M. Harrison. 3 vols.
Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918-20.
(5) _Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York._
Edited by Allen T. Burns. 10 vols. New York, 1920-21.
(6) Chapin, F. Stuart. _Field Work and Social Research._ New York, 1920.
C. _Studies of the Individual_
(1) Healy, William. _The Individual Delinquent._ Boston, 1915.
(2) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ "Life Record of an Immigrant," Vol. III. Boston, 1919.
(3) Richmond, Mary. _Social Diagnosis._ Russell Sage Foundation. New
York, 1917.
IV. PERIODICALS
(1) _American Journal of Sociology._ Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1896-.
(2) _American Sociological Society, Papers and Proceedings._ Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1907-.
(3) _Annales de l'institut international de sociologie._ Paris, M. Giard
et Cie., 1895.
(4) _L'Année sociologique._ Paris, F. Alcan, 1898-1912.
(5) _The Indian Journal of Sociology._ Baroda, India, The College,
1920-.
(6) _Kölner Vierteljahrshefte für Sozialwissenschaften._ Leipzig and
München, Duncker und Humblot, 1921-.
(7) _Rivista italiana di sociologia._ Roma, Fratelli Bocca, 1897-.
(8) _Revue del'institut de sociologie._ Bruxelles, l'Institut de
Sociologie, 1920-. [Successor to _Bulletin del'institut de sociologie
Solvay_. Bruxelles, 1910-14.]
(9) _Revue internationale de sociologie._ Paris, M. Giard et Cie.,
1893-.
(10) _The Sociological Review._ Manchester, Sherratt and Hughes, 1908-.
[Preceded by Sociological Papers, Sociological Society, London, 1905-7.]
(11) _Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und
Volkswirtschaft im deutschen Reiche._ Leipzig, Duncker und Humblot,
1877-.
(12) _Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft._ Berlin, G. Reimer, 1898-.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Comte's Conception of Humanity
2. Herbert Spencer on the Social Organism
3. The Social Process as Defined by Small
4. Imitation and Like-mindedness as Fundamental Social Facts
5. Social Control as a Sociological Problem
6. Group Consciousness and the Group Mind
7. Investigation and Research as Illustrated by the Pittsburgh Survey
and the Carnegie Americanization Studies
8. The Concept of the Group in Sociology
9. The Person, Personality, and Status
10. Sociology in Its Relation to Economics and to Politics
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand was Comte's purpose in demanding for sociology
a place among the sciences?
2. Are social phenomena susceptible to scientific prevision? Compare
with physical phenomena.
3. What is Comte's order of the sciences? What is your explanation for
the late appearance of sociology in the series?
4. What do you understand by the term "positive" when applied to the
social sciences?
5. Can sociology become positive without becoming experimental?
6. "Natural science emphasizes the abstract, the historian is interested
in the concrete." Discuss.
7. How do you distinguish between the historical method and the method
of natural science in dealing with the following phenomena: (a)
electricity, (b) plants, (c) cattle, (d) cities?
8. Distinguish between history, natural history, and natural science.
9. Is Westermarck's _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ history,
natural history, or sociology? Why?
10. "History is past politics, politics is present history." Do you
agree? Elaborate your position.
11. What is the value of history to the person?
12. Classify the following formulas of behavior under either (a)
natural law (social law in the scientific sense), and (b) moral law
(customary sanction, ethical principles), (c) civil law: "birds of a
feather flock together"; "thou shalt not kill"; an ordinance against
speeding; "honesty is the best policy"; monogamy; imitation tends to
spread in geometric ratio; "women first"; the Golden Rule; "walk in the
trodden paths"; the federal child-labor statute.
13. Give an illustration of a sociological hypothesis.
14. Of the following statements of fact, which are historical and which
sociological?
Auguste Comte suffered from myopia.
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
"Science works not at all for nationality or its spirit. It makes
entirely for cosmopolitanism."
15. How would you verify each of the foregoing statements? Distinguish
between the sociological and historical methods of verification.
16. Is the use of the comparative method that of history or that of
natural science?
17. "The social organism: humanity or Leviathan?" What is your reaction
to this alternative? Why?
18. What was the difference in the conception of the social organism
held by Comte and that held by Spencer?
19. "How does a mere collection of individuals succeed in acting in a
corporate and consistent way?" What was the answer to this question
given by Hobbes, Aristotle, Worms?
20. "Man and society are at the same time products of nature and of
human artifice." Explain.
21. What are the values and limitations of the following explanations of
the control of the group over the behavior of its members: (a)
homogeneity, (b) like-mindedness, (c) imitation, (d) common
purpose?
22. What bearing have the facts of a panic or a stampede upon the
theories of like-mindedness, imitation, and common purpose as
explanations of group behavior?
23. "The characteristic social phenomenon is just this control by the
group as a whole of the individuals which compose it. This fact of
control is the fundamental social fact." Give an illustration of the
control of the group over its members.
24. What is the difference between group mind and group consciousness as
indicated in current usage in the phrases "urban mind," "rural mind,"
"public mind," "race consciousness," "national consciousness," "class
consciousness"?
25. What do you understand by "a group in being"? Compare with the
nautical expression "a fleet in being." Is "a fleet in being" a social
organism? Has it a "social mind" and "social consciousness" in the sense
that we speak of "race consciousness", for example, or "group
consciousness"?
26. In what sense is public opinion objective? Analyze a selected case
where the opinion of the group as a whole is different from the opinion
of its members as individuals.
27. For what reason was the fact of "social control" interpreted in
terms of "the collective mind"?
28. Which is the social reality (a) that society is a collection of
like-minded persons, or (b) that society is a process and a product of
interaction? What is the bearing upon this point of the quotation from
Dewey: "Society may fairly be said to exist in transmission"?
29. What three steps were taken in the transformation of sociology from
a philosophy of history to a science of society?
30. What value do you perceive in a classification of social problems?
31. Classify the following studies under (a) administrative problems
or (b) problems of policy or (c) problems of human nature: a survey
to determine the feasibility of health insurance to meet the problem of
sickness; an investigation of the police force; a study of attitudes
toward war; a survey of the contacts of racial groups; an investigation
for the purpose of improving the technique of workers in a social
agency; a study of the experiments in self-government among prisoners in
penal institutions.
32. Is the description of great cities as "social laboratories" metaphor
or fact?
33. What do you understand by the statement: Sociology will become an
experimental science as soon as it can state its problems in such a way
that the results in one instance show what can be done in another?
34. What would be the effect upon political life if sociology were able
to predict with some precision the effects of political action, for
example, the effect of prohibition?
35. Would you favor turning over the government to control of experts as
soon as sociology became a positive science? Explain.
36. How far may the politician who makes a profession of controlling
elections be regarded as a practicing sociologist?
37. What is the distinction between sociology as an art and as a
science?
38. Distinguish between research and investigation as the terms are used
in the text.
39. What illustrations in American society occur to you of the (a)
autocratic and (b) democratic methods of social change?
40. "All social problems turn out finally to be problems of group life."
Are there any exceptions?
41. Select twelve groups at random and enter under the heads in the
classification of social groups. What groups are difficult to classify?
42. Study the organization and structure of one of the foregoing groups
in terms of (a) statistical facts about it; (b) its institutional
aspect; (c) its heritages; and (d) its collective opinion.
43. "All progress implies a certain amount of disorganization." Explain.
44. What do you understand to be the differences between the various
social processes: (a) historical, (b) cultural, (c) economic,
(d) political?
45. What is the significance of the relative diameters of the areas of
the cultural, political, and economic processes?
46. "The person is an individual who has status." Does an animal have
status?
47. "In a given group the status of every member is determined by his
relation to every other member of that group." Give an illustration.
48. Why are the problems of the person, problems of the group as well?
49. What does the organization of the bibliography and the sequence of
the volumes referred to suggest in regard to the development of
sociological science?
50. How far does it seem to you that the emphasis upon process rather
than progress accounts for the changes which have taken place in the
sociological theory and point of view?
FOOTNOTES:
[2] From Robert E. Park, "Sociology and the Social Sciences," _American
Journal of Sociology_, XXVI (1920-21), 401-24; XXVII (1921-22), 1-21;
169-83.
[3] Harriet Martineau, _The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte_,
freely translated and condensed (London, 1893), II, 61.
[4] Harriet Martineau, _op. cit._, II, 59-61.
[5] Montesquieu, Baron M. de Secondat, _The Spirit of Laws_, translated
by Thomas Nugent (Cincinnati, 1873), I, xxxi.
[6] David Hume, _Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, Part II, sec.
7.
[7] Condorcet, _Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit
humain_ (1795), 292. See Paul Barth, _Die Philosophie der Geschichte als
Sociologie_ (Leipzig, 1897), Part I, pp. 21-23.
[8] _Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin_ (Paris, 1865-78), XVII, 228.
Paul Barth, _op. cit._, Part I, p. 23.
[9] Henry Adams, _The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma_ (New York,
1919), p. 126.
[10] James Harvey Robinson, _The New History, Essays Illustrating the
Modern Historical Outlook_ (New York, 1912), pp. 54-55.
[11] James Harvey Robinson, _op. cit._, p. 83.
[12] Wilhelm Windelband, _Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft, Rede zum
Antritt des Rectorats der Kaiser-Wilhelms Universität Strassburg_
(Strassburg, 1900). The logical principle outlined by Windelband has
been further elaborated by Heinrich Rickert in _Die Grenzen der
naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, eine logische Einleitung in die
historischen Wissenschaften_ (Tübingen u. Leipzig, 1902). See also
Georg Simmel, _Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, eine
erkenntnistheoretische Studie_ (2d ed., Leipzig, 1915).
[13] J. Arthur Thomson, _The System of Animate Nature_ (New York, 1920),
pp. 8-9. See also Karl Pearson, _The Grammar of Science_ (2d ed.;
London, 1900), chap. iii, "The Scientific Law."
[14] Karl Pearson, _op. cit._, p. 359.
[15] Henry Adams, _op. cit._, p. 127.
[16] Professor Robertson Smith (_Nature_, XLIV, 270), criticizing
Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_, complains that the author has
confused history with natural history. "The history of an institution,"
he writes, "which is controlled by public opinion and regulated by law
is not natural history. The true history of marriage begins where the
natural history of pairing ends.... To treat these topics (polyandry,
kinship through the female only, infanticide, exogamy) as essentially a
part of the natural history of pairing involves a tacit assumption that
the laws of society are at bottom mere formulated instincts, and this
assumption really underlies all our author's theories. His fundamental
position compels him, if he will be consistent with himself, to hold
that every institution connected with marriage that has universal
validity, or forms an integral part of the main line of development, is
rooted in instinct, and that institutions which are not based on
instinct are necessarily exceptional and unimportant for scientific
history."
[17] Edward Westermarck, _The History of Human Marriage_ (London, 1901),
p. 1.
[18] _Ibid._, p. 5.
[19] Jane Ellen Harrison, _Themis_, _A Study of the Social Origins of
Greek Religion_ (Cambridge, 1912), p. ix.
[20] Robert H. Lowie, _Primitive Society_ (New York, 1920), pp. 7-8.
[21] Wilhelm Wundt, _Völkerpsychologie, eine Untersuchung der
Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte_. Erster Band, _Die
Sprache_, Erster Theil (Leipzig, 1900), p. 13. The name folk-psychology
was first used by Lazarus and Steinthal, _Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, I, 1860. Wundt's
folk-psychology is a continuation of the tradition of these earlier
writers.
[22] G. Tarde, _Social Laws, An Outline of Sociology_, translated from
the French by Howard C. Warren (New York, 1899), pp. 40-41.
[23] Hanns Oertel, "Some Present Problems and Tendencies in Comparative
Philology," _Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St.
Louis, 1904_ (Boston, 1906), III, 59.
[24] Edward A. Freeman, _Comparative Politics_ (London, 1873), p. 23.
[25] L. Lévy-Bruhl, _The Philosophy of Auguste Comte_, authorized
translation; an Introduction by Frederic Harrison (New York, 1903), p.
337.
[26] _Ibid._, p. 234.
[27] Hobbes's statement is as follows: "For by art is created that great
_Leviathan_ called a _Commonwealth_, or _State_, in Latin _Civitas_,
which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength
than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and
in which the _sovereignty_ is an artificial _soul_, as giving life and
motion to the whole body; the _magistrates_, and other _officers_ of
judicature, artificial _joints_; _reward_ and _punishment_, by which
fastened to the seat of the sovereignty every joint and member is moved
to perform his duty, are the _nerves_, that do the same in the body
natural." Spencer criticizes this conception of Hobbes as representing
society as a "factitious" and artificial rather than a "natural"
product. Herbert Spencer, _The Principles of Sociology_ (London, 1893),
I, 437, 579-80. See also chap. iii, "Social Growth," pp. 453-58.
[28] Herbert Spencer, _op. cit._, I, 437.
[29] _Ibid._, p. 440.
[30] _Ibid._, p. 450.
[31] _Ibid._, pp. 449-50.
[32] _Westminster Review_, January, 1860.
[33] René Worms, _Organisme et Société_, "Bibliothèque Sociologique
Internationale" (Paris, 1896), pp. 210-13.
[34] W. Trotter, _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_ (New York,
1916), pp. 29-30.
[35] _Ibid._, pp. 40-41.
[36] Franklin Henry Giddings, _The Concepts and Methods of Sociology_,
Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition (St. Louis, 1904),
pp. 789-90.
[37] G. Tarde, _op. cit._, pp. 38-39.
[38] Émile Durkheim, _Elementary Forms of Religious Life_ (New York,
1915), pp. 206-8.
[39] John Dewey, _Democracy and Education_ (New York, 1916), p. 5.
[40] _Ibid._, pp. 6-7.
[41] Émile Durkheim, "Représentations individuelles et représentations
collectives," _Revue métaphysique_, VI (1898), 295. Quoted and
translated by Charles Elmer Gehlke, "Émile Durkheim's Contributions to
Sociological Theory," _Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law_,
LXIII, 29-30.
[42] Bliss Perry, _The American Mind_ (Boston, 1912), p. 47.
[43] James Mark Baldwin, _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_
(New York and London, 1895); Charles A. Ellwood, _Sociology in Its
Psychological Aspects_ (New York and London, 1912).
[44] _Labour and Life of the People_ (London, 1889), I, pp. 6-7.
[45] Thomas and Znaniecki, _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America_
(Boston, 1918), I, 3.
[46] Walter B. Bodenhafer, "The Comparative Rôle of the Group Concept in
Ward's Dynamic Sociology and Contemporary American Sociology," _American
Journal of Sociology_, XXVI (1920-21), 273-314; 425-74; 588-600; 716-43.
[47] _Stillwater, the Queen of the St. Croix_, a report of a social
survey, published by The Community Service of Stillwater, Minnesota,
1920, p. 71.
[48] Frank Tannenbaum, "Prison Democracy," _Atlantic Monthly_, October,
1920, pp. 438-39. (Psychology of the criminal group.)
[49] _Ibid._, pp. 443-46.
[50] Franz Oppenheimer, _The State_ (Indianapolis, 1914), p. 5.
[51] Thomas and Znaniecki, _op. cit._, III, 34-36.
[52] Original nature in its relation to social welfare and human
progress has been made the subject-matter of a special science,
eugenics. For a criticism of the claims of eugenics as a social science
see Leonard T. Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political Theory_
(Columbia University Press, 1917).
[53] Charles H. Cooley, _Social Organization_, p. 28.
[54] Thomas and Znaniecki, _op. cit._, III, 63-64.
CHAPTER II
HUMAN NATURE
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Human Interest in Human Nature
The human interest in human nature is proverbial. It is an original
tendency of man to be attentive to the behavior of other human beings.
Experience heightens this interest because of the dependence of the
individual upon other persons, not only for physical existence, but for
social life.
The literature of every people is to a large extent but the
crystallization of this persistent interest. Old saws and proverbs of
every people transmit from generation to generation shrewd
generalizations upon human behavior. In joke and in epigram, in
caricature and in burlesque, in farce and in comedy, men of all races
and times have enjoyed with keen relish the humor of the contrast
between the conventional and the natural motives in behavior. In Greek
mythology, individual traits of human nature are abstracted, idealized,
and personified into gods. The heroes of Norse sagas and Teutonic
legends are the gigantic symbols of primary emotions and sentiments.
Historical characters live in the social memory not alone because they
are identified with political, religious, or national movements but also
because they have come to typify human relationships. The loyalty of
Damon and Pythias, the grief of Rachel weeping for her children, the
cynical cruelty of the egocentric Nero, the perfidy of Benedict Arnold,
the comprehending sympathy of Abraham Lincoln, are proverbial, and as
such have become part of the common language of all the peoples who
participate in our occidental culture.
Poetry, drama, and the plastic arts are interesting and significant only
so far as they reveal in new and ever changing circumstances the
unchanging characteristics of a fundamental human nature. Illustrations
of this naïve and unreflecting interest in the study of mankind are
familiar enough in the experience and observation of any of us.
Intellectual interest in, and the scientific observation of, human
traits and human behavior have their origin in this natural interest and
unreflective observation by man of his fellows. History, ethnology,
folklore, all the comparative studies of single cultural traits, i.e.,
of language, of religion, and of law, are but the more systematic
pursuit of this universal interest of mankind in man.
2. Definition of Human Nature
The natural history of the expression "human nature" is interesting.
Usage has given it various shades of meaning. In defining the term more
precisely there is a tendency either unwarrantedly to narrow or unduly
to extend and overemphasize some one or another of the different senses
of the term. A survey of these varied uses reveals the common and
fundamental meaning of the phrase.
The use which common sense makes of the term human nature is
significant. It is used in varied contexts with the most divergent
implications but always by way of explanation of behavior that is
characteristically human. The phrase is sometimes employed with cynical
deprecation as, "Oh, that's human nature." Or as often, perhaps, as an
expression of approbation, "He's so human."
The weight of evidence as expressed in popular sayings is distinctly in
depreciation of man's nature.
It's human natur', p'raps,--if so,
Oh, isn't human natur' low,
are two lines from Gilbert's musical comedy "Babette's Love." "To err is
human, to forgive divine" reminds us of a familiar contrast. "Human
nature is like a bad clock; it might go right now and then, or be made
to strike the hour, but its inward frame is to go wrong," is a simile
that emphasizes the popular notion that man's behavior tends to the
perverse. An English divine settles the question with the statement,
"Human nature is a rogue and a scoundrel, or why would it perpetually
stand in need of laws and religion?"
Even those who see good in the natural man admit his native tendency to
err. Sir Thomas Browne asserts that "human nature knows naturally what
is good but naturally pursues what is evil." The Earl of Clarendon gives
the equivocal explanation that "if we did not take great pains to
corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us." Addison, from
the detached position of an observer and critic of manners and men,
concludes that "as man is a creature made up of different extremes, he
has something in him very great and very mean."
The most commonly recognized distinction between man and the lower
animals lies in his possession of reason. Yet familiar sayings tend to
exclude the intellectual from the human attributes. Lord Bacon shrewdly
remarks that "there is in human nature, generally, more of the fool than
of the wise." The phrase "he is a child of nature" means that behavior
in social relations is impulsive, simple, and direct rather than
reflective, sophisticated, or consistent. Wordsworth depicts this human
type in his poem "She Was a Phantom of Delight":
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
The inconsistency between the rational professions and the impulsive
behavior of men is a matter of common observation. "That's not the
logic, reason, or philosophy of it, but it's the human nature of it." It
is now generally recognized that the older English conception of the
"economic man" and the "rational man," motivated by enlightened
self-interest, was far removed from the "natural man" impelled by
impulse, prejudice, and sentiment, in short, by human nature. Popular
criticism has been frequently directed against the reformer in politics,
the efficiency expert in industry, the formalist in religion and morals
on the ground that they overlook or neglect the so-called "human factor"
in the situation. Sir Arthur Helps says:
No doubt hard work is a great police-agent; if everybody were
worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up,
the register of crimes might be greatly diminished. But what
would become of human nature? Where would be the room for
growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and
mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances,
and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's
natures are developed.
Certain sayings already quoted imply that the nature of man is a fact to
be reckoned with in controlling his behavior. "There are limits to human
nature" which cannot lightly be overstepped. "Human nature," according
to Periander, "is hard to overcome." Yet we also recognize with Swift
that "it is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to
another." Finally, nothing is more trite and familiar than the statement
that "human nature is the same all over the world." This fundamental
likeness of human nature, despite artificial and superficial cultural
differences, has found a classic expression in Kipling's line: "The
Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins!"
Human nature, then, as distinct from the formal wishes of the individual
and the conventional order of society, is an aspect of human life that
must be reckoned with. Common sense has long recognized this, but until
recently no systematic attempt has been made to _isolate_, describe, and
explain the distinctively human factors in the life either of the
individual or of society.
Of all that has been written on this subject the most adequate statement
is that of Cooley. He has worked out with unusual penetration and
peculiar insight an interpretation of human nature as a product of group
life.
By human nature we may understand those sentiments and impulses
that are human in being superior to those of lower animals, and
also in the sense that they belong to mankind at large, and not
to any particular race or time. It means, particularly,
sympathy and the innumerable sentiments into which sympathy
enters, such as love, resentment, ambition, vanity,
hero-worship, and the feeling of social right and wrong.
Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a
comparatively permanent element in society. Always and
everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public
opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire
courage, generosity, and success. It is always safe to assume
that people are and have been human.
Human nature is not something existing separately in the
individual, but a _group nature or primary phase of society_, a
relatively simple and general condition of the social mind. It
is something more, on the one hand, than the mere instinct that
is born in us--though that enters into it--and something less,
on the other, than the more elaborate development of ideas and
sentiments that makes up institutions. It is the nature which
is developed and expressed in those simple, face-to-face groups
that are somewhat alike in all societies; groups of the family,
the playground, and the neighborhood. In the essential
similarity of these is to be found the basis, in experience,
for similar ideas and sentiments in the human mind. In these,
everywhere, human nature comes into existence. Man does not
have it at birth; he cannot acquire it except through
fellowship, and it decays in isolation.[55]
3. Classification of the Materials
With the tacit acceptance by biologists, psychologists, and sociologists
of human behavior as a natural phenomenon, materials upon human nature
have rapidly accumulated. The wealth and variety of these materials are
all the greater because of the diversity of the points of view from
which workers in this field have attacked the problem. The value of the
results of these investigations is enhanced when they are brought
together, classified, and compared.
The materials fall naturally into two divisions: (a) "The Original
Nature of Man" and (b) "Human Nature and Social Life." This division
is based upon a distinction between traits that are inborn and
characters socially acquired; a distinction found necessary by students
in this field. Selections under the third heading, "Personality and the
Social Self" indicate the manner in which the individual develops under
the social influences, from the raw material of "instinct" into the
social product "the person." Materials in the fourth division,
"Biological and Social Inheritance," contrast the method of the
transmission of original tendencies through the germ plasm with the
communication of the social heritage through education.
a) _The original nature of man._--No one has stated more clearly than
Thorndike that human nature is a product of two factors, (a)
tendencies to response rooted in original nature and (b) the
accumulated effects of the stimuli of the external and social
environment. At birth man is a bundle of random tendencies to respond.
Through experience, and by means of the mechanisms of habit and
character, control is secured over instinctive reactions. In other
words, the original nature of man is, as Comte said, an abstraction. It
exists only in the psychic vacuum of antenatal life, or perhaps only in
the potentiality of the germ plasm. The fact of observation is that the
structure of the response is irrevocably changed in the process of
reaction to the stimulus. The _Biography of a Baby_ gives a concrete
picture of the development of the plastic infant in the environment of
the social group.
The three papers on differences between sexes, races, and individuals
serve as an introduction into the problem of differentiating the aspects
of behavior which are in _original nature_ from those that are
_acquired_ through social experience. Are the apparent differences
between men and women, white and colored, John and James, those which
arise from differences in the germ plasm or from differences in
education and in cultural contacts? The selections must not be taken as
giving the final word upon the subject. At best they represent merely
the conclusions reached by three investigators. Attempts to arrive at
positive differences in favor either of original nature or of education
are frequently made in the interest of preconceived opinion. The
problem, as far as science is concerned, is to discover what limitations
original nature places upon response to social copies, and the ways in
which the inborn potentialities find expression or repression in
differing types of social environment.
b) _Human nature and social life._--Original nature is represented in
human responses in so far as they are determined by the _innate
structure of the individual organism_. The materials assembled under
this head treat of inborn reactions as influenced, modified, and
reconstructed by the _structure of the social organization_.
The actual reorganization of human nature takes place in response to the
folkways and mores, the traditions and conventions, of the group. So
potentially fitted for social life is the natural man, however, so
manifold are the expressions that the plastic original tendencies may
take, that instinct is replaced by habit, precedent, personal taboo, and
good form. This remade structure of human nature, this objective mind,
as Hegel called it, is fixed and transmitted in the folkways and mores,
social ritual, i.e., _Sittlichkeit_, to use the German word, and
convention.
c) _Personality and the social self._--The selections upon
"Personality and the Social Self" bring together and compare the
different definitions of the term. These definitions fall under three
heads:
(1) _The organism as personality:_ This is a biological statement,
satisfactory as a definition only as preparatory to further analysis.
(2) _Personality as a complex:_ Personality defined in terms of the
unity of mental life is a conception that has grown up in the recent
"individual psychology," so called. Personality includes, in this case,
not only the memories of the individual and his stream of
consciousness, but also the characteristic organization of mental
complexes and trends which may be thought of as a supercomplex. The
phenomena of double and multiple personalities occur when this unity
becomes disorganized. Disorganization in releasing groups of complexes
from control may even permit the formation of independent organizations.
Morton Prince's book _The Dissociation of a Personality_ is a classic
case study of multiple personality. The selections upon "The Natural
Person versus the Social and Conventional Person" and "The Divided Self
and the Moral Consciousness" indicate the more usual and less extreme
conflicts of opposing sentiments and interests within the organization
of personality.
(3) _Personality as the rôle of the individual in the group:_ The word
personality is derived from the Latin _persona_, a mask used by actors.
The etymology of the term suggests that its meaning is to be found in
the rôle of the individual in the social group. By usage, personality
carries the implication of the social expression of behavior.
Personality may then be defined as the sum and organization of those
traits which determine the rôle of the individual in the group. The
following is a classification of the characteristics of the person which
affect his social status and efficiency:
(a) physical traits, as physique, physiognomy, etc.;
(b) temperament;
(c) character;
(d) social expression, as by facial expression, gesture, manner,
speech, writing, etc.;
(e) prestige, as by birth, past success, status, etc.;
(f) the individual's conception of his rôle.
The significance of these traits consists in the way in which they enter
into the rôle of the individual in his social milieu. Chief among these
may be considered the individual's conception of the part which he plays
among his fellows. Cooley's discriminating description of "the
looking-glass self" offers a picture of the process by which the person
conceives himself in terms of the attitudes of others toward him.
The reflected or looking-glass self seems to have three
principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the
other person; the imagination of his judgment of that
appearance; and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or
mortification. The comparison with a looking-glass self hardly
suggests the second element, the imagined judgment, which is
quite essential. The thing that moves us to pride or shame is
not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed
sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon
another's mind. This is evident from the fact that the
character and weight of that other, in whose mind we see
ourselves, makes all the difference with our feeling.[56]
Veblen has made a subtle analysis of the way in which conduct is
controlled by the individual's conception of his social rôle in his
analysis of "invidious comparison" and "conspicuous expenditure."[57]
d) _Biological and social inheritance._--The distinction between
biological and social inheritance is sharply made by the noted
biologist, J. Arthur Thomson, in the selection entitled "Nature and
Nurture." The so-called "acquired characters" or modifications of
original nature through experience, he points out, are transmitted not
through the germ plasm but through communication.
Thorndike's "Inventory of Original Tendencies" offers a detailed
classification of the traits transmitted biologically. Since there
exists no corresponding specific analysis of acquired traits, the
following brief inventory of types of social heritages is offered.
TYPES OF SOCIAL HERITAGES
(a) means of communication, as language, gesture, etc.;
(b) social attitudes, habits, wishes, etc.;
(c) character;
(d) social patterns, as folkways, mores, conventions, ideals,
etc.;
(e) technique;
(f) culture (as distinguished from technique, formal organization,
and machinery);
(g) social organization (primary group life, institutions, sects,
secondary groups, etc.).
On the basis of the work of Mendel, biologists have made marked progress
in determining the inheritance of specific traits of original nature.
The selection from a foremost American student of heredity and eugenics,
C. B. Davenport, entitled "Inheritance of Original Nature" indicates the
precision and accuracy with which the prediction of the inheritance of
individual innate traits is made.
The mechanism of the transmission of social heritages, while more open
to observation than biological inheritance, has not been subjected to as
intensive study. The transmission of the social heritage takes place by
communication, as Keller points out, through the medium of the various
senses. The various types of the social heritages are transmitted in two
ways: (a) by tradition, as from generation to generation, and (b) by
acculturation, as from group to group.
In the communication of the social heritages, either by tradition or by
acculturation, two aspects of the process may be distinguished: (a)
Because of temperament, interest, and run of attention of the members of
the group, the heritage, whether a word, an act of skill, or a social
attitude, may be selected, appropriated, and incorporated into its
culture. This is communication by _imitation_. (b) On the other hand,
the heritage may be imposed upon the members of the group through
authority and routine, by tabu and repression. This is communication by
_inculcation_. In any concrete situation the transmission of a social
heritage may combine varying elements of both processes. Education, as
the etymology of the term suggests, denotes culture of original
tendencies; yet the routine of a school system is frequently organized
about formal discipline rather than around interest, aptitude, and
attention.
Historically, the scientific interest in the question of biological and
social inheritance has concerned itself with the rather sterile problem
of the weight to be attached on the one hand to physical heredity and on
the other to social heritage. The selection, "Temperament, Tradition,
and Nationality" suggests that a more important inquiry is to determine
how the behavior patterns and the culture of a racial group or a social
class are determined by the interaction of original nature and the
social tradition. According to this conception, racial temperament is an
active selective agency, determining interest and the direction of
attention. The group heritages on the other hand represent a detached
external social environment, a complex of stimuli, effective only in so
far as they call forth responses. The culture of a group is the sum
total and organization of the social heritages which have acquired a
social meaning because of racial temperament and of the historical life
of the group.
II. MATERIALS
A. THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN
1. Original Nature Defined[58]
A man's nature and the changes that take place in it may be described in
terms of the responses--of thought, feeling, action, and attitude--which
he makes, and of the bonds by which these are connected with the
situations which life offers. Any fact of intellect, character, or skill
means a tendency to respond in a certain way to a certain
situation--involves a _situation_ or state of affairs influencing the
man, a _response_ or state of affairs in the man, and a _connection_ or
bond whereby the latter is the result of the former.
Any man possesses at the very start of his life--that is, at the moment
when the ovum and spermatozoön which are to produce him have
united--numerous well-defined tendencies to future behavior. Between the
situations which he will meet and the responses which he will make to
them, pre-formed bonds exist. It is already determined by the
constitution of these two germs that under certain circumstances he will
see and hear and feel and act in certain ways. His intellect and morals,
as well as his bodily organs and movements, are in part the consequence
of the nature of the embryo in the first moment of its life. What a man
is and does throughout life is a result of whatever constitution he has
at the start and of the forces that act upon it before and after birth.
I shall use the term "original nature" for the former and "environment"
for the latter. His original nature is thus a name for the nature of the
combined germ-cells from which he springs, and his environment is a name
for the rest of the universe, so far as it may, directly or indirectly,
influence him.
Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, divide the work
of naming these unlearned tendencies. When the tendency concerns a very
definite and uniform response to a very simple sensory situation, and
when the connection between the situation and the response is very hard
to modify and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the
connection or response to which it leads is called a reflex. Thus the
knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the simple
sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a certain spot.
When the response is more indefinite, the situation more complex, and
the connection more modifiable, instinct becomes the customary term.
Thus one's misery at being scorned is too indefinite a response to too
complex a situation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex.
When the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of
responses to a very complex situation, as when the connection's final
degree of strength is commonly due to very large contributions from
training, it has seemed more appropriate to replace reflex and instinct
by some term like capacity, or tendency, or potentiality. Thus an
original tendency to respond to the circumstances of school education by
achievement in learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for
scholarship.
There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, or between
instincts and the still less easily describable original tendencies. The
fact is that original tendencies range with respect to the nature of the
responses from such as are single, simple, definite, uniform within the
individual and only slightly variable amongst individuals, to responses
that are highly compound, complex, vague, and variable within one
individual's life and amongst individuals.
A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes the
ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to make a
certain response, and the existence of a bond or connection whereby that
response is made to that situation. For instance, the young chick is
sensitive to the absence of other members of his species, is able to
peep, and is so organized that the absence of other members of the
species makes him peep. But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain
situation may exist without the existence of a connection therewith of
any further exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain
response may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that
response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year-old child
is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence and acts of other
human beings, but the exact nature of his response varies. The original
tendency to cry is very strong, but there is no one situation to which
it is exclusively bound. Original nature seems to decide that the
individual will respond somehow to certain situations more often than it
decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make certain
responses more often than it decides just when he will make them. So,
for convenience in thinking about man's unlearned equipment, this
appearance of _multiple response_ to one same situation and _multiple
causation_ of one same response may be taken roughly as the fact.
2. Inventory of Original Tendencies[59]
I. _Sensory capacities_
II. _Original attentiveness_
III. _Gross bodily control_
IV. _Food getting and habitation_
A. Food getting
1. Eating. 2. Reaching, grasping, putting into the mouth.
3. Acquisition and possession. 4. Hunting (a) a small
escaping object, (b) a small or moderate-sized object not of
offensive mien, moving away from or past him. 5. Possible
specialized tendencies. 6. Collecting and hoarding.
7. Avoidance and repulsion. 8. Rivalry and co-operation
B. Habitation
1. Responses to confinement. 2. Migration and domesticity
V. _Fear, fighting, and anger_
A. Fear
1. Unpleasant expectation and dread. 2. Anxiety and
worry. 3. Dislike and avoidance. 4. Shock. 5. Flight,
paralysis, etc.
B. Fighting
1. Escape from restraint. 2. Overcoming a moving obstacle.
3. Counter-attack. 4. Irrational response to pain.
5. Combat in rivalry. 6. Resentment of presence of other
males in courtship. 7. Angry behavior at persistent
thwarting.
C. Anger
VI. _Responses to the behavior of other human beings_
A. Motherly behavior
B. Filial behavior
C. Responses to presence, approval, and scorn of men
1. Gregariousness. 2. Attention to human beings. 3. Attention-getting.
4. Responses to approval and scorn.
5. Responses by approval and scorn
D. Mastering and submissive behavior
1. Display. 2. Shyness. 3. Self-conscious behavior
E. Other social instincts
1. Sex behavior. 2. Secretiveness. 3. Rivalry. 4. Co-operation.
5. Suggestibility and opposition. 6. Envious
and jealous behavior. 7. Greed. 8. Ownership. 9. Kindliness.
10. Teasing, tormenting, and bullying
F. Imitation
1. General imitativeness. 2. Imitation of particular forms
of behavior
VII. _Original satisfiers and annoyers_
VIII. _Minor bodily movements and cerebral connections_
A. Vocalization
B. Visual exploration
C. Manipulation
D. Other possible specializations
1. Constructiveness. 2. Cleanliness. 3. Adornment and art
E. Curiosity and mental control
1. Curiosity. 2. The instinct of multiform mental activity.
3. The instinct of multiform physical activity.
4. The instinct of workmanship and the desire for excellence
F. Play
IX. _The emotions and their expression_
X. _Consciousness, learning, and remembering_
3. Man Not Born Human[60]
Man is not born human. It is only slowly and laboriously, in fruitful
contact, co-operation, and conflict with his fellows, that he attains
the distinctive qualities of human nature. In the course of his prenatal
life he has already passed roughly through, or, as the biologists say,
"recapitulated," the whole history of his animal ancestors. He brings
with him at birth a multitude of instincts and tendencies, many of which
persist during life and many of which are only what G. Stanley Hall
calls "vestigial traces" of his brute ancestry, as is shown by the fact
that they are no longer useful and soon disappear.
These non-volitional movements of earliest infancy and of later
childhood (such as licking things, clicking with the tongue,
grinding the teeth, biting the nails, shrugging corrugations,
pulling buttons, or twisting garments, strings, etc., twirling
pencils, etc.) are relics of past forms of utilities now
essentially obsolete. Ancient modes of locomotion, prehension,
balancing, defense, attack, sensuality, etc., are all
rehearsed, some quite fully and some only by the faintest
mimetic suggestion, flitting spasmodic tensions, gestures, or
facial expressions.
Human nature may therefore be regarded on the whole as a superstructure
founded on instincts, dispositions, and tendencies, inherited from a
long line of human and animal ancestors. It consists mainly in a higher
organization of forces, a more subtle distillation of potencies latent
in what Thorndike calls "the original nature of man."
The original nature of man is roughly what is common to all men
minus all adaptations to tools, houses, clothes, furniture,
words, beliefs, religions, laws, science, the arts, and to
whatever in other men's behavior is due to adaptations to them.
From human nature as we find it, take away, first, all that is
in the European but not in the Chinaman, all that is in the
Fiji Islander but not in the Esquimaux, all that is local or
temporary. Then take away also the effects of all products of
human art. What is left of human intellect and character is
largely original--not wholly, for all those elements of
knowledge which we call ideas and judgments must be subtracted
from his responses. Man originally possesses only capacities
which, after a given amount of education, will produce ideas
and judgments.
Such, in general, is the nature of human beings before that nature has
been modified by experience and formed by the education and the
discipline of contact and intercourse with their fellows.
Several writers, among them William James, have attempted to make a
rough inventory of the special instinctive tendencies with which human
beings are equipped at birth. First of all there are the simpler
reflexes such as "crying, sneezing, snoring, coughing, sighing,
sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the limb in
response to its being tickled, touched or blown upon, spreading the toes
in response to its being touched, tickled, or stroked on the sole of the
foot, extending and raising the arms at any sudden sensory stimulus, or
the quick pulsation of the eyelid."
Then there are the more complex original tendencies such as sucking,
chewing, sitting up, and gurgling. Among the more general unlearned
responses of children are fear, anger, pugnacity, envy, jealousy,
curiosity, constructiveness, love of festivities, ceremonies and
ordeals, sociability and shyness, secretiveness, etc. Thorndike, who
quotes this list at length, has sought to give definiteness to its
descriptions by clearly defining and distinguishing the character of the
situation to which the behavior cited is a response. For example, to the
situation, "strange man or animal, to solitude, black things, dark
places, holes and corners, a human corpse," the native and unlearned
response is fear. The original response of man to being alone is an
experience of discomfort, to perceiving a crowd, "a tendency to join
them and do what they are doing and an unwillingness to leave off and go
home." It is part of man's original nature when he is in love to conceal
his love affairs, and so forth.
It is evident from this list that what is meant by original nature is
not confined to the behavior which manifests itself at birth, but
includes man's spontaneous and unlearned responses to situations as they
arise in the experience of the individual.
The widespread interest in the study of children has inspired in recent
years a considerable literature bearing upon the original and inherited
tendencies of human nature. The difficulty of distinguishing between
what is original and what is acquired among the forms of behavior
reported upon, and the further difficulty of obtaining accurate
descriptions of the situations to which the behavior described was a
response, has made much of this literature of doubtful value for
scientific purposes. These studies have, nevertheless, contributed to a
radical change in our conceptions of human nature. They have shown that
the distinction between the mind of man and that of the lower animals is
not so wide nor so profound as was once supposed. They have emphasized
the fact that human nature rests on animal nature, and the transition
from one to the other, in spite of the contrast in their separate
achievements, has been made by imperceptible gradations. In the same
way they have revealed, beneath differences in culture and individual
achievement, the outlines of a pervasive and relatively unchanging human
nature in which all races and individuals have a common share.
The study of human nature begins with description, but it goes on from
that point to explanation. If the descriptions which we have thus far
had of human nature are imperfect and lacking in precision, it is
equally true that the explanations thus far invented have, on the whole,
been inadequate. One reason for this has been the difficulty of the
task. The mechanisms which control human behavior are, as might be
expected, tremendously complicated, and the problem of analyzing them
into their elementary forms and reducing their varied manifestations to
precise and lucid formulas is both intricate and perplexing.
The foundation for the explanation of human nature has been laid,
however, by the studies of behavior in animals and the comparative study
of the physiology of the nervous system. Progress has been made, on the
one hand, by seeking for the precise psycho-chemical process involved in
the nervous reactions, and on the other, by reducing all higher mental
processes to elementary forms represented by the tropisms and reflex
actions.
In this, science has made a considerable advance upon common sense in
its interpretations of human behavior, but has introduced no new
principle; it has simply made its statements more detailed and exact.
For example, common sense has observed that "the burnt child shuns the
fire," that "the moth seeks the flame." These are both statements of
truths of undoubted generality. In order to give them the validity of
scientific truth, however, we need to know what there is in the nature
of the processes involved that makes it inevitable that the child should
shun the fire and the moth should seek the flame. It is not sufficient
to say that the action in one case is instinctive and in the other
intelligent, unless we are able to give precise and definite meanings to
those terms; unless, in short, we are able to point out the precise
mechanisms through which these reactions are carried out. The following
illustration from Loeb's volume on the comparative physiology of the
brain will illustrate the distinction between the common sense and the
more precise scientific explanation of the behavior in man and the lower
animals.
It is a well-known fact that if an ant be removed from a nest
and afterward put back it will not be attacked, while almost
invariably an ant belonging to another nest will be attacked.
It has been customary to use the words memory, enmity,
friendship, in describing this fact. Now Bethe made the
following experiment: an ant was placed in the liquids (blood
and lymph) squeezed out from the bodies of nest companions and
was then put back into its nest; it was not attacked. It was
then put in the juice taken from the inmates of a "hostile"
nest and was at once attacked and killed. Bethe was able to
prove by special experiments that these reactions of ants are
not learned by experience, but are inherited. The "knowing" of
"friend and foe" among ants is thus reduced to different
reactions, depending upon the nature of the chemical stimulus
and in no way depending upon memory.
Here, again, there is no essential difference between the common sense
and the scientific explanation of the behavior of the ant except so far
as the scientific explanation is more accurate, defining the precise
mechanisms by which the recognition of "friend and foe" is effected, and
the limitations to which it is subject.
Another result of the study of the comparative behavior of man and the
lower animals has been to convince students that there is no fundamental
difference between what was formerly called intelligent and instinctive
behavior; that they may rather be reduced, as has been said, to the
elementary form of reaction represented by the simple reflex in animals
and the tropism in plants. Thus Loeb says:
A prominent psychologist has maintained that reflexes are to be
considered as the mechanical effects of acts of volition of
past generations. The ganglion-cell seems the only place where
such mechanical effects could be stored up. It has therefore
been considered the most essential element of the reflex
mechanism, the nerve-fibers being regarded, and probably
correctly, merely as conductors.
Both the authors who emphasize the purposefulness of the reflex
act, and those who see in it only a physical process, have
invariably looked upon the ganglion-cell as the principal
bearer of the structures for the complex co-ordinated movements
in reflex action.
I should have been as little inclined as any other physiologist
to doubt the correctness of this conception had not the
establishment of the identity of the reactions of animals and
plants to light proved the untenability of this view and at the
same time offered a different conception of reflexes. The
flight of the moth into the flame is a typical reflex process.
The light stimulates the peripheral sense organs, the stimulus
passes to the central nervous system, and from there to the
muscles of the wings, and the moth is caused to fly into the
flame. This reflex process agrees in every point with the
heliotropic effects of light on plant organs. Since plants
possess no nerves, this identity of animal with plant
heliotropism can offer but one inference--these heliotropic
effects must depend upon conditions which are common to both
animals and plants.
On the other hand, Watson, in his _Introduction to Comparative
Psychology_, defines the reflex as "a unit of analysis of instinct," and
this means that instinctive actions in man and in animals may be
regarded as combinations of simple reflex actions, that is to say of
"fairly definite and generally predictable but unlearned responses of
lower and higher organisms to stimuli." Many of these reflex responses
are not fixed, as they were formerly supposed to be, but "highly
unstable and indefinite." This fact makes possible the formation of
habits, by combination and fixation of these inherited responses.
These views in the radical form in which they are expressed by Loeb and
Watson have naturally enough been the subject of considerable
controversy, both on scientific and sentimental grounds. They seem to
reduce human behavior to a system of chemical and physical reactions,
and rob life of all its spiritual values. On the other hand, it must be
remembered that human beings, like other forms of nature, have this
mechanical aspect and it is precisely the business of natural science to
discover and lay them bare. It is only thus that we are able to gain
control over ourselves and of others. It is a matter of common
experience that we do form habits and that education and social control
are largely dependent upon our ability to establish habits in ourselves
and in others. Habit is, in fact, a characteristic example of just what
is meant by "mechanism," in the sense in which it is here used. It is
through the fixation of habit that we gain that control over our
"original nature," which lifts us above the brutes and gives human
nature its distinctive character as human. Character is nothing more
than the sum and co-ordination of those mechanisms which we call habit
and which are formed on the basis of the inherited and instinctive
tendencies and dispositions which we share in so large a measure with
the lower animals.
4. The Natural Man[61]
"Its first act is a cry, not of wrath, as Kant said, nor a shout of joy,
as Schwartz thought, but a snuffling, and then a long, thin, tearless
á-á, with the timbre of a Scotch bagpipe, purely automatic, but of
discomfort. With this monotonous and dismal cry, with its red,
shriveled, parboiled skin (for the child commonly loses weight the first
few days), squinting, cross-eyed, pot-bellied, and bow-legged, it is not
strange that, if the mother has not followed Froebel's exhortations and
come to love her child before birth, there is a brief interval
occasionally dangerous to the child before the maternal instinct is
fully aroused."
The most curious of all the monkey traits shown by the new-born baby is
the one investigated by Dr. Louis Robinson. It was suggested by _The
Luck of Roaring Camp_. The question was raised in conversation whether a
limp and molluscous baby, unable so much as to hold up its head on its
helpless little neck, could do anything so positive as to "rastle with"
Kentuck's finger; and the more knowing persons present insisted that a
young baby does, as a matter of fact, have a good firm hand-clasp. It
occurred to Dr. Robinson that if this was true it was a beautiful
Darwinian point, for clinging and swinging by the arms would naturally
have been a specialty with our ancestors if they ever lived a
monkey-like life in the trees. The baby that could cling best to its
mother as she used hands, feet, and tail to flee in the best time over
the trees, or to get at the more inaccessible fruits and eggs in time of
scarcity, would be the baby that lived to bequeath his traits to his
descendants; so that to this day our housed and cradled human babies
would keep in their clinging powers a reminiscence of our wild treetop
days.
There is another class of movements, often confused with the
reflex--that is, instinctive movements. Real grasping (as distinguished
from reflex grasping), biting, standing, walking, are examples of this
class. They are race movements, the habits of the species to which the
animal belongs, and every normal member of the species is bound to come
to them; yet they are not so fixed in the bodily mechanism as the reflex
movements.
The one instinct the human baby always brings into the world already
developed is half a mere reflex act--that of sucking. It is started as a
reflex would be, by the touch of some object--pencil, finger, or nipple,
it may be--between the lips; but it does not act like a reflex after
that. It continues and ceases without reference to this external
stimulus, and a little later often begins without it, or fails to begin
when the stimulus is given. If it has originally a reflex character,
that character fades out and leaves it a pure instinct.
My little niece evidently felt a difference between light and darkness
from the first hour, for she stopped crying when her face was exposed to
gentle light. Two or three report also a turning of the head toward the
light within the first week. The nurse, who was intelligent and exact,
thought she saw this in the case of my niece. I did not, but I saw
instead a constant turning of the eyes toward a person coming near
her--that is, toward a large dark mass that interrupted the light. No
other sign of vision appeared in the little one during the first
fortnight. The eyes were directed to nothing, fixed on nothing. They did
not wink if one made a pass at them. There was no change of focus for
near or distant seeing.
The baby showed no sign of hearing anything until the third day, when
she started violently at the sound of tearing paper, some eight feet
from her. After that, occasional harsh or sudden sounds--oftener the
rustling of paper than anything else--could make her start or cry. It is
well established by the careful tests of several physiologists that
babies are deaf for a period lasting from several hours to several days
after birth.
Taste and smell were senses that the baby gave no sign of owning till
much later. The satisfaction of hunger was quite enough to account for
the contentment she showed in nursing; and when she was not hungry she
would suck the most tasteless object as cheerfully as any other.
Our baby showed from the first that she was aware when she was touched.
She stopped crying when she was cuddled or patted. She showed comfort in
the bath, which may have been in part due to freedom from the contact of
clothes, and to liking for the soft touches of the water. She responded
with sucking motions to the first touch of the nipple on her lips.
Our baby showed temperament--luckily of the easy-going and cheerful
kind--from her first day, though we could hardly see this except by
looking backward. On the twenty-fifth day, toward evening, when the baby
was lying on her grandmother's knee by the fire, in a condition of high
well-being and content, gazing at her grandmother's face with an
expression of attention, I came and sat down close by, leaning over the
baby, so that my face must have come within the indirect range of her
vision. At that she turned her eyes to my face and gazed at it with the
same appearance of attention, and even of some effort, shown by the
slight tension of brows and lips, then turned her eyes back to her
grandmother's face, and again to mine, and so several times. The last
time she seemed to catch sight of my shoulder, on which a high light
struck from the lamp, and not only moved her eyes but threw her head far
back to see it better, and gazed for some time with a new expression on
her face--"a sort of dim and rudimentary eagerness," says my note. She
no longer stared, but really looked.
The baby's increased interest in seeing centered especially on the faces
about her, at which she gazed with rapt interest. Even during the period
of mere staring, faces had oftenest held her eyes, probably because they
were oftener brought within the range of her clearest seeing than other
light surfaces. The large, light, moving patch of the human face (as
Preyer has pointed out) coming and going in the field of vision, and
oftener chancing to hover at the point of clearest seeing than any other
object, embellished with a play of high lights on cheeks, teeth, and
eyes, is calculated to excite the highest degree of attention a baby is
capable of at a month old. So from the very first--before the baby has
yet really seen his mother--her face and that of his other nearest
friends become the most active agents in his development and the most
interesting things in his experience.
Our baby was at this time in a way aware of the difference between
companionship and solitude. In the latter days of the first month she
would lie contentedly in the room with people near by, but would fret if
left alone. But by the end of the month she was apt to fret when she was
laid down on a chair or lounge, and to become content only when taken
into the lap. This was not yet distinct memory and desire, but it showed
that associations of pleasure had been formed with the lap, and that
she felt a vague discomfort in the absence of these.
Nature has provided an educational appliance almost ideally adapted to
the child's sense condition, in the mother's face, hovering close above
him, smiling, laughing, nodding, with all manner of delightful changes
in the high lights; in the thousand little meaningless caressing sounds,
the singing, talking, calling, that proceed from it; the patting,
cuddling, lifting, and all the ministrations that the baby feels while
gazing at it, and associates with it, till finally they group together
and round out into the idea of his mother as a whole.
Our baby's mother rather resented the idea of being to her baby only a
collection of detached phenomena, instead of a mamma; but the more you
think of it, the more flattering it is to be thus, as it were, dissolved
into your elements and incorporated item by item into the very
foundations of your baby's mental life. Herein is hinted much of the
philosophy of personality; and Professor Baldwin has written a solid
book, mainly to show from the development of babies and little children
that all other people are part of each of us, and each of us is part of
all other people, and so there is really no separate personality, but we
are all one spirit, if we did but know it.
5. Sex Differences[62]
As children become physically differentiated in respect of sex, so also
does a mental differentiation ensue. Differences are observed in the
matter of occupation, of games, of movements, and numerous other
details. Since man is to play the active part in life, boys rejoice
especially in rough outdoor games. Girls, on the other hand, prefer such
games as correspond to their future occupations. Hence their inclination
to mother smaller children, and to play with dolls. Watch how a little
girl takes care of her doll, washes it, dresses and undresses it. When
only six or seven years of age she is often an excellent nurse. Her need
to occupy herself in such activities is often so great that she pretends
that her doll is ill.
In all kinds of ways, we see the little girl occupying herself in the
activities and inclinations of her future existence. She practices house
work; she has a little kitchen, in which she cooks for herself and her
doll. She is fond of needlework. The care of her own person, and more
especially its adornment, is not forgotten. I remember seeing a girl of
three who kept on interrupting her elders' conversation by crying out,
"New clothes!" and would not keep quiet until these latter had been duly
admired. The love of self-adornment is almost peculiar to female
children; boys, on the other hand, prefer rough outdoor games, in which
their muscles are actively employed, robber-games, soldier-games, and
the like. And whereas, in early childhood, both sexes are fond of very
noisy games, the fondness for these disappears earlier in girls than in
boys.
Differences between the sexes have been established also by means of
experimental psychology, based upon the examination of a very large
number of instances. Berthold Hartmann has studied the childish circle
of thought, by means of a series of experiments. Schoolboys to the
number of 660 and schoolgirls to the number of 652, at ages between five
and three-fourths and six and three-fourths years, were subjected to
examination. It was very remarkable to see how, in respect to certain
ideas, such as those of the triangle, cube, and circle, the girls
greatly excelled the boys; whereas in respect of animals, minerals, and
social ideas, the boys were better informed than the girls.
Characteristic of the differences between the sexes, according to
Meumann, from whom I take these details and some of those that follow,
is the fact that the idea of "marriage" was known to only 70 boys as
compared to 227 girls; whilst the idea of "infant baptism" was known to
180 boys as compared to 220 girls. The idea of "pleasure" was also much
better understood by girls than by boys. Examination of the memory has
also established the existence of differences between the sexes in
childhood. In boys the memory for objects appears to be at first the
best developed; to this succeeds the memory for words with a visual
content; in the case of girls, the reverse of this was observed. In
respect of numerous details, however, the authorities conflict. Very
striking is the fact, one upon which a very large number of
investigators are agreed, that girls have a superior knowledge of
colors.
There are additional psychological data relating to the differences
between the sexes in childhood. I may recall Stern's investigations
concerning the psychology of evidence, which showed that girls were much
more inaccurate than boys.
It has been widely assumed that these psychical differences between the
sexes result from education, and are not inborn. Others, however, assume
that the psychical characteristics by which the sexes are differentiated
result solely from individual differences in education. Stern believes
that in the case of one differential character, at least, he can prove
that for many centuries there has been no difference between the sexes
in the matter of education; this character is the capacity for drawing.
Kerschensteiner has studied the development of this gift, and considers
that his results have established beyond dispute that girls are greatly
inferior in this respect to boys of like age. Stern points out that
there can be no question here of cultivation leading to a sexual
differentiation of faculty, since there is no attempt at a general and
systematic teaching of draughtsmanship to the members of one sex to the
exclusion of members of the other.
I believe that we are justified in asserting that at the present time
the sexual differentiation manifested in respect of quite a number of
psychical qualities is the result of direct inheritance. It would be
quite wrong to assume that all these differences arise in each
individual in consequence of education. It does, indeed, appear to me to
be true that inherited tendencies may be increased or diminished by
individual education; and further, that when the inherited tendency is
not a very powerful one, it may in this way even be suppressed.
We must not forget the frequent intimate association between structure
and function. Rough outdoor games and wrestling thus correspond to the
physical constitution of the boy. So, also, it is by no means improbable
that the little girl, whose pelvis and hips have already begun to
indicate by their development their adaption for the supreme functions
of the sexually mature woman, should experience obscurely a certain
impulsion toward her predestined maternal occupation, and that her
inclinations and amusements should in this way be determined. Many,
indeed, and above all the extreme advocates of women's rights, prefer to
maintain that such sexually differentiated inclinations result solely
from differences in individual education: if the boy has no enduring
taste for dolls and cooking, this is because his mother and others have
told him, perhaps with mockery, that such amusements are unsuited to a
boy; whilst in a similar way the girl is dissuaded from the rough
sports of boyhood. Such an assumption is the expression of that general
psychological and educational tendency, which ascribes to the activity
of the will an overwhelmingly powerful influence upon the development of
the organs subserving the intellect, and secondarily also upon that of
the other organs of the body. We cannot dispute the fact that in such a
way the activity of the will may, within certain limits, be effective,
especially in cases in which the inherited tendency thus counteracted is
comparatively weak; but only within certain limits. Thus we can
understand how it is that in some cases, by means of education, a child
is impressed with characteristics normally foreign to its sex; qualities
and tendencies are thus developed which ordinarily appear only in a
child of the opposite sex. But even though we must admit that the
activity of the individual may operate in this way, none the less we are
compelled to assume that certain tendencies are inborn. The failure of
innumerable attempts to counteract such inborn tendencies by means of
education throws a strong light upon the limitations of the activity of
the individual will; and the same must be said of a large number of
other experiences.
Criminological experiences appear also to confirm the notion of an
inherited sexual differentiation, in children as well as in adults.
According to various statistics, embracing not only the period of
childhood, but including as well the period of youth, we learn that
girls constitute one-fifth only of the total number of youthful
criminals. A number of different explanations have been offered to
account for this disproportion. Thus, for instance, attention has been
drawn to the fact that a girl's physical weakness renders her incapable
of attempting violent assaults upon the person, and this would suffice
to explain why it is that girls so rarely commit such crimes. In the
case of offenses for which bodily strength is less requisite, such as
fraud, theft, etc., the number of youthful female offenders is
proportionately larger, although here also they are less numerous than
males of corresponding age charged with the like offenses. It has been
asserted that in the law courts girls find more sympathy than boys, and
that for this reason the former receive milder sentences than the
latter; hence it results that in appearance merely the criminality of
girls is less than that of boys. Others, again, refer the differences in
respect of criminality between the youthful members of the two sexes to
the influences of education and general environment. Morrison, however,
maintains that all these influences combined are yet insufficient to
account for the great disproportion between the sexes, and insists that
there exists in youth as well as in adult life a specific sexual
differentiation, based, for the most part, upon biological differences
of a mental and physical character.
Such a marked differentiation as there is between the adult man and the
adult woman certainly does not exist in childhood. Similarly in respect
of many other qualities, alike bodily and mental, in respect of many
inclinations and numerous activities, we find that in childhood sexual
differentiation is less marked than it is in adult life. None the less,
a number of sexual differences can be shown to exist even in childhood;
and as regards many other differences, though they are not yet apparent,
we are nevertheless compelled to assume that they already exist
potentially in the organs of the child.
6. Racial Differences[63]
The results of the Cambridge expedition to the Torres Straits have shown
that in acuteness of vision, hearing, smell, etc., these peoples are not
noticeably different from our own. We conclude that the remarkable tales
adduced to the contrary by various travelers are to be explained, not by
the acuteness of sensation, but by the acuteness of interpretation of
primitive peoples. Take the savage into the streets of a busy city and
see what a number of sights and sounds he will neglect because of their
meaninglessness to him. Take the sailor whose powers of discerning a
ship on the horizon appear to the landsman so extraordinary, and set him
to detect micro-organisms in the field of a microscope. Is it then
surprising that primitive man should be able to draw inferences which to
the stranger appear marvelous, from the merest specks in the far
distance or from the faintest sounds, odors, or tracks in the jungle?
Such behavior serves only to attest the extraordinary powers of
observation in primitive man with respect to things which are of use and
hence of interest to him. The same powers are shown in the vast number
of words he will coin to denote the same object, say a certain tree at
different stages of its growth.
We concluded, then, that no fundamental difference in powers of sensory
acuity, nor, indeed, in sensory discrimination, exists between primitive
and civilized communities. Further, there is no proof of any difference
in memory between them, save, perhaps, in a greater tendency for
primitive folk to use and to excel in mere mechanical learning, in
preference to rational learning. But this surely is also the
characteristic of the European peasant. He will never commit things to
memory by thinking of their meaning, if he can learn them by rote.
In temperament we meet with just the same variations in primitive as in
civilized communities. In every primitive society is to be found the
flighty, the staid, the energetic, the indolent, the cheerful, the
morose, the even-, the hot-tempered, the unthinking, the philosophical
individual. At the same time, the average differences between different
primitive peoples are as striking as those between the average German
and the average Italian.
It is a common but manifest error to suppose that primitive man is
distinguished from the civilized peasant in that he is freer and that
his conduct is less under control. On the contrary, the savage is
probably far more hidebound than we are by social regulations. His life
is one round of adherence to the demands of custom. For instance, he may
be compelled even to hand over his own children at their birth to
others; he may be prohibited from speaking to certain of his relatives;
his choice of a wife may be very strictly limited by traditional laws;
at every turn there are ceremonies to be performed and presents to be
made by him so that misfortune may be safely averted. As to the control
which primitive folk exercise over their conduct, this varies enormously
among different peoples; but if desired, I could bring many instances of
self-control before you which would put to shame the members even of our
most civilized communities.
Now since in all these various mental characters no appreciable
difference exists between primitive and advanced communities, the
question arises, what is the most important difference between them? I
shall be told, in the capacity for logical and abstract thought. But by
how much logical and abstract thought is the European peasant superior
to his primitive brother? Study our country folklore, study the actual
practices in regard to healing and religion which prevail in every
European peasant community today, and what essential differences are
discoverable? Of course, it will be urged that these practices are
continued unthinkingly, that they are merely vestiges of a period when
once they were believed and were full of meaning. But this, I am
convinced, is far from being generally true, and it also certainly
applies to many of the ceremonies and customs of primitive peoples.
It will be said that although the European peasant may not in the main
think more logically and abstractly, he has, nevertheless, the
potentiality for such thought, should only the conditions for its
manifestations--education and the like--ever be given. From such as he
have been produced the geniuses of Europe--the long line of artists and
inventors who have risen from the lowest ranks.
I will consider this objection later. At present it is sufficient for my
purpose to have secured the admission that the peasants of Europe do not
as a whole use their mental powers in a much more logical or abstract
manner than do primitive people. I maintain that such superiority as
they have is due to differences (1) of environment and (2) of
variability.
We must remember that the European peasant grows up in a (more or less)
civilized environment; he learns a (more or less) well-developed and
written language, which serves as an easier instrument and a stronger
inducement for abstract thought; he is born into a (more or less)
advanced religion. All these advantages and the advantage of a more
complex education the European peasant owes to his superiors in ability
and civilization. Rob the peasant of these opportunities, plunge him
into the social environment of present primitive man, and what
difference in thinking power will be left between them?
The answer to this question brings me to the second point of difference
which I have mentioned--the difference in variability. I have already
alluded to the divergencies in temperament to be found among the members
of every primitive community. But well marked as are these and other
individual differences, I suspect that they are less prominent among
primitive than among more advanced peoples. This difference in
variability, if really existent, is probably the outcome of more
frequent racial admixture and more complex social environment in
civilized communities. In another sense, the variability of the savage
is indicated by the comparative data afforded by certain psychological
investigations. A civilized community may not differ much from a
primitive one in the mean or average of a given character, but the
extreme deviations which it shows from that mean will be more numerous
and more pronounced. This kind of variability has probably another
source. The members of a primitive community behave toward the applied
test in the simplest manner, by the use of a mental process which we
will call A, whereas those of a more advanced civilization employ other
mental processes, in addition to A, say B, C, D, or E, each individual
using them in different degrees for the performance of one and the same
test. Finally, there is in all likelihood a third kind of variability,
whose origin is ultimately environmental, which is manifested by
extremes of nervous instability. Probably the exceptionally defective
and the exceptional genius are more common among civilized than among
primitive peoples.
Similar features undoubtedly meet us in the study of sexual differences.
The average results of various tests of mental ability applied to men
and women are not, on the whole, very different for the two sexes, but
the men always show considerably greater individual variation than the
women. And here, at all events, the relation between the frequency of
mental deficiency and genius in the two sexes is unquestionable. Our
asylums contain a considerably greater number of males than of females,
as a compensation for which genius is decidedly less frequent in females
than in males.
7. Individual Differences[64]
The life of a man is a double series--a series of effects produced in
him by the rest of the world, and a series of effects produced in that
world by him. A man's make-up or nature equals his tendencies to be
influenced in certain ways by the world and to react in certain ways to
it.
If we could thus adequately describe each of a million human beings--if,
for each one, we could prophesy just what the response would be to every
possible situation of life--the million men would be found to differ
widely. Probably no two out of the million would be so alike in mental
nature as to be indistinguishable by one who knew their entire natures.
Each has an individuality which marks him off from other men. We may
study a human being in respect to his common humanity, or in respect to
his individuality. In other words, we may study the features of
intellect and character which are common to all men, to man as a
species; or we may study the differences in intellect and character
which distinguish individual men.
Individuals are commonly considered as differing in respect to such
traits either quantitatively or qualitatively, either in degree or in
kind. A quantitative difference exists when the individuals have
different amounts of the same trait. Thus, "John is more attentive to
his teacher than James is"; "Mary loves dolls less than Lucy does"; "A
had greater devotion to his country than B had"; are reports of
quantitative differences, of differences in the amount of what is
assumed to be the same kind of thing. A qualitative difference exists
when some quality or trait possessed by one individual is lacking in the
other. Thus, "Tom knows German, Dick does not"; "A is artistic, B is
scientific"; "C is a man of thought, D is a man of action"; are reports
of the fact that Tom has some positive amount or degree of the trait
"knowledge of German" while Dick has none of it; that A has some
positive amount of ability and interest in art while B has zero; whereas
B has a positive amount of ability in science, of which A has none; and
so on.
A qualitative difference in intellect or character is thus really a
quantitative difference wherein one term is zero, or a compound of two
or more quantitative differences. All intelligible differences are
ultimately quantitative. The difference between any two individuals, if
describable at all, is described by comparing the amounts which A
possesses of various traits with the amounts which B possesses of the
same traits. In intellect and character, differences of kind between one
individual and another turn out to be definable, if defined at all, as
compound differences of degree.
If we could list all the traits, each representing some one
characteristic of human nature, and measure the amount of each of them
possessed by a man, we could represent his nature--read his
character--in a great equation. John Smith would equal so many units of
this, plus so many units of that, and so on. Such a mental inventory
would express his individuality conceivably in its entirety and with
great exactitude. No such list has been made for any man, much less have
the exact amounts of each trait possessed by him been measured. But in
certain of the traits, many individuals have been measured; and certain
individuals have been measured, each in a large number of traits.
It is useless to recount the traits in which men have been found to
differ. For there is no trait in which they do not differ. Of course, if
the scale by which individuals are measured is very coarsely divided,
their differences may be hidden. If, for example, ability to learn is
measured on a scale with only two divisions, (1) "ability to learn less
than the average kitten can" and (2) "ability to learn more than the
average kitten can," all men may be put in class two, just as if their
heights were measured on a scale of one yard, two yards, or three yards,
nearly all men would alike be called two yards high. But whenever the
scale of measurement is made fine enough, differences at once appear.
Their existence is indubitable to any impartial observer. The early
psychologists neglected or failed to see them precisely because the
early psychology was partial. It believed in a typical or pattern mind,
after the manner of which all minds were created, and from whom they
differed only by rare accidents. It studied "the mind," and neglected
individual minds. It studied "the will" of "man," neglecting the
interests, impulses, and habits of actual men.
The differences exist at birth and commonly increase with progress
toward maturity. Individuality is already clearly manifest in children
of school age. The same situation evokes widely differing responses; the
same task is done at differing speeds and with different degrees of
success; the same treatment produces differing results. There can be
little doubt that of a thousand ten-year-olds taken at random, some will
be four times as energetic, industrious, quick, courageous, or honest as
others, or will possess four times as much refinement, knowledge of
arithmetic, power of self-control, sympathy, or the like. It has been
found that among children of the same age and, in essential respects, of
the same home training and school advantages, some do in the same time
six times as much, or do the same amount with only one-tenth as many
errors.
B. HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL LIFE
1. Human Nature and Its Remaking[65]
Human beings as we find them are artificial products; and for better or
for worse they must always be such. Nature has made us: social action
and our own efforts must continually remake us. Any attempt to reject
art for "nature" can only result in an artificial naturalness which is
far less genuine and less pleasing than the natural work of art.
Further, as self-consciousness varies, the amount or degree of this
remaking activity will vary. Among the extremely few respects in which
human history shows unquestionable growth we must include the degree and
range of self-consciousness. The gradual development of psychology as a
science and the persistent advance of the subjective or introspective
element in literature and in all fine art are tokens of this change. And
as a further indication and result, the art of human reshaping has taken
definite character, has left its incidental beginnings far behind, has
become an institution, a group of institutions.
Wherever a language exists, as a magazine of established meanings, there
will be found a repertoire of epithets of praise and blame, at once
results and implements of this social process. The simple existence of
such a vocabulary acts as a persistent force; but the effect of current
ideals is redoubled when a coherent agency, such as public religion,
assumes protection of the most searching social maxims and lends to them
the weight of all time, all space, all wonder, and all fear. For many
centuries religion held within itself the ripening self-knowledge and
self-discipline of the human mind. Now, beside this original agency we
have its offshoots, politics, education, legislation, the penal art. And
the philosophical sciences, including psychology and ethics, are the
especial servants of these arts.
As to structure, human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic part of
the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals,
it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building
forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts
least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of
habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility to
social impressions keenest; and it becomes clear that in every way
nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for her own
displacement. His major instincts and passions first appear on the
scene, not as controlling forces, but as elements of _play_, in a
prolonged life of play. Other creatures nature could largely finish: the
human creature must finish himself.
And as to history, it cannot be said that the results of man's attempts
at self-modeling appear to belie the liberty thus promised in his
constitution. If he has retired his natural integument in favor of a
device called clothing, capable of expressing endless nuances, not alone
of status and wealth, but of temper and taste as well--conservatism or
venturesomeness, solemnity, gaiety, profusion, color, dignity,
carelessness or whim, he has not failed to fashion his inner self into
equally various modes of character and custom. That is a hazardous
refutation of socialism which consists in pointing out that its success
would require a change in human nature. Under the spell of particular
ideas monastic communities have flourished, in comparison with whose
demands upon human nature the change required by socialism--so far as it
calls for purer altruism and not pure economic folly--is trivial. To any
one who asserts as a dogma that "human nature never changes," it is fair
to reply, "It is human nature to change itself."
When one reflects to what extent racial and national traits are manners
of the mind, fixed by social rather than by physical heredity, while the
bodily characters themselves may be due in no small measure to sexual
choices at first experimental, then imitative, then habitual, one is not
disposed to think lightly of the human capacity for self-modification.
But it is still possible to be skeptical as to the depth and permanence
of any changes which are genuinely voluntary. There are few maxims of
conduct, and few laws so contrary to nature that they could not be put
into momentary effect by individuals or by communities. Plato's Republic
has never been fairly tried; but fragments of this and other Utopias
have been common enough in history. No one presumes to limit what men
can _attempt_; one only inquires what the silent forces are which
determine what can _last_.
What, to be explicit, is the possible future of measures dealing with
divorce, with war, with political corruption, with prostitution, with
superstition? Enthusiastic idealism is too precious an energy to be
wasted if we can spare it false efforts by recognizing those permanent
ingredients of our being indicated by the words pugnacity, greed, sex,
fear. Machiavelli was not inclined to make little of what an unhampered
ruler could do with his subjects; yet he saw in such passions as these a
fixed limit to the power of the Prince. "It makes him hated above all
things to be rapacious, and to be violator of the property and women of
his subjects, from both of which he must abstain." And if Machiavelli's
despotism meets its master in the undercurrents of human instinct,
governments of less determined stripe, whether of states or of persons,
would hardly do well to treat these ultimate data with less respect.
2. Human Nature, Folkways, and the Mores[66]
It is generally taken for granted that men inherited some guiding
instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true, although it has
never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they controlled and
aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes it easy to
assume that the ways of beasts had produced channels of habit and
predisposition along which dexterities and other psycho-physical
activities would run easily. Experiments with new born animals show that
in the absence of any experience of the relation of means to ends,
efforts to satisfy needs are clumsy and blundering. The method is that
of trial and failure, which produces repeated pain, loss, and
disappointments. Nevertheless, it is the method of rude experiment and
selection. The earliest efforts of men were of this kind. Need was the
impelling force. Pleasure and pain, on the one side and the other, were
the rude constraints which defined the line on which efforts must
proceed. The ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain is the
only psychical power which is to be assumed. Thus ways of doing things
were selected which were expedient. They answered the purpose better
than other ways, or with less toil and pain. Along the course on which
efforts were compelled to go, habit, routine, and skill were developed.
The struggle to maintain existence was carried on, not individually, but
in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there was
concurrence toward that which proved to be most expedient.
All at last adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways
turned into customs and became mass phenomena. Instincts were developed
in connection with them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn
them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time,
provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform,
universal in the group, imperative, and invariable.
The operation by which folkways are produced consists in the frequent
repetition of petty acts, often by great numbers acting in concert or,
at least, acting in the same way when face to face with the same need.
The immediate motive is interest. It produces habit in the individual
and custom in the group. It is, therefore, in the highest degree
original and primitive. Out of the unconscious experiment which every
repetition of the ways includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and
then, so far as the men are capable of reflection, convictions that the
ways are conducive to social welfare. When this conviction as to the
relation to welfare is added to the folkways, they are converted into
mores, and, by virtue of the philosophical and ethical element added to
them, they win utility and importance and become the source of the
science and the art of living.
It is of the first importance to notice that, from the first acts by
which men try to satisfy needs, each act stands by itself, and looks no
further than immediate satisfaction. From recurrent needs arise habits
for the individual and customs for the group, but these results are
consequences which were never conscious and never foreseen or intended.
They are not noticed until they have long existed, and it is still
longer before they are appreciated. Another long time must pass, and a
higher stage of mental development must be reached, before they can be
used as a basis from which to deduce rules for meeting, in the future,
problems whose pressure can be foreseen. The folkways, therefore, are
not creations of human purpose and wit. They are like products of
natural forces which men unconsciously set in operation, or they are
like the instinctive ways of animals, which are developed out of
experience, which reach a final form of maximum adaptation to an
interest, which are handed down by tradition and admit of no exception
or variation, yet change to meet new conditions, still within the same
limited methods, and without rational reflection or purpose. From this
it results that all the life of human beings, in all ages and stages of
culture, is primarily controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down
from the earliest existence of the race, having the nature of the ways
of other animals, only the topmost layers of which are subject to change
and control, and have been somewhat modified by human philosophy,
ethics, and religion, or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are
told of savages that "it is difficult to exhaust the customs and small
ceremonial usages of a savage people. Custom regulates the whole of a
man's actions--his bathing, washing, cutting his hair, eating, drinking,
and fasting. From his cradle to his grave he is the slave of ancient
usage. In his life there is nothing free, nothing original, nothing
spontaneous, no progress toward a higher and better life, and no attempt
to improve his condition, mentally, morally, or spiritually." All men
act in this way, with only a little wider margin of voluntary variation.
The folkways are, therefore: (1) subject to a strain of improvement
toward better adaptation of means to ends, as long as the adaptation is
so imperfect that pain is produced. They are also (2) subject to a
strain of consistency with each other, because they all answer their
several purposes with less friction and antagonism when they co-operate
and support each other. The forms of industry, the forms of the family,
the notions of property, the constructions of rights, and the types of
religion show the strain of consistency with each other through the
whole history of civilization. The two great cultural divisions of the
human race are the oriental and occidental. Each is consistent
throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are separated
from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints, different
ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are
advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible
range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life,
and in the views of earthly existence by which life-policy may be
controlled. If two planets were joined in one, their inhabitants could
not differ more widely as to what things are best worth seeking, or what
ways are most expedient for well-living.
Custom is the product of concurrent action through time. We find it
existent and in control at the extreme reach of our investigations.
Whence does it begin, and how does it come to be? How can it give
guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem to begin because the
mass wants to act together. The less they know what it is right and
best to do, the more open they are to suggestion from an incident in
nature, or from a chance act of one, or from the current doctrines of
ghost fear. A concurrent drift begins which is subject to later
correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action, under
the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first
importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be
antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise
out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the
course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The
origin of primitive customs is always lost in mystery, because when the
action begins the men are never conscious of historical action or of the
historical importance of what they are doing. When they become conscious
of the historical importance of their acts, the origin is already far
behind.
3. Habit and Custom, the Individual and the General Will[67]
The term _Sitte_ (mores) is a synonym of habit and of usage, of
convention and tradition, but also of fashion, propriety, practise, and
the like. Those words which characterize the habitual are usually
regarded as having essentially unequivocal meanings. The truth is that
language, careless of the more fundamental distinctions, confuses widely
different connotations. For example, I find that custom--to return to
this most common expression--has a threefold significance, namely:
1. _The meaning of a simple objective matter of fact._--In this sense we
speak of the man with the habit of early rising, or of walking at a
particular time, or of taking an afternoon nap. By this we mean merely
that he is accustomed to do so, he does it regularly, it is a part of
his manner of life. It is easily understood how this meaning passes over
into the next:
2. _The meaning of a rule, of a norm which the man sets up for
himself._--For example, we say he has made this or that a custom, and in
a like meaning, he has made it a rule, or even a law; and we mean that
this habit works like a law or a precept. By it a person governs himself
and regards habit as an imperative command, a structure of subjective
kind, that, however, has objective form and recognition. The precept
will be formulated, the original will be copied. A rule may be presented
as enjoined, insisted upon, imposed as a command which brings up the
third meaning of habit:
3. _An expression for a thing willed, or a will._--This third meaning,
which is generally given the least consideration, is the most
significant. If, in truth, habit is the will of man, then this alone can
be his real will. In this sense the proverb is significant that habit is
called a second nature, and that man is a creature of habit. Habit is,
in fact, a psychic disposition, which drives and urges to a specific
act, and this is the will in its most outstanding form, as decision, or
as "fixed" purpose.
Imperceptibly, the habitual passes over into the instinctive and the
impulsive. What we are accustomed to do, that we do "automatically."
Likewise we automatically make gestures, movements of welcome and
aversion which we have never learned but which we do "naturally." They
have their springs of action in the instinct of self-preservation and in
the feelings connected with it. But what we are accustomed to do, we
must first have learned and practiced. It is just that practice, the
frequent repetition, that brings about the performance of the act "of
itself," like a reflex, rapidly and easily. The rope dancer is able to
walk the rope, because he is accustomed to it. Habit and practice are
also the reasons not only why a man can perform something but also why
he performs it with relatively less effort and attention. Habit is the
basis not only for our knowing something but also for our actually doing
it. Habit operates as a kind of stimulus, and, as may be said, as
necessity. The "power of habit" has often been described and often
condemned.
As a rule, opinions (mental attitudes) are dependent upon habit, by
which they are conditioned and circumscribed. Yet, of course, opinions
can also detach themselves from habit, and rise above it, and this is
done successfully when they become general opinions, principles,
convictions. As such they gain strength which may even break down and
overcome habit. Faith, taken in the conventional religious sense of
assurance of things hoped for, is a primitive form of will. While in
general habit and opinion on the whole agree, there is nevertheless in
their relations the seeds of conflict and struggle. Thought continually
tends to become the dominating element of the mind, and man thereby
becomes the more human.
The same meaning that the will, in the usual individual sense, has for
individual man, the social will has for any community or society,
whether there be a mere loose relationship, or a formal union and
permanent association. And what is this meaning? I have pointed this out
in my discussion of habit, and present here the more general statement:
The social will is the general volition which serves for the government
and regulation of individual wills. Every general volition can be
conceived as corresponding to a "thou shalt," and in so far as an
individual or an association of individuals directs this "thou shalt" to
itself, we recognize the autonomy and freedom of this individual or of
this association. The necessary consequence of this is that the
individual against all opposing inclinations and opinions, the
association against opposing individuals, wherever their opposition
manifests itself, attempt, at least, to carry through their will so that
they work as a constraint and exert pressure. And this is essentially
independent of the means which are used to that end. These pressures
extend, at least in the social sense, from measures of persuasion, which
appeal to a sense of honor and of shame, to actual coercion and
punishment which may take the form of physical compulsion. _Sitte_
develops into the most unbending, overpowering force.
4. The Law, Conscience, and the General Will[68]
In the English language we have no name for it (_Sittlichkeit_), and
this is unfortunate, for the lack of a distinctive name has occasioned
confusion both of thought and of expression. _Sittlichkeit_ is the
system of habitual or customary conduct, ethical rather than legal,
which embraces all those obligations of the citizen which it is "bad
form" or "not the thing" to disregard. Indeed, regard for these
obligations is frequently enjoined merely by the social penalty of being
"cut" or looked on askance. And yet the system is so generally accepted
and is held in so high regard, that no one can venture to disregard it
without in some way suffering at the hands of his neighbors for so
doing. If a man maltreats his wife and children, or habitually jostles
his fellow-citizens in the street, or does things flagrantly selfish or
in bad taste, he is pretty sure to find himself in a minority and the
worse off in the end. But not only does it not pay to do these things,
but the decent man does not wish to do them. A feeling analogous to what
arises from the dictates of his more private and individual conscience
restrains him. He finds himself so restrained in the ordinary affairs of
daily life. But he is guided in his conduct by no mere inward feeling,
as in the case of conscience. Conscience and, for that matter, law,
overlap parts of the sphere of social obligation about which I am
speaking. A rule of conduct may, indeed, appear in more than one sphere,
and may consequently have a twofold sanction. But the guide to which the
citizen mostly looks is just the standard recognized by the community, a
community made up mainly of those fellow-citizens whose good opinion he
respects and desires to have. He has everywhere round him an
object-lesson in the conduct of decent people toward each other and
toward the community to which they belong. Without such conduct and the
restraints which it imposes there could be no tolerable social life, and
real freedom from interference would not be enjoyed. It is the
instinctive sense of what to do and what not to do in daily life and
behavior that is the source of liberty and ease. And it is this
instinctive sense of obligation that is the chief foundation of society.
Its reality takes objective shape and displays itself in family life and
in our other civic and social institutions. It is not limited to any one
form, and it is capable of manifesting itself in new forms and of
developing and changing old forms. Indeed, the civic community is more
than a political fabric. It includes all the social institutions in and
by which the individual life is influenced--such as are the family, the
school, the church, the legislature, and the executive. None of these
can subsist in isolation from the rest; together they and other
institutions of the kind form a single organic whole, the whole which is
known as the nation. The spirit and habit of life which this organic
entirety inspires and compels are what, for my present purpose, I mean
by _Sittlichkeit_.
_Sitte_ is the German for custom, and _Sittlichkeit_ implies custom and
a habit of mind and action. It also implies a little more. Fichte
defines it in words which are worth quoting, and which I will put into
English:
What, to begin with, does _Sitte_ signify, and in what sense do
we use the word? It means for us, and means in every accurate
reference we make of it, those principles of conduct which
regulate people in their relations to each other, and which
have become matter of habit and second nature at the stage of
culture reached, and of which, therefore, we are not explicitly
conscious. Principles, we call them, because we do not refer to
the sort of conduct that is casual or is determined on casual
grounds, but to the hidden and uniform ground of action which
we assume to be present in the man whose action is not
deflected and from which we can pretty certainly predict what
he will do. Principles, we say, which have become a second
nature and of which we are not explicitly conscious. We thus
exclude all impulses and motives based on free individual
choice, the inward aspect of _Sittlichkeit_, that is to say,
morality, and also the outward side, or law, alike. For what a
man has first to reflect over and then freely to resolve is not
for him a habit in conduct; and in so far as habit in conduct
is associated with a particular age, it is regarded as the
unconscious instrument of the Time Spirit.
The system of ethical habit in a community is of a dominating character,
for the decision and influence of the whole community is embodied in
that social habit. Because such conduct is systematic and covers the
whole of the field of society, the individual will is closely related by
it to the will and the spirit of the community. And out of this relation
arises the power of adequately controlling the conduct of the
individual. If this power fails or becomes weak, the community
degenerates and may fall to pieces. Different nations excel in their
_Sittlichkeit_ in different fashions. The spirit of the community and
its ideals may vary greatly. There may be a low level of _Sittlichkeit_;
and we have the spectacle of nations which have even degenerated in this
respect. It may possibly conflict with law and morality, as in the case
of the duel. But when its level is high in a nation we admire the
system, for we see it not only guiding a people and binding them
together for national effort, but affording the greatest freedom of
thought and action for those who in daily life habitually act in harmony
with the General Will.
Thus we have in the case of a community, be it the city or be it the
state, an illustration of a sanction which is sufficient to compel
observance of a rule without any question of the application of force.
This kind of sanction may be of a highly compelling quality, and it
often extends so far as to make the individual prefer the good of the
community to his own. The development of many of our social
institutions, of our hospitals, of our universities, and of other
establishments of the kind, shows the extent to which it reaches and is
powerful. But it has yet higher forms in which it approaches very nearly
to the level of the obligation of conscience, although it is distinct
from that form of obligation. I will try to make clear what I mean by
illustrations. A man may be impelled to action of a high order by his
sense of unity with the society to which he belongs, action of which,
from the civic standpoint, all approve. What he does in such a case is
natural to him, and is done without thought of reward or punishment; but
it has reference to standards of conduct set up by society and accepted
just because society has set them up. There is a poem by the late Sir
Alfred Lyall which exemplifies the high level that may be reached in
such conduct. The poem is called _Theology in Extremis_, and it
describes the feelings of an Englishman who had been taken prisoner by
Mahometan rebels in the Indian Mutiny. He is face to face with a cruel
death. They offer him his life if he will repeat something from the
Koran. If he complies, no one is likely ever to hear of it, and he will
be free to return to England and to the woman he loves. Moreover, and
here is the real point, he is not a believer in Christianity, so that it
is no question of denying his Savior. What ought he to do? Deliverance
is easy, and the relief and advantage would be unspeakably great. But he
does not really hesitate, and every shadow of doubt disappears when he
hears his fellow-prisoner, a half-caste, pattering eagerly the words
demanded.
I will take another example, this time from the literature of ancient
Greece. In one of the shortest but not least impressive of his
_Dialogues_, the "Crito," Plato tells us of the character of Socrates,
not as a philosopher, but as a good citizen. He has been unjustly
condemned by the Athenians as an enemy to the good of the state. Crito
comes to him in prison to persuade him to escape. He urges on him many
arguments, his duty to his children included. But Socrates refuses. He
chooses to follow, not what anyone in the crowd might do, but the
example which the ideal citizen should set. It would be a breach of his
duty to fly from the judgment duly passed in the Athens to which he
belongs, even though he thinks the decree should have been different.
For it is the decree of the established justice of his city state. He
will not "play truant." He hears the words, "Listen, Socrates, to us who
have brought you up"; and in reply he refuses to go away, in these
final sentences: "This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my
ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice,
I say, is murmuring in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other.
And I know that anything more which you may say will be vain."
Why do men of this stamp act so, it may be when leading the battle line,
it may be at critical moments of quite other kinds? It is, I think,
because they are more than mere individuals. Individual they are, but
completely real, even as individual, only in their relation to organic
and social wholes in which they are members, such as the family, the
city, the state. There is in every truly organized community a Common
Will which is willed by those who compose that community, and who in so
willing are more than isolated men and women. It is not, indeed, as
unrelated atoms that they have lived. They have grown, from the
receptive days of childhood up to maturity, in an atmosphere of example
and general custom, and their lives have widened out from one little
world to other and higher worlds, so that, through occupying successive
stations in life, they more and more come to make their own the life of
the social whole in which they move and have their being. They cannot
mark off or define their own individualities without reference to the
individualities of others. And so they unconsciously find themselves as
in truth pulse-beats of the whole system, and themselves the whole
system. It is real in them and they in it. They are real only because
they are social. The notion that the individual is the highest form of
reality, and that the relationship of individuals is one of mere
contract, the notion of Hobbes and of Bentham and of Austin, turns out
to be quite inadequate. Even of an everyday contract, that of marriage,
it has been well said that it is a contract to pass out of the sphere of
contract, and that it is possible only because the contracting parties
are already beyond and above that sphere. As a modern writer, F. H.
Bradley of Oxford, to whose investigations in these regions we owe much,
has finely said: "The moral organism is not a mere animal organism. In
the latter the member is not aware of itself as such, while in the
former it knows itself, and therefore knows the whole in itself. The
narrow external function of the man is not the whole man. He has a life
which we cannot see with our eyes, and there is no duty so mean that it
is not the realization of this, and knowable as such. What counts is
not the visible outer work so much as the spirit in which it is done.
The breadth of my life is not measured by the multitude of my pursuits,
nor the space I take up amongst other men; but by the fulness of the
whole life which I know as mine. It is true that less now depends on
each of us as this or that man; it is not true that our individuality is
therefore lessened; that therefore we have less in us."
There is, according to this view, a General Will with which the will of
the good citizen is in accord. He feels that he would despise himself
were his private will not in harmony with it. The notion of the reality
of such a will is no new one. It is as old as the Greeks, for whom the
moral order and the city state were closely related; and we find it in
modern books in which we do not look for it. Jean Jacques Rousseau is
probably best known to the world by the famous words in which he begins
the first chapter of the _Social Contract_: "Man is born free, and
everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves to be the masters
of others cease not to be greater slaves than the people they govern."
He goes on in the next paragraph to tell us that if he were only to
consider force and the effects of it, he would say that if a nation was
constrained to obey and did obey, it did well, but that whenever it
could throw off its yoke and did throw it off, it acted better. His
words, written in 1762, became a text for the pioneers of the French
Revolution. But they would have done well to read further into the book.
As Rousseau goes on, we find a different conception. He passes from
considering the fiction of a social contract to a discussion of the
power over the individual of the General Will, by virtue of which a
people becomes a people. This General Will, the _Volonté Générale_, he
distinguishes from the Volonté de Tous, which is a mere numerical sum of
individual wills. These particular wills do not rise above themselves.
The General Will, on the other hand, represents what is greater than the
individual volition of those who compose the society of which it is the
will. On occasions, this higher will is more apparent than at other
times. But it may, if there is social slackness, be difficult to
distinguish from a mere aggregate of voices, from the will of a mob.
What is interesting is that Rousseau, so often associated with doctrine
of quite another kind, should finally recognize the bond of a General
Will as what really holds the community together. For him, as for those
who have had a yet clearer grasp of the principle, in willing the
General Will we not only realize our true selves but we may rise above
our ordinary habit of mind. We may reach heights which we could not
reach, or which at all events most of us could not reach, in isolation.
There are few observers who have not been impressed with the wonderful
unity and concentration of purpose which an entire nation may
display--above all, in a period of crisis. We see it in time of war,
when a nation is fighting for its life or for a great cause. We have
marvelled at the illustrations with which history abounds of the General
Will rising to heights of which but few of the individual citizens in
whom it is embodied have ever before been conscious even in their
dreams.
By leadership a common ideal can be made to penetrate the soul of a
people and to take complete possession of it. The ideal may be very
high, or it may be of so ordinary a kind that we are not conscious of it
without the effort of reflection. But when it is there it influences and
guides daily conduct. Such idealism passes beyond the sphere of law,
which provides only what is necessary for mutual protection and liberty
of just action. It falls short, on the other hand, in quality of the
dictates of what Kant called the Categorical Imperative that rules the
private and individual conscience, but that alone, an Imperative which
therefore gives insufficient guidance for ordinary and daily social
life. Yet the ideal of which I speak is not the less binding; and it is
recognized as so binding that the conduct of all good men conforms to
it.
C. PERSONALITY AND THE SOCIAL SELF
1. The Organism as Personality[69]
The organism and the brain, as its highest representation, constitute
the real personality, containing in itself all that we have been, and
the possibility of all that we shall be. The complete individual
character is inscribed there with all its active and passive aptitudes,
sympathies, and antipathies; its genius, talents, or stupidity; its
virtues, vices, torpor, or activity. Of all these, what emerges and
actually reaches consciousness is only a small item compared with what
remains buried below, albeit still active. Conscious personality is
always but a feeble portion of physical personality.
The unity of the ego, consequently, is not that of the one-entity of
spiritualists which is dispersed into multiple phenomena, but the
co-ordination of a certain number of incessantly renascent states,
having for their support the vague sense of our bodies. This unity does
not pass from above to below, but from below to above; the unity of the
ego is not an initial, but a terminal point.
Does there really exist a perfect unity? Evidently not in the strict,
mathematical sense. In a relative sense it is met with, rarely and
incidentally. In a clever marksman in the act of taking aim, or in a
skilled surgeon performing a difficult operation all is found to
converge, both physically and mentally. Still, let us take note of the
result: in these conditions the awareness of real personality
disappears; the conscious individual is reduced to an idea; whence it
would follow that perfect unity of consciousness and the awareness of
personality exclude each other. By a different course we again reach the
same conclusion; the ego is a co-ordination. It oscillates between two
extreme points at which it ceases to exist: viz., perfect unity and
absolute inco-ordination. All the intermediate degrees are met with, in
fact, and without any line of demarcation between the healthy and the
morbid; the one encroaches upon the other.
Even in the normal state the co-ordination is often sufficiently loose
to allow several series to coexist separately. We can walk or perform
manual work with a vague and intermittent consciousness of the
movements, at the same time singing, musing; but if the activity of
thought increases, the singing will cease. With many people it is a kind
of substitute for intellectual activity, an intermediate state between
thinking and not-thinking.
The unity of the ego, in a psychological sense, is, therefore, the
cohesion, during a given time, of a certain number of clear states of
consciousness, accompanied by others less clear, and by a multitude of
physiological states which, without being accompanied by consciousness
like the others, yet operate as much as, and even more than, the former.
Unity, in fact, means co-ordination. The conclusion to be drawn from the
above remarks is namely this, that the consensus of consciousness being
subordinate to the consensus of the organism, the problem of the unity
of the ego is, in its ultimate form, a biological problem. To biology
pertains the task of explaining, if it can, the genesis of organisms and
the solidarity of their component parts. Psychological interpretation
can only follow in its wake.
2. Personality as a Complex[70]
Ideas, after being experienced in consciousness, become dormant
(conserved as physiological dispositions) and may or may not afterward
be reawakened in consciousness as memories. Many such ideas, under
conditions with some of which we are all familiar, tend to form part of
our voluntary or involuntary memories and many do not. But when such is
the case, the memories do not ordinarily include the whole of a given
mental experience, but only excerpts or abstracts of it. Hence one
reason for the fallibility of human memory and consequent testimony.
Now under special conditions, the ideas making up an experience at any
given moment tend to become organized into a system or complex, so that
when we later think of the experience or recall any of the ideas
belonging to it, the complex as a whole is revived. This is one of the
principles underlying the mechanism of memory. Thus it happens that
memory may, to a large extent, be made up of complexes. These complexes
may be very loosely organized in that the elementary ideas are weakly
bound together, in which case, when we try to recall the original
experience, only a part of it is recalled. Or a complex may be very
strongly organized, owing to the conditions under which it is formed,
and then a large part of the experience can be recalled. In this case,
any idea associated with some element in the complex may, by the law of
association, revive the whole original complex. If, for instance, we
have gone through a railroad accident involving exciting incidents, loss
of life, etc., the words "railroad," "accident," "death," or a sudden
crashing sound, or the sight of blood, or even riding in a railroad
train may recall the experience from beginning to end, or at least the
prominent features in it, i.e., so much as was organized. The memory of
the greater part of this experience is well organized, while the earlier
events and those succeeding the accident may have passed out of all
possibility of voluntary recall.
To take an instance commonplace enough but which happens to have just
come within my observation: A fireman was injured severely by being
thrown from a hose wagon rushing to a fire against a telegraph pole with
which the wagon collided. He narrowly escaped death. Although three
years have passed he still cannot ride on a wagon to a fire without the
memory of the whole accident rising in his mind. When he does so he
again lives through the accident, including the thoughts just previous
to the actual collision when, realizing his situation, he was overcome
with terror, and he again manifests all the organic physical expressions
of fear, viz.: perspiration, tremor, and muscular weakness. Here is a
well-organized and fairly limited complex.
Among the loosely organized complexes in many individuals, and possibly
in all of us, there are certain dispositions toward views of life which
represent natural inclinations, desires, and modes of activity which,
for one reason or another, we tend to suppress or are unable to give
full play to. Many individuals, for example, are compelled by the
exactions of their duties and responsibilities to lead serious lives, to
devote themselves to pursuits which demand all their energies and
thought and which, therefore, do not permit of indulgence in the lighter
enjoyments of life, and yet there may be a natural inclination to
partake of the pleasures which innately appeal to all mankind and which
many pursue. The longing for these recurs from time to time. The mind
dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves a fabric of
pictures, thoughts, and emotions which thus become associated into a
complex. There may be a rebellion and "kicking against the pricks" and
thereby a liberation of the emotional force that impresses a stronger
organization on the whole process. The recurrence of such a complex is
one form of what we call a "mood," which has a distinctly emotional tone
of its own. The revival of this feeling tone tends to revive the
associated ideas and vice versa. Such a feeling-idea complex is often
spoken of as "a side to one's character," to which a person may from
time to time give play. Or the converse of this may hold, and a person
who devotes his life to the lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and
longings for more serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination
may similarly build up a complex which may express itself in a mood.
Thus a person is often said to have "many sides to his character," and
exhibits certain alternations of personality which may be regarded as
normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal states.
Most of what has been said about the formation of complexes is a
statement of commonplace facts, and I would not repeat it here were it
not that, in certain abnormal conditions, disposition, subject, and
other complexes, though loosely organized, often play an important part.
This is not the place to enter into an explanation of dissociated
personality, but in such conditions we sometimes find that disposition
complexes, for instance, come to the surface and displace or substitute
themselves for the other complexes which make up a personality. A
complex which is only a mood or a "side of the character" of a normal
individual may, in conditions of dissociation, become the main, perhaps
sole, complex and chief characteristic of the new personality. In Miss
Beauchamp, for instance, the personality known as BI was made up almost
entirely of the religious and ethical ideas which formed one side of the
original self. In the personality known as Sally we had for the most
part the complex which represented the enjoyment of youthful pleasures
and sports, the freedom from conventionalities and artificial restraints
generally imposed by duties and responsibilities. In BIV the complex
represented the ambitions and activities of practical life. In Miss
Beauchamp as a whole, normal, without disintegration, it was easy to
recognize all three dispositions as "sides of her character," though
each was kept ordinarily within proper bounds by the correcting
influence of the others. It was only necessary to put her in an
environment which encouraged one or the other side, to associate her
with people who strongly suggested one or the other of her own
characteristics, whether religious, social, pleasure loving, or
intellectual, to see the characteristics of BI, Sally, or BIV stand out
in relief as the predominant personality. Then we had the alternating
play of these different sides of her character.
In fact, the total of our complexes, which, regarded as a whole and in
view of their reaction to the environment, their behavior under the
various conditions of social life, their aptitudes, feeling-tones,
"habits," and faculties, we term character and personality, are in large
part predetermined by the mental experiences of the past and the
vestiges of memory which have been left as residual from these
experiences. We are the offspring of our past.
The great mass of our ideas involve associations of the origin of which
we are unaware because the memories of the original experience have
become split and a large portion thus has become forgotten even if ever
fully appreciated. We all have our prejudices, our likes and dislikes,
our tastes and aversions; it would tax our ingenuity to give a
sufficient psychological account of their origin. They were born long
ago in educational, social, personal, and other experiences, the details
of which we have this many a year forgotten. It is the residua of these
experiences that have persisted and become associated into complexes
which are retained as traits of our personality.
3. The Self as the Individual's Conception of His Rôle[71]
Suggestion may have its end and aim in the creation of a new
personality. The experimenter then chooses the sort of personality he
wishes to induce and obliges the subject to realize it. Experiments of
this kind succeeding in a great many somnambulists, and usually
producing very curious results, have long been known and have been
repeated, one might say, almost to satiety within the last few years.
When we are awake and in full possession of all our faculties we can
imagine sensations different from those which we ordinarily experience.
For example, when I am sitting quietly at my table engaged in writing
this book, I can conceive the sensations that a soldier, a woman, an
artist, or an Englishman would experience in such and such a situation.
But, however fantastic the conceptions may be that we form, we do not
cease to be conscious withal of our own personal existence. Imagination
has taken flight fairly in space, but the memory of ourselves always
remains behind. Each of us knows that he is himself and not another,
that he did this yesterday, that he has just written a letter, that he
must write another such letter tomorrow, that he was out of Paris for a
week, etc. It is this memory of passed facts--a memory always present to
the mind--that constitutes the consciousness of our normal personality.
It is entirely different in the case of the two women, A---- and B----,
that M. Richet studied.
Put to sleep and subjected to certain influences, A---- and
B---- forget their identity; their age, their clothing, their
sex, their social position, their nationality, the place and
the time of their life--all this has entirely disappeared.
Only a single idea remains--a single consciousness--it is the
consciousness of the idea and of the new being that dawns upon
their imagination.
They have lost the idea of their late existence. They live,
talk, and think exactly like the type that is suggested to
them. With what tremendous intensity of life these types are
realized, only those who have been present at these experiments
can know. Description can only give a weak and imperfect idea
of it.
Instead of imagining a character simply, they realize it,
objectify it. It is not like a hallucination, of which one
witnesses the images unfolding before him, as a spectator
would. He is rather like an actor who is seized with passion,
imagines that the drama he plays is a reality, not a fiction,
and that he has been transformed, body and soul, into the
personality that he sets himself to play.
In order to have this transformation of personality work it is
sufficient to pronounce a word with some authority. I say to
A----, "You are an old woman," she considers herself changed
into an old woman, and her countenance, her bearing, her
feelings, become those of an old woman. I say to B----, "You
are a little girl," and she immediately assumes the language,
games, and tastes of a little girl.
Although the account of these scenes is quite dull and
colorless compared with the sight of the astonishing and sudden
transformations themselves, I shall attempt, nevertheless, to
describe some of them. I quote some of M----'s
_objectivations_:
_As a peasant._--She rubs her eyes and stretches herself. "What
time is it? Four o'clock in the morning!" She walks as if she
were dragging sabots. "Now, then, I must get up. Let us go to
the stable. Come up, red one! come up, get about!" She seems to
be milking a cow. "Let me alone, Gros-Jean, let me alone, I
tell you. When I am through my work. You know well enough that
I have not finished my work. Oh! yes, yes, later."
_As an actress._--Her face took a smiling aspect instead of the
dull and listless manner which she had just had. "You see my
skirt? Well, my manager makes me wear it so long. These
managers are too tiresome. As for me, the shorter the skirt the
better I like it. There is always too much of it. A simple fig
leaf! Mon Dieu, that is enough! You agree with me, don't you,
my dear, that it is not necessary to have more than a fig leaf?
Look then at this great dowdy Lucie--where are her legs, eh?"
_As a priest._--She imagines that she is the Archbishop of
Paris. Her face becomes very grave. Her voice is mildly sweet
and drawling, which forms a great contrast with the harsh,
blunt tone she had as a general. (Aside.) "But I must
accomplish my charge." She leans her head on her hand and
reflects. (Aloud.) "Ah! it is you, Monsieur Grand Vicar; what
is your business with me? I do not wish to be disturbed. Yes,
today is the first of January, and I must go to the cathedral.
This throng of people is very respectful, don't you think so,
monsieur? There is a great deal of religion in the people,
whatever one does. Ah! a child! let him come to me to be
blessed. There, my child." She holds out to him her imaginary
bishop's ring to kiss. During this whole scene she is making
gestures of benediction with her right hand on all sides. "Now
I have a duty to perform. I must go and pay my respects to the
president of the Republic. Ah! Mr. President, I come to offer
you my allegiance. It is the wish of the church that you may
have many years of life. She knows that she has nothing to
fear, notwithstanding cruel attacks, while such an honorable
man is at the head of the Republic." She is silent and seems to
listen attentively. (Aside.) "Yes, fair promises. Now let us
pray!" She kneels down.
_As a religious sister._--She immediately kneels down and
begins to say her prayers, making a great many signs of the
cross; then she arises. "Now to the hospital. There is a
wounded man in this ward. Well, my friend, you are a little
better this morning, aren't you? Now, then, let me take off
your bandage." She gestures as if she were unrolling a bandage.
"I shall do it very gently; doesn't that relieve you? There! my
poor friend, be as courageous before pain as you were before
the enemy."
I might cite other objectivations from A----'s case, in the
character of old woman, little girl, young man, gay woman, etc.
But the examples given seem sufficient to give some idea of the
entire transformation of the personality into this or that
imaginary type. It is not a simple dream, it is a _living
dream_.
The complete transformation of feelings is not the least
curious phenomenon of these objectivations. A---- is timid, but
she becomes very daring when she thinks herself a bold person.
B---- is silent, she becomes talkative when she represents a
talkative person. The disposition is thus completely changed.
Old tastes disappear and give place to the new tastes that the
new character represented is supposed to have.
In a more recent paper, prepared with the co-operation of M. Ferrari and
M. Hericourt, M. Richet has added a curious detail to the preceding
experiments. He has shown that the subject on whom a change of
personality is imposed not only adapts his speech, gestures, and
attitudes to the new personality, but that even his handwriting is
modified and brought into relation with the new ideas that absorb his
consciousness. This modification of handwriting is an especially
interesting discovery, since handwriting, according to current theories,
is nothing more than a sort of imitation. I cite some examples borrowed
from these authors.
It is suggested in succession to a young student that he is a sly and
crafty peasant, then a miser, and finally a very old man. While the
subject's features and behavior generally are modified and brought into
harmony with the idea of the personality suggested, we may observe also
that his handwriting undergoes similar modifications which are not less
marked. It has a special character peculiar to each of the new states of
personality. In short, the graphic movements change like the gestures
generally.
In a note on the handwriting of hysterical patients, I have shown that
under the influence of suggested emotions, or under the influence of
sensorial stimulations, the handwriting of a hysterical patient may be
modified. It gets larger, for example, in cases of dynamogenic
excitation.
The characteristic of the suggestion that we have just studied is that
it does not bear exclusively on perception or movement--that is to say,
on a limited psychic element; but there are comprehensive suggestions.
They impose a topic on the subject that he is obliged to develop with
all the resources of his intellect and imagination, and if the
observations be carefully examined, it will also be seen that in these
suggestions the faculties of perception are affected and perverted by
the same standard as that of ideation. Thus the subject, under the
influence of his assumed personality, ceases to perceive the external
world as it exists. He has hallucinations in connection with his new
psychological personality. When a bishop, he thinks he is in Notre Dame,
and sees a host of the faithful. When a general, he thinks he is
surrounded by troops, etc. Things that harmonize with the suggestion are
conjured up. This systematic development of states of consciousness
belongs to all kinds of suggestions, but is perhaps nowhere else so
marked as in these transformations of personality.
On the other hand, everything that is inconsistent with the suggestion
gets inhibited and leaves the subject's consciousness. As has been said,
alterations of personality imply phenomena of amnesia. In order that the
subject may assume the fictitious personality he must begin by
forgetting his true personality. The infinite number of memories that
represent his past experience and constitute the basis of his normal ego
are for the time being effaced, because these memories are inconsistent
with the ideal of the suggestion.
4. The Natural Person versus the Social and Conventional Self[72]
Somewhat after the order of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde I seem to possess
two distinct personalities, being both at the same time but presenting
no such striking contrast as the Jekyll-Hyde combination. They are about
equally virtuous. Their main difference seems to be one of age, one
being a decade or so in advance of the other.
At times they work harmoniously together and again at cross-purposes. I
do not seem to have developed equally. Part of me sits humbly at the
feet of the other part of me and receives advice and instruction. Part
of me feels constrained to confess to the other part of me when it has
done wrong and meekly receives rebuke. Part of me tries to shock the
other part of me and to force the more dignified part to misbehave and
giggle and do things not considered correct in polite society.
My younger part delights to tease the older, to doubt her motives, to
interrupt her meditations. It wants to play, while my older self is more
seriously inclined. My younger self is only twelve years old. This is my
real self. To my own mind I am still a little girl with short dresses
and a bunch of curls. For some reason my idea of self has never advanced
beyond this point. The long dress and the hair piled high will never
seem natural. Sometimes I enjoy this duality and again I do not.
Sometimes the two parts mingle delightfully together, again they wrangle
atrociously, while I (there seems to be a third part of me) sit off and
watch the outcome.
The older part gets tired before the younger. The younger, still fresh
and in a good humor, undertakes to furnish amusement for the older. I
have often thrown myself on the bed wearied and exhausted and been made
to shake with laughter at the capers of the younger part of me. They are
capers indeed. On these occasions she will carry on conversations with
friends--real friends--fairly bristling with witticisms, and although
taking both parts herself, the parry and thrust is delightful.
Sometimes, however, the younger part of me seems to get up all awry. She
will carry on quarrels--heated quarrels--from morning to night, taking
both sides herself, with persons whom I (the combination) dearly love,
and against whom I have no grievance whatever. These are a great
distress to my older self.
On other days she seems to take the greatest delight in torturing me
with imaginary horrors. She cuts my throat, pulls my eyes out of their
sockets, removes tumors, and amputates limbs until I wonder that there
is anything left of me. She does it all without administering
anæsthetics and seems to enjoy my horror and disgust.
Again, some little jingle or tune will take her fancy and she will
repeat it to herself until I am almost driven to madness. Sometimes it
is only a word, but it seems to have a fascination for her and she rolls
it as a sweet morsel under her tongue until sleep puts an end to it.
Again, if I (the combination) fall ill, one part of me, I have never
discovered which, invariably hints that I am not ill at all but merely
pretending. So much so that it has become with me a recognized symptom
of incipient illness.
Moreover, the younger and older are never on the same side of any
question. One leans to wisdom, the other to fun. I am a house divided
against itself. The younger longs to dance, to go to the theater and to
play cards, all of which the older disapproves. The younger mocks the
older, calls her a hypocrite and the like until the older well-nigh
believes it herself and almost yields to her pleadings. The older
listens sedately to the sermon, while the younger plans her Easter suit
or makes fun of the preacher.
The older declares she will never marry, while the younger scouts the
idea of being an old maid. But even if she could gain the consent of the
older, it were but little better, they differ so as to their ideals.
In society the difference is more marked. I seem to be a combination
chaperone and protégée. The older appears at ease, the younger shy and
awkward--she has never made her début. If one addresses a remark to her
she is thrown into utter confusion until the older rushes to the rescue.
My sympathy is with the younger, however, for even to this day I, the
combination, can scarce resist the temptation to say nothing when there
is nothing to say.
There is something tragic to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two
so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher,
offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protégée, a
prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a
prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That
we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably
together, part of me paying compliments to the other part of me--whole
days being given to this--until each of us has such a good opinion of
herself and the other that we feel on equal terms and are at our
happiest.
But how dreadful are the days when we turn against each other! There are
not words enough to express the contempt which we feel for ourselves. We
seem to set each other in the corner and the combination as a whole is
utterly miserable.
I can but wonder and enjoy and wait to see what Myself and I will make
of Me.
5. The Divided Self and Moral Consciousness[73]
Two ways of looking at life are characteristic respectively of what we
call the healthy-minded, who need to be born only once, and of the sick
souls, who must be twice-born in order to be happy. The result is two
different conceptions of the universe of our experience. In the religion
of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilineal or one-storied
affair, whose accounts are kept in one denomination, whose parts have
just the values which naturally they appear to have, and of which a
simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth.
Happiness and religious peace consist in living on the plus side of the
account. In the religion of the twice-born, on the other hand, the world
is a double-storied mystery. Peace cannot be reached by the simple
addition of pluses and elimination of minuses from life. Natural good is
not simply insufficient in amount and transient; there lurks a falsity
in its very being. Cancelled as it all is by death, if not by earlier
enemies, it gives no final balance, and can never be the thing intended
for our lasting worship. It keeps us from our real good, rather; and
renunciation and despair of it are our first step in the direction of
the truth. There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we
must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
In their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and pure salvationism, the
two types are violently contrasted; though here, as in most other
current classifications, the radical extremes are somewhat ideal
abstractions, and the concrete human beings whom we oftenest meet are
intermediate varieties and mixtures. Practically, however, you all
recognize the difference: you understand, for example, the disdain of
the Methodist convert for the mere sky-blue healthy-minded moralist; and
you likewise enter into the aversion of the latter to what seems to him
the diseased subjectivism of the Methodist, dying to live, as he calls
it, and making of paradox and the inversion of natural appearances the
essence of God's truth.
The psychological basis of the twice-born character seems to be a
certain discordancy or heterogeneity in the native temperament of the
subject, an incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution.
"Homo duplex, homo duplex!" writes Alphonse Daudet. "The first time that
I perceived that I was two was at the death of my brother Henri, when my
father cried out so dramatically, 'He is dead, he is dead!' While my
first self wept, my second self thought, 'How truly given was that cry,
how fine it would be at the theater.' I was then fourteen years old.
This horrible duality has often given me matter for reflection. Oh, this
terrible second me, always seated whilst the other is on foot, acting,
living, suffering, bestirring itself. This second me that I have never
been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it
sees into things, and how it mocks!"
Some persons are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and
well balanced from the outset. Their impulses are consistent with one
another, their will follows without trouble the guidance of their
intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little
haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely constituted; and are so in
degrees which may vary from something so slight as to result in a merely
odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the
consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent
kinds of heterogeneity I find a good example in Mrs. Annie Besant's
autobiography.
I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength,
and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to
suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied
would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky
string; as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think
myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager
gratitude to anyone who noticed me kindly; as the young
mistress of a house I was afraid of my servants, and would let
careless work pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the
ill-doer; when I have been lecturing and debating with no lack
of spirit on the platform, I have preferred to go without what
I wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter
fetch it. Combative on the platform in defense of any cause I
cared for, I shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the house,
and am a coward at heart in private while a good fighter in
public. How often have I passed unhappy quarters of an hour
screwing up my courage to find fault with some subordinate whom
my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered at
myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when
shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work
badly. An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink
myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform,
opposition makes me speak my best.
This amount of inconsistency will only count as amiable weakness; but a
stronger degree of heterogeneity may make havoc of the subject's life.
There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of
zigzags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their
spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward
impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one
long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and
mistakes.
Whatever the cause of heterogeneous personality may be, we find the
extreme examples of it in the psychopathic temperament. All writers
about that temperament make the inner heterogeneity prominent in their
descriptions. Frequently, indeed, it is only this trait that leads us to
ascribe that temperament to a man at all. A _dégénéré supérieur_ is
simply a man of sensibility in many directions, who finds more
difficulty than is common in keeping his spiritual house in order and
running his furrow straight, because his feelings and impulses are too
keen and too discrepant mutually. In the haunting and insistent ideas,
in the irrational impulses, the morbid scruples, dreads, and inhibitions
which beset the psychopathic temperament when it is thoroughly
pronounced, we have exquisite examples of heterogeneous personality.
Bunyan had an obsession of the words, "Sell Christ for this, sell him
for that, sell him, sell him!" which would run through his mind a
hundred times together, until one day out of breath with retorting, "I
will not, I will not," he impulsively said, "Let him go if he will," and
this loss of the battle kept him in despair for over a year. The lives
of the saints are full of such blasphemous obsessions, ascribed
invariably to the direct agency of Satan.
St. Augustine's case is a classic example of discordant personality. You
all remember his half-pagan, half-Christian bringing up at Carthage, his
emigration to Rome and Milan, his adoption of Manicheism and subsequent
skepticism, and his restless search for truth and purity of life; and
finally how, distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his
breast, and ashamed of his own weakness of will when so many others whom
he knew and knew of had thrown off the shackles of sensuality and
dedicated themselves to chastity and the higher life, he heard a voice
in the garden say, "Sume, lege" (take and read), and opening the Bible
at random, saw the text, "not in chambering and wantonness," etc., which
seemed directly sent to his address, and laid the inner storm to rest
forever. Augustine's psychological genius has given an account of the
trouble of having a divided self which has never been surpassed.
The new will which I began to have was not yet strong enough to
overcome that other will, strengthened by long indulgence. So
these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the other
spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I
understood by my own experience what I had read, "Flesh lusteth
against spirit, and spirit against flesh." It was myself indeed
in both the wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in
myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. Yet it was
through myself that habit had obtained so fierce a mastery over
me, because I had willingly come whither I willed not. Still
bound to earth, I refused, O God, to fight on thy side, as much
afraid to be freed from all bonds as I ought to have feared
being trammeled by them.
Thus the thoughts by which I meditated upon thee were like the
efforts of one who would awake, but being overpowered with
sleepiness is soon asleep again. Often does a man when heavy
sleepiness is on his limbs defer to shake it off, and though
not approving it, encourage it; even so I was sure it was
better to surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts,
yet, though the former course convinced me, the latter pleased
and held me bound. There was naught in me to answer thy call,
"Awake, thou sleeper," but only drawling, drowsy words,
"Presently; yes, presently; wait a little while." But the
"presently" had no "present," and the "little while" grew long.
For I was afraid thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at
once of my disease of lust, which I wished to satiate rather
than to see extinguished. With what lashes of words did I not
scourge my own soul. Yet it shrank back; it refused, though it
had no excuse to offer. I said within myself: "Come, let it be
done now," and as I said it, I was on the point of the resolve.
I all but did it, yet I did not do it. And I made another
effort, and almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did
not grasp it, hesitating to die to death, and live to life; and
the evil to which I was so wonted held me more than the better
life I had not tried.
There could be no more perfect description of the divided will, when the
higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch of explosive
intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang of the
psychologists), that enables them to burst their shell, and make
irruption efficaciously into life and quell the lower tendencies
forever.
6. Personality of Individuals and of Peoples[74]
In my opinion personality is not merely a unifying and directing
principle which controls thought and action, but one which, at the same
time, defines the relation of individuals to their fellows. The concept
of personality includes, in addition to inner unity and co-ordination of
the impulses, a definite attitude directed toward the outer world which
is determined by the manner in which the individual organizes his
external stimulations.
In this definition the objective aspect of personality is emphasized as
over against the subjective. We should not in psychological matters be
satisfied with subjective definitions. The mental life is not only a sum
of subjective experiences but manifests itself invariably also in a
definite series of objective expressions. These objective expressions
are the contributions which the personality makes to its external social
environment. More than that, only these objective expressions of
personality are accessible to external observation and they alone have
objective value.
According to Ribot, the real personality is an organism which is
represented at its highest in the brain. The brain embraces all our past
and the possibilities of our future. The individual character with all
its active and passive peculiarities, with all its antipathies, genius,
talents, stupidities, virtues, and vices, its inertia and its energy is
predetermined in the brain.
Personality, from the objective point of view, is the psychic individual
with all his original characters, an individual in free association with
his social _milieu_. Neither innate mental ability, nor creative energy,
nor what we call will, in and of themselves, constitutes personality.
Nothing less than the totality of psychical manifestations, all these
including idiosyncrasies which distinguish one man from another and
determine his positive individuality, may be said to characterize, from
the objective point of view, the human personality.
The intellectual horizon of persons on different cultural levels varies,
but no one, for that reason (because of intellectual inferiority), loses
the right to recognition as a person, provided that he maintains, over
against his environment, his integrity as an individual and remains a
self-determining person. It is the loss of this self-determined
individuality alone that renders man completely impersonal. When
individual spontaneity is feebly manifested, we speak of an ill-defined
or a "passive" personality. Personality is, in short, from the objective
point of view, a self-determining individual with a unique nature and a
definite status in the social world around him.
If now, on the basis of the preceding definition, we seek to define the
significance of personality in social and public life, it appears that
personality is the basis upon which all social institutions, movements,
and conditions, in short all the phenomena of social life, rest. The
people of our time are no more, as in the Golden Age, inarticulate
masses. They are a totality of more or less active personalities
connected by common interests, in part by racial origin, and by a
certain similarity of fundamental psychic traits. A people is a kind of
collective personality possessing particular ethnic and psychological
characteristics, animated by common political aspirations and political
traditions. The progress of peoples, their civilization, and their
culture naturally are determined by the advancement of the personalities
which compose them. Since the emancipation of mankind from a condition
of subjection, the life of peoples and of societies has rested upon the
active participation of each member of society in the common welfare
which represents the aim of all. The personality, considered as a
psychic self-determining individual, asserts itself the more
energetically in the general march of historical events, the farther a
people is removed from the condition of subjection in which the rights
of personality are denied.
In every field of activity, the more advanced personality "blazes a new
trail." The passive personality, born in subjection, is disposed merely
to imitate and to repeat. The sheer existence of modern states depends
less on the crude physical force and its personified agencies, than on
the moral cohesion of the personalities who constitute the nation.
Since the beginning of time, it is only the moral values that have
endured. Force can support the state only temporarily. When a nation
disregards the moral forces and seeks its salvation in the rude clash of
arms, it bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction. No army
in the world is strong enough to maintain a state, the moral basis of
which is shaken, for the strength of the army rests upon its morale.
The importance of personality in the historic life of peoples is
manifest in periods when social conditions accelerate the movement of
social life. Personality, like every other force, reaches its maximum
when it encounters resistance, in conflict and in rivalry--when it
fights--hence its great value in friendly rivalry of nations in industry
and culture, and especially in periods of natural calamities or of
enemies from without. Since the fruits of individual development
contribute to the common fund of social values, it is clear that
societies and peoples which, other things being equal, possess the most
advanced and active personalities contribute most to the enrichment of
civilization. It does not seem necessary to demonstrate that the pacific
competition of nations and their success depends on the development of
the personalities which compose them. A nation weak in the development
of individualities, of social units which compose it, could not defend
itself against the exploitation of nations composed of personalities
with a superior development.
D. BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL HEREDITY
1. Nature and Nurture[75]
We have seen that the scientific position in regard to the
transmissibility of modifications should be one of active scepticism,
that there seems to be no convincing evidence in support of the
affirmative position, and that there is strong presumption in favor of
the negative.
A modification is a definite change in the individual body, due to some
change in "nurture." There is no secure evidence that any such
individual gain or loss can be transmitted as such, or in any
representative degree. How does this affect our estimate of the value of
"nurture"? How should the sceptical or negative answer, which we believe
to be the scientific one, affect our practice in regard to education,
physical culture, amelioration of function, improvement of environment,
and so on? Let us give a practical point to what we have already said.
a) Every inheritance requires an appropriate nurture if it is to
realize itself in development. Nurture supplies the liberating stimuli
necessary for the full expression of the inheritance. A man's character
as well as his physique is a function of "nature" and of "nurture." In
the language of the old parable of the talents, what is given must be
traded with. A boy may be truly enough a chip of the old block, but how
far he shows himself such depends on "nurture." The conditions of
nurture determine whether the expression of the inheritance is to be
full or partial. It need hardly be said that the strength of an
(inherited) individuality may be such that it expresses itself almost in
the face of inappropriate nurture. History abounds in instances. As
Goethe said, "Man is always achieving the impossible." Corot was the son
of a successful milliner and prosperous tradesman, and he was thirty
before he left the draper's shop to study nature.
b) Although modifications do not seem to be transmitted as such, or in
any representative degree, there is no doubt that they or their
secondary results may in some cases affect the offspring. This is
especially the case in typical mammals, where there is before birth a
prolonged (placental) connection between the mother and the unborn
young. In such cases the offspring is for a time almost part of the
maternal body, and liable to be affected by modifications thereof, e.g.,
by good or bad nutritive conditions. In other cases, also, it may be
that deeply saturating parental modifications, such as the results of
alcoholic and other poisoning, affect the germ cells, and thus the
offspring. A disease may saturate the body with toxins and waste
products, and these may provoke prejudicial germinal variations.
c) Though modifications due to changed "nurture" do not seem to be
transmissible, they may be re-impressed on each generation. Thus
"nurture" becomes not less, but more, important in our eyes.
"Is my grandfather's environment not my heredity?" asks an American
author quaintly and pathetically. Well, if not, let us secure for
ourselves and for our children those factors in the "grandfather's
environment" that made for progressive evolution, and eschew those that
tended elsewhere.
Are modifications due to changed nurture not, as such, entailed on
offspring? Perhaps it is just as well, for we are novices at nurturing
even yet! Moreover, the non-transmissibility cuts both ways: if
individual modificational gains are not handed on, neither are the
losses.
Is the "nature"--the germinal constitution, to wit--all that passes from
generation to generation, the capital sum without the results of
individual usury; then we are freed, at least, from undue pessimism at
the thought of the many harmful functions and environments that
disfigure our civilization. Many detrimental acquired characters are to
be seen all around us, but if they are not transmissible, they need not
last.
In the development of "character," much depends upon early nurture,
education, and surrounding influences generally, but how the individual
reacts to these must largely depend on his inheritance. Truly the
individual himself makes his own character, but he does so by his
habitual adjustment of his (hereditarily determined) constitution to
surrounding influences. Nurture supplies the stimulus for the expression
of the moral inheritance, and how far the inheritance can express itself
is limited by the nurture-stimuli available just as surely as the result
of nurture is conditioned by the hereditarily determined nature on which
it operates. It may be urged that character, being a product of habitual
modes of feeling, thinking, and acting, cannot be spoken of as
_inherited_, but bodily character is also a product dependent upon vital
experience. It seems to us as idle to deny that some children are "born
good" or "born bad," as it is to deny that some children are born strong
and others weak, some energetic and others "tired" or "old." It may be
difficult to tell how far the apparently hereditary goodness or badness
of disposition is due to the nutritive influences of the mother, both
before and after birth, and we must leave it to the reader's experience
and observation to decide whether we are right or wrong in our opinion
that quite apart from maternal nutritive influence there is a genuine
inheritance of kindly disposition, strong sympathy, good humor, and good
will. The further difficulty that the really organic character may be
half-concealed by nurture-effects, or inhibited by the external heritage
of custom and tradition, seems less serious, for the selfishness of an
acquired altruism is as familiar as honor among thieves.
It is entirely useless to boggle over the difficulty that we are unable
to conceive how dispositions for good or ill lie implicit within the
protoplasmic unit in which the individual life begins. The fact is
undoubted that the initiatives of moral character are in some degree
transmissible, though from the nature of the case the influences of
education, example, environment, and the like are here more potent than
in regard to structural features. We cannot make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear, though the plasticity of character under nurture is a fact
which gives us all hope. Explain it we cannot, but the transmission of
the raw material of character is a fact, and we must still say with Sir
Thomas Browne: "Bless not thyself that thou wert born in Athens; but,
among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand to heaven that
thou wert born of honest parents, that modesty, humility, and veracity
_lay in the same egg_, and came into the world with thee."
2. Inheritance of Original Nature[76]
The principles of heredity (may be recapitulated as follows):
First of all, we find useful the principle of the unit-character.
According to this principle, characters are, for the most part,
inherited independently of each other, and each trait is inherited as a
unit or may be broken up into characters that are so inherited.
Next, it must be recognized that characters, as such, are not inherited.
Strictly, my son has not my nose, because I still have it; what was
transmitted was something that determined the shape of his nose, and
that is called in brief a "determiner." So the second principle is that
unit-characters are inherited through determiners in the germ cells.
And finally, it is recognized that there really is no inheritance from
parent to child, but that parent and child resemble each other because
they are derived from the same germ plasm, they are chips from the same
old block; and the son is the half-brother to his father, by another
mother.
These three principles are the three corner stones of heredity as we
know it today, the principles of the independent unit-characters each
derived from a determiner in the germ plasm.
How far are the known facts of heredity in man in accord with these
principles? No doubt all human traits are inherited in accordance with
these principles; but knowledge proceeds slowly in this field.
As a first illustration I may take the case of human eye color. The iris
is made up of a trestle-work of fibers, in which are suspended particles
that give the blue color. In addition, in many eyes much brown pigment
is formed which may be small in amount and gathered around the pupil or
so extensive as to suffuse the entire iris and make it all brown. It is
seen, then, that the brown iris is formed by something additional to the
blue. And brown iris may be spoken of as a _positive_ character,
depending on a determiner for brown pigment; and blue as a _negative_
character, depending on the absence of the determiner for brown.
Now when both parents have brown eyes and come from an ancestry with
brown eyes, it is probable that all of their germ cells contain the
determiner for brown iris pigmentation. So when these germ cells, both
carrying the determiner, unite, all of the progeny will receive the
determiner from both sides of the house; consequently the determiners
are double in their bodies and the resulting iris pigmentation may be
said to be _duplex_. When a character is duplex in an individual, that
means that when the germ cells ripen in the body of that individual
each contains a determiner. So that individual is capable, so far as he
is concerned, of transmitting his trait in undiminished intensity.
If a parent has pure blue eyes, that is evidence that in neither of the
united germ cells from which he arose was there a determiner for iris
pigmentation; consequently in respect to brown iris pigmentation such a
person may be said to be _nulliplex_. If, now, such a person marry an
individual duplex in eye color, in whom all of the germ cells contain
the determiner, each child will receive the determiner for iris
pigmentation from one side of the house only. This determiner will, of
course, induce pigmentation, but the pigmentation is simplex, being
induced by one determiner only. Consequently, the pigmentation is apt to
be weak. When a person whose pigment determiners have come from one side
of the house forms germ cells, half will have and half will lack the
determiner. If such a person marry a consort all of whose germ cells
contain the determiner for iris pigmentation, all of the children will,
of course, receive the iris pigmentation, but in half it will be duplex
and in the other half it will be simplex. If the two parents both be
simplex, so that, in each, half of the germ cells possess and half lack
the determiner in the union of germ cells, there are four events that
are equally apt to occur: (1) an egg _with_ the determiner unites with a
sperm _with_ the determiner; (2) an egg _with_ the determiner unites
with a sperm _without_ the determiner; (3) an egg _without_ the
determiner unites with a sperm _with_ the determiner; (4) an egg
_without_ the determiner unites with a sperm _without_ the determiner.
Thus the character is duplex in one case, simplex in two cases, and
nulliplex in one case; that is, one in four will have no brown pigment,
or will be blue eyed. If one parent be simplex, so that the germ cells
are equally with and without the determiner, while the other be
nulliplex, then half of the children will be simplex and half nulliplex
in eye pigment. Finally, if both parents be nulliplex in eye
pigmentation (that is, blue eyed), then none of their germ cells will
have the determiner, and all children will be nulliplex, or blue eyed.
The inheritance of eye color serves as a paradigm of the method of
inheritance of any unit-character.
Let us now consider some of the physical traits of man that follow the
same law as brown eye color, traits that are clearly positive, and due
to a definite determiner in the germ plasm.
Hair color is due either to a golden-brown pigment that looks black in
masses, or else to a red pigment. The lighter tints differ from the
darker by the absence of some pigment granules. If neither parent has
the capacity of producing a large quantity of pigment granules in the
hair, the children cannot have that capacity, that is, two flaxen-haired
parents have only flaxen-haired children. But a dark-haired parent may
be either simplex or duplex; and so two such parents _may_ produce
children with light hair; but not more than one out of four. In general,
the hair color of the children tends not to be darker than that of the
darker parent. Skin pigment follows a similar rule. It is really one of
the surprises of modern studies that skin pigment should be found to
follow the ordinary law of heredity; it was commonly thought to blend.
The inheritance of skin color is not dependent on race; two blonds never
have brunette offspring, but brunettes may have blondes. The extreme
case is that of albinos with no pigment in skin, hair, and iris. Two
albinos have only albino children, but albinos may come from two
pigmented parents.
Similarly, straight-haired parents lack curliness, and two such have
only straight-haired children. Also two tall parents have only tall
children. _Shortness_ is the trait: tallness is a negative character.
Also when both parents lack stoutness (are slender), all children tend
to lack it.
We may now consider briefly the inheritance of certain pathological or
abnormal states, to see in how far the foregoing principles hold for
them also. Sometimes the abnormal condition is positive, due to a new
trait; but sometimes, on the contrary, the normal condition is the
positive one and the trait is due to a defect.
Deaf-mutism is due to a defect; but the nature of the defect is
different in different cases. Deaf-mutism is so varied that frequently
two unrelated deaf mutes may have hearing children. But if the deaf-mute
parents are cousins, the chances that the deafness is due to the _same_
unit defect are increased and all of the children will probably be deaf.
From the studies of Dr. Goddard and others, it appears that when both
parents are feeble-minded all of the children will be so likewise; this
conclusion has been tested again and again. But if _one_ of the parents
be normal and of normal ancestry, all of the children may be normal;
whereas, if the normal person have defective germ cells, half of his
progeny by a feeble-minded woman will be defective.
Many criminals, especially those who offend against the person, are
feeble-minded, as is shown by the way they occur in fraternities with
feeble-mindedness, or have feeble-minded parents. The test of the mental
condition of relatives is one that may well be applied by judges in
deciding upon the responsibility of an aggressor.
Not only the condition of imperfect mental development, but also that of
inability to withstand stress upon the nervous system, may be inherited.
From the studies of Dr. Rosanoff and his collaborators, it appears that
if both parents be subject to manic depressive insanity or to dementia
precox, all children will be neuropathic also; that if one parent be
affected and come from a weak strain, half of the children are liable to
go insane; and that nervous breakdowns of these types never occur if
both parents be of sound stock.
Finally, a study of families with special abilities reveals a method of
inheritance quite like that of nervous defect. If both parents be color
artists or have a high grade of vocal ability or are littérateurs of
high grade, then all of their children tend to be of high grade also. If
one parent has high ability, while the other has low ability but has
ancestry with high ability, part of the children will have high ability
and part low. It seems like an extraordinary conclusion that high
ability is inherited as though due to the absence of a determiner in the
same way as feeble-mindedness and insanity are inherited. We are
reminded of the poet: "Great wits to madness sure are near allied."
Evidence for the relationship is given by pedigrees of men of genius
that often show the combination of ability and insanity. May it not be
that just that lack of control that permits "flights of the imagination"
is related to the flightiness characteristic of those with mental
weakness or defect?
These studies of inheritance of mental defect inevitably raise the
question how to eliminate the mentally defective. This is a matter of
great importance because, on the one hand, it is now coming to be
recognized that mental defect is at the bottom of most of our social
problems. Extreme alcoholism is usually a consequence of a mental
make-up in which self-control of the appetite for liquor is lacking.
Pauperism is a consequence of mental defects that make the pauper
incapable of holding his own in the world's competition. Sex immorality
in either sex is commonly due to a certain inability to appreciate
consequences, to visualize the inevitableness of cause and effect,
combined sometimes with a sex-hyperesthesia and lack of self-control.
Criminality in its worst forms is similarly due to a lack of
appreciation of or receptivity to moral ideas.
If we seek to know what is the origin of these defects, we must admit
that it is very ancient. They are probably derived from our ape-like
ancestors, in which they were _normal_ traits. There occurs in man a
strain that has not yet acquired those traits of inhibition that
characterized the more highly developed civilized persons. The evidence
for this is that, as far back as we go, we still trace back the black
thread of defective heredity.
We have now to answer the question as to the eugenical application of
the laws of inheritance of defects. First, it may be pointed out that
traits due to the absence of a determiner are characterized by their
usual sparseness in the pedigree, especially when the parents are
normal; by the fact that they frequently appear where cousin marriages
abound, because cousins tend to carry the same defects in their germ
plasm, though normal themselves; by the fact that two affected parents
have exclusively normal children, while two normal parents who belong to
the same strain, or who both belong to strains containing the same
defect, have some (about 25 per cent) defective children. But a
defective married to a pure normal will have no defective offspring.
The clear eugenical rule is then this: Let abnormals marry normals
without trace of the defect, and let their normal offspring marry in
turn into strong strains; thus the defect may never appear again.
Normals from the defective strain may marry normals of normal ancestry,
but must particularly avoid consanguineous marriages.
The sociological conclusion is: Prevent the feeble-minded, drunkards,
paupers, sex-offenders, and criminalistic from marrying their like or
cousins or any person belonging to a neuropathic strain. Practically it
might be well to segregate such persons during the reproductive period
for one generation. Then the crop of defectives will be reduced to
practically nothing.
3. Inheritance of Acquired Nature: Tradition[77]
The factor in societal evolution corresponding to heredity in organic
evolution is tradition; and the agency of transmission is the nervous
system by way of its various "senses" rather than the germ-plasm. The
organs of transmission are the eye, ear, tongue, etc., and not those of
sex. The term tradition, like variation and selection, is taken in the
broad sense. Variation in nature causes the offspring to differ from the
parents and from one another; variation in the folkways causes those of
one period (or place) to differ from their predecessors and to some
extent among themselves. It is the vital fact at the bottom of change.
Heredity in nature causes the offspring to resemble or repeat the
present type; tradition in societal evolution causes the mores of one
period to repeat those of the preceding period. Each is a stringent
conservator. Variation means diversity; heredity and tradition mean the
preservation of type. If there were no force of heredity or tradition,
there could be no system or classification of natural or of societal
forms; the creation hypothesis would be the only tenable one, for there
could be no basis for a theory of descent. If there were no variation,
all of nature and all human institutions would show a monotony as of the
desert sand. Heredity and tradition allow respectively of the
accumulation of organic or societal variations through repeated
selection, extending over generations, in this or that direction. In
short, what one can say of the general effects of heredity in the
organic realm he can say of tradition in the field of the folkways. That
the transmission is in the one case by way of the sex organs and the
germ-plasm, and in the other through the action of the vocal cords, the
auditory nerves, etc., would seem to be of small moment in comparison
with the essential identity in the functions discharged.
Tradition is, in a sense and if such a comparison were profitable, more
conservative than heredity. There is in the content of tradition an
invariability which could not exist if it were a dual composite, as is
the constitution of the germ-plasm. Here we must recall certain
essential qualities of the mores which we have hitherto viewed from
another angle. Tradition always looks to the folkways as constituting
the matter to be transmitted. But the folkways, after the concurrence
in their practice has been established, come to include a judgment that
they conduce to societal and, indeed, individual welfare. This is where
they come to be properly called mores. They become the prosperity-policy
of the group, and the young are reared up under their sway, looking to
the older as the repositories of precedent and convention. But presently
the older die, and in conformity with the ideas of the time, they become
beings of a higher power toward whom the living owe duty, and whose will
they do not wish to cross. The sanction of ghost-fear is thus extended
to the mores, which, as the prosperity-policy of the group, have already
taken on a stereotyped character. They thus become in an even higher
degree "uniform, universal in a group, imperative, invariable. As time
goes on, they become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative.
If asked why they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive
people always answer that it is because they and their ancestors always
have done so." Thus the transmission of the mores comes to be a process
embodying the greatest conservatism and the least likelihood of change.
This situation represents an adaption of society to life-conditions; it
would seem that because of the rapidity of succession of variations
there is need of an intensely conserving force (like ethnocentrism or
religion) to preserve a certain balance and poise in the evolutionary
movement.
Transmission of the mores takes place through the agency of imitation or
of inculcation; through one or the other according as the initiative is
taken by the receiving or the giving party respectively. Inculcation
includes education in its broadest sense; but since that term implies in
general usage a certain, let us say protective, attitude taken by the
educator (as toward the young), the broader and more colorless
designation is chosen. Acculturation is the process by which one group
or people learns from another, whether the culture or civilization be
gotten by imitation or by inculcation. As there must be contact,
acculturation is sometimes ascribed to "contagion."
4. Temperament, Tradition, and Nationality[78]
The temperament of the Negro, as I conceive it, consists in a few
elementary but distinctive characteristics, determined by physical
organizations and transmitted biologically. These characteristics
manifest themselves in a genial, sunny, and social disposition, in an
interest and attachment to external, physical things rather than to
subjective states and objects of introspection, in a disposition for
expression rather than enterprise and action.
The changes which have taken place in the manifestations of this
temperament have been actuated by an inherent and natural impulse,
characteristic of all living beings, to persist and maintain itself in a
changed environment. Such changes have occurred as are likely to take
place in any organism in its struggle to live and to use its environment
to further and complete its own existence.
The result has been that this racial temperament has selected out of the
mass of cultural materials to which it had access, such technical,
mechanical, and intellectual devices as met its needs at a particular
period of its existence. It has clothed and enriched itself with such
new customs, habits, and cultural forms as it was able, or permitted to
use. It has put into these relatively external things, moreover, such
concrete meanings as its changing experience and its unchanging racial
individuality demanded. Everywhere and always it has been interested
rather in expression than in action; interested in life itself rather
than in its reconstruction or reformation. The Negro is, by natural
disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor
a brooding introspective, like the East Indian; nor a pioneer and
frontiersman, like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving
life for its own sake. His _metier_ is expression rather than action. He
is, so to speak, the lady among the races.
In reviewing the fortunes of the Negro's temperament as it is manifested
in the external events of the Negro's life in America, our analysis
suggests that this racial character of the Negro has exhibited itself
everywhere in something like the rôle of the _wish_ in the Freudian
analysis of dream-life. The external cultural forms which he found here,
like the memories of the individual, have furnished the materials in
which the racial wish, i.e., the Negro temperament, has clothed itself.
The inner meaning, the sentiment, the emphasis, the emotional color,
which these forms assumed as the result of their transference from the
white man to the Negro, these have been the Negro's own. They have
represented his temperament--his temperament modified, however, by his
experience and the tradition which he has accumulated in this country.
The temperament is African, but the tradition is American.
If it is true that the Jew just because of his intellectuality is a
natural-born idealist, internationalist, doctrinaire, and revolutionist,
while the Negro, because of his natural attachment to known familiar
objects, places, and persons, is pre-adapted to conservatism and to
local and personal loyalties--if these things are true, we shall
eventually have to take account of them practically. It is certain that
the Negro has uniformly shown a disposition to loyalty during slavery to
his master and during freedom to the South and the country as a whole.
He has maintained this attitude of loyalty, too, under very discouraging
circumstances. I once heard Kelly Miller, the most philosophical of the
leaders and teachers of his race, say in a public speech that one of the
greatest hardships the Negro suffered in this country was due to the
fact that he was not permitted to be patriotic.
Of course all these alleged racial characteristics have a positive as
well as a negative significance. Every race, like every individual, has
the vices of its virtues. The question remains still to what extent
so-called racial characteristics are actually racial, i.e., biological,
and to what extent they are the effect of environmental conditions. The
thesis of this paper, to state it again, is: (1) that fundamental
temperamental qualities, which are the basis of interest and attention,
act as selective agencies and as such determine what elements in the
cultural environment each race will select; in what region it will seek
and find its vocation in the larger social organization; (2) that, on
the other hand, technique, science, machinery, tools, habits,
discipline, and all the intellectual and mechanical devices with which
the civilized man lives and works remain relatively external to the
inner core of significant attitudes and values which constitute what we
may call the will of the group. This racial will is, to be sure, largely
social, that is, modified by social experience, but it rests ultimately
upon a complex of inherited characteristics, which are racial.
The individual man is the bearer of a double inheritance. As a member of
a race, he transmits by interbreeding a biological inheritance. As a
member of society or a social group, on the other hand, he transmits by
communication a social inheritance. The particular complex of
inheritable characters which characterizes the individuals of a racial
group constitutes the racial temperament. The particular group of
habits, accommodations, sentiments, attitudes, and ideals transmitted by
communication and education constitutes a social tradition. Between this
temperament and this tradition there is, as has been generally
recognized, a very intimate relationship. My assumption is that
temperament is the basis of the interests; that as such it determines in
the long run the general run of attention, and this, eventually,
determines the selection in the case of an individual of his vocation,
in the case of the racial group of its culture. That is to say,
temperament determines what things the individual and the group will be
interested in; what elements of the general culture, to which they have
access, they will assimilate; what, to state it pedagogically, they will
learn.
It will be evident at once that where individuals of the same race and
hence the same temperament are associated, the temperamental interests
will tend to reinforce one another, and the attention of members of the
group will be more completely focused upon the specific objects and
values that correspond to the racial temperament. In this way racial
qualities become the basis for nationalities, a nationalistic group
being merely a cultural and, eventually, a political society founded on
the basis of racial inheritances.
On the other hand, when racial segregation is broken up and members of a
racial group are dispersed, the opposite effect will take place. This
explains the phenomena which have frequently been the subject of comment
and observation, that the racial characteristics manifest themselves in
an extraordinary way in large homogeneous gatherings. The contrast
between a mass meeting of one race and a similar meeting of another is
particularly striking. Under such circumstances characteristic racial
and temperamental differences appear that would otherwise pass entirely
unnoticed.
When the physical unity of a group is perpetuated by the succession of
parents and children, the racial temperament, including fundamental
attitudes and values which rest in it, is preserved intact. When,
however, society grows and is perpetuated by immigration and adaptation,
there ensues, as a result of miscegenation, a breaking up of the complex
of the biologically inherited qualities which constitute the temperament
of the race. This again initiates changes in the mores, traditions, and
eventually in the institutions of the community. The changes which
proceed from modification in the racial temperament will, however,
modify but slightly the external forms of the social traditions, but
they will be likely to change profoundly their content and meaning. Of
course other factors, individual competition, the formation of classes,
and especially the increase of communication, all co-operate to
complicate the whole situation and to modify the effects which would be
produced by racial factors working in isolation.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Conceptions of Human Nature Implicit in Religious and Political
Doctrines
Although the systematic study of it is recent, there has always been a
certain amount of observation and a great deal of assumption in regard
to human nature. The earliest systematic treatises in jurisprudence,
history, theology, and politics necessarily proceeded from certain more
or less naïve assumptions in regard to the nature of man. In the
extension of Roman law over subject peoples the distinction was made
between _jus gentium_ and _jus naturae_, i.e., the laws peculiar to a
particular nation as contrasted with customs and laws common to all
nations and derived from the nature of mankind. Macauley writes of the
"principles of human nature" from which it is possible to deduce a
theory of government. Theologians, in devising a logical system of
thought concerning the ways of God to man, proceeded on the basis of
certain notions of human nature. The doctrines of original sin, the
innate depravity of man, the war of the natural man and the spiritual
man had a setting in the dogmas of the fall of man, redemption through
faith, and the probationary character of life on earth. In striking
contrast with the pessimistic attitude of theologians toward human
nature, social revolutionists like Rousseau have condemned social
institutions as inherently vicious and optimistically placed reliance
upon human nature as innately good.
In all these treatises the assumptions about human nature are either
preconceptions or rationalizations from experience incidental to the
legal, moral, religious, or political system of thought. There is in
these treatises consequently little or no analysis or detailed
description of the traits attributed to men. Certainly, there is no
evidence of an effort to arrive at an understanding of human behavior
from an objective study of its nature.
Historic assumptions in regard to human nature, no matter how fantastic
or unscientific, have exerted, nevertheless, a far-reaching influence
upon group action. Periods of social revolution are ushered in by
theorists who perceive only the evil in institutions and the good in
human nature. On the other hand, the "guardians of society," distrustful
of the impulses of human nature, place their reliance upon conventions
and upon existing forms of social organization. Communistic societies
have been organized upon certain ideas of human nature and have survived
as long as these beliefs which inspired them controlled the behavior of
members of the group.
Philosophers from the time of Socrates have invariably sought to justify
their moral and political theories upon a conception, if not a
definition, of the nature of man. Aristotle, in his _Politics_ and
Hobbes in his _Leviathan_, to refer to two classics, offer widely
divergent interpretations of human nature. Aristotle emphasized man's
altruistic traits, Hobbes stressed his egoistic disposition. These
opposite conceptions of human behavior are explicit and in each case
presented with a display of evidence. Yet students soon realize that
neither philosopher, in fashioning his conception, is entirely without
animus or ulterior motive. When these definitions are considered in the
context in which they occur, they seem less an outgrowth of an analysis
of human nature, than formulas devised in the interest of a political
theory. Aristotle was describing the ideal state; Hobbes was interested
in the security of an existing social order.
Still, the contribution made by social and political philosophers has
been real. Their descriptions of human behavior, if inadequate and
unscientific, at least recognized that an understanding of human nature
was a precondition to social reorganization. The fact that philosophical
conceptions and ideal constructions are themselves social forces and as
such frequently represent vested interests, has been an obstacle to
social as well as physical science.
Comte's notion that every scientific discipline must pass through a
theological and metaphysical stage before it assumed the character of a
positive science seems to be true as far as sociology is concerned.
Machiavelli shocked the moral sense of his time, if not the moralists of
all time, when he proposed to accept human nature as it is as a basis
for political science. Herbert Spencer insisted upon the futility of
expecting "golden conduct from leaden instincts." To the utopian social
reformers of his day he pointed out a series of welfare measures in
England in which the outcome was the direct opposite of the results
desired.
This negative criticism of preconceived notions and speculations about
human nature prepared the way for disinterested observation and
comparison. Certain modern tendencies and movements gave an impetus to
the detached study of human behavior. The ethnologists collected
objective descriptions of the behavior of primitive people. In
psychology interest developed in the study of the child and in the
comparative study of human and animal behavior. The psychiatrist, in
dealing with certain types of abnormal behavior like hysteria and
multiple personality, was forced to study human behavior objectively.
All this has prepared the way for a science of human nature and of
society based upon objective and disinterested observation.
2. Literature and the Science of Human Nature
The poets were the first to recognize that "the proper study of mankind
is man" as they were also the first to interpret it objectively. The
description and appreciation of human nature and personality by the poet
and artist preceded systematic and reflective analysis by the
psychologist and the sociologist. In recent years, moreover, there has
been a very conscious effort to make literature, as well as history,
"scientific." Georg Brandes in his _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century
Literature_ set himself the task to "trace first and foremost the
connection between literature and life." Taine's _History of English
Literature_ attempts to delineate British temperament and character as
mirrored in literary masterpieces.
The novel which emphasizes "_milieu_" and "character," as contrasted
with the novel which emphasizes "action" and "plot," is a literary
device for the analysis of human nature and society. Émile Zola in an
essay _The Experimental Novel_ has presented with characteristic
audacity the case for works of fiction as instruments for the scientific
dissection and explanation of human behavior.
The novelist is equally an observer and an experimentalist. The
observer in him gives the facts as he has observed them,
suggests the points of departure, displays the solid earth on
which his characters are to tread and the phenomena develop.
Then the experimentalist appears and introduces an experiment,
that is to say, sets his characters going in a certain story so
as to show that the succession of facts will be such as the
requirements of the determinism of the phenomena under
examination call for. The novelist starts out in search of a
truth. I will take as an example the character of the "Baron
Hulot," in _Cousine Bette_, by Balzac. The general fact
observed by Balzac is the ravages that the amorous temperament
of a man makes in his home, in his family, and in society. As
soon as he has chosen his subject he starts from known facts,
then he makes his experiment and exposes Hulot to a series of
trials, placing him among certain surroundings in order to
exhibit how the complicated machinery of his passions works. It
is then evident that there is not only observation there, but
that there is also experiment, as Balzac does not remain
satisfied with photographing the facts collected by him, but
interferes in a direct way to place his characters in certain
conditions, and of these he remains the master. The problem is
to know what such a passion, acting in such surroundings and
under such circumstances, would produce from the point of view
of an individual and of society; and an experimental novel,
_Cousine Bette_, for example, is simply the report of the
experiment that the novelist conducts before the eyes of the
public. In fact, the whole operation consists of taking facts
in nature, then in studying the mechanism of these facts,
acting upon them, by the modification of circumstances and
surroundings, without deviating from the laws of nature.
Finally, you possess knowledge of the man, scientific knowledge
of him, in both his individual and social relations.[79]
After all that may be said for the experimental novel, however, its
primary aim, like that of history, is appreciation and understanding,
not generalization and abstract formulas. Insight and sympathy, the
mystical sense of human solidarity, expressed in the saying "to
comprehend all is to forgive all," this fiction has to give. And these
are materials which the sociologist cannot neglect. As yet there is no
autobiography or biography of an egocentric personality so convincing as
George Meredith's _The Egoist_. The miser is a social type; but there
are no case studies as sympathetic and discerning as George Eliot's
_Silas Marner_. Nowhere in social science has the technique of case
study developed farther than in criminology; yet Dostoévsky's
delineation of the self-analysis of the murderer in _Crime and
Punishment_ dwarfs all comparison outside of similar studies in
fiction. The function of the so-called psychological or sociological
novel stops, however, with its presentation of the individual incident
or case; it is satisfied by the test of its appeal to the experience of
the reader. The scientific study of human nature proceeds a step
farther; it seeks generalizations. From the case studies of history and
of literature it abstracts the laws and principles of human behavior.
3. Research in the Field of Original Nature
Valuable materials for the study of human nature have been accumulated
in archaeology, ethnology, and folklore. William G. Sumner, in his book
_Folkways_, worked through the ethnological data and made it available
for sociological use. By classification and comparison of the customs of
primitive peoples he showed that cultural differences were based on
variations in folkways and mores in adaptation to the environment,
rather than upon fundamental differences in human nature.
The interests of research have resulted in a division of labor between
the fields of original and acquired nature in man. The examination of
original tendencies has been quite properly connected with the study of
inheritance. For the history of research in this field, the student is
referred to treatises upon genetics and evolution and to the works of
Lamarck, Darwin, DeVries, Weismann, and Mendel. Recent discoveries in
regard to the mechanism of biological inheritance have led to the
organization of a new applied science, "eugenics." The new science
proposes a social program for the improvement of the racial traits based
upon the investigations of breeding and physical inheritance. Research
in eugenics has been fostered by the Galton Laboratory in England, and
by the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor in the United
States. Interest has centered in the study of the inheritance of
feeble-mindedness. Studies of feeble-minded families and groups, as _The
Kallikak Family_ by Goddard, _The Jukes_ by Dugdale, and _The Tribe of
Ishmael_ by M'Culloch, have shown how mental defect enters as a factor
into industrial inefficiency, poverty, prostitution, and crime.
4. The Investigation of Human Personality
The trend of research in human nature has been toward the study of
personality. Scientific inquiry into the problems of personality was
stimulated by the observation of abnormal behavior such as hysteria,
loss of memory, etc., where the cause was not organic and, therefore,
presumably psychic. A school of French psychiatrists and psychologists
represented by Charcot, Janet, and Ribot have made signal contributions
to an understanding of the maladies of personality. Investigation in
this field, invaluable for an understanding of the person, has been made
in the study of dual and multiple personality. The work of Freud, Jung,
Adler, and others in psychoanalysis has thrown light upon the rôle of
mental conflict, repression, and the wishes in the growth of
personality.
In sociology, personality is studied, not only from the subjective
standpoint of its organization, but even more in its objective aspects
and with reference to the rôle of the person in the group. One of the
earliest classifications of "kinds of conduct" has been ascribed by
tradition to a disciple of Aristotle, Theophrastus, who styled himself
"a student of human nature." _The Characters of Theophrastus_ is
composed of sketches--humorous and acute, if superficial--of types such
as "the flatterer," "the boor," "the coward," "the garrulous man." They
are as true to modern life as to the age of Alexander. Chief among the
modern imitators of Theophrastus is La Bruyère, who published in 1688
_Les caractères, ou les moeurs de ce siècle_, a series of essays on
the manners of his time, illustrated by portraits of his contemporaries.
Autobiography and biography provide source material for the study both
of the subjective life and of the social rôle of the person. Three great
autobiographies which have inspired the writing of personal narratives
are themselves representative of the different types: Caesar's
_Commentaries_, with his detached impersonal description of his great
exploits; the _Confessions of St. Augustine_, with his intimate
self-analysis and intense self-reproach, and the less well-known _De
Vita Propria Liber_ by Cardan. This latter is a serious attempt at
scientific self-examination. Recently, attention has been directed to
the accumulation of autobiographical and biographical materials which
are interpreted from the point of view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
The study _Der Fall Otto Weininger_ by Dr. Ferdinand Probst is a
representative monograph of this type. The outstanding example of this
method and its use for sociological interpretation is "Life Record of an
Immigrant" contained in the third volume of Thomas and Znaniecki, _The
Polish Peasant_. In connection with the _Recreation Survey_ of the
Cleveland Foundation and the _Americanization Studies of the Carnegie
Corporation_, the life-history has been developed as part of the
technique of investigation.
5. The Measurement of Individual Differences
With the growing sense of the importance of individual differences in
human nature, attempts at their measurement have been essayed. Tests for
physical and mental traits have now reached a stage of accuracy and
precision. The study of temperamental and social characteristics is
still in the preliminary stage.
The field of the measurement of physical traits is dignified by the name
"anthropometry." In the nineteenth century high hopes were widely held
of the significance of measurements of the cranium and of physiognomy
for an understanding of the mental and moral nature of the person. The
lead into phrenology sponsored by Gall and Spurzheim proved to be a
blind trail. The so-called "scientific school of criminology" founded by
Cesare Lombroso upon the identification of the criminal type by certain
abnormalities of physiognomy and physique was undermined by the
controlled study made by Charles Goring. At the present time the
consensus of expert opinion is that only for a small group may gross
abnormalities of physical development be associated with abnormal mental
and emotional reactions.
In 1905-11 Binet and Simon devised a series of tests for determining the
mental age of French school children. The purpose of the mental
measurements was to gauge innate mental capacity. Therefore the tests
excluded material which had to do with special social experience. With
their introduction into the United States certain revisions and
modifications, such as the Goddard Revision, the Terman Revision, the
Yerkes-Bridges Point Scale, were made in the interests of
standardization. The application of mental measurements to different
races and social classes raised the question of the extent to which
individual groups varied because of differences in social experience.
While it is not possible absolutely to separate original tendencies from
their expression in experience, it is practicable to devise tests which
will take account of divergent social environments.
The study of volitional traits and of temperament is still in its
infancy. Many recent attempts at classification of temperaments rest
upon as impressionistic a basis as the popular fourfold division into
sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic. Two of the efforts to
define temperamental differences rest, however, upon first-hand study of
cases. Dr. June E. Downey has devised a series of tests based upon
handwriting material for measuring will traits. In her pamphlet _The
Will Profile_ she presents an analysis of twelve volitional traits:
revision, perseverance, co-ordination of impulses, care for detail,
motor inhibition, resistance, assurance, motor impulsion, speed of
decision, flexibility, freedom from inertia, and speed of movement. From
a study of several hundred cases she defined certain will patterns which
apparently characterize types of individuals. In her experience she has
found the rating of the subject by the will test to have a distinct
value in supplementing the test for mentality.
Kraepelin, on the basis of his examination of abnormal mental states,
offers a classification of types of psychopathic personalities. He
distinguishes six groups: the excitable, the unstable, the psychopathic
trend, the eccentric, the anti-social, and the contentious. In
psychoanalysis a simpler twofold division is frequently made between the
_introverts_, or the "introspective" and the _extroverts_, or the
"objective" types of individual.
The study of social types is as yet an unworked field. Literature and
life surround us with increasing specializations in personalities, but
attempts at classification are still in the impressionistic stage. The
division suggested by Thomas into the Philistine, Bohemian, and Creative
types, while suggestive, is obviously too simple for an adequate
description of the rich and complex variety of personalities.
This survey indicates the present status of attempts to define and
measure differences in original and human nature. A knowledge of
individual differences is important in every field of social control. It
is significant that these tests have been devised to meet problems of
policies and of administration in medicine, in industry, in education,
and in penal and reformatory institutions. Job analysis, personnel
administration, ungraded rooms, classes for exceptional children,
vocational guidance, indicate fields made possible by the development of
tests for measuring individual differences.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. ORIGINAL NATURE
A. _Racial Inheritance_
(1) Thomson, J. Arthur. _Heredity._ London and New York, 1908.
(2) Washburn, Margaret F. _The Animal Mind._ New York, 1908.
(3) Morgan, C. Lloyd. _Habit and Instinct._ London and New York, 1896.
(4) ----. _Instinct and Experience._ New York, 1912.
(5) Loeb, Jacques. _Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative
Psychology._ New York, 1900.
(6) ----. _Forced Movements._ Philadelphia and London, 1918.
(7) Jennings, H. S. _Behavior of the Lower Organisms._ New York, 1906.
(8) Watson, John. _Behavior: an Introduction to Comparative Psychology._
New York, 1914.
(9) Thorndike, E. L. _The Original Nature of Man._ Vol. I of
"Educational Psychology." New York, 1913.
(10) Paton, Stewart. _Human Behavior._ In relation to the study of
educational, social, and ethical problems. New York, 1921.
(11) Faris, Ellsworth. "Are Instincts Data or Hypotheses?" _American
Journal of Sociology_, XXVII (Sept., 1921.)
B. _Heredity and Eugenics_
1. Systematic Treatises:
(1) Castle, W. E., Coulter, J. M., Davenport, C. B., East, E. M., and
Tower, W. L. _Heredity and Eugenics._ Chicago, 1912.
(2) Davenport, C. B. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics._ New York, 1911.
(3) Goddard, Henry H. _Feeble-mindedness._ New York, 1914.
2. Inherited Inferiority of Families and Communities:
(1) Dugdale, Richard L. _The Jukes._ New York, 1877.
(2) M'Culloch, O. C. _The Tribe of Ishmael._ A study in social
degradation. National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1888,
154-59; 1889, 265; 1890, 435-37.
(3) Goddard, Henry H. _The Kallikak Family._ New York, 1912.
(4) Winship, A. E. _Jukes-Edwards._ A study in education and heredity.
Harrisburg, Pa., 1900.
(5) Estabrook, A. H., and Davenport, C. B. _The Nam Family._ A study in
cacogenics. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., 1912.
(6) Danielson, F. H., and Davenport, C. B. _The Hill Folk._ Report on a
rural community of hereditary defectives. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.,
1912.
(7) Kite, Elizabeth S. "The Pineys," _Survey_, XXXI (October 4, 1913),
7-13. 38-40.
(8) Gesell, A. L. "The Village of a Thousand Souls," _American
Magazine_, LXXVI (October, 1913), 11-13.
(9) Kostir, Mary S. _The Family of Sam Sixty._ Columbus, 1916.
(10) Finlayson, Anna W. _The Dack Family._ A study on hereditary lack of
emotional control. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y., 1916.
II. HUMAN NATURE
A. _Human Traits_
(1) Cooley, Charles H. _Human Nature and the Social Order._ New York,
1902.
(2) Shaler, N. S. _The Individual._ New York, 1900.
(3) Hocking, W. E. _Human Nature and Its Remaking._ New Haven, 1918.
(4) Edman, Irwin. _Human Traits and Their Social Significance._ Boston,
1919.
(5) Wallas, Graham. _Human Nature in Politics._ London, 1908.
(6) Lippmann, Walter. _A Preface to Politics._ [A criticism of present
politics from the point of view of human-nature studies.] New York and
London, 1913.
(7) James, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience._ A study in
human nature. London and New York, 1902.
(8) Ellis, Havelock. _Studies in the Psychology of Sex._ 6 vols.
Philadelphia, 1900-1905.
(9) Thomas, W. I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ Chicago, 1909.
[Contains extensive bibliographies.]
B. _The Mores_
1. Comparative Studies of Cultural Traits:
(1) Tylor, E. B. _Primitive Culture._ Researches into the development of
mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. 4th ed. 2
vols. London, 1903.
(2) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ A study of the sociological importance of
usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. Boston, 1906.
(3) Westermarck, E. A. _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas._
London and New York, 1908.
(4) Ratzel, F. _History of Mankind._ Translated by A. J. Butler. London
and New York, 1898.
(5) Vierkandt, A. _Naturvölker und Kulturvölker._ Leipzig, 1896.
(6) Lippert, Julius. _Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit in ihrem
organischem Aufbau._ Stuttgart, 1886-87.
(7) Frazer, J. G. _The Golden Bough._ A study in magic and religion. 3d
ed., 12 vols. (Volume XII is a bibliography of the preceding volumes.)
London and New York, 1907-15.
(8) Dewey, John, and Tufts, James H. _Ethics._ New York, 1908.
2. Studies of Traits of Individual Peoples:
(1) Fouillée, A. _Psychologie du peuple français._ Paris, 1898.
(2) Rhys, J., and Brynmor-Jones, D. _The Welsh People._ London, 1900.
(3) Fishberg, M. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment. London and
New York, 1911.
(4) Strausz, A. _Die Bulgaren._ Ethnographische Studien. Leipzig, 1898.
(5) Stern, B. _Geschichtete der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Russland._
Kultur, Aberglaube, Sitten, und Gebraüche. Zwei Bände. Berlin, 1907-8.
(6) Krauss, F. S. _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven._ Wien, 1885.
(7) Kidd, D. _The Essential Kafir._ London, 1904.
(8) Spencer, B., and Gillen, F. J. _The Native Tribes of Central
Australia._ London and New York, 1899.
C. _Human Nature and Industry_
(1) Taylor, F. W. _The Principles of Scientific Management._ New York,
1911.
(2) Tead, O., and Metcalf, H. C. _Personnel Administration; Its
Principles and Practice._ New York, 1920.
(3) Tead, O. _Instincts in Industry._ A study of working-class
psychology. Boston, 1918.
(4) Parker, C. H. _The Casual Laborer and Other Essays._ New York, 1920.
(5) Marot, Helen. _Creative Impulse in Industry; A Proposition for
Educators._ New York, 1918.
(6) Williams, Whiting. _What's on the Worker's Mind._ New York, 1920.
(7) Hollingworth, H. L. _Vocational Psychology; Its Problems and
Methods._ New York, 1916.
III. PERSONALITY
A. _The Genesis of Personality_
(1) Baldwin, J. M. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race:
Methods and Processes._ 3d rev. ed. New York and London, 1906.
(2) Baldwin, J. M. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental
Developments._ Chap ii, "The Social Person," pp. 66-98. 3d ed., rev. and
enl. New York and London, 1902.
(3) Sully, J. _Studies of Childhood._ rev. ed. New York, 1903.
(4) King, I. _The Psychology of Child Development._ Chicago, 1903.
(5) Thorndike, E. L. _Notes on Child Study._ New York, 1903.
(6) Hall, G. S. _Adolescence._ Its psychology and its relations to
physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and
education. 2 vols.. New York, 1904.
(7) Shinn, Milicent W. _Notes on the Development of a Child._ University
of California Studies. Nos. 1-4. 1893-99.
(8) Kirkpatrick, E. A. _The Individual in the Making._ Boston and New
York, 1911.
B. _Psychology and Sociology of the Person_
(1) James, William. _The Principles of Psychology._ Chap, x,
"Consciousness of Self," I, 291-401. New York, 1890.
(2) Bekhterev, V. M. (Bechterew, W. v.) _Die Persönlichkeit und die
Bedingungen ihrer Entwicklung und Gesundheit._ "Grenzfragen des Nerven
und Seelenlebens," No. 45. Wiesbaden, 1906.
(3) Binet, A. _Alterations of Personality._ Translated by H. G. Baldwin.
New York, 1896.
(4) Ribot, T. A. _Diseases of Personality._ Authorized translation, 2d
rev. ed. Chicago, 1895.
(5) Adler, A. _The Neurotic Constitution._ New York, 1917.
(6) Prince, M. _The Dissociation of a Personality._ A biographical study
in abnormal psychology. 2d ed. New York, 1913.
(7) ----. _The Unconscious._ The fundamentals of human personality,
normal and abnormal. New York, 1914.
(8) Coblenz, Felix. _Ueber das betende Ich in den Psalmen._ Ein Beitrag
zur Erklaerung des Psalters. Frankfort, 1897.
(9) Royce, J. _Studies of Good and Evil._ A series of essays upon
problems of philosophy and life. Chap, viii, "Some Observations on the
Anomalies of Self-consciousness," pp. 169-97. A paper read before the
Medico-Psychological Association of Boston, March 21, 1894. New York,
1898.
(10) Stern, B. _Werden and Wesen der Persönlichkeit._ Biologische und
historische Untersuchungen über menschliche Individualität. Wien und
Leipzig, 1913.
(11) Shand, A. F. _The Foundations of Character._ Being a study of the
tendencies of the emotions and sentiments. London, 1914.
C. _Materials for the Study of the Person_
(1) Theophrastus. _The Characters of Theophrastus._ Translated from the
Greek by R. C. Jebb. London, 1870.
(2) La Bruyère, Jean de. _Les caractères, ou les moeurs de ce siècle._
Paris, 1916. _The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère._ Translated from
the French by Henri Van Laun. London, 1885.
(3) Augustinus, Aurelius. _The Confessions of St. Augustine._ Translated
from the Latin by E. B. Pusly. London, 1907.
(4) Wesley, John. _The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley._ New York and
London, 1907.
(5) Amiel, H. _Journal intime._ Translated by Mrs. Ward. London and New
York, 1885.
(6) Cellini, Benvenuto. _Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini._ Translated from
the Italian by J. A. Symonds. New York, 1898.
(7) Woolman, John. _Journal of the Life, Gospel Labors, and Christian
Experiences of That Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman._
Dublin, 1794.
(8) Tolstoy, Count Leon. _My Confession._ Translated from the Russian.
Paris and New York, 1887. _My Religion._ Translated from the French. New
York, 1885.
(9) Riley, I. W. _The Founder of Mormonism._ A psychological study of
Joseph Smith, Jr. New York, 1902.
(10) Wilde, Oscar. _De Profundis._ New York and London, 1905.
(11) Keller, Helen. _The Story of My Life._ New York, 1903.
(12) Simmel, Georg. _Goethe._ Leipzig, 1913.
(13) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ "Life-Record of an Immigrant," III, 89-400. Boston, 1919.
(14) Probst, Ferdinand. _Der Fall Otto Weininger._ "Grenzfragen des
Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 31. Wiesbaden, 1904.
(15) Anthony, Katherine. _Margaret Fuller._ A psychological biography.
New York, 1920.
(16) Willard, Josiah Flynt. _My Life._ New York, 1908.
(17) ----. _Tramping with Tramps._ New York, 1899.
(18) Cummings, B. F. _The Journal of a Disappointed Man_, by Barbellion,
W. N. P. [_pseud._] Introduction by H. G. Wells. New York, 1919.
(19) Audoux, Marguerite. _Marie Claire._ Introduction by Octave
Mirabeau. Translated from the French by J. N. Raphael. London and New
York, 1911.
(20) Clemens, Samuel L. _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_, by Mark Twain
[_pseud._]. New York, 1903.
(21) Hapgood, Hutchins. _The Autobiography of a Thief._ New York, 1903.
(22) Johnson, James W. _The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man._
Published anonymously. Boston, 1912.
(23) Washington, Booker T. _Up from Slavery._ An autobiography. New
York, 1901.
(24) Du Bois, W. E. B. _The Souls of Black Folk._ Chicago, 1903.
(25) Beers, C. W. _A Mind That Found Itself._ An autobiography. 4th rev.
ed. New York, 1917.
IV. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
A. _The Nature of Individual Differences_
(1) Thorndike, E. L. _Individuality._ Boston, 1911.
(2) ----. "Individual Differences and Their Causes," _Educational
Psychology_, III, 141-388. New York, 1913-14.
(3) Stern, W. _Ueber Psychologie der individuellen Differenzen._
Leipzig, 1900.
(4) Hollingworth, Leta S. _The Psychology of Subnormal Children._ Chap.
i. "Individual Differences." New York, 1920.
B. _Mental Differences_
(1) Goddard, H. H. _Feeble-mindedness._ Its causes and consequences. New
York, 1914.
(2) Tredgold, A. F. _Mental Deficiency._ 2d ed. New York, 1916.
(3) Bronner, Augusta F. _The Psychology of Special Abilities and
Disabilities._ Boston, 1917.
(4) Healy, William. _Case Studies of Mentally and Morally Abnormal
Types._ Cambridge, Mass., 1912.
C. _Temperamental Differences_
1. Systematic Treatises:
(1) Fouillée, A. _Tempérament et caractère selon les individus, les
sexes et les races._ Paris, 1895.
(2) Hirt, Eduard. _Die Temperamente, ihr Wesen, ihre Bedeutung, für das
seelische Erleben und ihre besonderen Gestaltungen._ "Grenzfragen des
Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 40. Wiesbaden, 1905.
(3) Hoch, A., and Amsden, G. S. "A Guide to the Descriptive Study of
Personality," _Review of Neurology and Psychiatry_, (1913), pp. 577-87.
(4) Kraepelin, E. _Psychiatrie._ Ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Ärzte.
Vol. IV, chap. xvi, pp. 1973-2116. 8th ed. 4 vols. Leipzig, 1909-15.
(5) Loewenfeld, L. _Ueber die geniale Geistesthätigkeit mit besonderer
Berücksichtigung des Genie's für bildende Kunst._ "Grenzfragen des
Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 21. Wiesbaden, 1903.
2. Temperamental Types:
(1) Lombroso, C. _The Man of Genius._ Translated from the Italian.
London and New York, 1891.
(2) ----. _L'uomo delinquente in rapporto all'antropologia, alla
giurisprudenza ed alle discipline carcerarie._ 3 vols. 5th ed. Torino,
1896-97.
(3) Goring, Charles. _The English Convict._ A statistical study. London,
1913.
(4) Wilmanns, Karl. _Psychopathologie des Landstreichers._ Leipzig,
1906.
(5) Downey, June E. "The Will Profile." A tentative scale for
measurement of the volitional pattern. _University of Wyoming Bulletin_,
Laramie, 1919.
(6) Pagnier, A. _Le vagabond._ Paris, 1910.
(7) Kowalewski, A. _Studien zur Psychologie der Pessimismus._
"Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 24. Wiesbaden, 1904.
D. _Sex Differences_
(1) Ellis, H. H. _Man and Woman._ A study of human secondary sexual
characters. 5th rev. ed. London and New York, 1914.
(2) Geddes, P., and Thomson, J. A. _The Evolution of Sex._ London, 1889.
(3) Thompson, Helen B. _The Mental Traits of Sex._ An experimental
investigation of the normal mind in men and women. Chicago, 1903.
(4) Montague, Helen, and Hollingworth, Leta S. "The Comparative
Variability of the Sexes at Birth," _American Journal of Sociology_, XX
(1914-15), 335-70.
(5) Thomas, W. I. _Sex and Society._ Chicago, 1907.
(6) Weidensall, C. J. _The Mentality of the Criminal Woman._ A
comparative study of the criminal woman, the working girl, and the
efficient working woman, in a series of mental and physical tests.
Baltimore, 1916.
(7) Hollingworth, Leta S. "Variability as Related to Sex Differences in
Achievement," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1913-14), 510-30.
[Bibliography.]
E. _Racial Differences_
(1) Boas, F. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ New York, 1911.
(2) _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits._ 5 vols.
Cambridge, 1901-08.
(3) Le Bon, G. _The Psychology of Peoples._ Its influence on their
evolution. New York and London, 1898. [Translation.]
(4) Reuter, E. B. _The Mulatto in the United States._ Boston, 1918.
(5) Bruner, F. G. "Hearing of Primitive Peoples," _Archives of
Psychology_, No. 11. New York, 1908.
(6) Woodworth, R. S. "Racial Differences in Mental Traits," _Science_,
new series, XXI (1910), 171-86.
(7) Morse, Josiah. "A Comparison of White and Colored Children Measured
by the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence," _Popular Science Monthly_,
LXXXIVC (1914), 75-79.
(8) Ferguson, G. O., Jr. "The Psychology of the Negro, an Experimental
Study," _Archives of Psychology_, No. 36. New York, 1916.
[Bibliography.]
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Cooley's Conception of Human Nature
2. Human Nature and the Instincts
3. Human Nature and the Mores
4. Studies in the Evolution of the Mores; Prohibition, Birth Control,
the Social Status of Children
5. Labor Management as a Problem in Human Nature
6. Human Nature in Politics
7. Personality and the Self
8. Personality as a Sociological Concept
9. Temperament, Milieu, and Social Types; the Politician, Labor Leader,
Minister, Actor, Lawyer, Taxi Driver, Chorus Girl, etc.
10. Bohemian, Philistine, and Genius
11. The Beggar, Vagabond, and Hobo
12. Literature as Source Material for the Study of Character
13. Outstanding Personalities in a Selected Community
14. Autobiography as Source Material for the Study of Human Nature
15. Individual and Racial Differences Compared
16. The Man of Genius as a Biological and a Sociological Product
17. The Jukes and Kindred Studies of Inferior Groups
18. History of the Binet-Simon Tests
19. Mental Measurements and Vocational Guidance
20. Psychiatry and Juvenile Delinquency
21. Recent Studies of the Adolescent Girl
22. Mental Inferiority and Crime
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Is human nature that which is fundamental and alike in all
individuals or is it those qualities which we recognize and appreciate
as human when we meet them in individuals?
2. What is the relation between original nature and the environment?
3. What is the basis for the distinction made by Thorndike between
reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities?
4. Read carefully Thorndike's _Inventory of Original Tendencies_. What
illustrations of the different original traits occur to you?
5. What do you understand by Park's statement that man is not born
human?
6. "Human nature is a superstructure." What value has this metaphor?
What are its limitations? Suggest a metaphor which more adequately
illustrates the relation of original nature to acquired nature.
7. In what sense can it be said that habit is a means of controlling
original nature?
8. What, according to Park, is the relation of character to instinct and
habit? Do you agree with him?
9. What do you understand by the statement that "original nature is
blind?"
10. What relation has an ideal to (a) instinct and (b) group life?
11. In what sense may we speak of the infant as the "natural man"?
12. To what extent are racial differences (a) those of original
nature, (b) those acquired from experience?
13. What evidence is there for the position that sex differences in
mental traits are acquired rather than inborn?
14. How do you distinguish between mentality and temperament?
15. How do you account for the great differences in achievement between
the sexes?
16. What evidence is there of temperamental differences between the
sexes? between races?
17. In the future will women equal men in achievement?
18. What, in your judgment, is the range of individual differences? Is
it less or greater than that of racial and sex differences?
19. What do you understand is the distinction between racial inheritance
as represented by the instincts, and innate individual differences? Do
you think that both should be regarded as part of original nature?
20. What is the effect of education and the division of labor (a) upon
instincts and (b) upon individual differences?
21. Are individual differences or likenesses more important for society?
22. What do you understand to be the significance of individual
differences (a) for social life; (b) for education; (c) for
industry?
23. What do you understand by the remaking of human nature? What is the
importance of this principle for politics, industry, and social
progress?
24. Explain the proverbs: "Habit is ten times nature," "Habit is second
nature."
25. What is Cooley's definition of human nature? Do you agree or
disagree with him? Elaborate your position.
26. To what extent does human nature differ with race and geographic
environment?
27. How would you reinterpret Aristotle's and Hobbes's conception of
human nature in the light of this definition?
28. What illustrations of the difference between folkways and mores
would you suggest?
29. Classify the following forms of behavior under (a) folkways or
(b) mores: tipping the hat, saluting an officer, monogamy, attending
church, Sabbath observance, prohibition, immersion as a form of baptism,
the afternoon tea of the Englishman, the double standard of morals, the
Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Constitution of the United
States.
30. What do you understand to be the relation of the mores to human
nature?
31. In what way is (a) habit related to will? (b) custom related to
the general will?
32. How do you distinguish the general will (a) from law, (b) from
custom?
33. Does any one of the following terms embody your conception of what
is expressed by _Sittlichkeit_: good form, decency, self-respect,
propriety, good breeding, convention?
34. Describe and analyze several concrete social situations where
_Sittlichkeit_ rather than conscience or law controlled the behavior of
the person or of the group.
35. What do you understand by convention? What is the relation of
convention to instinct? Is convention a part of human nature to the same
extent as loyalty, honor, etc.?
36. What is meant by the saying that mores, ritual, and convention are
in the words of Hegel "objective mind"?
37. "The organism, and the brain as its highest representative,
constitute the real personality." What characteristics of personality
are stressed in this definition?
38. Is there any significance to the fact that personality is derived
from the Latin word _persona_ (mask worn by actors)?
39. Is the conventional self a product of habit, or of _Sittlichkeit_,
or of law, or of conscience?
40. What is the importance of other people to the development of
self-consciousness?
41. Under what conditions does self-consciousness arise?
42. What do you understand by personality as a complex? As a total of
mental complexes?
43. What is the relation of memory to personality as illustrated in the
case of dual personality and of moods?
44. What do you understand Cooley to mean by the looking-glass self?
45. What illustration would you suggest to indicate that an individual's
sense of his personality depends upon his status in the group?
46. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
Is personality adequately defined in terms of a person's conception of
his rôle?
47. What is the sociological significance of the saying, "If you would
have a virtue, feign it"?
48. What, according to Bechterew, is the relation of personality to the
social _milieu_?
49. What do you understand by the personality of peoples? What is the
relation of the personality of peoples and the personalities of
individuals who constitute the peoples?
50. What do you understand by the difference between nature and nurture?
51. What are acquired characters? How are they transmitted?
52. What do you understand by the Mendelian principles of inheritance:
(a) the hypothesis of unit characters; (b) the law of dominance; and
(c) the law of segregation?
53. What illustrations of the differences between instinct and tradition
would you suggest?
54. What is the difference between the blue eye as a defect in
pigmentation, and of feeble-mindedness as a defective characteristic?
55. Should it be the policy of society to eliminate all members below a
certain mental level either by segregation or by more drastic measures?
56. What principles of treatment of practical value to parents and
teachers would you draw from the fact that feeble inhibition of temper
is a trait transmitted by biological inheritance?
57. Why is an understanding of the principles of biological inheritance
of importance to sociology?
58. In what two ways, according to Keller, are acquired characters
transmitted by tradition?
59. Make a list of the different types of things derived by the person
(a) from his biological inheritance, and (b) from his social
heritage.
60. What traits, temperament, mentality, manner, or character, are
distinctive of members of your family? Which of these have been
inherited, which acquired?
61. What problems in society are due to defects in man's original
nature?
62. What problems are the result of defects in folkways and mores?
63. In what way do racial temperament and tradition determine national
characteristics? To what extent is the religious behavior of the negro
determined (a) by temperament, (b) by imitation of white culture?
How do you explain Scotch economy, Irish participation in politics, the
intellectuality of the Jew, etc.?
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Charles H. Cooley, _Social Organization_, pp. 28-30.
[56] Charles H. Cooley, _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pp. 152-53.
[57] _The Theory of the Leisure Class_ (New York, 1899).
[58] From Edward L. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_, pp. 1-7.
(Teachers College, Columbia University, 1913. Author's copyright.)
[59] Compiled from Edward L. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_,
pp. 43-194. (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1913. Author's
copyright.)
[60] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 9-16. (The
Zalaz Corporation, 1915.)
[61] Adapted from Milicent W. Shinn, _The Biography of a Baby_, pp.
20-77. (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1900. Author's copyright.)
[62] From Albert Moll, _Sexual Life of the Child_, pp. 38-49. Translated
from the German by Dr. Eden Paul. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1902.
Reprinted by permission.)
[63] From C. S. Myers, "On the Permanence of Racial Differences," in
_Papers on Inter-racial Problems_, edited by G. Spiller, pp. 74-76. (P.
S. King & Son, 1911.)
[64] From Edward L. Thorndike, _Individuality_, pp. 1-8. (By permission
of and special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911.)
[65] From W. E. Hocking, _Human Nature and Its Remaking_, pp. 2-12.
(Yale University Press, 1918.)
[66] From William G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 2-8. (Ginn & Co., 1906.)
[67] Translated and adapted from Ferdinand Tönnies, _Die Sitte_, pp.
7-14. (Literarische Anstalt, Rütten und Loening, 1909.)
[68] From Viscount Haldane, "Higher Nationality," in _International
Conciliation_, November, 1913, No. 72, pp. 4-12.
[69] From Th. Ribot, _The Diseases of Personality_, pp. 156-57.
Translated from the French. (The Open Court Publishing Co., 1891.)
[70] From Morton Prince, "The Unconscious," in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, III (1908-9), 277-96, 426.
[71] From Alfred Binet, _Alterations of Personality_, pp. 248-57. (D.
Appleton & Co., 1896.)
[72] From L. G. Winston, "Myself and I," in the _American Journal of
Psychology_, XIX (1908), 562-63.
[73] From William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp.
166-73. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.)
[74] Translated from V. M. Bekhterev (W. v. Bechterew), _Die
Persönlichkeit und die Bedingungen ihrer Entwicklung und Gesundheit_,
pp. 3-5. (J. F. Bergmann, 1906.)
[75] From J. Arthur Thomson, _Heredity_, pp. 244-49. (G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1908.)
[76] Adapted from C. B. Davenport, "The Method of Evolution," in Castle,
Coulter, Davenport, East, and Tower, _Heredity and Eugenics_, pp.
269-87. (The University of Chicago Press, 1912.)
[77] From Albert G. Keller, _Societal Evolution_, pp. 212-15. (Published
by The Macmillan Co., 1915. Reprinted by permission.)
[78] From Robert E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and
Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological
Society_, XIII (1918), 58-63.
[79] Émile Zola, _The Experimental Novel_ (New York, 1893), pp. 8-9.
Translated from the French by Belle M. Sherman.
CHAPTER III
SOCIETY AND THE GROUP
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Society, the Community, and the Group
Human nature and the person are products of society. This is the sum and
substance of the readings in the preceding chapter. But what, then, is
society--this web in which the lives of individuals are so inextricably
interwoven, and which seems at the same time so external and in a sense
alien to them? From the point of view of common sense, "society" is
sometimes conceived as the sum total of social institutions. The family,
the church, industry, the state, all taken together, constitute society.
In this use of the word, society is identified with social structure,
something more or less external to individuals.
In accordance with another customary use of the term, "society" denotes
a collection of persons. This is a vaguer notion but it at least
identifies society with individuals instead of setting it apart from
them. But this definition is manifestly superficial. Society is not a
collection of persons in the sense that a brick pile is a collection of
bricks. However we may conceive the relation of the parts of society to
the whole, society is not a mere physical aggregation and not a mere
mathematical or statistical unit.
Various explanations that strike deeper than surface observation have
been proposed as solutions for this cardinal problem of the social one
and the social many; of the relation of society to the individual.
Society has been described as a tool, an instrument, as it were, an
extension of the individual organism. The argument runs something like
this: The human hand, though indeed a part of the physical organism, may
be regarded as an instrument of the body as a whole. If, as by accident
it be lost, it is conceivable that a mechanical hand might be
substituted for it, which, though not a part of the body, would function
for all practical purposes as a hand of flesh and blood. A hoe may be
regarded as a highly specialized hand, so also logically, if less
figuratively, a plow. So the hand of another person if it does your
bidding may be regarded as your instrument, your hand. Language is
witness to the fact that employers speak of "the hands" which they
"work." Social institutions may likewise be thought of as tools of
individuals for accomplishing their purposes. Logically, therefore,
society, either as a sum of institutions or as a collection of persons,
may be conceived of as a sum total of instrumentalities, extensions of
the functions of the human organism which enable individuals to carry on
life-activities. From this standpoint society is an immense co-operative
concern of mutual services.
This latter is an aspect of society which economists have sought to
isolate and study. From this point of view the relations of individuals
are conceived as purely external to one another, like that of the plants
in a plant community. Co-operation, so far as it exists, is competitive
and "free."
In contrast with the view of society which regards social institutions
and the community itself as the mere instruments and tools of the
individuals who compose it, is that which conceives society as resting
upon biological adaptations, that is to say upon instincts,
gregariousness, for example, imitation, or like-mindedness. The classic
examples of societies based on instinct are the social insects, the
well-known bee and the celebrated ant. In human society the family, with
its characteristic differences and interdependences of the sexes and the
age groups, husband and wife, children and parents, most nearly realizes
this description of society. In so far as the organization of society is
predetermined by inherited or constitutional differences, as is the case
pre-eminently in the so-called animal societies, competition ceases and
the relations of its component individuals become, so to speak,
internal, and a permanent part of the structure of the group.
The social organization of human beings, on the other hand, the various
types of social groups, and the changes which take place in them at
different times under varying circumstances, are determined not merely
by instincts and by competition but by custom, tradition, public
opinion, and contract. In animal societies as herds, flocks, and packs,
collective behavior seems obviously to be explained in terms of instinct
and emotion. In the case of man, however, instincts are changed into
habits; emotions, into sentiments. Furthermore, all these forms of
behavior tend to become conventionalized and thus become relatively
independent of individuals and of instincts. The behavior of the person
is thus eventually controlled by the formal standards which, implicit in
the mores, are explicit in the laws. Society now may be defined as the
social heritage of _habit and sentiment_, _folkways and mores_,
_technique and culture_, all of which are incident or necessary to
collective human behavior.
Human society, then, unlike animal society is mainly a social heritage,
created in and transmitted by communication. The continuity and life of
a society depend upon its success in transmitting from one generation to
the next its folkways, mores, technique, and ideals. From the standpoint
of collective behavior these cultural traits may all be reduced to the
one term "consensus." Society viewed abstractly is an organization of
individuals; considered concretely it is a complex of organized habits,
sentiments, and social attitudes--in short, consensus.
The terms society, community, and social group are now used by students
with a certain difference of emphasis but with very little difference in
meaning. Society is the more abstract and inclusive term, and society is
made up of social groups, each possessing its own specific type of
organization but having at the same time all the general characteristics
of society in the abstract. Community is the term which is applied to
societies and social groups where they are considered from the point of
view of the geographical distribution of the individuals and
institutions of which they are composed. It follows that every community
is a society, but not every society is a community. An individual may
belong to many social groups but he will not ordinarily belong to more
than one community, except in so far as a smaller community of which he
is a member is included in a larger of which he is also a member.
However, an individual is not, at least from a sociological point of
view, a member of a community because he lives in it but rather because,
and to the extent that, he participates in the common life of the
community.
The term social group has come into use with the attempts of students to
classify societies. Societies may be classified with reference to the
rôle which they play in the organization and life of larger social
groups or societies. The internal organization of any given social
group will be determined by its external relation to other groups in the
society of which it is a part as well as by the relations of individuals
within the group to one another. A boys' gang, a girls' clique, a
college class, or a neighborhood conforms to this definition quite as
much as a labor union, a business enterprise, a political party, or a
nation. One advantage of the term "group" lies in the fact that it may
be applied to the smallest as well as to the largest forms of human
association.
2. Classification of the Materials
Society, in the most inclusive sense of that term, the Great Society, as
Graham Wallas described it, turns out upon analysis to be a
constellation of other smaller societies, that is to say races, peoples,
parties, factions, cliques, clubs, etc. The community, the
world-community, on the other hand, which is merely the Great Society
viewed from the standpoint of the territorial distribution of its
members, presents a different series of social groupings and the Great
Society in this aspect exhibits a totally different pattern. From the
point of view of the territorial distribution of the individuals that
constitute it, the world-community is composed of nations, colonies,
spheres of influence, cities, towns, local communities, neighborhoods,
and families.
These represent in a rough way the subject-matter of sociological
science. Their organization, interrelation, constituent elements, and
the characteristic changes (social processes) which take place in them
are the phenomena of sociological science.
Human beings as we meet them are mobile entities, variously distributed
through geographical space. What is the nature of the connection between
individuals which permits them at the same time to preserve their
distances and act corporately and consentiently--with a common purpose,
in short? These distances which separate individuals are not merely
spatial, they are psychical. Society exists where these distances have
been _relatively_ overcome. Society exists, in short, not merely where
there are people but where there is communication.
The materials in this chapter are intended to show (1) the fundamental
character of the relations which have been established between
individuals through communication; (2) the gradual evolution of these
relations in animal and human societies. On the basis of the principle
thus established it is possible to work out a rational classification of
social groups.
Espinas defines society in terms of corporate action. Wherever separate
individuals act together as a unit, where they co-operate as though they
were parts of the same organism, there he finds society. Society from
this standpoint is not confined to members of one species, but may be
composed of different members of species where there is permanent joint
activity. In the study of symbiosis among animals, it is significant to
note the presence of structural adaptations in one or both species. In
the taming and domestication of animals by man the effects of symbiosis
are manifest. Domestication, by the selection in breeding of traits
desired by man, changes the original nature of the animal. Taming is
achieved by control of habits in transferring to man the filial and
gregarious responses of the young naturally given to its parents and
members of its kind. Man may be thought of as domesticated through
natural social selection. Eugenics is a conscious program of further
domestication by the elimination of defective physical and mental racial
traits and by the improvement of the racial stock through the social
selection of superior traits. Taming has always been a function of human
society, but it is dignified by such denominations as "education,"
"social control," "punishment," and "reformation."
The plant community offers the simplest and least qualified example of
the community. Plant life, in fact, offers an illustration of a
_community_ which is _not a society_. It is not a society because it is
an organization of individuals whose relations, if not wholly external,
are, at any rate, "unsocial" in so far as there is no consensus. The
plant community is interesting, moreover, because it exhibits in the
barest abstraction, the character of _competitive co-operation_, the
aspect of social life which constitutes part of the special
subject-matter of economic science.
This struggle for existence, in some form or other, is in fact essential
to the existence of society. Competition, segregation, and accommodation
serve to maintain the social distances, to fix the status, and preserve
the independence of the individual in the social relation. A society in
which all distances, physical as well as psychical, had been abolished,
in which there was neither taboo, prejudice, nor reserve of any sort; a
society in which the intimacies were absolute, would be a society in
which there were neither persons nor freedom. The processes of
competition, segregation, and accommodation brought out in the
description of the plant community are quite comparable with the same
processes in animal and human communities. A village, town, city, or
nation may be studied from the standpoint of the adaptation, struggle
for existence, and survival of its individual members in the environment
created by the community as a whole.
Society, as Dewey points out, if based on instinct is an effect of
communication. _Consensus_ even more than _co-operation_ or _corporate
action_ is the distinctive mark of human society. Dewey, however, seems
to restrict the use of consensus to group decisions in which all the
members consciously and rationally participate. Tradition and sentiment
are, however, forms of consensus quite as much as constitutions, rules,
and elections.
Le Bon's classification of social groups into heterogeneous and
homogeneous crowds, while interesting and suggestive, is clearly
inadequate. Many groups familiar to all of us, as the family, the
play-group, the neighborhood, the public, find no place in his
system.[80]
Concrete descriptions of group behavior indicate three elements in the
consensus of the members of the group. The first is the characteristic
state of group feeling called _esprit de corps_. The enthusiasm of the
two sides in a football contest, the ecstasy of religious ceremonial,
the fellowship of members of a fraternity, the brotherhood of a monastic
band are all different manifestations of group spirit.
The second element in consensus has become familiar through the term
"morale." Morale may be defined as the collective will. Like the will of
the individual it represents an organization of behavior tendencies. The
discipline of the individual, his subordination to the group, lies in
his participation and reglementation in social activities.
The third element of consensus which makes for unified behavior of the
members of the group has been analyzed by Durkheim under the term
"collective representations." Collective representations are the
concepts which embody the objectives of group activity.
The totem of primitive man, the flag of a nation, a religious creed, the
number system, and Darwin's theory of the descent of man--all these are
collective representations. Every society and every social group has, or
tends to have, its own symbols and its own language. The language and
other symbolic devices by which a society carries on its collective
existence are collective representations. Animals do not possess them.
II. MATERIALS
A. SOCIETY AND SYMBIOSIS
1. Definition of Society[81]
The idea of society is that of a permanent co-operation in which
separate living beings undertake to accomplish an identical act. These
beings may find themselves brought by their conditions to a point where
their co-operation forces them to group themselves in space in some
definite form, but it is by no means necessary that they should be in
juxtaposition for them to act together and thus to form a society. A
customary reciprocation of services among more or less independent
individualities is the characteristic feature of the social life, a
feature that contact or remoteness does not essentially modify, nor the
apparent disorder nor the regular disposition of the parties in space.
Two beings may then form what is to the eyes a single mass, and may
live, not only in contact with each other, but even in a state of mutual
penetration without constituting a society. It is enough in such a case
that one looks at them as entirely distinct, that their activities tend
to opposite or merely different ends. If their functions, instead of
co-operating, diverge; if the good of one is the evil of the other,
whatever the intimacy of their contact may be, no social bond unites
them.
But the nature of the functions and the form of the organs are
inseparable. If two beings are endowed with functions that necessarily
combine, they are also endowed with organs, if not similar, at least
corresponding. And these beings with like or corresponding organs are
either of the same species or of very nearly the same species.
However, circumstances may be met where two beings with quite different
organs and belonging even to widely remote species may be accidentally
and at a single point useful to each other. A habitual relation may be
established between their activities, but only on this one point, and in
the time limits in which the usefulness exists. Such a case gives the
occasion, if not for a society, at least for an association; that is to
say, a union less necessary, less strict, less durable, may find its
origin in such a meeting. In other words, beside the normal societies
formed of elements specifically alike, which cannot exist without each
other, there will be room for more accidental groupings, formed of
elements more or less specifically unlike, which convenience unites and
not necessity. We will commence with a study of the latter.
To society the most alien relations of two living beings which can be
produced are those of the predator and his prey. In general, the
predator is bulkier than his prey, since he overcomes him and devours
him. Yet smaller ones sometimes attack larger creatures, consuming them,
however, by instalments, and letting them live that they themselves may
live on them as long as possible. In such a case they are forced to
remain for a longer or a shorter time attached to the body of their
victim, carried about by it wherever the vicissitudes of its life lead
them. Such animals have received the name of parasites. Parasitism forms
the line inside of which our subject begins; for if one can imagine that
the parasite, instead of feeding on the animal from whom he draws his
subsistence, is content to live on the remains of the other's meals, one
will find himself in the presence, not yet of an actual society, but of
half the conditions of a society; that is to say, a relation between two
beings such that, all antagonism ceasing, one of the two is useful to
the other. Such is commensalism. However, this association does not yet
offer the essential element of all society, co-operation. There is
co-operation when the commensal is not less useful to his host than the
latter is to the commensal himself, when the two are concerned in living
in a reciprocal relation and in developing their double activity in
corresponding ways toward a single and an identical goal. One has given
to this mode of activity the name of mutualism. Domestication is only
one form of it. Parasitism, commensalism, mutualism, exist with animals
among the different species.
2. Symbiosis (literally "living together")[82]
In gaining their wide and intimate acquaintance with the vegetable world
the ants have also become acquainted with a large number of insects that
obtain their nutriment directly from plants, either by sucking up their
juices or by feeding on their foliage. To the former group belong the
phytophthorous Homoptera, the plant lice, scale insects, or mealy bugs,
tree-hoppers, lantern flies, and jumping plant lice; to the latter
belong the caterpillars of the lycaenid butterflies, the "blues," or
"azures," as they are popularly called. All of these creatures excrete
liquids which are eagerly sought by the ants and constitute the whole,
or, at any rate, an important part of the food of certain species. In
return the Homoptera and caterpillars receive certain services from the
ants, so that the relations thus established between these widely
different insects may be regarded as a kind of symbiosis. These
relations are most apparent in the case of the aphids, and these insects
have been more often and more closely studied in Europe and America.
The consociation of the ants with the aphids is greatly facilitated by
the gregarious and rather sedentary habits of the latter, especially in
their younger, wingless stages, for the ants are thus enabled to obtain
a large amount of food without losing time and energy in ranging far
afield from their nests. Then, too, the ants may establish their nests
in the immediate vicinity of the aphid droves or actually keep them in
their nests or in "sheds" carefully constructed for the purpose.
Some ants obtain the honey-dew merely by licking the surface of the
leaves and stems on which it has fallen, but many species have learned
to stroke the aphids and induce them to void the liquid gradually so
that it can be imbibed directly. A drove of plant lice, especially when
it is stationed on young and succulent leaves or twigs, may produce
enough honey-dew to feed a whole colony of ants for a considerable
period.
As the relations between ants and the various Homoptera have been
regarded as mutualistic, it may be well to marshal the facts which seem
to warrant this interpretation. The term "mutualism" as applied to these
cases means, of course, that the aphids, coccids, and membracids are of
service to the ants and in turn profit by the companionship of these
more active and aggressive insects. Among the modifications in structure
and behavior which may be regarded as indicating on the part of aphids
unmistakable evidence of adaptation to living with ants, the following
may be cited:
1. The aphids do not attempt to escape from the ants or to defend
themselves with their siphons, but accept the presence of these
attendants as a matter of course.
2. The aphids respond to the solicitations of the ants by extruding the
droplets of honey-dew gradually and not by throwing them off to a
distance with a sudden jerk, as they do in the absence of ants.
3. Many species of Aphididae that live habitually with ants have
developed a perianal circlet of stiff hairs which support the drop of
honey-dew till it can be imbibed by the ants. This circlet is lacking in
aphids that are rarely or never visited by ants.
4. Certain observations go to show that aphids, when visited by ants,
extract more of the plant juices than when unattended.
The adaptations on the part of the ants are, with a single doubtful
exception, all modifications in behavior and not in structure.
1. Ants do not seize and kill aphids as they do when they encounter
other sedentary defenseless insects.
2. The ants stroke the aphids in a particular manner in order to make
them excrete the honey-dew, and know exactly where to expect the
evacuated liquid.
3. The ants protect the aphids. Several observers have seen the ants
driving away predatory insects.
4. Many aphidicolous ants, when disturbed, at once seize and carry their
charges in their mandibles to a place of safety, showing very plainly
their sense of ownership and interest in these helpless creatures.
5. This is also exhibited by all ants that harbor root-aphids and
root-coccids in their nests. Not only are these insects kept in
confinement by the ants, but they are placed by them on the roots. In
order to do this the ants remove the earth from the surfaces of the
roots and construct galleries and chambers around them so that the
Homoptera may have easy access to their food and even move about at
will.
6. Many ants construct, often at some distance from their nests, little
closed pavilions or sheds of earth, carton, or silk, as a protection for
their cattle and for themselves. The singular habit may be merely a more
recent development from the older and more general habit of excavating
tunnels and chambers about roots and subterranean stems.
7. The solicitude of the ants not only envelops the adult aphids and
coccids, but extends also to their eggs and young. Numerous observers
have observed ants in the autumn collecting and storing aphid eggs in
the chambers of their nests, caring for them through the winter and in
the spring placing the recently hatched plant lice on the stems and
roots of the plants.
In the foregoing I have discussed the ethological relations of ants to a
variety of other organisms. This, however, did not include an account of
some of the most interesting symbiotic relations, namely, those of the
ants to other species of their own taxonomic group and to termites. This
living together of colonies of different species may be properly
designated as social symbiosis, to distinguish it from the simple
symbiosis that obtains between individual organisms of different species
and the intermediate form of symbiosis exhibited by individual organisms
that live in ant or termite colonies.
The researches of the past forty years have brought to light a
remarkable array of instances of social symbiosis, varying so much in
intimacy and complexity that it is possible to construct a series
ranging from mere simultaneous occupancy of a very narrow ethological
station, or mere contiguity of domicile, to an actual fusion, involving
the vital dependence or parasitism of a colony of one species on that of
another. Such a series is, of course, purely conceptual and does not
represent the actual course of development in nature, where, as in the
animal and vegetable kingdoms in general, development has not followed a
simple linear course, but has branched out repeatedly and terminated in
the varied types at the present time.
It is convenient to follow the European writers, von Hagens, Forel,
Wasmann, and others, in grouping all the cases of social symbiosis under
two heads, the compound nests and the mixed colonies. Different species
of ants or of ants and termites are said to form compound nests when
their galleries are merely contiguous or actually interpenetrate and
open into one another, although the colonies which inhabit them bring
up their respective offspring in different apartments. In mixed
colonies, on the other hand, which, in a state of nature, can be formed
only by species of ants of close taxonomic affinities, the insects live
together in a single nest and bring up their young in common. Although
each of these categories comprises a number of dissimilar types of
social symbiosis, and although it is possible, under certain
circumstances, as will be shown in the sequel, to convert a compound
nest into a mixed colony, the distinction is nevertheless fundamental.
It must be admitted, however, that both types depend in last analysis on
the dependent, adoption-seeking instincts of the queen ant and on the
remarkable plasticity which enables allied species and genera to live in
very close proximity to one another. By a strange paradox these
peculiarities have been produced in the struggle for existence, although
this struggle is severer among different species of ants than between
ants and other organisms. As Forel says: "The greatest enemies of ants
are other ants, just as the greatest enemies of men are other men."
3. The Taming and the Domestication of Animals[83]
Primitive man was a hunter almost before he had the intelligence to use
weapons, and from the earliest times he must have learned something
about the habits of the wild animals he pursued for food or for
pleasure, or from which he had to escape. It was probably as a hunter
that he first came to adopt young animals which he found in the woods or
the plains, and made the surprising discovery that these were willing to
remain under his protection and were pleasing and useful. He passed
gradually from being a hunter to becoming a keeper of flocks and herds.
From these early days to the present time, the human race has taken an
interest in the lower animals, and yet extremely few have been really
domesticated. The living world would seem to offer an almost unlimited
range of creatures which might be turned to our profit and as
domesticated animals minister to our comfort or convenience. And yet it
seems as if there were some obstacle rooted in the nature of animals or
in the powers of man, for the date of the adoption by man of the few
domesticated species lies in remote, prehistoric antiquity. The surface
of the earth has been explored, the physiology of breeding and feeding
has been studied, our knowledge of the animal kingdom has been vastly
increased, and yet there is hardly a beast bred in the farm-yard today
with which the men who made stone weapons were not acquainted and which
they had not tamed. Most of the domestic animals of Europe, America, and
Asia came originally from Central Asia, and have spread thence in charge
of their masters, the primitive hunters who captured them.
No monkeys have been domesticated. Of the carnivores only the cat and
the dog are truly domesticated. Of the ungulates there are horses and
asses, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, and reindeer. Among rodents there are
rabbits and guinea-pigs, and possibly some of the fancy breeds of rats
and mice should be included. Among birds there are pigeons, fowls,
peacocks, and guinea-fowl, and aquatic birds such as swans, geese, and
ducks, whilst the only really domesticated passerine bird is the canary.
Goldfish are domesticated, and the invertebrate bees and silk-moths must
not be forgotten. It is not very easy to draw a line between
domesticated animals and animals that are often bred in partial or
complete captivity. Such antelopes as elands, fallow-deer, roe-deer, and
the ostriches of ostrich farms are on the border-line of being
domesticated.
It is also difficult to be quite certain as to what is meant by a tame
animal. Cockroaches usually scuttle away when they are disturbed and
seem to have learnt that human beings have a just grievance against
them. But many people have no horror of them. A pretty girl, clean and
dainty in her ways, and devoted to all kinds of animals, used to like
sitting in a kitchen that was infested with these repulsive creatures,
and told me that when she was alone they would run over her dress and
were not in the least startled when she took them up. I have heard of a
butterfly which used to come and sip sugar from the hand of a lady; and
those who have kept spiders and ants declare that these intelligent
creatures learn to distinguish their friends. So also fish, like the
great carp in the garden of the palace of Fontainebleau, and many fishes
in aquaria and private ponds, learn to come to be fed. I do not think,
however, that these ought to be called tame animals. Most of the wild
animals in menageries very quickly learn to distinguish one person from
another, to obey the call of their keeper and to come to be fed,
although certainly they would be dangerous even to the keeper if he
were to enter their cages. To my mind, tameness is something more than
merely coming to be fed, and, in fact, many tame animals are least tame
when they are feeding. Young carnivores, for instance, which can be
handled freely and are affectionate, very seldom can be touched whilst
they are feeding. The real quality of tameness is that the tame animal
is not merely tolerant of the presence of man, not merely has learned to
associate him with food, but takes some kind of pleasure in human
company and shows some kind of affection.
On the other hand, we must not take our idea of tameness merely from the
domesticated animals. These have been bred for many generations, and
those that were most wild and that showed any resistance to man were
killed or allowed to escape. Dogs are always taken as the supreme
example of tameness, and sentimentalists have almost exhausted the
resources of language in praising them. Like most people, I am very fond
of dogs, but it is an affection without respect. Dogs breed freely in
captivity, and in the enormous period of time that has elapsed since the
first hunters adopted wild puppies there has been a constant selection
by man, and every dog that showed any independence of spirit has been
killed off. Man has tried to produce a purely subservient creature, and
has succeeded in his task. No doubt a dog is faithful and affectionate,
but he would be shot or drowned or ordered to be destroyed by the local
magistrate if he were otherwise. A small vestige of the original spirit
has been left in him, merely from the ambition of his owners to possess
an animal that will not bite them, but will bite anyone else. And even
this watch-dog trait is mechanical, for the guardian of the house will
worry the harmless, necessary postman, and welcome the bold burglar with
fawning delight. The dog is a slave, and the crowning evidence of his
docility, that he will fawn on the person who has beaten him, is the
result of his character having been bred out of him. The dog is an
engaging companion, an animated toy more diverting than the cleverest
piece of clockwork, but it is only our colossal vanity that makes us
take credit for the affection and faithfulness of our own particular
animal. The poor beast cannot help it; all else has been bred out of him
generations ago.
When wild animals become tame, they are really extending or transferring
to human beings the confidence and affection they naturally give their
mothers, and this view will be found to explain more facts about
tameness than any other. Every creature that would naturally enjoy
maternal, or it would be better to say parental, care, as the father
sometimes shares in or takes upon himself the duty of guarding the
young, is ready to transfer its devotion to other animals or to human
beings, if the way be made easy for it, and if it be treated without too
great violation of its natural instincts. The capacity to be tamed is
greatest in those animals that remain longest with their parents and
that are most intimately associated with them. The capacity to learn new
habits is greatest in those animals which naturally learn most from
their parents, and in which the period of youth is not merely a period
of growing, a period of the awakening of instincts, but a time in which
a real education takes place. These capacities of being tamed and of
learning new habits are greater in the higher mammals than in the lower
mammals, in mammals than in birds, and in birds than in reptiles. They
are very much greater in very young animals, where dependence on the
parents is greatest, than in older animals, and they gradually fade away
as the animal grows up, and are least of all in fully grown and
independent creatures of high intelligence.
Young animals born in captivity are no more easy to tame than those
which have been taken from the mother in her native haunts. If they
remain with the mother, they very often grow up even shyer and more
intolerant of man than the mothers themselves. There is no inherited
docility or tameness, and a general survey of the facts fully bears out
my belief that the process of taming is almost entirely a transference
to human beings of the confidence and affection that a young animal
would naturally give its mother. The process of domestication is
different, and requires breeding a race of animals in captivity for many
generations and gradually weeding out those in which youthful tameness
is replaced by the wild instinct of adult life, and so creating a strain
with new and abnormal instincts.
B. PLANT COMMUNITIES AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES
1. Plant Communities[84]
Certain species group themselves into natural associations, that is to
say, into communities which we meet with more or less frequently and
which exhibit the same combination of growth-forms and the same facies.
As examples in northern Europe may be cited a meadow with its grasses
and perennial herbs, or a beech forest with its beech trees and all the
species usually accompanying these. Species that form a community must
either practice the same economy, making approximately the same demands
on its environment (as regards nourishment, light, moisture, and so
forth), or one species present must be dependent for its existence upon
another species, sometimes to such an extent that the latter provides it
with what is necessary or even best suited to it (Oxalis Acetosella and
saprophytes which profit from the shade of the beech and from its humus
soil); a kind of symbiosis seems to prevail between such species. In
fact, one often finds, as in beech forests, that the plants growing
under the shade and protection of other species, and belonging to the
most diverse families, assume growth-forms that are very similar to one
another, but essentially different from those of the forest trees,
which, in their turn, often agree with one another.
The ecological analysis of a plant-community leads to the recognition of
the growth-forms composing it as its ultimate units. From what has just
been said in regard to growth-forms it follows that species of very
diverse physiognomy can very easily occur together in the same natural
community. But beyond this, as already indicated, species differing
widely, not only in physiognomy but also in their whole economy, may be
associated. We may therefore expect to find both great variety of form
and complexity of interrelations among the species composing a natural
community; as an example we may cite the richest of all types of
communities--the tropical rain-forest. It may also be noted that the
physiognomy of a community is not necessarily the same at all times of
the year, the distinction sometimes being caused by a rotation of
species.
The different communities, it need hardly be stated, are scarcely ever
sharply marked off from one another. Just as soil, moisture, and other
external conditions are connected by the most gradual transitions, so
likewise are the plant-communities, especially in cultivated lands. In
addition, the same species often occur in several widely different
communities; for example, Linnaea borealis grows not only in coniferous
forests, but also in birch woods, and even high above the tree limit on
the mountains of Norway and on the fell-fields of Greenland. It appears
that different combinations of external factors can replace one another
and bring into existence approximately the same community, or at least
can satisfy equally well one and the same species, and that, for
instance, a moist climate often completely replaces the forest shade of
dry climates.
The term "community" implies a diversity but at the same time a certain
organized uniformity in the units. The units are the many individual
plants that occur in every community, whether this be a beech forest, a
meadow, or a heath. Uniformity is established when certain atmospheric,
terrestrial, and other factors are co-operative, and appears either
because a certain defined economy makes its impress on the community as
a whole, or because a number of different growth-forms are combined to
form a single aggregate which has a definite and constant guise.
The analysis of a plant-community usually reveals one or more of the
kinds of symbiosis as illustrated by parasites, saprophytes, epiphytes,
and the like. There is scarce a forest or a bushland where examples of
these forms of symbiosis are lacking; if, for instance, we investigate
the tropical rain-forest we are certain to find in it all conceivable
kinds of symbiosis. But the majority of individuals of a plant-community
are linked by bonds other than those mentioned--bonds that are best
described as _commensal_. The term _commensalism_ is due to Van Beneden,
who wrote, "Le commensal est simplement un compagnon de table"; but we
employ it in a somewhat different sense to denote the relationship
subsisting between species which share with one another the supply of
food-material contained in soil and air, and thus feed at the same
table.
More detailed analysis of the plant-community reveals very considerable
distinctions among commensals. Some relationships are considered in the
succeeding paragraphs.
_Like commensals._--When a plant-community consists solely of
individuals belonging to one species--for example, solely of beech,
ling, or Aira flexuosa--then we have the purest example of like
commensals. These all make the same demands as regards nutriment, soil,
light, and other like conditions; as each species requires a certain
amount of space and as there is scarcely ever sufficient nutriment for
all the offspring, a struggle for food arises among the plants so soon
as the space is occupied by the definite numbers of individuals which,
according to the species, can develop thereon. The individuals lodged in
unfavorable places and the weaklings are vanquished and exterminated.
This competitive struggle takes place in all plant-communities, with
perhaps the sole exceptions of sub-glacial communities and in deserts.
In these _open communities_ the soil is very often or always so open and
so irregularly clothed that there is space for many more individuals
than are actually present; the cause for this is obviously to be sought
in the climatically unfavorable conditions of life, which either prevent
plants from producing seed and other propagative bodies in sufficient
numbers to clothe the ground or prevent the development of seedlings. On
such soil one can scarcely speak of a competitive struggle for
existence; in this case a struggle takes place between the plant and
inanimate nature, but to little or no extent between plant and plant.
That a congregation of individuals belonging to one species into one
community may be profitable to the species is evident; it may obviously
in several ways aid in maintaining the existence of the species, for
instance, by facilitating abundant and certain fertilization (especially
in anemophilous plants) and maturation of seeds; in addition, the social
mode of existence may confer other less-known advantages. But, on the
other hand, it brings with it greater danger of serious damage and
devastation wrought by parasites.
The bonds that hold like individuals to a like habitat are, as already
indicated, identical demands as regards existence, and these demands are
satisfied in their precise habitat to such an extent that the species
can maintain itself here against rivals. Natural unmixed associations of
forest trees are the result of struggles with other species. But there
are differences as regards the ease with which a community can arise and
establish itself. Some species are more social than others, that is to
say, better fitted to form communities. The causes for this are
biological, in that some species, like Phragmites, Scirpus lacustris,
Psamma (Ammophila) arenaria, Tussilago, Farfara, and Asperula odorata,
multiply very readily by means of stolons; or others, such as Cirsium
arvense, and Sonchus arvensis, produce buds from their roots; or yet
others produce numerous seeds which are easily dispersed and may remain
for a long time capable of germinating, as is the case with Calluna,
Picea excelsa, and Pinus; or still other species, such as beech and
spruce, have the power of enduring shade or even suppressing other
species by the shade they cast. A number of species, such as Pteris
aquilina, Acorus Calamus, Lemna minor, and Hypnum Schreberi, which are
social, and likewise very widely distributed, multiply nearly
exclusively by vegetative means, rarely or never producing fruit. On the
contrary, certain species, for example, many orchids and Umbelliferae,
nearly always grow singly.
In the case of many species certain geological conditions have favored
their grouping together into pure communities. The forests of northern
Europe are composed of few species, and are not mixed in the same sense
as are those in the tropics, or even those in Austria and other southern
parts of Europe: the cause for this may be that the soil is geologically
very recent, inasmuch as the time that has elapsed since the glacial
epoch swept it clear has been too short to permit the immigration of
many competitive species.
_Unlike commensals._--The case of a community consisting of individuals
belonging to one species is, strictly speaking, scarcely ever met with;
but the dominant individuals of a community may belong to a single
species, as in the case of a beech forest, spruce forest, or ling
heath--and only thus far does the case proceed. In general, many species
grow side by side, and many different growth-forms and types of
symbiosis, in the extended sense, are found collected in a community.
For even when one species occupies an area as completely as the nature
of the soil will permit, other species can find room and can grow
between its individuals; in fact, if the soil is to be completely
covered the vegetation must necessarily always be heterogeneous. The
greatest aggregate of existence arises where the greatest diversity
prevails. The kind of communal life resulting will depend upon the
nature of the demands made by the species in regard to conditions of
life. As in human communities, so in this case, the _struggle between
the like_ is the _most severe_, that is, between the species making more
or less the same demands and wanting the same dishes from the common
table. In a tropical mixed forest there are hundreds of species of trees
growing together in such profuse variety that the eye can scarce see at
one time two individuals of the same species, yet all of them
undoubtedly represent tolerable uniformity in the demands they make as
regards conditions of life, and in so far they are alike. And among them
a severe competition for food must be taking place. In those cases in
which certain species readily grow in each other's company--and cases of
this kind are familiar to florists--when, for instance, Isoetes, Lobelia
Dortmanna, and Litorella lacustris occur together--the common demands
made as regards external conditions obviously form the bond that unites
them. Between such species a competitive struggle must take place. Which
of the species shall be represented by the greatest number of
individuals certainly often depends upon casual conditions, a slight
change in one direction or the other doubtless often playing a decisive
rôle; but apart from this it appears that morphological and biological
features, for example, development at a different season, may change the
nature of the competition.
Yet there are in every plant-community numerous species which _differ
widely_ in the demands they make for light, heat, nutriment, and so on.
Between such species there is less competition, the greater the
disparity in their wants; the case is quite conceivable in which the
_one species should require exactly what the other would avoid_; the two
species would then be complementary to one another in their occupation
and utilization of the same soil.
There are also obvious cases in which different species are of service
to each other. The carpet of moss in a pine forest, for example,
protects the soil from desiccation and is thus useful to the pine; yet,
on the other hand, it profits from the shade cast by the latter.
As a rule, limited numbers of definite species are the most potent, and,
like absolute monarchs, can hold sway over the whole area; while other
species, though possibly present in far greater numbers than these, are
subordinate or even dependent on them. This is the case where
subordinate species only flourish in the shade or among the fallen
fragments of dominant species. Such is obviously the relationship
between trees and many plants growing on the ground of high forest, such
as mosses, fungi, and other saprophytes, ferns, Oxalis Acetosella, and
their associates. In this case, then, there is a commensalism in which
individuals feed at the same table but on different fare. An additional
factor steps in when species do not absorb their nutriment at the same
season of the year. Many spring plants--for instance, Galanthus nivalis,
Corydalis solida, and C. cava--have withered before the summer plants
commence properly to develop. Certain species of animals are likewise
confined to certain plant-communities. But one and the same tall plant
may, in different places or soils, have different species of lowly
plants as companions; the companion plants of high beech forests depend,
for instance, upon climate and upon the nature of the forest soil; Pinus
nigra, according to von Beck, can maintain under it in the different
parts of Europe a Pontic, a central European, or a Baltic vegetation.
There are certain points of resemblance between communities of plants
and those of human beings or animals; one of these is the competition
for food which takes place between similar individuals and causes the
weaker to be more or less suppressed. But far greater are the
distinctions. The plant-community is the lowest form; it is merely a
congregation of units, among which there is no co-operation for the
common weal, but rather a ceaseless struggle of all against all. Only in
a loose sense can we speak of certain individuals protecting others, as
for example, when the outermost and most exposed individuals of scrub
serve to shelter from the wind others, which consequently become taller
and finer; for they do not afford protection from any special motive,
such as is met with in some animal communities, nor are they in any way
specially adapted to act as guardians against a common foe. In the
plant-community egoism reigns supreme. The plant-community has no higher
units or personages in the sense employed in connection with human
communities, which have their own organizations and their members
co-operating, as prescribed by law, for the common good. In
plant-communities there is, it is true, often (or always) a certain
natural dependence or reciprocal influence of many species upon one
another; they give rise to definite organized units of a higher order;
but there is no thorough or organized division of labor such as is met
with in human and animal communities, where certain individuals or
groups of individuals work as organs, in the wide sense of the term, for
the benefit of the whole community.
Woodhead has suggested the term _complementary association_ to denote a
community of species that live together in harmony, because their
rhizomes occupy different depths in the soil; for example, he described
an "association" in which Holcus mollis is the "surface plant," Pteris
aquilina has deeper-seated rhizomes, and Scilla festalis buries its
bulbs at the greatest depth. The photophilous parts of these plants are
"seasonably complementary." The opposite extreme is provided by
_competitive associations_, composed of species that are battling with
each other.
2. Ant Society[85]
There is certainly a striking parallelism between the development of
human and ant societies. Some anthropologists, like Topinard,
distinguish in the development of human societies six different types or
stages, designated as the hunting, pastoral, agricultural, commercial,
industrial, and intellectual. The ants show stages corresponding to the
first three of these, as Lubbock has remarked.
Some species, such as _Formica fusca_, live principally on the
produce of the chase; for though they feed partially on the
honey-dew of aphids, they have not domesticated these insects.
These ants probably retain the habits once common to all ants.
They resemble the lower races of men, who subsist mainly by
hunting. Like them they frequent woods and wilds, live in
comparatively small communities, as the instincts of collective
action are but little developed among them. They hunt singly,
and their battles are single combats, like those of Homeric
heroes. Such species as _Lasius flavus_ represent a distinctly
higher type of social life; they show more skill in
architecture, may literally be said to have domesticated
certain species of aphids, and may be compared to the pastoral
stage of human progress--to the races which live on the
products of their flocks and herds. Their communities are more
numerous; they act much more in concert; their battles are not
mere single combats, but they know how to act in combination. I
am disposed to hazard the conjecture that they will gradually
exterminate the mere hunting species, just as savages disappear
before more advanced races. Lastly, the agricultural nations
may be compared with the harvesting ants.
Granting the resemblances above mentioned between ant and human
societies, there are nevertheless three far-reaching differences between
insect and human organization and development to be constantly borne in
mind:
a) Ant societies are societies of females. The males really take no
part in the colonial activities, and in most species are present in the
nest only for the brief period requisite to secure the impregnation of
the young queens. The males take no part in building, provisioning, or
guarding the nest or in feeding the workers or the brood. They are in
every sense the _sexus sequior_. Hence the ants resemble certain
mythical human societies like the Amazons, but unlike these, all their
activities center in the multiplication and care of the coming
generations.
b) In human society, apart from the functions depending on sexual
dimorphism, and barring individual differences and deficiencies which
can be partially or wholly suppressed, equalized, or augmented by an
elaborate system of education, all individuals have the same natural
endowment. Each normal individual retains its various physiological and
psychological needs and powers intact, not necessarily sacrificing any
of them for the good of the community. In ants, however, the female
individuals, of which the society properly consists, are not all alike
but often very different, both in their structure (polymorphism) and in
their activities (physiological division of labor). Each member is
_visibly_ predestined to certain social activities to the exclusion of
others, not as a man through the education of some endowment common to
all the members of the society, but through the exigencies of structure,
fixed at the time of hatching, i.e., the moment the individual enters on
its life as an active member of the community.
c) Owing to this pre-established structure and the specialized
functions which it implies, ants are able to live in a condition of
anarchistic socialism, each individual instinctively fulfilling the
demands of social life without "guide, overseer, or ruler," as Solomon
correctly observed, but not without the imitation and suggestion
involved in an appreciation of the activities of its fellows.
An ant society, therefore, may be regarded as little more than an
expanded family, the members of which co-operate for the purpose of
still further expanding the family and detaching portions of itself to
found other families of the same kind. There is thus a striking analogy,
which has not escaped the philosophical biologist, between the ant
colony and the cell colony which constitutes the body of a Metazoan
animal; and many of the laws that control the cellular origin,
development, growth, reproduction, and decay of the individual Metazoan,
are seen to hold good also of the ant society regarded as an individual
of a higher order. As in the case of the individual animal, no further
purpose of the colony can be detected than that of maintaining itself
in the face of a constantly changing environment till it is able to
reproduce other colonies of a like constitution. The queen-mother of the
ant colony displays the generalized potentialities of all the
individuals, just as the Metazoan egg contains _in potentia_ all the
other cells of the body. And, continuing the analogy, we may say that
since the different castes of the ant colony are morphologically
specialized for the performance of different functions, they are truly
comparable with the differentiated tissues of the Metazoan body.
C. HUMAN SOCIETY
1. Social Life[86]
The most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that
the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists.
If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it
remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller
bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may
maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a
contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing
may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn
the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence.
If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least
in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.
As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its
own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To
say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own
conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus
turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the
return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this
sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and
controls for its own continued activity the energies that would
otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon
the environment. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the
environment to the needs of living organisms.
We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical thing.
But we use the word "life" to denote the whole range of experience,
individual and racial. When we see a book called the _Life of Lincoln_
we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We
look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early
surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the
chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and
achievements; of the individual's hopes, tastes, joys, and sufferings.
In precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of
the Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs,
institutions, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and
occupations.
We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to it,
as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of
continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical
existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs,
ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any
experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact.
Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity
of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a
modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without
language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each
unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time
passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.
Society exists through a process of transmission, quite as much as
biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of
habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.
Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards,
opinions from those members of society who are passing out of the group
life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive.
Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission,
_in_ communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words
common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue
of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in
which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in
common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs,
aspirations, knowledge--a common understanding--like-mindedness, as the
sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to
another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie
by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures
participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar
emotional and intellectual dispositions--like ways of responding to
expectations and requirements.
Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more
than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or
miles removed from others. A book or a letter may institute a more
intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles
from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof.
Individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for
a common end. The parts of a machine work with a maximum of
co-operativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community.
If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all
interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view
of it, then they would form a community. But this would involve
communication. Each would have to know what the other was about and
would have to have some way of keeping the other informed as to his own
purpose and progress. Consensus demands communications.
We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most social
group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A large
number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the
machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired
results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition
and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority, or
superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools,
mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and child,
teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and governed, remain
upon this level, they form no true social group, no matter how closely
their respective activities touch one another. Giving and taking of
orders modifies action and results, but does not of itself effect a
sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.
Not only is social life identical with communication, but all
communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be a
recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed
experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt, and in so
far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the one
who communicates left unaffected. Try the experiment of communicating,
with fulness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it
be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your
experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and
ejaculations. The experience has to be formulated in order to be
communicated. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as
another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the
life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can
appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch
phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's
experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience.
All communication is like art. It may fairly be said, therefore, that
any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared,
is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast
in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power.
In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching and
learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together
educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates and
enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for accuracy and
vividness of statement and thought. A man really living alone (alone
mentally as well as physically) would have little or no occasion to
reflect upon his past experience to extract its net meaning. The
inequality of achievement between the mature and the immature not only
necessitates teaching the young, but the necessity of this teaching
gives an immense stimulus to reducing experience to that order and form
which will render it most easily communicable and hence most usable.
2. Behavior and Conduct[87]
The word "behavior" is commonly used in an interesting variety of ways.
We speak of the behavior of ships at sea, of soldiers in battle, and of
little boys in Sunday school.
"The geologist," as Lloyd Morgan remarks, "tells us that a glacier
behaves in many respects like a river, and discusses how the crust of
the earth behaves under the stresses to which it is subjected.
Weatherwise people comment on the behavior of the mercury in the
barometer as a storm approaches. When Mary, the nurse maid, returns with
the little Miss Smiths from Master Brown's birthday party, she is
narrowly questioned as to their behavior."
In short, the word is familiar both to science and to common sense, and
is applied with equal propriety to the actions of physical objects and
to the manners of men. The abstract sciences, quite as much as the
concrete and descriptive, are equally concerned with behavior. "The
chemist and the physicist often speak of the behavior of the atoms and
the molecules, or of that of gas under changing conditions of
temperature and pressure." The fact is that every science is everywhere
seeking to describe and explain the movements, changes, and reactions,
that is to say the behavior, of some portion of the world about us.
Indeed, wherever we consciously set ourselves to observe and reflect
upon the changes going on about us, it is always behavior that we are
interested in. Science is simply a little more persistent in its
curiosity and a little nicer and more exact in its observation than
common sense. And this disposition to observe, to take a disinterested
view of things, is, by the way, one of the characteristics of human
nature which distinguishes it from the nature of all other animals.
Since every science has to do with some form of behavior, the first
question that arises is this: What do we mean by behavior in human
beings as distinguished from that in other animals? What is there
distinctive about the actions of human beings that marks them off and
distinguishes them from the actions of animals and plants with which
human beings have so much in common?
The problem is the more difficult because, in some one or other of its
aspects, human behavior involves processes which are characteristic of
almost every form of nature. We sometimes speak, for example, of the
human machine. Indeed, from one point of view human beings may be
regarded as psycho-physical mechanisms for carrying on the vital
processes of nutrition, reproduction, and movement. The human body is,
in fact, an immensely complicated machine, whose operations involve an
enormous number of chemical and physical reactions, all of which may be
regarded as forms of human behavior.
Human beings are, however, not wholly or merely machines; they are
living organisms and as such share with the plants and the lower animals
certain forms of behavior which it has not thus far, at any rate, been
possible to reduce to the exact and lucid formulas of either chemistry
or physics.
Human beings are, however, not merely organisms: they are the home and
the habitat of minuter organisms. The human body is, in a certain sense,
an organization--a sort of social organization--of the minute and simple
organisms of which it is composed, namely, the cells, each of which has
its own characteristic mode of behavior. In fact, the life of human
beings, just as the life of all other creatures above the simple
unicellular organisms, may be said to consist of the corporate life of
the smaller organisms of which it is composed. In human beings, as in
some great city, the division of labor among the minuter organisms has
been carried further, the interdependence of the individual parts is
more complete, and the corporate life of the whole more complex.
It is not strange, therefore, that Lloyd Morgan begins his studies of
animal behavior by a description of the behavior of the cells and
Thorndike in his volume, _The Original Nature of Man_, is led to the
conclusion that the original tendencies of man have their basis in the
neurones, or nerve cells, and in the changes which these cells and their
ancestors have undergone, as a result of the necessity of carrying on
common and corporate existences as integral parts of the human organism.
All acquired characteristics of men, everything that they learn, is due
to mutual stimulations and associations of the neurones, just as
sociologists are now disposed to explain civilization and progress as
phenomena due to the interaction and association of human beings, rather
than to any fundamental changes in human nature itself. In other words,
the difference between a savage and a civilized man is not due to any
fundamental differences in their brain cells but to the connections and
mutual stimulations which are established by experience and education
between those cells. In the savage those possibilities are not absent
but latent. In the same way the difference between the civilization of
Central Africa and that of Western Europe is due, not to the difference
in native abilities of the individuals and the peoples who have created
them, but rather to the form which the association and interaction
between those individuals and groups of individuals has taken. We
sometimes attribute the difference in culture which we meet among races
to the climate and physical conditions generally, but, in the long run,
the difference is determined by the way in which climate and physical
condition determine the contacts and communications of individuals.
So, too, in the corporate life of the individual man it is the
association of the nerve cells, their lines of connection and
communication, that is responsible for the most of the differences
between the ignorant and the educated, the savage and civilized man. The
neurone, however, is a little unicellular animal, like the amoeba or the
paramecium. Its life consists of: (1) eating, (2) excreting waste
products, (3) growing, (4) being sensitive, and (5) movement, and, as
Thorndike expresses it: "The safest provisional hypothesis about the
action of the neurones singly is that they retain the modes of behavior
common to unicellular animals, so far as consistent with the special
conditions of their life as an element of man's nervous system."
In the widest sense of the term, behavior may be said to include all the
chemical and physical changes that go on inside the organism, as well as
every response to stimulus either from within or from without the
organism. In recent studies of animal behavior, however, the word has
acquired a special and technical meaning in which it is applied
exclusively to those actions that have been, or may be, modified by
conscious experience. What the animal does in its efforts to find food
is behavior, but the processes of digestion are relegated to another
field of observation, namely, physiology.
In all the forms of behavior thus far referred to, human and animal
nature are not fundamentally distinguished. There are, however, ways of
acting that are peculiar to human nature, forms of behavior that man
does not share with the lower animals. One thing which seems to
distinguish man from the brute is self-consciousness. One of the
consequences of intercourse, as it exists among human beings, is that
they are led to reflect upon their own impulses and motives for action,
to set up standards by which they seek to govern themselves. The clock
is such a standard. We all know from experience that time moves more
slowly on dull days, when there is nothing doing, than in moments of
excitement. On the other hand, when life is active and stirring, time
flies. The clock standardizes our subjective tempos and we control
ourselves by the clock. An animal never looks at the clock and this is
typical of the different ways in which human beings and animals behave.
Human beings, so far as we have yet been able to learn, are the only
creatures who habitually pass judgment upon their own actions, or who
think of them as right or wrong. When these thoughts about our actions
or the actions of others get themselves formulated and expressed they
react back upon and control us. That is one reason we hang mottoes on
the wall. That is why one sees on the desk of a busy man the legend "Do
it now!" The brutes do not know these devices. They do not need them
perhaps. They have no aim in life. They do not work.
What distinguishes the action of men from animals may best be expressed
in the word "conduct." Conduct as it is ordinarily used is applied to
actions which may be regarded as right or wrong, moral or immoral. As
such it is hardly a descriptive term since there does not seem to be any
distinctive mark about the actions which men have at different times and
places called moral or immoral. I have used it here to distinguish the
sort of behavior which may be regarded as distinctively and exclusively
human, namely, that which is self-conscious and personal. In this sense
blushing may be regarded as a form of conduct, quite as much as the
manufacture of tools, trade and barter, conversation or prayer.
No doubt all these activities have their beginnings in, and are founded
upon, forms of behavior of which we may find the rudiments in the lower
animals. But there is in all distinctively human activities a
conventional, one might almost say a contractual, element which is
absent in action of other animals. Human actions are more often than not
controlled by a sense or understanding of what they look like or appear
to be to others. This sense and understanding gets itself embodied in
some custom or ceremonial observance. In this form it is transmitted
from generation to generation, becomes an object of sentimental respect,
gets itself embodied in definite formulas, is an object not only of
respect and reverence but of reflection and speculation as well. As such
it constitutes the mores, or moral customs, of a group and is no longer
to be regarded as an individual possession.
3. Instinct and Character[88]
In no part of the world, and at no period of time, do we find the
behavior of men left to unchartered freedom. Everywhere human life is in
a measure organized and directed by customs, laws, beliefs, ideals,
which shape its ends and guide its activities. As this guidance of life
by rule is universal in human society, so upon the whole it is peculiar
to humanity. There is no reason to think that any animal except man can
enunciate or apply general rules of conduct. Nevertheless, there is not
wanting something that we can call an organization of life in the animal
world. How much of intelligence underlies the social life of the higher
animals is indeed extremely hard to determine. In the aid which they
often render to one another, in their combined hunting, in their play,
in the use of warning cries, and the employment of "sentinels," which is
so frequent among birds and mammals, it would appear at first sight that
a considerable measure of _mutual understanding_ is implied, that we
find at least an analogue to human custom, to the assignment of
functions, the division of labor, which mutual reliance renders
possible. How far the analogy may be pressed, and whether terms like
"custom" and "mutual understanding," drawn from human experience, are
rightly applicable to animal societies, are questions on which we shall
touch presently. Let us observe first that as we descend the animal
scale the sphere of _intelligent activity_ is gradually narrowed down,
and yet behavior is still regulated. The lowest organisms have their
definite methods of action under given conditions. The amoeba shrinks
into itself at a touch, withdraws the pseudopodium that is roughly
handled, or makes its way round the small object which will serve it as
food. Given the conditions, it acts in the way best suited to avoid
danger or to secure nourishment. We are a long way from the intelligent
regulation of conduct by a general principle, but we still find action
adapted to the requirements of organic life.
When we come to human society we find the basis for a social
organization of life already laid in the animal nature of man. Like
others of the higher animals, man is a gregarious beast. His interests
lie in his relations to his fellows, in his love for wife and children,
in his companionship, possibly in his rivalry and striving with his
fellow-men. His loves and hates, his joys and sorrows, his pride, his
wrath, his gentleness, his boldness, his timidity--all these permanent
qualities, which run through humanity and vary only in degree, belong to
his inherited structure. Broadly speaking, they are of the nature of
instincts, but instincts which have become highly plastic in their mode
of operation and which need the stimulus of experience to call them
forth and give them definite shape.
The mechanical methods of reaction which are so prominent low down in
the animal scale fill quite a minor place in human life. The ordinary
operations of the body, indeed, go upon their way mechanically enough.
In walking or in running, in saving ourselves from a fall, in coughing,
sneezing, or swallowing, we react as mechanically as do the lower
animals; but in the distinctly human modes of behavior, the place taken
by the inherited structure is very different. Hunger and thirst no doubt
are of the nature of instincts, but the methods of satisfying hunger and
thirst are acquired by experience or by teaching. Love and the whole
family life have an instinctive basis, that is to say, they rest upon
tendencies inherited with the brain and nerve structure; but everything
that has to do with the satisfaction of these impulses is determined by
the experience of the individual, the laws and customs of the society in
which he lives, the woman whom he meets, the accidents of their
intercourse, and so forth. Instinct, already plastic and modifiable in
the higher animals, becomes in man a basis of character which determines
how he will take his experience, but without experience is a mere blank
form upon which nothing is yet written.
For example, it is an ingrained tendency of average human nature to be
moved by the opinion of our neighbors. This is a powerful motive in
conduct, but the kind of conduct to which it will incite clearly depends
on the kind of thing that our neighbors approve. In some parts of the
world ambition for renown will prompt a man to lie in wait for a woman
or child in order to add a fresh skull to his collection. In other parts
he may be urged by similar motives to pursue a science or paint a
picture. In all these cases the same hereditary or instinctive element
is at work, that quality of character which makes a man respond
sensitively to the feelings which others manifest toward him. But the
kind of conduct which this sensitiveness may dictate depends wholly on
the social environment in which the man finds himself. Similarly it is,
as the ordinary phrase quite justly puts it, "in human nature" to stand
up for one's rights. A man will strive, that is, to secure that which he
has counted on as his due. But as to what he counts upon, as to the
actual treatment which he expects under given circumstances, his views
are determined by the "custom of the country," by what he sees others
insisting on and obtaining, by what has been promised him, and so forth.
Even such an emotion as sexual jealousy, which seems deeply rooted in
the animal nature, is largely limited in its exercise and determined in
the form it takes by custom. A hospitable savage, who will lend his wife
to a guest, would kill her for acting in the same way on her own motion.
In the one case he exercises his rights of proprietorship; in the other,
she transgresses them. It is the maintenance of a claim which jealousy
concerns itself with, and the standard determining the claim is the
custom of the country.
In human society, then, the conditions regulating conduct are from the
first greatly modified. Instinct, becoming vague and more general, has
evolved into "character," while the intelligence finds itself confronted
with customs to which it has to accommodate conduct. But how does custom
arise? Let us first consider what custom is. It is not merely a habit of
action; but it implies also a judgment upon action, and a judgment
stated in general and impersonal terms. It would seem to imply a
bystander or third party. If A hits B, B probably hits back. It is his
"habit" so to do. But if C, looking on, pronounces that it was or was
not a fair blow, he will probably appeal to the "custom" of the
country--the traditional rules of fighting, for instance--as the ground
of his judgment. That is, he will lay down a rule which is general in
the sense that it would apply to other individuals under similar
conditions, and by it he will, as an impartial third person, appraise
the conduct of the contending parties. The formation of such rules,
resting as it does on the power of framing and applying general
conceptions, is the prime differentia of human morality from animal
behavior. The fact that they arise and are handed on from generation to
generation makes social tradition at once the dominating factor in the
regulation of human conduct. Without such rules we can scarcely conceive
society to exist, since it is only through the general conformity to
custom that men can understand each other, that each can know how the
other will act under given circumstances, and without this amount of
understanding the reciprocity, which is the vital principle of society,
disappears.
4. Collective Representation and Intellectual Life[89]
Logical thought is made up of concepts. Seeking how society can have
played a rôle in the genesis of logical thought thus reduces itself to
seeking how it can have taken a part in the formation of concepts.
The concept is opposed to sensual representations of every
order--sensations, perceptions, or images--by the following properties.
Sensual representations are in a perpetual flux; they come after each
other like the waves of a river, and even during the time that they last
they do not remain the same thing. Each of them is an integral part of
the precise instant when it takes place. We are never sure of again
finding a perception such as we experienced it the first time; for if
the thing perceived has not changed, it is we who are no longer the
same. On the contrary, the concept is, as it were, outside of time and
change; it is in the depths below all this agitation; it might be said
that it is in a different portion of the mind, which is serener and
calmer. It does not move of itself, by an internal and spontaneous
evolution, but, on the contrary, it resists change. It is a manner of
thinking that, at every moment of time, is fixed and crystallized. In so
far as it is what it ought to be, it is immutable. If it changes, it is
not because it is its nature to do so, but because we have discovered
some imperfection in it; it is because it had to be rectified. The
system of concepts with which we think in everyday life is that
expressed by the vocabulary of our mother-tongue; for every word
translates a concept. Now language is something fixed; it changes but
very slowly, and consequently it is the same with the conceptual system
which it expresses. The scholar finds himself in the same situation in
regard to the special terminology employed by the science to which he
has consecrated himself, and hence in regard to the special scheme of
concepts to which this terminology corresponds. It is true that he can
make innovations, but these are always a sort of violence done to the
established ways of thinking.
And at the same time that it is relatively immutable, the concept is
universal, or at least capable of becoming so. A concept is not my
concept; I hold it in common with other men, or, in any case, can
communicate it to them. It is impossible for me to make a sensation pass
from my consciousness into that of another; it holds closely to my
organism and personality and cannot be detached from them. All that I
can do is to invite others to place themselves before the same object as
myself and to leave themselves to its action. On the other hand,
conversation and all intellectual communication between men is an
exchange of concepts. The concept is an essentially impersonal
representation; it is through it that human intelligences communicate.
The nature of the concept, thus defined, bespeaks its origin. If it is
common to all, it is the work of the community. Since it bears the mark
of no particular mind, it is clear that it was elaborated by a unique
intelligence, where all others meet each other, and after a fashion,
come to nourish themselves. If it has more stability than sensations or
images, it is because the collective representations are more stable
than the individual ones; for while an individual is conscious even of
the slight changes which take place in his environment, only events of a
greater gravity can succeed in affecting the mental status of a society.
Every time that we are in the presence of a _type_ of thought or action
which is imposed uniformly upon particular wills or intelligences, this
pressure exercised over the individual betrays the intervention of the
group. Also, as we have already said, the concepts with which we
ordinarily think are those of our vocabulary. Now it is unquestionable
that language, and consequently the system of concepts which it
translates, is the product of collective elaboration. What it expresses
is the manner in which society as a whole represents the facts of
experience. The ideas which correspond to the diverse elements of
language are thus collective representations.
Even their contents bear witness to the same fact. In fact, there are
scarcely any words among those which we usually employ whose meaning
does not pass, to a greater or less extent, the limits of our personal
experience. Very frequently a term expresses things which we have never
perceived or experiences which we have never had or of which we have
never been the witnesses. Even when we know some of the objects which
it concerns, it is only as particular examples that they serve to
illustrate the idea which they would never have been able to form by
themselves. Thus there is a great deal of knowledge condensed in the
word which I never collected, and which is not individual; it even
surpasses me to such an extent that I cannot even completely appropriate
all its results. Which of us knows all the words of the language he
speaks and the entire signification of each?
This remark enables us to determine the sense in which we mean to say
that concepts are collective representations. If they belong to a whole
social group, it is not because they represent the average of the
corresponding individual representations; for in that case they would be
poorer than the latter in intellectual content, while, as a matter of
fact, they contain much that surpasses the knowledge of the average
individual. They are not abstractions which have a reality only in
particular consciousnesses, but they are as concrete representations as
an individual could form of his own personal environment; they
correspond to the way in which this very special being, society,
considers the things of its own proper experience. If, as a matter of
fact, the concepts are nearly always general ideas, and if they express
categories and classes rather than particular objects, it is because the
unique and variable characteristics of things interest society but
rarely; because of its very extent, it can scarcely be affected by more
than their general and permanent qualities. Therefore it is to this
aspect of affairs that it gives its attention: it is a part of its
nature to see things in large and under the aspect which they ordinarily
have. But this generality is not necessary for them, and, in any case,
even when these representations have the generic character which they
ordinarily have, they are the work of society and are enriched by its
experience.
The collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life,
since it is the consciousness of the consciousnesses. Being placed
outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things
only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes
into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it
sees farther; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality;
that is why it alone can furnish the mind with the molds which are
applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to
think of them. It does not create these molds artificially; it finds
them within itself; it does nothing but become conscious of them. They
translate the ways of being which are found in all the stages of reality
but which appear in their full clarity only at the summit, because the
extreme complexity of the psychic life which passes there necessitates a
greater development of consciousness. Collective representations also
contain subjective elements, and these must be progressively rooted out
if we are to approach reality more closely. But howsoever crude these
may have been at the beginning, the fact remains that with them the germ
of a new mentality was given, to which the individual could never have
raised himself by his own efforts; by them the way was opened to a
stable, impersonal and organized thought which then had nothing to do
except to develop its nature.
D. THE SOCIAL GROUP
1. Definition of the Group[90]
The term "group" serves as a convenient sociological designation for any
number of people, larger or smaller, between whom such relations are
discovered that they must be thought of together. The "group" is the
most general and colorless term used in sociology for combinations of
persons. A family, a mob, a picnic party, a trade union, a city
precinct, a corporation, a state, a nation, the civilized or the
uncivilized population of the world, may be treated as a group. Thus a
"group" for sociology is a number of persons whose relations to each
other are sufficiently impressive to demand attention. The term is
merely a commonplace tool. It contains no mystery. It is only a handle
with which to grasp the innumerable varieties of arrangements into which
people are drawn by their variations of interest. The universal
condition of association may be expressed in the same commonplace way:
people always live in groups, and the same persons are likely to be
members of many groups.
Individuals nowhere live in utter isolation. There is no such thing as a
social vacuum. The few Robinson Crusoes are not exceptions to the rule.
If they are, they are like the Irishman's horse. The moment they begin
to get adjusted to the exceptional condition, they die. Actual persons
always live and move and have their being in groups. These groups are
more or less complex, more or less continuous, more or less rigid in
character. The destinies of human beings are always bound up with the
fate of the groups of which they are members. While the individuals are
the real existences, and the groups are only relationships of
individuals, yet to all intents and purposes the groups which people
form are just as distinct and efficient molders of the lives of
individuals as though they were entities that had existence entirely
independent of the individuals.
The college fraternity or the college class, for instance, would be only
a name, and presently not even that, if each of its members should
withdraw. It is the members themselves, and not something outside of
themselves. Yet to A, B, or C the fraternity or the class might as well
be a river or a mountain by the side of which he stands, and which he is
helpless to remove. He may modify it somewhat. He is surely modified by
it somewhat; and the same is true of all the other groups in which A, B,
or C belong. To a very considerable extent the question, Why does A, B,
or C do so and so? is equivalent to the question, What are the
peculiarities of the group to which A, B, or C belongs? It would never
occur to A, B, or C to skulk from shadow to shadow of a night, with
paint-pot and brush in hand, and to smear Arabic numerals of bill-poster
size on sidewalk or buildings, if "class spirit" did not add stimulus to
individual bent. Neither A, B, nor C would go out of his way to flatter
and cajole a Freshman, if membership in a fraternity did not make a
student something different from an individual. These are merely
familiar cases which follow a universal law.
In effect, the groups to which we belong might be as separate and
independent of us as the streets and buildings of a city are from the
population. If the inhabitants should migrate in a body, the streets and
buildings would remain. This is not true of human groups, but their
reaction upon the persons who compose them is no less real and evident.
We are in large part what our social set, our church, our political
party, our business and professional circles are. This has always been
the case from the beginning of the world, and will always be the case.
To understand what society is, either in its larger or its smaller
parts, and why it is so, and how far it is possible to make it
different, we must invariably explain groups on the one hand, no less
than individuals on the other. There is a striking illustration in
Chicago at present (summer, 1905). Within a short time a certain man has
made a complete change in his group-relations. He was one of the most
influential trade-union leaders in the city. He has now become the
executive officer of an association of employers. In the elements that
are not determined by his group-relationships he is the same man that he
was before. Those are precisely the elements, however, that may be
canceled out of the social problem. All the elements in his personal
equation that give him a distinct meaning in the life of the city are
given to him by his membership in the one group or the other. Till
yesterday he gave all his strength to organizing labor against capital.
Now he gives all his strength to the service of capital against labor.
Whatever social problem we confront, whatever persons come into our
field of view, the first questions involved will always be: To what
groups do these persons belong? What are the interests of these groups?
What sort of means do the groups use to promote their interests? How
strong are these groups, as compared with groups that have conflicting
interests? These questions go to one tap root of all social
interpretation, whether in the case of historical events far in the
past, or of the most practical problems of our own neighborhood.
2. The Unity of the Social Group[91]
It has long been a cardinal problem in sociology to determine just how
to conceive in objective terms so very real and palpable a thing as the
continuity and persistence of social groups. Looked at as a physical
object society appears to be made up of mobile and independent units.
The problem is to understand the nature of the bonds that bind these
independent units together and how these connections are maintained and
transmitted.
Conceived of in its lowest terms the unity of the social group may be
compared to that of the plant communities. In these communities, the
relation between the individual species which compose it seems at first
wholly fortuitous and external. Co-operation and community, so far as it
exists, consists merely in the fact that within a given geographical
area, certain species come together merely because each happens to
provide by its presence an environment in which the life of the other is
easier, more secure, than if they lived in isolation. It seems to be a
fact, however, that this communal life of the associated plants fulfils,
as in other forms of life, a typical series of changes which correspond
to growth, decay and death. The plant community comes into existence,
matures, grows old, and eventually dies. In doing this, however, it
provides by its own death an environment in which another form of
community finds its natural habitat. Each community thus precedes and
prepares the way for its successor. Under such circumstances the
succession of the individual communities itself assumes the character of
a life-process.
In the case of the animal and human societies we have all these
conditions and forces and something more. The individuals associated in
an animal community not only provide, each for the other, a physical
environment in which all may live, but the members of the community are
organically pre-adapted to one another in ways which are not
characteristic of the members of a plant community. As a consequence,
the relations between the members of the animal community assume a much
more organic character. It is, in fact, a characteristic of animal
society that the members of a social group are organically adapted to
one another and therefore the organization of animal society is almost
wholly transmitted by physical inheritance.
In the case of human societies we discover not merely organically
inherited adaptation, which characterizes animal societies, but, in
addition, a great body of habits and accommodations which are
transmitted in the form of social inheritance. Something that
corresponds to social tradition exists, to be sure, in animal societies.
Animals learn by imitation from one another, and there is evidence that
this social tradition varies with changes in environment. In man,
however, association is based on something more than habits or instinct.
In human society, largely as a result of language, there exists a
conscious community of purpose. We have not merely folkways, which by an
extension of that term might be attributed to animals, but we have mores
and formal standards of conduct.
In a recent notable volume on education, John Dewey has formulated a
definition of the educational process which he identifies with the
process by which the social tradition of human society is transmitted.
Education, he says in effect, is a self-renewing process, a process in
which and through which the social organism lives.
With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of
human beings, the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes,
happiness, misery and practices. The continuity of experience,
through renewal of the social group, is a literal fact.
Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social
continuity of life.
Under ordinary circumstances the transmission of the social tradition is
from the parents to the children. Children are born into the society and
take over its customs, habits, and standards of life simply, naturally,
and without conflict. But it will at once occur to anyone that the
physical life of society is not always continued and maintained in this
natural way, i.e., by the succession of parents and children. New
societies are formed by conquest and by the imposition of one people
upon another. In such cases there arises a conflict of cultures, and as
a result the process of fusion takes place slowly and is frequently not
complete. New societies are frequently formed by colonization, in which
case new cultures are grafted on to older ones. The work of missionary
societies is essentially one of colonization in this sense. Finally we
have societies growing up, as in the United States, by immigration.
These immigrants, coming as they do from all parts of the world, bring
with them fragments of divergent cultures. Here again the process of
assimilation is slow, often painful, not always complete.
3. Types of Social Groups[92]
Between the two extreme poles--the crowd and the state (nation)--between
these extreme links of the chain of human association, what are the
other intermediate groups, and what are their distinctive
characteristics?
Gustave Le Bon thus classifies the different types of crowds
(aggregations):
A. Heterogeneous crowds
1. Anonymous (street crowds, for example)
2. Not anonymous (parliamentary assemblies, for example)
B. Homogeneous crowds
1. Sects (political, religious, etc.)
2. Castes (military, sacerdotal, etc.)
3. Classes (bourgeois, working-men, etc.)
This classification is open to criticism. First of all, it is inaccurate
to give the name of crowd indiscriminately to every human group.
Literally (from the etymological standpoint) this objection seems to me
unanswerable. Tarde more exactly distinguishes between crowds,
associations, and corporations.
But we retain the generic term of "crowd" because it indicates the first
stage of the social group which is the source of all the others, and
because with these successive distinctions it does not lend itself to
equivocal meaning.
In the second place, it is difficult to understand why Le Bon terms the
sect a _homogeneous_ crowd, while he classifies parliamentary assemblies
among the _heterogeneous_ crowds. The members of a sect are usually far
more different from one another in birth, education, profession, social
status, than are generally the members of a political assembly.
Turning from this criticism to note without analyzing heterogeneous
crowds, let us then proceed to determine the principal characteristics
of the three large types of homogeneous crowds, the classes, the castes,
the sects.
The heterogeneous crowd is composed of _tout le monde_, of people like
you, like me, like the first passer-by. _Chance_ unites these
individuals physically, the _occasion_ unites them psychologically; they
do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves
together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is
a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, and
transitory kind.
On this accidental and fortuitous foundation are formed here and there
other crowds, always heterogeneous, but with a certain character of
stability or, at least, of periodicity. The audience at a theater, the
members of a club, of a literary or social gathering, constitute also a
crowd but a different crowd from that of the street. The members of
these groups know each other a little; they have, if not a common aim,
at least a common custom. They are nevertheless "anonymous crowds," as
Le Bon calls them, because they do not have within themselves the
nucleus of organization.
Proceeding further, we find crowds still heterogeneous, but not so
anonymous--juries, for example, and assemblies. These small crowds
experience a new sentiment, unknown to anonymous crowds, that of
responsibility which may at times give to their actions a different
orientation. Then the parliamentary crowds are to be distinguished from
the others because, as Tarde observes with his habitual penetration,
they are double crowds: they represent a majority in conflict with one
or more minorities, which safeguards them in most cases from unanimity,
the most menacing danger which faces crowds.
We come now to homogeneous crowds, of which the first type is the sect.
Here are found again individuals differing in birth, in education, in
profession, in social status, but united and, indeed, voluntarily
cemented by an extremely strong bond, a common faith and ideal. Faith,
religious, scientific, or political, rapidly creates a communion of
sentiments capable of giving to those who possess it a high degree of
homogeneity and power. History records the deeds of the barbarians under
the influence of Christianity, and the Arabs transformed into a sect by
Mahomet. Because of their sectarian organization, a prediction may be
made of what the future holds in store for the socialists.
The sect is a crowd, picked out and permanent; the crowd is a transitory
sect which has not chosen its members. The sect is a chronic kind of
crowd; the crowd is an acute kind of sect. The crowd is composed of a
multitude of grains of sand without cohesion; the sect is a block of
marble which resists every effort. When a sentiment or an idea, having
in itself a reason for existence, slips into the crowd, its members soon
crystallize and form a sect. The sect is then the first crystallization
of every doctrine. From the confused and amorphous state in which it
manifests itself to the crowd, every idea is predestined to define
itself in the more specific form of the sect, to become later a party, a
school, or a church--scientific, political, or religious.
Any faith, whether it be Islamism, Buddhism, Christianity, patriotism,
socialism, anarchy, cannot but pass through this sectarian phase. It is
the first step, the point where the human group in leaving the twilight
zone of the anonymous and mobile crowd raises itself to a definition and
to an integration which then may lead up to the highest and most
perfect human group, the nation.
If the sect is composed of individuals united by a common idea and aim,
in spite of diversity of birth, education, and social status, the caste
unites, on the contrary, those who could have--and who have
sometimes--diverse ideas and aspirations, but who are brought together
through identity of profession. The sect corresponds to the community of
faith, the caste to the community of professional ideas. The sect is a
_spontaneous_ association; the caste is, in many ways, a _forced_
association. After having chosen a profession--let it be priest,
soldier, magistrate--a man belongs necessarily to a caste. A person, on
the contrary, does not necessarily belong to a sect. And when one
belongs to a caste--be he the most independent man in the world--he is
more or less under the influence of that which is called _esprit de
corps_.
The caste represents the highest degree of organization to which the
homogeneous crowd is susceptible. It is composed of individuals who by
their tastes, their education, birth, and social status, resemble each
other in the fundamental types of conduct and mores. There are even
certain castes, the military and sacerdotal, for example, in which the
members at last so resemble one another in appearance and bearing that
no disguise can conceal the nature of their profession.
The caste offers to its members ideas already molded, rules of conduct
already approved; it relieves them, in short, of the fatigue of thinking
with their own brains. When the caste to which an individual belongs is
known, all that is necessary is to press a button of his mental
mechanism to release a series of opinions and of phrases already made
which are identical in every individual of the same caste.
This harmonious collectivity, powerful and eminently conservative, is
the most salient analogy which the nations of the Occident present to
that of India. In India the caste is determined by birth, and it is
distinguished by a characteristic trait: the persons of one caste can
live with, eat with, and marry only individuals of the same caste.
In Europe it is not only birth, but circumstances and education which
determine the entrance of an individual into a caste; to marry, to
frequent, to invite to the same table only people of the same caste,
exists practically in Europe as in India. In Europe the above-mentioned
prescriptions are founded on convention, but they are none the less
observed. We all live in a confined circle, where we find our friends,
our guests, our sons- and daughters-in-law.
Misalliances are assuredly possible in Europe; they are impossible in
India. But if there religion prohibits them, with us public opinion and
convention render them very rare. And at bottom the analogy is complete.
The class is superior to the caste in extent. If the psychological bond
of the sect is community of faith, and that of the caste community of
profession, the psychological bond of the class is community of
interests.
Less precise in its limits, more diffuse and less compact than the caste
or the sect, the class represents today the veritable crowd in a dynamic
state, which can in a moment's time descend from that place and become
statically a crowd. And it is from the sociological standpoint the most
terrible kind of crowd; it is that which today has taken a bellicose
attitude, and which by its attitude and precepts prepares the brutal
blows of mobs.
We speak of the "conflict of the classes," and from the theoretical
point of view and in the normal and peaceful life that signifies only a
contest of ideas by legal means. Always depending upon the occasion, the
audacity of one or many men, the character of the situation, the
conflict of the classes is transformed into something more material and
more violent--into revolt or into revolution.
Finally we arrive at the state (nation). Tocqueville said that the
classes which compose society form so many distinct nations. They are
the greatest collectivities before coming to the nation, the state.
This is the most perfect type of organization of the crowd, and the
final and supreme type, if there is not another collectivity superior in
number and extension, the collectivity formed by race.
The bond which unites all the citizens of a state is language and
nationality. Above the state there are only the crowds determined by
race, which comprise many states. And these are, like the states and
like the classes, human aggregates which in a moment could be
transformed into violent crowds. But then, and justly, because their
evolution and their organization are more developed, their mobs are
called armies, and their violences are called wars, and they have the
seal of legitimacy unknown in other crowds. In this order of ideas war
could be defined as the supreme form of collective crimes.
4. _Esprit de Corps_, Morale, and Collective Representations of Social
Groups[93]
War is no doubt the least human of human relationships. It can begin
only when persuasion ends, when arguments fitted to move minds are
replaced by the blasting-powder fitted to move rocks and hills. It means
that one at least of the national wills concerned has deliberately set
aside its human quality--as only a human will can do--and has made of
itself just such a material obstruction or menace. Hence war seems, and
is often called, a contest of brute forces. Certainly it is the
extremest physical effort men make, every resource of vast populations
bent to increase the sum of power at the front, where the two lines
writhe like wrestlers laboring for the final fall.
Yet it is seldom physical force that decides a long war. For war summons
skill against skill, head against head, staying-power against
staying-power, as well as numbers and machines against machines and
numbers. When an engine "exerts itself" it spends more power, eats more
fuel, but uses no nerve; when a man exerts himself, he must bend his
will to it. The extremer the physical effort, the greater the strain on
the inner or moral powers. Hence the paradox of war: just because it
calls for the maximum material performance, it calls out a maximum of
moral resource. As long as guns and bayonets have men behind them, the
quality of the men, the quality of their minds and wills, must be
counted with the power of the weapons.
And as long as men fight in nations and armies, that subtle but mighty
influence that passes from man to man, the temper and spirit of the
group, must be counted with the quality of the individual citizen and
soldier. But how much does this intangible, psychological factor count?
Napoleon in his day reckoned it high: "In war, the moral is to the
physical as three to one."
For war, completely seen, is no mere collision of physical forces; it is
a collision of will against will. It is, after all, the mind and will of
a nation--a thing intangible and invisible--that assembles the materials
of war, the fighting forces, the ordnance, the whole physical array. It
is this invisible thing that wages the war; it is this same invisible
thing that on one side or the other must admit the finish and so end it.
As things are now, it is the element of "morale" that controls the
outcome.
I say, as things are now; for it is certainly not true as a rule of
history that will-power is enough to win a war, even when supported by
high fighting spirit, brains, and a good conscience: Belgium had all
this, and yet was bound to fall before Germany had she stood alone. Her
spirit worked miracles at Liége, delayed by ten days the marching
program of the German armies, and thereby saved--perhaps Paris, perhaps
Europe. But the day was saved because the issue raised in Serbia and in
Belgium drew to their side material support until their forces could
compare with the physical advantages of the enemy. Morale wins, not by
itself, but by turning scales; it has a value like the power of a
minority or of a mobile reserve. It adds to one side or the other the
last ounce of force which is to its opponent the last straw that breaks
its back.
Perhaps the simplest way of explaining the meaning of morale is to say
that what "condition" is to the athlete's body, morale is to the mind.
Morale is condition; good morale is good condition of the inner man: it
is the state of will in which you can get most from the machinery,
deliver blows with the greatest effect, take blows with the least
depression, and hold out for the longest time. It is both fighting-power
and staying-power and strength to resist the mental infections which
fear, discouragement, and fatigue bring with them, such as eagerness for
any kind of peace if only it gives momentary relief, or the irritability
that sees large the defects in one's own side until they seem more
important than the need of defeating the enemy. And it is the perpetual
ability to come back.
From this it follows that good morale is not the same as good spirits or
enthusiasm. It is anything but the cheerful optimism of early morning,
or the tendency to be jubilant at every victory. It has nothing in
common with the emotionalism dwelt on by psychologists of the "crowd."
It is hardly to be discovered in the early stages of war. Its most
searching test is found in the question, How does war-weariness affect
you?
No one going from America to Europe in the last year could fail to
notice the wide difference between the mind of nations long at war and
that of a nation just entering. Over there, "crowd psychology" had spent
itself. There was little flag-waving; the common purveyors of music were
not everywhere playing (or allowed to play) the national airs. If in
some Parisian cinema the Marseillaise was given, nobody stood or sang.
The reports of atrocities roused little visible anger or even talk--they
were taken for granted. In short, the simpler emotions had been worn
out, or rather had resolved themselves into clear connections between
knowledge and action. The people had found the mental gait that can be
held indefinitely. Even a great advance finds them on their guard
against too much joy. As the news from the second victory of the Marne
begins to come in, we find this despatch: "Paris refrains from
exultation."
And in the trenches the same is true in even greater degree. All the
bravado and illusion of war are gone, also all the nervous revulsion;
and in their places a grimly reliable resource of energy held in
instant, almost mechanical, readiness to do what is necessary. The
hazards which it is useless to speculate about, the miseries, delays,
tediums, casualties, have lost their exclamatory value and have fallen
into the sullen routine of the day's work. Here it is that morale begins
to show in its more vital dimensions. Here the substantial differences
between man and man, and between side and side, begin to appear as they
can never appear in training camp.
Fitness and readiness to act, the positive element in morale, is a
matter not of good and bad alone, but of degree. Persistence, courage,
energy, initiative, may vary from zero upward without limit. Perhaps the
most important dividing line--one that has already shown itself at
various critical points--is that between the willingness to defend and
the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive
mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between
a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at
first hand capable of assuming for itself the position of leadership.
But readiness to wait, the negative element in morale, is as important
as readiness to act, and oftentimes it is a harder virtue. Patience,
especially under conditions of ignorance of what may be brewing, is a
torment for active and critical minds such as this people is made of.
Yet impetuosity, exceeding of orders, unwillingness to retreat when the
general situation demands it, are signs not of good morale but the
reverse. They are signs that one's heart cannot be kept up except by the
flattering stimulus of always going forward--a state of mind that may
cause a commanding officer serious embarrassment, even to making
impossible decisive strokes of strategy.
In fact, the better the morale, the more profound its mystery from the
utilitarian angle of judgment. There is something miraculous in the
power of a bald and unhesitating announcement of reverse to steel the
temper of men attuned to making sacrifices and to meeting emergencies.
No one can touch the deepest moral resources of an army or nation who
does not know the fairly regal exaltation with which it is possible for
men to face an issue--_if they believe in it_. There are times when men
seem to have an appetite for suffering, when, to judge from their own
demeanor, the best bait fortune could offer them is the chance to face
death or to bear an inhuman load. This state of mind does not exist of
itself; it is morale at its best, and it appears only when the occasion
strikes a nerve which arouses the super-earthly vistas of human
consciousness or subconsciousness. But it commonly appears at the
summons of a leader who himself welcomes the challenge of the task he
sets before his followers. It is the magic of King Alfred in his appeal
to his chiefs to do battle with the Danes, when all that he could hold
out to them was the prospect of his own vision,
This--that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Morale, for all the greater purposes of war, is a state of faith; and
its logic will be the superb and elusive logic of human faith. It is for
this reason that morale, while not identical with the righteousness of
the cause, can never reach its height unless the aim of the war can be
held intact in the undissembled moral sense of the people. This is one
of the provisions in the deeper order of things for the slow
predominance of the better brands of justice.
There are still officers in army and navy--not as many as formerly--who
believe exclusively in the morale that works its way into every body of
recruits through discipline and the sway of _esprit de corps_. "They
know that they're here to can the Kaiser, and that's all they need to
know," said one such officer to me very recently. "After a man has been
here two months, the worst punishment you can give him is to tell him he
can't go to France right away. The soldier is a man of action; and the
less thinking he does, the better." There is an amount of practical
wisdom in this; for the human mind has a large capacity for adopting
beliefs that fit the trend of its habits and feelings, and this trend is
powerfully molded by the unanimous direction of an army's purpose. There
is an all but irresistible orthodoxy within a body committed to a war.
And the current (pragmatic) psychology referred to, making the
intelligence a mere instrument of the will, would seem to sanction the
maxim, "First decide, and then think accordingly."
But there are two remarks to be made about this view; first, that in the
actual creation of morale within an army corps much thinking is
included, and nothing is accomplished without the consent of such
thoughts as a man already has. Training does wonders in making morale,
when nothing in the mind opposes it. Second, that the morale which is
sufficient for purposes of training is not necessarily sufficient for
the strains of the field.
The intrinsic weakness of "affective morale," as psychologists call it,
is that it puts both sides on the same mental and moral footing: it
either justifies our opponents as well as ourselves, or it makes both
sides the creatures of irrational emotion.
Crowds are capable of doing reasonless things upon impulse and of
adopting creeds without reflection. But an army is not a crowd; still
less is a nation a crowd. A mob or crowd is an unorganized group of
people governed by less than the average individual intelligence of its
members. Armies and nations are groups of people so organized that they
are controlled by an intelligence higher than the average. The instincts
that lend, and must lend, their immense motive-power to the great
purposes of war are the servants, not the masters, of that
intelligence.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. The Scientific Study of Societies
Interest in the study of "society as it is" has had its source in two
different motives. Travelers' tales have always fascinated mankind. The
ethnologists began their investigations by criticising and systematizing
the novel and interesting observations of travelers in regard to
customs, cultures, and behavior of people of different races and
nationalities. Their later more systematic investigations were, on the
whole, inspired by intellectual curiosity divorced from any overwhelming
desire to change the manner of life and social organizations of the
societies studied.
The second motive for the systematic observation of actual society came
from persons who wanted social reforms but who were forced to realize
the futility of Utopian projects. The science of sociology as conceived
by Auguste Comte was to substitute fact for doctrines about society. But
his attempt to interpret social evolution resulted in a philosophy of
history, not a natural science of society.
Herbert Spencer appreciated the fact that the new science of sociology
required an extensive body of materials as a basis for its
generalizations. Through the work of assistants he set himself the
monumental task of compiling historical and cultural materials not only
upon primitive and barbarous peoples but also upon the Hebrews, the
Phoenicians, the French and the English. These data were classified and
published in eight large volumes under the title _Descriptive
Sociology_.
The study of human societies was too great to be satisfactorily
compassed by the work of one man. Besides that, Spencer, like most
English sociologists, was more interested in the progress of
civilization than in its processes. Spencer's _Sociology_ is still a
philosophy of history rather than a science of society. The philosophy
of history took for its unit of investigation and interpretation the
evolution of human society as a whole. The present trend in sociology is
toward the study of _societies_ rather than _society_. Sociological
research has been directed less to a study of the stages of evolution
than to the diagnosis and control of social problems.
Modern sociology's chief inheritance from Comte and Spencer was a
problem in logic: What is a society?
Manifestly if the relations between individuals in society are not
merely formal, and if society is something more than the sum of its
parts, then these relations must be defined in terms of interaction,
that is to say, in terms of process. What then is _the social process_;
what are the social processes? How are social processes to be
distinguished from physical, chemical, or biological processes? What is,
in general, the nature of the relations that need to be established in
order to make of individuals in society, members of society? These
questions are fundamental since they define the point of view of
sociology and describe the sort of facts with which the science seeks to
deal. Upon these questions the schools have divided and up to the
present time there is no very general consensus among sociologists in
regard to them. The introductory chapter to this volume is at once a
review of the points of view and an attempt to find answers. In the
literature to which reference is made at the close of chapter iii the
logical questions involved are discussed in a more thoroughgoing way
than has been possible to do in this volume.
Fortunately science does not wait to define its points of view nor solve
its theoretical problems before undertaking to analyze and collect the
facts. The contrary is nearer the truth. Science collects facts and
answers the theoretical questions afterward. In fact, it is just its
success in analyzing and collecting facts which throw light upon human
problems that in the end justifies the theories of science.
2. Surveys of Communities
The historian and the philosopher introduced the sociologist to the
study of society. But it was the reformer, the social worker, and the
business man who compelled him to study the community.
The study of the community is still in its beginnings. Nevertheless,
there is already a rapidly growing literature on this topic.
Ethnologists have presented us with vivid and detailed pictures of
primitive communities as in McGee's _The Seri Indians_, Jenk's _The
Bontoc Igorot_, Rivers' _The Todas_. Studies of the village communities
of India, of Russia, and of early England have thrown new light upon the
territorial factor in the organization of societies.
More recently the impact of social problems has led to the intensive
study of modern communities. The monumental work of Charles Booth,
_Life and Labour of the People in London_, is a comprehensive
description of conditions of social life in terms of the community. In
the United States, interest in community study is chiefly represented by
the social-survey movement which received impetus from the Pittsburgh
Survey of 1907. For sociological research of greater promise than the
survey are the several monographs which seek to make a social analysis
of the community, as Williams, _An American Town_, or Galpin, _The
Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_. With due recognition of
these auspicious beginnings, it must be confessed that there is no
volume upon human communities comparable with several works upon plant
and animal communities.
3. The Group as a Unit of Investigation
The study of societies is concerned primarily with types of social
organization and with attitudes and cultural elements embodied in them.
The survey of communities deals essentially with social situations and
the problems connected with them.
The study of social groups was a natural outgrowth of the study of the
individual. In order to understand the person it is necessary to
consider the group. Attention first turned to social institutions, then
to conflict groups, and finally to crowds and crowd influences.
Social institutions were naturally the first groups to be studied with
some degree of detachment. The work of ethnologists stimulated an
interest in social origins. Evolution, though at first a purely
biological conception, provoked inquiry into the historical development
of social structure. Differences in institutions in contemporary
societies led to comparative study. Critics of institutions, both
iconoclasts without and reformers within, forced a consideration of
their more fundamental aspects.
The first written accounts of conflict groups were quite naturally of
the propagandist type both by their defenders and by their opponents.
Histories of nationalities, for example, originated in the patriotic
motive of national glorification. With the acceptance of objective
standards of historical criticism the ground was prepared for the
sociological study of nationalities as conflict groups. A school of
European sociologists represented by Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, and
Novicow stressed conflict as the characteristic behavior of social
groups. Beginnings, as indicated in the bibliography, have been made of
the study of various conflict groups as gangs, labor unions, parties,
and sects.
The interest in the mechanism of the control of the individual by the
group has been focused upon the study of the crowd. Tarde and Le Bon in
France, Sighele in Italy, and Ross in the United States were the
pioneers in the description and interpretation of the behavior of mobs
and crowds. The crowd phenomena of the Great War have stimulated the
production of several books upon crowds and crowd influences which are,
in the main, but superficial and popular elaborations of the
interpretations of Tarde and Le Bon. Concrete material upon group
behavior has rapidly accumulated, but little or no progress has been
made in its sociological explanation.
At present there are many signs of an increasing interest in the study
of group behavior. Contemporary literature is featuring realistic
descriptions. Sinclair Lewis in _Main Street_ describes concretely the
routine of town life with its outward monotony and its inner zest.
Newspapers and magazines are making surveys of the buying habits of
their readers as a basis for advertising. The federal department of
agriculture in co-operation with schools of agriculture is making
intensive studies of rural communities. Social workers are conscious
that a more fundamental understanding of social groups is a necessary
basis for case work and community organization. Surveys of institutions
and communities are now being made under many auspices and from varied
points of view. All this is having a fruitful reaction upon the
sociological theory.
4. The Study of the Family
The family is the earliest, the most elementary, and the most permanent
of social groups. It has been more completely studied, in all its
various aspects, than other forms of human association. Methods of
investigation of family life are typical of methods that may be employed
in the description of other forms of society. For that reason more
attention is given here to studies of family life than it is possible or
desirable to give to other and more transient types of social groups.
The descriptions of travelers, of ethnologists and of historians made
the first contributions to our knowledge of marriage, ceremonials, and
family organization among primitive and historical peoples. Early
students of these data devised theories of stages in the evolution of
the family. An anthology might be made of the conceptions that students
have formulated of the original form of the family, for example, the
theory of the matriarchate by Bachofen, of group marriage growing out of
earlier promiscuous relations by Morgan, of the polygynous family by
Darwin, of pair marriage by Westermarck. An example of the ingenious,
but discarded method of arranging all types of families observed in a
series representing stages of the evolution is to be found in Morgan's
_Ancient Society_. A survey of families among primitive peoples by
Hobhouse, Ginsberg, and Wheeler makes the point that even family life is
most varied upon the lower levels of culture, and that the historical
development of the family with any people must be studied in relation to
the physical and social environment.
The evolutionary theory of the family has, however, furnished a somewhat
detached point of view for the criticism of the modern family. Social
reformers have used the evolutionary theory as a formula to justify
attacks upon the family as an institution and to support the most varied
proposals for its reconstruction. Books like Ellen Key's _Love and
Marriage_ and Meisel-Hess, _The Sexual Crisis_ are not scientific
studies of the family but rather social political philippics directed
against marriage and the family.
The interest stimulated by ethnological observation, historical study,
and propagandist essays has, however, turned the attention of certain
students to serious study of the family and its problems. Howard's
_History of Matrimonial Institutions_ is a scholarly and comprehensive
treatise upon the evolution of the legal status of the family. Annual
statistics of marriage and divorce are now compiled and published by all
the important countries except the United States government. In the
United States, however, three studies of marriages and divorces have
been made; one in 1887-88, by the Department of Labor, covering the
twenty years from 1867-86 inclusive; another in 1906-7, by the Bureau of
the Census, for the twenty years 1887-1906; and the last, also by the
Bureau of the Census, for the year 1916.
The changes in family life resulting from the transition from home
industry to the factory system have created new social problems.
Problems of woman and child labor, unemployment, and poverty are a
product of the machine industry. Attempts to relieve the distress under
conditions of city life resulted in the formation of charity
organization societies and other philanthropic institutions, and in
attempts to control the behavior of the individuals and families
assisted. The increasing body of experience gained by social agencies
has gradually been incorporated in the technique of the workers. Mary
Richmond in _Social Diagnosis_ has analyzed and standardized the
procedure of the social case worker.
Less direct but more fundamental studies of family life have been made
by other investigators. Le Play, a French social economist, who lived
with the families which he observed, introduced the method of the
monographic study of the economic organization of family life. Ernst
Engel, from his study of the expenditure of Saxon working-class
families, formulated so-called "laws" of the relation between family
income and family outlay. Recent studies of family incomes and budgets
by Chapin, Ogburn, and others have thrown additional light upon the
relationship between wages and the standard of living. Interest in the
economics of the family is manifested by an increasing number of studies
in dietetics, household administration and domestic science.
Westermarck in his _History of Human Marriage_ attempted to write a
sociology of the family. Particularly interesting is his attempt to
compare the animal family with that of man. The effect of this was to
emphasize instinctive and biological aspects of the family rather than
its institutional character. The basis for a psychology of family life
was first laid in the _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_ by Havelock
Ellis. The case studies of individuals by psychoanalysts often lead into
family complexes and illuminate the structure of family attitudes and
wishes.
The sociological study of the family as a natural and a cultural group
is only now in its beginnings. An excellent theoretical study of the
family as a unity of interacting members is presented in Bosanquet, _The
Family_. The family as defined in the mores has been described and
interpreted, as for example, by Thomas in his analysis of the
organization of the large peasant family group in the first two volumes
of the _Polish Peasant_. Materials upon the family in the United States
have been brought together by Calhoun in his _Social History of the
American Family_.
While the family is listed by Cooley among primary groups, the notion is
gaining ground that it is primary in a unique sense which sets it apart
from all other social groups. The biological interdependence and
co-operation of the members of the family, intimacies of closest and
most enduring contacts have no parallel among other human groups. The
interplay of the attractions, tensions, and accommodations of
personalities in the intimate bonds of family life have up to the
present found no concrete description or adequate analysis in
sociological inquiry.
The best case studies of family life at present are in fiction, not in
the case records of social agencies, nor yet in sociological literature.
Arnold Bennett's trilogy, _Clayhanger_, _Hilda Lessways_, and _These
Twain_, suggests a pattern not unworthy of consideration by social
workers and sociologists. _The Pastor's Wife_, by the author of
_Elizabeth and Her German Garden_, is a delightful contrast of English
and German mores in their effect upon the intimate relations of family
life.
In the absence of case studies of the family as a natural and cultural
group the following tentative outline for sociological study is offered:
1. _Location and extent in time and space._--Genealogical tree
as retained in the family memory; geographical distribution and
movement of members of small family group and of large family
group; stability or mobility of family; its rural or urban
location.
2. _Family traditions and ceremonials._--Family romance; family
skeleton; family ritual, as demonstration of affection, family
events, etc.
3. _Family economics._--Family communism; division of labor
between members of the family; effect of occupation of its
members.
4. _Family organization and control._--Conflicts and
accommodation; superordination and subordination; typical forms
of control--patriarchy, matriarchy, consensus, etc.; family
_esprit de corps_, family morale, family objectives; status in
community.
5. _Family behavior._--Family life from the standpoint of the
four wishes (security, response, recognition, and new
experience); family crises; the family and the community;
familism versus individualism; family life and the development
of personality.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. THE DEFINITION OF SOCIETY
(1) Kistiakowski, Dr. Th. _Gesellschaft und Einselwesen; eine
methodologische Studie._ Berlin, 1899. [A review and criticism of the
principal conceptions of society with reference to their value for a
natural science of society.]
(2) Barth, Paul. _Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie._
Leipzig, 1897. [A comparison of the different schools and an attempt to
interpret them as essays in the philosophy of history.]
(3) Espinas, Alfred. _Des sociétés animales._ Paris, 1877. [A definition
of society based upon a comparative study of animal associations,
communities, and societies.]
(4) Spencer, Herbert. "The Social Organism," _Essays, Scientific,
Political and Speculative_. I, 265-307. New York, 1892. [First published
in _The Westminster Review_ for January, 1860.]
(5) Lazarus, M., and Steinthal, H. "Einleitende Gedanken zur
Völkerpsychologie als Einladung zu einer Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft," _Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, I (1860), 1-73. [This is the
most important early attempt to interpret social phenomena from a social
psychological point of view. See p. 35 for definition of _Volk_ "the
people."]
(6) Knapp, G. Friedrich. "Quételet als Theoretiker," _Jahrbücher für
Nationalökonomie und Statistik_, XVIII (1872), 89-124.
(7) Lazarus, M. _Das Leben der Seele in Monographien über seine
Erscheinungen und Gesetze._ Berlin, 1876.
(8) Durkheim, Émile. "Représentations individuelles et représentations
collectives," _Revue de métaphysique et de morale_, VI (1898), 273-302.
(9) Simmel, Georg. _Über sociale Differenzierung._ Sociologische und
psychologische Untersuchungen. Leipzig, 1890.
[See also in Bibliography, chap. i, volumes listed under Systematic
Treatises.]
II. PLANT COMMUNITIES AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES
(1) Clements, Frederic E. _Plant Succession._ An analysis of the
development of vegetation. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916.
(2) Wheeler, W. M. "The Ant-Colony as an Organism," _Journal of
Morphology_, XXII (1911), 307-25.
(3) Parmelee, Maurice. _The Science of Human Behavior._ Biological and
Psychological Foundations. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.]
(4) Massart, J., and Vandervelde, É. _Parasitism, Organic and Social._
2d ed. Translated by W. Macdonald. Revised by J. Arthur Thomson. London,
1907.
(5) Warming, Eug. _Oecology of Plants._ An introduction to the study of
plant communities. Oxford, 1909. [Bibliography.]
(6) Adams, Charles C. _Guide to the Study of Animal Ecology._ New York,
1913. [Bibliography.]
(7) Waxweiler, E. "Esquisse d'une sociologie," _Travaux de l'Institut de
Sociologie (Solvay), Notes et mémoires_, Fasc. 2. Bruxelles, 1906.
(8) Reinheimer, H. _Symbiosis._ A socio-physiological study of
evolution. London, 1920.
III. THE CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL GROUPS
A. _Types of Social Group_
1. Non-territorial Groups:
(1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Crowd._ A study of the popular mind. London,
1897.
(2) Sighele, S. _Psychologie des sectes._ Paris, 1898.
(3) Tarde, G. _L'opinion et la foule._ Paris, 1901.
(4) Fahlbeck, Pontus. _Klasserna och Samhallet._ Stockholm, 1920. (Book
review in _American Journal of Sociology_, XXVI [1920-21], 633-34.)
(5) Nesfield, John C. _Brief View of the Caste System of the
North-western Provinces and Oudh_. Allahabad, 1885.
2. Territorial Groups:
(1) Simmel, Georg. "Die Grossstädte und das Geistesleben," _Die
Grossstadt_, Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Städteausstellung, von K. Bücher,
F. Ratzel, G. v. Mayr, H. Waentig, G. Simmel, Th. Peterman, und D.
Schäfer. Dresden, 1903.
(2) Galpin, C. J. _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community._
Madison, Wis., 1915. (Agricultural experiment station of the University
of Wisconsin. Research Bulletin 34.) [See also _Rural Life_, New York,
1918.]
(3) Aronovici, Carol. _The Social Survey._ Philadelphia, 1916.
(4) McKenzie, R. D. _The Neighborhood._ A study of local life in
Columbus, Ohio. Chicago, 1921 [in press].
(5) Park, Robert E. "The City. Suggestions for the Investigation of
Human Behavior in the City Environment," _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 577-612.
(6) Sims, Newell L. _The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern._ New York,
1920.
B. _Studies of Individual Communities:_
(1) Maine, Sir Henry. _Village-Communities in the East and West._
London, 1871.
(2) Baden-Powell, H. _The Indian Village Community._ Examined with
reference to the physical, ethnographic, and historical conditions of
the provinces. London, 1896.
(3) Seebohm, Frederic. _The English Village Community._ Examined in its
relations to the manorial and tribal systems and to the common or open
field system of husbandry. An essay in economic history. London, 1883.
(4) McGee, W. J. "The Seri Indians," _Bureau of American Ethnology 17th
Annual Report 1895-96._ Washington, 1898.
(5) Rivers, W. H. R. _The Todas._ London and New York, 1906.
(6) Jenks, Albert. _The Bontoc Igorot._ Manila, 1905.
(7) Stow, John. _A Survey of London._ Reprinted from the text of 1603
with introduction and notes by C. L. Kingsford. Oxford, 1908.
(8) Booth, Charles. _Life and Labour of the People in London_, 9 vols.
London and New York, 1892-97. 8 additional volumes, 1902.
(9) Kellogg, P. U., ed. _The Pittsburgh Survey._ Findings in 6 vols.
Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1909-14.
(10) Woods, Robert. _The City Wilderness._ A settlement study, south end
of Boston. Boston, 1898. ----. _Americans in Process._ A settlement
study, north and west ends of Boston. Boston, 1902.
(11) Kenngott, G. F. _The Record of a City._ A social survey of Lowell,
Massachusetts. New York, 1912.
(12) Harrison, Shelby M., ed. _The Springfield Survey._ A study of
social conditions in an American city. Findings in 3 vols. Russell Sage
Foundation. New York, 1918.
(13) Roberts, Peter. _Anthracite Coal Communities._ A study of the
demography, the social, educational, and moral life of the anthracite
regions. New York and London, 1904.
(14) Williams, J. M. _An American Town._ A sociological study. New York,
1906.
(15) Wilson, Warren H. _Quaker Hill._ A sociological study. New York,
1907.
(16) Taylor, Graham R. _Satellite Cities._ A study of industrial
suburbs. New York and London, 1915.
(17) Lewis, Sinclair. _Main Street._ New York, 1920.
(18) Kobrin, Leon. _A Lithuanian Village._ Translated from the Yiddish
by Isaac Goldberg. New York, 1920.
IV. THE STUDY OF THE FAMILY
A. _The Primitive Family_
1. The Natural History of Marriage:
(1) Bachofen, J. J. _Das Mutterrecht._ Eine Untersuchung über die
Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen
Natur. Stuttgart, 1861.
(2) Westermarck, E. _The History of Human Marriage._ London, 1891.
(3) McLennan, J. F. _Primitive Marriage._ An inquiry into the origin of
the form of capture in marriage ceremonies. Edinburgh, 1865.
(4) Tylor, E. B. "The Matriarchal Family System," _Nineteenth Century_,
XL (1896), 81-96.
(5) Dargun, L. von. _Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht._ Leipzig, 1892.
(6) Maine, Sir Henry. _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom._ Chap.
vii. London, 1883.
(7) Letourneau, C. _The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family._
(Trans.) New York, 1891.
(8) Kovalevsky, M. _Tableau des origines et de l'évolution de la famille
et de la propriété._ Stockholm, 1890.
(9) Lowie, Robert H. _Primitive Society._ New York, 1920.
(10) Starcke, C. N. _The Primitive Family in Its Origin and
Development._ New York, 1889.
(11) Hobhouse, L. T., Wheeler, G. C., and Ginsberg, M. _The Material
Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples._ London, 1915.
(12) Parsons, Elsie Clews. _The Family._ An ethnographical and
historical outline. New York and London, 1906.
2. Studies of Family Life in Different Cultural Areas:
(1) Spencer, B., and Gillen, F. J. _The Native Tribes of Central
Australia._ Chap. iii, "Certain Ceremonies Concerned with Marriage," pp.
92-111. London and New York, 1899.
(2) Rivers, W. H. R. _Kinship and Social Organization._ "Studies in
Economics and Political Science," No. 36. In the series of monographs by
writers connected with the London School of Economics and Political
Science. London, 1914.
(3) Rivers, W. H. R. "Kinship," _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits, Report._ V, 129-47, VI, 92-125.
(4) Kovalevsky, M. "La famille matriarcale au Caucase,"
_L'Anthropologie_, IV (1893), 259-78.
(5) Thomas, N. W. _Kinship Organizations and Group Marriage in
Australia._ Cambridge, 1906.
(6) Malinowski, Bronislaw. _The Family among the Australian Aborigines._
A sociological study. London, 1913.
B. _Materials for the Study of Familial Attitudes and Sentiments_
(1) Frazer, J. G. _Totemism and Exogamy._ A treatise on certain early
forms of superstition and society. London, 1910.
(2) Durkheim, É. "La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," _L'année
sociologique._ I (1896-97), 1-70.
(3) Ploss, H. _Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde._ Leipzig, 1902.
(4) Lasch, R. "Der Selbstmord aus erotischen Motiven bei den primitiven
Völkern," _Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft_, II (1899), 578-85.
(5) Jacobowski, L. "Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten," _Globus_,
LXX (1896), 173-76.
(6) Stoll, O. _Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie._ Leipzig,
1908.
(7) Crawley, A. E. "Sexual Taboo: A Study in the Relations of the
Sexes," _The Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV (1894-95),
116-25; 219-35; 430-46.
(8) Simmel, G. "Zur Psychologie der Frauen," _Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, XX, 6-46.
(9) Finck, Henry T. _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty._ Their
development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities.
London and New York, 1887.
(10) ----. _Primitive Love and Love Stories_. New York, 1899.
(11) Kline, L. W. "The Migratory Impulse versus Love of Home," _American
Journal of Psychology_, X (1898-99), 1-81.
(12) Key, Ellen. _Love and Marriage._ Translated from the Swedish by A.
G. Chater; with a critical and biographical introduction by Havelock
Ellis. New York and London, 1912.
(13) Meisel-Hess, Grete. _The Sexual Crisis._ A critique of our sex
life. Translated from the German by E. and C. Paul. New York, 1917.
(14) Bloch, Iwan. _The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relation to Modern
Civilization._ Translated from the 6th German ed. by M. Eden Paul. Chap.
viii, "The Individualization of Love," pp. 159-76. London, 1908.
C. _Economics of the Family_
(1) Grosse, Ernst. _Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der
Wirtschaft._ Freiburg, 1896.
(2) Le Play, P. G. Frédéric. _Les ouvriers européens._ Études sur les
travaux, la vie domestique, et la condition morale des populations
ouvrières de l'Europe. Précédées d'un exposé de la méthode
d'observation. Paris, 1855. [Comprises a series of 36 monographs on the
budgets of typical families selected from the most diverse industries.]
(3) Le Play, P. G. Frédéric. _L'organisation de la famille._ Selon le
vrai modèle signalé par l'histoire de toutes les races et de tous les
temps. Paris, 1871.
(4) Engel, Ernst. _Die Lebenskosten belgischer Arbeiter-Familien früher
und jetzt._ Ermittelt aus Familien-Haushaltrechnungen und vergleichend
zusammengestellt. Dresden, 1895.
(5) Chapin, Robert C. _The Standard of Living among Workingmen's
Families in New York City._ Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1909.
(6) Talbot, Marion, and Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. _The Modern
Household._ Rev. ed. Boston, 1919. [Bibliography at the end of each
chapter.]
(7) Nesbitt, Florence. _Household Management._ Preface by Mary E.
Richmond. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918.
D. _The Sociology of the Family_
1. Studies in Family Organization:
(1) Bosanquet, Helen. _The Family._ London and New York, 1906.
(2) Durkheim, É. "Introduction à la sociologie de la famille." _Annales
de la faculté des lettres de Bordeaux_ (1888), 257-81.
(3) ----. "La famille conjugale," _Revue philosophique_, XLI (1921),
1-14.
(4) Howard, G. E. _A History of Matrimonial Institutions Chiefly in
England and the United States._ With an introductory analysis of the
literature and theories of primitive marriage and the family. 3 vols.
Chicago, 1904.
(5) Thwing, Charles F. and Carrie F. B. _The Family._ A historical and
social study. Boston, 1887.
(6) Goodsell, Willystine. _A History of the Family as a Social and
Educational Institution._ New York, 1915.
(7) Dealey, J. Q. _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects._ Boston,
1912.
(8) Calhoun, Arthur W. _A Social History of the American Family from
Colonial Times to the Present._ 3 vols. Cleveland, 1917-19.
[Bibliography.]
(9) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ "Primary-Group Organization," I, 87-524, II. Boston, 1918. [A
study based on correspondence between members of the family in America
and Poland.]
(10) Du Bois, W. E. B. _The Negro American Family._ Atlanta, 1908.
[Bibliography.]
(11) Williams, James M. "Outline of a Theory of Social Motives,"
_American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909-10), 741-80. [Theory of
motives based upon observation of rural and urban families.]
2. Materials for the Study of Family Disorganization:
(1) Willcox, Walter F. _The Divorce Problem._ A study in statistics.
("Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law,"
Vol. I. New York, 1891.)
(2) Lichtenberger, J. P. _Divorce._ A study in social causation. New
York, 1909.
(3) United States Bureau of the Census. _Marriage and Divorce_,
1867-1906. 2 vols. Washington, 1908-09. [Results of two federal
investigations.]
(4) ----. _Marriage and Divorce 1916._ Washington, 1919.
(5) Eubank, Earle E. _A Study in Family Desertion._ Department of Public
Welfare. Chicago, 1916. [Bibliography.]
(6) Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., and Abbott, Edith. _The Delinquent
Child and the Home._ A study of the delinquent wards of the Juvenile
Court of Chicago. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1912.
(7) Colcord, Joanna. _Broken Homes._ A study of family desertion and its
social treatment. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1919.
(8) Kammerer, Percy G. _The Unmarried Mother._ A study of five hundred
cases. Boston, 1918.
(9) Ellis, Havelock. _The Task of Social Hygiene._ Boston, 1912.
(10) Myerson, Abraham. "Psychiatric Family Studies," _American Journal
of Insanity_, LXXIV (April, 1918), 497-555.
(11) Morrow, Prince A. _Social Diseases and Marriage._ Social
prophylaxis. New York, 1904.
(12) Periodicals on Social Hygiene:
_Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Bd. 1, April, 1914-, Bonn [1915-].
_Social Hygiene_, Vol. I, December, 1914-, New York [1915-].
_Die Neuere Generation_, Bd. I, 1908-Berlin [1908-]. Preceded by
_Mutterschutz_, Vols. I-III.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Society and the Individual: The Cardinal Problem of Sociology.
2. Historic Conceptions of Society: Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc.
3. Plant Communities.
4. Animal Societies: The Ant Colony, the Bee Hive.
5. Animal Communities, or Studies in Animal Ecology.
6. Human Communities, Human Ecology, and Economics.
7. The Natural Areas of the City.
8. Studies in Group Consciousness: National, Sectional, State, Civic.
9. Co-operation versus Consensus.
10. Taming as a Form of Social Control.
11. Domestication among Plants, Animals, and Man.
12. Group Unity and the Different Forms of Consensus: _Esprit de corps_,
Morale, Collective Representations.
13. The Social Nature of Concepts.
14. Conduct and Behavior.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What, in your opinion, are the essential elements in Espinas'
definition of society?
2. In what sense does society differ from association?
3. According to Espinas' definition, which of the following social
relations would constitute society: robber and robbed; beggar and
almsgiver; charity organization and recipients of relief; master and
slave; employer and employee?
4. What illustrations of symbiosis in human society occur to you?
5. Are changes resulting from human symbiosis changes (a) of
structure, or (b) of function?
6. What are the likenesses and the differences between social symbiosis
in human and in ant society?
7. What is the difference between taming and domestication?
8. What is the relation of domestication to society?
9. Is man a _tamed_ or a _domesticated_ animal?
10. What are the likenesses between a plant and a human community? What
are the differences?
11. What is the fundamental difference between a plant community and an
ant society?
12. What are the differences between human and animal societies?
13. Does the ant have customs? ceremonies?
14. Do you think that there is anything akin to public sentiment in ant
society?
15. What is the relation of education to social heredity?
16. In what way do you differentiate between the characteristic behavior
of machines and human beings?
17. "Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission,
_in_ communication." Interpret.
18. How does Dewey's definition of society differ from that of Espinas?
Which do you prefer? Why?
19. Is consensus synonymous with co-operation?
20. Under what conditions would Dewey characterize the following social
relations as society: master and slave; employer and employee; parent
and child; teacher and student?
21. In what sense does the communication of an experience to another
person change the experience itself?
22. In what sense are concepts _social_ in contrast with sensations
which are _individual_? Would it be possible to have concepts outside of
group life?
23. How does Park distinguish between behavior and conduct?
24. In what ways is human society in its origin and continuity based on
conduct?
25. To what extent does "the animal nature of man" (Hobhouse) provide a
basis for the social organization of life?
26. What, according to Hobhouse, are the _differentia_ of human morality
from animal behavior?
27. What do you understand by a collective representation?
28. How do you distinguish between the terms society, social community,
and group? Can you name a society that could not be considered as a
community? Can you name a community that is not a society?
29. In what, fundamentally, does the unity of the group consist?
30. What groups are omitted in Le Bon's classification of social groups?
Make a list of all the groups, formal and informal, of which you are a
member. Arrange these groups under the classification given in the
General Introduction (p. 50). Compare this classification with that made
by Le Bon.
31. How do you distinguish between _esprit de corps_, morale, and
collective representation as forms of consensus?
32. Classify under _esprit de corps_, morale, or collective
representation the following aspects of group behavior: rooting at a
football game; army discipline; the flag; college spirit; the so-called
"war psychosis"; the fourteen points of President Wilson; "the English
never know when they are beaten"; slogans; "Paris refrains from
exultation"; crowd enthusiasm; the Golden Rule; "where there's a will
there's a way"; Grant's determination, "I'll fight it out this way if it
takes all summer"; ideals.
33. "The human mind has a large capacity for adopting beliefs that fit
the trends of its habits and feelings." Give concrete illustrations
outside of army life.
34. What is the importance of the study of the family as a social
group?
FOOTNOTES:
[80] See _supra_, chap. i, pp. 50-51.
[81] Translated from Alfred Espinas, _Des sociétés animales_ (1878), pp.
157-60.
[82] Adapted from William M. Wheeler, _Ants, Their Structure,
Development, Behavior_, pp. 339-424. (Columbia University Press, 1910.)
[83] Adapted from P. Chalmers Mitchell, _The Childhood of Animals_, pp.
204-21. (Frederick A. Stokes & Co., 1912.)
[84] Adapted from Eugenius Warming, _Oecology of Plants_, pp. 12-13,
91-95. (Oxford University Press, 1909.)
[85] Adapted from William E. Wheeler, _Ants, Their Structure,
Development, and Behavior_, pp. 5-7. (Columbia University Press, 1910.)
[86] From John Dewey, _Democracy and Education_, pp. 1-7. (Published by
The Macmillan Co., 1916. Reprinted by permission.)
[87] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 1-9. (The
Zalaz Corporation, 1915.)
[88] Adapted from L. T. Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, pp. 1-2, 10-12.
(Henry Holt & Co., 1915.)
[89] Adapted from Émile Durkheim, _Elementary Forms of Religious Life_,
pp. 432-37. (Allen & Unwin, 1915.)
[90] From Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 495-97. (The
University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[91] From R. E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and
Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological
Society_, VIII (1918), 38-40.
[92] Translated from S. Sighele, _Psychologie des Sectes_, pp. 42-51.
(M. Giard et Cie., 1898.)
[93] Adapted from William E. Hocking, _Morale and Its Enemies_, pp.
3-37. (Yale University Press, 1918.)
CHAPTER IV
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Geological and Biological Conceptions of Isolation
Relations of persons with persons, and of groups with groups, may be
either those of isolation or those of contact. The emphasis in this
chapter is placed upon _isolation_, in the next chapter upon _contact_
in a comparison of their effects upon personal conduct and group
behavior.
Absolute isolation of the person from the members of his group is
unthinkable. Even biologically, two individuals of the higher animal
species are the precondition to a new individual existence. In man,
postnatal care by the parent for five or six years is necessary even for
the physiological survival of the offspring. Not only biologically but
sociologically complete isolation is a contradiction in terms.
Sociologists following Aristotle have agreed with him that human nature
develops within and decays outside of social relations. Isolation, then,
in the social as well as the biological sense is _relative_, not
_absolute_.
The term "isolation" was first employed in anthropogeography, the study
of the relation of man to his physical environment. To natural barriers,
as mountains, oceans, and deserts, was attributed an influence upon the
location of races and the movements of peoples and the kind and the
degree of cultural contact. The nature and the extent of separation of
persons and groups was considered by geographers as a reflex of the
physical environment.
In biology, isolation as a factor in the evolution and the life of the
species, is studied from the standpoint of the animal group more than
from that of the environment. Consequently, the separation of species
from each other is regarded as the outcome not only of a sheer physical
impossibility of contact, but even more of other factors as differences
in physical structure, in habits of life, and in the instincts of the
animal groups. J. Arthur Thomson in his work on "Heredity" presents the
following compact and illuminating statement of isolation as a factor in
inheritance.
The only other directive evolution-factor that biologists are
at all agreed about, besides selection, is isolation--a general
term for all the varied ways in which the radius of possible
intercrossing is narrowed. As expounded by Wagner, Weismann,
Romanes, Gulick, and others, isolation takes many
forms--spatial, structural, habitudinal, and psychical--and it
has various results.
It tends to the segregation of species into subspecies, it
makes it easier for new variations to establish themselves, it
promotes prepotency, or what the breeders call "transmitting
power," it fixes characters. One of the most successful breeds
of cattle (Polled Angus) seems to have had its source in one
farmsteading; its early history is one of close inbreeding, its
prepotency is remarkable, its success from our point of view
has been great. It is difficult to get secure data as to the
results of isolation in nature, but Gulick's recent volume on
the subject abounds in concrete illustrations, and we seem
warranted in believing that conditions of isolation have been
and are of frequent occurrence.
Reibmayr has collected from human history a wealth of
illustrations of various forms of isolation, and there seems
much to be said for his thesis that the establishment of a
successful race or stock requires the alternation of periods of
inbreeding (endogamy) in which characters are fixed, and
periods of outbreeding (exogamy) in which, by the introduction
of fresh blood, new variations are promoted. Perhaps the Jews
may serve to illustrate the influence of isolation in promoting
stability of type and prepotency; perhaps the Americans may
serve to illustrate the variability which a mixture of
different stocks tends to bring about. In historical inquiry
into the difficult problem of the origin of distinct races, it
seems legitimate to think of periods of "mutation"--of
discontinuous sporting--which led to numerous offshoots from
the main stock, of the migration of these variants into new
environments where in relative isolation they became prepotent
and stable.[94]
The biological use of the term "isolation" introduces a new emphasis.
Separation may be spatial, but its effects are increasingly structural
and functional. Indeed, spatial isolation was a factor in the origin of
species because of specialized organic adaptation to varied geographic
conditions. In other words, the structure of the species, its habits of
life, and its original and acquired responses, tend to isolate it from
other species.
Man as an animal species in his historical development has attempted
with fair success to destroy the barriers separating him from other
animals. Through domestication and taming he has changed the original
nature and habits of life of many animals. The dog, the companion of
man, is the summit of human achievement in association with animals.
Nevertheless, the barriers that separate the dog and his master are
insurmountable. Even if "a candidate for humanity," the dog is forever
debarred from any share in human tradition and culture.
2. Isolation and Segregation
In geography, isolation denotes separation in space. In sociology, the
essential characteristic of isolation is found in exclusion from
communication.
Geographical forms of isolation are sociologically significant in so far
as they prevent communication. The isolation of the mountain whites in
the southern states, even if based on spatial separation, consisted in
the absence of contacts and competition, participation in the
progressive currents of civilization.
Biological differences, whether physical or mental, between the
different races are sociologically important to the extent to which they
affect communication. Of themselves, differences in skin color between
races would not prevent intercommunication of ideas. But the physical
marks of racial differences have invariably become the symbols of racial
solidarity and racial exclusiveness. The problems of humanity are
altogether different from what they would have been were all races of
one complexion as they are of one blood.
Certain physical and mental defects and differences in and of themselves
tend to separate the individual from his group. The deaf-mute and the
blind are deprived of normal avenues to communication. "My deafness,"
wrote Beethoven, "forces me to live in exile." The physically
handicapped are frequently unable to participate in certain human
activities on equal terms with their fellows. Minor physical defects and
marked physical variations from the normal tend to become the basis of
social discrimination.
Mental differences frequently offer still greater obstacles to social
contacts. The idiot and the imbecile are obviously debarred from normal
communication with their intelligent associates. The "dunce" was
isolated by village ridicule and contempt long before the term "moron"
was coined, or the feeble-minded segregated in institutions and
colonies. The individual with the highest native endowments, the genius,
and the talented enjoy or suffer from a more subtle type of isolation
from their fellows, that is, the isolation of eminence. "The reason of
isolation," says Thoreau, a lover of solitude, "is not that we love to
be alone, but that we love to soar; and when we soar, the company grows
thinner and thinner until there is none left."
So far, isolation as a tool of social analysis has been treated as an
effect of geographical separation or of structural differentiation
resulting in limitation of communication. Social distances are
frequently based on other subtler forms of isolation.
The study of cultural differences between groups has revealed barriers
quite as real and as effective as those of physical space and structure.
Variations in language, folkways, mores, conventions, and ideals
separate individuals and peoples from each other as widely as oceans and
deserts. Communication between England and Australia is far closer and
freer than between Germany and France.
Conflict groups, like sects and parties, and accommodation groups like
castes and classes depend for survival upon isolation. Free intercourse
of opposing parties is always a menace to their morale. Fraternization
between soldiers of contending armies, or between ministers of rival
denominations is fraught with peril to the fighting efficiency of the
organizations they represent. The solidarity of the group, like the
integrity of the individual, implies a measure at least of isolation
from other groups and persons as a necessary condition of its existence.
The life-history of any group when analyzed is found to incorporate
within it elements of isolation as well as of social contact. Membership
in a group makes for increasing contacts within the circle of
participants, but decreasing contacts with persons without. Isolation is
for this reason a factor in the preservation of individuality and unity.
The _esprit de corps_ and morale of the group is in large part
maintained by the fixation of attention upon certain collective
representations to the exclusion of others. The memories and sentiments
of the members have their source in common experiences of the past from
which non-members are isolated. This natural tendency toward exclusive
experiences is often reinforced by conscious emphasis upon secrecy.
Primitive and modern secret societies, sororities, and fraternities have
been organized around the principle of isolation. Secrecy in a society,
like reserve in an individual, protects it from a disintegrating
publicity. The family has its "skeleton in the closet," social groups
avoid the public "washing of dirty linen"; the community banishes from
consciousness, if it can, its slums, and parades its parks and
boulevards. Every individual who has any personality at all maintains
some region of privacy.
A morphological survey of group formation in any society discloses the
fact that there are lateral as well as vertical divisions in the social
structure. Groups are arranged in strata of relative superiority and
inferiority. In a stratified society the separation into castes is rigid
and quite unalterable. In a free society competition tends to destroy
classes and castes. New devices come into use to keep aspiring and
insurgent individuals and groups at the proper social level. If
"familiarity breeds contempt" respect may be secured by reserve. In the
army the prestige of the officer is largely a matter of "distance." The
"divinity that doth hedge the king" is due in large part to the hedge of
ceremonial separating him from his subjects. Condescension and pity,
while they denote external contact, involve an assumption of spiritual
eminence not to be found in consensus and sympathy. As protection
against the penetration of the inner precincts of personality and the
group individuality, there are the defenses of suspicion and aversion,
of reticence and reserve, designed to insure the proper social distance.
3. Classification of the Materials
The materials in the present chapter are intended to illustrate the fact
that individuality of the person and of the group is both an effect of
and a cause of isolation.
The first selections under the heading "Isolation and Personal
Individuality" bring out the point that the function of isolation in
personal development lies not so much in sheer physical separation from
other persons as in freedom from the control of external social
contacts. Thus Rousseau constructs an ideal society in the solitude of
his forest retreat. The lonely child enjoys the companionship of his
imaginary comrade. George Eliot aspires to join the choir invisible. The
mystic seeks communion with divinity.
This form of isolation within the realm of social contacts is known as
privacy. Indeed privacy may be defined as withdrawal from the group,
with, at the same time, ready access to it. It is in solitude that the
creative mind organizes the materials appropriated from the group in
order to make novel and fruitful innovations. Privacy affords
opportunity for the individual to reflect, to anticipate, to recast, and
to originate. Practical recognition of the human demand for privacy has
been realized in the study of the minister, the office of the business
man, and the den of the boy. Monasteries and universities are
institutions providing leisure and withdrawal from the world as the
basis for personal development and preparation for life's work. Other
values of privacy are related to the growth of self-consciousness,
self-respect, and personal ideals of conduct.
Many forms of isolation, unlike privacy, prevent access to stimulating
social contact. Selections under the heading "Isolation and Retardation"
indicate conditions responsible for the arrest of mental and personal
growth.
The cases of feral men, in the absence of contradictory evidence, seem
adequate in support of Aristotle's point that social contacts are
indispensable for human development. The story by Helen Keller, the
talented and celebrated blind deaf-mute, of her emergence from the
imprisonment of sense deprivation into the free life of communication is
a most significant sociological document. With all of us the change from
the animal-like isolation of the child at birth to personal
participation in the fullest human life is gradual. In Helen Keller's
case the transformation of months was telescoped into minutes. The
"miracle" of communication when sociologically analyzed seems to consist
in the transition from the experience of _sensations_ and _sense
perceptions_ which man shares in common with animals to the development
of _ideas_ and _self-consciousness_ which are the unique attributes of
human beings.
The remaining selections upon isolation and retardation illustrate the
different types of situations in which isolation makes for retardation
and retardation in turn emphasizes the isolation. The reversion of a
man of scientific training in the solitudes of Patagonia to the animal
level of mentality suggests that the low intelligence of the savage, the
peasant, and the backward races is probably due more to the absence of
stimulating contacts than to original mental inferiority. So the
individuality and conservatism of the farmer, his failure to keep pace
with the inhabitant of the town and city, Galpin assigns to deficiency
in social contacts. Then, too, the subtler forms of handicap in personal
development and achievement result from social types of isolation, as
race prejudice, the sheltered life of woman, exclusiveness of social
classes, and make for increased isolation.
Up to this point, isolation has been treated statically as a cause.
Under the heading, "Isolation and Segregation" it is conceived as an
effect, an effect of competition, and the consequent selection and
segregation.
The first effect of the introduction of competition in any society is to
break up all types of isolation and provincialism based upon lack of
communication and contact. But as competition continues, natural and
social selection comes into play. Successful types emerge in the process
of competitive struggle while variant individuals who fail to maintain
the pace or conform to standard withdraw or are ejected from the group.
Exiled variants from several groups under auspicious circumstances may
in turn form a community where the process of selection will be directly
opposite to that in their native groups. In the new community the
process of selection naturally accentuates and perfects the traits
originally responsible for exclusion. The outcome of segregation is the
creation of specialized social types with the maximum of isolation. The
circle of isolation is then complete.
This circular effect of the processes of competition, selection, and
segregation, from isolation to isolation, may be found everywhere in
modern western society. Individual variants with criminalistic
tendencies exiled from villages and towns through the process of
selection form a segregated group in city areas popularly called
"breeding places of crime." The tribe of Pineys, Tin Town, The Village
of a Thousand Souls, are communities made up by adverse selection of
feeble-minded individuals, outcasts of the competitive struggle of
intelligent, "high-minded" communities. The result is the formation of a
criminal type and of a feeble-minded caste. These slums and outcast
groups are in turn isolated from full and free communication with the
progressive outside world.
National individuality in the past, as indicated in the selections upon
"Isolation and National Individuality," has been in large degree the
result of a cultural process based upon isolation. The historical
nations of Europe, biologically hybrid, are united by common language,
folkways, and mores. This unity of mother tongue and culture is the
product of historical and cultural processes circumscribed, as Shaler
points out, by separated geographical areas.
A closer examination of the cultural process in the life of progressive
historical peoples reveals the interplay of isolation and social
contacts. Grote gives a penetrating analysis of Grecian achievement in
terms of the individuality based on small isolated land areas and the
contacts resulting from maritime communication. The world-hegemony of
English-speaking peoples today rests not only upon naval supremacy and
material resources but even more upon the combination of individual
development in diversified areas with large freedom in international
contacts.
II. MATERIALS
A. ISOLATION AND PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY
1. Society and Solitude[95]
It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and
untruth together in few words than in that speech: "Whosoever is
delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it is most
true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in
any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it
should have any character at all of the divine nature except it proceed,
not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to
sequester a man's self for a higher conversation, such as is found to
have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as Epimenides
the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of
Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and Holy
Fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and
how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a
gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no
love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: _Magna civitas magna
solitudo_ ("A great town is a great solitude"), because in a great town
friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the
most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and
affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true
friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this
sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and
affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast and not
from humanity.
2. Society in Solitude[96]
What period do you think, sir, I recall most frequently and most
willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of my youth: they were too
rare, too much mingled with bitterness, and are now too distant. I
recall the period of my seclusion, of my solitary walks, of the fleeting
but delicious days that I have passed entirely by myself, with my good
and simple housekeeper, with my beloved dog, my old cat, with the birds
of the field, the hinds of the forest, with all nature, and her
inconceivable Author.
But what, then, did I enjoy when I was alone? Myself; the entire
universe; all that is; all that can be; all that is beautiful in the
world of sense; all that is imaginable in the world of intellect. I
gathered around me all that could delight my heart; my desires were the
limit of my pleasures. No, never have the voluptuous known such
enjoyments; and I have derived a hundred times more happiness from my
chimeras than they from their realities.
The wild spot of the forest [selected by Rousseau for his solitary walks
and meditations] could not long remain a desert to my imagination. I
soon peopled it with beings after my own heart, and, dismissing opinion,
prejudice, and all factitious passions, I brought to these sanctuaries
of nature men worthy of inhabiting them. I formed with these a charming
society, of which I did not feel myself unworthy. I made a golden age
according to my fancy, and, filling up these bright days with all the
scenes of my life that had left the tenderest recollections, and with
all that my heart still longed for, I affected myself to tears over the
true pleasures of humanity--pleasure so delicious, so pure, and yet so
far from men! Oh, if in these moments any ideas of Paris, of the age,
and of my little author vanity, disturbed my reveries, with what
contempt I drove them instantly away, to give myself up entirely to the
exquisite sentiments with which my soul was filled. Yet, in the midst of
all this, I confess the nothingness of my chimeras would sometimes
appear, and sadden me in a moment.
3. Prayer as a Form of Isolation[97]
He who prays begins his prayer with some idea of God, generally one that
he has received from instruction or from current traditions. He commonly
retires to a quiet place, or to a place having mental associations of
religious cast, in order to "shut out the world." This beginning of
concentration is followed by closing the eyes, which excludes a mass of
irrelevant impressions. The body bows, kneels, or assumes some other
posture that requires little muscular tension and that may favor
extensive relaxation. Memory now provides the language of prayer or of
hallowed scripture, or makes vivid some earlier experiences of one's
own. The worshiper represents to himself his needs, or the interests
(some of them happy ones) that seem most important, and he brings them
into relation to God by thinking how God regards them. The
presupposition of the whole procedure is that God's way of looking at
the matters in question is the true and important one. Around God, then,
the interests of the individual are now freshly organized. Certain ones
that looked large before the prayer began, now look small because of
their relation to the organizing idea upon which attention has focused.
On the other hand, interests that express this organizing idea gain
emotional quality by this release from competing, inhibiting
considerations. To say that the will now becomes organized toward unity
and that it acquires fresh power thereby is simply to name another
aspect of the one movement. This movement is ideational, emotional, and
volitional concentration, all in one, achieved by fixation of attention
upon the idea of God.
Persons who have been troubled with insomnia, or wakefulness or
disturbing dreams, have been enabled to secure sound sleep by merely
relaxing the muscles and repeating mechanically, without effort at
anything more, some formula descriptive of what is desired. The main
point is that attention should fix upon the appropriate organizing idea.
When this happens in a revival meeting one may find one's self
unexpectedly converted. When it happens in prayer one may be surprised
to find one's whole mood changed from discouragement to courage, from
liking something to hating it (as in the case of alcoholic drinks, or
tobacco), or from loneliness to the feeling of companionship with God.
This analysis of the structure of prayer has already touched upon some
of its functions. It is a way of getting one's self together, of
mobilizing and concentrating one's dispersed capacities, of begetting
the confidence that tends toward victory over difficulties. It produces
in a distracted mind the repose that is power. It freshens a mind
deadened by routine. It reveals new truth, because the mind is made more
elastic and more capable of sustained attention. Thus does it remove
mountains in the individual, and, through him, in the world beyond.
The values of prayer in sickness, distress, and doubt are by no means
measurable by the degree to which the primary causes thereof are made to
disappear. There is a real conquest of trouble, even while trouble
remains. It is sometimes a great source of strength, also, merely to
realize that one is fully understood. The value of having some friend or
helper from whom I reserve no secrets has been rendered more impressive
than ever by the Freud-Jung methods of relieving mental disorders
through (in part) a sort of mental house-cleaning, or bringing into the
open the patient's hidden distresses and even his most intimate and
reticent desires. Into the psychology of the healings that are brought
about by this psychoanalysis we need not go, except to note that one
constant factor appears to be the turning of a private possession into a
social possession, and particularly the consciousness that another
understands. I surmise that we shall not be far from the truth here if
we hold that, as normal experience has the _ego-alter_ form, so the
continuing possession of one's self in one's developing experience
requires development of this relation. We may, perhaps, go as far as to
believe that the bottling up of any experience as merely private is
morbid. But, however this may be, there are plenty of occasions when the
road to poise, freedom, and joy is that of social sharing. Hence the
prayer of confession, not only because it helps us to see ourselves as
we are, but also because it shares our secrets with another, has great
value for organizing the self. In this way we get relief from the
misjudgments of others, also, and from the mystery that we are to
ourselves, for we lay our case, as it were, before a judge who does not
err. Thus prayer has value in that it develops the essentially social
form of personal self-realization.
To complete this functional view of prayer we must not fail to secure
the evolutionary perspective. If we glance at the remote beginnings, and
then at the hither end, of the evolution of prayer we discover that an
immense change has taken place. It is a correlate of the transformed
character of the gods, and of the parallel disciplining of men's
valuations. In the words of Fosdick, prayer may be considered as
dominant desire. But it is also a way of securing domination over
desire. It is indeed self-assertion; sometimes it is the making of one's
supreme claim, as when life reaches its most tragic crisis; yet it is,
even in the same act, submission to an over-self. Here, then, is our
greater problem as to the function of prayer. It starts as the assertion
of any desire; it ends as _the organization of one's own desires into a
system of desires recognized as superior and then made one's own_.
4. Isolation, Originality, and Erudition[98]
The question as to how far the world's leaders in thought and action
were great readers is not quite an easy one to answer, partly because
the sources of information are sometimes scanty, and partly because
books themselves have been few in number. If we could prove that since
the days of Caxton the world's total of original thought declined in
proportion to the increase of published works, we should stand on firm
ground, and might give orders for a holocaust such as that which
Hawthorne once imagined. But no such proof is either possible or
probable. We can only be impressed by the fact that the finest
intellectual epoch of history was marked by a comparative absence of the
manuscripts which were books to the Greeks, and if a further analysis of
the lives of men of light and leading in all ages should show that
their devotion to the books of the period was slight, it will only
accentuate the suspicion that even today we are still minus the right
perspective between the printed volume and the thinking mind.
Buddha, Christ, St. Paul, Mohammed--these are names of men who changed
the course of history. But do they suggest vast scholarship, or a
profound acquaintance with books in any sense whatever? They were great
originators, even though they built on other men's foundations, but
their originality was not inspired by libraries. Can we imagine Mohammed
poring over ancient manuscripts in order to obtain the required
knowledge and impetus for his new religion? With Buddha was it not 1 per
cent papyrus roll and 99 per cent meditation? When St. Paul was struck
down on the way to Damascus, he did not repair to the nearest Jewish
seminary to read up prophecy. He says: "I went into Arabia." The desert
solitude was the only place in which to find a rationale of his new
experience. And was it not in a similar life of solitude that
Jesus--Essene-like--came to self-realization? Deane's _Pseudepigrapha:
Books that Influenced our Lord and His Apostles_ does not suggest that
the Messiah obtained his ideas from the literature of the Rabbis, much
less from Greek or other sources; indeed, the New Testament suggests
that in the earliest years he showed a genius for divine things.
It will be urged that to restrict this inquiry to great names in
religion would be unfair because such leaders are confessedly
independent of literature; indeed, they are often the creators of it.
True; but that fact alone is suggestive. If great literature can come
from meditation alone, are we not compelled to ask: "Where shall wisdom
be found and where is the place of understanding?" Is enlightenment to
be found only in the printed wisdom of the past? We know it is not, but
we also know it is useless to set one source of truth over against
another, as if they were enemies. The soul has its place and so has the
book; but need it be said that the soul has done more wonderful things
than the book? Language is merely the symbol; the soul is the reality.
But let us take other names with different associations--e.g., Plato,
Charlemagne, Caesar, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Bismarck. Can it be said of
any one of these that he owed one-third of his distinction to what he
learned from manuscripts or books? We do know, indeed, that Bismarck
was a wide reader, but it was on the selective principle as a student of
history and affairs. His library grew under the influence of the
controlling purpose of his life--i.e., the unification of Germany, so
that there was no vague distribution of energy. Of Shakespeare's reading
we know less, but there is no evidence that he was a collector of books
or that he was a student after the manner of the men of letters of his
day. The best way to estimate him as a reader is to judge him by the
references in his plays, and these do not show an acquaintance with
literature so extensive as it is intensive. The impression he made on
Ben Johnson, an all-round scholar, was not one of learning--quite
otherwise. The qualities that impressed the author of _Timber, or
Discoveries upon Men and Matter_, were Shakespeare's "open and free
nature," his "excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions
wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he
should be stopped." And, true to himself, Ben Jonson immediately adds:
"_Sufflaminandus erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius." Shakespeare, when
in the company of kindred spirits, showed precisely the kind of talk we
should expect--not Latin and Greek or French and Italian quotations, not
a commentary on books past or present, but a stream of conversation
marked by brilliant fancy, startling comparison, unique contrast, and
searching pathos, wherein life, not literature, was the chief subject.
B. ISOLATION AND RETARDATION
1. Feral Men[99]
What would the results be if children born with a normal organism and
given food and light sufficient to sustain life were deprived of the
usual advantage of human intercourse? What psychic growth would be
possible?
Perhaps no character ever aroused greater interest than Caspar Hauser.
More than a thousand articles of varying merit have been written
concerning him. In the theaters of England, France, Germany, Hungary,
and Austria, plays were founded on his strange story and many able men
have figured in the history of his case.
According to a letter which he bore when found at Nürnberg one afternoon
in 1828, he was born in 1812, left on the doorstep of a Hungarian
peasant's hut, adopted by him, and reared in strict seclusion.
At the time of his appearance in Nürnberg, he could walk only with
difficulty. He knew no German, understood but little that was said to
him, paid no heed to what went on about him, and was ignorant of social
customs. When taken to a stable, he at once fell asleep on a heap of
straw. In time it was learned that he had been kept in a low dark cell
on the ground; that he had never seen the face of the man who brought
him food, that sometimes he went to sleep after the man gave him a
drink; that on awakening he found his nails cut and clean clothing on
his body; and that his only playthings had been two wooden horses with
red ribbons.
When first found, he suffered much pain from the light, but he could see
well at night. He could distinguish fruit from leaves on a tree, and
read the name on a doorplate where others could see nothing in the
darkness. He had no visual idea of distance and would grasp at remote
objects as though they were near. He called both men and women _Bua_ and
all animals _Rosz_. His memory span for names was marvelous. Drawing
upon the pages of Von Kolb and Stanhope, a writer in _The Living Age_
says that he burned his hand in the first flame that he saw and that he
had no fear of being struck with swords, but that the noise of a drum
threw him into convulsions. He thought that pictures and statuary were
alive, as were plants and trees, bits of paper, and anything that
chanced to be in motion. He delighted in whistles and glittering
objects, but disliked the odor of paint, fabrics, and most flowers. His
hearing was acute and his touch sensitive at first, but after interest
in him had lessened, all his senses showed evidence of rapid
deterioration. He seemed to be wanting in sex instinct and to be unable
to understand the meaning of religious ceremonies. Merker, who observed
him secretly during the early days which he spent in jail, declared that
he was "in all respects like a child." Meyer, of the school at Ansbach,
found him "idle, stupid, and vain." Dr. Osterhausen found a deviation
from the normal in the shape of his legs, which made walking difficult,
but Caspar never wearied of riding on horseback.
His autopsy revealed a small brain without abnormalities. It simply gave
evidence of a lack of development.
To speak of children who have made the struggle for life with only
animals for nurses and instructors is to recall the rearing of Cyrus in
a kennel and the fabulous story of the founding of Rome. Yet Rauber has
collected many cases of wild men and some of them, taken as they are
from municipal chronicles and guaranteed by trustworthy writers, must be
accepted as authentic.
a) The Hessian Boy. Was discovered by hunters in 1341, running on all
fours with wolves; was captured and turned over to the landgrave. Was
always restless, could not adapt himself to civilized life, and died
untamed. The case is recorded in the Hessian chronicles by Wilhelm
Dilich. Rousseau refers to it in his _Discours sur l'origine et les
fondements de Pinégalité parmi les hommes_.
b) The Irish Boy. Studied and described by Dr. Tulp, curator of the
gymnasium at Amsterdam; features animal, body covered with hair; lived
with sheep and bleated like them; stolid, unconscious of self; did not
notice people; fierce, untamable, and indocible; skin thick, sense of
touch blunted so that thorns and stones were unnoticed. Age about
sixteen. (Rauber.)
c) The Lithuanian Boys. Three are described. The first was found with
bears in 1657; face not repulsive nor beastlike; hair thick and white;
skin dry and insensitive; voice a growl; great physical strength. He was
carefully instructed and learned to obey his trainer to some degree but
always kept the bear habit; ate vegetable food, raw flesh, and anything
not containing oils; had a habit of rolling up in secluded places and
taking long naps. The second, said to have been captured in 1669, is not
so well described as the third, which Dr. Connor, in the _History of
Poland_, says was found in 1694. This one learned to walk erect with
difficulty, but was always leaping restlessly about; he learned to eat
from a table, but mastered only a few words, which he spoke in a voice
harsh and inhuman. He showed great sagacity in wood life.
d) The Girl of Cranenburg. Born in 1700; lost when sixteen months old;
skin dark, rough, hard; understood but little that was said to her;
spoke little and stammeringly; food--roots, leaves, and milk. (Rauber.)
e) Clemens of Overdyke. This boy was brought to Count von der Ricke's
Asylum after the German struggle with Napoleon. He knew little and said
little. After careful training it was gathered that his parents were
dead and that a peasant had adopted him and set him to herd pigs. Little
food was given him, and he learned to suck a cow and eat grass with the
pigs. At Overdyke he would get down on his hands and knees and pull up
vegetables with his teeth. He was of low intelligence, subject to fits
of passion, and fonder of pigs than of men.[100]
f) Jean de Liége. Lost at five; lived in the woods for sixteen years;
food--roots, plants, and wild fruit; sense of smell extraordinarily
keen; could distinguish people by odor as a dog would recognize his
master; restless in manner, and always trying to escape. (Rauber.)
g) The Savage of Aveyron. After capture, was given into the care of
Dr. Itard by Abbé Sicard. Dermal sense duller than in animals; gaze
wandering; language wanting and ideas few; food--raw potatoes, acorns,
and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent,
secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the
kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing
of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew
wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with
hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them;
when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look
from a height, and Itard cured him of spasms of rage by holding his head
out of a window; met all efforts to teach him with apathy, and learned
but little of language.[101]
h) The Wolf Children of India. The two cases described by a writer in
_Chambers' Journal_ and by Rauber were boys of about ten years. Both ate
raw food but refused cooked food; one never spoke, smiled, or laughed;
both shunned human beings of both sexes, but would permit a dog to eat
with them; they pined in captivity, and lived but a short time.[102]
i) Peter of Hanover. Found in the woods of Hanover; food--buds, barks,
roots, frogs, eggs of birds, and anything else that he could get out of
doors; had a habit of wandering away in the spring; always went to bed
as soon as he had his supper; was unable to walk in shoes at first, and
it was long before he would tolerate a covering for his head. Although
Queen Caroline furnished him a teacher, he could never learn to speak;
he became docile, but remained stoical in manner; he learned to do farm
work willingly unless he was compelled to do it; his sense of hearing
and of smell was acute, and before changes in the weather he was sullen
and irritable; he lived to be nearly seventy years old.[103]
j) The Savage of Kronstadt. Of middle size, wild-eyed, deep-jawed, and
thick-throated; elbows and knees thick; cuticle insensitive; unable to
understand words or gestures perfectly; generally indifferent; found
1784.[104]
k) The Girl of Songi. According to Rauber, this is one of the most
frequently quoted of feral cases. The girl came out of the forest near
Chalons in 1731. She was thought to be nine years old. She carried a
club in her hand, with which she killed a dog that attacked her. She
climbed trees easily, and made niches on walls and roofs, over which she
ran like a squirrel. She caught fish and ate them raw; a cry served for
speech. She showed an instinct for decorating herself with leaves and
flowers. She found it difficult to adapt herself to the customs of
civilized life and suffered many fits of sickness. In 1747 she was put
into a convent at Chalons. She learned something of the French language,
of domestic science, and embroidery. She readily understood what was
pointed out to her but always had certain sounds which were not
understood. She claimed to have first begun to reflect after the
beginning of her education. In her wild life she thought only of her own
needs. She believed that the earth and the trees produced her, and her
earliest memory of shelter was of holes in the ground.[105]
2. From Solitude to Society[106]
The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my
teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder
when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it
connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was
seven years old.
The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a
doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it
and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until
afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan
slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested
in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in
making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and
pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the
letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that
words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like
imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this
uncomprehending way a great many words, among them _pin_, _hat_, _cup_
and a few verbs like _sit_, _stand_, and _walk_. But my teacher had been
with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.
One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big
rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me
understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had
a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan had tried
to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is _mug_ and that "w-a-t-e-r" is
_water_, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had
dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first
opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing
the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I
felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor
regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the
still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or
tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the
hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my
discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going
out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be
called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of
the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water
and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed
over one hand she spelled into the other the word _water_, first slowly,
then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions
of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something
forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of
language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the
wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word
awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were
barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept
away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each
name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every
object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I
saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On
entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to
the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them
together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had
done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.
I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they
all were; but I do know that _mother_, _father_, _sister_, _teacher_,
were among them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like
Aaron's rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a
happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that
eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the
first time longed for a new day to come.
3. Mental Effects of Solitude[107]
I spent the greater part of one winter at a point on the Rio Negro,
seventy or eighty miles from the sea. It was my custom to go out every
morning on horseback with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away
from the valley; and no sooner would I climb the terrace and plunge into
the gray universal thicket, than I would find myself as completely alone
as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the
valley and river. So wild and solitary and remote seemed that gray
waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and
where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable
path in the wilderness of thorns.
Not once nor twice nor thrice, but day after day I returned to this
solitude, going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, and
leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled
me. And yet I had no object in going--no motive which could be put into
words; for, although I carried a gun, there was nothing to shoot--the
shooting was all left behind in the valley. Sometimes I would pass an
entire day without seeing one mammal and perhaps not more than a dozen
birds of any size. The weather at that time was cheerless, generally
with a gray film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak wind, often
cold enough to make my bridle hand quite numb. At a slow pace, which
would have seemed intolerable in other circumstances, I would ride about
for hours at a stretch. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to
its summit, and stand there to survey the prospect. On every side it
stretched away in great undulations, wild and irregular. How gray it all
was! Hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon, where
the hills were dim and the outline blurred by distance. Descending from
my outlook, I would take up my aimless wanderings again, and visit other
elevations to gaze on the same landscape from another point; and so on
for hours; and at noon I would dismount and sit or lie on my folded
poncho for an hour or longer. One day, in these rambles, I discovered a
small grove composed of twenty or thirty trees, growing at a convenient
distance apart, that had evidently been resorted to by a herd of deer or
other wild animals. This grove was on a hill differing in shape from
other hills in its neighborhood; and after a time I made a point of
finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon. I did not ask
myself why I made choice of that one spot, sometimes going miles out of
my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the
millions of trees and bushes on any other hillside. I thought nothing at
all about it, but acted unconsciously. Only afterward it seemed to me
that, after having rested there once, each time I wished to rest again
the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of
trees, with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath; and in a short
time I formed a habit of returning, animal-like, to repose at that same
spot.
It was perhaps a mistake to say that I would sit down and rest, since I
was never tired: and yet, without being tired, that noonday pause,
during which I sat for an hour without moving, was strangely grateful.
All day there would be no sound, not even the rustle of a leaf. One day
while _listening_ to the silence, it occurred to my mind to wonder what
the effect would be if I were to shout aloud. This seemed at the time a
horrible suggestion, which almost made me shudder; but during those
solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind. In
the state of mind I was in, thought had become impossible. My state was
one of _suspense_ and _watchfulness_; yet I had no expectation of
meeting with an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I feel
now when sitting in a room in London. The state seemed familiar rather
than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation; and I did
not know that something had come between me and my intellect until I
returned to my former self--to thinking, and the old insipid existence.
I had undoubtedly _gone back_, and that state of intense watchfulness,
or alertness rather, with suspension of the higher intellectual
faculties, represented the mental state of the pure savage. He thinks
little, reasons little, having a surer guide in his instincts; he is in
perfect harmony with nature, and is nearly on a level, mentally, with
the wild animals he preys on, and which in their turn sometimes prey on
him.
4. Isolation, and the Rural Mind[108]
As an occupation farming has dealt largely, if not exclusively, with the
growth and care of plant and animal life. Broadly speaking, the farmer
has been engaged in a struggle with nature to produce certain staple
traditional raw foods and human comfort materials in bulk. He has been
excused, on the whole, from the delicate situations arising from the
demands of an infinite variety of human wishes, whims, and fashions,
perhaps because the primary grains, fruits, vegetables, fibers, animals,
and animal products, have afforded small opportunity for manipulation to
satisfy the varying forms of human taste and caprice. This exemption of
the farmer in the greater part of his activity from direct work upon and
with persons and from strenuous attempts to please persons, will
doubtless account very largely, perhaps more largely than mere isolation
on the land, for the strong individualism of the country man.
In striking contrast, the villager and city worker have always been
occupied in making things or parts of things out of such impressionable
materials as iron, wood, clay, cloth, leather, gold, and the like, to
fit, suit, and satisfy a various and increasingly complex set of human
desires; or they have been dealing direct with a kaleidoscopic human
mind, either in regard to things or in regard to troubles and ideals of
the mind itself. This constant dealing with persons in business will
account even more than mere congestion of population for the complex
organization of city life. The highly organized social institutions of
the city, moreover, have reinforced the already keen-edged insight of
the city man of business, so that he is doubly equipped to win his
struggles. The city worker knows men, the farmer knows nature. Each has
reward for his deeper knowledge, and each suffers some penalty for his
circle of ignorance.
Modern conditions underlying successful farm practice and profit-making
require of the farmer a wider and more frequent contact with men than at
any time in the past. His materials, too, have become more plastic,
subject to rapid change by selection and breeding.
The social problem of the farmer seems to be how to overcome the
inevitable handicap of a social deficiency in the very nature of his
occupation, so as to extend his acquaintance with men; and secondly, how
to erect social institutions on the land adequate to reinforce his
individual personality so as to enable him to cope with his
perplexities.
Occasions must be created, plans must be made, to bring people together
in a wholesale manner so as to facilitate this interchange of community
acquaintance. Especially is it necessary for rural children to know many
more children. The one-room district school has proved its value in
making the children of the neighborhood acquainted with one another. One
of the large reasons for the consolidated and centralized school is the
increased size of territorial unit, with more children to know one
another and mingle together. Intervisiting of district schools--one
school, teachers and pupils, playing host to a half-dozen other schools,
with some regularity, using plays and games, children's readiest means
of getting acquainted--is a successful means of extending acquaintance
under good auspices.
If large-scale acquaintance--men with men, women with women, children
with children--in a rural community once becomes a fact, the initial
step will have been taken for assuring the rise of appropriate social
institutions on the land of that community.
5. The Subtler Effects of Isolation[109]
The mechanics of modern culture is complicated. The individual has
access to materials outside his group, from the world at large. His
consciousness is built up not only by word of mouth but by the printed
page. He may live as much in German books as in fireside conversation.
Much more mail is handled every day in the New York post-office than was
sent out by all the thirteen states in a year at the close of the
eighteenth century. But by reason of poverty, geographical isolation,
caste feeling, or "pathos," individuals, communities, and races may be
excluded from some of the stimulations and copies which enter into a
high grade of mind. The savage, the Negro, the peasant, the slum
dwellers, and the white woman are notable sufferers by exclusion.
Easy communication of ideas favors differentiation of a
rational and functional sort, as distinguished from the random
variations fostered by isolation. And it must be remembered
that any sort is rational and functional that really commends
itself to the human spirit. Even revolt from an ascendant type
is easier now than formerly because the rebel can fortify
himself with the triumphant records of the non-conformers of
the past.
The peasant [at the middle of the nineteenth century], limited
in a cultural respect to his village life, thinks, feels, and
acts solely in the bounds of his native village; his thought
never goes beyond his farm and his neighbor; toward the
political, economic, or national events taking place outside of
his village, be they of his own or of a foreign country, he is
completely indifferent, and even if he has learned something of
them, this is described by him in a fantastic, mythological
way, and only in this adopted form is it added to his cultural
condition and transmitted to his descendants. Every peasant
farm produced almost exclusively for itself, only to the most
limited extent for exchange; every village formed an economic
unit, which stood in only a loose economic connection with the
outer world. Outwardly complete isolation of the village
settlements and their inhabitants from each other and from the
rest of the country and other classes of society; inwardly
complete homogeneity, one and the same economic, social, and
cultural equality of the peasant mass, no possibility of
advance for the more gifted and capable individuals, everyone
pressed down to a flat level. The peasant of one village holds
himself, if not directly hostile, at least as a rule not
cordial to the peasants of another village. The nobles living
in the same village territory even wanted to force upon the
peasants an entirely different origin, in that with the
assistance of the Biblical legend they wished to trace him from
the accursed Ham (from this the curse and insult _Ty chamie_,
"Thou Ham"), but themselves from Japhet, of better repute in
the Bible, while they attributed to the Jews, Shem as an
ancestor.
The pathetic effect of isolation on the state of knowledge is recorded
in many of the stories of runaway slaves:
With two more boys, I started for the free states. We did not
know where they were, but went to try to find them. We crossed
the Potomac and hunted round and round and round. Some one
showed us the way to Washington; but we missed it, and wandered
all night; then we found ourselves where we set out.
For our purposes race prejudice may be regarded as a form of isolation.
And in the case of the American Negro this situation is aggravated by
the fact that the white man has developed a determination to keep him in
isolation--"in his place." Now, when the isolation is willed and has at
the same time the emotional nature of a tabu, the handicap is very grave
indeed. It is a fact that the most intelligent Negroes are usually half
or more than half white, but it is still a subject for investigation
whether this is due to mixed blood or to the fact that they have been
more successful in violating the tabu.
The humblest white employee knows that the better he does his
work, the more chance there is for him to rise in the business.
The black employee knows that the better he does his work, the
longer he may do it; he cannot often hope for promotion.
All these careers are at the very outset closed to the Negro on
account of his color; what lawyer would give even a minor case
to a Negro assistant? Or what university would appoint a
promising young Negro as tutor? Thus the white young man starts
in life knowing that within some limits and barring accidents,
talent and application will tell. The young Negro starts
knowing that on all sides his advance is made doubly difficult,
if not wholly shut off, by his color.
In all walks of life the Negro is liable to meet some objection
to his presence or some discourteous treatment. If an
invitation is issued to the public for any occasion, the Negro
can never know whether he would be welcomed or not; if he goes
he is liable to have his feelings hurt and get into unpleasant
altercation; if he stays away, he is blamed for indifference.
If he meet a lifelong white friend on the street, he is in a
dilemma; if he does not greet the friend he is put down as
boorish and impolite; if he does greet the friend he is liable
to be flatly snubbed. If by chance he is introduced to a white
woman or man, he expects to be ignored on the next meeting, and
usually is. White friends may call on him, but he is scarcely
expected to call on them, save for strictly business matters.
If he gain the affections of a white woman and marry her he may
invariably expect that slurs will be thrown on her reputation
and on his, and that both his and her race will shun their
company. When he dies he cannot be buried beside white corpses.
Kelly Miller, himself a full-blooded black (for which the Negroes have
expressed their gratitude), refers to the backwardness of the negro in
the following terms:
To expect the Negroes of Georgia to produce a great general
like Napoleon when they are not even allowed to carry arms, or
to deride them for not producing scholars like those of the
Renaissance when a few years ago they were forbidden the use of
letters, verges closely upon the outer rim of absurdity. Do you
look for great Negro statesmen in states where black men are
not allowed to vote? Above all, for southern white men to
berate the Negro for failing to gain the highest rounds of
distinction reaches the climax of cruel inconsistency. One is
reminded of the barbarous Teutons in _Titus Andronicus_, who,
after cutting out the tongue and hacking off the hands of the
lovely Lavinia, ghoulishly chided her for not calling for sweet
water with which to wash her delicate hands.
It is not too much to say that no Negro and no mulatto, in America at
least, has ever been fully in the white man's world. But we must
recognize that their backwardness is not wholly due to prejudice. A race
with an adequate technique can live in the midst of prejudice and even
receive some stimulation from it. But the Negro has lost many of the
occupations which were particularly his own, and is outclassed in
others--not through prejudice but through the faster pace of his
competitors.
Obviously obstacles which discourage one race may stimulate another.
Even the extreme measures in Russia and Roumania against the Jew have
not isolated him. He has resources and traditions and technique of his
own, and we have even been borrowers from him.
C. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION
1. Segregation as a Process[110]
Within the limitations prescribed, however, the inevitable processes of
human nature proceed to give these regions and these buildings a
character which it is less easy to control. Under our system of
individual ownership, for instance, it is not possible to determine in
advance the extent of concentration of population in any given area. The
city cannot fix land values, and we leave to private enterprise, for the
most part, the task of determining the city's limits and the location of
its residential and industrial districts. Personal tastes and
convenience, vocational and economic interests, infallibly tend to
segregate and thus to classify the populations of great cities. In this
way the city acquires an organization which is neither designed nor
controlled.
Physical geography, natural advantages, and the means of transportation
determine in advance the general outlines of the urban plan. As the city
increases in population, the subtler influences of sympathy, rivalry,
and economic necessity tend to control the distribution of population.
Business and manufacturing seek advantageous locations and draw around
them a certain portion of the population. There spring up fashionable
residence quarters from which the poorer classes are excluded because of
the increased value of the land. Then there grow up slums which are
inhabited by great numbers of the poorer classes who are unable to
defend themselves from association with the derelict and vicious. In the
course of time every section and quarter of the city takes on something
of the character and qualities of its inhabitants. Each separate part of
the city is inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its
population. The effect of this is to convert what was at first a mere
geographical expression into a neighborhood, that is to say, a locality
with sentiments, traditions, and a history of its own. Within this
neighborhood the continuity of the historical processes is somehow
maintained. The past imposes itself upon the present and the life of
every locality moves on with a certain momentum of its own, more or less
independent of the larger circle of life and interests about it.
In the city environment the neighborhood tends to lose much of the
significance which it possessed in simpler and more primitive forms of
society. The easy means of communication and of transportation, which
enables individuals to distribute their attention and to live at the
same time in several different worlds, tends to destroy the permanency
and intimacy of the neighborhood. Further than that, where individuals
of the same race or of the same vocation live together in segregated
groups, neighborhood sentiment tends to fuse together with racial
antagonisms and class interests.
In this way physical and sentimental distances reinforce each other, and
the influences of local distribution of the population participate with
the influences of class and race in the evolution of the social
organization. Every great city has its racial colonies, like the
Chinatowns of San Francisco and New York, the Little Sicily of Chicago,
and various other less pronounced types. In addition to these, most
cities have their segregated vice districts, like that which until
recently existed in Chicago, and their rendezvous for criminals of
various sorts. Every large city has its occupational suburbs like the
Stockyards in Chicago, and its residence suburbs like Brookline in
Boston, each of which has the size and the character of a complete
separate town, village, or city, except that its population is a
selected one. Undoubtedly the most remarkable of these cities within
cities, of which the most interesting characteristic is that they are
composed of persons of the same race, or of persons of different races
but of the same social class, is East London, with a population of
2,000,000 laborers.
The people of the original East London have now overflowed and
crossed the Lea, and spread themselves over the marshes and
meadows beyond. This population has created new towns which
were formerly rural villages, West Ham, with a population of
nearly 300,000; East Ham, with 90,000; Stratford, with its
"daughters," 150,000; and other "hamlets" similarly overgrown.
Including these new populations we have an aggregate of nearly
two millions of people. The population is greater than that of
Berlin or Vienna, or St. Petersburg, or Philadelphia.
It is a city full of churches and places of worship, yet there
are no cathedrals, either Anglican or Roman; it has a
sufficient supply of elementary schools, but it has no public
or high school, and it has no colleges for the higher
education, and no university; the people all read newspapers,
yet there is no East London paper except of the smaller and
local kind.... In the streets there are never seen any private
carriages; there is no fashionable quarter ... one meets no
ladies in the principal thoroughfares. People, shops, houses,
conveyances--all together are stamped with the unmistakable
seal of the working class.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all is this: in a city of two
millions of people there are no hotels! That means, of course,
that there are no visitors.
In the older cities of Europe, where the processes of segregation have
gone farther, neighborhood distinctions are likely to be more marked
than they are in America. East London is a city of a single class, but
within the limits of that city the population is segregated again and
again by racial and vocational interests. Neighborhood sentiment, deeply
rooted in local tradition and in local custom, exercises a decisive
selective influence upon city population and shows itself ultimately in
a marked way in the characteristics of the inhabitants.
2. Isolation as a Result of Segregation[111]
There is the observed tendency of mental defectives to congregate in
localized centers, with resulting inbreeding. Feeble-mindedness is a
social level and the members of this level, like those in other levels,
are affected by social and biological tendencies, such as the
congregation of like personalities and the natural selection in matings
of persons of similar mental capacities. These are general tendencies
and not subject to invariable laws. The feeble-minded are primarily
quantitatively different from normals in mental and social qualities,
and do not constitute a separate species. The borderline types of
high-grade feeble-minded and low-grade normals may therefore prove
exceptions to the general rule. But such studies as Davenport and
Danielson's "Hill Folk," Davenport and Estabrook's "Nams," Dugdale's
"Jukes," Kostir's "Sam Sixty," Goddard's "Kallikaks," Key's "Vennams"
and "Fale-Anwals," Kite's "Pineys," and many others emphatically prove
that mental defectives show a tendency to drift together, intermarry,
and isolate themselves from the rest of the community, just as the rich
live in exclusive suburbs. Consequently they preponderate in certain
localities, counties, and cities. In a large measure this segregation is
not so much an expression of voluntary desire as it is a situation
forced upon mental defectives through those natural intellectual and
social deficiencies which restrict them to environments economically and
otherwise less desirable to normal people. This phenomenon is most
conspicuous in rural communities where such migratory movements as the
modern city-drift have exercised a certain natural selection, but it is
also plainly evident in the slums and poorer sections of the cities,
both large and small, as any field worker will testify. Closely related
to this factor of isolation are the varying percentages of mental
defectives found in different states and in different sections of the
same state, city or community. It is therefore likely that the
percentages of mental defectives among different groups of juvenile
delinquents will vary according to the particular ward, city, county, or
state, whence the delinquents come. For this reason it is essential to
any study of the number of mental defectives in a group of juvenile
delinquents coming from a particular locality, that some idea should be
available as to the probable or approximate number of mental defectives
in that community. If more mental defectives are found among the
population in the slum quarter of a city than in the residential
quarter, it is to be expected that there will be more mental defectives
in groups of juvenile delinquents from the slum quarter, because, in the
first place, they constitute a larger proportion of the population, and
because, secondly, of their greater proneness to social offenses.
Moreover, the prevalence of the feeble-minded in certain localities may
affect the attitude of the law-enforcing machinery toward the children
of that community.
A further result of the innate characteristics and tendencies of the
feeble-minded is to be found in the effect upon them of the biological
law of natural selection, resulting from the universal struggle for
existence and the survival of the fittest. We need not discuss here its
profound influences, economic and otherwise, upon the lives of the
mentally defective in general, but it will be profitable to review
briefly the effect of natural selection upon the juvenile delinquent
group.
Any group of delinquents is subject to this selection from the times of
offenses to final commitment. It undergoes a constant sifting process
whose operation is mainly determined by the natural consequences of the
group members; a large proportion of the "lucky," the intelligent, or
the socially favored individuals escape from the group, so that the
remaining members of the group are the least fit socially and
intellectually. The mentally defective delinquents constitute an undue
proportion of this unfit residue, for although they may receive as many
favors of chance as do their intellectually normal fellow-delinquents,
they cannot, like them, by reason of intelligence or social status,
escape the consequences of their delinquent acts. Furthermore, the
feeble-minded offender is caught oftener than are his more clever and
energetic companions of normal endowments, and after apprehension he is
less likely to receive the benefits of police and court prejudices, or
the advantages of family wealth and social influence. If placed on
probation he is more likely to fail, because of his own weaknesses and
his unfavorable environment. Hence the feeble-minded delinquent is much
more likely to come before the court and also to be committed to a
reformatory, jail, or industrial school than is his companion of normal
mind. Therefore practically every group of juvenile delinquents which
ultimately reaches commitment will have a very different aspect with
regard to its proportion of mental defectives from that larger group of
offenders, apprehended or non-apprehended, of which it was once a part.
In fact, it is doubtful if any group of apprehended, detained, or
probationed offenders can be said to be representative, or at least to
be exactly representative, of the true proportion of mental defectives
among all delinquents. Except where specific types of legal procedure
bring about the elimination of the defectives, it seems as if it must
inevitably result that the operation of natural selection will
continually increase the proportion of mental defectives above that
existing in the original group.
This factor of natural selection has not to our knowledge been given
adequate consideration in any published investigation on delinquency.
But if our estimate of its effects is at all justified, then most
examinations of juvenile delinquents, especially in reform and
industrial schools, have disclosed proportions of mental defectives
distinctly in excess of the original proportion previously existent
among the entire mass of all offenders. The reports of these
examinations have given rise to quite erroneous impressions concerning
the extent of criminality among the feeble-minded and its relation to
the whole volume of crime, and have consequently led to inaccurate
deductions. The feeble-minded are undoubtedly more prone to commit crime
than are the average normals; but through disregard of the influences of
this factor of natural selection, as well as of others, both the
proportion of crime committed by mental defectives and the true
proportion of mental defectives among delinquents and criminals have
very often been exaggerated.
D. ISOLATION AND NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY
1. Historical Races as Products of Isolation[112]
The continent of Europe differs from the other great land-masses in the
fact that it is a singular aggregation of peninsulas and islands,
originating in separate centers of mountain growth, and of enclosed
valleys walled about from the outer world by elevated summits. Other
continents are somewhat peninsulated; Asia approaches Europe in that
respect; North America has a few great dependencies in its larger
islands and considerable promontories; but Africa, South America, and
Australia are singularly united lands.
The highly divided state of Europe has greatly favored the development
within its area of isolated fields, each fitted for the growth of a
separate state, adapted even in this day for local life although
commerce in our time binds lands together in a way which it did not of
old. These separated areas were marvelously suited to be the cradles of
peoples; and if we look over the map of Europe we readily note the
geographic insulations which that remarkably varied land affords.
Beginning with the eastern Mediterranean, we have the peninsula on which
Constantinople stands--a region only partly protected from assault by
its geographic peculiarities; and yet it owes to its partial separation
from the mainlands on either side a large measure of local historic
development. Next, we have Greece and its associated islands, which--a
safe stronghold for centuries--permitted the nurture of the most
marvelous life the world has ever known. Farther to the west the Italian
peninsula, where during three thousand years the protecting envelope of
the sea and the walls of Alps and Apennines have enabled a score of
states to attain a development; where the Roman nation, absorbing, with
its singular power of taking in other life, a number of primitive
centers of civilization, grew to power which made it dominant in the
ancient world. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, have each profited by their
isolation, and have bred diverse qualities in man and contributed
motives which have interacted in the earth's history. Again, in Spain we
have a region well fitted to be the cradle of a great people; to its
geographic position it owed the fact that it became the seat of the most
cultivated Mahometanism the world has ever known. To the Pyrenees, the
mountain wall of the north, we owe in good part the limitation of that
Mussulman invasion and the protection of central Europe from its forward
movement, until luxury and half-faith had sapped its energies. Going
northward, we find in the region of Normandy the place of growth of that
fierce but strong folk, the ancient Scandinavians, who, transplanted
there, held their ground, and grew until they were strong enough to
conquer Britain and give it a large share of the quality which belongs
to our own state.
To a trifling geographic accident we owe the isolation of Great Britain
from the European continent; and all the marvelous history of the
English folk, as we all know, hangs upon the existence of that narrow
strip of sea between the Devon coast and the kindred lowlands of
northern France.
East of Britain lie two peninsulas which have been the cradle of very
important peoples. That of Sweden and Norway is the result of mountain
development; that of Denmark appears to be in the main the product of
glacial and marine erosion, differing in its non-mountainous origin from
all the other peninsulas and islands of the European border. Thus on the
periphery of Europe we have at least a dozen geographical isolated
areas, sufficiently large and well separated from the rest of the world
to make them the seats of independent social life. The interior of the
country has several similarly, though less perfectly, detached areas. Of
these the most important lie fenced within the highlands of the Alps. In
that extensive system of mountain disturbances we have the geographical
conditions which most favor the development of peculiar divisions of
men, and which guard such cradled peoples from the destruction which so
often awaits them on the plains. Thus, while the folk of the European
lowlands have been overrun by the successive tides of invasion, their
qualities confused, and their succession of social life interrupted,
Switzerland has to a great extent, by its mountain walls, protected its
people from the troubles to which their lowland neighbors have been
subjected. The result is that within an area not twice as large as
Massachusetts we find a marvelous diversity of folk, as is shown by the
variety in physical aspect, moral quality, language, and creed in the
several important valleys and other divisions of that complicated
topography.
After a race has been formed and bred to certain qualities within a
limited field, after it has come to possess a certain body of
characteristics which gives it its particular stamp, the importance of
the original cradle passes away. There is something very curious in the
permanence of race conditions after they have been fixed for a thousand
years or so in a people. When the assemblage of physical and mental
motives are combined in a body of country folk, they may endure under
circumstances in which they could not have originated; thus, even in our
domesticated animals and plants, we find that varieties created under
favorable conditions, obtaining their inheritances in suitable
conditions, may then flourish in many conditions of environment in which
they could not by any chance have originated. The barnyard creatures of
Europe, with their established qualities, may be taken to Australia, and
there retain their nature for many generations; even where the form
falls away from the parent stock, the decline is generally slow and may
not for a great time become apparent.
This fixity of race characteristics has enabled the several national
varieties of men to go forth from their nurseries, carrying the
qualities bred in their earlier conditions through centuries of life in
other climes. The Gothic blood of Italy and of Spain still keeps much of
its parent strength; the Aryan's of India, though a world apart in its
conditions from those which gave it character in its cradle, is still,
in many of its qualities, distinctly akin to that of the home people.
Moor, Hun and Turk--all the numerous folk we find in the present
condition of the world so far from their cradle-lands--are still to a
great extent what their primitive nurture made them. On this rigidity
which comes to mature races in the lower life as well as in man, depends
the vigor with which they do their appointed work.
2. Geographical Isolation and Maritime Contact[113]
Greece, considering its limited total extent, offers but little motive,
and still less of convenient means, for internal communication among its
various inhabitants. Each village or township occupying its plain with
the inclosing mountains, supplied its own main wants, whilst the
transport of commodities by land was sufficiently difficult to
discourage greatly any regular commerce with neighbors. In so far as the
face of the interior country was concerned, it seemed as if nature had
been disposed from the beginning to keep the population of Greece
socially and politically disunited by providing so many hedges of
separation and so many boundaries, generally hard, sometimes impossible,
to overleap. One special motive to intercourse, however, arose out of
this very geographical constitution of the country, and its endless
alternation of mountain and valley. The difference of climate and
temperature between the high and low grounds is very great; the harvest
is secured in one place before it is ripe in another, and the cattle
find during the heat of summer shelter and pasture on the hills, at a
time when the plains are burnt up. The practice of transferring them
from the mountains to the plain according to the change of season, which
subsists still as it did in ancient times, is intimately connected with
the structure of the country, and must from the earliest period have
brought about communication among the otherwise disunited villages.
Such difficulties, however, in the internal transit by land were to a
great extent counteracted by the large proportion of coast and the
accessibility of the country by sea. The prominences and indentations in
the line of Grecian coast are hardly less remarkable than the
multiplicity of elevations and depressions which everywhere mark the
surface. There was no part of Greece proper which could be considered as
out of reach of the sea, while most parts of it were convenient and easy
of access. As the only communication between them was maritime, so the
sea, important even if we look to Greece proper exclusively, was the
sole channel for transmitting ideas and improvements, as well as for
maintaining sympathies--social, political, religious, and
literary--throughout these outlying members of the Hellenic aggregate.
The ancient philosophers and legislators were deeply impressed with the
contrast between an inland and a maritime city: in the former,
simplicity and uniformity of life, tenacity of ancient habits and
dislike of what is new or foreign, great force of exclusive sympathy and
narrow range both of objects and ideas; in the latter, variety and
novelty of sensations, expansive imagination, toleration, and occasional
preference for extraneous customs, greater activity of the individual
and corresponding mutability of the state. This distinction stands
prominent in the many comparisons instituted between the Athens of
Periclês and the Athens of the earlier times down to Solon. Both Plato
and Aristotle dwell upon it emphatically--and the former especially,
whose genius conceived the comprehensive scheme of prescribing
beforehand and insuring in practice the whole course of individual
thought and feeling in his imaginary community, treats maritime
communication, if pushed beyond the narrowest limits, as fatal to the
success and permanence of any wise scheme of education. Certain it is
that a great difference of character existed between those Greeks who
mingled much in maritime affairs and those who did not. The Arcadian may
stand as a type of the pure Grecian landsman, with his rustic and
illiterate habits--his diet of sweet chestnuts, barley cakes, and pork
(as contrasted with the fish which formed the chief seasoning for the
bread of an Athenian)--his superior courage and endurance--his reverence
for Lacedaemonian headship as an old and customary influence--his
sterility of intellect and imagination as well as his slackness in
enterprise--his unchangeable rudeness of relations with the gods, which
led him to scourge and prick Pan if he came back empty-handed from the
chase; while the inhabitant of Phokaea or Miletus exemplifies the
Grecian mariner, eager in search of gain--active, skilful, and daring at
sea, but inferior in steadfast bravery on land--more excitable in
imagination as well as more mutable in character--full of pomp and
expense in religious manifestations toward the Ephesian Artemis or the
Apollo of Branchidae: with a mind more open to the varieties of Grecian
energy and to the refining influences of Grecian civilization.
The configuration of the Grecian territory, so like in many respects to
that of Switzerland, produced two effects of great moment upon the
character and history of the people. In the first place, it materially
strengthened their powers of defense: it shut up the country against
those invasions from the interior which successively subjugated all
their continental colonies; and it at the same time rendered each
fraction more difficult to be attacked by the rest, so as to exercise a
certain conservative influence in assuring the tenure of actual
possessors: for the pass of Thermopylae between Thessaly and Phokis,
that of Kithaeron between Boeotia and Attica, or the mountainous range
of Oneion and Geraneia along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positions
which an inferior number of brave men could hold against a much greater
force of assailants. But, in the next place, while it tended to protect
each section of Greeks from being conquered, it also kept them
politically disunited and perpetuated their separate autonomy. It
fostered that powerful principle of repulsion, which disposed even the
smallest township to constitute itself a political unit apart from the
rest, and to resist all idea of coalescence with others, either amicable
or compulsory. To a modern reader, accustomed to large political
aggregations, and securities for good government through the
representative system, it requires a certain mental effort to transport
himself back to a time when even the smallest town clung so tenaciously
to its right of self-legislation. Nevertheless, such was the general
habit and feeling of the ancient world, throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain,
and Gaul. Among the Hellens it stands out more conspicuously, for
several reasons--first, because they seem to have pushed the
multiplication of autonomous units to an extreme point, seeing that even
islands not larger than Peparethos and Amorgos had two or three separate
city communities; secondly, because they produced, for the first time in
the history of mankind, acute systematic thinkers on matters of
government, amongst all of whom the idea of the autonomous city was
accepted as the indispensable basis of political speculation; thirdly,
because this incurable subdivision proved finally the cause of their
ruin, in spite of pronounced intellectual superiority over their
conquerors; and lastly, because incapacity of political coalescence did
not preclude a powerful and extensive sympathy between the inhabitants
of all the separate cities, with a constant tendency to fraternize for
numerous purposes, social, religious, recreative, intellectual, and
aesthetical. For these reasons, the indefinite multiplication of
self-governing towns, though in truth a phenomenon common to ancient
Europe as contrasted with the large monarchies of Asia, appears more
marked among the ancient Greeks than elsewhere; and there cannot be any
doubt that they owe it, in a considerable degree, to the multitude of
insulating boundaries which the configuration of their country
presented.
Nor is it rash to suppose that the same causes may have tended to
promote that unborrowed intellectual development for which they stand so
conspicuous. General propositions respecting the working of climate and
physical agencies upon character are indeed treacherous; for our
knowledge of the globe is now sufficient to teach us that heat and cold,
mountain and plain, sea and land, moist and dry atmosphere, are all
consistent with the greatest diversities of resident men: moreover, the
contrast between the population of Greece itself, for the seven
centuries preceding the Christian era, and the Greeks of more modern
times, is alone enough to inculcate reserve in such speculations.
Nevertheless we may venture to note certain improving influences,
connected with their geographical position, at a time when they had no
books to study, and no more advanced predecessors to imitate.
We may remark, first, that their position made them at once mountaineers
and mariners, thus supplying them with great variety of objects,
sensations, and adventures; next, that each petty community, nestled
apart amidst its own rocks, was sufficiently severed from the rest to
possess an individual life and attributes of its own, yet not so far as
to subtract it from the sympathies of the remainder; so that an
observant Greek, commercing with a great diversity of half-countrymen,
whose language he understood, and whose idiosyncrasies he could
appreciate, had access to a larger mass of social and political
experience than any other man in so unadvanced an age could personally
obtain. The Phoenician, superior to the Greek on shipboard, traversed
wider distances and saw a greater number of strangers, but had not the
same means of intimate communion with a multiplicity of fellows in blood
and language. His relations, confined to purchase and sale, did not
comprise that mutuality of action and reaction which pervaded the crowd
at a Grecian festival. The scene which here presented itself was a
mixture of uniformity and variety highly stimulating to the observant
faculties of a man of genius--who at the same time, if he sought to
communicate his own impressions, or to act upon this mingled and diverse
audience, was forced to shake off what was peculiar to his own town or
community, and to put forth matter in harmony with the feelings of all.
It is thus that we may explain, in part, that penetrating apprehension
of human life and character, and that power of touching sympathies
common to all ages and nations, which surprises us so much in the
unlettered authors of the old epic. Such periodical intercommunion of
brethren habitually isolated from each other was the only means then
open of procuring for the bard a diversified range of experience and a
many-colored audience; and it was to a great degree the result of
geographical causes. Perhaps among other nations such facilitating
causes might have been found, yet without producing any results
comparable to the Iliad and Odyssey. But Homer was nevertheless
dependent upon the conditions of his age, and we can at least point out
those peculiarities in early Grecian society without which Homeric
excellence would never have existed--the geographical position is one,
the language another.
3. Isolation as an Explanation of National Differences[114]
To decide between race and environment as the efficient cause of any
social phenomenon is a matter of singular interest at this time. A
school of sociological writers, dazzled by the recent brilliant
discoveries in European ethnology, show a decided inclination to sink
the racial explanation up to the handle in every possible phase of
social life in Europe. It must be confessed that there is provocation
for it. So persistent have the physical characteristics of the people
shown themselves that it is not surprising to find theories of a
corresponding inheritance of mental attributes in great favor.
This racial school of social philosophers derives much of its data from
French sources. For this reason, and also because our anthropological
knowledge of that country is more complete than for any other part of
Europe, we shall confine our attention primarily to France. In the
unattractive upland areas of isolation is the Alpine broad-headed race
common to central Europe. At the north, extending down in a broad belt
diagonally as far as Limoges and along the coast of Brittany, there is
intermixture with the blond, long-headed Teutonic race; while along the
southern coast, penetrating up the Rhone Valley, is found the extension
of the equally long-headed but brunet Mediterranean stock. These ethnic
facts correspond to physical ones; three areas of geographical isolation
are distinct centers of distribution of the Alpine race.
The organization of the family is the surest criterion of the stage of
social evolution attained by a people. No other phase of human
association is so many-sided, so fundamental, so pregnant for the
future. For this reason we may properly begin our study by an
examination of a phenomenon which directly concerns the stability of the
domestic institution--viz., divorce. What are the facts as to its
distribution in France? Marked variations between different districts
occur. Paris is at one extreme; Corsica, as always, at the other. Of
singular interest to us is the parallel which at once appears between
this distribution of divorce and that of head form. The areas of
isolation peopled by the Alpine race are characterized by almost
complete absence of legal severance of domestic relations between
husband and wife.
Do the facts instanced above have any ethnic significance? Do they mean
that the Alpine type, as a race, holds more tenaciously than does the
Teuton to its family traditions, resenting thereby the interference of
the state in its domestic institutions? A foremost statistical
authority, Jacques Bertillon, has devoted considerable space to proving
that some relation between the two exists. Confronted by the preceding
facts, his explanation is this: that the people of the southern
departments, inconstant perhaps and fickle, nevertheless are quickly
pacified after a passionate outbreak of any kind. Husband and wife may
quarrel, but the estrangement is dissipated before recourse to the law
can take place. On the other hand, the Norman peasant, Teutonic by race,
cold and reserved, nurses his grievances for a long time; they abide
with him, smoldering but persistent. "Words and even blows terminate
quarrels quickly in the south; in the north they are settled by the
judge." From similar comparisons in other European countries, M.
Bertillon draws the final conclusion that the Teutonic race betrays a
singular preference for this remedy for domestic ills. It becomes for
him an ethnic trait.
Another social phenomenon has been laid at the door of the Teutonic race
of northern Europe; one which even more than divorce is directly the
concomitant of modern intellectual and economic progress. We refer to
suicide. Morselli devotes a chapter of his interesting treatise upon
this subject to proving that "the purer the German race--that is to say,
the stronger the Germanism (e.g., Teutonism) of a country--the more it
reveals in its psychical character an extraordinary propensity to
self-destruction."
Consider for a moment the relative frequency of suicide with reference
to the ethnic composition of France. The parallel between the two is
almost exact in every detail. There are again our three areas of Alpine
racial occupation--Savoy, Auvergne, and Brittany--in which suicide falls
annually below seventy-five per million inhabitants. There, again, is
the Rhone Valley and the broad diagonal strip from Paris to Bordeaux,
characterized alike by strong infusion of Teutonic traits and relative
frequency of the same social phenomenon.
Divorce and suicide will serve as examples of the mode of proof adopted
for tracing a number of other social phenomena to an ethnic origin. Thus
Lapouge attributes the notorious depopulation of large areas in France
to the sterility incident upon intermixture between the several racial
types of which the population is constituted. This he seeks to prove
from the occurrence of a decreasing birth-rate in all the open, fertile
districts where the Teutonic element has intermingled with the native
population. Because wealth happens to be concentrated in the fertile
areas of Teutonic occupation, it is again assumed that this coincidence
demonstrates either a peculiar acquisitive aptitude in this race or else
a superior measure of frugality.
By this time our suspicions are aroused. The argument is too simple. Its
conclusions are too far-reaching. By this we do not mean to deny the
facts of geographical distribution in the least. It is only the validity
of the ethnic explanation which we deny. We can do better for our races
than even its best friends along such lines of proof. With the data at
our disposition there is no end to the racial attributes which we might
saddle upon our ethnic types. Thus, it would appear that the Alpine type
in its sterile areas of isolation was the land-hungry one described by
Zola in his powerful novels. For, roughly speaking, individual
land-holdings are larger in them on the average than among the Teutonic
populations. Peasant proprietorship is more common also; there are fewer
tenant farmers. Crime in the two areas assumes a different aspect. We
find that among populations of Alpine type, in the isolated uplands,
offenses against the person predominate in the criminal calendar. In the
Seine basin, along the Rhone Valley, wherever the Teuton is in evidence,
on the other hand, there is less respect for property; so that offenses
against the person, such as assault, murder, and rape, give place to
embezzlements, burglary, and arson. It might just as well be argued that
the Teuton shows a predilection for offenses against property; the
native Celt an equal propensity for crimes against the person.
Appeal to the social geography of other countries, wherein the ethnic
balance of power is differently distributed, may be directed against
almost any of the phenomena we have instanced in France as seemingly of
racial derivation. In the case either of suicide or divorce, if we turn
from France to Italy or Germany, we instantly perceive all sorts of
contradictions. The ethnic type, which is so immune from propensity to
self-destruction or domestic disruption in France, becomes in Italy most
prone to either mode of escape from temporary earthly ills. For each
phenomenon culminates in frequency in the northern half of the latter
country, stronghold of the Alpine race. Nor is there an appreciable
infusion of Teutonism, physically speaking, herein, to account for the
change of heart. Of course, it might be urged that this merely shows
that the Mediterranean race of southern Italy is as much less inclined
to the phenomenon than the Alpine race in these respects, as it in turn
lags behind the Teuton. For it must be confessed that even in Italy
neither divorce nor suicide is so frequent anywhere as in Teutonic
northern France. Well, then, turn to Germany. Compare its two halves in
these respects again. The northern half of the empire is most purely
Teutonic by race; the southern is not distinguishable ethnically, as we
have sought to prove, from central France. Bavaria, Baden, and
Würtemberg are scarcely more Teutonic by race than Auvergne. Do we find
differences in suicide, for example, following racial boundaries here?
Far from it; for Saxony is its culminating center; and Saxony, as we
know, is really half-Slavic at heart, as is also eastern Prussia.
Suicide should be most frequent in Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, if
racial causes were appreciably operative. The argument, in fact, falls
to pieces of its own weight, as Durkheim has shown. His conclusion is
thus stated:
"If the Germans are more addicted to suicide, it is not because of the
blood in their veins, but of the civilization in which they have been
raised."
A summary view of the class of social phenomena seemingly characteristic
of the distinct races in France, if we extend our field of vision to
cover all Europe, suggests an explanation for the curious coincidences
and parallelisms noted above, which is the exact opposite of the racial
one.
Our theory, then, is this: that most of the social phenomena we have
noted as peculiar to the areas occupied by the Alpine type are the
necessary outcome, not of racial proclivities but rather of the
geographical and social isolation characteristic of the habitat of this
race. The ethnic type is still pure for the very same reason that social
phenomena are primitive. Wooden ploughs pointed with stone, blood
revenge, an undiminished birth-rate, and relative purity of physical
type are all alike derivatives from a common cause, isolation, directly
physical and coincidently social. We discover, primarily, an influence
of environment where others perceive phenomena of ethnic inheritance.
4. Natural versus Vicinal Location in National Development[115]
In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location,
anthropogeography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term.
The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal
food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a
territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet
the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their
specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of
mountain, desert, and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to
displace, or more often by both.
A people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, based
upon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing out
of its relations to the countries nearest them. The first is a question
of the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them.
The first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographic
conditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or national
existence. This basis may be a peninsula, island, archipelago, an
oasis, an arid steppe, a mountain system, or a fertile lowland. The
stronger the vicinal location, the more dependent is the people upon the
neighboring states, but the more potent the influence which it can,
under certain circumstances, exert upon them. Witness Germany in
relation to Holland, France, Austria, and Poland. The stronger the
natural location, on the other hand, the more independent is the people
and the more strongly marked is the national character. This is
exemplified in the people of mountain lands like Switzerland, Abyssinia,
and Nepal; of peninsulas like Korea, Spain, and Scandinavia; and of
islands like England and Japan. Today we stand amazed at that strong
primordial brand of the Japanese character which nothing can blur or
erase.
Clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains and
sea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend to
hold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outside
interference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make them
develop the national genius in such direction as the local geographic
conditions permit. In the unceasing movements which have made up most of
the historic and prehistoric life of the human race, in their migrations
and counter-migrations, their incursions, retreats, and expansions over
the face of the earth, vast unfenced areas, like the open lowlands of
Russia and the grasslands of Africa, present the picture of a great
thoroughfare swept by pressing throngs. Other regions, more secluded,
appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest.
Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and
held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas
of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and
political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas
of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of
national differentiation which goes on in such secluded-locations.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Isolation in Anthropogeography and Biology
A systematic treatise upon isolation as a sociological concept remains
to be written. The idea of isolation as a tool of investigation has been
fashioned with more precision in geography and in biology than in
sociology.
Research in human geography has as its object the study of man in his
relations to the earth. Students of civilization, like Montesquieu and
Buckle, sought to explain the culture and behavior of peoples as the
direct result of the physical environment. Friedrich Ratzel with his
"thorough training as a naturalist, broad reading, and travel" and above
all, his comprehensive knowledge of ethnology, recognized the importance
of direct effects, such as cultural isolation. Jean Brunhes, by the
selection of small natural units, his so-called "islands," has made
intensive studies of isolated groups in the oases of the deserts of the
Sub and of the Mzab, and in the high mountains of the central Andes.
Biology indicates isolation as one of the factors in the origin of the
species. Anthropology derives the great races of mankind--the Caucasian,
the Ethiopian, the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Indian--from
geographical separation following an assumed prehistoric dispersion. A
German scholar, Dr. Georg Gerland, has prepared an atlas which plots
differences in physical traits, such as skin color and hair texture, as
indicating the geographical distribution of races.
2. Isolation and Social Groups
Anthropogeographical and biological investigations have proceeded upon
the assumption, implicit or explicit, that the geographic environment,
and the physical and mental traits of races and individuals, _determine_
individual and collective behavior. What investigations in human
geography and heredity actually demonstrate is that the geographic
environment and the original nature of man _condition_ the culture and
conduct of groups and of persons. The explanations of isolation, so far
as it affects social life, which have gained currency in the writings of
anthropologists and geographers, are therefore too simple. Sociologists
are able to take into account forms of isolation not considered by the
students of the physical environment and of racial inheritance. Studies
of folkways, mores, culture, nationality, the products of a historical
or cultural process, disclose types of social contact which transcend
the barriers of geographical or racial separation, and reveal social
forms of isolation which prevent communication where there is close
geographical contact or common racial bonds.
The literature upon isolated peoples ranges from investigations of
arrest of cultural development as, for example, the natives of
Australia, the Mountain Whites of the southern states, or the
inhabitants of Pitcairn Island to studies of hermit nations, of caste
systems as in India, or of outcast groups such as feeble-minded "tribes"
or hamlets, fraternities of criminals, and the underworld of
commercialized prostitution. Special research in dialects, in folklore,
and in provincialism shows how spatial isolation fixes differences in
speech, attitudes, folkways, and mores which, in turn, enforce isolation
even when geographic separation has disappeared.
The most significant contribution to the study of isolation from the
sociological standpoint has undoubtedly been made by Fishberg in a work
entitled _The Jews, a Study of Race and Environment_. The author points
out that the isolation of the Jew has been the result of neither
physical environment nor of race, but of social barriers. "Judaism has
been preserved throughout the long years of Israel's dispersion by two
factors: its separative ritualism, which prevented close and intimate
contact with non-Jews, and the iron laws of the Christian theocracies of
Europe which encouraged and enforced 'isolation.'"[116]
3. Isolation and Personality
Philosophers, mystics, and religious enthusiasts have invariably
stressed privacy for meditation, retirement for ecstatic communion with
God, and withdrawal from the contamination of the world. In 1784-86
Zimmermann wrote an elaborate essay in which he dilates upon "the
question whether it is easier to live virtuously in society or in
solitude," considering in Part I "the influence of occasional retirement
upon the mind and the heart" and in Part II "the pernicious influence of
a total exclusion from society upon the mind and the heart."
Actual research upon the effect of isolation upon personal development
has more of future promise than of present accomplishment. The
literature upon cases of feral men is practically all of the anecdotal
type with observations by persons untrained in the modern scientific
method. One case, however, "the savage of Aveyron" was studied
intensively by Itard, the French philosopher and otologist who cherished
high hopes of his mental and social development. After five years spent
in a patient and varied but futile attempt at education, he confessed
his bitter disappointment. "Since my pains are lost and efforts
fruitless, take yourself back to your forest and primitive tastes; or if
your new wants make you dependent on society, suffer the penalty of
being useless, and go to Bicêtre, there to die in wretchedness."
Only second in importance to the cases of feral men are the
investigations which have been made of the results of solitary
confinement. Morselli, in his well-known work on _Suicide_, presented
statistics showing that self-destruction was many times as frequent
among convicts under the system of absolute isolation as compared with
that of association during imprisonment. Studies of Auburn prison in New
York, of Mountjoy in England, and penal institutions on the continent
show the effects of solitary incarceration in the increase of cases of
suicides, insanity, invalidism, and death.
Beginnings have been made in child study, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis
of the effects of different types of isolation upon personal
development. Some attention has been given to the study of effects upon
mentality and personality of physical defects such as deaf-mutism and
blindness. Students of the so-called "morally defective child," that is
the child who appears deficient in emotional and sympathetic responses,
suggest as a partial explanation the absence in infancy and early
childhood of intimate and sympathetic contacts with the mother. An
investigation not yet made but of decisive bearing upon this point will
be a comparative study of children brought up in families with those
reared in institutions.
Psychiatry and psychoanalysis in probing mental life and personality
have related certain mental and social abnormalities to isolation from
social contact. Studies of paranoia and of egocentric personalities have
resulted in the discovery of the only or favorite child complex. The
exclusion of the boy or girl in the one-child family from the give and
take of democratic relations with brothers and sisters results,
according to the theory advanced, in a psychopathic personality of the
self-centered type. A contributing cause of homosexuality, it is said by
psychoanalysts, is the isolation during childhood from usual association
with individuals of the same sex. Research in dementia praecox discloses
a symptom and probably a cause of this mental malady to be the
withdrawal of the individual from normal social contacts and the
substitution of an imaginary for a real world of persons and events.
Dementia praecox has been related by one psychoanalyst to the "shut-in"
type of personality.
The literature on the subject of privacy in its relation to personal
development is fragmentary but highly promising for future research. The
study of the introspective type of personality suggests that
self-analysis is the counterpart of the inhibition of immediate and
impulsive self-expression in social relations. Materials for an
understanding of the relation of retirement and privacy to the
aesthetic, moral, and creative life of the person may be found in the
lives of hermits, inventors, and religious leaders; in the studies of
seclusion, prayer, and meditation; and in research upon taboo, prestige,
and attitudes of superiority and inferiority.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF ISOLATION
I. CHARACTERISTIC SENTIMENTS AND ATTITUDES OF THE ISOLATED PERSON
(1) Zimmermann, Johann G. _Solitude._ Or the effects of occasional
retirement on the mind, the heart, general society. Translated from the
German. London, 1827.
(2) Canat, René. _Une forme du mal du siècle._ Du sentiment de la
solitude morale chez les romantiques et les parnassiens. Paris, 1904.
(3) Goltz, E. von der. _Das Gebet in der aeltesten Christenheit._
Leipzig, 1901.
(4) Strong, Anna L. _A Consideration of Prayer from the Standpoint of
Social Psychology._ Chicago, 1908.
(5) Hoch, A. "On Some of the Mental Mechanisms in Dementia Praecox,"
_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, V (1910), 255-73. [A study of the
isolated person.]
(6) Bohannon, E. W. "Only Child," _Pedagogical Seminary_, V (1897-98),
475-96.
(7) Brill, A. A. _Psychanalysis._ Its theories and practical
application. "The Only or Favorite Child in Adult Life," pp. 253-65. 2d
rev. ed. Philadelphia and London, 1914.
(8) Neter, Eugen. _Das einzige Kind und seine Erziehung._ Ein ernstes
Mahnwort an Eltern und Erzieher. München, 1914.
(9) Whiteley, Opal S. _The Story of Opal._ Boston, 1920.
(10) Delbrück, A. _Die pathologische Lüge und die psychisch abnormen
Schwindler._ Stuttgart, 1891.
(11) Healy, Wm. _Pathological Lying._ Boston, 1915.
(12) Dostoévsky, F. _The House of the Dead; or, Prison Life in Siberia._
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York, 1915.
(13) Griffiths, Arthur. _Secrets of the Prison House, or Gaol Studies
and Sketches._ I, 262-80. London, 1894.
(14) Kingsley, Charles. _The Hermits._ London and New York, 1871.
(15) Baring-Gould, S. _Lives of Saints._ 16 vols. Rev. ed. Edinburgh,
1916. [See references in index to hermits.]
(16) Solenberger, Alice W. _One Thousand Homeless Men._ A study of
original records. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1911.
II. TYPES OF ISOLATION AND TYPES OF SOCIAL GROUPS
(1) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment.
London and New York, 1911.
(2) Gummere, Amelia M. _The Quaker._ A study in costume. Philadelphia,
1901.
(3) Webster, Hutton. _Primitive Secret Societies._ A study in early
politics and religion. New York, 1908.
(4) Heckethorn, C. W. _The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries._
A comprehensive account of upwards of one hundred and sixty secret
organizations--religious, political, and social--from the most remote
ages down to the present time. 2 vols. New ed., rev. and enl. London,
1897.
(5) Fosbroke, Thomas D. _British Monachism, or Manners and Customs of
the Monks and Nuns of England._ London, 1817.
(6) Wishart, Alfred W. _A Short History of Monks and Monasteries._
Trenton, N.J., 1900. [Chap. i, pp. 17-70, gives an account of the monk
as a type of human nature.]
III. GEOGRAPHICAL ISOLATION AND CULTURAL AREAS
(1) Ratzel, Friedrich. _Politische Geographie; oder, Die Geographie der
Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges._ 2d. ed. München, 1903.
(2) Semple, Ellen. _Influences of Geographic Environment, on the Basis
of Ratzel's System of Anthropogeography._ Chap. xiii, "Island Peoples,"
pp. 409-72. New York, 1911. [Bibliography.]
(3) Brunhes, Jean. _Human Geography._ An attempt at a positive
classification, principles, and examples. 2d ed. Translated from the
French by T. C. LeCompte. Chicago, 1920. [See especially chaps. vi, vii,
and viii, pp. 415-569.]
(4) Vallaux, Camille. _La Mer._ (Géographie Sociale.) Populations
maritimes, migrations, pêches, commerce, domination de la mer, Chap.
iii, "Les isles et l'insularité." Paris, 1908.
(5) Gerland, Georg. _Atlas der Völkerkunde._ Gotha, 1892. [Indicates the
geographical distribution of differences in skin color, hair form,
clothing, customs, languages, etc.]
(6) Ripley, William Z. _The Races of Europe._ A sociological study. New
York, 1899.
(7) Campbell, John C. _The Southern Highlander and His Homeland._ New
York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1921. [Bibliography.]
(8) Barrow, Sir John. _A Description of Pitcairn's Island and Its
Inhabitants._ With an authentic account of the mutiny of the ship
"Bounty" and of the subsequent fortunes of the mutineers. New York,
1832.
(9) Routledge, Mrs. Scoresby. _The Mystery of Easter Island._ The story
of an expedition. Chap. xx, "Pitcairn Island." London, 1919.
(10) Galpin, Charles J. _Rural Life._ New York, 1918.
IV. LANGUAGE FRONTIERS AND NATIONALITY
(1) Dominian, Leon. _The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in
Europe._ New York, 1917. [Bibliography, pp. 348-56.]
(2) Auerbach, Bertrand. _Les Races et les nationalités en
Autriche-Hongrie._ 2d rev. ed. Paris, 1917.
(3) Bernhard, L. _Das polnische Gemeinwesen im preussischen Staat._ Die
Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910.
(4) Bourgoing, P. de. _Les guerres d'idiome et de nationalité._
Tableaux, esquisses, et souvenirs d'histoire contemporaine. Paris, 1849.
(5) _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. XI, "The Growth of Nationalities."
Cambridge, 1909.
(6) Meillet, A. "Les Langues et les Nationalités," _Scientia_, Vol.
XVIII, (Sept., 1915), pp. 192-201.
(7) Pfister, Ch. "La limite de la langue française et de la langue
allemande en Alsace-Lorraine," Considérations historiques. _Bull. Soc.
Géogr. de l'Est_, Vol. XII, 1890.
(8) This, G. "Die deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze in Lothringen,"
_Beiträge zur Landes- und Volkskunde von Elsass-Lothringen_, Vol. I,
Strassburg, 1887.
(9)----. "Die deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze in Elsass," _ibid._,
1888.
V. DIALECTS AS A FACTOR IN ISOLATION
(1) Babbitt, Eugene H. "College Words and Phrases," _Dialect Notes_, II
(1900-1904), 3-70.
(2)----. "The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and
Vicinity," _Dialect Notes_, Vol. I, Part ix, 1896.
(3)----. "The Geography of the Great Languages," _World's Work_, Feb. 15
(1907-8), 9903-7.
(4) Churchill, William. _Beach-la-mar: the Jargon or Trade Speech of the
Western Pacific._ Washington, 1911.
(5) Dana, Richard H., Jr. _A Dictionary of Sea Terms._ London, 1841.
(6) Elliott, A.M. "Speech-Mixture in French Canada: English and French,"
_American Journal of Philology_, X (1889), 133.
(7) Flaten, Nils. "Notes on American-Norwegian with a Vocabulary,"
_Dialect Notes_, II (1900-1904), 115-26.
(8) Harrison, James A. "Negro-English," _Transactions and Proceedings
American Philological Association_, XVI (1885), Appendix, pp.
xxxi-xxxiii.
(9) Hempl, George. "Language-Rivalry and Speech-Differentiation in the
Case of Race-Mixture," _Transactions and Proceedings of the American
Philological Association_. XXIX (1898), 31-47.
(10) Knortz, Karl. _Amerikanische Redensarten und Volksgebräuche._
Leipzig, 1907.
(11) Letzner, Karl. _Wörterbuch der englischen Volkssprache Australiens
und der englischen Mischsprachen._ Halle, 1891.
(12) Pettman, Charles. _Africanderisms._ A glossary of South African
colloquial words and phrases and of place and other names. London and
New York, 1913.
(13) Ralph, Julian. "The Language of the Tenement-Folk," _Harper's
Weekly_, XLI (Jan. 23, 1897), 90.
(14) Skeat, Walter W. _English Dialects from the Eighth Century to the
Present Day_. Cambridge, 1911.
(15) Yule, Henry, and Burnell, A. C. _Hobson-Jobson._ A glossary of
colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms,
etymological, historical, geographical, and discursive; new ed. by Wm.
Crooke, London, 1903.
VI. PHYSICAL DEFECT AS A FORM OF ISOLATION
(1) Bell, Alexander G. "Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of
the Human Race." _National Academy of Sciences, Memoirs_, II, 177-262.
Washington, D.C., 1884.
(2) Fay, Edward A. _Marriages of the Deaf in America._ An inquiry
concerning the results of marriages of the deaf in America. Washington,
D.C., 1893.
(3) Desagher, Maurice. "La timidité chez les aveugles," _Revue
philosophique_, LXXVI (1913), 269-74.
(4) Best, Harry. _The Deaf._ Their position in society and the provision
for their education in the United States. New York, 1914.
(5) ----. _The Blind._ Their condition and the work being done for them
in the United States. New York, 1919.
VII. FERAL MEN
(1) Rauber, August. _Homo Sapiens Ferus_; oder, Die Zustände der
Verwilderten und ihre Bedeutung für Wissenschaft, Politik, und Schule.
Leipzig, 1885.
(2) Seguin, Edward. _Idiocy and Its Treatment by the Physiological
Method._ Pp. 14-23. New York, 1866.
(3) Bonnaterre, J. P. _Notice historique sur le sauvage de l'Aveyron, et
sur quelques autres individus qu'on a trouvés dans les forêts à
différentes époques._ Paris, 1800.
(4) Itard, Jean E. M. G. _De l'éducation d'un homme sauvage, et des
premiers developpemens physiques et moraux du jeune sauvage de
l'Aveyron._ Pp. 45-46. Paris, 1801.
(5) Feuerbach, Paul J. A. von. _Caspar Hauser._ An account of an
individual kept in a dungeon from early childhood, to about the age of
seventeen. Translated from the German by H. G. Linberg. London, 1834.
(6) Stanhope, Philip Henry [4th Earl]. _Tracts relating to Caspar
Hauser._ Translated from the original German. London, 1836.
(7) Lang, Andrew. _Historical Mysteries._ London, 1904.
(8) Tredgold, A. F. _Mental Deficiency._ "Isolation Amentia," pp.
297-305. 3d rev. ed. New York, 1920.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Isolation as a Condition of Originality.
2. The Relation of Social Contact and of Isolation to Historic
Inventions and Discoveries, as the Law of Gravitation, Mendelian
Inheritance, the Electric Light, etc.
3. Isolated Types: the Hermit, the Mystic, the Prophet, the Stranger,
and the Saint.
4. Isolation, Segregation, and the Physically Defective: as the Blind,
the Deaf-Mute, the Physically Handicapped.
5. Isolated Areas and Cultural Retardation: the Southern Mountaineer,
Pitcairn Islanders, the Australian Aborigines.
6. "Moral" Areas, Isolation, and Segregation: City Slums, Vice
Districts, "Breeding-places of Crime."
7. The Controlled versus the Natural process of Segregation of the
Feeble-minded.
8. Isolation and Insanity.
9. Privacy in the Home.
10. Isolation and Prestige.
11. Isolation as a Defence against the Invasion of Personality.
12. Nationalism as a Form of Isolation.
13. Biological and Social Immunity: or Biological Immunity from
Infection, Personal or Group Immunity against Social Contagion.
14. The Only Child.
15. The Pathological Liar Considered from the Point of View of
Isolation.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Is the distinction between isolation and social contact relative or
absolute?
2. What illustrations of the various forms of isolation, spatial,
structural, habitudinal, and psychical, occur to you?
3. By what process does isolation cause racial differentiation?
4. What is the relation of endogamy and exogamy (a) to isolation, and
(b) to the establishment of a successful stock or race?
5. In what ways do the Jews and the Americans as racial types illustrate
the effects of isolation and of contact?
6. What do you understand to be Bacon's definition of solitude?
7. What is the point in the saying "A great town is a great solitude"?
8. What is the sociology of the creation by a solitary person of
imaginary companions?
9. Under what conditions does an individual prefer solitude to society?
Give illustrations.
10. What are the devices used in prayer to secure isolation?
11. "Prayer has value in that it develops the essentially social form of
personal self-realization." Explain.
12. What are the interrelations of social contact and of privacy in the
development of the ideal self?
13. What do you understand by the relation of erudition to originality?
14. In what ways does isolation (a) promote, (b) impede,
originality? What other factors beside isolation are involved in
originality?
15. What is the value of privacy?
16. What was the value of the monasteries?
17. What conclusions do you derive from the study of the cases of feral
men? Do these cases bear out the theory of Aristotle in regard to the
effect of isolation upon the individual?
18. What is the significance of Helen Keller's account of how she broke
through the barriers of isolation?
19. What were the mental effects of solitude described by Hudson? How do
you explain the difference between the descriptions of the effect of
solitude in the accounts given by Rousseau and by Hudson?
20. How does Galpin explain the relation of isolation to the development
of the "rural mind"?
21. What are the effects of isolation upon the young man or young woman
reared in the country?
22. Was Lincoln the product of isolation or of social contact?
23. To what extent are rural problems the result of isolation?
24. What do you understand by Thomas' statement, "The savage, the Negro,
the peasant, the slum dwellers, and the white woman are notable
sufferers by exclusion"?
25. What other of the subtler forms of isolation occur to you?
26. Is isolation to be regarded as always a disadvantage?
27. What do you understand by segregation as a process?
28. Give illustrations of groups other than those mentioned which have
become segregated as a result of isolation.
29. How would you describe the process by which isolation leads to the
segregation of the feeble-minded?
30. Why does a segregated group, like the feeble-minded, become an
isolated group?
31. What are other illustrations of isolation resulting from
segregation?
32. How would you compare Europe with the other continents with
reference to number and distribution of isolated areas?
33. What do you understand to be the nature of the influence of the
cradle land upon "the historical race"?
34. What illustrations from the Great War would you give of the effects
(a) of central location; (b) of peripheral location?
35. How do you explain the contrast between the characteristics of the
inhabitants of the Grecian inland and maritime cities?
36. To what extent may (a) the rise of the Greek city state, (b)
Grecian intellectual development, and (c) the history of Greece, be
interpreted in terms of geographic isolation?
37. To what extent can you explain the cultural retardation of Africa,
as compared with European progress, by isolation?
38. Does race or isolation explain more adequately the following
cultural differences for the several areas of France--divorce, intensity
of suicide, distribution of awards, relative frequency of men of
letters?
39. What is the relation of village and city emigration and immigration
to isolation?
40. What is the difference between a natural and a vicinal location?
41. In what ways does isolation affect national development?
42. What is the relation of geographical position in area to
literature?
FOOTNOTES:
[94] J. Arthur Thomson, _Heredity_, pp. 536-37. (G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1908.)
[95] From Francis Bacon, _Essays_, "Of Friendship."
[96] Adapted from Jean Jacques Rousseau, _Letter to the President de
Malesherbes, 1762_.
[97] Adapted from George Albert Coe, _The Psychology of Religion_, pp.
311-18. (The University of Chicago Press, 1917.)
[98] From T. Sharper Knowlson, _Originality_, pp. 173-75. (T. Werner
Laurie, 1918.)
[99] From Maurice H. Small, "On Some Psychical Relations of Society and
Solitude," in the _Pedagogical Seminary_, VII, No. 2 (1900), 32-36.
[100] _Anthropological Review_, I (London, 1863), 21 ff.
[101] _All the Year_, XVIII, 302 ff.
[102] _Chambers' Journal_, LIX, 579 ff.
[103] _The Penny Magazine_, II, 113.
[104] Wagner, _Beitragen zur philosophischen Anthropologie_; Rauber, pp.
49-55.
[105] "Histoire d'une jeune fille sauvage trouvée dans les bois à l'âge
de dix ans," _Magazin der Natur, Kunst, und Wissenschaft_, Leipzig,
1756, pp. 219-72; _Mercure de France_, December, 1731; Rudolphi,
_Grundriss der Physiologie_, I, 25; Blumenbach, _Beiträge zur
Naturgeschichte_, II, 38.
[106] Adapted from Helen Keller, _The Story of My Life_, pp. 22-24.
(Doubleday, Page & Co., 1917.)
[107] Adapted from W. H. Hudson, "The Plains of Patagonia," _Universal
Review_, VII (1890), 551-57.
[108] Adapted from C. J. Galpin, _Rural Social Centers in Wisconsin_,
pp. 1-3. (Wisconsin Experiment Station, Bulletin 234, 1913.)
[109] Adapted from W. I. Thomas, "Race Psychology," in the _American
Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1911-12), 744-47.
[110] Adapted from Robert E. Park, "The City: Suggestions for the
Investigation of Behavior in the City Environment," in the _American
Journal of Sociology_, XX (1915), 579-83.
[111] Adapted from L. W. Crafts and E. A. Doll, "The Proportion of
Mental Defectives among Juvenile Delinquents," in the _Journal of
Delinquency_, II (1917), 123-37.
[112] Adapted from N. S. Shaler, _Nature and Man in America_, pp.
151-66. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.)
[113] Adapted from George Grote, _History of Greece_, II, 149-57. (John
Murray, 1888.)
[114] From William Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 515-30. (D.
Appleton & Co., 1899.)
[115] Adapted from Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic
Environment_, pp. 132-33. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.)
[116] Fishberg, _op. cit._, p. 555.
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL CONTACTS
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Preliminary Notions of Social Contact
The fundamental social process is that of interaction. This interaction
is (a) of persons with persons, and (b) of groups with groups. The
simplest aspect of interaction, or its primary phase, is contact.
Contact may be considered as the initial stage of interaction, and
preparatory to the later stages. The phenomena of social contact require
analysis before proceeding to the more difficult study of the mechanism
of social interaction.
"With whom am I in contact?" Common sense has in stock ready answers to
this question.
There is, first of all, the immediate circle of contact through the
senses. Touch is the most intimate kind of contact. Face-to-face
relations include, in addition to touch, visual and auditory sensations.
Speech and hearing by their very nature establish a bond of contact
between persons.
Even in common usage, the expression "social contact" is employed beyond
the limits fixed by the immediate responses of touch, sight, and
hearing. Its area has expanded to include connection through all the
forms of communication, i.e., language, letters, and the printed page;
connection through the medium of the telephone, telegraph, radio, moving
picture, etc. The evolution of the devices for communication has taken
place in the fields of two senses alone, those of hearing and seeing.
Touch remains limited to the field of primary association. But the
newspaper with its elaborate mechanism of communication gives publicity
to events in London, Moscow, and Tokio, and the motion picture unreels
to our gaze scenes from distant lands and foreign peoples with all the
illusion of reality.
The frontiers of social contact are farther extended to the widest
horizons, by commerce. The economists, for example, include in their
conception of society the intricate and complex maze of relations
created by the competition and co-operation of individuals and societies
within the limits of a world-wide economy. This inclusion of unconscious
as well as conscious reciprocal influences in the concept of social
relations brings into "contact" the members of a village missionary
society with the savages of the equatorial regions of Africa; or the
pale-faced drug addict, with the dark-skinned Hindu laborers upon the
opium fields of Benares; or the man gulping down coffee at the breakfast
table, with the Java planter; the crew of the Pacific freighter and its
cargo of spices with the American wholesaler and retailer in food
products. In short, everyone is in a real, though concealed and devious,
way in contact with every other person in the world. Contacts of this
type, remote from the familiar experiences of everyday life, have
reality to the intellectual and the mystic and are appreciated by the
masses only when co-operation breaks down, or competition becomes
conscious and passes into conflict.
These three popular meanings of contacts emphasize (1) the intimacy of
sensory responses, (2) the extension of contact through devices of
communication based upon sight and hearing, and (3) the solidarity and
interdependence created and maintained by the fabric of social life,
woven as it is from the intricate and invisible strands of human
interests in the process of a world-wide competition and co-operation.
2. The Sociological Concept of Contact
The use of the term "contact" in sociology is not a departure from, but
a development of, its customary significance. In the preceding chapter
the point was made that the distinction between isolation and contact is
not absolute but relative. Members of a society spatially separate, but
socially in contact through sense perception and through communication
of ideas, may be thereby mobilized to collective behavior. Sociological
interest in this situation lies in the fact that the various kinds of
social contacts between persons and groups determine behavior. The
student of problems of American society, for example, realizes the
necessity of understanding the mutual reactions involved in the contacts
of the foreign and the native-born, of the white and the negro, and of
employers and employees. In other words, contact, as the first stage of
social interaction, conditions and controls the later stages of the
process.
It is convenient, for certain purposes, to conceive of contact in terms
of space. The contacts of persons and of groups may then be plotted in
units of _social distance_. This permits graphic representation of
relations of sequence and of coexistence in terms both of units of
separation and of contact. This spatial conception may now be applied to
the explanation of the readings in social contacts.
3. Classification of the Materials
In sociological literature there have grown up certain distinctions
between types of social contacts. Physical contacts are distinguished
from social contacts; relations within the "in-group" are perceived to
be different from relations with the "out-group"; contacts of historical
continuity are compared with contacts of mobility; primary contacts are
set off from secondary contacts. How far and with what advantage may
these distinctions be stated in spatial terms?
a) _Land as a basis for social contacts._--The position of persons and
peoples on the earth gives us a literal picture of the spatial
conception of social contact. The cluster of homes in the Italian
agricultural community suggests the difference in social life in
comparison with the isolated homesteads of rural America. A gigantic
spot map of the United States upon which every family would be indicated
by a dot would represent schematically certain different conditions
influencing group behavior in arid areas, the open country, hamlets,
villages, towns, and cities. The movements of persons charted with
detail sufficient to bring out variations in the daily, weekly, monthly,
and yearly routine, would undoubtedly reveal interesting identities and
differences in the intimacy and intensity of social contacts. It would
be possible and profitable to classify people with reference to the
routine of their daily lives.
b) _Touch as the physiological basis of social contact._--According to
the spatial conception the closest contacts possible are those of touch.
The physical proximity involved in tactile sensations is, however, but
the symbol of the intensity of the reactions to contact. Desire and
aversion for contacts, as Crawley shows in his selection, arise in the
most intimate relations of human life. Love and hate, longing and
disgust, sympathy and hostility increase in intensity with intimacy of
association. It is a current sociological fallacy that closeness of
contact results only in the growth of good will. The fact is, that with
increasing contact either attraction or repulsion may be the outcome,
depending upon the situation and upon factors not yet fully analyzed.
Peculiar conditions of contact, as its prolonged duration, its frequent
repetition, just as in the case of isolation from normal association,
may lead to the inversion of the original impulses and sentiments of
affection and antipathy.[117]
c) _Contacts with the "in-group" and with the "out-group."_--The
conception of the we-group in terms of distance is that of a group in
which the solidarity of units is so complete that the movements and
sentiments of all are completely regulated with reference to their
interests and behavior as a group. This control by the in-group over its
members makes for solidity and impenetrability in its relations with the
out-group. Sumner in his _Folkways_ indicates how internal sympathetic
contacts and group egotism result in double standards of behavior:
good-will and co-operation within the members of the in-group, hostility
and suspicion toward the out-group and its members. The essential point
is perhaps best brought out by Shaler in his distinction between
sympathetic and categoric contacts. He describes the transition from
contacts of the out-group to those of the in-group, or from remote to
intimate relations. From a distance, a person has the characteristics of
his group, upon close acquaintance he reveals his individuality.
d) _Historical continuity and mobility._--Historical continuity, which
maintains the identity of the present with the past, implies the
existence of a body of tradition which is transmitted from the older to
the younger generations. Through the medium of tradition, including in
that term all the learning, science, literature, and practical arts, not
to speak of the great body of oral tradition which is after all a larger
part of life than we imagine, the historical and cultural life is
maintained. This is the meaning of the long period of childhood in man
during which the younger generation is living under the care and
protection of the older. When, for any reason, this contact of the
younger with the older generation is interrupted--as is true in the case
of immigrants--a very definite cultural deterioration frequently ensues.
Contacts of mobility are those of a changing present, and measure the
number and variety of the stimulations which the social life and
movements--the discovery of the hour, the book of the moment, the
passing fads and fashions--afford. Contacts of mobility give us novelty
and news. It is through contacts of this sort that change takes place.
Mobility, accordingly, measures not merely the social contacts that one
gains from travel and exploration, but the stimulation and suggestions
that come to us through the medium of communication, by which sentiments
and ideas are put in social circulation. Through the newspaper, the
common man of today participates in the social movements of his time.
His illiterate forbear of yesterday, on the other hand, lived unmoved by
the current of world-events outside his hamlet. The _tempo_ of modern
societies may be measured comparatively by the relative perfection of
devices of communication and the rapidity of the circulation of
sentiments, opinions, and facts. Indeed, the efficiency of any society
or of any group is to be measured not alone in terms of numbers or of
material resources, but also in terms of mobility and access through
communication and publicity to the common fund of tradition and culture.
e) _Primary and secondary contacts._--Primary contacts are those of
"intimate face-to-face association"; secondary contacts are those of
externality and greater distance. A study of primary association
indicates that this sphere of contact falls into two areas: one of
intimacy and the other of acquaintance. In the diagram which follows,
the field of primary contacts has been subdivided so that it includes
(x) a circle of greater intimacy, (y) a wider circle of
acquaintanceship. The completed chart would appear as shown on page 285.
Primary contacts of the greatest intimacy are (a) those represented by
the affections that ordinarily spring up within the family, particularly
between parents and children, husband and wife; and (b) those of
fellowship and affection outside the family as between lovers, bosom
friends, and boon companions. These relations are all manifestations of
a craving for response. These personal relationships are the nursery for
the development of human nature and personality. John Watson, who
studied several hundred new-born infants in the psychological
laboratory, concludes that "the first few years are the all-important
ones, for shaping the emotional life of the child."[118] The primary
virtues and ideals of which Cooley writes so sympathetically are, for
the most part, projections from family life. Certainly in these most
intimate relations of life in the contacts of the family circle, in the
closest friendships, personality is most severely tried, realizes its
most characteristic expressions, or is most completely disorganized.
[Illustration: FIG. 3
A, primary contacts; x, greater intimacy; y, acquaintanceship;
B, secondary contacts]
Just as the life of the family represents the contacts of touch and
response, the neighborhood or the village is the natural area of primary
contacts and the city the social environment of secondary contacts. In
primary association individuals are in contact with each other at
practically all points of their lives. In the village "everyone knows
everything about everyone else." Canons of conduct are absolute, social
control is omnipotent, the status of the family and the individual is
fixed. In secondary association individuals are in contact with each
other at only one or two points in their lives. In the city, the
individual becomes anonymous; at best he is generally known in only one
or two aspects of his life. Standards of behavior are relative; the old
primary controls have disappeared; the new secondary instruments of
discipline, necessarily formal, are for the most part crude and
inefficient; the standing of the family and of the individual is
uncertain and subject to abrupt changes upward or downward in the social
scale.
Simmel has made a brilliant contribution in his analysis of the
sociological significance of "the stranger." "The stranger" in the
sociological sense is the individual who unites in his social relations
primary and secondary contacts. Simmel himself employs the conception of
social distance in his statement of the stranger as the combination of
the near and the far. It is interesting and significant to determine the
different types of the union of intimacy and externality in the
relations of teacher and student, physician and patient, minister and
layman, lawyer and client, social worker and applicant for relief.
A complete analysis of the bearing upon personal and cultural life of
changes from a society based upon contacts of continuity and of primary
relations to a society of increasing mobility organized around secondary
contacts cannot be given here. Certain of the most obvious contrasts of
the transition may, however, be stated. Increasing mobility of persons
in society almost inevitably leads to change and therefore to loss of
continuity. In primary groups, where social life moves slowly, there is
a greater sense of continuity than in secondary groups where it moves
rapidly.
There is a further contrast if not conflict between direct and intimate
contacts and contacts based upon communication of ideas. All sense of
values, as Windelband has pointed out,[119] rests upon concrete
experience, that is to say upon sense contacts. Society, to the extent
that it is organized about secondary contacts, is based upon
abstractions, upon science and technique. Secondary contacts of this
type have only secondary values because they represent means rather than
ends. Just as all behavior arises in sense impressions it must also
terminate in sense impressions to realize its ends and attain its
values. The effect of life in a society based on secondary contacts is
to build up between the impulse and its end a world of means, to project
values into the future, and to direct life toward the realization of
distant hopes.
The ultimate effect upon the individual as he becomes accommodated to
secondary society is to find a substitute expression for his primary
response in the artificial physical environment of the city. The
detachment of the person from intimate, direct, and spontaneous contacts
with social reality is in large measure responsible for the intricate
maze of problems of urban life.
The change from concrete and personal to abstract and impersonal
relations in economic and social life began with the Industrial
Revolution. The machine is the symbol of the monotonous routine of
impersonal, unskilled, large-scale production just as the hand tool is
the token of the interesting activity of personal, skilled, handicraft
work. The so-called "instinct of workmanship" no longer finds expression
in the anonymous standardized production of modern industry.[120]
It is not in industry alone that the natural impulses of the person for
response, recognition, and self-expression are balked. In social work,
politics, religion, art, and sport the individual is represented now by
proxies where formerly he participated in person. All the forms of
communal activity in which all persons formerly shared have been taken
over by professionals. The great mass of men in most of the social
activities of modern life are no longer actors, but spectators. The
average man of the present time has been relegated by the influence of
the professional politician to the rôle of taxpayer. In social work
organized charity has come between the giver and the needy.
In these and other manifold ways the artificial conditions of city life
have deprived the person of most of the natural outlets for the
expression of his interests and his energies. To this fact is to be
attributed in large part the restlessness, the thirst for novelty and
excitement so characteristic of modern life. This emotional unrest has
been capitalized by the newspapers, commercialized recreations, fashion,
and agitation in their appeal to the sensations, the emotions, and the
instincts loosened from the satisfying fixations of primary-group life.
The _raison d'être_ of social work, as well as the fundamental problem
of all social institutions in city life must be understood in its
relation to this background.
II. MATERIALS
A. PHYSICAL CONTACT AND SOCIAL CONTACT
1. The Frontiers of Social Contact[121]
Sociology deals especially with the phenomena of _contact_. The
reactions which result from voluntary or involuntary contact of human
beings with other human beings are the phenomena peculiarly "social," as
distinguished from the phenomena that belong properly to biology and
psychology.
In the first place, we want to indicate, not the essence of the social,
but the location, the sphere, the extent, of the social. If we can agree
where it is, we may then proceed to discover what it is. The social,
then, is the term next beyond the individual. Assuming, for the sake of
analysis, that our optical illusion, "the individual," is an isolated
and self-sufficient fact, there are many sorts of scientific problems
that do not need to go beyond this fact to satisfy their particular
terms. Whether the individual can ever be abstracted from his conditions
and remain himself is not a question that we need here discuss. At all
events, the individual known to our experience is not isolated. He is
connected in various ways with one or more individuals. The different
ways in which individuals are connected with each other are indicated by
the inclusive term "contact." Starting, then, from the individual, to
measure him in all his dimensions and to represent him in all his
phases, we find that each person is what he is by virtue of the
existence of other persons, and by virtue of an alternating current of
influence between each person and all the other persons previously or at
the same time in existence. The last native of Central Africa around
whom we throw the dragnet of civilization, and whom we inoculate with a
desire for whiskey, adds an increment to the demand for our distillery
products, and affects the internal revenue of the United States, and so
the life-conditions of every member of our population. This is what we
mean by "contact." So long as that African tribe is unknown to the
outside world, and the world to it, so far as the European world is
concerned, the tribe might as well not exist. The moment the tribe comes
within touch of the rest of the world, the aggregate of the world's
contacts is by so much enlarged; the social world is by so much
extended. In other words, the realm of the social is the realm of
circuits of reciprocal influence between individuals and the groups
which individuals compose. The general term "contact" is proposed to
stand for this realm, because it is a colorless word that may mark
boundaries without prejudging contents. Wherever there is physical or
spiritual contact between persons, there is inevitably a circuit of
exchange of influence. The realm of the social is the realm constituted
by such exchange. It extends from the producing of the baby by the
mother, and the simultaneous producing of the mother by the baby, to the
producing of merchant and soldier by the world-powers, and the producing
of the world-powers by merchant and soldier.
The most general and inclusive way in which to designate all the
phenomena that sociology proper considers, without importing into the
term premature hypotheses by way of explanation, is to assert that they
are the phenomena of "contact" between persons.
In accordance with what was said about the division of labor between
psychology and sociology, it seems best to leave to the psychologist all
that goes on inside the individual and to say that the work of the
sociologist begins with the things that take place between individuals.
This principle of division is not one that can be maintained absolutely,
any more than we can hold absolutely to any other abstract
classification of real actions. It serves, however, certain rough uses.
Our work as students of society begins in earnest when the individual
has become equipped with his individuality. This stage of human growth
is both cause and effect of the life of human beings side by side in
greater or lesser numbers. Under those circumstances individuals are
produced; they act as individuals; by their action as individuals they
produce a certain type of society; that type reacts on the individuals
and helps to transform them into different types of individuals, who in
turn produce a modified type of society; and so the rhythm goes on
forever. Now the medium through which all this occurs is the fact of
contacts, either physical or spiritual. In either case, contacts are
collisions of interests in the individuals.
2. The Land and the People[122]
Every clan, tribe, state, or nation includes two ideas, a people and its
land, the first unthinkable without the other. History, sociology,
ethnology, touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gain
their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their
local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features,
and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the
development of actual or possible inhabitants. A land is fully
comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its
people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its
activities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only
in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated
them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of
navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population,
can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for
the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world and each fact
interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang.
Therefore anthropology, sociology, and history should be permeated by
geography.
Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached
from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. The
anthropogeographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and
psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; but
he has something to add. He sees in the land occupied by a primitive
tribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holding
society together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental social
activities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. He sees the
common territory exercising an integrating force--weak in primitive
communities where the group has established only a few slight and
temporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complex
breaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organism
found in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance in
civilization involving more complex relations to the land--with settled
habitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminating
and highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation of
mineral resources, and, finally, with that far-reaching exchange of
commodities and ideas which means the establishment of varied
extra-territorial relations. Finally, the modern society or state has
grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic
advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by
international trade, and, when possible, to absorb outlying territories
by means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, more
varied, its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their
exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which
the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with
each other; or, in other words, the greater may be its ultimate
historical significance.
3. Touch and Social Contact[123]
General ideas concerning human relations are the medium through which
sexual taboo works, and these must now be examined. If we compare the
facts of social taboo generally, or of its subdivision, sexual taboo, we
find that the ultimate test of human relations, in both _genus_ and
_species_, is _contact_. An investigation of primitive ideas concerning
the relations of man with man, when guided by this clue, will lay bare
the principles which underlie the theory and practice of sexual taboo.
Arising, as we have seen, from sexual differentiation, and forced into
permanence by difference of occupation and sexual solidarity, this
segregation receives the continuous support of religious conceptions as
to human relations. These conceptions center upon contact, and ideas of
contact are at the root of all conceptions of human relations at any
stage of culture; contact is the one universal test, as it is the most
elementary form, of mutual relations. Psychology bears this out, and the
point is psychological rather than ethnological.
As I have pointed out before and shall have occasion to do so again, a
comparative examination, assisted by psychology, of the emotions and
ideas of average modern humanity is a most valuable aid to ethnological
inquiry. In this connection, we find that desire or willingness for
physical contact is an animal emotion, more or less subconscious, which
is characteristic of similarity, harmony, friendship, or love.
Throughout the world, the greeting of a friend is expressed by contact,
whether it be nose-rubbing, or the kiss, the embrace, or the clasp of
hands; so the ordinary expression of friendship by a boy, that eternal
savage, is contact of arm and shoulder. More interesting still for our
purpose is the universal expression by contact of the emotion of love.
To touch his mistress is the ever-present desire of the lover, and in
this impulse, even if we do not trace it back, as we may without being
fanciful, to polar or sexual attraction inherent in the atoms, the
[Greek: philia] of Empedocles, yet we may place the beginning and ending
of love. When analyzed, the emotion always comes back to contact.
Further, mere willingness for contact is found universally when the
person to be touched is healthy, if not clean, or where he is of the
same age or class or caste, and, we may add, for ordinary humanity the
same sex.
On the other hand, the avoidance of contact, whether consciously or
subconsciously presented, is no less the universal characteristic of
human relations where similarity, harmony, friendship, or love is
absent. This appears in the attitude of men to the sick, to strangers,
distant acquaintances, enemies, and in cases of difference of age,
position, sympathies or aims, and even of sex. Popular language is full
of phrases which illustrate this feeling.
Again, the pathology of the emotions supplies many curious cases where
the whole being seems concentrated upon the sense of touch, with
abnormal desire or disgust for contact; and in the evolution of the
emotions from physiological pleasure and pain, contact plays an
important part in connection with functional satisfaction or
dissatisfaction with the environment.
In the next place, there are the facts, first, that an element of
thought inheres in all sensation, while sensation conditions thought;
and secondly, that there is a close connection of all the senses, both
in origin--each of them being a modification of the one primary sense of
touch--and in subsequent development, where the specialized organs are
still co-ordinated through tactile sensation, in the sensitive surface
of organism. Again, and here we see the genesis of ideas of contact, it
is by means of the tactile sensibility of the skin and membranes of
sense-organs, forming a sensitized as well as a protecting surface, that
the nervous system conveys to the brain information about the external
world, and this information is in its original aspect the response to
impact. Primitive physics, no less than modern, recognizes that contact
is a modified form of a blow. These considerations show that contact not
only plays an important part in the life of the soul but must have had a
profound influence on the development of ideas, and it may now be
assumed that ideas of contact have been a universal and original
constant factor in human relations and that they are so still. The
latter assumption is to be stressed, because we find that the ideas
which lie beneath primitive taboo are still a vital part of human
nature, though mostly emptied of their religious content; and also
because, as I hold, ceremonies and etiquette, such as still obtain,
could not possess such vitality as they do unless there were a living
psychological force behind them, such as we find in elementary ideas
which come straight from functional processes.
These ideas of contact are _primitive_ in each sense of the word, at
whatever stage of culture they appear. They seem to go back in origin
and in character to that highly developed sensibility of all animal and
even organized life, which forms at once a biological monitor and a
safeguard for the whole organism in relation to its environment. From
this sensibility there arise subjective ideas concerning the safety or
danger of the environment, and in man we may suppose these subjective
ideas as to his environment, and especially as to his fellow-men, to be
the origin of his various expressions of avoidance or desire for
contact.
Lastly, it is to be observed that avoidance of contact is the most
conspicuous phenomenon attaching to cases of taboo when its dangerous
character is prominent. In taboo the connotation of "not to be touched"
is the salient point all over the world, even in cases of permanent
taboo such as belongs to Samoan and Maori chiefs, with whom no one dared
come in contact; and so we may infer the same aversion to be potential
in all such relations.
B. SOCIAL CONTACT IN RELATION TO SOLIDARITY AND TO MOBILITY
1. The In-Group and the Out-Group[124]
The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of
small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is
determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal
organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups
may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance,
connubium, and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates
them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the
we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups,
out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace,
order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to
all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so
far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in
it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it
are adopted persons, guest-friends, and slaves.
The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of
hostility and war toward others-groups are correlative to each other.
The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest
internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies
also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent
quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each
other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the
intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they
are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal
organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to
correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt
for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without--all grow
together, common products of the same situation.
Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which
one's own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled
and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both
the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and
vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks
with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only
right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways,
these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these
differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are
epithets of contempt and abomination.
2. Sympathetic Contacts versus Categoric Contacts[125]
Let us now consider what takes place when two men, mere strangers to one
another, come together. The motive of classification, which I have
considered in another chapter, leads each of them at once to recognize
the approaching object first as living, then as human. The shape and
dress carry the categorizing process yet farther, so that they are
placed in groups, as of this or that tribe or social class, and as these
determinations are made they arouse the appropriate sympathies or
hatreds such as by experience have become associated with the several
categories. Be it observed that these judgments are spontaneous,
instinctive, and unnoticed. They are made so by immemorial education in
the art of contact which man has inherited from the life of the
ancestral beasts and men; they have most likely been in some measure
affirmed by selection, for these determinations as to the nature of the
neighbor were in the lower stages of existence in brute and man of
critical importance, the creatures lived or died according as they
determined well or ill, swiftly or slowly. If we observe what takes
place in our own minds at such meetings we will see that the action in
its immediateness is like that of the eyelids when the eye is
threatened. As we say, it is done before we know it.
With this view as to the conditions of human contact, particularly of
what occurs when men first meet one another, let us glance at what takes
place in near intercourse. We have seen that at the beginning of any
acquaintance the fellow-being is inevitably dealt with in the categoric
way. He is taken as a member of a group, which group is denoted to us by
a few convenient signs; as our acquaintance with a particular person
advances, this category tends to become qualified. Its bounds are pushed
this way and that until they break down. It is to be noted in this
process that the category fights for itself, or we for it, so that the
result of the battle between the immediate truth and the prejudice is
always doubtful. It is here that knowledge, especially that gained by
individual experience, is most helpful. The uninformed man, who begins
to find, on the nearer view of an Israelite, that the fellow is like
himself, holds by his category in the primitive way. The creature _is_ a
Jew, therefore the evidence of kinship must not count. He who is better
informed is, or should be, accustomed to amend his categories. He may,
indeed, remember that he is dealing with a neighbor of the race which
gave us not only Christ, but all the accepted prophets who have shaped
our own course, and his understanding helps to cast down the barriers of
instinctive prejudice.
At the stage of advancing acquaintance where friendship is attained, the
category begins to disappear from our minds. We may, indeed, measure the
advance in this relation by the extent to which it has been broken down.
Looking attentively at our mental situation as regards those whom we
know pretty well, we see that most of them are still, though rather
faintly, classified into groups. While a few of the nearer stand forth
by themselves, all of the nearest to our hearts are absolutely
individualized, so that our judgments of them are made on the basis of
our own motives and what we of ourselves discern. We may use categoric
terms concerning our lovers, spouses, or children, but they have no real
meaning; these persons are to us purely individual, all trace of the
inclusive category has disappeared; they are, in the full sense of the
word, our neighbors, being so near that when we look upon them we see
nothing else, not even ourselves.
Summing up these considerations concerning human contact, it may be said
that the world works by a system of individualities rising in scale as
we advance from the inorganic through the organic series until we find
the summit in man. The condition of all these individuals is that of
isolation; each is necessarily parted from all the others in the realm,
each receiving influences, and, in turn, sending forth its peculiar tide
of influences to those of its own and other kinds. This isolation in the
case of man is singularly great for the reason that he is the only
creature we know in the realm who is so far endowed with consciousness
that he can appreciate his position and know the measure of his
solitude. In the case of all individuals the discernible is only a small
part of what exists. In man the measure of this presentation is, even to
himself, very small, and that which he can readily make evident to his
neighbor is an exceedingly limited part of the real whole. Yet it is on
this slender basis that we must rest our relations with the fellow man
if we are to found them upon knowledge. The imperfection of this method
of ascertaining the fellow-man is well shown by the trifling contents of
the category discriminations we apply to him. While, as has been
suggested, much can be done by those who have gained in knowledge of our
kind by importing understandings into our relations with men, the only
effective way to the betterment of those relations is through the
sympathies.
What can be done by knowledge in helping us to a comprehension of the
fellow-man is at best merely explanatory of his place in the phenomenal
world; of itself it has only scientific value. The advantage of the
sympathetic way of approach is that in this method the neighbor is
accounted for on the supposition that he is ourself in another form, so
we feel for and with him on the instinctive hypothesis that he is
essentially ourself. There can be no question that this method of
looking upon other individualities is likely to lead to many errors. We
see examples of these blunders in all the many grades of the
personifying process, from the savage's worship of a tree or stone to
the civilized man's conception of a human-like god. We see them also in
the attribution to the lower animals of thoughts and feelings which are
necessarily limited to our own kind, but in the case of man the
conception of identity gives a minimum of error and a maximum of truth.
It, indeed, gives a truer result than could possibly be attained by any
scientific inquiries that we could make, or could conceive of being
effectively made, and this for the following reasons.
When, as in the sympathetic state, we feel that the neighbor of our
species is essentially ourself, the tacit assumption is that his needs
and feelings are as like our own as our own states of mind at diverse
times are like one another, so that we might exchange motives with him
without experiencing any great sense of strangeness. What we have in
mind is not the measure of instruction or education, not the class or
station or other adventitious circumstances, but the essential traits of
his being. Now this supposition is entirely valid. All we know of
mankind justifies the statement that, as regards all the qualities and
motives with which the primal sympathies deal, men are remarkably alike.
Their loves, hates, fears, and sorrows are alike in their essentials; so
that the postulate of sympathy that the other man is essentially like
one's self is no idle fancy but an established truth. It not only
embodies the judgment of all men in thought and action but has its
warrant from all the science we can apply to it.
It is easy to see how by means of sympathy we can at once pass the gulf
which separates man from man. All the devices of the ages in the way of
dumb or spoken language fail to win across the void, and leave the two
beings apart; but with a step the sympathetic spirit passes the gulf. In
this strange feature we have the completion of the series of differences
between the inorganic and the organic groups of individualities. In the
lower or non-living isolations there is no reason why the units should
do more than mechanically interact. All their service in the realm can
be best effected by their remaining forever completely apart. But when
we come to the organic series, the units begin to have need of
understanding their neighbors, in order that they may form those
beginnings of the moral order which we find developing among the members
even of the lowliest species. Out of this sympathetic accord arises the
community, which we see in its simple beginnings in the earlier stages
of life; it grows with the advance in the scale of being, and has its
supreme success in man. Human society, the largest of all organic
associations, requires that its units be knit together in certain common
purposes and understandings, and the union can only be made effective by
the ways of sympathy--by the instinctive conviction of essential
kinship.
3. Historical Continuity and Civilization[126]
In matters connected with political and economical institutions we
notice among the natural races very great differences in the sum of
their civilization. Accordingly we have to look among them, not only for
the beginnings of civilization, but for a very great part of its
evolution, and it is equally certain that these differences are to be
referred less to variations in endowment than to great differences in
the conditions of their development. Exchange has also played its part,
and unprejudiced observers have often been more struck in the presence
of facts by agreement than by difference. "It is astonishing," exclaims
Chapman, when considering the customs of the Damaras, "what a similarity
there is in the manners and practices of the human family throughout the
world. Even here, the two different classes of Damaras practice rites in
common with the New Zealanders, such as that of chipping out the front
teeth and cutting off the little finger." It is less astonishing if, as
the same traveler remarks, their agreement with the Bechuanas goes even
farther. Now, since the essence of civilization lies first in the
amassing of experiences, then in the fixity with which these are
retained, and lastly in the capacity to carry them farther or to
increase them, our first question must be, how is it possible to realize
the first fundamental condition of civilization, namely, the amassing a
stock of culture in the form of handiness, knowledge, power, capital? It
has long been agreed that the first step thereto is the transition from
complete dependence upon what Nature freely offers to a conscious
exploitation through man's own labor, especially in agriculture or
cattle-breeding, of such of her fruits as are most important to him.
This transition opens at one stroke all the most remote possibilities of
Nature, but we must always remember at the same time that it is still a
long way from the first step to the height which has now been attained.
The intellect of man and also the intellect of whole races shows a wide
discrepancy in regard to differences of endowment as well as in regard
to the different effects which external circumstances produce upon it.
Especially are there variations in the degree of inward coherence and
therewith of the fixity or duration of the stock of intellect. The want
of coherence, the breaking up of this stock, characterizes the lower
stages of civilization no less than its coherence, its inalienability,
and its power of growth do the higher. We find in low stages a poverty
of tradition which allows these races neither to maintain a
consciousness of their earlier fortunes for any appreciable period nor
to fortify and increase their stock of intelligence either through the
acquisitions of individual prominent minds or through the adoption and
fostering of any stimulus. Here, if we are not entirely mistaken, is the
basis of the deepest-seated differences between races. The opposition of
historic and non-historic races seems to border closely upon it.
There is a distinction between the quickly ripening immaturity of the
child and the limited maturity of the adult who has come to a stop in
many respects. What we mean by "natural" races is something much more
like the latter than the former. We call them races deficient in
civilization, because internal and external conditions have hindered
them from attaining to such permanent developments in the domain of
culture as form the mark of the true civilized races and the guaranties
of progress. Yet we should not venture to call any of them cultureless,
so long as none of them is devoid of the primitive means by which the
ascent to higher stages can be made--language, religion, fire, weapons,
implements; while the very possession of these means, and many others,
such as domestic animals and cultivated plants, testifies to varied and
numerous dealings with those races which are completely civilized.
The reasons why they do not make use of these gifts are of many kinds.
Lower intellectual endowment is often placed in the first rank. That is
a convenient but not quite fair explanation. Among the savage races of
today we find great differences in endowments. We need not dispute that
in the course of development races of even slightly higher endowments
have got possession of more and more means of culture, and gained
steadiness and security for their progress, while the less endowed
remained behind. But external conditions, in respect to their furthering
or hindering effects, can be more clearly recognized and estimated; and
it is juster and more logical to name them first. We can conceive why
the habitations of the savage races are principally to be found on the
extreme borders of the inhabited world, in the cold and hot regions, in
remote islands, in secluded mountains, in deserts. We understand their
backward condition in parts of the earth which offer so few facilities
for agriculture and cattle-breeding as Australia, the Arctic regions, or
the extreme north and south of America. In the insecurity of
incompletely developed resources we can see the chain which hangs
heavily on their feet and confines their movements within a narrow
space. As a consequence their numbers are small, and from this again
results the small total amount of intellectual and physical
accomplishment, the rarity of eminent men, the absence of the salutary
pressure exercised by surrounding masses on the activity and forethought
of the individual, which operates in the division of society into
classes, and the promotion of a wholesome division of labor. A partial
consequence of this insecurity of resources is the instability of
natural races. A nomadic strain runs through them all, rendering easier
to them the utter incompleteness of their unstable political and
economical institutions, even when an indolent agriculture seems to tie
them to the soil. Thus it often comes about that, in spite of abundantly
provided and well-tended means of culture, their life is desultory,
wasteful of power, unfruitful. This life has no inward consistency, no
secure growth; it is not the life in which the germs of civilization
first grew up to the grandeur in which we frequently find them at the
beginnings of what we call history. It is full rather of fallings-away
from civilization and dim memories from civilized spheres which in many
cases must have existed long before the commencement of history as we
have it.
By the word "civilization" or "culture" we denote usually the sum of all
the acquirements at a given time of the human intelligence. When we
speak of stages, of higher and lower, of semi-civilization, of civilized
and "natural" races, we apply to the various civilizations of the earth
a standard which we take from the degree that we have ourselves
attained. Civilization means _our_ civilization.
The confinement, in space as in time, which isolates huts, villages,
races, no less than successive generations, involves the negation of
culture; in its opposite, the intercourse of contemporaries and the
interdependence of ancestors and successors, lies the possibility of
development. The union of contemporaries secures the retention of
culture, the linking of generations its unfolding. The development of
civilization is a process of hoarding. The hoards grow of themselves so
soon as a retaining power watches over them. In all domains of human
creation and operation we shall see the basis of all higher development
in intercourse. Only through co-operation and mutual help, whether
between contemporaries, whether from one generation to another, has
mankind succeeded in climbing to the stage of civilization on which its
highest members now stand. On the nature and extent of this intercourse
the growth depends. Thus the numerous small assemblages of equal
importance, formed by the family stocks, in which the individual had no
freedom, were less favorable to it than the larger communities and
states of the modern world, with their encouragement to individual
competition.
4. Mobility and the Movement of Peoples[127]
Every country whose history we examine proves the recipient of
successive streams of humanity. Even sea-girt England has received
various intruding peoples, from the Roman occupation to the recent
influx of Russian Jews. In prehistoric times it combined several
elements in its population, as the discovery of the "long barrow" men
and "round barrow" men by archaeologists and the identification of a
surviving Iberian or Mediterranean strain by ethnologists go to prove.
Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India tell the same story, whether in their
recorded or unrecorded history. Tropical Africa lacks a history; but all
that has been pieced together by ethnologists and anthropologists, in an
effort to reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement--growth,
expansion, and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion,
or absorption by another invader. To this constant shifting of races and
peoples the name of historical movement has been given, because it
underlies most of written history and constitutes the major part of
unwritten history, especially that of savage and nomadic tribes.
Among primitive peoples this movement is simple and monotonous. It
involves all members of the tribe, either in pursuit of game or
following the herd over the tribal territory, or in migrations seeking
more and better land. Among civilized peoples it assumes various forms
and especially is differentiated for different members of the social
group. The civilized state develops specialized frontiers--men, armies,
explorers, maritime traders, colonists, and missionaries, who keep a
part of the people constantly moving and directing external expansion,
while the mass of the population converts the force once expended in the
migrant food-quest into internal activity. Here we come upon a paradox.
The nation as a whole, with the development of sedentary life, increases
its population and therewith its need for external movements; it widens
its national area and its circle of contact with other lands, enlarges
its geographical horizon, and improves its internal communication over a
growing territory; it evolves a greater mobility within and without,
which attaches, however, to certain classes of society, not to the
entire social group. This mobility becomes the outward expression of a
whole complex of economic wants, intellectual needs, and political
ambitions. It is embodied in the conquests which build up empires, in
the colonization which develops new lands, in the world-wide exchange of
commodities and ideas which lifts the level of civilization till this
movement of peoples becomes a fundamental fact of history.
Otis Mason finds that the life of a social group involves a variety of
movements characterized by different ranges or scopes: (1) The daily
round from bed to bed. (2) The annual round from year to year, like that
of the Tunguse Orochon of Siberia who, in pursuit of various fish and
game, change their residence within their territory from month to month,
or the pastoral nomads who move with the seasons from pasture to
pasture. (3) Less systematic outside movements covering the tribal
sphere of influence, such as journeys or voyages to remote hunting or
fishing grounds, forays or piratical descents upon neighboring lands,
eventuating usually in conquest, expansion into border regions for
occasional occupation, or colonization. (4) Participation in streams of
barter or commerce. (5) And, at a higher stage, in the great currents of
human intercourse, experience, and ideas, which finally compass the
world. In all this series the narrower movement prepares for the
broader, of which it constitutes at once an impulse and a part.
Civilized man is at once more and less mobile than his primitive
brother. Every advance in civilization multiplies and tightens the bonds
uniting him with his soil, makes him a sedentary instead of a migratory
being. On the other hand, every advance in civilization is attended by
the rapid clearing of the forests, by the construction of bridges and
interlacing roads, the invention of more effective vehicles for
transportation whereby intercourse increases, and the improvement of
navigation to the same end. Civilized man progressively modifies the
land which he occupies, removes or reduces obstacles to intercourse, and
thereby approximates it to the open plain. Thus far he facilitates
movements. But while doing this he also places upon the land a dense
population, closely attached to the soil, strong to resist incursion,
and for economic reasons inhospitable to any marked accession of
population from without. Herein lies the great difference between
migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated
when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of our
era. As the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves
became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain
countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to
a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here,
repression there. Hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnic
boundaries scarcely budge. The greatest wars of modern Europe have
hardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. Only in the
Balkan Peninsula, as the frontiers of the Turkish Empire have been
forced back from the Danube, the alien Turks have withdrawn to the
shrinking territory of the Sultan and especially to Asia Minor.
Where a population too great to be dislodged occupies the land, conquest
results in the eventual absorption of the victors and their civilization
by the native folk, as happened to the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals in
Africa, and the Normans in England. Where the invaders are markedly
superior in culture, though numerically weak, conquest results in the
gradual permeation of the conquered with the religion, economic methods,
language, and customs of the newcomers. The latter process, too, is
always attended by some intermixture of blood, where no race repulsion
exists, but this is small in comparison to the diffusion of
civilization. This was the method by which Greek traders and colonists
Hellenized the countries about the eastern Mediterranean and spread
their culture far back from the shores which their settlements had
appropriated. In this way Saracen armies, soon after the death of
Mohammed, Arabized the whole eastern and southern sides of the
Mediterranean from Syria to Spain, and Arab merchants set the stamp of
their language and religion on the coasts of East Africa as far as
Mozambique. The handful of Spanish adventurers who came upon the
relatively dense populations of Mexico and Peru left among them a
civilization essentially European, but only a thin strain of Castilian
blood. Thus the immigration of small bands of people sufficed to
influence the culture of that big territory known as Latin America.
Throughout the life of any people, from its fetal period in some small
locality to its well-rounded adult era marked by the occupation and
organization of a wide national territory, gradations in area mark
gradations of development. And this is true, whether we consider the
compass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritime
ventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of their
territorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests and
human sympathies. From land to ethics, the rule holds good. Peoples in
the lower stages of civilization have contracted spatial ideas, desire
and need at a given time only a limited territory, though they may
change that territory often; they think in small linear terms, have a
small horizon, a small circle of contact with others, a small range of
influence, only tribal sympathies; they have an exaggerated conception
of their own size and importance, because their basis of comparison is
fatally limited. With a mature, widespread people like the English or
French, all this is different; they have made the earth their own, so
far as possible.
Just because of this universal tendency toward the occupation of ever
larger areas and the formation of vaster political aggregates, in making
a sociological or political estimate of different peoples, we should
never lose sight of the fact that all racial and national
characteristics which operate toward the absorption of more land and
impel to political expansion are of fundamental value. A ship of state
manned by such a crew has its sails set to catch the winds of the world.
Territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circle
of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea
fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries,
and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through
fortuitous or systematic exploration.
C. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONTACTS
1. Village Life in America (from the Diary of a Young Girl)[128]
_November 21, 1852._--I am ten years old today, and I think I will write
a journal and tell who I am and what I am doing. I have lived with my
Grandfather and Grandmother Beals ever since I was seven years old, and
Anna, too, since she was four. Our brothers, James and John, came too,
but they are at East Bloomfield at Mr. Stephen Clark's Academy. Miss
Laura Clark of Naples is their teacher.
Anna and I go to school at District No. 11. Mr. James C. Cross is our
teacher, and some of the scholars say he is cross by name and cross by
nature, but I like him. He gave me a book by the name of _Noble Deeds of
American Women_, for reward of merit, in my reading class.
_Friday._--Grandmother says I will have a great deal to answer for,
because Anna looks up to me so and tries to do everything that I do and
thinks whatever I say is "gospel truth." The other day the girls at
school were disputing with her about something and she said, "It is so,
if it ain't so, for Calline said so." I shall have to "toe the mark," as
Grandfather says, if she keeps watch of me all the time and walks in my
footsteps.
_April 1, 1853._--Before I go to school every morning I read three
chapters in the Bible. I read three every day and five on Sunday and
that takes me through the Bible in a year. Those I read this morning
were the first, second, and third chapters of Job. The first was about
Eliphaz reproveth Job; second, benefit of God's correction; third, Job
justifieth his complaint. I then learned a text to say at school. I went
to school at quarter to nine and recited my text and we had prayers and
then proceeded with the business of the day. Just before school was out,
we recited in _Science of Things Familiar_, and in Dictionary, and then
we had calisthenics.
_July._--Hiram Goodrich, who lives at Mr. Myron H. Clark's, and George
and Wirt Wheeler ran away on Sunday to seek their fortunes. When they
did not come back everyone was frightened and started out to find them.
They set out right after Sunday school, taking their pennies which had
been given them for the contribution, and were gone several days. They
were finally found at Palmyra. When asked why they had run away, one
replied that he thought it was about time they saw something of the
world. We heard that Mr. Clark had a few moments' private conversation
with Hiram in the barn and Mr. Wheeler the same with his boys and we do
not think they will go traveling on their own hook again right off. Miss
Upham lives right across the street from them and she was telling little
Morris Bates that he must fight the good fight of faith and he asked her
if that was the fight that Wirt Wheeler fit. She probably had to make
her instructions plainer after that.
_1854, Sunday._--Mr. Daggett's text this morning was the twenty-second
chapter of Revelation, sixteenth verse, "I am the root and offspring of
David and the bright and morning star." Mrs. Judge Taylor taught our
Sunday-school class today and she said we ought not to read our
Sunday-school books on Sunday. I always do. Mine today was entitled,
_Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More_, and it did not seem
unreligious at all.
_Tuesday._--Mrs. Judge Taylor sent for me to come over to see her today.
I didn't know what she wanted, but when I got there she said she wanted
to talk and pray with me on the subject of religion. She took me into
one of the wings. I never had been in there before and was frightened at
first, but it was nice after I got used to it. After she prayed, she
asked me to, but I couldn't think of anything but "Now I lay me down to
sleep," and I was afraid she would not like that, so I didn't say
anything. When I got home and told Anna, she said, "Caroline, I presume
probably Mrs. Taylor wants you to be a missionary, but I shan't let you
go." I told her she needn't worry for I would have to stay at home and
look after her. After school tonight I went out into Abbie Clark's
garden with her and she taught me how to play "mumble te peg." It is
fun, but rather dangerous. I am afraid Grandmother won't give me a knife
to play with. Abbie Clark has beautiful pansies in her garden and gave
me some roots.
_Sunday._--I almost forgot that it was Sunday this morning and talked
and laughed just as I do week days. Grandmother told me to write down
this verse before I went to church so I would remember it: "Keep thy
foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than
to offer the sacrifice of fools." I will remember it now, sure. My feet
are all right anyway with my new patten leather shoes on, but I shall
have to look out for my head. Mr. Thomas Howell read a sermon today as
Mr. Daggett is out of town. Grandmother always comes upstairs to get the
candle and tuck us in before she goes to bed herself, and some nights we
are sound asleep and do not hear her, but last night we only pretended
to be asleep. She kneeled down by the bed and prayed aloud for us, that
we might be good children and that she might have strength given her
from on high to guide us in the straight and narrow path which leads to
life eternal. Those were her very words. After she had gone downstairs
we sat up in bed and talked about it and promised each other to be good,
and crossed our hearts and "hoped to die," if we broke our promise. Then
Anna was afraid we would die, but I told her I didn't believe we would
be as good as that, so we kissed each other and went to sleep.
_Sunday._--Rev. Mr. Tousley preached today to the children and told us
how many steps it took to be bad. I think he said lying was first, then
disobedience to parents, breaking the Sabbath, swearing, stealing,
drunkenness. I don't remember just the order they came. It was very
interesting, for he told lots of stories and we sang a great many times.
I should think Eddy Tousley would be an awful good boy with his father
in the house with him all the while, but probably he has to be away part
of the time preaching to other children.
_December 20, 1855._--Susan B. Anthony is in town and spoke in Bemis
Hall this afternoon. She made a special request that all the seminary
girls should come to hear her as well as all the women and girls in
town. She had a large audience and she talked very plainly about our
rights and how we ought to stand up for them, and said the world would
never go right until the women had just as much right to vote and rule
as the men. She asked us all to come up and sign our names who would
promise to do all in our power to bring about that glad day when equal
rights would be the law of the land. A whole lot of us went up and
signed the paper. When I told Grandmother about it she said she guessed
Susan B. Anthony had forgotten that St. Paul said the women should keep
silence. I told her no, she didn't, for she spoke particularly about St.
Paul and said if he had lived in these times, instead of eighteen
hundred years ago, he would have been as anxious to have the women at
the head of the government as she was. I could not make Grandmother
agree with her at all and she said we might better all of us stayed at
home. We went to prayer meeting this evening and a woman got up and
talked. Her name was Mrs. Sands. We hurried home and told Grandmother
and she said she probably meant all right and she hoped we did not
laugh.
_February 21, 1856._--We had a very nice time at Fannie Gaylord's party
and a splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed herself almost to pieces
when she found on going home that she had worn her leggins all the
evening. We had a pleasant walk home but did not stay till it was out.
Someone asked me if I danced every set and I told them no, I set every
dance. I told Grandmother and she was very much pleased. Some one told
us that Grandfather and Grandmother first met at a ball in the early
settlement of Canandaigua. I asked her if it was so and she said she
never danced since she became a professing Christian and that was more
than fifty years ago.
_May, 1856._--We were invited to Bessie Seymour's party last night and
Grandmother said we could go. The girls all told us at school that they
were going to wear low neck and short sleeves. We have caps on the
sleeves of our best dresses and we tried to get the sleeves out, so we
could go bare arms, but we couldn't get them out. We had a very nice
time, though, at the party. Some of the Academy boys were there and they
asked us to dance but of course we couldn't do that. We promenaded
around the rooms and went out to supper with them. Eugene Stone and Tom
Eddy asked to go home with us but Grandmother sent our two girls for us,
Bridget Flynn and Hannah White, so they couldn't. We were quite
disappointed, but perhaps she won't send for us next time.
_Thursday, 1857._--We have four sperm candles in four silver
candlesticks and when we have company we light them. Johnnie Thompson,
son of the minister, Rev. M. L. R. P., has come to the academy to school
and he is very full of fun and got acquainted with all the girls very
quick. He told us this afternoon to have "the other candle lit" for he
was coming down to see us this evening. Will Schley heard him say it and
he said he was coming too. _Later._--The boys came and we had a very
pleasant evening but when the 9 o'clock bell rang we heard Grandfather
winding up the clock and scraping up the ashes on the hearth to cover
the fire so it would last till morning and we all understood the signal
and they bade us good night. "We won't go home till morning" is a song
that will never be sung in this house.
_September, 1857._--Grandmother let Anna have six little girls here to
supper to-night: Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Martha
Densmore, Emma Wheeler, and Alice Jewett. We had a splendid supper and
then we played cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grandfather
thinks those kinds are contageous or outrageous or something dreadful
and never keeps them in the house. Grandmother said they found a pack
once, when the hired man's room was cleaned, and they went into the fire
pretty quick. The kind we played was just "Dr. Busby," and another "The
Old Soldier and His Dog." There are counters with them, and if you don't
have the card called for you have to pay one into the pool. It is real
fun. They all said they had a very nice time, indeed, when they bade
Grandmother good night, and said: "Mrs. Beals, you must let Carrie and
Anna come and see us some time," and she said she would. I think it is
nice to have company.
_August 30, 1858._--Some one told us that when Bob and Henry Antes were
small boys they thought they would like to try, just for once, to see
how it would seem to be bad, so in spite of all of Mr. Tousley's sermons
they went out behind the barn one day and in a whisper Bob said, "I
swear," and Henry said, "So do I." Then they came into the house
looking guilty and quite surprised, I suppose, that they were not struck
dead just as Ananias and Sapphira were for lying.
_February, 1859._--Mary Wheeler came over and pierced my ears today, so
I can wear my new earrings that Uncle Edward sent me. She pinched my ear
until it was numb and then pulled a needle through, threaded with silk.
Anna would not stay in the room. She wants hers done but does not dare.
It is all the fashion for girls to cut off their hair and friz it. Anna
and I have cut off ours and Bessie Seymour got me to cut off her lovely
long hair today. It won't be very comfortable for us to sleep with curl
papers all over our heads, but we must do it now. I wanted my new dress
waist which Miss Rosewarne is making to hook up in front, but
Grandmother said I would have to wear it that way all the rest of my
life so I had better be content to hook it in the back a little longer.
She said when Aunt Glorianna was married, in 1848, it was the fashion
for grown-up women to have their waists fastened in the back, so the
bride had hers made that way but she thought it was a very foolish and
inconvenient fashion. It is nice, though, to dress in style and look
like other people. I have a Garibaldi waist and a Zouave jacket and a
balmoral skirt.
_1860, Sunday._--Frankie Richardson asked me to go with her to teach a
class in the colored Sunday School on Chapel Street this afternoon. I
asked Grandmother if I could go and she said she never noticed that I
was particularly interested in the colored race and she said she thought
I only wanted an excuse to get out for a walk Sunday afternoon. However,
she said I could go just this once. When we got up as far as the
Academy, Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother, who is one of the teachers, came
out and Frank said he led the singing at the Sunday school and she said
she would give me an introduction to him, so he walked up with us and
home again. Grandmother said that when she saw him opening the gate for
me, she understood my zeal in missionary work. "The dear little lady,"
as we often call her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and
wonderful sagacity and loses none of it as she advances in years. Some
one asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her
faculties and Anna said, "Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree."
Grandmother knows that we think she is a perfect angel even if she does
seem rather strict sometimes. Whether we are seven or seventeen we are
children to her just the same, and the Bible says, "Children obey your
parents in the Lord for this is right." We are glad that we never will
seem old to her. I had the same company home from church in the evening.
His home is in Naples.
_Christmas, 1860._--I asked Grandmother if Mr. Clarke could take Sunday
night supper with us and she said she was afraid he did not know the
catechism. I asked him Friday night and he said he would learn it on
Saturday so that he could answer every third question anyway. So he did
and got along very well. I think he deserves a pretty good supper.
2. Secondary Contacts and City Life[129]
Modern methods of urban transportation and communication--the electric
railway, the automobile, and the telephone--have silently and rapidly
changed in recent years the social and industrial organization of the
modern city. They have been the means of concentrating traffic in the
business districts; have changed the whole character of retail trade,
multiplying the residence suburbs and making the department store
possible. These changes in the industrial organization and in the
distribution of population have been accompanied by corresponding
changes in the habits, sentiments, and character of the urban
population.
The general nature of these changes is indicated by the fact that the
growth of cities has been accompanied by the substitution of indirect,
"secondary," for direct, face-to-face, "primary" relations in the
associations of individuals in the community.
By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate
face-to-face association and co-operation. They are primary in
several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in
forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The
result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain
fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very
self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and
purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing
this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the
sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is
the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole
and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling.
Touch and sight, physical contact, are the basis for the first and most
elementary human relationships. Mother and child, husband and wife,
father and son, master and servant, kinsman and neighbor, minister,
physician, and teacher--these are the most intimate and real
relationships of life and in the small community they are practically
inclusive.
The interactions which take place among the members of a community so
constituted are immediate and unreflecting. Intercourse is carried on
largely within the region of instinct and feeling. Social control
arises, for the most part spontaneously, in direct response to personal
influences and public sentiment. It is the result of a personal
accommodation rather than the formulation of a rational and abstract
principle.
In a great city, where the population is unstable, where parents and
children are employed out of the house and often in distant parts of the
city, where thousands of people live side by side for years without so
much as a bowing acquaintance, these intimate relationships of the
primary group are weakened and the moral order which rested upon them is
gradually dissolved.
Under the disintegrating influences of city life most of our traditional
institutions, the church, the school, and the family, have been greatly
modified. The school, for example, has taken over some of the functions
of the family. It is around the public school and its solicitude for the
moral and physical welfare of the children that something like a new
neighborhood and community spirit tends to get itself organized.
The church, on the other hand, which has lost much of its influence
since the printed page has so largely taken the place of the pulpit in
the interpretation of life, seems at present to be in process of
readjustment to the new conditions.
It is probably the breaking down of local attachments and the weakening
of the restraints and inhibitions of the primary group, under the
influence of the urban environment, which are largely responsible for
the increase of vice and crime in great cities. It would be interesting
in this connection to determine by investigation how far the increase in
crime keeps pace with the increasing mobility of the population. It is
from this point of view that we should seek to interpret all those
statistics which register the disintegration of the moral order, for
example, the statistics of divorce, of truancy, and of crime.
Great cities have always been the melting-pots of races and of cultures.
Out of the vivid and subtle interactions of which they have been the
centers, there have come the newer breeds and the newer social types.
The great cities of the United States, for example, have drawn from the
isolation of their native villages great masses of the rural populations
of Europe and America. Under the shock of the new contacts the latent
energies of these primitive peoples have been released, and the subtler
processes of interaction have brought into existence not merely
vocational but temperamental types.
Transportation and communication have effected, among many other silent
but far-reaching changes, what I have called the "mobilization of the
individual man." They have multiplied the opportunities of the
individual man for contact and for association with his fellows, but
they have made these contacts and associations more transitory and less
stable. A very large part of the populations of great cities, including
those who make their homes in tenements and apartment houses, live much
as people do in some great hotel, meeting but not knowing one another.
The effect of this is to substitute fortuitous and casual relationship
for the more intimate and permanent associations of the smaller
community.
Under these circumstances the individual's status is determined to a
considerable degree by conventional signs--by fashion and "front"--and
the art of life is largely reduced to skating on thin surfaces and a
scrupulous study of style and manners.
Not only transportation and communication, but the segregation of the
urban population, tends to facilitate the mobility of the individual
man. The processes of segregation establish moral distances which make
the city a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not
interpenetrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass quickly
and easily from one moral milieu to another and encourages the
fascinating but dangerous experiment of living at the same time in
several different contiguous, perhaps, but widely separated worlds. All
this tends to give to city life a superficial and adventitious
character; it tends to complicate social relationships and to produce
new and divergent individual types. It introduces, at the same time, an
element of chance and adventure, which adds to the stimulus of city
life and gives it for young and fresh nerves a peculiar attractiveness.
The lure of great cities is perhaps a consequence of stimulations which
act directly upon the reflexes. As a type of human behavior it may be
explained, like the attraction of the flame for the moth, as a sort of
tropism.
The attraction of the metropolis is due in part, however, to the fact
that in the long run every individual finds somewhere among the varied
manifestations of city life the sort of environment in which he expands
and feels at ease; finds, in short, the moral climate in which his
peculiar nature obtains the stimulations that bring his innate qualities
to full and free expression. It is, I suspect, motives of this kind
which have their basis, not in interest nor even in sentiment, but in
something more fundamental and primitive which draw many, if not most,
of the young men and young women from the security of their homes in the
country into the big, booming confusion and excitement of city life. In
a small community it is the normal man, the man without eccentricity or
genius, who seems most likely to succeed. The small community often
tolerates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary, rewards it. Neither
the criminal, the defective, nor the genius has the same opportunity to
develop his innate disposition in a small town that he invariably finds
in a great city.
Fifty years ago every village had one or two eccentric characters who
were treated ordinarily with a benevolent toleration, but who were
regarded meanwhile as impracticable and queer. These exceptional
individuals lived an isolated existence, cut off by their very
eccentricities, whether of genius or of defect, from genuinely intimate
intercourse with their fellows. If they had the making of criminals, the
restraints and inhibitions of the small community rendered them
harmless. If they had the stuff of genius in them, they remained sterile
for lack of appreciation or opportunity. Mark Twain's story of _Pudd'n
Head Wilson_ is a description of one such obscure and unappreciated
genius. It is not so true as it was that--
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its fragrance on the desert air.
Gray wrote the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" before the existence of
the modern city.
In the city many of these divergent types now find a milieu in which for
good or for ill their dispositions and talents parturiate and bear
fruit.
3. Publicity as a Form of Secondary Contact[130]
In contrast with the political machine, which has founded its organized
action on the local, personal, and immediate interests represented by
the different neighborhoods and localities, the good-government
organizations, the bureaus of municipal research, and the like have
sought to represent the interests of the city as a whole and have
appealed to a sentiment and opinion neither local nor personal. These
agencies have sought to secure efficiency and good government by the
education of the voter, that is to say, by investigating and publishing
the facts regarding the government.
In this way publicity has come to be a recognized form of social
control, and advertising--"social advertising"--has become a profession
with an elaborate technique supported by a body of special knowledge.
It is one of the characteristic phenomena of city life and of society
founded on secondary relationships that advertising should have come to
occupy so important a place in its economy.
In recent years every individual and organization which has had to deal
with the public, that is to say, the public outside the smaller and more
intimate communities of the village and small town, has come to have its
press agent, who is often less an advertising man than a diplomatic man
accredited to the newspapers, and through them to the world at large.
Institutions like the Russell Sage Foundation, and to a less extent the
General Education Board, have sought to influence public opinion
directly through the medium of publicity. The Carnegie Report upon
Medical Education, the Pittsburgh Survey, the Russell Sage Foundation
Report on Comparative Costs of Public-School Education in the Several
States, are something more than scientific reports. They are rather a
high form of journalism, dealing with existing conditions critically,
and seeking through the agency of publicity to bring about radical
reforms. The work of the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York has
had a similar practical purpose. To these must be added the work
accomplished by the child-welfare exhibits, by the social surveys
undertaken in different parts of the country, and by similar propaganda
in favor of public health.
As a source of social control public opinion becomes important in
societies founded on secondary relationships of which great cities are a
type. In the city every social group tends to create its own milieu,
and, as these conditions become fixed, the mores tend to accommodate
themselves to the conditions thus created. In secondary groups and in
the city, fashion tends to take the place of custom, and public opinion
rather than the mores becomes the dominant force in social control.
In any attempt to understand the nature of public opinion and its
relation to social control, it is important to investigate, first of
all, the agencies and devices which have come into practical use in the
effort to control, enlighten, and exploit it.
The first and the most important of these is the press, that is, the
daily newspaper and other forms of current literature, including books
classed as current.
After the newspaper, the bureaus of research which are now springing up
in all the large cities are the most interesting and the most promising
devices for using publicity as a means of control.
The fruits of these investigations do not reach the public directly, but
are disseminated through the medium of the press, the pulpit and other
sources of popular enlightenment.
In addition to these, there are the educational campaigns in the
interest of better health conditions, the child-welfare exhibits, and
the numerous "social advertising" devices which are now employed,
sometimes upon the initiative of private societies, sometimes upon that
of popular magazines or newspapers, in order to educate the public and
enlist the masses of the people in the movement for the improvement of
conditions of community life.
The newspaper is the great medium of communication within the city, and
it is on the basis of the information which it supplies that public
opinion rests. The first function which a newspaper supplies is that
which was formerly performed by the village gossip.
In spite, however, of the industry with which newspapers pursue facts of
personal intelligence and human interest, they cannot compete with the
village gossips as a means of social control. For one thing, the
newspaper maintains some reservations not recognized by gossip, in the
matters of personal intelligence. For example, until they run for office
or commit some other overt act that brings them before the public
conspicuously, the private life of individual men or women is a subject
that is for the newspaper taboo. It is not so with gossip, partly
because in a small community no individual is so obscure that his
private affairs escape observation and discussion; partly because the
field is smaller. In small communities there is a perfectly amazing
amount of personal information afloat among the individuals who compose
them.
The absence of this in the city is what, in large part, makes the city
what it is.
4. From Sentimental to Rational Attitudes[131]
I can imagine it to be of exceeding great interest to write the history
of mankind from the point of view of the stranger and his influence on
the trend of events. From the earliest dawn of history we may observe
how communities developed in special directions, no less in important
than in insignificant things, because of influences from without. Be it
religion or technical inventions, good form in conduct or fashions in
dress, political revolutions or stock-exchange machinery, the impetus
always--or, at least, in many cases--came from strangers. It is not
surprising, therefore, that in the history of the intellectual and
religious growth of the bourgeois the stranger should play no small
part. Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages in Europe, and to a large
extent in the centuries that followed, families left their homes to set
up their hearths anew in other lands. The wanderers were in the majority
of cases economic agents with a strongly marked tendency toward
capitalism, and they originated capitalist methods and cultivated them.
Accordingly, it will be helpful to trace the interaction of migrations
and the history of the capitalist spirit.
First, as to the facts themselves. Two sorts of migrations may be
distinguished--those of single individuals and those of groups. In the
first category must be placed the removal, of their own free will, of a
family, or it may even be of a few families, from one district or
country to another. Such cases were universal. But we are chiefly
concerned with those instances in which the capitalist spirit manifested
itself, as we must assume it did where the immigrants were acquainted
with a more complex economic system or were the founders of new
industries. Take as an instance the Lombards and other Italian
merchants, who in the early Middle Ages carried on business in England,
France, and elsewhere. Or recall how in the Middle Ages many an
industry, more especially silk weaving, that was established in any
district was introduced by foreigners, and very often on a capitalist
basis. "A new phase in the development of the Venetian silk industry
began with the arrival of traders and silk-workers from Lucca, whereby
the industry reached its zenith. The commercial element came more and
more to the fore; the merchants became the organizers of production,
providing the master craftsman with raw materials which he worked up."
So we read in Broglio d'Ajano. We are told a similar tale about the silk
industry in Genoa, which received an enormous impetus when the Berolerii
began to employ craftsmen from Lucca. In 1341 what was probably the
first factory for silk manufacture was erected by one Bolognino di
Barghesano, of Lucca. Even in Lyons tradition asserts that Italians
introduced the making of silk, and, when in the sixteenth century the
industry was placed on a capitalist basis, the initiative thereto came
once more from aliens. It was the same in Switzerland, where the silk
industry was introduced by the Pelligari in 1685. In Austria likewise we
hear the same tale.
Silk-making in these instances is but one example; there were very many
others. Here one industry was introduced, there another; here it was by
Frenchmen or Germans, there by Italians or Dutchmen. And always the new
establishments came at the moment when the industries in question were
about to become capitalistic in their organization.
Individual migrations, then, were not without influence on the economic
development of society. But much more powerful was the effect of the
wanderings of large groups from one land to another. From the sixteenth
century onward migrations of this sort may be distinguished under three
heads: (1) Jewish migrations; (2) the migration of persecuted
Christians, more especially of Protestants; and (3) the colonizing
movement, particularly the settlement in America.
We come, then, to the general question, Is it not a fact that the
"stranger," the immigrant, was possessed of a specially developed
capitalist spirit, and this quite apart from his environment, and, to a
lesser degree, his religion or his nationality? We see it in the old
states of Europe no less than in the new settlements beyond; in Jews and
Gentiles alike; in Protestants and Catholics (the French in Louisiana
were, by the middle of the nineteenth century, not a whit behind the
Anglo-Saxons of the New England states in this respect). The assumption
therefore forces itself upon us that this particular social
condition--migration or change of habitat--was responsible for the
unfolding of the capitalist spirit. Let us attempt to show how.
If we are content to find it in a single cause, it would be the breach
with all old ways of life and all old social relationships. Indeed, the
psychology of the stranger in a new land may easily be explained by
reference to this one supreme fact. His clan, his country, his people,
his state, no matter how deeply he was rooted in them, have now ceased
to be realities for him. His first aim is to make profit. How could it
be otherwise? There is nothing else open to him. In the old country he
was excluded from playing his part in public life; in the colony of his
choice there is no public life to speak of. Neither can he devote
himself to a life of comfortable, slothful ease; the new lands have
little comfort. Nor is the newcomer moved by sentiment. His environment
means nothing to him. At best he regards it as a means to an end--to
make a living. All this must surely be of great consequence for the rise
of a mental outlook that cares only for gain; and who will deny that
colonial activity generates it? "Our rivulets and streams turn mill
wheels and bring rafts into the valleys, as they do in Scotland. But not
one ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and
women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of
separation; that under each roof in the valleys life's joys and sorrows
come and go." This plaint of an American of the old days expresses my
meaning; it has been noted again and again, particularly by those who
visited America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The only
relationship between the Yankee and his environment is one of practical
usefulness. The soil, as one of them says, is not regarded as "the
mother of men, the hearth of the gods, the abiding resting-place of the
past generations, but only as a means to get rich." There is nothing of
"the poetry of the place" anywhere to check commercial devastations. The
spire of his village is for the American like any other spire; in his
eyes the newest and most gaudily painted is the most beautiful. A
waterfall for him merely represents so much motive power. "What a mighty
volume of water!" is, as we are assured, the usual cry of an American on
seeing Niagara for the first time, and his highest praise of it is that
it surpasses all other waterfalls in the world in its horse-power.
Nor has the immigrant or colonial settler a sense of the present or the
past. He has only a future. Before long the possession of money becomes
his one aim and ambition, for it is clear to him that by its means alone
will he be able to shape that future. But how can he amass money? Surely
by enterprise. His being where he is proves that he has capacities, that
he can take risks; is it remarkable, then, that sooner or later his
unbridled acquisitiveness will turn him into a restless capitalist
undertaker? Here again we have cause and effect. He undervalues the
present; he overvalues the future. Hence his activities are such as they
are. Is it too much to say that even today American civilization has
something of the unfinished about it, something that seems as yet to be
in the making, something that turns from the present to the future?
Another characteristic of the newcomer everywhere is that there are no
bounds to his enterprise. He is not held in check by personal
considerations; in all his dealings he comes into contact only with
strangers like himself. As we have already had occasion to point out,
the first profitable trade was carried on with strangers; your own kith
and kin received assistance from you. You lent out money at interest
only to the stranger, as Antonio remarked to Shylock, for from the
stranger you could demand more than you lent.
Nor is the stranger held in check by considerations other than personal
ones. He has no traditions to respect; he is not bound by the policy of
an old business. He begins with a clean slate; he has no local
connections that bind him to any one spot. Is not every locality in a
new country as good as every other? You therefore decide upon the one
that promises most profit. As Poscher says, a man who has risked his all
and left his home to cross the ocean in search of his fortune will not
be likely to shrink from a small speculation if this means a change of
abode. A little traveling more or less can make no difference.
So it comes about that the feverish searching after novelties manifested
itself in the American character quite early. "If to live means constant
movement and the coming and going of thoughts and feelings in quick
succession, then the people here live a hundred lives. All is
circulation, movement, and vibrating life. If one attempt fails, another
follows on its heels, and before every one undertaking has been
completed, the next has already been entered upon" (Chevalier). The
enterprising impulse leads to speculation; and here again early
observers have noticed the national trait. "Everybody speculates and no
commodity escapes from the speculating rage. It is not tulip speculation
this time, but speculations in cottons, real estate, banks, and
railways."
One characteristic of the stranger's activity, be he a settler in a new
or an old land, follows of necessity. I refer to the determination to
apply the utmost rational effort in the field of economic and technical
activity. The stranger must carry through plans with success because of
necessity or because he cannot withstand the desire to secure his
future. On the other hand, he is able to do it more easily than other
folk because he is not hampered by tradition. This explains clearly
enough why alien immigrants, as we have seen, furthered commercial and
industrial progress wherever they came. Similarly we may thus account
for the well-known fact that nowhere are technical inventions so
plentiful as in America, that railway construction and the making of
machinery proceed much more rapidly there than anywhere else in the
world. It all comes from the peculiar conditions of the problem,
conditions that have been termed colonial--great distances, dear labor,
and the will to progress. The state of mind that will have, nay, must
have, progress is that of the stranger, untrammeled by the past and
gazing toward the future.
Yet results such as these are not achieved by strangers merely because
they happen to be strangers. Place a negro in a new environment; will he
build railways and invent labor-saving machines? Hardly. There must be a
certain fitness; it must be in the blood. In short, other forces beside
that of being merely a stranger in a strange land are bound to
co-operate before the total result can be fully accounted for. There
must be a process of selection, making the best types available, and
the ethical and moral factor, too, counts for much. Nevertheless, the
migrations themselves were a very powerful element in the growth of
capitalism.
5. The Sociological Significance of the "Stranger"[132]
If wandering, considered as the liberation from every given point in
space, is the conceptual opposite to fixation at such a point, then
surely the sociological form of "the stranger" presents the union of
both of these specifications. It discloses, indeed, the fact that
relations to space are only, on the one hand, the condition, and, on the
other hand, the symbol, of relations to men. The stranger is not taken
here, therefore, in the sense frequently employed, of the wanderer who
comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather of the man who comes today and
stays tomorrow, the potential wanderer, so to speak, who, although he
has gone no further, has not quite got over the freedom of coming and
going. He is fixed within a certain spatial circle, but his position
within it is peculiarly determined by the fact that he does not belong
in it from the first, that he brings qualities into it that are not, and
cannot be, native to it.
The union of nearness and remoteness, which every relation between men
comprehends, has here produced a system of relations or a constellation
which may, in the fewest words, be thus formulated: The distance within
the relation signifies that the Near is far; the very fact of being
alien, however, that the Far is near. For the state of being a stranger
is naturally a quite positive relation, a particular form of
interaction. The inhabitants of Sirius are not exactly strangers to us,
at least not in the sociological sense of the word as we are considering
it. In that sense they do not exist for us at all. They are beyond being
far and near. The stranger is an element of the group itself, not
otherwise than the Poor and the various "inner enemies," an element
whose inherent position and membership involve both an exterior and an
opposite. The manner, now, in which mutually repulsive and opposing
elements here compose a form of a joint and interacting unity may now be
briefly analyzed.
In the whole history of economics the stranger makes his appearance
everywhere as the trader, the trader his as the stranger. As long as
production for one's own needs is the general rule, or products are
exchanged within a relatively narrow circle, there is no need of any
middleman within the group. A trader is only required with those
products which are produced entirely outside of the group. Unless there
are people who wander out into foreign lands to buy these necessities,
in which case they are themselves "strange" merchants in this other
region, the trader must be a stranger. No other has a chance for
existence.
This position of the stranger is intensified in our consciousness if,
instead of leaving the place of his activity, he fixes himself in it.
This will be possible for him only if he can live by trade in the rôle
of a middleman. Any closed economic group in which the division of the
land and of the crafts which satisfy the local demands has been achieved
will still grant an existence to the trader. For trade alone makes
possible unlimited combinations, in which intelligence finds ever wider
extensions and ever newer accessions, a thing rarely possible in the
case of the primitive producer with his lesser mobility and his
restriction to a circle of customers which could only very gradually be
increased. Trade can always absorb more men than primary production, and
it is therefore the most favorable province for the stranger, who
thrusts himself, so to speak, as a supernumerary into a group in which
all the economic positions are already possessed. History offers as the
classic illustration the European Jew. The stranger is by his very
nature no landowner--in saying which, land is taken not merely in a
physical sense but also in a metaphorical one of a permanent and a
substantial existence, which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in
an ideal position within the social order. The special sociological
characteristics of the stranger may now be presented.
a) _Mobility._--In the more intimate relations of man to man, the
stranger may disclose all possible attractions and significant
characters, but just as long as he is regarded as a stranger, he is in
so far no landowner. Now restriction to trade, and frequently to pure
finance, as if by a sublimation from the former, gives the stranger the
specific character of mobility. With this mobility, when it occurs
within a limited group, there occurs that synthesis of nearness and
remoteness which constitutes the formal position of the stranger; for
the merely mobile comes incidentally into contact with every single
element but is not bound up organically, through the established ties of
kinship, locality, or profession, with any single one.
b) _Objectivity._--Another expression for this relation lies in the
objectivity of the stranger. Because he is not rooted in the peculiar
attitudes and biased tendencies of the group, he stands apart from all
these with the peculiar attitude of the "objective," which does not
indicate simply a separation and disinterestedness but is a peculiar
composition of nearness and remoteness, concern and indifference. I call
attention to the domineering positions of the stranger to the group, as
whose archtype appeared that practice of Italian cities of calling their
judges from without, because no native was free from the prejudices of
family interests and factions.
c) _Confidant._--With the objectivity of the stranger is connected the
phenomenon which indeed belongs chiefly, but not indeed exclusively, to
the mobile man: namely, that often the most surprising disclosures and
confessions, even to the character of the confessional disclosure, are
brought to him, secrets such as one carefully conceals from every
intimate. Objectivity is by no means lack of sympathy, for that is
something quite outside and beyond either subjective or objective
relations. It is rather a positive and particular manner of sympathy. So
the objectivity of a theoretical observation certainly does not mean
that the spirit is a _tabula rasa_ on which things inscribe their
qualities, but it means the full activity of a spirit working according
to its own laws, under conditions in which accidental dislocations and
accentuations have been excluded, the individual and subjective
peculiarities of which would give quite different pictures of the same
object.
d) _Freedom from convention._--One can define objectivity also as
freedom. The objective man is bound by no sort of proprieties which can
prejudice for him his apprehension, his understanding, his judgment of
the given. This freedom which permits the stranger to experience and
deal with the relation of nearness as though from a bird's-eye view,
contains indeed all sorts of dangerous possibilities. From the
beginnings of things, in revolutions of all sorts, the attacked party
has claimed that there has been incitement from without, through foreign
emissaries and agitators. As far as that is concerned, it is simply an
exaggeration of the specific rôle of the stranger; he is the freer man,
practically and theoretically; he examines the relations with less
prejudice; he submits them to more general, more objective, standards,
and is not confined in his action by custom, piety, or precedents.
e) _Abstract relations._--Finally, the proportion of nearness and
remoteness which gives the stranger the character of objectivity gets
another practical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation
to him. This is seen in the fact that one has certain more general
qualities only in common with the stranger, whereas the relation with
those organically allied is based on the similarity of just those
specific differences by which the members of an intimate group are
distinguished from those who do not share that intimacy. All personal
relations whatsoever are determined according to this scheme, however
varied the form which they assume. What is decisive is not the fact that
certain common characteristics exist side by side with individual
differences which may or may not affect them but rather that the
influence of this common possession itself upon the personal relation of
the individuals involved is determined by certain conditions: Does it
exist in and for these individuals and for these only? Does it represent
qualities that are general in the group, to be sure, but peculiar to it?
Or is it merely felt by the members of the group as something peculiar
to individuals themselves whereas, in fact, it is a common possession of
a group, or a type, or mankind? In the last case an attenuation of the
effect of the common possession enters in, proportional to the size of
the group. Common characteristics function, it is true, as a basis for
union among the elements, but it does not specifically refer these
elements to each other. A similarity so widely shared might serve as a
common basis of each with every possible other. This too is evidently
one way in which a relation may at the same moment comprehend both
nearness and remoteness. To the extent to which the similarities become
general, the warmth of the connection which they effect will have an
element of coolness, a feeling in it of the adventitiousness of this
very connection. The powers which united have lost their specific,
centripetal character.
This constellation (in which similarities are shared by large numbers)
acquires, it seems to me, an extraordinary and fundamental
preponderance--as against the individual and personal elements we have
been discussing--in defining our relation to the stranger. The stranger
is near to us in so far as we feel between him and ourselves
similarities of nationality or social position, of profession or of
general human nature. He is far from us in so far as these similarities
reach out over him and us, and only ally us both because in fact they
ally a great many.
In this sense a trait of this strangeness easily comes into even the
most intimate relations. Erotic relations show a very decided aversion,
in the stage of first passion, to any disposition to think of them in
general terms. A love such as this (so the lover feels) has never
existed before, nor is there anything to be compared with our passion
for the beloved person. An estrangement is wont, whether as cause or as
result it is difficult to decide, to set in at that moment in which the
sentiment of uniqueness disappears from the connection. A scepticism of
its value in itself and for us fastens itself to the very thought that
after all one has only drawn the lot of general humanity, one has
experienced a thousand times re-enacted adventure, and that, if one had
not accidentally encountered this precise person, any other one would
have acquired the same meaning for us. And something of this cannot fail
to be present in any relation, be it ever so intimate, because that
which is common to the two is perhaps never common only to them but
belongs to a general conception, which includes much else, many
possibilities of similarities. As little actuality as they may have,
often as we may forget them, yet here and there they crowd in like
shadows between men, like a mist gliding before every word's meaning,
which must actually congeal into solid corporeality in order to be
called rivalry. Perhaps this is in many cases a more general, at least
more insurmountable, strangeness than that afforded by differences and
incomprehensibilities. There is a feeling, indeed, that these are
actually not the peculiar property of just that relation but of a more
general one that potentially refers to us and to an uncertain number of
others, and therefore the relation experienced has no inner and final
necessity.
On the other hand, there is a sort of strangeness, in which this very
connection on the basis of a general quality embracing the parties is
precluded. The relation of the Greeks to the Barbarians is a typical
example; so are all the cases in which the general characteristics which
one takes as peculiarly and merely human are disallowed to the other.
But here the expression "the stranger" has no longer any positive
meaning. The relation with him is a non-relation. He is not a member of
the group itself. As such he is much more to be considered as near and
far at the same moment, seeing that the foundation of the relation is
now laid simply on a general human similarity. Between these two
elements there occurs, however, a peculiar tension, since the
consciousness of having only the absolutely general in common has
exactly the effect of bringing into particular emphasis that which is
not common. In the case of strangers according to country, city, or
race, the individual characteristics of the person are not perceived;
but attention is directed to his alien extraction which he has in common
with all the members of his group. Therefore the strangers are
perceived, not indeed as individuals, but chiefly as strangers of a
certain type. Their remoteness is no less general than their nearness.
With all his inorganic adjacency, the stranger is yet an organic member
of the group, whose uniform life is limited by the peculiar dependence
upon this element. Only we do not know how to designate the
characteristic unity of this position otherwise than by saying that it
is put together of certain amounts of nearness and of remoteness, which,
characterizing in some measure any sort of relation, determine in a
certain proportion and with characteristic mutual tension the specific,
formal relation of "the stranger."
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Physical Contacts
The literature of the research upon social contacts falls naturally
under four heads: physical contacts, sensory contacts, primary contacts,
and secondary contacts.
The reaction of the person to contacts with things as contrasted with
his contacts with persons is an interesting chapter in social
psychology. Observation upon children shows that the individual tends to
respond to inanimate objects, particularly if they are unfamiliar, as if
they were living and social. The study of animism among primitive
peoples indicates that their attitude toward certain animals whom they
regarded as superior social beings is a specialization of this response.
A survey of the poetry of all times and races discloses that nature to
the poet as well as to the mystic is personal. Homesickness and
nostalgia are an indication of the personal and intimate nature of the
relation of man to the physical world.
It seems to be part of man's original nature to take the world socially
and personally. It is only as things become familiar and controllable
that he gains the concept of mechanism. It is natural science and
machinery that has made so large a part of the world impersonal for most
of us.
The scientific study of the actual reaction of persons and groups to
their physical environment is still in the pioneer stage. The
anthropogeographers have made many brilliant suggestions and a few
careful and critical studies of the direct and indirect effects of the
physical environment not merely upon man's social and political
organization but upon his temperament and conduct. Huntington's
suggestive observations upon the effect of climate upon manners and
efficiency have opened a wide field for investigation.[133]
Interest is growing in the psychology and sociology of the responses of
individuals and groups to the physical conditions of their environment.
Communities, large and small in this country, as they become civic
conscious, have devised city plans. New York has made an elaborate
report on the zoning of the city into business, industrial, and
residential areas. A host of housing surveys present realistic pictures
of actual conditions of physical existence from the standpoint of the
hygienic and social effects of low standards of dwelling, overcrowding,
the problem of the roomer. Even historic accounts and impressionistic
observations of art and ornament, decoration and dress, indicate the
relation of these material trappings to the self-consciousness of the
individual in his social milieu.
The reservation must be made that studies of zoning, city planning, and
housing have taken account of economic, aesthetic, and hygienic factors
rather than those of contacts. Implicit, however, in certain aspects of
these studies, certainly present often as an unconscious motive, has
been an appreciation of the effects of the urban, artificial physical
environment upon the responses and the very nature of plastic human
beings, creatures more than creators of the modern leviathan, the Great
City.
Glimpses into the nature and process of these subtle effects appear only
infrequently in formal research. Occasionally such a book as _The
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets_ by Jane Addams throws a flood of
light upon the contrasts between the warmth, the sincerity, and the
wholesomeness of primary human responses and the sophistication, the
coldness, and the moral dangers of the secondary organization of urban
life.
A sociological study of the effect of the artificial physical and social
environment of the city upon the person will take conscious account of
these social factors. The lack of attachment to home in the city tenant
as compared with the sentiments and status of home-ownership in the
village, the mobility of the urban dweller in his necessary routine of
work and his restless quest for pleasure, the sophistication, the front,
the self-seeking of the individual emancipated from the controls of the
primary group--all these represent problems for research.
There are occasional references in literature to what may be called the
inversion of the natural attitudes of the city child. His attention, his
responses, even his images become fixed by the stimuli of the city
streets.[134] To those interested in child welfare and human values this
is the supreme tragedy of the city.
2. Touch and the Primary Contacts of Intimacy
The study of the senses in their relations to personal and social
behavior had its origins in psychology, in psychoanalysis, in ethnology,
and in the study of races and nationalities with reference to the
conflict and fusion of cultures. Darwin's theory of the origin of the
species increased interest in the instincts and it was the study of the
instincts that led psychologists finally to define all forms of behavior
in terms of stimulus and response. A "contact" is simply a stimulation
that has significance for the understanding of group behavior.
In psychoanalysis, a rapidly growing literature is accessible to
sociologists upon the nature and the effects of the intimate contacts of
sex and family life. Indeed, the Freudian concept of the _libido_ may be
translated for sociological purposes into the desire for response. The
intensity of the sentiments of love and hate that cement and disrupt the
family is indicated in the analyses of the so-called "family romance."
Life histories reveal the natural tendencies toward reciprocal affection
of mother and son or father and daughter, and the mutual antagonism of
father and son or mother and daughter.
In ethnology, attention was early directed to the phenomena of taboo
with its injunction against contamination by contacts. The literature of
primitive communities is replete with the facts of avoidance of contact,
as between the sexes, between mother-in-law and son-in-law, with persons
"with the evil eye," etc. Frazer's volume on "Taboo and the Perils of
the Soul" in his series entitled _The Golden Bough_, and Crawley, in his
book, _The Mystic Rose_, to mention two outstanding examples, have
assembled, classified, and interpreted many types of taboo. In the
literature of taboo is found also the ritualistic distinction between
"the clean" and "the unclean" and the development of reverence and awe
toward "the sacred" and "the holy."
Recent studies of the conflict of races and nationalities, generally
considered as exclusively economic or political in nature, bring out the
significance of disgusts and fears based fundamentally upon
characteristic racial odors, marked variations in skin color and in
physiognomy as well as upon differences in food habits, personal
conduct, folkways, mores, and culture.
3. Primary Contacts of Acquaintanceship
Two of the best sociological statements of primary contacts are to be
found in Professor Cooley's analysis of primary groups in his book
_Social Organization_ and in Shaler's exposition of the sympathetic way
of approach in his volume _The Neighbor_. A mass of descriptive material
for the further study of the primary contacts is available from many
sources. Studies of primitive peoples indicate that early social
organizations were based upon ties of kinship and primary group
contacts. Village life in all ages and with all races exhibits absolute
standards and stringent primary controls of behavior. The Blue Laws of
Connecticut are little else than primary-group attitudes written into
law. Common law, the traditional code of legal conduct sanctioned by the
experience of primary groups, may be compared with statute law, which is
an abstract prescription for social life in secondary societies. Here
also should be included the consideration of programs and projects for
community organization upon the basis of primary contacts, as for
example, Ward's _The Social Center_.
4. Secondary Contacts
The transition from feudal societies of villages and towns to our modern
world-society of great cosmopolitan cities has received more attention
from economics and politics than from sociology. Studies of the
industrial basis of city life have given us the external pattern of the
city: its topographical conditions, the concentration of population as
an outcome of large-scale production, division of labor, and
specialization of effort. Research in municipal government has proceeded
from the muck-raking period, indicated by Lincoln Steffens' _The Shame
of the Cities_ to surveys of public utilities and city administration of
the type of those made by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research.
Social interest in the city was first stimulated by the polemics against
the political and social disorders of urban life. There were those who
would destroy the city in order to remedy its evils and restore the
simple life of the country. Sociology sought a surer basis for the
solution of the problems from a study of the facts of city life.
Statistics of population by governmental departments provide figures
upon conditions and tendencies. Community surveys have translated into
understandable form a mass of information about the formal aspects of
city life.
Naturally enough, sympathetic and arresting pictures of city life have
come from residents of settlements as in Jane Addam's _Twenty Years at
Hull House_, Robert Wood's _The City Wilderness_, Lillian Wald's _The
House on Henry Street_ and Mrs. Simkhovitch's _The City Worker's World_.
Georg Simmel has made the one outstanding contribution to a sociology
or, perhaps better, a social philosophy of the city in his paper "The
Great City and Cultural Life."
BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL CONTACTS
I. THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CONTACTS
(1) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ An exposition of the main
development in sociological theory from Spencer to Ratzenhofer, pp.
486-91. Chicago, 1905.
(2) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation_. Translated from the French
by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. iii, "What Is a Society?" New York, 1903.
(3) Thomas, W. I. "Race Psychology: Standpoint and Questionnaire, with
Particular Reference to the Immigrant and the Negro." _American Journal
of Sociology_, XVII (May, 1912), 725-75.
(4) Boas, Franz. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ New York, 1911.
II. INTIMATE SOCIAL CONTACTS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE SENSES
(1) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der
Vergesellschaftung. Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne, pp. 646-65.
Leipzig, 1908.
(2) Crawley, E. _The Mystic Rose._ A study of primitive marriage. London
and New York, 1902.
(3) Sully, James. _Sensation and Intuition._ Studies in psychology and
aesthetics. Chap, iv, "Belief: Its Varieties and Its Conditions."
London, 1874.
(4) Moll, Albert. _Der Rapport in der Hypnose._ Leipzig, 1892.
(5) Elworthy, F. T. _The Evil Eye._ An account of this ancient and
widespread superstition. London, 1895.
(6) Lévy-Bruhl. _Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures._
Paris, 1910.
(7) Starbuck, Edwin D. "The Intimate Senses as Sources of Wisdom," _The
Journal of Religion_, I (March, 1921), 129-45.
(8) Paulhan, Fr. _Les transformations saddles des sentiments._ Paris,
1920.
(9) Stoll, O. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._
Chap. ix, pp. 225-29. Leipzig, 1904.
(10) Hooper, Charles E. _Common Sense._ An analysis and interpretation.
Being a discussion of its general character, its distinction from
discursive reasoning, its origin in mental imagery, its speculative
outlook, its value for practical life and social well-being, its
relation to scientific knowledge, and its bearings on the problems of
natural and rational causation. London, 1913.
(11) Weigall, A. "The Influence of the Kinematograph upon National
Life," _Nineteenth Century and After_, LXXXIX (April, 1921), 661-72.
III. MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF MOBILITY
(1) Vallaux, Camille. "Le sol et l'état," _Géographie sociale._ Paris,
1911.
(2) Demolins, Edmond. _Comment la route crée le type social._ Les
grandes routes des peuples; essai de géographie social. 2 vols. Paris,
1901.
(3) Vandervelde, É. _L'exode rural el le retour aux champs._ Chap. iv,
"Les conséquences de l'exode rural." (Sec. 3 discusses the political and
intellectual, the physical and moral consequences of the rural exodus,
pp. 202-13.) Paris, 1903.
(4) Bury, J. B. _A History of Freedom of Thought._ London and New York,
1913.
(5) Bloch, Iwan. _Die Prostitution._ Handbuch der gesamten
Sexualwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen. Berlin, 1912.
(6) Pagnier, Armand. _Du vagabondage et des vagabonds._ Étude
psychologique, sociologique et médico-légale. Lyon, 1906.
(7) Laubach, Frank C. _Why There Are Vagrants._ A study based upon an
examination of one hundred men. New York, 1916.
(8) Ribton-Turner, Charles J. _A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy and
Beggars and Begging._ London, 1887.
(9) Florian, Eugenio. _I vagabondi._ Studio sociologicoguiridico. Parte
prima, "L'Evoluzione del vagabondaggio." Pp. 1-124. Torino, 1897-1900.
(10) Devine, Edward T. "The Shiftless and Floating City Population,"
_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, X
(September, 1897), 149-164.
IV. SOCIAL CONTACTS IN PRIMARY GROUPS
(1) Sumner, Wm. G. _Folkways._ A study of the sociological importance of
usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. "The In-Group and the
Out-Group," pp. 12-16. Boston, 1906.
(2) Vierkandt, Alfred. _Naturvölker und Kulturvölker._ Ein Beitrag zur
Socialpsychologie. Leipzig, 1896.
(3) Pandian, T. B. _Indian Village Folk._ Their Works and Ways. London,
1897.
(4) Dobschütz, E. v. _Die urchristlichen Gemeinden._
Sittengeschichtliche Bilder. Leipzig, 1902.
(5) Kautsky, Karl. _Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the
Reformation._ Translated by J. L. and E. G. Mulliken. London, 1897.
(6) Hupka, S. von. _Entwicklung der westgalizischen Dorfzustände in der
2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, verfolgt in einem Dörferkomplex._
Zürich, 1910.
(7) Wallace, Donald M. _Russia._ Chaps. vi, vii, viii, and ix. New York,
1905.
(8) Ditchfield, P. H. _Old Village Life, or, Glimpses of Village Life
through All Ages._ New York, 1920.
(9) Hammond, John L., and Hammond, Barbara. _The Village Labourer,
1760-1832._ A study in the government of England before the reform bill.
London, 1911.
(10) _The Blue Laws of Connecticut._ A collection of the earliest
statutes and judicial proceedings of that colony, being an exhibition of
the rigorous morals and legislation of the Puritans. Edited with an
introduction by Samuel M. Schmucker. Philadelphia, 1861.
(11) Nordhoff, C. _The Communistic Societies of the United States._ From
personal visit and observation. Including detailed accounts of the
Economists, Zoarites, Shakers, the Amana, Oneida, Bethel, Aurora,
Icarian, and other existing societies, their religious creeds, social
practices, numbers, industries, and present condition. New York, 1875.
(12) Hinds, William A. _American Communities and Co-operative Colonies._
2d rev. Chicago, 1908. [Contains notices of 144 communities in the
United States.]
(13) L'Houet, A. _Zur Psychologie des Bauerntums._ Ein Beitrag.
Tübingen, 1905.
(14) Pennington, Patience. _A Woman Rice-Planter._ New York, 1913.
(15) Smedes, Susan D. _A Southern Planter._ London, 1889.
(16) Sims, Newell L. _The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern._ Chap.
iv, "The Disintegration of the Village Community." New York, 1920.
(17) Anderson, Wilbert L. _The Country Town._ A study of rural
evolution. New York, 1906.
(18) Zola, Émile. _La Terre._ Paris, 1907. [Romance.]
V. SOCIAL CONTACTS IN SECONDARY GROUPS
(1) Weber, Adna Ferrin. _The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth
Century._ A study in statistics. New York, 1899.
(2) Preuss, Hugo. _Die Entwicklung des deutschen Städtewesens._ I Band.
Leipzig, 1906.
(3) Green, Alice S. A. (Mrs. J. R.) _Town Life in the Fifteenth
Century._ London and New York, 1894.
(4) Toynbee, Arnold. _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the
Eighteenth Century in England._ London, 1890.
(5) Hammond, J. L., and Hammond, Barbara. _The Town Labourer,
1760-1832._ The new civilization. London, 1917.
(6) ----. _The Skilled Labourer_, 1760-1832. London, 1919. [Presents the
detailed history of particular bodies of skilled workers during the
great change of the Industrial Revolution.]
(7) Jastrow, J. "Die Stadtgemeinschaft in ihren kulturellen
Beziehungen." (Indicates the institutions which have come into existence
under conditions of urban community life.) _Zeitschrift für
Socialwissenschaft_, X (1907), 42-51, 92-101. [Bibliography.]
(8) Sombart, Werner. _The Jews and Modern Capitalism._ Translated from
the German by M. Epstein. London, 1913.
(9) ----. _The Quintessence of Capitalism._ A study of the history and
psychology of the modern business man. Translated from the German by M.
Epstein. New York, 1915.
(10) Wallas, Graham. _The Great Society._ A psychological analysis. New
York, 1914.
(11) Booth, Charles. _Life and Labour of the People in London._ V, East
London, chap, ii, "The Docks." III, chap, iv, "Influx of Population."
London, 1892.
(12) Marpillero, G. "Saggio di psicologia dell'urbanismo," _Rivista
italiana di sociologia_, XII (1908), 599-626.
(13) Besant, Walter. _East London._ London and New York, 1901.
(14) _The Pittsburgh Survey--the Pittsburgh District._ Robert A. Woods,
"Pittsburgh, an Interpretation." Allen T. Burns, "Coalition of
Pittsburgh Coal Fields." New York, 1914.
(15) _Hull House Maps and Papers._ A presentation of nationalities and
wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and
essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. New York, 1895.
(16) Addams, Jane. _Twenty Years at Hull House._ With autobiographical
notes. New York, 1910.
(17) ----. _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets._ New York, 1909.
(18) Simkhovitch, Mary K. _The City Worker's World in America._ New
York, 1917.
(19) Park, R. E., and Miller, H. A. _Old World Traits Transplanted._ New
York, 1921.
(20) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control._ (In press.)
(21) Steiner, J. F. _The Japanese Invasion._ A study in the psychology
of inter-racial contacts. Chicago, 1917.
(22) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. IV, Chicago, 1918.
(23) Cahan, Abraham. _The Rise of David Levinsky._ A novel. New York and
London, 1917.
(24) Hasanovitz, Elizabeth. _One of Them._ Chapters from a passionate
autobiography. Boston, 1918.
(25) Ravage, M. E. _An American in the Making._ The life story of an
immigrant. New York and London, 1917.
(26) Ribbany, Abraham Mitrie. _A Far Journey._ Boston, 1914.
(27) Riis, Jacob A. _The Making of an American._ New York and London,
1901.
(28) Cohen, Rose. _Out of the Shadow._ New York, 1918.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The Land as the Basis for Social Contacts.
2. Density of Population, Social Contacts and Social Organization.
3. Mobility and Social Types, as the Gypsy, the Nomad, the Hobo, the
Pioneer, the Commercial Traveler, the Missionary, the Globe-Trotter, the
Wandering Jew.
4. Stability and Social Types, as the Farmer, the Home-Owner, the
Business Man.
5. Sensory Experience and Human Behavior. Nostalgia (Homesickness).
6. Race Prejudice and Primary Contacts.
7. Taboo and Social Contact.
8. Social Contacts in a Primary Group, as the Family, the Play Group,
the Neighborhood, the Village.
9. Social Control in Primary Groups.
10. The Substitution of Secondary for Primary Contacts as the Cause of
Social Problems, as Poverty, Crime, Prostitution, etc.
11. Control of Problems through Secondary Contacts, as Charity
Organization Society, Social Service Registration Bureau, Police
Department, Morals Court, Publicity through the Press, etc.
12. The Industrial Revolution and the Great Society.
13. Attempts to Revive Primary Groups in the City, as the Social Center,
the Settlement, the Social Unit Experiment, etc.
14. Attempts to Restore Primary Contacts between Employer and Employee.
15. The Anonymity of the Newspaper.
16. Standardization and Impersonality of the Great Society.
17. The Sociology of the Stranger; a Study of the Revivalist, the
Expert, the Genius, the Trader.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand by the term contact?
2. What are the ways in which geographic conditions influence social
contacts?
3. What are the differences in contact with the land between primitive
and modern peoples?
4. In what ways do increasing social contacts affect contacts with the
soil? Give concrete illustrations.
5. What is the social significance of touch as compared with that of the
other senses?
6. In what sense is touch a social contact?
7. By what principle do you explain desire or aversion for contact?
8. Give illustrations indicating the significance of touch in various
fields of social life.
9. How do you explain the impulse to touch objects which attract
attention?
10. What are the differences in contacts within and without the group in
primitive society?
11. In what way do external relations affect the contacts within the
group?
12. Give illustrations of group egotism or ethnocentrism.
13. To what extent does the dependence of the solidarity of the in-group
upon its relations with the out-groups have a bearing upon present
international relations?
14. To what extent is the social control of the immigrant dependent upon
the maintenance of the solidarity of the immigrant group?
15. What are our reactions upon meeting a person? a friend? a stranger?
16. What do you understand Shaler to mean by the statement that "at the
beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is evidently dealt with
in the categoric way"?
17. How far is "the sympathetic way of approach" practical in human
relations?
18. What is the difference in the basis of continuity between animal and
human society?
19. What types of social contacts make for historical continuity?
20. What are the differences of social contacts in the movements of
primitive and civilized peoples?
21. To what extent is civilization dependent upon increasing contacts
and intimacy of contacts?
22. Does mobility always mean increasing contacts?
23. Under what conditions does mobility contribute to the increase of
experience?
24. Does the hobo get more experience than the schoolboy?
25. Contrast the advantages and limitations of historical continuity and
of mobility.
26. What do you understand by a primary group?
27. Are primary contacts limited to members of face-to-face groups?
28. What attitudes and relations characterize village life?
29. Interpret sociologically the control by the group of the behavior of
the individual in a rural community.
30. Why has the growth of the city resulted in the substitution of
secondary for primary social contacts?
31. What problems grow out of the breakdown of primary relations? What
problems are solved by the breakdown of primary relations?
32. Do the contacts of city life make for the development of
individuality? personality? social types?
33. In what ways does publicity function as a form of secondary contact
in American life?
34. Why does the European peasant first become a reader of newspapers
after his immigration to the United States?
35. Why does the shift from country to city involve a change (a) from
concrete to abstract relations; (b) from absolute to relative
standards of life; (c) from personal to impersonal relations; and
(d) from sentimental to rational attitudes?
36. How far is social solidarity based upon concrete and sentimental
rather than upon abstract and rational relations?
37. Why does immigration make for change from sentimental to rational
attitudes toward life?
38. In what way is capitalism associated with the growth of secondary
contacts?
39. How does "the stranger" include externality and intimacy?
40. In what ways would you illustrate the relation described by Simmel
that combines "the near" and "the far"?
41. Why is it that "the stranger" is associated with revolutions and
destructive forces in the group?
42. Why does "the stranger" have prestige?
43. In what sense is the attitude of the academic man that of "the
stranger" as compared with the attitude of the practical man?
44. To what extent does the professional man have the characteristics of
"the stranger"?
45. Why does the feeling of a relation as unique give it value that it
loses when thought of as shared by others?
46. What would be the effect upon the problem of the relation of the
whites and negroes in the United States of the recognition that this
relation is of the same kind as that which exists between other races in
similar situations?
FOOTNOTES:
[117] Alexander Pope, in smooth lines, and with apt phrases, has
concretely described this process of perversion:
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
[118] H. S. Jennings, John B. Watson, Adolph Meyer, and W. I. Thomas,
"Practical and Theoretical Problems in Instinct and Habit," _Suggestions
of Modern Science Concerning Education_, p. 174.
[119] See Introduction, pp. 8-10.
[120] Thorstein Veblin, _The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of
the Industrial Arts_. (New York, 1914.)
[121] From Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 486-89. (The
University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[122] From Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_, pp.
51-53. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.)
[123] From Ernest Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, pp. 76-79. (Published by
The Macmillan Co., 1902. Reprinted by permission.)
[124] From W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 12-13. (Ginn & Co., 1906.)
[125] Adapted from N. S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_, pp. 207-27. (Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1904.)
[126] From Friedrich Ratzel, _The History of Mankind_, I, 21-25.
(Published by The Macmillan Co., 1896. Reprinted by permission.)
[127] Adapted from Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic
Environment_, pp. 75-84, 186-87. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.)
[128] Adapted from Caroline C. Richards, _Village Life in America_, pp.
21-138. (Henry Holt & Co., 1912.)
[129] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 593-609.
[130] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 604-7.
[131] Adapted from Werner Sombart, _The Quintessence of Capitalism_, pp.
292-307. (T. F. Unwin, Ltd., 1915.)
[132] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, pp. 685-91. (Leipzig:
Duncker und Humblot, 1908.)
[133] Ellsworth Huntington, _Climate and Civilization_. (New Haven,
1915.)
[134] The following is one of the typical illustrations of this point.
An art teacher conducted a group of children from a settlement, in a
squalid city area, to the country. She asked the children to draw any
object they wished. On examination of the drawings she was astonished to
find not rural scenes but pictures of the city streets, as lamp-posts
and smokestacks.
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL INTERACTION
I. INTRODUCTION
1. The Concept of Interaction
The idea of interaction is not a notion of common sense. It represents
the culmination of long-continued reflection by human beings in their
ceaseless effort to resolve the ancient paradox of unity in diversity,
the "one" and the "many," to find law and order in the apparent chaos of
physical changes and social events; and thus to find explanations for
the behavior of the universe, of society, and of man.
The disposition to be curious and reflective about the physical and
social universe is human enough. For men, in distinction from animals,
live in a world of ideas as well as in a realm of immediate reality.
This world of ideas is something more than the mirror that
sense-perception offers us; something less than that ultimate reality to
which it seems to be a prologue and invitation. Man, in his ambition to
be master of himself and of nature, looks behind the mirror, to analyze
phenomena and seek causes, in order to gain control. Science, natural
science, is a research for causes, that is to say, for mechanisms, which
in turn find application in technical devices, organization, and
machinery, in which mankind asserts its control over physical nature and
eventually over man himself. Education, in its technical aspects at
least, is a device of social control, just as the printing press is an
instrument that may be used for the same purpose.
Sociology, like other natural sciences, aims at prediction and control
based on an investigation of the nature of man and society, and nature
means here, as elsewhere in science, just those aspects of life that are
determined and predictable. In order to describe man and society in
terms which will reveal their nature, sociology is compelled to reduce
the complexity and richness of life to the simplest terms, i.e.,
elements and forces. Once the concepts "elements" or "forces" have been
accepted, the notion of interaction is an evitable, logical development.
In astronomy, for example, these elements are (a) the masses of the
heavenly bodies, (b) their position, (c) the direction of their
movement, and (d) their velocity. In sociology, these forces are
institutions, tendencies, human beings, ideas, anything that embodies
and expresses motives and wishes. In _principle_, and with reference to
their logical character, the "forces" and "elements" in sociology may be
compared with the forces and elements in any other natural science.
Ormond, in his _Foundations of Knowledge_,[135] gives an illuminating
analysis of interaction as a concept which may be applied equally to the
behavior of physical objects and persons.
The notion of interaction is not simple but very complex. The
notion involves not simply the idea of bare collision and
rebound, but something much more profound, namely, the internal
modifiability of the colliding agents. Take for example the
simplest possible case, that of one billiard ball striking
against another. We say that the impact of one ball against
another communicates motion, so that the stricken ball passes
from a state of rest to one of motion, while the striking ball
has experienced a change of an opposite character. But nothing
is explained by this account, for if nothing happens but the
communication of motion, why does it not pass through the
stricken ball and leave its state unchanged? The phenomenon
cannot be of this simple character, but there must be a point
somewhere at which the recipient of the impulse gathers itself
up, so to speak, into a knot and becomes the subject of the
impulse which is thus translated into movement. We have thus
movement, impact, impulse, which is translated again into
activity, and outwardly the billiard ball changing from a state
of rest to one of motion; or in the case of the impelling ball,
from a state of motion to one of rest. Now the case of the
billiard balls is one of the simpler examples of interaction.
We have seen that the problem it supplies is not simple but
very complex. The situation is not thinkable at all if we do
not suppose the internal modifiability of the agents, and this
means that these agents are able somehow to receive internally
and to react upon impulses which are communicated externally in
the form of motion or activity. The simplest form of
interaction involves the supposition, therefore, of internal
subject-points or their analogues from which impulsions are
received and responded to.
Simmel, among sociological writers, although he nowhere expressly
defines the term, has employed the conception of interaction with a
clear sense of its logical significance. Gumplowicz, on the other hand,
has sought to define social interaction as a principle fundamental to
all natural sciences, that is to say, sciences that seek to describe
change in terms of a process, i.e., physics, chemistry, biology,
psychology. The logical principle is the same in all these sciences; the
_processes_ and the _elements_ are different.
2. Classification of the Materials
The material in this chapter will be considered here under three main
heads: (a) society as interaction, (b) communication as the medium
of interaction, and (c) imitation and suggestion as mechanisms of
interaction.
a) _Society as interaction._--Society stated in mechanistic terms
reduces to interaction. A person is a member of society so long as he
responds to social forces; when interaction ends, he is isolated and
detached; he ceases to be a person and becomes a "lost soul." This is
the reason that the limits of society are coterminous with the limits of
interaction, that is, of the participation of persons in the life of
society. One way of measuring the wholesome or the normal life of a
person is by the sheer external fact of his membership in the social
groups of the community in which his lot is cast.
Simmel has illustrated in a wide survey of concrete detail how
interaction defines the group in time and space. Through contacts of
historical continuity, the life of society extends backward to
prehistoric eras. More potent over group behavior than contemporary
discovery and invention is the control exerted by the "dead hand of the
past" through the inertia of folkways and mores, through the revival of
memories and sentiments and through the persistence of tradition and
culture. Contacts of mobility, on the other hand, define the area of the
interaction of the members of the group in space. The degree of
departure from accepted ideas and modes of behavior and the extent of
sympathetic approach to the strange and the novel largely depend upon
the rate, the number, and the intensity of the contacts of mobility.
b) _Communication as the medium of social interaction._--Each science
postulates its own medium of interaction. Astronomy and physics assume
a hypothetical substance, the ether. Physics has its principles of molar
action and reaction; chemistry studies molecular interaction. Biology
and medicine direct their research to the physiological interaction of
organisms. Psychology is concerned with the behavior of the individual
organism in terms of the interaction of stimuli and responses.
Sociology, as collective psychology, deals with communication.
Sociologists have referred to this process as intermental stimulation
and response.
The readings on communication are so arranged as to make clear the three
natural levels of interaction: (x) that of the senses; (y) that of
the emotions; and (z) that of sentiments and ideas.
Interaction through sense-perceptions and emotional responses may be
termed the natural forms of communication since they are common to man
and to animals. Simmel's interpretation of interaction through the
senses is suggestive of the subtle, unconscious, yet profound, way in
which personal attitudes are formed. Not alone vision, but hearing,
smell and touch exhibit in varying degrees the emotional responses of
the type of appreciation. This means understanding other persons or
objects on the perceptual basis.
The selections from Darwin and from Morgan upon emotional expression in
animals indicate how natural expressive signs become a vehicle for
communication. A prepossession for speech and ideas blinds man to the
important rôle in human conduct still exerted by emotional
communication, facial expression, and gesture. Blushing and laughter are
peculiarly significant, because these forms of emotional response are
distinctively human. To say that a person blushes when he is
self-conscious, that he laughs when he is detached from, and superior
to, and yet interested in, an occurrence means that blushing and
laughter represent contrasted attitudes to a social situation. The
relation of blushing and laughter to social control, as an evidence of
the emotional dependence of the person upon the group, is at its apogee
in adolescence.
Interaction through sensory impressions and emotional expression is
restricted to the communication of attitudes and feelings. The
selections under the heading "Language and the Communication of Ideas"
bring out the uniquely human character of speech. Concepts, as Max
Müller insists, are the common symbols wrought out in social experience.
They are more or less conventionalized, objective, and intelligible
symbols that have been defined in terms of a common experience or, as
the logicians say, of a universe of discourse. Every group has its own
universe of discourse. In short, to use Durkheim's phrase, concepts are
"collective representations."
History has been variously conceived in terms of great events,
epoch-making personalities, social movements, and cultural changes. From
the point of view of sociology social evolution might profitably be
studied in its relation to the development and perfection of the means
and technique of communication. How revolutionary was the transition
from word of mouth and memory to written records! The beginnings of
ancient civilization with its five independent centers in Egypt, the
Euphrates River Valley, China, Mexico, and Peru appear to be
inextricably bound up with the change from pictographs to writing, that
is to say from symbols representing words to symbols representing
sounds. The modern period began with the invention of printing and the
printing press. As books became the possession of the common man the
foundation was laid for experiments in democracy. From the sociological
standpoint the book is an organized objective mind whose thoughts are
accessible to all. The rôle of the book in social life has long been
recognized but not fully appreciated. The Christian church, to be sure,
regards the Bible as the word of God. The army does not question the
infallibility of the Manual of Arms. Our written Constitution has been
termed "the ark of the covenant." The orthodox Socialist appeals in
unquestioning faith to the ponderous tomes of Marx.
World-society of today, which depends upon the almost instantaneous
communication of events and opinion around the world, rests upon the
invention of telegraphy and the laying of the great ocean cables.
Wireless telegraphy and radio have only perfected these earlier means
and render impossible a monopoly or a censorship of intercommunication
between peoples. The traditional cultures, the social inheritances of
ages of isolation, are now in a world-process of interaction and
modification as a result of the rapidity and the impact of these modern
means of the circulation of ideas and sentiments. At the present time it
is so popular to malign the newspaper that few recognize the extent to
which news has freed mankind from the control of political parties,
social institutions, and, it may be added, from the "tyranny" of books.
c) _Imitation and suggestion the mechanistic forms of
interaction._--In all forms of communication behavior changes occur, but
in two cases the processes have been analyzed, defined, and reduced to
simple terms, viz., in imitation and in suggestion.
Imitation, as the etymology of the term implies, is a process of copying
or learning. But imitation is learning only so far as it has the
character of an experiment, or trial and error. It is also obvious that
so-called "instinctive" imitation is not learning at all. Since the
results of experimental psychology have limited the field of instinctive
imitation to a few simple activities, as the tendencies to run when
others run, to laugh when others laugh, its place in human life becomes
of slight importance as compared with imitation which involves
persistent effort at reproducing standard patterns of behavior.
This human tendency, under social influences, to reproduce the copy
Stout has explained in psychological terms of attention and interest.
The interests determine the run of attention, and the direction of
attention fixes the copies to be imitated. Without in any way
discounting the psychological validity of this explanation, or its
practical value in educational application, social factors controlling
interest and attention should not be disregarded. In a primary group,
social control narrowly restricts the selection of patterns and
behavior. In an isolated group the individual may have no choice
whatsoever. Then, again, attention may be determined, not by interests
arising from individual capacity or aptitude, but rather from _rapport_,
that is, from interest in the prestige or in the personal traits of the
individual presenting the copy.
The relation of the somewhat complex process of imitation to the simple
method of trial and error is of significance. Learning by imitation
implies at once both identification of the person with the individual
presenting the copy and yet differentiation from him. Through imitation
we appreciate the other person. We are in sympathy or _en rapport_ with
him, while at the same time we appropriate his sentiment and his
technique. Ribot and Adam Smith analyze this relation of imitation to
sympathy and Hirn points out that in art this process of internal
imitation is indispensable for aesthetic appreciation.
In this process of appreciation and learning the primitive method of
trial and error comes into the service of imitation. In a real sense
imitation is mechanical and conservative; it provides a basis for
originality, but its function is to transmit, not to originate the new.
On the other hand, the simple process of trial and error, a common
possession of man and the animals, results in discovery and invention.
The most scientifically controlled situation for the play of suggestion
is in hypnosis. An analysis of the observed facts of hypnotism will be
helpful in arriving at an understanding of the mechanism of suggestion
in everyday life. The essential facts of hypnotism may be briefly
summarized as follows: (a) The establishment of a relation of
_rapport_ between the experimenter and the subject of such a nature that
the latter carries out suggestions presented by the former. (b) The
successful response by the subject to the suggestion is conditional upon
its relation to his past experience. (c) The subject responds to his
own idea of the suggestion, and not to the idea as conceived by the
experimenter. A consideration of cases is sufficient to convince the
student of a complete parallel between suggestion in social life with
suggestion in hypnosis, so far, at least, as concerns the last two
points. Wherever rapport develops between persons, as in the love of
mother and son, the affection of lovers, the comradeship of intimate
friends, there also arises the mechanism of the reciprocal influence of
suggestion. But in normal social situations, unlike hypnotism, there may
be the effect of suggestion where no rapport exists.
Herein lies the significance of the differentiation made by Bechterew
between active perception and passive perception. In passive perception
ideas and sentiments evading the "ego" enter the "subconscious mind"
and, uncontrolled by the active perception, form organizations or
complexes of "lost" memories. It thus comes about that in social
situations, where no rapport exists between two persons, a suggestion
may be made which, by striking the right chord of memory or by
resurrecting a forgotten sentiment, may transform the life of the other,
as in conversion. The area of suggestion in social life is indicated in
a second paper selected from Bechterew. In later chapters upon "Social
Control" and "Collective Behavior" the mechanism of suggestion in the
determination of group behavior will be further considered.
Imitation and suggestion are both mechanisms of social interaction in
which an individual or group is controlled by another individual or
group. The distinction between the two processes is now clear. The
characteristic mark of imitation is the tendency, under the influence of
copies socially presented, to build up mechanisms of habits, sentiments,
ideals, and patterns of life. The process of suggestion, as
differentiated from imitation in social interaction, is to release under
the appropriate social stimuli mechanisms already organized, whether
instincts, habits, or sentiments. The other differences between
imitation and suggestion grow out of this fundamental distinction. In
imitation attention is alert, now on the copy and now on the response.
In suggestion the attention is either absorbed in, or distracted from,
the stimulus. In imitation the individual is self conscious; the subject
in suggestion is unconscious of his behavior. In imitation the activity
tends to reproduce the copy; in suggestion the response may be like or
unlike the copy.
II. MATERIALS
A. SOCIETY AS INTERACTION
1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of Society[136]
In every natural process we may observe the two essential factors which
constitute it, namely, heterogeneous elements and their reciprocal
interaction which we ascribe to certain natural forces. We observe these
factors in the natural process of the stars, by which the different
heavenly bodies exert certain influences over each other, which we
ascribe either to the force of attraction or to gravity.
"No material bond unites the planets to the sun. The direct activity of
an elementary force, the general force of attraction, holds both in an
invisible connection by the elasticity of its influence."
In the chemical natural process we observe the most varied elements
related to each other in the most various ways. They attract or repulse
each other. They enter into combinations or they withdraw from them.
These are nothing but actions and interactions which we ascribe to
certain forces inherent in these elements.
The vegetable and animal natural process begins, at any rate, with the
contact of heterogeneous elements which we characterize as sexual cells
(gametes). They exert upon each other a reciprocal influence which sets
into activity the vegetable and animal process.
The extent to which science is permeated by the hypothesis that
heterogeneous elements reacting upon each other are necessary to a
natural process is best indicated by the atomic theory.
Obviously, it is conceded that the origins of all natural processes
cannot better be explained than by the assumption of the existence in
bodies of invisible particles, each of which has some sort of separate
existence and reacts upon the others.
The entire hypothesis is only the consequence of the concept of a
natural process which the observation of nature has produced in the
human mind.
Even though we conceive the social process as characteristic and
different from the four types of natural processes mentioned above,
still there must be identified in it the two essential factors which
constitute the generic conception of the natural process. And this is,
in fact, what we find. The numberless human groups, which we assume as
the earliest beginnings of human existence, constitute the great variety
of heterogeneous ethnic elements. These have decreased with the decrease
in the number of hordes and tribes. From the foregoing explanation we
are bound to assume as certain that in this field we are concerned with
ethnically different and heterogeneous elements.
The question now remains as to the second constitutive element of a
natural process, namely, the definite interaction of these elements, and
especially as to those interactions which are characterized by
regularity and permanency. Of course, we must avoid analogy with the
reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous elements in the domain of other
natural processes. In strict conformity with the scientific method we
take into consideration merely such interactions as the facts of common
knowledge and actual experience offer us. Thus will we be able, happily,
to formulate a principle of the reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous
ethnic, or, if you will, social elements, the mathematical certainty and
universality of which cannot be denied irrefutably, since it manifests
itself ever and everywhere in the field of history and the living
present.
This principle may be very simply stated: Every stronger ethnic or
social group strives to subjugate and make serviceable to its purposes
every weaker element which exists or may come within the field of its
influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and
social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding
from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle
of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis
illustrated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the
interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become
convinced of its universal validity. In this latter relation it does not
correspond at all to such natural laws, as, for example, attraction and
gravitation or chemical affinity, or to the laws of vegetable and animal
life. In order better to conceive of this social natural law in its
general validity, we must study it in its different consequences and in
the various forms which it assumes according to circumstances and
conditions.
2. Social Interaction as the Definition of the Group in Time and
Space[137]
Society exists wherever several individuals are in reciprocal
relationship. This reciprocity arises always from specific impulses or
by virtue of specific purposes. Erotic, religious, or merely associative
impulses, purposes of defense or of attack, of play as well as of gain,
of aid and instruction, and countless others bring it to pass that men
enter into group relationships of acting for, with, against, one
another; that is, men exercise an influence upon these conditions of
association and are influenced by them. These reactions signify that out
of the individual bearers of those occasioning impulses and purposes a
unity, that is, a "society," comes into being.
An organic body is a unity because its organs are in a relationship of
more intimate interchange of their energies than with any external
being. A _state_ is _one_ because between its citizens the corresponding
relationship of reciprocal influences exists. We could, indeed, not call
the world _one_ if each of its parts did not somehow influence every
other, if anywhere the reciprocity of the influences, however mediated,
were cut off. That unity, or socialization, may, according to the kind
and degree of reciprocity, have very different gradations, from the
ephemeral combination for a promenade to the family; from all
relationships "at will" to membership in a state; from the temporary
aggregation of the guests in a hotel to the intimate bond of a medieval
guild.
Everything now which is present in the individuals--the immediate
concrete locations of all historical actuality--in the nature of
impulse, interest, purpose, inclination, psychical adaptability, and
movement of such sort that thereupon or therefrom occurs influence upon
others, or the reception of influence from them--all this I designate as
the content or the material of socialization. In and of themselves,
these materials with which life is filled, these motivations which impel
it, are not social in their nature. Neither hunger nor love, neither
labor nor religiosity, neither the technique nor the functions and
results of intelligence, as they are given immediately and in their
strict sense, signify socialization. On the contrary, they constitute it
only when they shape the isolated side-by-sideness of the individuals
into definite forms of with-and-for-one-another, which belong under the
general concept of reciprocity. Socialization is thus the _form_,
actualizing itself in countless various types, in which the
individuals--on the basis of those interests, sensuous or ideal,
momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, casually driving or
purposefully leading--grow together into a unity, and within which these
interests come to realization.
That which constitutes "society" is evidently types of reciprocal
influencing. Any collection of human beings whatsoever becomes
"society," not by virtue of the fact that in each of the number there is
a life-content which actuates the individual as such, but only when the
vitality of these contents attains the form of reciprocal influencing.
Only when an influence is exerted, whether immediately or through a
third party, from one upon another has society come into existence in
place of a mere spatial juxtaposition or temporal contemporaneousness or
succession of individuals. If, therefore, there is to be a science, the
object of which is to be "society" and nothing else, it can investigate
only these reciprocal influences, these kinds and forms of
socialization. For everything else found within "society" and realized
by means of it is not "society" itself, but merely a content which
builds or is built by this form of coexistence, and which indeed only
together with "society" brings into existence the real structure,
"society," in the wider and usual sense.
The persistence of the group presents itself in the fact that, in spite
of the departure and the change of members, the group remains identical.
We say that it is the same state, the same association, the same army,
which now exists that existed so and so many decades or centuries ago;
this, although no single member of the original organization remains.
Here is one of the cases in which the temporal order of events presents
a marked analogy with the spatial order. Out of individuals existing
side by side, that is, apart from each other, a social unity is formed.
The inevitable separation which space places between men is nevertheless
overcome by the spiritual bond between them, so that there arises an
appearance of unified interexistence. In like manner the temporal
separation of individuals and of generations presents their union in our
conceptions as a coherent, uninterrupted whole. In the case of persons
spatially separated, this unity is effected by the reciprocity
maintained between them across the dividing distance. The unity of
complex being means nothing else than the cohesion of elements which is
produced by the reciprocal exercise of forces. In the case of temporally
separated persons, however, unity cannot be effected in this manner,
because reciprocity is lacking. The earlier may influence the later, but
the later cannot influence the earlier. Hence the persistence of the
social unity in spite of shifting membership presents a peculiar problem
which is not solved by explaining how the group came to exist at a given
moment.
a) _Continuity by continuance of locality._--The first and most
obvious element of the continuity of group unity is the continuance of
the locality, of the place and soil on which the group lives. The state,
still more the city, and also countless other associations, owe their
unity first of all to the territory which constitutes the abiding
substratum for all change of their contents. To be sure, the continuance
of the locality does not of itself alone mean the continuance of the
social unity, since, for instance, if the whole population of a state is
driven out or enslaved by a conquering group, we speak of a changed
civic group in spite of the continuance of the territory. Moreover, the
unity of whose character we are speaking is psychical, and it is this
psychical factor itself which makes the territorial substratum a unity.
After this has once taken place, however, the locality constitutes an
essential point of attachment for the further persistence of the group.
But it is only one such element, for there are groups that get along
without a local substratum. On the one hand, there are the very small
groups, like the family, which continue precisely the same after the
residence is changed. On the other hand, there are the very large
groups, like that ideal community of the "republic of letters," or the
other international associations in the interest of culture, or the
groups conducting international commerce. Their peculiar character
comes from entire independence of all attachment to a definite locality.
b) _Continuity through blood relationship._--In contrast with this
more formal condition for the maintenance of the group is the
physiological connection of the generations. Community of stock is not
always enough to insure unity of coherence for a long time. In many
cases the local unity must be added. The social unity of the Jews has
been weakened to a marked degree since the dispersion, in spite of their
physiological and confessional unity. It has become more compact in
cases where a group of Jews have lived for a time in the same territory,
and the efforts of the modern "Zionism" to restore Jewish unity on a
larger scale calculate upon concentration in one locality. On the other
hand, when other bonds of union fail, the physiological is the last
recourse to which the self-maintenance of the group resorts. The more
the German guilds declined, the weaker their inherent power of cohesion
became, the more energetically did each guild attempt to make itself
exclusive, that is, it insisted that no persons should be admitted as
guildmasters except sons or sons-in-law of masters or the husbands of
masters' widows.
The physiological coherence of successive generations is of incomparable
significance for the maintenance of the unitary self of the group, for
the special reason that the displacement of one generation by the
following _does not take place all at once_. By virtue of this fact it
comes about that a continuity is maintained which conducts the vast
majority of the individuals who live in a given moment into the life of
the next moment. The change, the disappearance and entrance of persons,
affects in two contiguous moments a number relatively small compared
with the number of those who remain constant. Another element of
influence in this connection is the fact that human beings are not bound
to a definite mating season, but that children are begotten at any time.
It can never properly be asserted of a group, therefore, that at any
given moment a new generation begins. The departure of the older and the
entrance of the younger elements proceed so gradually and continuously
that the group seems as much like a unified self as an organic body in
spite of the change of its atoms.
If the change were instantaneous, it is doubtful if we should be
justified in calling the group "the same" after the critical moment as
before. The circumstance alone that the transition affected in a given
moment only a minimum of the total life of the group makes it possible
for the group to retain its selfhood through the change. We may express
this schematically as follows: If the totality of individuals or other
conditions of the life of the group be represented by a, b, c, d, e; in
a later moment by m, n, o, p, q; we may nevertheless speak of the
persistence of identical selfhood if the development takes the following
course: a, b, c, d, e--m, b, c, d, e--m, n, c, d, e--m, n, o, d, e--m,
n, o, p, e--m, n, o, p, q. In this case each stage is differentiated
from the contiguous stage by only one member, and at each moment it
shares the same chief elements with its neighboring moments.
c) _Continuity through membership in the group._--This continuity in
change of the individuals who are the vehicles of the group unity is
most immediately and thoroughly visible when it rests upon procreation.
The same form is found, however, in cases where this physical agency is
excluded, as, for example, within the Catholic clerus. Here the
continuity is secured by provision that enough persons always remain in
office to initiate the neophytes. This is an extremely important
sociological fact. It makes bureaucracies tenacious, and causes their
character and spirit to endure in spite of all shifting of individuals.
The physiological basis of self-maintenance here gives place to a
psychological one. To speak exactly, the preservation of group identity
in this case depends, of course, upon the amount of invariability in the
vehicles of this unity, but, at all events, the whole body of members
belonging in the group at any given moment only separate from the group
after they have been associated with their successors long enough to
assimilate the latter fully to themselves, i.e., to the spirit, the
form, the tendency of the group. The immortality of the group depends
upon the fact that the change is sufficiently slow and gradual.
The fact referred to by the phrase "immortality of the group" is of the
greatest importance. The preservation of the identical selfhood of the
group through a practically unlimited period gives to the group a
significance which, _ceteris paribus_, is far superior to that of the
individual. The life of the individual, with its purposes, its
valuations, its force, is destined to terminate within a limited time,
and to a certain extent each individual must start at the beginning.
Since the life of the group has no such a priori fixed time limit, and
its forms are really arranged as though they were to last forever, the
group accomplishes a summation of the achievements, powers, experiences,
through which it makes itself far superior to the fragmentary individual
lives. Since the early Middle Ages this has been the source of the power
of municipal corporations in England. Each had from the beginning the
right, as Stubbs expresses it, "of perpetuating its existence by filling
up vacancies as they occur." The ancient privileges were given expressly
only to the burghers and their heirs. As a matter of fact, they were
exercised as a right to add new members so that, whatever fate befell
the members and their physical descendants, the corporation, as such,
was held intact. This had to be paid for, to be sure, by the
disappearance of the individual importance of the units behind their
rôle as vehicles of the maintenance of the group, for the group security
must suffer, the closer it is bound up with the perishable individuality
of the units. On the other hand, the more anonymous and unpersonal the
unit is, the more fit is he to step into the place of another, and so to
insure to the group uninterrupted self-maintenance. This was the
enormous advantage through which during the Wars of the Roses the
Commons repulsed the previously superior power of the upper house. A
battle that destroyed half the nobility of the country took also from
the House of Lords one-half its force, because this is attached to the
personalities. The House of Commons is in principle assured against such
weakening. That estate at last got predominance which, through the
equalizing of its members, demonstrated the most persistent power of
group existence. This circumstance gives every group an advantage in
competition with an individual.
d) _Continuity through leadership._--On this account special
arrangements are necessary so soon as the life of the group is
intimately bound up with that of a leading, commanding individual. What
dangers to the integrity of the group are concealed in this sociological
form may be learned from the history of all interregnums--dangers which,
of course, increase in the same ratio in which the ruler actually forms
the central point of the functions through which the group preserves its
unity, or, more correctly, at each moment creates its unity anew.
Consequently a break between rulers may be a matter of indifference
where the prince only exercises a nominal sway--"reigns, but does not
govern"--while, on the other hand, we observe even in the swarm of bees
that anarchy results so soon as the queen is removed. Although it is
entirely false to explain this latter phenomenon by analogy of a human
ruler, since the queen bee gives no orders, yet the queen occupies the
middle point of the activity of the hive. By means of her antennae she
is in constant communication with the workers, and so all the signals
coursing through the hive pass through her. By virtue of this very fact
the hive feels itself a unity, and this unity dissolves with the
disappearance of the functional center.
e) _Continuity through the hereditary principle._--In political groups
the attempt is made to guard against all the dangers of personality,
particularly those of possible intervals between the important persons,
by the principle: "The king never dies." While in the early Middle Ages
the tradition prevailed that when the king dies his peace dies with him,
this newer principle contains provision for the self-preservation of the
group. It involves an extraordinarily significant sociological
conception, viz., the king is no longer king as a person, but the
reverse is the case, that is, his person is only the in itself
irrelevant vehicle of the abstract kingship, which is as unalterable as
the group itself, of which the kingship is the apex. The group reflects
its immortality upon the kingship, and the sovereign in return brings
that immortality to visible expression in his own person, and by so
doing reciprocally strengthens the vitality of the group. That mighty
factor of social coherence which consists of loyalty of sentiment toward
the reigning power might appear in very small groups in the relation of
fidelity toward the person of the ruler. For large groups the definition
that Stubbs once gave must certainly apply, viz.: "Loyalty is a habit of
strong and faithful attachment to a person, not so much by reason of his
personal character as of his official position." By becoming objectified
in the deathless office, the princely principle gains a new
psychological power for concentration and cohesion within the group,
while the old princely principle that rested on the mere personality of
the prince necessarily lost power as the size of the group increased.
f) _Continuity through a material symbol._--The objectification of the
coherence of the group may also do away with the personal form to such
an extent that it attaches itself to a material symbol. Thus in the
German lands in the Middle Ages the imperial jewels were looked upon as
the visible realization of the idea of the realm and of its continuity,
so that the possession of them gave to a pretender a decided advantage
over all other aspirants, and this was one of the influences which
evidently assisted the heir of the body of the deceased emperor in
securing the succession.
In view of the destructibility of a material object, since too this
disadvantage cannot be offset, as in the case of a person, by the
continuity of heredity, it is very dangerous for the group to seek such
a support for its self-preservation. Many a regiment has lost its
coherence with the loss of its standard. Many kinds of associations have
dissolved after their palladium, their storehouse, their grail, was
destroyed. When, however, the social coherence is lost in this way, it
is safe to say that it must have suffered serious internal disorder
before, and that in this case the loss of the external symbol
representing the unity of the group is itself only the symbol that the
social elements have lost their coherence. When this last is not the
case, the loss of the group symbol not only has no disintegrating effect
but it exerts a direct integrating influence. While the symbol loses its
corporeal reality, it may, as mere thought, longing, ideal, work much
more powerfully, profoundly, indestructibly. We may get a good view of
these two opposite influences of the forms of destruction of the group
symbol upon the solidity of the group by reference to the consequences
of the destruction of the Jewish temple by Titus. The hierarchal Jewish
state was a thorn in the flesh of the Roman statecraft that aimed at the
unity of the empire. The purpose of dissolving this state was
accomplished, so far as a certain number of the Jews were concerned, by
the destruction of the temple. Such was the effect with those who cared
little, anyway, about this centralization. Thus the alienation of the
Pauline Christians from Judaism was powerfully promoted by this event.
For the Palestinian Jews, on the other hand, the breach between Judaism
and the rest of the world was deepened. By this destruction of its
symbol their national religious exclusiveness was heightened to
desperation.
g) _Continuity through group honor._--The sociological significance of
honor as a form of cohesion is extraordinarily great. Through the appeal
to honor, society secures from its members the kind of conduct conducive
to its own preservation, particularly within the spheres of conduct
intermediate between the purview of the criminal code, on the one hand,
and the field of purely personal morality, on the other. By the demands
upon its members contained in the group standard of honor the group
preserves its unified character and its distinctness from the other
groups within the same inclusive association. The essential thing is the
specific idea of honor in narrow groups--family honor, officers' honor,
mercantile honor, yes, even the "honor among thieves." Since the
individual belongs to various groups, the individual may, at the same
time, be under the demands of several sorts of honor which are
independent of each other. One may preserve his mercantile honor, or his
scientific honor as an investigator, who has forfeited his family honor,
and vice versa; the robber may strictly observe the requirements of
thieves' honor after he has violated every other; a woman may have lost
her womanly honor and in every other respect be most honorable, etc.
Thus honor consists in the relation of the individual to a particular
circle, which in this respect manifests its separateness, its
sociological distinctness, from other groups.
h) _Continuity through specialized organs._--From such recourse of
social self-preservation to individual persons, to a material substance,
to an ideal conception, we pass now to the cases in which social
persistence takes advantage of an organ composed of a number of persons.
Thus a religious community embodies its coherence and its life principle
in its priesthood; a political community its inner principle of union in
its administrative organization, its union against foreign power in its
military system; this latter in its corps of officers; every permanent
union in its official head; transitory associations in their committees;
political parties in their parliamentary representatives.
B. THE NATURAL FORMS OF COMMUNICATION
1. Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction[138]
It is through the medium of the senses that we perceive our fellow-men.
This fact has two aspects of fundamental sociological significance:
(a) that of appreciation, and (b) that of comprehension.
a) _Appreciation._--Sense-impressions may induce in us affective
responses of pleasure or pain, of excitement or calm, of tension or
relaxation, produced by the features of a person, or by the tone of his
voice, or by his mere physical presence in the same room. These
affective responses, however, do not enable us to understand or to
define the other person. Our emotional response to the sense-image of
the other leaves his real self outside.
b) _Comprehension._--The sense-impression of the other person may
develop in the opposite direction when it becomes the medium for
understanding the other. What I see, hear, feel of him is only the
bridge over which I reach his real self. The sound of the voice and its
meaning, perhaps, present the clearest illustration. The speech, quite
as much as the appearance, of a person, may be immediately either
attractive or repulsive. On the other hand, what he says enables us to
understand not only his momentary thoughts but also his inner self. The
same principle applies to all sense-impressions.
The sense-impressions of any object produce in us not only emotional and
aesthetic attitudes toward it but also an understanding of it. In the
case of reaction to non-human objects, these two responses are, in
general, widely separated. We may appreciate the emotional value of any
sense-impression of an object. The fragrance of a rose, the charm of a
tone, the grace of a bough swaying in the wind, is experienced as a joy
engendered within the soul. On the other hand, we may desire to
understand and to comprehend the rose, or the tone, or the bough. In the
latter case we respond in an entirely different way, often with
conscious endeavor. These two diverse reactions which are independent of
each other are with human beings generally integrated into a unified
response. Theoretically, our sense-impressions of a person may be
directed on the one hand to an appreciation of his emotional value, or
on the other to an impulsive or deliberate understanding of him.
Actually, these two reactions are coexistent and inextricably interwoven
as the basis of our relation to him. Of course, appreciation and
comprehension develop in quite different degrees. These two diverse
responses--to the tone of voice and to the meaning of the utterance; to
the appearance of a person and to his individuality; to the attraction
or repulsion of his personality and to the impulsive judgment upon his
character as well as many times upon his grade of culture--are present
in any perception in very different degrees and combinations.
Of the special sense-organs, the eye has a uniquely sociological
function. The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual
glances. This is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which
exists anywhere. This highest psychic reaction, however, in which the
glances of eye to eye unite men, crystallizes into no objective
structure; the unity which momentarily arises between two persons is
present in the occasion and is dissolved in the function. So tenacious
and subtle is this union that it can only be maintained by the shortest
and straightest line between the eyes, and the smallest deviation from
it, the slightest glance aside, completely destroys the unique character
of this union. No objective trace of this relationship is left behind,
as is universally found, directly or indirectly, in all other types of
associations between men, as, for example, in interchange of words. The
interaction of eye and eye dies in the moment in which the directness of
the function is lost. But the totality of social relations of human
beings, their self-assertion and self-abnegation, their intimacies and
estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways if there occurred
no glance of eye to eye. This mutual glance between persons, in
distinction from the simple sight or observation of the other, signifies
a wholly new and unique union between them.
The limits of this relation are to be determined by the significant fact
that the glance by which the one seeks to perceive the other is itself
expressive. By the glance which reveals the other, one discloses
himself. By the same act in which the observer seeks to know the
observed, he surrenders himself to be understood by the observer. The
eye cannot take unless at the same time it gives. The eye of a person
discloses his own soul when he seeks to uncover that of another. What
occurs in this direct mutual glance represents the most perfect
reciprocity in the entire field of human relationships.
Shame causes a person to look at the ground to avoid the glance of the
other. The reason for this is certainly not only because he is thus
spared the visible evidence of the way in which the other regards his
painful situation, but the deeper reason is that the lowering of his
glance to a certain degree prevents the other from comprehending the
extent of his confusion. The glance in the eye of the other serves not
only for me to know the other but also enables him to know me. Upon the
line which unites the two eyes, it conveys to the other the real
personality, the real attitude, and the real impulse. The "ostrich
policy" has in this explanation a real justification: who does not see
the other actually conceals himself in part from the observer. A person
is not at all completely present to another, when the latter sees him,
but only when he also sees the other.
The sociological significance of the eye has special reference to the
expression of the face as the first object of vision between man and
man. It is seldom clearly understood to what an extent even our
practical relations depend upon mutual recognition, not only in the
sense of all external characteristics, as the momentary appearance and
attitude of the other, but what we know or intuitively perceive of his
life, of his inner nature, of the immutability of his being, all of
which colors unavoidably both our transient and our permanent relations
with him. The face is the geometric chart of all these experiences. It
is the symbol of all that which the individual has brought with him as
the pre-condition of his life. In the face is deposited what has been
precipitated from past experience as the substratum of his life, which
has become crystallized into the permanent features of his face. To the
extent to which we thus perceive the face of a person, there enters into
social relations, in so far as it serves practical purposes, a
super-practical element. It follows that a man is first known by his
countenance, not by his acts. The face as a medium of expression is
entirely a theoretical organ; it does not act, as the hand, the foot,
the whole body; it transacts none of the internal or practical relations
of the man, it only tells about him. The peculiar and important
sociological art of "knowing" transmitted by the eye is determined by
the fact that the countenance is the essential object of the
interindividual sight. This knowing is still somewhat different from
understanding. To a certain extent, and in a highly variable degree, we
know at first glance with whom we have to do. Our unconsciousness of
this knowledge and its fundamental significance lies in the fact that we
direct our attention from this self-evident intuition to an
understanding of special features which determine our practical
relations to a particular individual. But if we become conscious of this
self-evident fact, then we are amazed how much we know about a person in
the first glance at him. We do not obtain meaning from his expression,
susceptible to analysis into individual traits. We cannot unqualifiedly
say whether he is clever or stupid, good- or ill-natured, temperamental
or phlegmatic. All these traits are general characteristics which he
shares with unnumbered others. But what this first glance at him
transmits to us cannot be analyzed or appraised into any such conceptual
and expressive elements. Yet our initial impression remains ever the
keynote of all later knowledge of him; it is the direct perception of
his individuality which his appearance, and especially his face,
discloses to our glance.
The sociological attitude of the blind is entirely different from that
of the deaf-mute. For the blind, the other person is actually present
only in the alternating periods of his utterance. The expression of the
anxiety and unrest, the traces of all past events, exposed to view in
the faces of men, escape the blind, and that may be the reason for the
peaceful and calm disposition, and the unconcern toward their
surroundings, which is so often observed in the blind. Indeed, the
majority of the stimuli which the face presents are often puzzling; in
general, what we see of a man will be interpreted by what we hear from
him, while the opposite is more unusual. Therefore the one who sees,
without hearing, is much more perplexed, puzzled, and worried, than the
one who hears without seeing. This principle is of great importance in
understanding the sociology of the modern city.
Social life in the large city as compared with the towns shows a great
preponderance of occasions to _see_ rather than to _hear_ people. One
explanation lies in the fact that the person in the town is acquainted
with nearly all the people he meets. With these he exchanges a word or a
glance, and their countenance represents to him not merely the visible
but indeed the entire personality. Another reason of especial
significance is the development of public means of transportation.
Before the appearance of omnibuses, railroads, and street cars in the
nineteenth century, men were not in a situation where for periods of
minutes or hours they could or must look at each other without talking
to one another. Modern social life increases in ever growing degree the
rôle of mere visual impression which always characterizes the
preponderant part of all sense relationship between man and man, and
must place social attitudes and feelings upon an entirely changed basis.
The greater perplexity which characterizes the person who only sees, as
contrasted with the one who only hears, brings us to the problems of
the emotions of modern life: the lack of orientation in the collective
life, the sense of utter lonesomeness, and the feeling that the
individual is surrounded on all sides by closed doors.
2. The Expression of the Emotions[139]
Actions of all kinds, if regularly accompanying any state of the mind,
are at once recognized as expressive. These may consist of movements of
any part of the body, as the wagging of a dog's tail, the shrugging of a
man's shoulders, the erection of the hair, the exudation of
perspiration, the state of the capillary circulation, labored breathing,
and the use of the vocal or other sound-producing instruments. Even
insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation.
With man the respiratory organs are of especial importance in
expression, not only in a direct, but to a still higher degree in an
indirect, manner.
Few points are more interesting in our present subject than the
extraordinarily complex chain of events which lead to certain expressive
movements. Take, for instance, the oblique eyebrows of a man suffering
from grief or anxiety. When infants scream loudly from hunger or pain,
the circulation is affected, and the eyes tend to become gorged with
blood; consequently the muscles surrounding the eyes are strongly
contracted as a protection. This action, in the course of many
generations, has become firmly fixed and inherited; but when, with
advancing years and culture, the habit of screaming is partially
repressed, the muscles round the eyes still tend to contract, whenever
even slight distress is felt. Of these muscles, the pyramidals of the
nose are less under the control of the will than are the others, and
their contraction can be checked only by that of the central fasciae of
the frontal muscle; these latter fasciae draw up the inner ends of the
eyebrows and wrinkle the forehead in a peculiar manner, which we
instantly recognize as the expression of grief or anxiety. Slight
movements, such as these just described, or the scarcely perceptible
drawing down of the corners of the mouth, are the last remnants or
rudiments of strongly marked and intelligible movements. They are as
full of significance to us in regard to expression as are ordinary
rudiments to the naturalist in the classification and genealogy of
organic beings.
That the chief expressive actions exhibited by man and by the lower
animals are now innate or inherited--that is, have not been learned by
the individual--is admitted by everyone. So little has learning or
imitation to do with several of them that they are from the earliest
days and throughout life quite beyond our control; for instance, the
relaxation of the arteries of the skin in blushing, and the increased
action of the heart in anger. We may see children only two or three
years old, and even those born blind, blushing from shame; and the naked
scalp of a very young infant reddens from passion. Infants scream from
pain directly after birth, and all their features then assume the same
form as during subsequent years. These facts alone suffice to show that
many of our most important expressions have not been learned; but it is
remarkable that some, which are certainly innate, require practice in
the individual before they are performed in a full and perfect manner;
for instance, weeping and laughing. The inheritance of most of our
expressive actions explains the fact that those born blind display them,
as I hear from the Rev. R. H. Blair, equally well with those gifted with
eyesight. We can thus also understand the fact that the young and the
old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the
same state of mind by the same movement.
We are so familiar with the fact of young and old animals displaying
their feelings in the same manner that we hardly perceive how remarkable
it is that a young puppy should wag its tail when pleased, depress its
ears and uncover its canine teeth when pretending to be savage, just
like an old dog; or that a kitten should arch its little back and erect
its hair when frightened and angry, like an old cat. When, however, we
turn to less common gestures in ourselves, which we are accustomed to
look at as artificial or conventional--such as shrugging the shoulders
as a sign of impotence, or the raising the arms with open hands and
extended fingers as a sign of wonder--we feel perhaps too much surprise
at finding that they are innate. That these and some other gestures are
inherited we may infer from their being performed by very young
children, by those born blind, and by the most widely distinct races of
man. We should also bear in mind that new and highly peculiar tricks, in
association with certain states of the mind, are known to have arisen
in certain individuals and to have been afterward transmitted to their
offspring, in some cases for more than one generation.
Certain other gestures, which seem to us so natural that we might easily
imagine that they were innate, apparently have been learned like the
words of a language. This seems to be the case with the joining of the
uplifted hands and the turning up of the eyes in prayer. So it is with
kissing as a mark of affection; but this is innate, in so far as it
depends on the pleasure derived from contact with a beloved person. The
evidence with respect to the inheritance of nodding and shaking the head
as signs of affirmation and negation is doubtful, for they are not
universal, yet seem too general to have been independently acquired by
all the individuals of so many races.
We will now consider how far the will and consciousness have come into
play in the development of the various movements of expression. As far
as we can judge, only a few expressive movements, such as those just
referred to, are learned by each individual; that is, were consciously
and voluntarily performed during the early years of life for some
definite object, or in imitation of others, and then became habitual.
The far greater number of the movements of expression, and all the more
important ones, are, as we have seen, innate or inherited; and such
cannot be said to depend on the will of the individual. Nevertheless,
all those included under our first principle were at first voluntarily
performed for a definite object, namely, to escape some danger, to
relieve some distress, or to gratify some desire. For instance, there
can hardly be a doubt that the animals which fight with their teeth have
acquired the habit of drawing back their ears closely to their heads
when feeling savage from their progenitors having voluntarily acted in
this manner in order to protect their ears from being torn by their
antagonists; for those animals which do not fight with their teeth do
not thus express a savage state of mind. We may infer as highly probable
that we ourselves have acquired the habit of contracting the muscles
round the eyes whilst crying gently, that is, without the utterance of
any loud sound, from our progenitors, especially during infancy, having
experienced during the act of screaming an uncomfortable sensation in
their eyeballs. Again, some highly expressive movements result from the
endeavor to check or prevent other expressive movements; thus the
obliquity of the eyebrows and the drawing down of the corners of the
mouth follow from the endeavor to prevent a screaming-fit from coming on
or to check it after it has come on. Here it is obvious that the
consciousness and will must at first have come into play; not that we
are conscious in these or in other such cases what muscles are brought
into action, any more than when we perform the most ordinary voluntary
movements.
The power of communication between the members of the same tribe by
means of language has been of paramount importance in the development of
man; and the force of language is much aided by the expressive movements
of the face and body. We perceive this at once when we converse on an
important subject with any person whose face is concealed. Nevertheless
there are no grounds, as far as I can discover, for believing that any
muscle has been developed or even modified exclusively for the sake of
expression. The vocal and other sound-producing organs by which various
expressive noises are produced seem to form a partial exception; but I
have elsewhere attempted to show that these organs were first developed
for sexual purposes, in order that one sex might call or charm the
other. Nor can I discover grounds for believing that any inherited
movement which now serves as a means of expression was at first
voluntarily and consciously performed for this special purpose--like
some of the gestures and the finger-language used by the deaf and dumb.
On the contrary, every true or inherited movement of expression seems to
have had some natural and independent origin. But when once acquired,
such movements may be voluntarily and consciously employed as a means of
communication. Even infants, if carefully attended to, find out at a
very early age that their screaming brings relief, and they soon
voluntarily practice it. We may frequently see a person voluntarily
raising his eyebrows to express surprise, or smiling to express
pretended satisfaction and acquiescence. A man often wishes to make
certain gestures conspicuous or demonstrative, and will raise his
extended arms with widely opened fingers above his head to show
astonishment or lift his shoulders to his ears to show that he cannot or
will not do something.
We have seen that the study of the theory of expression confirms to a
certain limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some
lower animal form, and supports the belief of the specific or
subspecific unity of the several races; but as far as my judgment
serves, such confirmation was hardly needed. We have also seen that
expression in itself, or the language of the emotions, as it has
sometimes been called, is certainly of importance for the welfare of
mankind. To understand, as far as is possible, the source or origin of
the various expressions which may be hourly seen on the faces of the men
around us, not to mention our domesticated animals, ought to possess
much interest for us. From these several causes we may conclude that the
philosophy of our subject has well deserved that attention which it has
already received from several excellent observers, and that it deserves
still further attention, especially from any able physiologist.
3. Blushing[140]
Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.
Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount
of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush. The
reddening of the face from a blush is due to the relaxation of the
muscular coats of the small arteries, by which the capillaries become
filled with blood; and this depends on the proper vasomotor center being
affected. No doubt if there be at the same time much mental agitation,
the general circulation will be affected; but it is not due to the
action of the heart that the network of minute vessels covering the face
becomes under a sense of shame gorged with blood. We can cause laughing
by tickling the skin, weeping or frowning by a blow, trembling from the
fear of pain, and so forth; but we cannot cause a blush by any physical
means--that is, by any action on the body. It is the mind which must be
affected. Blushing is not only involuntary, but the wish to restrain it,
by leading to self-attention, actually increases the tendency.
The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy,
which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden
from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls
blushing at the ages of between two and three years; and of another
sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault. Many
children at a somewhat more advanced age blush in a strongly marked
manner. It appears that the mental powers of infants are not as yet
sufficiently developed to allow of their blushing. Hence, also, it is
that idiots rarely blush. Dr. Crichton Browne observed for me those
under his care, but never saw a genuine blush, though he has seen their
faces flush, apparently from joy, when food was placed before them, and
from anger. Nevertheless some, if not utterly degraded, are capable of
blushing. A microcephalous idiot, for instance, thirteen years old,
whose eyes brightened a little when he was pleased or amused, has been
described by Dr. Behn as blushing and turning to one side when undressed
for medical examination.
Women blush much more than men. It is rare to see an old man, but not
nearly so rare to see an old woman, blushing. The blind do not escape.
Laura Bridgman, born in this condition, as well as completely deaf,
blushes. The Rev. R. H. Blair, principal of the Worcester College,
informs me that three children born blind, out of seven or eight then in
the asylum, are great blushers. The blind are not at first conscious
that they are observed, and it is a most important part of their
education, as Mr. Blair informs me, to impress this knowledge on their
minds; and the impression thus gained would greatly strengthen the
tendency to blush, by increasing the habit of self-attention.
The tendency to blush is inherited. Dr. Burgess gives the case of a
family consisting of a father, mother, and ten children, all of whom,
without exception, were prone to blush to a most painful degree. The
children were grown up; "and some of them were sent to travel in order
to wear away this diseased sensibility, but nothing was of the slightest
avail." Even peculiarities in blushing seem to be inherited. Sir James
Paget, whilst examining the spine of a girl, was struck at her singular
manner of blushing; a big splash of red appeared first on one cheek, and
then other splashes, variously scattered over the face and neck. He
subsequently asked the mother whether her daughter always blushed in
this peculiar manner and was answered, "Yes, she takes after me." Sir J.
Paget then perceived that by asking this question he had caused the
mother to blush and she exhibited the same peculiarity as her daughter.
In most cases the face, ears, and neck are the sole parts which redden;
but many persons, whilst blushing intensely, feel that their whole
bodies grow hot and tingle; and this shows that the entire surface must
be in some manner affected. Blushes are said sometimes to commence on
the forehead, but more commonly on the cheeks, afterward spreading to
the ears and neck. In two albinos examined by Dr. Burgess, the blushes
commenced by a small circumscribed spot on the cheeks, over the
parotidean plexus of nerves, and then increased into a circle; between
this blushing circle and the blush on the neck there was an evident line
of demarcation, although both arose simultaneously. The retina, which is
naturally red in the albino, invariably increased at the same time in
redness. Every one must have noticed how easily after one blush fresh
blushes chase each other over the face. Blushing is preceded by a
peculiar sensation in the skin. According to Dr. Burgess the reddening
of the skin is generally succeeded by a slight pallor, which shows that
the capillary vessels contract after dilating. In some rare cases
paleness instead of redness is caused under conditions which would
naturally induce a blush. For instance, a young lady told me that in a
large and crowded party she caught her hair so firmly on the button of a
passing servant that it took some time before she could be extricated;
from her sensation she imagined that she had blushed crimson but was
assured by a friend that she had turned extremely pale.
The mental states which induce blushing consist of shyness, shame, and
modesty, the essential element in all being self-attention. Many reasons
can be assigned for believing that originally self-attention directed to
personal appearance, in relation to the opinion of others, was the
exciting cause, the same effect being subsequently produced, through the
force of association, by self-attention in relation to moral conduct. It
is not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance, but the
thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush. In absolute
solitude the most sensitive person would be quite indifferent about his
appearance. We feel blame or disapprobation more acutely than
approbation; and consequently depreciatory remarks or ridicule, whether
of our appearance or conduct, cause us to blush much more readily than
does praise. But undoubtedly praise and admiration are highly efficient:
a pretty girl blushes when a man gazes intently at her, though she may
know perfectly well that he is not depreciating her. Many children, as
well as old and sensitive persons, blush when they are much praised.
Hereafter the question will be discussed how it has arisen that the
consciousness that others are attending to our personal appearance
should have led to the capillaries, especially those of the face,
instantly becoming filled with blood.
My reasons for believing that attention directed to personal appearance,
and not to moral conduct, has been the fundamental element in the
acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are
separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me,
considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person
blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance.
One cannot notice even the dress of a woman much given to blushing
without causing her face to crimson. It is sufficient to stare hard at
some persons to make them, as Coleridge remarks, blush--"account for
that he who can."
With the two albinos observed by Dr. Burgess, "the slightest attempt to
examine their peculiarities" invariably caused them to blush deeply.
Women are much more sensitive about their personal appearance than men
are, especially elderly women in comparison with elderly men, and they
blush much more freely. The young of both sexes are much more sensitive
on this same head than the old, and they also blush much more freely
than the old. Children at a very early age do not blush; nor do they
show those other signs of self-consciousness which generally accompany
blushing; and it is one of their chief charms that they think nothing
about what others think of them. At this early age they will stare at a
stranger with a fixed gaze and unblinking eyes, as on an inanimate
object, in a manner which we elders cannot imitate.
It is plain to everyone that young men and women are highly sensitive to
the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance;
and they blush incomparably more in the presence of the opposite sex
than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will
blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl
whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy
pair of young lovers, valuing each other's admiration and love more than
anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without
many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr.
Bridges, blush "chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their
own personal appearance."
Of all parts of the body, the face is most considered and regarded, as
is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of
the voice. It is also the chief seat of beauty and of ugliness, and
throughout the world is the most ornamented. The face, therefore, will
have been subjected during many generations to much closer and more
earnest self-attention than any other part of the body; and in
accordance with the principle here advanced we can understand why it
should be the most liable to blush. Although exposure to alternations of
temperature, etc., has probably much increased the power of dilatation
and contraction in the capillaries of the face and adjoining parts, yet
this by itself will hardly account for these parts blushing much more
than the rest of the body; for it does not explain the fact of the hands
rarely blushing. With Europeans the whole body tingles slightly when the
face blushes intensely; and with the races of men who habitually go
nearly naked, the blushes extend over a much larger surface than with
us. These facts are, to a certain extent, intelligible, as the
self-attention of primeval man, as well as of the existing races which
still go naked, will not have been so exclusively confined to their
faces, as is the case with the people who now go clothed.
We have seen that in all parts of the world persons who feel shame for
some moral delinquency are apt to avert, bend down, or hide their faces,
independently of any thought about their personal appearance. The object
can hardly be to conceal their blushes, for the face is thus averted or
hidden under circumstances which exclude any desire to conceal shame, as
when guilt is fully confessed and repented of. It is, however, probable
that primeval man before he had acquired much moral sensitiveness would
have been highly sensitive about his personal appearance, at least in
reference to the other sex, and he would consequently have felt distress
at any depreciatory remarks about his appearance; and this is one form
of shame. And as the face is the part of the body which is most
regarded, it is intelligible that any one ashamed of his personal
appearance would desire to conceal this part of his body. The habit,
having been thus acquired, would naturally be carried on when shame from
strictly moral causes was felt; and it is not easy otherwise to see why
under these circumstances there should be a desire to hide the face more
than any other part of the body.
The habit, so general with everyone who feels ashamed, of turning away
or lowering his eyes, or restlessly moving them from side to side,
probably follows from each glance directed toward those present,
bringing home the conviction that he is intently regarded; and he
endeavors, by not looking at those present, and especially not at their
eyes, momentarily to escape from this painful conviction.
4. Laughing[141]
Sympathy, when it is not the direct cause, is conditional to the
existence of laughter. Sometimes it provokes it; always it spreads it,
sustains and strengthens it.
First of all, it is so much the nature of laughter to communicate itself
that when it no longer communicates itself it ceases to exist. One might
say that outbursts of merriment need to be encouraged, that they are not
self-sufficient. Not to share them is to blow upon them and extinguish
them. When, in an animated and mirthful group, some one remains cold or
gloomy, the laughter immediately stops or is checked. Yet those whom the
common people call, in their picturesque language, wet blankets,
spoil-sports, or kill-joys, are not necessarily hostile to the gaiety of
the rest. They may only have, and, in fact, very often do have, nothing
but the one fault of being out of tune with this gaiety. But even their
calm appears an offense to the warmth and the high spirits of the others
and kills by itself alone this merriment.
Not only is laughter maintained by sympathy but it is even born of
sympathy. The world is composed of two kinds of people: those who make
one laugh and those who are made to laugh, these latter being infinitely
more numerous. How many there are, indeed, who have no sense of humor,
and who, of themselves, would not think of laughing at things at which
they do nevertheless laugh heartily because they see others laugh. As
for those who have a ready wit and a sense of the comic, do they not
enjoy the success of their jokes as much, if not more, than their jokes
themselves? Their mirthfulness, then, at least, grows with the joy of
spreading it. Very often it happens that many good humorists are
temperamentally far from gay, and laugh at their jokes only on the
rebound, echoing the laughter which they provoke. To laugh, then, is to
share the gaiety of others, whether this gaiety is communicated from
them to us or from us to them. It seems that we can be moved to laughter
only by the merriment of others, that we possess ours only indirectly
when others send it to us. Human solidarity never appears more clearly
than in the case of laughter.
Yet can one say that sympathy actually produces laughter? Is it not
enough to say that it increases it, that it strengthens its effects? All
our sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others.
How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had
never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered
by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the
feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of
one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition.
This fact alone of their contagion proves that from one's birth one
carries the germ in himself. Sympathy would explain, then, contagion,
but not the birth, of laughter. The fact is that our feelings exist for
ourselves only when they acquire a communicative or social value; they
have to be diffused in order to manifest themselves. Sympathy does not
create them but it gives them their place in the world. It gives them
just that access of intensity without which their nature cannot develop
or even appear: thus it is that our laughter would be for us as if it
did not exist, if it did not find outside itself an echo which increases
it.
From the fact that sympathy is the law of laughter, does it follow that
it is the cause? Not at all. It would be even contradictory to maintain
this. A laugh being given, others are born out of sympathy. But the
first laugh or one originally given, where does it get its origin?
Communicated laughter implies spontaneous laughter as the echo implies a
sound. If sympathy explains one, it is, it would seem, an antipathy or
the absence of sympathy which produces the other. "The thing at which we
laugh," says Aristotle, "is a defect or ugliness which is not great
enough to cause suffering or injury. Thus, for example, a ridiculous
face is an ugly or misshapen face, but one on which suffering has not
marked." Bain says likewise, "The laughable is the deformed or ugly
thing which is not pushed to the point where it is painful or injurious.
An occasion for laughter is the degradation of a person of dignity in
circumstances which do not arouse a strong emotion," like indignation,
anger, or pity. Descartes puts still more limits upon laughter. Speaking
of malice he says that laughter cannot be provoked except by misfortunes
not only _light_ but also _unforseen_ and _deserved_. "Derision or
mockery," he says, "is a kind of joy mixed with hate, which comes from
one's perceiving some _little misfortune_ in a person _whom one thinks
deserves it_. We hate this misfortune but are happy at seeing it in some
one who merits it, and, _when this happens unexpectedly, surprise causes
us to burst out laughing_. But this misfortune must be small, for if it
is great we cannot believe that he who meets it deserves it, unless one
has a very malicious or hateful nature."
This fact can be established directly by analyzing the most cruel
laughter. If we enter into the feelings of the one who laughs and set
aside the disagreeable sentiments, irritation, anger, and disgust, which
at times they produce upon us, we come to understand even the savage
sneer which appears to us as an insult to suffering; the laugh of the
savage, trampling his conquered enemy under foot, or that of the child
torturing unfortunate animals. This laugh is, in fact, inoffensive in
its way, it is cruel in fact but not in intention. What it expresses is
not a perverse, satanic joy but a _heartlessness_, as is so properly
said. In the child and the savage sympathy has not been born, that is to
say, the absence of imagination for the sufferings of others is
complete. As a result we have a negative cruelty, a sort of altruistic
or social anaesthesia.
When such an anaesthesia is not complete, when the altruistic
sensibility of one who laughs is only dull, his egotism being very keen,
his laughter might appear still less hatefully cruel. It would express
then not properly the joy of seeing others suffer but that of not having
to undergo their suffering and the power of seeing it only as a
spectacle.
Analogous facts may be cited closer to us, easier to verify. Those who
enjoy robust health often laugh at invalids: their imagination does not
comprehend physical suffering, they are incapable of sympathizing with
those who experience it. Likewise those who possess calm and even
dispositions cannot witness without laughing an excess of mad anger or
of impotent rage. In general we do not take seriously those feelings to
which we ourselves are strangers; we consider them extravagant and
amusing. "How can one be a Persian?" To laugh is to detach one's self
from others, to separate one's self and to take pleasure in this
separation, to amuse one's self by contrasting the feelings, character,
and temperament of others and one's own feelings, character, and
temperament. _Insensibility_ has been justly noted by M. Bergson as an
essential characteristic of him who laughs. But this _insensibility_,
this heartlessness, gives very much the effect of a positive and real
ill nature, and M. Bergson had thus simply repeated and expressed in a
new way, more precise and correct, the opinion of Aristotle: the cause
of laughter is malice mitigated by insensibility or the absence of
sympathy.
Thus defined, malice is after all essentially relative, and when one
says that the object of our laughter is the misfortune of someone else,
_known by us_ to be endurable and slight, it must be understood that
this misfortune may be _in itself_ very serious as well as undeserved,
and in this way laughter is often really cruel.
The coarser men are, the more destitute they are of sympathetic
imagination, and the more they laugh at one another with an offensive
and brutal laugh. There are those who are not even touched by contact
with physical suffering; such ones have the heart to laugh at the
shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the
repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by
physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering.
These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at
the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are,
in their eyes, harmless, and slight pricks which they themselves, by a
coarseness of nature, or a fine moral health, would endure perhaps with
equanimity, which at any rate they do not feel in behalf of others, with
whom they do not suffer in sympathy.
_Castigat ridendo mores._ According to M. A. Michiels, the author of a
book upon the _World of Humor and of Laughter_, this maxim must be
understood in its broadest sense. "Everything that is contrary to the
absolute ideal of human perfection," in whatever order it be, whether
physical, intellectual, moral, or social, arouses laughter. The fear of
ridicule is the most dominant of our feelings, that which controls us in
most things and with the most strength. Because of this fear one does
"what one would not do for the sake of justice, scrupulousness, honor,
or good will;" one submits to an infinite number of obligations which
morality would not dare to prescribe and which are not included in the
laws. "Conscience and the written laws," says A. Michiels, "form two
lines of ramparts against evil, the ludicrous is the third line of
defense, it stops, brands, and condemns the little misdeeds which the
guards have allowed to pass."
Laughter is thus the great censor of vices, it spares none, it does not
even grant indulgence to the slightest imperfections, of whatever nature
they be. This mission, which M. Michiels attributes to laughter,
granting that it is fulfilled, instead of taking its place in the
natural or providential order of things, does it not answer simply to
those demands, whether well founded or not, which society makes upon
each of us? M. Bergson admits this, justly enough, it appears, when he
defines laughter as a social bromide. But then it is no longer mere
imperfection in general, it is not even immorality, properly speaking;
it is merely unsociability, well or badly understood, which laughter
corrects. More precisely, it is a special unsociability, one which
escapes all other penalties, which it is the function of laughter to
reach. What can this unsociability be? It is the self-love of each one
of us in so far as it has anything disagreeable to others in it, an
abstraction of every injurious or hateful element. It is the harmless
self-love, slight, powerless, which one does not fear but one scorns,
yet for all that does not pardon but on the contrary pitilessly pursues,
wounds, and galls. Self-love thus defined is vanity, and what is called
the moral correction administered by laughter is the wound to self-love.
"The specific remedy for vanity," says M. Bergson, "is laughter, and the
essentially ridiculous is vanity."
One sees in what sense laughter is a "correction." Whether one considers
the jests uttered, the feelings of the jester, or of him at whom one
jests, laughter appears from the point of view of morality as a
correction most often undeserved, unjust--or at least disproportionate
to the fault--pitiless, and cruel.
In fact, the self-love at which one laughs is, as we have said,
harmless. Besides it is often a natural failing, a weakness, not a vice.
Even if it were a vice, the jester would not be justified in laughing at
it, for it does not appear that he himself is exempt. On the contrary,
his vanity is magnified when that of others is upon the rack. Finally
the humiliation caused by laughter is not a chastisement which one
accepts but a torture to which one submits; it is a feeling of
resentment, of bitterness, not a wholesome sense of shame, nor one from
which anyone is likely to profit. Laughter may then have a social use;
but it is not an act of justice. It is a quick and summary police
measure which will not stand too close a scrutiny but which it would be
imprudent either to condemn or to approve without reserve. Society is
established and organized according to natural laws which seem to be
modeled on those of reason, but self-loves discipline themselves, they
enter into conflict and hold each other in check.
C. LANGUAGE AND THE COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS
1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals[142]
The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are laid
in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by the
acts of other animals of the same social group.
Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds,
which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional
state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke a
like emotional state and correlated expressive behavior in other birds
of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick will
place its companions on the alert; and the harsh "krek" of a young
moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching attitude, will often throw
others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound may be
invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen
is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes
them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less
familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with
her lambs, can doubt that such "dumb animals" are influenced in their
behavior by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, how they
originate, what is their value, and how far such intercommunication--if
such we may call it--extends.
There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under
natural conditions such behavior has an instinctive basis. Though the
effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not their
conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital and
hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke responsive
behavior in another animal--the reciprocal action being generally in its
primary origin between mate and mate, between parent and offspring, or
between members of the same family group. _And it is this reciprocal
action which constitutes it a factor in social evolution._ Its chief
interest in connection with the subject of behavior lies in the fact
that it shows the instinctive foundations on which intelligent and
eventually rational modes of intercommunication are built up. For
instinctive as the sounds are at the outset, by entering into the
conscious situation and taking their part in the association-complex of
experience, they become factors in the social life as modified and
directed by intelligence. To their original instinctive value as the
outcome of stimuli, and as themselves affording stimuli to responsive
behavior, is added a value for consciousness in so far as they enter
into those guiding situations by which intelligent behavior is
determined. And if they also serve to evoke, in the reciprocating
members of the social group, similar or allied emotional states, there
is thus added a further social bond, inasmuch as there are thus laid the
foundations of sympathy.
"What makes the old sow grunt and the piggies sing and whine?" said a
little girl to a portly, substantial farmer. "I suppose they does it for
company, my dear," was the simple and cautious reply. So far as
appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as man
could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be
regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose
of animal sounds. They are a means by which each indicates to others the
fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent,
retain their primary function. The chirping of grasshoppers, the song of
the cicada, the piping of frogs in the pool, the bleating of lambs at
the hour of dusk, the lowing of contented cattle, the call-notes of the
migrating host of birds--all these, whatever else they may be, are the
reassuring social links of sound, the grateful signs of kindred
presence. Arising thus in close relation to the primitive feelings of
social sympathy, they would naturally be called into play with special
force and suggestiveness at times of strong emotional excitement, and
the earliest differentiations would, we may well believe, be determined
along lines of emotional expression. Thus would originate mating cries,
male and female after their kind; and parental cries more or less
differentiated into those of mother and offspring, the deeper note of
the ewe differing little save in pitch and timbre from the bleating of
her lamb, while the cluck of the hen differs widely from the peeping
note of the chick in down. Thus, too, would arise the notes of anger and
combat, of fear and distress, of alarm and warning. If we call these the
instinctive language of emotional expression, we must remember that such
"language" differs markedly from the "language" of which the sentence is
the recognized unit.
It is, however, not improbable that, through association in the
conscious situation, sounds, having their origin in emotional expression
and evoking in others like emotional states, may acquire a new value in
suggesting, for example, the presence of particular enemies. An example
will best serve to indicate my meaning. The following is from H. B.
Medlicott:
In the early dawn of a grey morning I was geologizing along the
base of the Muhair Hills in South Behar, when all of a sudden
there was a stampede of many pigs from the fringe of the
jungle, with porcine shrieks of _sauve qui peut_ significance.
After a short run in the open they took to the jungle again,
and in a few minutes there was another uproar, but different in
sound and in action; there was a rush, presumably of the
fighting members, to the spot where the row began, and after
some seconds a large leopard sprang from the midst of the
scuffle. In a few bounds he was in the open, and stood looking
back, licking his chops. The pigs did not break cover, but
continued on their way. They were returning to their lair after
a night's feeding on the plain, several families having
combined for mutual protection; while the beasts of prey were
evidently waiting for the occasion. I was alone, and, though
armed, I did not care to beat up the ground to see if in either
case a kill had been effected. The numerous herd covered a
considerable space, and the scrub was thick. The prompt
concerted action must in each case have been started by the
special cry. I imagine that the first assailant was a tiger,
and the case was at once known to be hopeless, the cry
prompting instant flight, while in the second case the cry was
for defense. It can scarcely be doubted that in the first case
each adult pig had a vision of a tiger, and in the second of a
leopard or some minor foe.
If we accept Mr. Medlicott's interpretation as in the main correct, we
have in this case: (1) common action in social behavior, (2) community
of emotional state, and (3) the suggestion of natural enemies not
unfamiliar in the experience of the herd. It is a not improbable
hypothesis, therefore, that in the course of evolution the initial value
of uttered sounds is emotional; but that on this may be grafted in
further development the indication of particular enemies. If, for
example, the cry which prompts instant flight among the pigs is called
forth by a tiger, it is reasonable to suppose that this cry would give
rise to a representative generic image of that animal having its
influence on the conscious situation. But if the second cry, for
defense, was prompted sometimes by a leopard and sometimes by some other
minor foe, then this cry would not give rise to a representative image
of the same definiteness. Whether animals have the power of
intentionally differentiating the sounds they make to indicate different
objects is extremely doubtful. Can a dog bark in different tones to
indicate "cat" or "rat," as the case may be? Probably not. It may,
however, be asked why, if a pig may squeak differently, and thus,
perhaps, incidentally indicate on the one hand "tiger" and on the other
hand "leopard," should not a dog bark differently and thus indicate
appropriately "cat" or "rat"? Because it is assumed that the two
different cries in the pig are the instinctive expression of two
different emotional states, and Mr. Medlicott could distinguish them;
whereas, in the case of the dog, we can distinguish no difference
between his barking in the one case and the other, nor do the emotional
states appear to be differentiated. Of course there may be differences
which we have failed to detect. What may be regarded, however, as
improbable is the _intentional_ differentiation of sounds by barking in
different tones with the _purpose_ of indicating "cat" or "rat."
Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess are based on direct
association and refer to the here and the now. A dog may be able to
suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat;
but can a dog tell his neighbor of the delightful worry he enjoyed the
day before yesterday in the garden where the man with the biscuit tin
lives? Probably not, bark he never so expressively.
From the many anecdotes of dogs calling others to their assistance or
bringing others to those who feed them or treat them kindly, we may
indeed infer the existence of a social tendency and of the suggestive
effects of behavior, but we cannot derive conclusive evidence of
anything like descriptive communication.
Such intentional communication as is to be found in animals, if indeed
we may properly so call it, seems to arise by an association of the
performance of some act in a conscious situation involving further
behavior for its complete development. Thus the cat which touches the
handle of the door when it wishes to leave the room has had experience
in which the performance of this act has coalesced with a specific
development of the conscious situation. The case is similar when your
dog drops a ball or stick at your feet, wishing you to throw it for him
to fetch. Still, it is clear that such an act would be the perceptual
precursor of the deliberate conduct of the rational being by whom the
sign is definitely realized as a sign, the intentional meaning of which
is distinctly present to thought. This involves a judgment concerning
the sign as an object of thought; and this is probably beyond the
capacity of the dog. For, as Romanes himself says, "It is because the
human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself and thus to
constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought that it
is capable of judgment, whether in the act of conception or in that of
predication. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of
objectifying its own ideas; and therefore we have no evidence that any
animal is capable of judgment."
2. The Concept as the Medium of Human Communication[143]
There is a petrified philosophy in language, and if we examine the most
ancient word for "name," we find it is _nâman_ in Sanskrit, _nomen_ in
Latin, _namô_ in Gothic. This _nâman_ stands for _gnâman_, and is
derived from the root _gnâ_, to know, and meant originally that by which
we know a thing.
And how do we know things?
The first step toward the real knowledge, a step which, however small in
appearance, separates man forever from all other animals, is _the naming
of a thing_, or the making a thing knowable. All naming is
classification, bringing the individual under the general; and whatever
we know, whether empirically or scientifically, we know it by means of
our general ideas.
At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at the
first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within us, there
we see the true genesis of language. Analyze any word you like and you
will find that it expresses a general idea peculiar to the individual to
whom the name belongs. What is the meaning of moon? The measurer. What
is the meaning of sun? The begetter. What is the meaning of earth? The
ploughed.
If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was
conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by the
root _srip_.
An ancient word for man was the Sanskrit _marta_, the Greek _brotos_,
the Latin _mortalis_. _Marta_ means "he who dies," and it is remarkable
that, where everything else was changing, fading, and dying, this should
have been chosen as the distinguishing name for man.
There were many more names for man, as there were many names for all
things in ancient languages. Any feature that struck the observing mind
as peculiarly characteristic could be made to furnish a new name. In
common Sanskrit dictionaries we find 5 words for hand, 11 for light, 15
for cloud, 20 for moon, 26 for snake, 33 for slaughter, 35 for fire, 37
for sun. The sun might be called the bright, the warm, the golden, the
preserver, the destroyer, the wolf, the lion, the heavenly eye, the
father of light and life. Hence that superabundance of synonyms in
ancient dialects, and hence that struggle for life carried on among
these words, which led to the destruction of the less strong, the less
fertile, the less happy words, and ended in the triumph of _one_ as the
recognized and proper name for every object in every language. On a very
small scale this process of natural selection, or, as it would better be
called, elimination, may still be watched even in modern languages, that
is to say, even in languages so old and stricken in years as English and
French. What it was at the first burst of dialects we can only gather
from such isolated cases as when von Hammer counts 5,744 words all
relating to the camel.
The fact that every word is originally a predicate--that names, though
signs of individual conceptions, are all, without exception, derived
from general ideas--is one of the most important discoveries in the
science of language. It was known before that language is the
distinguishing characteristic of man; it was known also that the having
of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man
and brutes; but that these two were only different expressions of the
same fact was not known till the theory of roots had been established as
preferable to the theories both of onomatopoicia and of interjections.
But, though our modern philosophy did not know it, the ancient poets and
framers of language must have known it. For in Greek, language is
_logos_, but _logos_ means also reason, and _alogon_ was chosen as the
name and the most proper name, for brute. No animal, so far as we know,
thinks and speaks except man. Language and thought are inseparable.
Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are
nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word
is the thought incarnate.
What are the two problems left unsettled at the end of the _Science of
Language_: "How do mere cries become phonetic types?" and "How can
sensations be changed into concepts?" What are these two, if taken
together, but the highest problem of all philosophy, viz., "What is the
origin of reason?"
3. Writing as a Form of Communication[144]
The earliest stages of writing were those in which pictographic forms
were used; that is, a direct picture was drawn upon the writing surface,
reproducing as nearly as possible the kind of impression made upon the
observer by the object itself. To be sure, the drawing used to represent
the object was not an exact reproduction or full copy of the object, but
it was a fairly direct image. The visual memory image was thus aroused
by a direct perceptual appeal to the eye. Anyone could read a document
written in this pictograph form, if he had ever seen the objects to
which the pictures referred. There was no special relation between the
pictures or visual forms at this stage of development and the sounds
used in articulate language. Concrete examples of such writing are seen
in early monuments, where the moon is represented by the crescent, a
king by the drawing of a man wearing a crown.
The next stage of development in writing began when the pictographic
forms were reduced in complexity to the simplest possible lines. The
reduction of the picture to a few sketchy lines depended upon the
growing ability of the reader to contribute the necessary
interpretation. All that was needed in the figure was something which
would suggest the full picture to the mind. Indeed, it is probably true
that the full picture was not needed, even in the reader's
consciousness. Memory images are usually much simplified reproductions
of the perceptual facts. In writing we have a concrete expression of
this tendency of memory to lose its full reproductive form and to become
reduced to the point of the most meager contents for conscious thought.
The simplification of the written forms is attained very early, and is
seen even in the figures which are used by savage tribes. Thus, to
represent the number of an enemy's army, it is not necessary to draw
full figures of the forms of the enemy; it is enough if single straight
lines are drawn with some brief indication, perhaps at the beginning of
the series of lines, to show that these stand each for an individual
enemy. This simplification of the drawing leaves the written symbol with
very much larger possibilities of entering into new relations in the
mind of the reader. Instead, now, of being a specific drawing related to
a specific object, it invites by its simple character a number of
different interpretations. A straight line, for example, can represent
not only the number of an enemy's army but it can represent also the
number of sheep in a flock, or the number of tents in a village, or
anything else which is capable of enumeration. The use of a straight
line for these various purposes stimulates new mental developments. This
is shown by the fact that the development of the idea of the number
relation, as distinguished from the mass of possible relations in which
an object may stand, is greatly facilitated by this general written
symbol for numbers. The intimate relation between the development of
ideas on the one hand and the development of language on the other is
here very strikingly illustrated. The drawing becomes more useful
because it is associated with more elaborate ideas, while the ideas
develop because they find in the drawing a definite content which helps
to mark and give separate character to the idea.
As soon as the drawing began to lose its significance as a direct
perceptual reproduction of the object and took on new and broader
meanings through the associations which attached to it, the written form
became a symbol, rather than a direct appeal to visual memory. As a
symbol it stood for something which, in itself, it was not. The way was
thus opened for the written symbol to enter into relation with oral
speech, which is also a form of symbolism. Articulate sounds are
simplified forms of experience capable through association with ideas of
expressing meanings not directly related to the sounds themselves. When
the written symbol began to be related to the sound symbol, there was at
first a loose and irregular relation between them. The Egyptians seem to
have established such relations to some extent. They wrote at times with
pictures standing for sounds, as we now write in rebus puzzles. In such
puzzles the picture of an object is intended to call up in the mind of
the reader, not the special group of ideas appropriate to the object
represented in the picture, but rather the sound which serves as the
name of this object. When the sound is once suggested to the reader, he
is supposed to attend to that and to connect with it certain other
associations appropriate to the sound. To take a modern illustration, we
may, for example, use the picture of the eye to stand for the first
personal pronoun. The relationship between the picture and the idea for
which it is used is in this case through the sound of the name of the
object depicted. That the early alphabets are of this type of rebus
pictures appears in their names. The first three letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, for example, are named, respectively, _aleph_ which means ox,
_beth_ which means house, and _gimmel_ which means camel.
The complete development of a sound alphabet from this type of rebus
writing required, doubtless, much experimentation on the part of the
nations which succeeded in establishing the association. The Phoenicians
have generally been credited with the invention of the forms and
relations which we now use. Their contribution to civilization cannot be
overestimated. It consisted, not in the presentation of new material or
content to conscious experience, but rather in the bringing together by
association of groups of contents which, in their new relation,
transformed the whole process of thought and expression. They associated
visual and auditory content and gave to the visual factors a meaning
through association which was of such unique importance as to justify us
in describing the association as a new invention.
There are certain systems of writing which indicate that the type of
relationship which we use is not the only possible type of relationship.
The Chinese, for example, have continued to use simple symbols which are
related to complex sounds, not to elementary sounds, as are our own
letters. In Chinese writing the various symbols, though much corrupted
in form, stand each for an object. It is true that the forms of Chinese
writing have long since lost their direct relationship to the pictures
in which they originated. The present forms are simplified and
symbolical. So free has the symbolism become that the form has been
arbitrarily modified to make it possible for the writer to use freely
the crude tools with which the Chinaman does his writing. These
practical considerations could not have become operative, if the direct
pictographic character of the symbols had not long since given place to
a symbolical character which renders the figure important, not because
of what it shows in itself, but rather because of what it suggests to
the mind of the reader. The relation of the symbol to elementary sounds
has, however, never been established. This lack of association with
elementary sounds keeps the Chinese writing at a level much lower and
nearer to primitive pictographic forms than is our writing.
Whether we have a highly elaborated symbolical system, such as that
which appears in Chinese writing, or a form of writing which is related
to sound, the chief fact regarding writing, as regarding all language,
is that it depends for its value very much more upon the ideational
relations into which the symbols are brought in the individual's mind
than upon the impressions which they arouse.
The ideational associations which appear in developed language could
never have reached the elaborate form which they have at present if
there had not been social co-operation. The tendency of the individual
when left to himself is to drop back into the direct adjustments which
are appropriate to his own life. He might possibly develop articulation
to a certain extent for his own sake, but the chief impulse to the
development of language comes through intercourse with others. As we
have seen, the development of the simplest forms of communication, as in
animals, is a matter of social imitation. Writing is also an outgrowth
of social relations. It is extremely doubtful whether even the child of
civilized parents would ever have any sufficient motive for the
development of writing, if it were not for the social encouragement he
receives.
4. The Extension of Communication by Human Invention[145]
No one who is asked to name the agencies that weave the great web of
intellectual and material influences and counter-influences by which
modern humanity is combined into the unity of society will need much
reflection to give first rank to the newspaper, along with the post,
railroad, and telegraph.
In fact, the newspaper forms a link in the chain of modern commercial
machinery; it is one of those contrivances by which in society the
exchange of intellectual and material goods is facilitated. Yet it is
not an instrument of commercial intercourse in the sense of the post or
the railway, both of which have to do with the transport of persons,
goods, and news, but rather in the sense of the letter and circular.
These make the news capable of transport only because they are enabled
by the help of writing and printing to cut it adrift, as it were, from
its originator and give it corporeal independence.
However great the difference between letter, circular, and newspaper may
appear today, a little reflection shows that all three are essentially
similar products, originating in the necessity of communicating news and
in the employment of writing in its satisfaction. The sole difference
consists in the letter being addressed to individuals, the circular to
several specified persons, the newspaper to many unspecified persons.
Or, in other words, while letter and circular are instruments for the
private communication of news, the newspaper is an instrument for its
publication.
Today we are, of course, accustomed to the regular printing of the
newspaper and its periodical appearance at brief intervals. But neither
of these is an essential characteristic of the newspaper as a means of
news publication. On the contrary, it will become apparent directly that
the primitive paper from which this mighty instrument of commercial
intercourse is sprung appeared neither in printed form nor periodically,
but that it closely resembled the letter from which, indeed, it can
scarcely be distinguished. To be sure, repeated appearance at brief
intervals is involved in the very nature of news publication. For news
has value only so long as it is fresh; and to preserve for it the charm
of novelty its publication must follow in the footsteps of the events.
We shall, however, soon see that the periodicity of these intervals, as
far as it can be noticed in the infancy of journalism, depended upon the
regular recurrence of opportunities to transport the news, and was in no
way connected with the essential nature of the newspaper.
The regular collection and despatch of news presupposes a widespread
interest in public affairs, or an extensive area of trade exhibiting
numerous commercial connections and combinations of interest, or both at
once. Such interest is not realized until people are united by some more
or less extensive political organization into a certain community of
life-interest. The city republics of ancient times required no
newspaper; all their needs of publication could be met by the herald and
by inscriptions, as occasion demanded. Only when Roman supremacy had
embraced or subjected to its influence all the countries of the
Mediterranean was there need of some means by which those members of the
ruling class who had gone to the provinces as officials, tax-farmers,
and in other occupations, might receive the current news of the capital.
It is significant that Caesar, the creator of the military monarchy and
of the administrative centralization of Rome, is regarded as the founder
of the first contrivance resembling a newspaper.
Indeed, long before Caesar's consulate it had become customary for
Romans in the provinces to keep one or more correspondents at the
capital to send them written reports on the course of political movement
and on other events of the day. Such a correspondent was generally an
intelligent slave or freedman intimately acquainted with affairs at the
capital, who, moreover, often made a business of reporting for several.
He was thus a species of primitive reporter, differing from those of
today only in writing, not for a newspaper, but directly for readers. On
recommendation of their employers, these reporters enjoyed at times
admission even to the senate discussions. Antony kept such a man, whose
duty it was to report to him not merely on the senate's resolutions but
also on the speeches and votes of the senators. Cicero, when proconsul,
received through his friend, M. Caelius, the reports of a certain
Chrestus, but seems not to have been particularly well satisfied with
the latter's accounts of gladiatorial sports, law-court proceedings, and
the various pieces of city gossip. As in this case, such correspondence
never extended beyond a rude relation of facts that required
supplementing through letters from party friends of the absent person.
These friends, as we know from Cicero, supplied the real report on
political feeling.
The innovation made by Caesar consisted in instituting the publication
of a brief record of the transactions and resolutions of the senate, and
in his causing to be published the transactions of the assemblies of the
plebs, as well as other important matters of public concern.
The Germanic peoples who, after the Romans, assumed the lead in the
history of Europe were neither in civilization nor in political
organization fitted to maintain a similar constitution of the news
service; nor did they require it. All through the Middle Ages the
political and social life of men was bounded by a narrow horizon;
culture retired to the cloisters and for centuries affected only the
people of prominence. There were no trade interests beyond the narrow
walls of their own town or manor to draw men together. It is only in the
later centuries of the Middle Ages that extensive social combinations
once more appear. It is first the church, embracing with her hierarchy
all the countries of Germanic and Latin civilization, next the burgher
class with its city confederacies and common trade interests, and,
finally, as a counter-influence to these, the secular territorial
powers, who succeed in gradually realizing some form of union. In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries we notice the first traces of an
organized service for transmission of news and letters in the messengers
of monasteries, the universities, and the various spiritual dignitaries;
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have advanced to a
comprehensive, almost postlike, organization of local messenger bureaus
for the epistolary intercourse of traders and of municipal authorities.
And now, for the first time, we meet with the word _Zeitung_, or
newspaper. The word meant originally that which was happening at the
time (_Zeit_ = "time"), a present occurrence; then information on such
an event, a message, a report, news.
Venice was long regarded as the birthplace of the newspaper in the
modern acceptation of the word. As the channel of trade between the East
and the West, as the seat of a government that first organized the
political news service and the consular system in the modern sense, the
old city of lagoons formed a natural collecting center for important
news items from all lands of the known world. Even early in the
fifteenth century, as has been shown by the investigations of
Valentinelli, the librarian of St. Mark's Library, collections of news
had been made at the instance of the council of Venice regarding events
that had either occurred within the republic or been reported by
ambassadors, consuls, and officials, by ships' captains, merchants, and
the like. These were sent as circular despatches to the Venetian
representatives abroad to keep them posted on international affairs.
Such collections of news were called _fogli d'avvisi_.
The further development of news publication in the field that it has
occupied since the more general adoption of the printing-press has been
peculiar. At the outset the publisher of a periodical printed newspaper
differed in no wise from the publisher of any other printed work--for
instance, of a pamphlet or a book. He was but the multiplier and seller
of a literary product, over whose content he had no control. The
newspaper publisher marketed the regular post-news in its printed form
just as another publisher offered the public a herbal or an edition of
an old writer.
But this soon changed. It was readily perceived that the contents of a
newspaper number did not form an entity in the same sense as the
contents of a book or pamphlet. The news items there brought together,
taken from different sources, were of varying reliability. They needed
to be used judicially and critically: in this a political or religious
bias could find ready expression. In a still higher degree was this the
case when men began to discuss contemporary political questions in the
newspapers and to employ them as a medium for disseminating party
opinions.
This took place first in England during the Long Parliament and the
Revolution of 1640. The Netherlands and a part of the imperial free
towns of Germany followed later. In France the change was not
consummated before the era of the great Revolution: in most other
countries it occurred in the nineteenth century. The newspaper, from
being a mere vehicle for the publication of news, became an instrument
for supporting and shaping public opinion and a weapon of party
politics.
The effect of this upon the internal organization of the newspaper
undertaking was to introduce a third department, the _editorship_,
between news collecting and news publication. For the newspaper
publisher, however, it signified that from a mere seller of news he had
become a dealer in public opinion as well.
At first this meant nothing more than that the publisher was placed in a
position to shift a portion of the risk of his undertaking upon a party
organization, a circle of interested persons, or a government. If the
leanings of the paper were distasteful to the readers, they ceased to
buy the paper. Their wishes thus remained, in the final analysis, the
determining factor for the contents of the newspapers.
The gradually expanding circulation of the printed newspapers
nevertheless soon led to their employment by the authorities for making
public announcements. With this came, in the first quarter of the last
century, the extension of private announcements, which have now
attained, through the so-called advertising bureaus, some such
organization as political news-collecting possesses in the
correspondence bureaus.
The modern newspaper is a capitalistic enterprise, a sort of
news-factory in which a great number of people (correspondents, editors,
typesetters, correctors, machine-tenders, collectors of advertisements,
office clerks, messengers, etc.) are employed on wage, under a single
administration, at very specialized work. This paper produces wares for
an unknown circle of readers, from whom it is, furthermore, frequently
separated by intermediaries, such as delivery agencies and postal
institutions. The simple needs of the reader or of the circle of patrons
no longer determine the quality of these wares; it is now the very
complicated conditions of competition in the publication market. In this
market, however, as generally in wholesale markets, the consumers of the
goods, the newspaper readers, take no direct part; the determining
factors are the wholesale dealers and the speculators in news: the
governments, the telegraph bureaus dependent upon their special
correspondents, the political parties, artistic and scientific cliques,
men on 'change, and, last but not least, the advertising agencies and
large individual advertisers.
Each number of a great journal which appears today is a marvel of
economic division of labor, capitalistic organization, and mechanical
technique; it is an instrument of intellectual and economic intercourse,
in which the potencies of all other instruments of commerce--the
railway, the post, the telegraph, and the telephone--are united as in a
focus.
D. IMITATION
1. Definition of Imitation[146]
The term "imitation" is used in ordinary language to designate any
repetition of any act or thought which has been noted by an observer.
Thus one imitates the facial expression of another, or his mode of
speech. The term has been brought into prominence in scientific
discussions through the work of Gabriel Tarde, who in his _Les lois de
l'imitation_ points out that imitation is a fundamental fact underlying
all social development. The customs of society are imitated from
generation to generation. The fashions of the day are imitated by large
groups of people without any consciousness of the social solidarity
which is derived from this common mode of behavior. There is developed
through these various forms of imitation a body of experiences which is
common to all of the members of a given social group. In complex society
the various imitations which tend to set themselves up are frequently
found to be in conflict; thus the tendency toward elaborate fashions in
dress is constantly limited by the counter-tendency toward simpler
fashions. The conflict of tendencies leads to individual variations from
the example offered at any given time, and, as a result, there are new
examples to be followed. Complex social examples are thus products of
conflict.
This general doctrine of Tarde has been elaborated by a number of recent
writers. Royce calls attention to the fundamental importance of
imitation as a means of social inheritance. The same doctrine is taken
up by Baldwin in his _Mental Development in the Child and Race_, and in
_Social and Ethical Interpretations_. With these later writers,
imitation takes on a significance which is somewhat technical and
broader than the significance which it has either with Tarde or in the
ordinary use of the term. Baldwin uses the term to cover that case in
which an individual repeats an act because he has himself gone through
the act. In such a case one imitates himself and sets up what Baldwin
terms a circular reaction. The principle of imitation is thus introduced
into individual psychology as well as into general social psychology,
and the relation between the individual's acts and his own imagery is
brought under the same general principle as the individual's responses
to his social environment. The term "imitation" in this broader sense is
closely related to the processes of sympathy.
The term "social heredity" has very frequently been used in connection
with all of the processes here under discussion. Society tends to
perpetuate itself in the new individual in a fashion analogous to that
in which the physical characteristics of the earlier generation tend to
perpetuate themselves in the physical characteristics of the new
generation. Since modes of behavior, such as acts of courtesy, cannot be
transmitted through physical structure, they would tend to lapse if they
were not maintained through imitation from generation to generation.
Thus imitation gives uniformity to social practices and consequently is
to be treated as a form of supplementary inheritance extending beyond
physical inheritance and making effective the established forms of
social practice.
2. Attention, Interest, and Imitation[147]
Imitation is a process of very great importance for the development of
mental life in both men and animals. In its more complex forms it
presupposes trains of ideas; but in its essential features it is present
and operative at the perceptual level. It is largely through imitation
that the results of the experience of one generation are transmitted to
the next, so as to form the basis for further development. Where trains
of ideas play a relatively unimportant part, as in the case of animals,
imitation may be said to be the sole form of social tradition. In the
case of human beings, the thought of past generations is embodied in
language, institutions, machinery, and the like. This distinctively
human tradition presupposes trains of ideas in past generations, which
so mold the environment of a new generation that in apprehending and
adapting itself to this environment it must re-think the old trains of
thought. Tradition of this kind is not found in animal life, because the
animal mind does not proceed by way of trains of ideas. None the less,
the more intelligent animals depend largely on tradition. This tradition
consists essentially in imitation by the young of the actions of their
parents, or of other members of the community in which they are born.
The same directly imitative process, though it is very far from forming
the whole of social tradition in human beings, forms a very important
part of it.
a) _The imitative impulse._--We must distinguish between ability to
imitate and impulse to imitate. We may be already fully able to perform
an action, and the sight of it as performed by another may merely prompt
us to reproduce it. But the sight of an act performed by another may
also have an educational influence; it may not only stimulate us to do
what we are already able to do without its aid; it may also enable us to
do what we could not do without having an example to follow. When the
cough of one man sets another coughing, it is evident that imitation
here consists only in the impulse to follow suit. The second man does
not learn how to cough from the example of the first. He is simply
prompted to do on this particular occasion what he is otherwise quite
capable of doing. But if I am learning billiards and someone shows me by
his own example how to make a particular stroke, the case is different.
It is not his example which in the first instance prompts me to the
action. He merely shows the way to do what I already desire to do.
We have then first to discuss the nature of the imitative impulse--the
impulse to perform an action which arises from the perception of it as
performed by another.
This impulse is an affair of attentive consciousness. The perception of
an action prompts us to reproduce it when and so far as it excites
interest or is at least intimately connected with what does excite
interest. Further, the interest must be of such a nature that it is more
fully gratified by partially or wholly repeating the interesting action.
Thus imitation is a special development of attention. Attention is
always striving after a more vivid, more definite, and more complete
apprehension of its object. Imitation is a way in which this endeavor
may gratify itself when the interest in the object is of a certain kind.
It is obvious that we do not try to imitate all manner of actions,
without distinction, merely because they take place under our eyes. What
is familiar and commonplace or what for any other reason is unexciting
or insipid fails to stir us to re-enact it. It is otherwise with what is
strikingly novel or in any way impressive, so that our attention dwells
on it with relish or fascination. It is, of course, not true that
whatever act fixes attention prompts to imitation. This is only the case
where imitation helps attention, where it is, in fact, a special
development of attention. This is so when interest is directly
concentrated on the activity itself for its own sake rather than for the
sake of its possible consequences and the like ulterior motives. But it
is not necessary that the act in itself should be interesting; in a most
important class of cases the interest centers, not directly in the
external act imitated, but in something else with which this act is so
intimately connected as virtually to form a part of it. Thus there is a
tendency to imitate not only interesting acts but also the acts of
interesting persons. Men are apt to imitate the gestures and modes of
speech of those who excite their admiration or affection or some other
personal interest. Children imitate their parents or their leaders in
the playground. Even the mannerisms and tricks of a great man are often
unconsciously copied by those who regard him as a hero. In such
instances the primary interest is in the whole personality of the model;
but this is more vividly and distinctly brought before consciousness by
reproducing his external peculiarities. Our result, then, is that
interest in an action prompts to imitation in proportion to its
intensity, provided the interest is of a kind which will be gratified or
sustained by imitative activity.
b) _Learning by imitation._--Let us now turn to the other side of the
question. Let us consider the case in which the power of performing an
action is acquired in and by the process of imitation itself. Here there
is a general rule which is obvious when once it is pointed out. It is
part of the still more general rule that "to him that hath shall be
given." Our power of imitating the activity of another is strictly
proportioned to our pre-existing power of performing the same general
kind of action independently. For instance, one devoid of musical
faculty has practically no power of imitating the violin playing of
Joachim. Imitation may develop and improve a power which already exists,
but it cannot create it. Consider the child beginning for the first time
to write in a copybook. He learns by imitation; but it is only because
he has already some rudimentary ability to make such simple figures as
pothooks that the imitative process can get a start. At the outset, his
pothooks are very unlike the model set before him. Gradually he
improves; increased power of independent production gives step by step
increased power of imitation, until he approaches too closely the limits
of his capacity in this direction to make any further progress of an
appreciable kind.
But this is an incomplete account of the matter. The power of learning
by imitation is part of the general power of learning by experience; it
involves mental plasticity. An animal which starts life with congenital
tendencies and aptitudes of a fixed and stereotyped kind, so that they
admit of but little modification in the course of individual
development, has correspondingly little power of learning by imitation.
At higher levels of mental development the imitative impulse is far less
conspicuous because impulsive activity in general is checked and
overruled by activity organized in a unified system. Civilized men
imitate not so much because of immediate interest in the action imitated
as with a view to the attainment of desirable results.
3. The Three Levels of Sympathy[148]
Sympathy is not an instinct or a tendency, i.e., a group of co-ordinated
movements adapted to a particular end, and showing itself in
consciousness as an emotion, such as fear, anger, sex attraction; it is,
on the contrary, a highly generalized psycho-physiological property. To
the specialized character of each emotion it opposes a character of
almost unlimited plasticity. We have not to consider it under all its
aspects but as one of the most important manifestations of emotional
life, as the basis of the tender emotions, and one of the foundations of
social and moral existence.
a) _The first phase._--In its primitive form sympathy is reflex,
automatic, unconscious, or very slightly conscious; it is, according to
Bain, the tendency to produce in ourselves an attitude, a state, a
bodily movement which we perceive in another person. This is imitation
in its most rudimentary form. Between sympathy and imitation, at any
rate in this primitive period, I see only one difference of aspect:
sympathy everywhere marks the passive, receptive side of the phenomenon;
imitation, its active and motor side.
It manifests itself in animals forming aggregates (not societies), such
as a flock of sheep, or a pack of dogs who run, stop, bark all at the
same time, through a purely physical impulse of imitation; in man,
infectious laughter or yawning, walking in step, imitating the movements
of a rope-walker while watching him, feeling a shock in one's legs when
one sees a man falling, and a hundred other occurrences of this kind are
cases of physiological sympathy. It plays a great part in the psychology
of crowds, with their rapid attacks and sudden panics. In nervous
diseases, there is a superfluity of examples: epidemics of hysteric
fits, convulsive barking, hiccup, etc. I omit the mental maladies
(epidemics of suicide, double or triple madness) since we are only
considering the purely physiological stage.
To sum up, sympathy is originally a property of living matter: as there
is an organic memory and an organic sensitiveness, being those of the
tissues and ultimate elements which compose them, there is an organic
sympathy, made up of receptivity and imitative movements.
b) _The second phase._--The next phase is that of sympathy in the
psychological sense, necessarily accompanied by consciousness; it
creates in two or more individuals analogous emotional states. Such are
the cases in which we say that fear, indignation, joy, or sorrow are
communicated. It consists in feeling an emotion existing in another, and
is revealed to us by its physiological expression. This phase consists
of two stages.
(1) The first might be defined as psychological unison. If, during this
period of unison, we could read the minds of those who sympathize, we
should see a single emotional fact reflected in the consciousness of
several individuals. L. Noiré, in his book, _Ursprung der Sprache_, has
proposed the theory that language originated in community of action
among the earliest human beings. When working, marching, dancing,
rowing, they uttered (according to this writer) sounds which became the
appellatives of these different actions, or of various objects; and
these sounds, being uttered by all, must have been understood by all.
Whether this theory be correct or not (it has been accepted as such by
Max Müller), it will serve as an illustration. But this state of
sympathy does not by itself constitute a tie of affection or tenderness
between those who feel it; it only prepares the way for such an emotion.
It may be the basis of a certain social solidarity, because the same
internal states excite the same acts of a mechanical, exterior,
non-moral solidarity.
(2) The second stage is that of sympathy, in the restricted and popular
sense of the word. This consists of psychological unison, _plus_ a new
element: there is added another emotional manifestation, tender emotion
(benevolence, sympathy, pity, etc.). It is no longer sympathy pure and
simple, it is a binary compound. The common habit of considering
phenomena only under their higher and complete forms often misleads us
as to their origin and constitution. Moreover, in order to understand
that this is a case of duality--the fusion of two distinct elements--and
that our analysis is not a factitious one, it is sufficient to point out
that sympathy (in the etymological sense) may exist without any tender
emotion--nay, that it may exclude instead of excite it. According to
Lubbock, while ants carry away their wounded, bees--though forming a
society--are indifferent toward each other. It is well known that
gregarious animals nearly always shun and desert a wounded member of the
herd. Among men, how many there are who, when they see suffering, hasten
to withdraw themselves from the spectacle, in order to escape the pain
which it sympathetically awakens in them. This impulse may go to the
length of aversion, as typified by Dives in the Gospel. It is therefore
a complete psychological error to consider sympathy as capable, unaided,
of delivering men from egoism; it only takes the first step, and not
always that.
c) _The third phase._--Under its intellectual form, sympathy is an
agreement in feelings and actions, founded on unity of representation.
The law of development is summed up in Spencer's formula, "The degree
and range of sympathy depend on the clearness and extent of
representation." I should, however, add: on condition of being based on
an emotional temperament. This last is the source _par excellence_ of
sympathy, because it vibrates like an echo; the active temperament lends
itself less to such impulses, because it has so much to do in
manifesting its own individuality that it can scarcely manifest those of
others; finally, the phlegmatic temperament does so least of all,
because it presents a minimum of emotional life; like Leibnitz' monads,
it has no windows.
In passing from the emotional to the intellectual phase, sympathy gains
in extent and stability. In fact, emotional sympathy requires some
analogy in temperament or nature; it can scarcely be established between
the timid and the daring, between the cheerful and the melancholic; it
may be extended to all human beings and to the animals nearest us, but
not beyond them. On the contrary, it is the special attribute of
intelligence to seek resemblances or analogies everywhere, to unify; it
embraces the whole of nature. By the law of transfer (which we have
already studied) sympathy follows this invading march and comprehends
even inanimate objects, as in the case of the poet, who feels himself in
communion with the sea, the woods, the lakes, or the mountains. Besides,
intellectual sympathy participates in the relative fixity of
representation; we find a simple instance of this in animal societies,
such as those of the bees, where unity or sympathy among the members is
only maintained by the perception or representation of the queen.
4. Rational Sympathy[149]
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form
no idea of the manner in which they are affected but by conceiving what
we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is
upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease our senses will
never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry
us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can
form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty
help us to this any other way than by representing to us what would be
our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses
only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination
we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all
the same torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in some
measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his
sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is
not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home
to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at
last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of
what he feels. For, as to be in pain or distress of any kind excites the
most excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to imagine that we are in it
excites some degree of the same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity
or dulness of the conception.
That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others,
that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer that we come
either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be
demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought
sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed, and just
ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink
and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel
it in some measure and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob,
when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and
twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel
that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate
fibers and a weak constitution of body complain that in looking on the
sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets they are
apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the corresponding part of
their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those
wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any other
because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would
suffer if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and
if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the same
miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in
their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation
complained of. Men of the most robust make observe that in looking upon
sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which
proceeds from the same reason; that organ, being in the strongest man
more delicate than any other part of the body, is the weakest.
Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a
certain emotion in another person. The passions upon some occasions may
seem to be transfused from one man to another instantaneously and
antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person
principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in
the look and gestures of any person at once affect the spectator with
some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is,
to everybody that sees it, a cheerful object, as a sorrowful
countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one.
This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every
passion. There are some passions of which the expressions excite no
sort of sympathy, but, before we are acquainted with what gave occasion
to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The
furious behavior of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against
himself than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his
provocation, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive
anything like the passions which it excites. But we plainly see what is
the situation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they
may be exposed from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore,
sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed
to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in danger.
If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some degree of
the like emotions, it is because they suggest to us the general idea of
some good or bad fortune that has befallen the person in whom we observe
them: and in these passions this is sufficient to have some little
influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the person
who feels these emotions, of which the expressions do not, like those of
resentment, suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are
concerned and whose interests are opposite to his. The general idea of
good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who
has met with it; but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy
with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches
us to be more averse to enter into this passion, and, till informed of
its cause, to be disposed rather to take part against it.
Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are
informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General
lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer,
create rather a curiosity to inquire into his situation, along with some
disposition to sympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is
very sensible. The first question which we ask is, What has befallen
you? Till this be answered, though we are uneasy both from the vague
idea of his misfortune and still more from torturing ourselves with
conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very
considerable.
Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion
as from that of the situation which excites it. We sometimes feel for
another a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable,
because, when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our
breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality.
We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself
appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behavior, because
we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be
covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner.
Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes
mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark
of humanity, by far the most dreadful; and they behold that last stage
of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the
poor wretch who is in it laughs and sings, perhaps, and is altogether
insensible to his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels,
therefore, at the sight of such an object cannot be the reflection of
any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must
arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if
he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is
impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present
reason and judgment.
What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the meanings of her
infant, that, during the agony of disease, cannot express what it feels?
In her idea of what it suffers, she joins to its real helplessness her
own consciousness of that helplessness and her own terrors for the
unknown consequences of its disorder; and, out of all these, forms for
her own sorrow the most complete image of misery and distress. The
infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which
can never be great. With regard to the future it is perfectly secure in
its thoughtlessness and want of anxiety, the great tormentors of the
human breast, from which reason and philosophy will in vain attempt to
defend it when it grows up to a man.
But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited,
nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling
with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much shocked
as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all
our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love think themselves at
no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this
pleasure and for this pain. Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness
and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices
whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions because he is then
assured of that assistance and grieves whenever he observes the
contrary, because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the
pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon
such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can
be derived from any such self-interested consideration. A man is
mortified when, after having endeavored to divert the company, he looks
round and sees that nobody laughs at his jests but himself. On the
contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him and he
regards this correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the
greatest applause.
5. Art, Imitation, and Appreciation[150]
The investigation into the psychology of masses, as well as the
experiments on suggestive therapeutics, have proved to how great an
extent mental states may be transmitted from individual to individual by
unconscious imitation of the accompanying movements. The doctrine of
universal sympathy, a clear statement of which was given long ago in the
ethical theory of Adam Smith, has thus acquired a psychological
justification in the modern theories of imitative movement. Contemporary
science has at last learned to appreciate the fundamental importance of
imitation for the development of human culture. And some authors have
even gone so far as to endeavor to deduce all sociological laws from
this one principle. At the same time natural history has begun to pay
more and more attention to the indispensability of imitation for the
full development of instincts, as well as for training in those
activities which are the most necessary in life.
It is fortunate for the theory of art that the importance of the
imitative functions has thus been simultaneously acknowledged in various
departments of science. Whatever one may think of the somewhat audacious
generalizations which have been made in the recent application of this
new principle, it is incontestable that the aesthetic activities can be
understood and explained only by reference to the universal tendency to
imitate. It is also significant that writers on aesthetic had felt
themselves compelled to set up a theory of imitation long before
experimental psychologists had begun to turn their attention in this
direction. In Germany the enjoyment of form and form-relations has,
since Vischer's time, been interpreted as the result of the movements by
which, not only our eye, but also our whole body follows the outlines of
external things. In France Jouffroy stated the condition for the
receiving of aesthetic impressions to be a "power of internally
imitating the states which are externally manifested in living nature."
In England, finally, Vernon Lee and Anstruther Thompson have founded a
theory of beauty and ugliness upon this same psychical impulse to copy
in our own unconscious movements the forms of objects. And in the
writings of, for instance, Home, Hogarth, Dugald Stewart, and Spencer,
there can be found a multitude of isolated remarks on the influence
which is in a direct way exercised on our mental life by the perception
of lines and forms.
In most of these theories and observations, however, the imitative
activity has been noticed only in so far as it contributes to the
aesthetic delight which may be derived from sensual impressions. But its
importance is by no means so restricted as this; on the contrary, we
believe it to be a fundamental condition for the existence of intuition
itself. Without all these imperceptible tracing movements with which our
body accompanies the adaptation of the eye-muscles to the outlines of
external objects, our notions of depth, height, and distance, and so on,
would certainly be far less distinct than they are. On the other hand,
the habit of executing such movements has, so to say, brought the
external world within the sphere of the internal. The world has been
measured with man as a standard, and objects have been translated into
the language of mental experience. The impressions have hereby gained,
not only in emotional tone, but also in intellectual comprehensibility.
Greater still is the importance of imitation for our intuition of moving
objects. And a difficult movement itself is fully understood only when
it has been imitated, either internally or in actual outward activity.
The idea of a movement, therefore, is generally associated with an
arrested impulse to perform it. Closer introspection will show everyone
to how great a part our knowledge, even of persons, is built up of motor
elements. By unconscious and imperceptible copying in our own body the
external behavior of a man, we may learn to understand him with
benevolent or malevolent sympathy. And it will, no doubt, be admitted
by most readers that the reason why they know their friends and foes
better than they know anyone else is that they carry the remembrance of
them not only in their eyes, but in their whole body. When in idle
moments we find the memory of an absent friend surging up in our minds
with no apparent reason, we may often note, to our astonishment, that we
have just been unconsciously adopting one of his characteristic
attitudes, or imitating his peculiar gestures or gait.
It may, however, be objected that the above-mentioned instances refer
only to a particular class of individuals. In other minds, it will be
said, the world-picture is entirely built up of visual and acoustic
elements. It is also impossible to deny that the classification of minds
in different types, which modern psychology has introduced, is as
legitimate as it is advantageous for the purposes of research. But we
can hardly believe that such divisions have in view anything more than a
relative predominance of the several psychical elements. It is easily
understood that a man in whose store of memory visual or acoustic images
occupy the foremost place may be inclined to deny that motor sensations
of unconscious copying enter to any extent into his psychical
experience. But an exclusively visual world-image, if such a thing is
possible, must evidently be not only emotionally poorer, but also
intellectually less distinct and less complete, than an intuition, in
which such motor elements are included.
The importance of motor sensations in the psychology of knowledge is by
itself of no aesthetic interest. The question has been touched upon in
this connection only because of the illustration which it gives to the
imitation theory. If, as we believe is the case, it is really necessary,
for the purpose of acquiring a complete comprehension of things and
events, to "experience" them--that is to say, to pursue and seize upon
them, not only with that particular organ of sense to which they appeal,
but also by tracing movements of the whole body--then there is no need
to wonder at the universality of the imitative impulse. Imitation does
not only, according to this view, facilitate our training in useful
activities, and aid us in deriving an aesthetic delight from our
sensations; it serves also, and perhaps primarily, as an expedient for
the accommodating of ourselves to the external world, and for the
explaining of things by reference to ourselves. It is therefore natural
that imitative movements should occupy so great a place among the
activities of children and primitive men. And we can also understand why
this fundamental impulse, which has played so important a part in racial
as well as in individual education, may become so great as to be a
disease and dominate the whole of conscious life. As children we all
imitated before we comprehended, and we have learned to comprehend by
imitating. It is only when we have grown familiar by imitation with the
most important data of perception that we become capable of
appropriating knowledge in a more rational way. Although no adult has
any need to resort to external imitation in order to comprehend new
impressions, it is still only natural that in a pathological condition
he should relapse into the primitive imitative reaction. And it is
equally natural that an internal, i.e., arrested, imitation should take
place in all our perceptions. After this explanation of the universality
of this phenomenon we have no further need to occupy ourselves with the
general psychology of imitation. We have here only to take notice of its
importance for the communication of feeling.
As is well known, it is only in cases of abnormally increased
sensibility--for instance, in some of the stages of hypnotism and
thought transmission--that the motor counterpart of a mental state can
be imitated with such faithfulness and completeness that the imitator is
thereby enabled to partake of all the _intellectual_ elements of the
state existing in another. The hedonic qualities, on the other hand,
which are physiologically conditioned by much simpler motor
counterparts, may of course be transmitted with far greater perfection:
it is easier to suggest a pleasure than a thought. It is also evident
that it is the most general hedonic and volitional elements which have
been considered by the German authors on aesthetic in their theories on
internal imitation ("Die innere Nachahmung"). They seem to have thought
that the adoption of the attitudes and the performance of the movements
which usually accompany a given emotional state will also succeed to
some extent in producing a similar emotional state. This assumption is
perfectly legitimate, even if the connection between feeling and
movement be interpreted in the associative way. And it needs no
justification when the motor changes are considered as the physiological
correlate of the feeling itself.
Everyday experience affords many examples of the way in which feelings
are called into existence by the imitation of their expressive
movements. A child repeats the smiles and the laughter of its parents,
and can thus partake of their joy long before it is able to understand
its cause. Adult life naturally does not give us many opportunities of
observing this pure form of direct and almost automatic transmission.
But even in adult life we may often meet with an exchange of feeling
which seems almost independent of any intellectual communication. Lovers
know it, and intimate friends like the brothers Goncourt, to say nothing
of people who stand in so close a rapport with each other as a
hypnotiser and his subject. And even where there is no previous
sympathetic relation, a state of joy or sadness may often, if it is only
distinctly expressed, pass over, so to say, from the individual who has
been under the influence of its objective cause, to another who, as it
were, borrows the feeling, but remains unconscious of its cause. We
experience this phenomenon almost daily in the influence exerted upon us
by social intercourse, and even by those aspects of nature--for
instance, blue open sky or overhanging mountains--which naturally call
up in us the physical manifestation of emotional states. The coercive
force with which our surroundings--animate or inanimate--compel us to
adopt the feelings which are suggested by their attitudes, forms, or
movements, is perhaps as a rule too weak to be noticed by a
self-controlled, unemotional man. But if we want an example of this
influence at its strongest, we need but remember how difficult it is for
an individual to resist the contagion of collective feeling. On public
occasions the common mood, whether of joy or sorrow, is often
communicated even to those who were originally possessed by the opposite
feeling. So powerful is the infection of great excitement
that--according to M. Féré--even a perfectly sober man who takes part in
a drinking bout may often be tempted to join in the antics of his
drunken comrades in a sort of second-hand intoxication, "drunkenness by
induction." In the great mental epidemics of the Middle Ages this kind
of contagion operated with more fatal results than ever before or
afterward. But even in modern times a popular street riot may often show
us something of the same phenomenon. The great tumult in London in 1886
afforded, it is said, a good opportunity of observing how people who had
originally maintained an indifferent attitude were gradually carried
away by the general excitement, even to the extent of joining in the
outrages. In this instance the contagious effect of expressional
movements was undoubtedly facilitated by their connection with so
primary an impulse as that of rapine and destruction. But the case is
the same with all the activities which appear as the outward
manifestations of our strongest feeling-states. They all consist of
instinctive actions with which everyone is well familiar from his own
experience. It is therefore natural that anger, hate, or love may be
communicated almost automatically from an individual to masses, and from
masses to individuals.
Now that the principle of the interindividual diffusion of feeling has
been stated and explained, we may return to our main line of research
and examine its bearings on the expressional impulse. We have seen that
in the social surroundings of the individual there is enacted a process
resembling that which takes place within his own organism. Just as
functional modifications spread from organ to organ, just as wider and
wider zones of the system are brought into participation in the primary
enhancement or inhibition, so a feeling is diffused from an individual
to a circle of sympathisers who repeat its expressional movements. And
just as all the widened "somatic resonances" contribute to the primary
feeling-tone increased strength and increased definiteness, so must the
emotional state of an individual be enhanced by retroactive stimulation
from the expressions by which the state has, so to say, been continued
in others. By the reciprocal action of primary movements and borrowed
movements, which mutually imitate each other, the social expression
operates in the same way as the individual expression. And we are
entitled to consider it as a secondary result of the general
expressional impulse, that when mastered by an overpowering feeling we
seek enhancement or relief by retroaction from sympathisers, who
reproduce and in their expression represent the mental state by which we
are dominated.
In point of fact, we can observe in the manifestations of all strong
feelings which have not found a satisfactory relief in individual
expression, a pursuit of social resonance. A happy man wants to see glad
faces around him, in order that from their expression he may derive
further nourishment and increase for his own feeling. Hence the
benevolent attitude of mind which as a rule accompanies all strong and
pure joy. Hence also the widespread tendency to express joy by gifts or
hospitality. In moods of depression we similarly desire a response to
our feeling from our surroundings. In the depth of despair we may long
for a universal cataclysm to extend, as it were, our own pain. As joy
naturally makes men good, so pain often makes them hard and cruel. That
this is not always the case is a result of the increased power of
sympathy which we gain by every experienced pain. Moreover, we have need
of sympathetic rapport for our motor reactions against pain. All the
active manifestations of sorrow, despair, or anger which are not wholly
painful in themselves are facilitated by the reciprocal influence of
collective excitement. Thus all strong feelings, whether pleasurable or
painful, act as socialising factors. This socialising action may be
observed at all stages of development. Even the animals seek their
fellows in order to stimulate themselves and each other by the common
expression of an overpowering feeling. As has been remarked by Espinas,
the flocking together of the male birds during the pairing season is
perhaps as much due to this craving for mutual stimulation as to the
desire to compete for the favor of the hen. The howling choirs of the
macaws and the drum concerts of the chimpanzees are still better and
unmistakable instances of collective emotional expression. In man we
find the results of the same craving for social expression in the
gatherings for rejoicing or mourning which are to be met with in all
tribes, of all degrees of development. And as a still higher development
of the same fundamental impulse, there appears in man the artistic
activity.
The more conscious our craving for retroaction from sympathisers, the
more there must also be developed in us a conscious endeavor to cause
the feeling to be appropriated by as many as possible and as completely
as possible. The expressional impulse is not satisfied by the resonance
which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able to afford. Its
natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings under the
influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish the
refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful
echo--that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied
longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead to
artistic production. The work of art presents itself as the most
effective means by which the individual is enabled to convey to wider
and wider circles of sympathisers an emotional state similar to that by
which he is himself dominated.
E. SUGGESTION
1. A Sociological Definition of Suggestion[151]
The nature of suggestion manifestly consists not in any external
peculiarities whatever. It is based upon the peculiar kind of relation
of the person making the suggestion to the "ego" of the subject during
the reception and realization of the suggestion.
Suggestion, is, in general, one of many means of influence of man on man
that is exercised with or without intention on persons, who respond
either consciously or unconsciously.
For a closer acquaintance with what we call "suggestion," it may be
observed that our perceptive activities are divided into (a) active,
and (b) passive.
a) _Active perception._--In the first case the "ego" of the subject
necessarily takes a part, and according to the trend of our thinking or
to the environmental circumstances directs the attention to these or
those external impressions. These, since they enter the mind through the
participation of attention and will and through reflection and judgment,
are assimilated and permanently incorporated in the personal
consciousness or in our "ego." This type of perception leads to an
enrichment of our personal consciousness and lies at the bottom of our
points of view and convictions. The organization of more or less
definite convictions is the product of the process of reflection
instituted by active perception. These convictions, before they become
the possession of our personal consciousness, may conceal themselves
awhile in the so-called subconsciousness. They are capable of being
aroused at any moment at the desire of the "ego" whenever certain
experienced representations are reproduced.
b) _Passive perception._--In contrast to active perception we perceive
much from the environment in a passive manner without that participation
of the "ego." This occurs when our attention is diverted in any
particular direction or concentrated on a certain thought, and when its
continuity for one or another reason is broken up, which, for instance,
occurs in cases of so-called distraction. In these cases the object of
the perception does not enter into the personal consciousness, but it
makes its way into other spheres of our mind, which we call the general
consciousness. The general consciousness is to a certain degree
independent of the personal consciousness. For this reason everything
that enters into the general consciousness cannot be introduced at will
into the personal consciousness. Nevertheless products of the general
consciousness make their way into the sphere of the personal
consciousness, without awareness by it of their original derivation.
In passive perception, without any participation of attention, a whole
series of varied impressions flow in upon us and press in past our "ego"
directly to the general consciousness. These impressions are the sources
of those influences from the outer world so unintelligible even to
ourselves, which determine our emotional attitudes and those obscure
motives and impulses which often possess us in certain situations.
The general consciousness, in this way, plays a permanent rôle in the
spiritual life of the individual. Now and then an impression passively
received in the train of an accidental chain of ideas makes its way into
the sphere of the personal consciousness as a mental image, whose
novelty astounds us. In specific cases this image or illusion takes the
form of a peculiar voice, a vision, or even a hallucination, whose
origin undoubtedly lies in the general consciousness. When the personal
consciousness is in abeyance, as in sleep or in profound hypnosis, the
activity of the general consciousness comes into the foreground. The
activity of the general consciousness is limited neither by our ways of
viewing things nor by the conditions under which the personal
consciousness operates. On this account, in a dream and in profound
hypnosis acts appear feasible and possible which with our full personal
consciousness we would not dare to contemplate.
This division of our mind into a personal and a general consciousness
affords a basis for a clear understanding of the principles of
suggestion. The personal consciousness, the so-called "ego," aided by
the will and attention, largely controls the reception of external
impressions, influences the trend of our ideas, and determines the
execution of our voluntary behavior. Every impression that the personal
consciousness transmits to the mind is usually subject to a definite
criticism and remodeling which results in the development of our points
of view and of our convictions.
This mode of influence from the outer world upon our mind is that of
"logical conviction." As the final result of that inner reconstruction
of impressions appears always the conviction: "This is true, that
useful, inevitable, etc." We can say this inwardly when any
reconstruction of the impressions has been affected in us through the
activity of the personal consciousness. Many impressions get into our
mind without our remarking them. In case of distraction, when our
voluntary attention is in abeyance, the impression from without evades
our personal consciousness and enters the mind without coming into
contact with the "ego." Not through the front door, but--so to speak--up
the back steps, it gets, in this case, directly into the inner rooms of
the soul.
Suggestion may now be defined as the direct infection of one person by
another of certain mental states. In other words, suggestion is the
penetration or inoculation of a strange idea into the consciousness,
without direct immediate participation of the "ego" of the subject.
Moreover, the personal consciousness in general appears quite incapable
of rejecting the suggestion, even when the "ego" detects its
irrationality. Since the suggestion enters the mind without the active
aid of the "ego," it remains outside the borders of the personal
consciousness. All further effects of the suggestion, therefore, take
place without the control of the "ego."
By the term suggestion we do not usually understand the effect upon the
mind of the totality of external stimuli, but the influence of person
upon person which takes place through passive perception and is
therefore independent of the activity of the personal consciousness.
Suggestion is, moreover, to be distinguished from the other type of
influences operating through mental processes of attention and the
participation of the personal consciousness, which result in logical
convictions and the development of definite points of view.
Lowenfeld emphasized a distinction between the actual process of
"suggesting" and its result, which one simply calls "suggestion." It is
self-evident that these are two different processes, which should not be
mistaken for each other. A more adequate definition might be accepted,
which embraces at once the characteristic manner of the "suggesting,"
and the result of its activity.
Therefore for suggestion it is not alone the process itself that is
characteristic, or the kind of psychic influence, but also the result
of this reaction. For that reason I do not understand under "suggesting"
alone a definite sort and manner of influence upon man but at the same
time the eventual result of it; and under "suggestion" not only a
definite psychical result but to a certain degree also the manner in
which this result was obtained.
An essential element of the concept of suggestion is, first of all, a
pronounced directness of action. Whether a suggestion takes place
through words or through attitudes, impressions, or acts, whether it is
a case of a verbal or of a concrete suggestion, makes no difference here
so long as its effect is never obtained through logical conviction. On
the other hand, the suggestion is always immediately directed to the
mind by evading the personal consciousness, or at least without previous
recasting by the "ego" of the subject. This process represents a real
infection of ideas, feelings, emotions, or other psychophysical states.
In the same manner there arise somewhat similar mental states known as
auto-suggestion. These do not require an external influence for their
appearance but originate immediately in the mind itself. Such is the
case, for instance, when any sort of an image forces itself into the
consciousness as something complete, whether it is in the form of an
idea that suddenly emerges and dominates consciousness, or a vision, a
premonition, or the like.
In all these cases psychic influences which have arisen without external
stimulus have directly inoculated the mind, thereby evading the
criticism of the "ego" or of personal consciousness.
"Suggesting" signifies, therefore, to inoculate the mind of a person
more or less directly with ideas, feelings, emotions, and other
psychical states, in order that no opportunity is left for criticism and
consideration. Under "suggestion," on the other hand, is to be
understood that sort of direct inoculation of the mind of an individual
with ideas, feelings, emotions, and other psychophysical states which
evade his "ego," his personal self-consciousness, and his critical
attitude.
Now and then, especially in the French writers, one will find besides
"suggestion" the term "psychic contagion," under which, however, nothing
further than involuntary imitation is to be understood (compare A.
Vigouroux and P. Juquelier, _La contagion mentale_, Paris, 1905). If one
takes up the conception of suggestion in a wider sense, and considers
by it the possibility of involuntary suggestion in the way of example
and imitation, one will find that the conceptions of suggestion and of
psychic contagion depend upon each other most intimately, and to a great
extent are not definitely to be distinguished from each other. In any
case, it is to be maintained that a strict boundary between psychic
contagion and suggestion does not always exist, a fact which Vigouroux
and Juquelier in their paper have rightly emphasized.
2. The Subtler Forms of Suggestion[152]
In one very particular respect hypnotism has given us a lesson of the
greatest importance to psychology: it has proved that special
precautionary measures must be taken in planning psychological
experiments. The training of hypnotics has thrown light on this source
of error. A hypnotizer may, often without knowing it, by the tone of his
voice or by some slight movement cause the hypnotic to exhibit phenomena
that at first could only be produced by explicit verbal suggestion, and
that altogether the signs used by the hypnotizer to cause suggestions
may go on increasing in delicacy. A dangerous source of error is
provided by the hypnotic's endeavor to divine and obey the
experimenter's intentions. This observation has also proved useful in
non-hypnotic experiments. We certainly knew before the days of hypnotism
that the signs by which A betrays his thoughts to B may gradually become
more delicate. We see this, for example, in the case of the schoolboy,
who gradually learns how to detect from the slightest movement made by
his master whether the answer he gave was right or not. We find the same
sort of thing in the training of animals--the horse, for instance, in
which the rough methods at first employed are gradually toned down until
in the end an extremely slight movement made by the trainer produces the
same effect that the rougher movements did originally. But even if this
lessening in the intensity of the signals exists independently of
hypnosis, it is the latter that has shown us how easily neglect of this
factor may lead to erroneous conclusions being drawn. The suggestibility
of the hypnotic makes these infinitesimal signals specially dangerous in
his case. But when once this danger was recognized, greater attention
was paid to this source of error in non-hypnotic cases than before. It
is certain that many psychological experiments are vitiated by the fact
that the subject knows what the experimenter wishes. Results are thus
brought about that can only be looked upon as the effects of suggestion;
they do not depend on the external conditions of the experiment but on
what is passing in the mind of the subject.
An event which at the time of its occurrence created a considerable
commotion (I refer to the case of Clever Hans), will show how far we may
be led by neglecting the above lesson taught us by hypnotism. If the
Berlin psychologist Stumpf, the scientific director of the committee of
investigation, had but taken into consideration the teachings of
hypnotism, he would never have made the fiasco of admitting that the
horse, Clever Hans, had been educated like a boy, not trained like an
animal.
Clever Hans answered questions by tapping his hoof on the stage; and the
observers, more particularly the committee presided over by Stumpf,
believed that answers tapped out were the result of due deliberation on
the part of the horse, exactly as spiritists believe that the spirits
hold intelligent intercourse with them by means of "raps." One tap
denoted a, two taps b, three taps c, etc.; or, where numbers were
concerned, one tap signified 1, two taps 2, etc. In this way the animal
answered the most complicated questions. For instance, it apparently not
only solved such problems as 3 times 4 by tapping 12 times, and 6 times
3 by tapping 18 times, but even extracted square roots, distinguished
between concords and discords, also between ten different colors, and
was able to recognize the photographs of people; altogether, Clever Hans
was supposed to be at that time about upon a level with fifth-form boys
(the fifth form is the lowest form but one in a German gymnasium). After
investigating the matter, Stumpf and the members of his committee drew
up the following conjoint report, according to which only one of two
things was possible--either the horse could think and calculate
independently, or else he was under telepathic, perhaps occult,
influence:
The undersigned met together to decide whether there was any
trickery in the performance given by Herr v. Osten with his
horse, i.e., whether the latter was helped or influenced
intentionally. As the result of the exhaustive tests employed,
they have come to the unanimous conclusion that, apart from the
personal character of Herr v. Osten, with which most of them
were well acquainted, the precautions taken during the
investigation altogether precluded any such assumption.
Notwithstanding the most careful observation, they were well
unable to detect any gestures, movements, or other intimations
that might serve as signs to the horse. To exclude the possible
influence of involuntary movements on the part of spectators, a
series of experiments was carried out solely in the presence of
Herr Busch, councilor of commissions. In some of these
experiments, tricks of the kind usually employed by trainers
were, in his judgment as an expert, excluded. Another series of
experiments was so arranged that Herr v. Osten himself could
not know the answer to the question he was putting to the
horse. From previous personal observations, moreover, the
majority of the undersigned knew of numerous individual cases
in which other persons had received correct answers in the
momentary absence of Herr v. Osten and Herr Schillings. These
cases also included some in which the questioner was either
ignorant of the solution or only had an erroneous notion of
what it should be. Finally, some of the undersigned have a
personal knowledge of Herr v. Osten's method, which is
essentially different from ordinary "training" and is copied
from the system of instruction employed in primary schools. In
the opinion of the undersigned, the collective results of these
observations show that even unintentional signs of the kind at
present known were excluded. It is their unanimous opinion that
we have here to deal with a case that differs in principle from
all former and apparently similar cases; that it has nothing to
do with "training" in the accepted sense of the word, and that
it is consequently deserving of earnest and searching
scientific investigation. Berlin, September 12, 1904. [Here
follow the signatures, among which is that of Privy Councilor
Dr. C. Stumpf, university professor, director of the
Psychological Institute, member of the Berlin Academy of
Sciences.]
Anyone who has done critical work in the domain of hypnotism after the
manner insisted on by the Nancy school cannot help considering Stumpf's
method of investigation erroneous from the very outset. A first source
of error that had to be considered was that someone present--it
might have been Herr v. Osten or it might have been anyone
else--unintentionally had given the horse a sign when to stop tapping.
It cannot be considered sufficient, as stated in Stumpf's report, that
Herr v. Osten did not know the answer; no one should be present who
knows it. This is the first condition to be fulfilled when making such
experiments. Anybody who has been engaged in training hypnotized
subjects knows that these insignificant signs constitute one of the
chief sources of error. Some of the leading modern investigators in the
domain of hypnotism--Charcot and Heidenhain, for instance--were misled
by them at the time they thought they had discovered new physical
reflexes in hypnosis. But in 1904, by which time suggestion had been
sufficiently investigated to prevent such an occurrence, a psychologist
should not have fallen into an error that had been sufficiently made
more than twenty years previously. But the main point is this: signs
that are imperceptible to others are nevertheless perceived by a subject
trained to do so, no matter whether that subject be a human being or an
animal.
3. Social Suggestion and Mass or "Corporate" Action[153]
In most cases the crowd naturally is under leaders, who, with an
instinctive consciousness of the importance and strength of the crowd,
seek to direct it much more through the power of suggestion than by
sound conviction.
It is conceivable, therefore, that anyone who understands how to arrest
the attention of the crowd, may always influence it to do great deeds,
as history, indeed, sufficiently witnesses. One may recall from the
history of Russia Minin, who with a slogan saved his native land from
the gravest danger. His "Pawn your wife and child, and free your
fatherland" necessarily acted as a powerful suggestion on the already
intense crowd. How the crowd and its sentiments may be controlled is
indicated in the following account by Boris Sidis:
On the 11th of August, 1895, there took place in the open air a
meeting at Old Orchard, Maine. The business at hand was a
collection for missionary purposes. The preacher resorted to
the following suggestions: "The most remarkable remembrance
which I have of foreign lands is that of multitudes, the waves
of lost humanity who ceaselessly are shattered on the shores of
eternity. How despairing are they, how poor in love--their
religion knows no joy, no pleasure, nor song. Once I heard a
Chinaman say why he was a Christian. It seemed to him that he
lay in a deep abyss, out of which he could not escape. Have you
ever wept for the sake of the lost world, as did Jesus Christ?
If not, then woe to you. Your religion is then only a dream and
a blind. We see Christ test his disciples. Will he take them
with him? My beloved, today he will test you. [Indirect
suggestion.] He could convert a thousand millionaires, but he
gives you an opportunity to be saved. [More direct suggestion.]
Are you strong enough in faith? [Here follows a discussion
about questions of faith.] Without faith God can do no great
things. I believe that Jesus will appear to them who believe
firmly in him. My dear ones, if only you give for the sake of
God, you have become participants in the faith. [Still more
direct suggestion.] The youth with the five loaves and the two
little fishes [the story follows]. When everything was ended,
he did not lose his loaves; there were twelve baskets left
over. O my dear ones, how will that return! Sometime the King
of Kings will call to you and give you an empire of glory, and
simply because you have had a little faith in him. It is a day
of much import to you. Sometime God will show us how much
better he has guarded our treasure than we ourselves." The
suggestion had the desired effect. Money streamed from all
sides; hundreds became thousands, tens of thousands. The crowd
gave seventy thousand dollars.
Of analogous importance are the factors of suggestions in wars, where
the armies go to brilliant victories. Discipline and the sense of duty
unite the troops into a single mighty giant's body. To develop its full
strength, however, this body needs some inspiration through a suggested
idea, which finds an active echo in the hearts of the soldiers.
Maintenance of the warlike spirit in decisive moments is one of the most
important problems for the ingenious general.
Even when the last ray of hope for victory seems to have disappeared,
the call of an honored war chief, like a suggestive spark, may fire the
hosts to self-sacrifice and heroism. A trumpet signal, a cry "hurrah,"
the melody of the national hymn, can here at the decisive moment have
incalculable effects. There is no need to recall the rôle of the
"Marsellaise" in the days of the French Revolution. The agencies of
suggestion in such cases make possible, provided that they are only able
to remove the feeling of hopelessness, results which a moment before are
neither to be anticipated nor expected. Where will and the sense of duty
alone seem powerless, the mechanisms of suggestion may develop
surprising effects.
Excited masses are, it is well known, capable of the most inhuman
behavior, and indeed for the very reason that, instead of sound logic,
automatism and impulsiveness have entered in as direct results of
suggestion. The modern barbarities of the Americans in the shape of
lynch law for criminals or those who are only under a suspicion of a
crime redound to the shame of the land of freedom, but find their full
explanation in that impulsiveness of the crowd which knows no mercy.
The multitude can, therefore, ever be led according to the content of
the ideas suggested to it, as well to sublime and noble deeds as, on the
other hand, to expressions of the lower and barbaric instincts. That is
the art of manipulating the masses.
It is a mistake to regard popular assemblies who have adopted a certain
uniform idea simply as a sum of single elements, as is now and then
attempted. For one is dealing in such cases, not with accidental, but
with actual psychical, processes of fusion, which reciprocal suggestion
is to a high degree effective in establishing and maintaining. The
aggressiveness of the single elements of the mass arrives in this at
their high point at one and the same time, and with complete spiritual
unanimity the mass can now act as _one_ man; it moves, then, like one
enormous social body, which unites in itself the thoughts and feelings
of all by the very fact that there is a temper of mind common to all.
Easily, however, as the crowd is to excite to the highest degrees of
activity, as quickly--indeed, much more quickly--does it allow itself,
as we have already seen, to be dispersed by a panic. Here too the panic
rests entirely on suggestion, contra-suggestion, and the instinct of
imitation, not on logic and conviction. Automatism, not intelligence, is
the moving factor therein.
Other, but quite generally favorable, conditions for suggestions are
universally at hand in the human society, whose individual members in
contrast to the crowd are physically separated from each other but stand
in a spiritual alliance to each other. Here obviously those preliminary
conditions for the dissemination of psychical infections are lacking as
they exist in the crowd, and the instruments of the voice, of mimicry,
of gestures, which often fire the passions with lightning rapidity, are
not allowed to assert themselves. There exists much rather a certain
spiritual cohesion on the ground perhaps of common impressions
(theatrical representations), a similar direction of thoughts (articles
in periodicals, etc.). These conditions are quite sufficient to prepare
the foundation on which similar feelings propagate themselves from
individual to individual by the method of suggestion and
auto-suggestion, and similar decisions for many are matured.
Things occur here more slowly, more peacefully, without those passionate
outbreaks to which the crowd is subjected; but this slow infection
establishes itself all the more surely in the feelings, while the
infection of the crowd often only continues for a time until the latter
is broken up.
Moreover, such contagious examples in the public do not usually lead to
such unexpected movements as they easily induce in the crowd. But here,
too, the infection frequently acts in defiance of a man's sound
intelligence; complete points of view are accepted upon trust and faith,
without further discussion, and frequently immature resolutions are
formed. On the boards representing the stage of the world there are ever
moving idols, who after the first storm of admiration which they call
out, sink back into oblivion. The fame of the people's leaders maintains
itself in quite the same way by means of psychical infection through the
similar national interest of a unified group. It has often happened that
their brightness was extinguished with the first opposition which the
masses saw setting its face against their wishes and ideals. What we,
however, see in close popular masses recurs to a certain degree in every
social milieu, in every larger society.
Between the single elements of such social spheres there occur
uninterrupted psychical infections and contra-infections. Ever according
to the nature of the material of the infection that has been received,
the individual feels himself attracted to the sublime and the noble, or
to the lower and bestial. Is, then, the intercourse between teacher and
pupil, between friends, between lovers, uninfluenced by reciprocal
suggestion? Suicide pacts and other mutual acts present a certain
participation of interacting suggestion. Yet more. Hardly a single deed
whatever occurs that stands out over the everyday, hardly a crime is
committed, without the concurrence of third persons, direct or indirect,
not unseldom bearing a likeness to the effects of suggestion.
We must here admit that Tarde was right when he said that it is less
difficult to find crimes of the crowd than to discover crimes which were
not such and which would indicate no sort of promotion or participation
of the environment. That is true to such a degree that one may ask
whether there are any individual crimes at all, as the question is also
conceivable whether there are any works of genius which do not have a
collective character.
Many believe that crimes are always pondered. A closer insight into the
behavior of criminals testifies, however, in many cases that even when
there is a long period of indecision, a single encouraging word from the
environment, an example with a suggestive effect, is quite sufficient to
scatter all considerations and to bring the criminal intention to the
deed. In organized societies, too, a mere nod from the chief may often
lead with magic power to a crime.
The ideas, efforts, and behavior of the individual may by no means be
looked on as something sharply distinct, individually peculiar, since
from the form and manner of these ideas, efforts, and behavior, there
shines forth ever, more or less, the influence of the milieu.
In close connection with this fact there stands also the so-called
astringent effect of the milieu upon the individuals who are incapable
of rising out of their environment, of stepping out of it. In society
that bacillus for which one has found the name "suggestion" appears
certainly as a leveling element, and, accordingly, whether the
individual stands higher or lower than his environment, whether he
becomes worse or better under its influence, he always loses or gains
something from the contact with others. This is the basis of the great
importance of suggestion as a factor in imposing a social uniformity
upon individuals.
The power of suggestion and contra-suggestion, however, extends yet
further. It enhances sentiments and aims and enkindles the activity of
the masses to an unusual degree.
Many historical personages who knew how to embody in themselves the
emotions and the desires of the masses--we may think of Jeanne d'Arc,
Mahomet, Peter the Great, Napoleon I--were surrounded with a nimbus by
the more or less blind belief of the people in their genius; this
frequently acted with suggestive power upon the surrounding company
which it carried away with a magic force to its leaders, and supported
and aided the mission historically vested in the latter by means of
their spiritual superiority. A nod from a beloved leader of any army is
sufficient to enkindle anew the courage of the regiment and to lead them
irresistibly into sure death.
Many, it is well known, are still inclined to deny the individual
personality any influence upon the course of historic events. The
individual is to them only an expression of the views of the mass, an
embodiment of the epoch, something, therefore, that cannot actively
strike at the course of history; he is much rather himself heaved up out
of the mass by historic events, which, unaffected by the individual,
proceed in the courses they have themselves chosen.
We forget in such a theory the influences of the suggestive factors
which, independently of endowments and of energy, appear as a mighty
lever in the hands of the fortunately situated nature and of those
created to be the rulers of the masses. That the individual reflects his
environment and his time, that the events of world-history only take
their course upon an appropriately prepared basis and under
appropriately favorable circumstances, no one will deny. There rests,
however, in the masters of speech and writing, in the demagogues and the
favorites of the people, in the great generals and statesmen, an inner
power which welds together the masses for battle for an ideal, sweeps
them away to heroism, and fires them to do deeds which leave enduring
impressions in the history of humanity.
I believe, therefore, that suggestion as an active agent should be the
object of the most attentive study for the historians and the
sociologists. Where this factor is not reckoned with, a whole series of
historical and social phenomena is threatened with the danger of
incomplete, insufficient, and perhaps even incorrect elucidation.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. The Process of Interaction
The concept of universal interaction was first formulated in philosophy.
Kant listed community or reciprocity among his dynamic categories. In
the Herbartian theory of a world of coexisting individuals, the notion
of reciprocal action was central. The distinctive contribution of Lotze
was his recognition that interaction of the parts implies the unity of
the whole since external action implies internal changes in the
interacting objects. Ormond in his book _The Foundations of Knowledge_
completes this philosophical conception by embodying in it a conclusion
based on social psychology. Just as society is constituted by
interacting persons whose innermost nature, as a result of interaction,
is internal to each, so the universe is constituted by the totality of
interacting units internally predisposed to interaction as elements and
products of the process.
In sociology, Gumplowicz arrived at the notions of a "natural social
process" and of "reciprocal action of heterogeneous elements" in his
study of the conflict of races. Ratzenhofer, Simmel, and Small place the
social process and socialization central in their systems of sociology.
Cooley's recent book _The Social Process_ is an intimate and sympathetic
exposition of "interaction" and the "social process." "Society is a
complex of forms or processes each of which is living and growing by
interaction with the others, the whole being so unified that what takes
place in one part affects all the rest. It is a vast tissue of
reciprocal activity, differentiated into innumerable systems, some of
them quite distinct, others not readily traceable, and all interwoven to
such a degree that you see different systems according to the point of
view you take."[154]
This brief résumé of the general literature upon the social process and
social interaction is introductory to an examination of the more
concrete material upon communication, imitation, and suggestion.
2. Communication
"Many works have been written on Expression, but a greater number on
Physiognomy" wrote Charles Darwin in 1872. Physiognomy, or the
interpretation of character through the observation of the features, has
long been relegated by the scientific world to the limbo occupied by
astrology, alchemy, phrenology, and the practice of charlatans.
While positive contributions to an appreciation of human expression were
made before Darwin, as by Sir Charles Bell, Pierre Gratiolet, and Dr.
Piderit, his volume on _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals_ marked an epoch in the thinking upon the subject. Although his
three principles of utility, antithesis, and direct nervous discharge to
explain the signs of emotions may be open to question, as the
physiological psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt, asserts, the great value of
his contribution is generally conceded. His convincing demonstration of
the universal similarity of emotional expression in the various human
races, a similarity based on a common human inheritance, prepared the
way for further study.
Darwin assumed that the emotion was a mental state which preceded and
caused its expression. According to the findings of later observation,
popularly known as the James-Lange Theory, the emotion is the mental
sign of a behavior change whose external aspects constitute the
so-called "expression." The important point brought out by this new view
of the emotion was an emphasis upon the nature of physiological changes
involved in emotional response. Certain stimuli affect visceral
processes and thereby modify the perception of external objects.
The impetus to research upon this subject given by Darwin was first
manifest in the reports of observation upon the expression of different
emotions. Fear, anger, joy, were made the subjects of individual
monographs. Several brilliant essays, as those by Sully, Dugas, and
Bergson, appeared in one field alone, that of laughter. In the last
decade there has been a distinct tendency toward the experimental study
of the physiological and chemical changes which constitute the inner
aspect of emotional responses, as for example, the report of Cannon upon
his studies in his book _Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and
Rage_.
Simultaneous with this study of the physiological aspect of the
emotional responses went further observation of its expression, the
manifestation of the emotion. The research upon the communication of
emotions and ideas proceeded from natural signs to gesture and finally
to language. Genetic psychologists pointed out that the natural gesture
is an abbreviated act. Mallery's investigation upon "Sign Language among
North American Indians Compared with that among Other Peoples and Deaf
Mutes" disclosed the high development of communication by gestures among
Indian tribes. Wilhelm Wundt in his study of the origin of speech
indicated the intimate relation between language and gesture in his
conclusion that speech is vocal gesture. Similarly research in the
origin of writing derives it, as indicated earlier in this chapter,
through the intermediate form of pictographs from pictures.
The significance for social life of the extension of communication
through inventions has impressed ethnologists, historians, and
sociologists. The ethnologist determines the beginnings of ancient
civilization by the invention of writing. Historians have noted and
emphasized the relation of the printing press to the transition from
medieval to modern society. Graham Wallas in his _Great Society_
interprets modern society as a creation of the machine and of the
artificial means of communication.
Sociological interest in language and writing is turning from studies of
origins to investigations of their function in group life. Material is
now available which indicates the extent to which the group may be
studied through its language. Accordingly the point of view for the
study of orthodox speech, or "correct" English, is that of the
continuity of society; just as the standpoint for the study of heterodox
language, or "slang," is that of the life of the group at the moment.
The significance of the fact that "every group has its own language" is
being recognized in its bearings upon research. Studies of dialects of
isolated groups, of the argot of social classes, of the technical terms
of occupational groups, of the precise terminology of scientific groups
suggest the wide range of concrete materials. The expression "different
universes of discourse" indicates how communication separates as well as
unites persons and groups.
3. Imitation
Bagehot's _Physics and Politics_ published in 1872, with its chapter on
"Imitation," was the first serious account of the nature of the rôle of
imitation in social life. Gabriel Tarde, a French magistrate, becoming
interested in imitation as an explanation of the behavior of criminals,
undertook an extensive observation of its effects in the entire field of
human activities. In his book _Laws of Imitation_, published in 1890, he
made imitation synonymous with all intermental activity. "I have always
given it (imitation) a very precise and characteristic meaning, that of
the action at a distance of one mind upon another.... By imitation I
mean every impression of interpsychical photography, so to speak, willed
or not willed, passive or active."[155] "The unvarying characteristic of
every social fact whatsoever is that it is imitative, and this
characteristic belongs exclusively to social facts."[156]
In this unwarranted extension of the concept of imitation Tarde
undeniably had committed the unpardonable sin of science, i.e., he
substituted for the careful study and patient observation of imitative
behavior, easy and glittering generalizations upon uniformities in
society. Contributions to an understanding of the actual process of
imitation came from psychologists. Baldwin brought forward the concept
of circular reaction to explain the interrelation of stimulus and
response in imitation. He also indicated the place of imitation in
personal development in his description of the dialectic of personal
growth where the self develops in a process of give-and-take with other
selves. Dewey, Stout, Mead, Henderson, and others, emphasizing the
futility of the mystical explanation of imitation by imitation, have
pointed out the influence of interest and attention upon imitation as a
learning process. Mead, with keen analysis of the social situation,
interprets imitation as the process by which the person practices rôles
in social life. The studies of Thorndike may be mentioned as
representative of the important experimental research upon this subject.
4. Suggestion
The reflective study of imitation originated in attempts at the
explanation of uniformities in the behavior of individuals. Research in
suggestion began in the narrow but mysterious field of the occult. In
1765 Mesmer secured widespread attention by advancing the theory that
heavenly bodies influence human beings by means of a subtle fluid which
he called "animal magnetism." Abbé Faria, who came to Paris from India
in 1814-15, demonstrated by experiments that the cause of the hypnotic
sleep was subjective. With the experiments in 1841 of Dr. James Braid,
the originator of the term "hypnotism," the scientific phase of the
development of hypnotism began. The acceptance of the facts of hypnotism
by the scientific world was the result of the work of Charcot and his
students of the so-called Nancy School of Psychology.
From the study of hypnotism to observation upon the rôle of suggestion
in social life was a short step. Binet, Sidis, Münsterberg have
formulated psychological definitions of suggestion and indicated its
significance for an understanding of so-called crowd phenomena in human
behavior. Bechterew in his monograph _Die Bedeutung der Suggestion im
Sozialen Leben_ has presented an interpretation of distinct value for
sociological research. At the present time there are many promising
developments in the study of suggestion in special fields, such as
advertising, leadership, politics, religion.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. INTERACTION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION
(1) Lotze, Hermann. _Metaphysic._ Vol. I, chap, vi, "The Unity of
Things." Oxford, 1887.
(2) Ormond, Alexander T. _Foundations of Knowledge._ Chap, vii,
"Community or Interaction." London and New York, 1900.
(3) Gumplowicz, L. _Der Rassenkampf._ Sociologische Untersuchungen. Pp.
158-75. Innsbruck, 1883.
(4) Simmel, Georg. "Über sociale Differenzierung, sociologische und
psychologische Untersuchungen." _Staats- und Socialwissenschaftliche
Forschungen_, edited by G. Schmoller. Vol. X. Leipzig, 1891.
(5) Royce, J. _The World and the Individual._ 2d ser. "Nature, Man, and
the Moral Order," Lecture IV. "Physical and Social Reality." London and
New York, 1901.
(6) Boodin, J. E. "Social Systems," _American Journal of Sociology_,
XXIII (May, 1918), 705-34.
(7) Tosti, Gustavo. "Social Psychology and Sociology," _The
Psychological Review_, V (July, 1898), 348-61.
(8) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chicago, 1905.
(9) Cooley, Charles H. _The Social Process._ New York, 1918.
II. SOCIAL INTERACTION AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
(1) Marshall, Henry R. _Consciousness._ Chap, vii, "Of Consciousnesses
More Complex than Human Consciousnesses." New York and London, 1909.
(2) Baldwin, James Mark. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental
Development._ A study in social psychology. New York and London, 1906.
(3) Royce, Josiah. "Self-Consciousness, Social Consciousness and
Nature," _Philosophical Review_, IV (1895), 465-85; 577-602.
(4) ----. "The External World and the Social Consciousness,"
_Philosophical Review_, III (1894), 513-45.
(5) Worms, René. _Organisme et Société._ Chap. x, "Fonctions de
Relation." Paris, 1896.
(6) Mead, G. H. "Social Consciousness and the Consciousness of Meaning,"
_Psychological Bulletin_, VII (Dec. 15, 1910), 397-405.
(7) ----. "Psychology of Social Consciousness Implied in Instruction,"
_Science_, N. S., XXI (1910), 688-93.
(8) Novicow, J. _Conscience et volonté sociales._ Paris, 1897.
(9) McDougall, W. _The Group Mind._ A sketch of the principles of
collective psychology with some attempt to apply them to the
interpretation of national life and character. New York and London,
1920.
(10) Ames, Edward S. "Religion in Terms of Social Consciousness," _The
Journal of Religion_, I (1921), 264-70.
(11) Burgess, E. W. _The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution._
Chicago, 1916.
(12) Maciver, R. M. _Community._ A sociological study, being an attempt
to set out the nature and fundamental laws of social life. London, 1917.
III. COMMUNICATION AND INTERACTION
A. _The Emotions and Emotional Expression_
(1) James, William. _The Principles of Psychology._ Vol. II, chap. xxv.
New York, 1896.
(2) Dewey, John. "The Theory of Emotion," _Psychological Review_, I
(1894), 553-69; II (1895), 13-32.
(3) Wundt, Wilhelm. _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie._ 3 vols.
6th ed. Leipzig, 1908-11.
(4) Ribot, T. _The Psychology of the Emotions._ London and New York,
1898.
(5) Darwin, Charles. _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals._ London and New York, 1873.
(6) Rudolph, Heinrich. _Der Ausdruck der Gemütsbewegungen des Menschen
dargestellt und erklärt auf Grund der Urformen-und der Gesetze des
Ausdrucks und der Erregungen._ Dresden, 1903.
(7) Piderit, T. _Mimik und Physiognomik._ Rev. ed. Detmold, 1886.
(8) Cannon, Walter B. _Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage._
An account of recent researches into the function of emotional
excitement. New York and London, 1915.
(9) Hirn, Yrjö. _The Origins of Art._ A psychological and sociological,
inquiry. London and New York, 1900.
(10) Bergson, H. _Le Rire._ Essai sur la signification du comique.
Paris, 1900.
(11) Sully, James. _An Essay on Laughter._ Its forms, its causes, its
development, and its value. London and New York, 1902.
(12) Dugas, L. _Psychologie du rire._ Paris, 1902.
(13) Groos, Karl. _The Play of Man._ Translated from the German by
Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York, 1901.
(14) ----. _The Play of Animals._ Translated from the German by
Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York, 1898.
(15) Royce, J. _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy._ An essay in the form
of lectures. Chap. xii, "Physical Law and Freedom: The World of
Description and the World of Appreciation." Boston, 1892.
(16) Bücher, Karl. _Arbeit und Rhythmus._ Leipzig, 1902.
(17) Mallery, Garrick. "Sign Language among North American Indians
compared with That among Other Peoples and Deaf Mutes." _United States
Bureau of American Ethnology. First Annual Report._ Washington, 1881.
B. _Language and the Printing Press_
(1) Schmoller, Gustav. _Grundriss der allgemeinen
Volkswirtschaftslehre._ Chap, ii, 2, "Die psychophysischen Mittel
menschlicher Verständigung: Sprache und Schrift." Leipzig, 1900.
(2) Lazarus, Moritz. "Das Leben der Seele," _Geist und Sprache_, Vol.
II. Berlin, 1878.
(3) Wundt, Wilhelm. "Völkerpsychologie." Eine Untersuchung der
Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus, und Sitte. _Die Sprache_, Vol.
I. Part i. Leipzig, 1900.
(4) Wuttke, Heinrich. _Die deutschen Zeitschriften und die Entstehung
der öffentlichen Meinung._ Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des
Zeitungswesens. Leipzig, 1875.
(5) Mason, William A. _A History of the Art of Writing._ New York, 1920.
(6) Bücher, Carl. _Industrial Evolution._ Translated from the German by
S. M. Wickett. Chap. vi, "The Genesis of Journalism." New York, 1901.
(7) Dibblee, G. Binney. _The Newspaper._ New York and London, 1913.
(8) Payne, George Henry. _History of Journalism in the United States._
New York and London, 1920.
(9) Kawabé, Kisaburo. _The Press and Politics in Japan._ A study of
the relation between the newspaper and the political development of
modern Japan. Chicago, 1921.
(10) Münsterberg, Hugo. _The Photoplay._ A psychological study. New
York, 1916.
(11) Kingsbury, J. E. _The Telephone and Telephone Exchanges._ Their
invention and development. London and New York, 1915.
(12) Borght, R. van der. _Das Verkehrswesen._ Leipzig, 1894.
(13) Mason, O. T. _Primitive Travel and Transportation._ New York, 1897.
C. _Slang, Argot, and Universes of Discourse_
(1) Farmer, John S. _Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present._ A
dictionary, historical and comparative, of the heterodox speech of all
classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in
English, French, German, Italian, etc. London, 1890-1904.
(2) Sechrist, Frank K. _The Psychology of Unconventional Language._
Worcester, Mass., 1913.
(3) Ware, J. Redding. _Passing English of the Victorian Era._ A
dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase. New York, 1909.
(4) Hotten, John C. _A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar
Words._ Used at the present day in the streets of London; the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the houses of Parliament; the dens
of St. Giles; and the palaces of St. James. Preceded by a history of
cant and vulgar language; with glossaries of two secret languages,
spoken by the wandering tribes of London, the costermongers, and the
patterers. London, 1859.
(5) ----. _The Slang Dictionary._ Etymological, historical, and
anecdotal. New York, 1898.
(6) Farmer, John S. _The Public School Word-Book._ A contribution to a
historical glossary of words, phrases, and turns of expression, obsolete
and in present use, peculiar to our great public schools, together with
some that have been or are modish at the universities. London, 1900.
(7) _A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting
Crew._ In its several tribes of gypsies, beggars, thieves, cheats, etc.,
with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, and figurative speeches,
etc. London, 1690. Reprinted, 19--.
(8) Kluge, F. _Rotwelsch._ Quellen und Wortschatz der Gaunersprache und
der verwandten Geheimsprachen. Strassburg, 1901.
(9) Barrère, Albert, and Leland, C. G., editors. _A Dictionary of Slang,
Jargon, and Cant._ Embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian slang,
pidgin English, gypsies' jargon, and other irregular phraseology. 2
vols. London, 1897.
(10) Villatte, Césaire. _Parisismen._ Alphabetisch geordnete Sammlung
der eigenartigen Ausdrucksweisen des Pariser Argot. Ein Supplement zu
allen französisch-deutschen Wörterbüchern. Berlin, 1899.
(11) Delesalle, Georges. _Dictionnaire argot-français et
français-argot._ Nouvelle Edition. Paris, 1899.
(12) Villon, François. _Le jargon et jobelin de François Villon, suivi
du jargon an théatre._ Paris, 1888.
(13) Saineanu, Lazar. _L'Argot ancien_ (1455-1850). Ses éléments
constitutifs, ses rapports avec les langues secrètes de l'Europe
méridionale et l'argot moderne, avec un appendice sur l'argot juge par
Victor Hugo et Balzac; par Lazare Sainéan, pseud. Paris, 1907.
(14) Dauzat, Albert. _Les argots des métiers franco-provençaux._ Paris,
1917.
(15) Leland, Charles G. _The English Gypsies and Their Languages._ 4th
ed. New York, 1893.
(16) _Dictionnaire des termes militaires et de l'argot poilu._ Paris,
1916.
(17) Empey, Arthur Guy. _Over the Top._ By an American soldier who went,
Arthur Guy Empey, machine gunner, serving in France; together with
Tommy's dictionary of the trenches. New York and London, 1917.
(18) Smith, L. N. _Lingo of No Man's Land; or, War Time Lexicon._
Compiled by Sergt. Lorenzo N. Smith. Chicago, 1918.
(19) Saineanu, Lazar. _L'Argot des tranchées._ D'après les lettres
des poilus et les journaux du front. Paris, 1915.
(20) Horn, Paul. _Die deutsche Soldatensprache._ Giessen, 1905.
IV. IMITATION AND SUGGESTION
A. _Imitation_
(1) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics; or, Thoughts on the
Application of the Principles of "Natural Selection" and "Inheritance"
to Political Society._ New York, 1873.
(2) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation._ Translated from the 2d.
French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. New York, 1903.
(3) Baldwin, James M. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._
Methods and processes. 3d. rev. ed. New York, 1906.
(4) ----. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development._ A
study in social psychology. 4th ed. New York, 1906.
(5) Royce, Josiah. _Outlines of Psychology._ An elementary treatise with
some practical applications. New York, 1903.
(6) Henderson, Ernest N. _A Text-Book in the Principles of Education._
Chap. xi, "Imitation." New York, 1910.
(7) Thorndike, E. L. _Educational Psychology._ Vol. I., The Original
Nature of Man. Chap. viii, pp. 108-22. New York, 1913.
(8) Hughes, Henry. _Die Mimik des Menschen auf Grund voluntarischer
Psychologie._ Frankfurt a. M., 1900.
(9) Park, Robert E. _Masse und Publikum._ Eine methodologische und
soziologische Untersuchung. Chap. ii, "Der soziologische Prozess,"
describes the historical development of the conception of imitation in
its relation to sympathy and mimicry in the writings of Hume, Butler,
and Dugald Stewart. Bern, 1904.
(10) Smith, Adam. _The Theory of Moral Sentiments._ To which is added a
dissertation on the origin of languages. London, 1892.
(11) Ribot, T. _The Psychology of the Emotions._ Part II, chap. iv,
"Sympathy and the Tender Emotions," pp. 230-38. Translated from the
French, 2d ed. London, 1911.
(12) Dewey, John. "Imitation in Education," _Cyclopedia of Education_,
III, 389-90.
(13) Him, Yrjö. _The Origins of Art._ A psychological and sociological
inquiry. Chap. vi, "Social Expression." London and New York, 1900.
B. _Suggestion_
(1) Moll, Albert. _Hypnotism._ Including a study of the chief points of
psychotherapeutics and occultism. Translated from the 4th enl. ed. by A.
F. Hopkirk. London and New York, 1909.
(2) Binet, A., and Féré, Ch. _Animal Magnetism._ New York, 1892.
(3) Janet, Pierre. _L'Automisme psychologique._ Essai de psychologie
expérimental sur les formes inférieures de l'activité humaine. Paris,
1889.
(4) Bernheim, H. _Hypnotisme, Suggestion, Psychothérapie._ Paris, 1891.
(5) Richet, Ch. _Experimentelle Studien auf dem Gebiete der
Gedankenübertragung und des sogenannten Hellsehens._ Deutsch von Frhrn.
von Schrenck-Notzing. Stuttgart, 1891.
(6) Pfungst, Oskar. _Clever Hans (The Horse of Mr. von Osten)._ A
contribution to experimental animal and human psychology. New York,
1911. [Bibliography.]
(7) Hansen, F. C. C., and Lehmann, A. _Über unwillkürliches Flüstern._
Philosophische Studien, Leipzig, XI (1895), 471-530.
(8) Féré, Ch. _Sensation et mouvement._ Chap, xix, pp. 120-24. Paris,
1887.
(9) Sidis, Boris. _The Psychology of Suggestion._ A research into the
subconscious nature of man and society. New York, 1898.
(10) Bechterew, W. v. _Die Bedeutung der Suggestion im Sozialen Leben._
Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Wiesbaden, 1905.
(11) Stoll, Otto. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._
Leipzig, 1904.
(12) Binet, Alfred. _La Suggestibilité._ Paris, 1900.
(13) Münsterberg, Hugo. _Psychotherapy._ Chap. v, "Suggestion and
Hypnotism," pp. 85-124. New York, 1909.
(14) Cooley, Charles. _Human Nature and the Social Order._ Chap. ii. New
York, 1902.
(15) Gulick, Sidney. _The American Japanese Problem._ A study of the
racial relations of the East and the West. Pp. 118-68. New York, 1914.
(16) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment.
London and New York, 1911.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. A History of the Concept of Social Interaction.
2. Interaction and the Atomic Theory.
3. Interaction and Social Consciousness.
4. Interaction and Self-Consciousness.
5. Religion and Social Consciousness.
6. Publicity and Social Consciousness.
7. Interaction and the Limits of the Group.
8. The Senses and Communication: a Comparative Study of the Rôle of
Touch, Smell, Sight, and Hearing in Social Intercourse.
9. Facial Expression as a Form of Communication.
10. Laughter and Blushing and Self-Consciousness.
11. The Sociology of Gesture.
12. The Subtler Forms of Interaction; "Mind-Reading," "Thought
Transference."
13. Rapport, A Study of Mutual Influence in Intimate Associations.
14. A History of Imitation as a Sociological Theory.
15. Suggestion as an Explanation of Collective Behavior.
16. Adam Smith's Theory of the Relation of Sympathy and Moral Judgment.
17. Interest, Attention, and Imitation.
18. Imitation and Appreciation.
19. The History of Printing and of the Press.
20. Modem Extensions of Communication: the Telephone, the Telegraph,
Radio, the Motion Picture, Popular Music.
21. An Explanation of Secondary Society in Terms of Secondary Devices of
Communication.
22. Graham Wallas' Conception of the Problem of Social Heritages in
Secondary Society.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand Gumplowicz to mean by a "natural process"?
2. Do you think that the idea of a "natural process" is applicable to
society?
3. Is Gumplowicz' principle of the interaction of social elements
valid?
4. What do you understand Simmel to mean by society? by socialization?
5. Do you agree with Simmel when he says, "In and of themselves, these
materials with which life is filled, these motivations which impel it,
are not social in their nature"?
6. In what ways, according to Simmel, does interaction maintain the
mechanism of the group in time?
7. What do you understand to be the distinction which Simmel makes
between attitudes of appreciation and comprehension?
8. "The interaction of individuals based upon mutual glances is perhaps
the most direct and purest reciprocity which exists." Explain.
9. Explain the sociology of the act of looking down to avoid the glance
of the other.
10. In what way does Simmel's distinction between the reactions to other
persons of the blind and the deaf-mute afford an explanation of the
difference between the social life of the village and of the large city?
11. In what sense are emotions expressive? To whom are they expressive?
12. What is the relation of emotional expression to communication?
13. Why would you say Darwin states that "blushing is the most peculiar
and the most human of all expressions"?
14. Does a person ever blush in isolation?
15. What in your opinion is the bearing of the phenomenon of blushing
upon interaction and communication?
16. What is the difference between the function of blushing and of
laughing in social life?
17. In what sense is sympathy the "law of laughter"?
18. What determines the object of laughter?
19. What is the sociological explanation of the rôle of laughter and
ridicule in social control?
20. What are the likenesses and differences between intercommunication
among animals and language among men?
21. What is the criterion of the difference between man and the animal,
according to Max Müller?
22. In your opinion, was the situation in which language arose one of
unanimity or diversity of attitude?
23. "Language and ideational processes developed together and are
necessary to each other." Explain.
24. What is the relation of the evolution of writing as a form of
communication (a) to the development of ideas, and (b) to social
life?
25. What difference in function, if any, is there between communication
carried on (a) merely through expressive signs, (b) language, (c)
writing, (d) printing?
26. How does the evolution of publicity exhibit the extension of
communication by human invention?
27. In what ways is the extension of communication related to primary
and secondary contacts?
28. Does the growth of communication make for or against the development
of individuality?
29. How do you define imitation?
30. What is the relation of attention and interest to the mechanism of
imitation?
31. What is the relation of imitation to learning?
32. What is the relation of imitation to the three phases of sympathy
differentiated by Ribot?
33. What do you understand by Smith's definition of sympathy? How does
it differ from that of Ribot?
34. Under what conditions is the sentiment aroused in the observer
likely to resemble that of the observed? When is it likely to be
different?
35. In what sense is sympathy the basis for passing a moral judgment
upon a person or an act?
36. What do you understand by "internal imitation"?
37. What is the significance of imitation for artistic appreciation?
38. What do you understand by the term "appreciation"? Distinguish
between "appreciation" and "comprehension." (Compare Hirn's distinction
with that made by Simmel.)
39. Upon what is the nature of suggestion based? How do you define
suggestion?
40. What do you understand by Bechterew's distinction between active
perception and passive perception?
41. Why can we speak of suggestion as a mental automatism?
42. How real is the analogy of suggestion to an infection or an
inoculation?
43. What do you understand by the distinction between personal
consciousness and general consciousness?
44. What is the significance of attention in determining the character
of suggestion?
45. What is the relation of rapport to suggestion?
46. How would you distinguish suggestion from other forms of stimulus
and response?
47. Is suggestion a term of individual or of social psychology?
48. What is the significance of the case of Clever Hans for the
interpretation of so-called telepathy? of muscle reading?
49. How extensive, would you say, are the subtler forms of suggestion in
normal life? What illustrations would you give?
50. What is the rôle of social contagion in mass action?
51. What do you understand Bechterew to mean by "the psychological
processes of fusion"? "spiritual cohesion," etc.?
52. What does it mean to say that historical personages "embody in
themselves the emotions and the desires of the masses"?
53. What, in your judgment, are the differentiating criteria of
suggestion and imitation?
54. What do you understand is meant by speaking of imitation and
suggestion as mechanisms of interaction?
FOOTNOTES:
[135] Pp. 70 and 72.
[136] Translated and adapted from Ludwig Gumplowicz, _Der Rassenkampf_,
pp. 158-61. (Innsbruck: Wagnerische Univ. Buchhandlung, 1883.)
[137] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, by Albion W. Small,
_American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909), 296-98; III (1898), 667-83.
[138] Translated and adapted from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, pp.
646-51. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1908.)
[139] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions_, pp.
350-67. (John Murray, 1873.)
[140] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions_, pp.
310-37. (John Murray, 1873.)
[141] Translated and adapted from L. Dugas, _Psychologie du rire_, pp.
32-153. (Félix Alcan, 1902.)
[142] Adapted from C. Lloyd Morgan, _Animal Behaviour_, pp. 193-205.
(Edward Arnold, 1908.)
[143] Adapted from F. Max Müller, _The Science of Language_, I, 520-27.
(Longmans, Green & Co., 1891.)
[144] Adapted from Charles H. Judd, _Psychology_, pp. 219-24. (Ginn &
Co., 1917.)
[145] Adapted from Carl Bücher, _Industrial Evolution_. Translated by S.
Morley Wickett, pp. 216-43. (Henry Holt & Co., 1907.)
[146] From Charles H. Judd, "Imitation," in _Monroe's Cyclopedia of
Education_, III, 388-89. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1912.
Reprinted by permission.)
[147] Adapted from G. F. Stout, _A Manual of Psychology_, pp. 390-91.
(The University Tutorial Press, 1913.)
[148] Adapted from Th. Ribot, _The Psychology of the Emotions_, pp.
230-34. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898.)
[149] Adapted from Adam Smith, _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_, pp.
3-10. (G. Bell & Sons, 1893.)
[150] From Yrjö Hirn, _The Origins of Art_, pp. 74-85. (Published by The
Macmillan Co., 1900. Reprinted by permission.)
[151] Translated and adapted from the German, _Die Bedeutung der
Suggestion im Sozialen Leben_, pp. 10-15, from the original Russian of
W. v. Bechterew. (J. F. Bergmann, Wiesbaden, 1905.)
[152] Adapted from Albert Moll, _Hypnotism_, pp. 453-57. The
Contemporary Science Series. (Walter Scott, 1909.)
[153] Translated and adapted from the German, _Die Bedeutung der
Suggestion im Sozialen Leben_, pp. 134-42, from the original Russian of
W. v. Bechterew. (Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann, 1905.)
[154] _The Social Process_, p. 28.
[155] P. xiv.
[156] P. 41.
CHAPTER VII
SOCIAL FORCES
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Sources of the Notion of Social Forces
The concept of interaction is an abstraction so remote from ordinary
experience that it seems to have occurred only to scientists and
philosophers. The idea of forces behind the manifestations of physical
nature and of society is a notion which arises naturally out of the
experience of the ordinary man. Historians, social reformers, and
students of community life have used the term in the language of common
sense to describe factors in social situations which they recognized but
did not attempt to describe or define. Movements for social reform have
usually met with unexpected obstacles. Public welfare programs have not
infrequently been received with popular antagonism instead of popular
support. Lack of success has led to the search for causes, and
investigation has revealed the obstacles, as well as the aids, to reform
embodied in influential persons, "political bosses," "union leaders,"
"the local magnate," and in powerful groups such as party organizations,
unions, associations of commerce, etc. Social control, it appears, is
resident, not in individuals as individuals, but as members of
communities and social groups. Candid recognition of the rôle of these
persons and groups led popular writers on social, political, and
economic topics to give them the impersonal designation "social forces."
A student made the following crude and yet illuminating analysis of the
social forces in a small community where he had lived: the community
club, "the Davidson clique," and the "Jones clique" (these two large
family groups are intensely hostile and divide village life); the
community Methodist church; the Presbyterian church group (no church);
the library; two soft-drink parlors where all kinds of beverages are
sold; the daily train; the motion-picture show; the dance hall; a
gambling clique; sex attraction; gossip; the "sporting" impulse; the
impulse to be "decent."
"The result," he states, "is a disgrace to our modern civilization. It
is one of the worst communities I ever saw."
The most significant type of community study has been the social survey,
with a history which antedates its recent developments. Yet the survey
movement from the _Domesday Survey_, initiated in 1085 by William the
Conqueror, to the recent _Study of Methods of Americanization_ by the
Carnegie Corporation, has been based upon an implicit or explicit
recognition of the interrelations of the community and its constituent
groups. The _Domesday Survey_, although undertaken for financial and
political purposes, gives a picture of the English nation as an
organization of isolated local units, which the Norman Conquest first of
all forced into closer unity. The surveys of the Russell Sage Foundation
have laid insistent emphasis upon the study of social problems and of
social institutions in their context within the life of the community.
The central theme of the different divisions of the Carnegie _Study of
Methods of Americanization_ is the nature and the degree of the
participation of the immigrant in our national and cultural life. In
short, the survey, wittingly or unwittingly, has tended to penetrate
beneath surface observations to discover the interrelations of social
groups and institutions and has revealed community life as a
_constellation of social forces_.
2. History of the Concept of Social Forces
The concept of social forces has had a history different from that of
interaction. It was in the writings of the historians rather than of the
sociologists that the term first gained currency. The historians, in
their description and interpretation of persons and events, discerned
definite motives or tendencies, which served to give to the mere
temporal sequence of the events a significance which they did not
otherwise possess. These tendencies historians called "social forces."
From the point of view and for the purposes of reformers social forces
were conceived as embodied in institutions. For the purposes of the
historian they are merely tendencies which combine to define the general
trend of historical change. The logical motive, which has everywhere
guided science in formulating its conceptions, is here revealed in its
most naïve and elementary form. Natural science invariably seeks to
describe change in terms of process, that is to say, in terms of
interaction of tendencies. These tendencies are what science calls
forces.
For the purposes of an adequate description, however, it is necessary
not merely to conceive change in terms of the interplay of forces, but
to think of these forces as somehow objectively embodied, as social
forces are conceived to be embodied in institutions, organizations, and
persons. These objects in which the forces are, or seem to be, resident
are not forces in any real or metaphysical sense, as the physicists tell
us. They are mere points of reference which enable us to visualize the
direction and measure the intensity of change.
Institutions and social organizations may, in any given situation, be
regarded as social forces, but they are not ultimate nor elementary
forces. One has but to carry the analysis of the community a little
farther to discover the fact that institutions and organizations may be
further resolved into factors of smaller and smaller denominations until
we have arrived at individual men and women. For common sense the
individual is quite evidently the ultimate factor in every community or
social organization.
Sociologists have carried the analysis a step farther. They have sought
to meet the problem raised by two facts: (1) the same individual may be
a member of different societies, communities, and social groups at the
same time; (2) under certain circumstances his interests as a member of
one group may conflict with his interests as a member of another group,
so that the conflict between different social groups will be reflected
in the mental and moral conflicts of the individual himself.
Furthermore, it is evident that the individual is, as we frequently say,
"not the same person" at different times and places. The phenomena of
moods and of dual personality has sociological significance in just this
connection.
From all this it is quite evident that the individual is not elementary
in a sociological sense. It is for this reason that sociologists have
invariably sought the sociological element, not in the individual but in
his appetites, desires, wishes--the human motives which move him to
action.
3. Classification of the Materials
The readings in this chapter are arranged in the natural order of the
development of the notion of social forces. They were first thought of
by historians as tendencies and trends. Then in the popular sociology
social forces were identified with significant social objects in which
the factors of the situations under consideration were embodied. This
was a step in the direction of a definition of the elementary social
forces. Later the terms interests, sentiments, and attitudes made their
appearance in the literature of economics, social psychology, and
sociology. Finally the concept of the wishes, first vaguely apprehended
by sociologists under the name "desires," having gained a more adequate
description and definition in the use made of it by psychoanalysis, has
been reintroduced into sociology by W. I. Thomas under the title of the
"four wishes." This brief statement is sufficient to indicate the
motives determining the order of the materials included under "Social
Forces."
In the list of social forces just enumerated, attitudes are, for the
purposes of sociology, elementary. They are elementary because, being
tendencies to act, they are expressive and communicable. They present us
human motives in the only form in which we can know them objectively,
namely, as behavior. Human motives become social forces only so far as
they are communicable, only when they are communicated. Because
attitudes have for the purposes of sociology this elementary character,
it is desirable to define the term "attitude" before attempting to
define its relation to the wishes and sentiments.
a) _The social element defined._--What is an attitude? Attitudes are
not instincts, nor appetites, nor habits, for these refer to specific
tendencies to act that condition attitudes but do not define them.
Attitudes are not the same as emotions or sentiments although attitudes
always are emotionally toned and frequently supported by sentiments.
Opinions are not attitudes. An opinion is rather a statement made to
justify and make intelligible an existing attitude or bias. A wish is an
inherited tendency or instinct which has been fixed by attention
directed to objects, persons, or patterns of behavior, which objects
then assume the character of values. An attitude is the tendency of the
person to react positively or negatively to the total situation.
Accordingly, attitudes may be defined as the mobilization of the will of
the person.
Attitudes are as many and as varied as the situations to which they are
a response. It is, of course, not to be gainsaid that instincts,
appetites, habits, emotions, sentiments, opinions, and wishes are
involved in and with the attitudes. Attitudes are mobilizations and
organizations of the wishes with reference to definite situations. My
wishes may be very positive and definite in a given situation, but my
attitude may be wavering and undetermined. On the other hand, my
attitude may be clearly defined in situations where my wishes are not
greatly involved. It is characteristic of the so-called academic, as
distinguished from the "practical" and emotional, attitude that, under
its influence, the individual seeks to emphasize all the factors in the
situation and thus qualifies and often weakens the will to act. The
wishes enter into attitudes as components. How many, varied,
ill-defined, and conflicting may be and have been the wishes that have
determined at different times the attitudes and the sentiments of
individuals and nations toward the issues of war and peace? The
fundamental wishes, we may assume, are the same in all situations. The
attitudes and sentiments, however, in which the wishes of the individual
find expression are determined not merely by these wishes, but by other
factors in the situation, the wishes of other individuals, for example.
The desire for recognition is a permanent and universal trait of human
nature, but in the case of an egocentric personality, this wish may take
the form of an excessive humility or a pretentious boasting. The wish is
the same but the attitudes in which it finds expression are different.
The attitudes which are elementary for _sociological analysis_ may be
resolved by _psychological analysis_ into smaller factors so that we may
think, if we choose, of attitudes as representing constellations of
smaller components which we call wishes. In fact it has been one of the
great contributions of psychoanalysis to our knowledge of human behavior
that it has been able to show that attitudes may be analyzed into still
more elementary components and that these components, like the
attitudes, are involved in a process of interaction among themselves. In
other words there is organization, tension, and change in the
constituent elements of the attitudes. This accounts, in part, for their
mutability.
b) _Attitudes as behavior patterns._--If the attitude may be said to
play the rôle in sociological analysis that the elementary substances
play in chemical analysis, then the rôle of the wishes may be compared
to that of the electrons.
The clearest way to think of attitudes is as behavior patterns or units
of behavior. The two most elementary behavior patterns are the tendency
to approach and the tendency to withdraw. Translated into terms of the
individual organism these are tendencies to expand and to contract. As
the self expands to include other selves, as in sympathy and in
fellowship, there is an extension of self-feeling to the whole group.
Self-consciousness passes over, in the rapport thus established, into
group consciousness. In the expansive movements characteristic of
individuals under the influence of crowd excitements the individual is
submerged in the mass.
On the other hand, in movements of withdrawal or of recoil from other
persons, characteristic of fear and embarrassment, there is a
heightening of self-consciousness. The tendency to identify one's self
with other selves, to lose one's self in the ecstasy of psychic union
with others, is essentially a movement toward contact; while the
inclination to differentiate one's self, to lead a self-sufficient
existence, apart from others, is as distinctly a movement resulting in
isolation.
The simplest and most fundamental types of behavior of individuals and
of groups are represented in these contrasting tendencies to approach an
object or to withdraw from it. If instead of thinking of these two
tendencies as unrelated, they are thought of as conflicting responses to
the same situation, where the tendency to approach is modified and
complicated by a tendency to withdraw, we get the phenomenon of _social
distance_. There is the tendency to approach, but not too near. There is
a feeling of interest and sympathy of A for B, but only when B remains
at a certain distance. Thus the Negro in the southern states is "all
right in his place." The northern philanthropist is interested in the
advancement of the Negro but wants him to remain in the South. At least
he does not want him for a neighbor. The southern white man likes the
Negro as an individual, but he is not willing to treat him as an equal.
The northern white man is willing to treat the Negro as an equal but he
does not want him too near. The wishes are in both cases essentially the
same but the attitudes are different.
The accommodations between conflicting tendencies, so flagrantly
displayed in the facts of race prejudice, are not confined to the
relation of white men and black. The same mechanisms are involved in all
the subordinations, exclusions, privacies, social distances, and
reserves which we seek everywhere, by the subtle devices of taboo and
social ritual, to maintain and defend. Where the situation calls forth
rival or conflicting tendencies, the resulting attitude is likely to be
an accommodation, in which what has been described as distance is the
determining factor. When an accommodation takes the form of the
domination of A and the submission of B, the original tendencies of
approach and withdrawal are transformed into attitudes of
superordination and subordination. If primary attitudes of expansion and
of contraction are thought of in terms of lateral distance, then
attitudes of superiority and inferiority may be charted in the vertical
plane as illustrated by the following diagram:
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--A = tendency to approach; B = tendency to
withdraw; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = distance defining levels of accommodation; X
= superordination; Y = subordination.]
This polar conception of attitudes, in which they are conceived in terms
of movements of expansion and contraction, of approach and withdrawal,
of attraction and repulsion, of domination and submission, may be
applied in an analysis of the sentiments.
A sentiment, as defined by McDougall, is "an organized system of
emotional dispositions centered about the idea of some object." The
polarity of the sentiments is, however, one of its evident and striking
characteristics. Love and hate, affection and dislike, attachment and
aversion, self-esteem and humility have this character of polarity
because each pair of sentiments and attitudes represents a different
constellation of the same component wishes.
A significant feature of sentiments and attitudes is inner tension and
consequent tendency to mutation. Love changes into hate, or dislike is
transformed into affection, or humility is replaced by self-assertion.
This mutability is explained by the fact, just mentioned, that the
sentiment-attitude is a complex of wishes and desires organized around a
person or object. In this complex one motive--love, for example--is for
a moment the dominant component. In this case components which tend to
excite repulsion, hostility, and disgust are for the moment suppressed.
With a change in the situation, as in the distance, these suppressed
components are released and, gaining control, convert the system into
the opposite sentiment, as hate.
c) _Attitudes and wishes._--The wishes, as popularly conceived, are as
numerous as the objects or values toward which they are directed. As
there are positive and negative values, so there are positive and
negative wishes. Fears are negative wishes. The speculations of the
Freudian school of psychology have attempted to reduce all wishes to
one, the _libido_. In that case, the wishes, as we know them and as they
present themselves to us in consciousness, are to be regarded as
offshoots or, perhaps better, specifications of the _one wish_. As the
one wish is directed to this or that object, it makes of that object a
value and the object gives its name to the wish. In this way the one
wish becomes many wishes.
Science demands, however, not a theory of the origin of the wishes but a
classification based on fundamental natural differences; differences
which it is necessary to take account of in explaining human behavior.
Thomas' fourfold classification fulfils this purpose. The wish for
security, the wish for new experience, the wish for response, and the
wish for recognition are the permanent and fundamental unconscious
motives of the person which find expression in the many and changing
concrete and conscious wishes. As wishes find expression in
characteristic forms of behavior they may also be thought of in spatial
terms as tendencies to move toward or away from their specific objects.
The wish for security may be represented by position, mere immobility;
the wish for new experience by the greatest possible freedom of movement
and constant change of position; the wish for response, by the number
and closeness of points of contact; the wish for recognition, by the
level desired or reached in the vertical plane of superordination and
subordination.
The fundamental value for social research of the classification inheres
in the fact that the wishes in one class cannot be substituted for
wishes in another. The desire for response and affection cannot be
satisfied by fame and recognition or only partially so. The wholesome
individual is he who in some form or other realizes all the four
fundamental wishes. The security and permanence of any society or
association depends upon the extent to which it permits the individuals
who compose it to realize their fundamental wishes. The restless
individual is the individual whose wishes are not realized even in
dreams.
This suggests the significance of the classification for the purposes of
social science. Human nature, and personality as we know it, requires
for its healthy growth security, new experience, response, and
recognition. In all races and in all times these fundamental longings of
human nature have manifested themselves; the particular patterns in
which the wish finds expression and becomes fixed depends upon some
special experience of the person, is influenced by individual
differences in original nature, and is circumscribed by the folkways,
the mores, the conventions, and the culture of his group.
II. MATERIALS
A. TRENDS, TENDENCIES, AND PUBLIC OPINION
1. Social Forces in American History[157]
That political struggles are based upon economic interests is today
disputed by few students of society. The attempt has been made in this
work to trace the various interests that have arisen and struggled in
each social stage and to determine the influence exercised by these
contending interests in the creation of social institutions.
Back of every political party there has always stood a group or class
which expected to profit by the activity and the success of that party.
When any party has attained to power, it has been because it has tried
to establish institutions or to modify existing ones in accord with its
interests.
Changes in the industrial basis of society--inventions, new processes,
and combinations and methods of producing and distributing goods--create
new interests with new social classes to represent them. These
improvements in the technique of production are the dynamic element that
brings about what we call progress in society.
In this work I have sought to begin at the origin of each line of social
progress. I have first endeavored to describe the steps in mechanical
progress, then the social classes brought into prominence by the
mechanical changes, then the struggle by which these new classes sought
to gain social power, and, finally, the institutions which were created
or the alterations made in existing institutions as a consequence of the
struggle or as a result of the victory of a new class.
It has seemed to me that these underlying social forces are of more
importance than the individuals that were forced to the front in the
process of these struggles, or even than the laws that were established
to record the results of the conflict. In short, I have tried to
describe the dynamics of history rather than to record the accomplished
facts, to answer the question, "Why did it happen?" as well as, "What
happened?"
An inquiry into causes is manifestly a greater task than the recording
of accomplished facts. To determine causes it is necessary to spend much
time in the study of "original documents"--the newspapers, magazines,
and pamphlet literature of each period. In these, rather than in the
"musty documents" of state, do we find history in the making. Here we
can see the clash of contending interests before they are crystallized
into laws and institutions.
2. Social Tendencies as Social Forces[158]
The philosophy of the eighteenth century viewed external nature as the
principal thing to be considered in a study of society, and not society
itself. The great force in society was extraneous to society. But
according to the philosophy of our times, the chief forces working in
society are truly social forces, that is to say, they are immanent in
society itself.
Let us briefly examine the social forces which are at work, either
concentrating or diffusing the ownership of wealth. If it is true that,
necessarily, there is going forward a concentration of property, that
the rich are necessarily becoming richer, that wealth is passing into
fewer and fewer hands, this gives a strong reason for believing that
those are right who hold to the fact that every field of production must
soon be controlled by monopoly. If, on the other hand, we find that the
forces which make for diffusion are dominant, we may believe that it is
quite possible for society to control the forces of production.
a) Forces operating in the direction of concentration of wealth: (1)
The unearned increment of land, especially in cities, is no doubt a real
force. (2) The trust movement is operating in its earlier phases, at
least, in the direction of concentration. (3) In the third place, war,
whenever it comes, carries with it forces which bring wealth to the few
rather than to the many. (4) Arrangements of one kind and another may be
mentioned by means of various trust devices to secure the ends of
primogeniture and entail. (5) Another force operating to concentrate the
ownership of wealth may be called economic inertia. According to the
principle of inertia, forces continue to operate until they are checked
by other forces coming into contact with them.
b) Forces which operate to diffuse wealth: (1) Education, broadly
considered, should be mentioned first of all. (2) Next, mention must be
made of the public control of corporations. (3) Changes in taxation are
the third item in this enumeration of forces. (4) The development of the
idea of property as a trust is next mentioned. (5) Profit-sharing and
co-operation. (6) Sound currency is next mentioned. (7) Public ownership
of public utilities is a further force. (8) Labor organizations. (9)
Institutions, especially in the interest of the wage-earning and
economically weaker elements in the community. (10) Savings institutions
and insurance.
3. Public Opinion: School of Thought and Legislation in England[159]
Public legislative opinion, as it has existed in England during the
nineteenth century, presents several noteworthy aspects or
characteristics. They may conveniently be considered under five heads:
the existence at any given period of a predominant public opinion; the
origin of such opinion; the development and continuity thereof; the
checks imposed on such opinion by the existence of counter-currents and
cross-currents of opinion; the action of laws themselves as the creators
of legislative opinion.
_First_, there exists at any given time a body of beliefs, convictions,
sentiments, accepted principles, or firmly rooted prejudices, which,
taken together, make up the public opinion of a particular era, or what
we may call the reigning or predominant current of opinion, and, as
regards at any rate the last three or four centuries, and especially the
nineteenth century, the influence of this dominant current of opinion
has, in England, if we look at the matter broadly, determined, directly
or indirectly, the course of legislation.
_Second_, the opinion which affects the development of the law has, in
modern England at least, often originated with some single thinker or
school of thinkers. No doubt it is at times allowable to talk of a
prevalent belief or opinion as "being in the air," by which expression
is meant that a particular way of looking at things has become the
common possession of all the world. But though a belief, when it
prevails, may at last be adopted by the whole of a generation, it rarely
happens that a widespread conviction has grown up spontaneously among
the multitude. "The initiation," it has been said, "of all wise or noble
things comes, and must come, from individuals; generally at first from
some one individual," to which it ought surely to be added that the
origination of a new folly or of a new form of baseness comes, and must
in general come, at first from individuals or from some one individual.
The peculiarity of individuals, as contrasted with the crowd, lies
neither in virtue nor in wickedness but in originality. It is idle to
credit minorities with all the good without ascribing to them
most, at least, of the evils due to that rarest of all human
qualities--inventiveness.
The course of events in England may often, at least, be thus described:
A new and, let us assume, a true idea presents itself to some one man of
originality or genius; the discoverer of the new conception, or some
follower who has embraced it with enthusiasm, preaches it to his friends
or disciples, they in their turn become impressed with its importance
and its truth, and gradually a whole school accepts the new creed. These
apostles of a new faith are either persons endowed with special ability
or, what is quite as likely, they are persons who, owing to their
peculiar position, are freed from a bias, whether moral or intellectual,
in favor of prevalent errors. At last the preachers of truth make an
impression, either directly upon the general public or upon some person
of eminence, say a leading statesman, who stands in a position to
impress ordinary people and thus to win the support of the nation.
Success, however, in converting mankind to a new faith, whether
religious or economical or political, depends but slightly on the
strength of the reasoning by which the faith can be defended, or even
on the enthusiasm of its adherents. A change of belief arises, in the
main, from the occurrence of circumstances which incline the majority of
the world to hear with favor theories which, at one time, men of common
sense derided as absurdities or distrusted as paradoxes. The doctrine of
free trade, for instance, has in England for about half a century held
the field as an unassailable dogma of economic policy, but a historian
would stand convicted of ignorance or folly who should imagine that the
fallacies of protection were discovered by the intuitive good sense of
the people, even if the existence of such a quality as the good sense of
the people be more than a political fiction. The principle of free trade
may, as far as Englishmen are concerned, be treated as the doctrine of
Adam Smith. The reasons in its favor never have been, nor will, from the
nature of things, be mastered by the majority of any people. The apology
for freedom of commerce will always present, from one point of view, an
air of paradox. Every man feels or thinks that protection would benefit
his own business, and it is difficult to realize that what may be a
benefit for any man taken alone may be of no benefit to a body of men
looked at collectively. The obvious objections to free trade may, as
free traders conceive, be met; but then the reasoning by which these
objections are met is often elaborate and subtle and does not carry
conviction to the crowd. It is idle to suppose that belief in freedom of
trade--or indeed in any other creed--ever won its way among the majority
of converts by the mere force of reasoning. The course of events was
very different. The theory of free trade won by degrees the approval of
statesmen of special insight, and adherents to the new economic religion
were one by one gained among persons of intelligence. Cobden and Bright
finally became potent advocates of truths of which they were in no sense
the discoverers. This assertion in no way detracts from the credit due
to these eminent men. They performed to admiration the proper function
of popular leaders; by prodigies of energy and by seizing a favorable
opportunity, of which they made the very most use that was possible,
they gained the acceptance by the English people of truths which have
rarely, in any country but England, acquired popularity. Much was due to
the opportuneness of the time. Protection wears its most offensive guise
when it can be identified with a tax on bread, and therefore can,
without patent injustice, be described as the parent of famine and
starvation. The unpopularity, moreover, inherent in a tax on corn is
all but fatal to a protective tariff when the class which protection
enriches is comparatively small, whilst the class which would suffer
keenly from dearness of bread and would obtain benefit from free trade
is large, and, having already acquired much, is certain soon to acquire
more political power. Add to all this that the Irish famine made the
suspension of the corn laws a patent necessity. It is easy, then, to see
how great in England was the part played by external circumstances--one
might almost say by accidental conditions--in determining the overthrow
of protection. A student should further remark that after free trade
became an established principle of English policy, the majority of the
English people accepted it mainly on authority. Men who were neither
land-owners nor farmers perceived with ease the obtrusive evils of a tax
on corn, but they and their leaders were far less influenced by
arguments against protection generally than by the immediate and almost
visible advantage of cheapening the bread of artisans and laborers.
What, however, weighed with most Englishmen, above every other
consideration, was the harmony of the doctrine that commerce ought to be
free, with that disbelief in the benefits of state intervention which in
1846 had been gaining ground for more than a generation.
It is impossible, indeed, to insist too strongly upon the consideration
that whilst opinion controls legislation, public opinion is itself far
less the result of reasoning or of argument than of the circumstances in
which men are placed. Between 1783 and 1861 negro slavery was
abolished--one might almost say ceased of itself to exist--in the
northern states of the American Republic; in the South, on the other
hand, the maintenance of slavery developed into a fixed policy, and
before the War of Secession the "peculiar institution" had become the
foundation stone of the social system. But the religious beliefs and,
except as regards the existence of slavery, the political institutions
prevalent throughout the whole of the United States were the same. The
condemnation of slavery in the North, and the apologies for slavery in
the South, must therefore be referred to difference of circumstances.
Slave labor was obviously out of place in Massachusetts, Vermont, or New
York; it appeared to be, even if in reality it was not, economically
profitable in South Carolina. An institution, again, which was utterly
incompatible with the social condition of the northern states
harmonized, or appeared to harmonize, with the social conditions of the
southern states. The arguments against the peculiar institution were in
themselves equally strong in whatever part of the Union they were
uttered, but they carried conviction to the white citizens of
Massachusetts, whilst, even when heard or read, they did not carry
conviction to the citizens of South Carolina. Belief, and, to speak
fairly, honest belief, was to a great extent the result, not of
argument, nor even of direct self-interest, but of circumstances. What
was true in this instance holds good in others. There is no reason to
suppose that in 1830 the squires of England were less patriotic than the
manufacturers, or less capable of mastering the arguments in favor of or
against the reform of Parliament. But everyone knows that, as a rule,
the country gentlemen were Tories and anti-reformers, whilst the
manufacturers were Radicals and reformers. Circumstances are the
creators of most men's opinions.
_Third_, the development of public opinion generally, and therefore of
legislative opinion, has been in England at once gradual, or slow, and
continuous. The qualities of slowness and continuity may conveniently be
considered together, and are closely interconnected, but they are
distinguishable and essentially different.
Legislative public opinion generally changes in England with unexpected
slowness. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was published in 1776; the
policy of free exchange was not completely accepted by England till
1846. All the strongest reasons in favor of Catholic emancipation were
laid before the English world by Burke between 1760 and 1797; the Roman
Catholic Relief Act was not carried till 1829.
The opinion which changes the law is in one sense the opinion of the
time when the law is actually altered; in another sense it has often
been in England the opinion prevalent some twenty or thirty years before
that time; it has been as often as not in reality the opinion, not of
today, but of yesterday.
Legislative opinion must be the opinion of the day, because, when laws
are altered, the alteration is of necessity carried into effect by
legislators who act under the belief that the change is an amendment;
but this law-making opinion is also the opinion of yesterday, because
the beliefs which have at last gained such hold on the legislature as to
produce an alteration in the law have generally been created by
thinkers or writers who exerted their influence long before the change
in the law took place. Thus it may well happen that an innovation is
carried through at a time when the teachers who supplied the arguments
in its favor are in their graves, or even--and this is well worth
noting--when in the world of speculation a movement has already set in
against ideas which are exerting their full effect in the world of
action and of legislation.
Law-making in England is the work of men well advanced in life; the
politicians who guide the House of Commons, to say nothing of the peers
who lead the House of Lords, are few of them below thirty, and most of
them are above forty, years of age. They have formed or picked up their
convictions, and, what is of more consequence, their prepossessions, in
early manhood, which is the one period of life when men are easily
impressed with new ideas. Hence English legislators retain the
prejudices or modes of thinking which they acquired in their youth; and
when, late in life, they take a share in actual legislation, they
legislate in accordance with the doctrines which were current, either
generally or in the society to which the law-givers belonged, in the
days of their early manhood. The law-makers, therefore, of 1850 may give
effect to the opinions of 1830, whilst the legislators of 1880 are
likely enough to impress upon the statute book the beliefs of 1860, or
rather the ideas which in the one case attracted the young men of 1830
and in the other the youth of 1860. We need not therefore be surprised
to find that a current of opinion may exert its greatest legislative
influence just when its force is beginning to decline. The tide turns
when at its height; a school of thought or feeling which still governs
law-makers has begun to lose its authority among men of a younger
generation who are not yet able to influence legislation.
_Fourth_, the reigning legislative opinion of the day has never, at any
rate during the nineteenth century, exerted absolute or despotic
authority. Its power has always been diminished by the existence of
counter-currents or cross-currents of opinion which were not in harmony
with the prevalent opinion of the time.
A counter-current here means a body of opinion, belief, or sentiment
more or less directly opposed to the dominant opinion of a particular
era. Counter-currents of this kind have generally been supplied by the
survival of ideas or convictions which are gradually losing their hold
upon a given generation, and particularly the youthful part thereof.
This kind of "conservatism" which prompts men to retain convictions
which are losing their hold upon the mass of the world is found, it
should be remarked, as much among the adherents of one religious or
political creed as of another. Any Frenchman who clung to Protestantism
during the reign of Louis the Fourteenth; any north-country squire who
in the England of the eighteenth century adhered to the Roman
Catholicism of his fathers; Samuel Johnson, standing forth as a Tory and
a High Churchman amongst Whigs and Free Thinkers; the Abbé Gregoire,
retaining in 1830 the attitude and the beliefs of a bishop of that
constitutional church of France whereof the claims have been repudiated
at once by the Church and by the State; James Mill, who, though the
leader in 1832 of philosophic Radicals, the pioneers as they deemed
themselves of democratic progress, was in truth the last "of the
eighteenth century"--these are each and all of them examples of that
intellectual and moral conservatism which everywhere, and especially in
England, has always been a strong force. The past controls the present.
Counter-currents, again, may be supplied by new ideals which are
beginning to influence the young. The hopes or dreams of the generation
just coming into the field of public life undermine the energy of a
dominant creed.
Counter-currents of opinion, whatever their source, have one certain and
one possible effect. The certain effect is that a check is imposed upon
the action of the dominant faith.
_Fifth_, laws foster or create law-making opinion. This assertion may
sound, to one who has learned that laws are the outcome of public
opinion, like a paradox; when properly understood, it is nothing but an
undeniable, though sometimes neglected, truth.
B. INTERESTS, SENTIMENTS, AND ATTITUDES
1. Social Forces and Interaction[160]
We must guard at the outset against an illusion that has exerted a
confusing influence. There are no social forces which are not at the
same time forces lodged in individuals, deriving their energy from
individuals and operating in and through individuals. There are no
social forces that lurk in the containing ether, and affect persons
without the agency of other persons. There are, to be sure, all the
physical conditions that affect persons just as they affect all other
forms of matter. So far, these are not social forces at all. They do not
get to be social forces until they get into persons, and in these
persons they take the form of feelings which impel them to react upon
other persons. Persons are thus transmuters of physical forces into
social forces; but all properly designated social forces are essentially
personal. They are within some persons, and stimulate them to act upon
other persons; or they are in other persons, and exert themselves as
external stimuli upon otherwise inert persons. In either case social
forces are personal influences passing from person to person and
producing activities that give content to the association.
The conception of social forces was never challenged so long as it was
merely an everyday commonplace. When it passed into technical forms of
expression, doubts began to be urged. If anyone in the United States had
questioned the existence of Mrs. Grundy fifty years ago, he would have
been pitied and ignored as a harmless "natural." Social forces in the
form of gossip, and personified in Mrs. Grundy, were real to everybody.
But the particular species of social forces which Mrs. Grundy
represented were neither more nor less real than the other social forces
which had no name in folklore. Persons incessantly influence persons.
The modes of this influence are indescribably varied. They are conscious
and unconscious, accidental and momentary, or deliberate and persistent;
they are conventional and continuous, the result of individual habit, or
of customs crystallized into national or racial institutions.
The simple fact which the concept "social forces" stands for is that
every individual acts and is acted upon in countless ways by the other
persons with whom he associates. These modes of action and reaction
between persons may be classified, and the more obvious and recurrent
among them may be enumerated. More than this, the action of these social
forces may be observed, and the results of observation may be organized
into social laws. Indeed, there would be only two alternatives, if we
did not discover the presence and action of social forces. On the one
hand, social science would at most be a subdivision of natural science;
on the other hand, the remaining alternative would be the impossibility
of social science altogether.
But social forces are just as distinctly discernible as chemical forces.
The fact that we are not familiar with them no more makes against their
existence and their importance than general ignorance of the pressure of
the atmosphere takes that phenomenon out of the physical world. They are
not only the atmosphere but they are a very large part of the moral
world in general. If we could compose a complete account of the social
forces, we should at the same time have completed, from one point of
attention at least, a science of everything involved in human society.
"All beings which can be said to perform actions do so in obedience to
those mental states which are denominated desires." But we have gone
back a step beyond the desires and have found it necessary to assume the
existence of underlying interests. These have to desires very nearly the
relation of substance to attribute, or, in a different figure, of genus
to species. Our interests may be beyond or beneath our ken; our desires
are strong and clear. I may not be conscious of my health interests in
any deep sense, but the desires that my appetites assert are specific
and concrete and real. The implicit interests, of which we may be very
imperfectly aware, move us to desires which may correspond well or ill
with the real content of the interests. At all events, it is these
desires which make up the active social forces, whether they are more or
less harmonious with the interests from which they spring. The desires
that the persons associating actually feel are practically the elemental
forces with which we have to reckon. They are just as real as the
properties of matter. They have their ratios of energy, just as
certainly as though they were physical forces. They have their peculiar
modes of action, which may be formulated as distinctly as the various
modes of chemical action.
Every desire that any man harbors is a force making or marring,
strengthening or weakening, the structure and functions of the society
of which he is a part. What the human desires are, what their relations
are to each other, what their peculiar modifications are under different
circumstances--these are questions of detail which must be answered in
general by social psychology, and in particular by specific analysis of
each social situation. The one consideration to be urged at this point
is that the concept "social forces" has a real content. It represents
reality. There are social forces. They are the desires of persons. They
range in energy from the vagrant whim that makes the individual a
temporary discomfort to his group, to the inbred feelings that whole
races share. It is with these subtle forces that social arrangements and
the theories of social arrangements have to deal.
2. Interests[161]
During the past generation, the conception of the "atom" has been of
enormous use in physical discovery. Although no one has ever seen an
atom, the supposition that there are ultimate particles of matter in
which the "promise and potency" of all physical properties and actions
reside has served as a means of investigation during the most intensive
period of research in the history of thought. Without the hypothesis of
the atom, physics and chemistry, and in a secondary sense biology, would
have lacked chart and compass upon their voyages of exploration.
Although the notion of the atom is rapidly changing, and the tendency of
physical science is to construe physical facts in terms of motion rather
than of the traditional atom, it is probably as needless as it is
useless for us to concern ourselves as laymen with this refinement.
Although we cannot avoid speaking of the smallest parts into which
matter can be divided, and although we cannot imagine, on the other
hand, how any portions of matter can exist and not be divisible into
parts, we are probably quite as incapable of saving ourselves from
paradox by resort to the vortex hypothesis in any form. That is, these
subtleties are too wonderful for most minds. Without pushing analysis
too far, and without resting any theory upon analogy with the atom of
physical theory, it is necessary to find some starting-place from which
to trace up the composition of sentient beings, just as the physicists
assumed that they found their starting-place in the atom. The notion of
interests is accordingly serving the same purpose in sociology which the
notion of atoms has served in physical science. Interests are the stuff
that men are made of. More accurately expressed, the last elements to
which we can reduce the actions of human beings are units which we may
conveniently name "interests." It is merely inverting the form of
expression to say: _Interests are the simplest modes of motion which we
can trace in the conduct of human beings._
To the psychologist the individual is interesting primarily as a center
of knowing, feeling, and willing. To the sociologist the individual
begins to be interesting when he is thought as knowing, feeling, and
willing _something_. In so far as a mere trick of emphasis may serve to
distinguish problems, this ictus indicates the sociological
starting-point. The individual given in experience is thought to the
point at which he is available for sociological assumption, when he is
recognized as a center of activities which make for something outside of
the psychical series in which volition is a term. These activities must
be referred primarily to desires, but the desires themselves may be
further referred to certain universal interests. In this character the
individual becomes one of the known or assumed terms of sociology. The
individual as a center of active interests may be thought both as the
lowest term in the social equation and as a composite term whose factors
must be understood. These factors are either the more evident desires,
or the more remote interests which the individual's desires in some way
represent. At the same time, we must repeat the admission that these
assumed interests are like the atom of physics. They are the
metaphysical recourse of our minds in accounting for concrete facts. We
have never seen or touched them. They are the hypothetical substratum of
those regularities of conduct which the activities of individuals
display.
We may start with the familiar popular expressions, "the farming
interest," "the railroad interest," "the packing interest," "the milling
interest," etc., etc. Everyone knows what the expressions mean. Our use
of the term "interest" is not co-ordinate with these, but it may be
approached by means of them. All the "interests" that are struggling for
recognition in business and in politics are highly composite. The owner
of a flour mill, for example, is a man before he is a miller. He becomes
a miller at last because he is a man; i.e., because he has interests--in
a deeper sense than that of the popular expressions--which impel him to
act in order to gain satisfactions. The clue to all social activity is
in this fact of individual interests. Every act that every man performs
is to be traced back to an interest. We eat because there is a desire
for food; but the desire is set in motion by a bodily interest in
replacing exhausted force. We sleep because we are tired; but the
weariness is a function of the bodily interest in rebuilding used-up
tissue. We play because there is a bodily interest in use of the
muscles. We study because there is a mental interest in satisfying
curiosity. We mingle with our fellow-men because there is a mental
interest in matching our personality against that of others. We go to
market to supply an economic interest, and to war because of some social
interest of whatever mixed or simple form.
With this introduction, we may venture an extremely abstract definition
of our concept "interest." In general, _an interest is an unsatisfied
capacity, corresponding to an unrealized condition, and it is
predisposition to such rearrangement as would tend to realize the
indicated condition_. Human needs and human wants are incidents in the
series of events between the latent existence of human interest and the
achievement of partial satisfaction. Human interests, then, are the
ultimate terms of calculation in sociology. _The whole life-process, so
far as we know it, whether viewed in its individual or in its social
phase, is at last the process of developing, adjusting, and satisfying
interests._
No single term is of more constant use in recent sociology than this
term "interests." We use it in the plural partly for the sake of
distinguishing it from the same term in the sense which has become so
familiar in modern pedagogy. The two uses of the term are closely
related, but they are not precisely identical. The pedagogical emphasis
is rather on the voluntary attitude toward a possible object of
attention. The sociological emphasis is on attributes of persons which
may be compared to the chemical affinities of different elements.
To distinguish the pedagogical from the sociological use of the term
"interest," we may say pedagogically of a supposed case: "The boy has no
_interest_ in physical culture, or in shopwork, or in companionship with
other boys, or in learning, or in art, or in morality." That is,
attention and choice are essential elements of interest in the
pedagogical sense. On the other hand, we may say of the same boy, in the
sociological sense: "He has not discovered his health, wealth,
sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness _interests_." We thus
imply that interests, in the sociological sense, are not necessarily
matters of attention and choice. They are affinities, latent in persons,
pressing for satisfaction, whether the persons are conscious of them
either generally or specifically, or not; they are indicated spheres of
activity which persons enter into and occupy in the course of realizing
their personality.
Accordingly, we have virtually said that interests are merely
specifications in the make-up of the personal units. We have several
times named the most general classes of interests which we find
serviceable in sociology, viz.: _health_, _wealth_, _sociability_,
_knowledge_, _beauty_, and _rightness_.
We need to emphasize, in addition, several considerations about these
interests which are the motors of all individual and social action.
First, there is a subjective and an objective aspect of them all. It
would be easy to use terms of these interests in speculative arguments
in such a way as to shift the sense fallaciously from the one aspect to
the other; e.g., moral conduct, as an actual adjustment of the person in
question with other persons, is that person's "interest," in the
objective sense. On the other hand, we are obliged to think of something
in the person himself impelling him, however unconsciously, toward that
moral conduct, i.e., interest as "unsatisfied capacity" in the
subjective sense. So with each of the other interests. The fact that
these two senses of the term are always concerned must never be ignored;
but, until we reach refinements of analysis which demand use for these
discriminations, they may be left out of sight. Second, human interests
pass more and more from the latent, subjective, unconscious state to the
active, objective, conscious form. That is, before the baby is
self-conscious, the baby's essential interest in bodily well-being is
operating in performance of the organic functions. A little later the
baby is old enough to understand that certain regulation of his diet,
certain kinds of work or play, will help to make and keep him well and
strong. Henceforth there is in him a co-operation of interest in the
fundamental sense, and interest in the derived, secondary sense,
involving attention and choice. If we could agree upon the use of terms,
we might employ the word "desire" for this development of interest;
i.e., physiological performance of function is, strictly speaking, the
health interest; the desires which men actually pursue within the realm
of bodily function may be normal or perverted, in an infinite scale of
variety. So with each of the other interests. Third, with these
qualifications provided for, resolution of human activities into pursuit
of differentiated interests becomes the first clue to the combination
that unlocks the mysteries of society. For our purposes in this
argument we need not trouble ourselves very much about nice metaphysical
distinctions between the aspects of interest, because we have mainly to
do with interests in the same sense in which the man of affairs uses the
term. The practical politician looks over the lobby at Washington and he
classifies the elements that compose it. He says: "Here is the railroad
interest, the sugar interest, the labor interest, the army interest, the
canal interest, the Cuban interest, etc." He uses the term "interest"
essentially in the sociological sense but in a relatively concrete form,
and he has in mind little more than variations of the wealth interest.
He would explain the legislation of a given session as the final balance
between these conflicting pecuniary interests. He is right, in the main;
and every social action is, in the same way, an accommodation of the
various interests which are represented in the society concerned.
3. Social Pressures[162]
The phenomena of government are from start to finish phenomena of force.
But force is an objectionable word. I prefer to use the word pressure
instead of force, since it keeps the attention closely directed upon the
groups themselves, instead of upon any mystical "realities" assumed to
be underneath and supporting them, and since its connotation is not
limited to the narrowly "physical." We frequently talk of "bringing
pressure to bear" upon someone, and we can use the word here with but
slight extension beyond this common meaning.
Pressure, as we shall use it, is always a group phenomenon. It indicates
the push and resistance between groups. The balance of the group
pressures _is_ the existing state of society. Pressure is broad enough
to include all forms of the group influence upon group, from battle and
riot to abstract reasoning and sensitive morality. It takes up into
itself "moral energy" and the finest discriminations of conscience as
easily as bloodthirsty lust of power. It allows for humanitarian
movements as easily as for political corruption. The tendencies to
activity are pressures, as well as the more visible activities.
All phenomena of government are phenomena of groups pressing one
another, forming one another, and pushing out new groups and group
representatives (the organs or agencies of government) to mediate the
adjustments. It is only as we isolate these group activities, determine
their representative values, and get the whole process stated in terms
of them that we approach to a satisfactory knowledge of government.
When we take such an agency of government as a despotic ruler, we cannot
possibly advance to an understanding of him except in terms of the group
activities of his society which are most directly represented through
him, along with those which almost seem not to be represented through
him at all, or to be represented to a different degree or in a different
manner. And it is the same with democracies, even in their "purest" and
simplest forms, as well as in their most complicated forms. We cannot
fairly talk of despotisms or of democracies as though they were
absolutely distinct types of government to be contrasted offhand with
each other or with other types. All depends for each despotism and each
democracy and each other form of government on the given interests,
their relations, and their methods of interaction. The interest groups
create the government and work through it; the government, as activity,
works "for" the groups; the government, from the viewpoint of certain of
the groups, may at times be their private tool; the government, from the
viewpoint of others of the groups, seems at times their deadly enemy;
but the process is all one, and the joint participation is always
present, however it may be phrased in public opinion or clamor.
It is convenient most of the time in studying government to talk of
these groups as interests. But I have already indicated with sufficient
clearness that the interest is nothing other than the group activity
itself. The words by which we name the interests often give the best
expression to the value of the group activities in terms of other group
activities: if I may be permitted that form of phrasing, they are more
qualitative than quantitative in their implications. But that is
sometimes a great evil as well as sometimes an advantage. We must always
remember that there is nothing in the interests purely because of
themselves and that we can depend on them only as they stand for groups
which are acting or tending toward activity or pressing themselves along
in their activity with other groups.
When we get the group activities on the lower planes worked out and show
them as represented in various forms of higher groups, culminating in
the political groups, then we make progress in our interpretations.
Always and everywhere our study must be a study of the interests that
work through government; otherwise we have not got down to facts. Nor
will it suffice to take a single interest group and base our
interpretation upon it, not even for a special time and a special place.
No interest group has meaning except with reference to other interest
groups; and those other interest groups are pressures; they count in the
government process. The lowest of despised castes, deprived of rights to
the protection of property and even life, will still be found to be a
factor in the government, if only we can sweep the whole field and
measure the caste in its true degree of power, direct or represented, in
its potentiality of harm to the higher castes, and in its identification
with them for some important purposes, however deeply hidden from
ordinary view. No slaves, not the worst abused of all, but help to form
the government. They are an interest group within it.
Tested by the interest groups that function through them, legislatures
are of two general types. First are those which represent one class or
set of classes in the government as opposed to some other class, which
is usually represented in a monarch. Second are those which are not the
exclusive stronghold of one class or set of classes, but are instead the
channel for the functioning of all groupings of the population. The
borders between the two types are of course indistinct, but they
approximate closely to the borders between a society with class
organization and one with classes broken down into freer and more
changeable group interests.
Neither the number of chambers in the legislative body nor the
constitutional relations of the legislature to the executive can serve
to define the two types. The several chambers may represent several
classes, or again the double-chamber system may be in fact merely a
technical division, with the same interests present in both chambers.
The executive may be a class representative, or merely a co-ordinate
organ, dividing with the legislature the labor of providing channels
through which the same lot of manifold interest groups can work.
It lies almost on the surface that a legislature which is a class agency
will produce results in accordance with the class pressure behind it.
Its existence has been established by struggle, and its life is a
continual struggle against the representatives of the opposite class. Of
course there will be an immense deal of argument to be heard on both
sides, and the argument will involve the setting forth of "reasons" in
limitless number. It is indeed because of the advantages (in group
terms, of course) of such argument as a technical means of adjustment
that the legislative bodies survive. Argument under certain conditions
is a greater labor-saver than blows, and in it the group interests more
fully unfold themselves. But beneath all the argument lies the strength.
The arguments go no farther than the strength goes. What the new Russian
duma will get, if it survives, will be what the people it solidly
represents are strong enough to make it get, and no more and no less,
with bombs and finances, famine and corruption funds alike in the scale.
But the farther we advance among legislatures of the second type, and
the farther we get away from the direct appeal to muscle and weapon, the
more difficult becomes the analysis of the group components, the greater
is the prominence that falls to the process of argumentation, the more
adroitly do the group forces mask themselves in morals, ideals, and
phrases, the more plausible becomes the interpretation of the
legislature's work as a matter of reason, not of pressure, and the more
common it is to hear condemnations of those portions of the process at
which violence shows through the reasoning as though they were per se
perverted, degenerate, and the bearers of ruin. There is, of course, a
strong, genuine group opposition to the technique of violence, which is
an important social fact; but a statement of the whole legislative
process in terms of the discussion forms used by that anti-violence
interest group is wholly inadequate.
4. Idea-Forces[163]
The principle that I assume at the outset is that every idea tends to
act itself out. If it is an isolated idea, or if it is not
counterbalanced by a stronger force, its realization must take place.
Thus the principle of the struggle for existence and of selection,
taking the latter word in its broadest sense, is in my opinion as
applicable to ideas as to individuals and living species; a selection
takes place in the brain to the advantage of the strongest and most
exclusive idea, which is thus able to control the whole organism. In
particular, the child's brain is an arena of conflict for ideas and the
impulses they include; in the brain the new idea is a new force which
encounters the ideas already installed, and the impulses already
developed therein. Assume a mind, as yet a blank, and suddenly introduce
into it the representation of any movement, the idea of any action--such
as raising the arm. This idea being isolated and unopposed, the wave of
disturbance arising in the brain will take the direction of the arm,
because the nerves terminating in the arm are disturbed by the
representation of the arm. The arm will therefore be lifted. Before a
movement begins, we must think of this; now no movement that has taken
place is lost; it is necessarily communicated from the brain to the
organs if unchecked by any other representation or impulse. The
transmission of the idea to the limbs is inevitable as long as the idea
is isolated or unopposed. This I have called the law of idea-forces, and
I think I have satisfactorily explained the curious facts in connection
with the impulsive actions of the idea.
The well-known experiments of Chevreul on the "pendule explorateur," and
on the divining rod, show that if we represent to ourselves a movement
in a certain direction, the hand will finally execute this movement
without our consciousness, and so will transmit it to the instrument.
Table-turning is the realization of the expected movement by means of
the unconscious motion of the hands. Thought-reading is the
interpretation of imperceptible movements, in which the thought of the
subject betrays itself, even without his being conscious of it. In the
process that goes on when we are fascinated or on the point of fainting,
a process more obvious in children than in adults, there is an inchoate
movement which the paralysis of the will fails to check. When I was a
lad, I was once running over a plank across the weir of a river, it
never entering my head that I ran any risk of falling; suddenly this
idea came into play like a force obliquely compounded with the straight
course of thought which had up to that moment been guiding my footsteps.
I felt as if an invisible arm had seized me and was dragging me down. I
shrieked and stood trembling above the foaming water until assistance
came. Here the mere idea of vertigo produced vertigo. A plank on the
ground may be crossed without arousing any idea of falling; but if it is
above a precipice, and we think of the distance below, the impulse to
fall is very strong. Even when we are in perfect safety we may feel what
is known as the "fascination" of a precipice. The sight of the gulf
below, becoming a fixed idea, produces a resultant inhibition on all
other ideas. Temptation, which is always besetting a child because
everything is new to it, is nothing but the power of an idea and its
motor impulse.
The power of an idea is the greater, the more prominently it is singled
out from the general content of consciousness. This selection of an
idea, which becomes so exclusive that the whole consciousness is
absorbed in it, is called _monoïdeism_. This state is precisely that of
a person who has been hypnotized. What is called hypnotic suggestion is
nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of all
others, so that it passes into action. Natural somnambulism similarly
exhibits the force of ideas; whatever idea is conceived by the
somnambulist, he carries into action. The kind of dream in which
children often live is not without analogy to somnambulism. The fixed
idea is another instance of the same phenomenon, which is produced in
the waking state, and which, when exaggerated, becomes monomania, a kind
of morbid monoïdeism; children, having very few ideas, would very soon
acquire fixed ideas, if it were not for the mobility of attention which
the ceaseless variation of the surrounding world produces in them. Thus
all the facts grouped nowadays under the name of auto-suggestion may, in
my opinion, be explained. Here we shall generalize the law in this form:
every idea conceived by the mind is an auto-suggestion, the selective
effect of which is only counterbalanced by other ideas producing a
different auto-suggestion. This is especially noticeable in the young,
who so rapidly carry into action what is passing through their minds.
The philosophers of the seventeenth century, with Descartes and Pascal,
considered sentiments and passions as indistinct thoughts, as "thoughts,
as it were, in process of precipitation." This is true. Beneath all our
sentiments lies a totality of imperfectly analyzed ideas, a swelling
stream of crowded and indistinct reasons by the momentum of which we are
carried away and swept along. Inversely, sentiments underlie all our
ideas; they smoulder in the dying embers of abstractions. Even language
has a power because it arouses all the sentiments which it condenses in
a formula; the mere names "honor" and "duty" arouse infinite echoes in
the consciousness. At the name of "honor" alone, a legion of images is
on the point of surging up; vaguely, as with eyes open in the dark, we
see all the possible witnesses of our acts, from father and mother to
friends and fellow-countrymen; further, if our imagination is vivid
enough, we can see those great ancestors who did not hesitate under
similar circumstances. "We must; forward!" We feel that we are enrolled
in an army of gallant men; the whole race, in its most heroic
representatives, is urging us on. There is a social and even a
historical element beneath moral ideas. Besides, language, a social
product, is also a social force. The pious mind goes farther still; duty
is personified as a being--the living Good whose voice we hear.
Some speak of lifeless formulas; of these there are very few. A word, an
idea, is a formula of possible action and of sentiments ready to pass
into acts; they are "verbs." Now, every sentiment, every impulse which
becomes formulated with, as it were, a _fiat_, acquires by this alone a
new and quasi-creative force; it is not merely rendered visible by its
own light to itself but it is defined, specified, and selected from the
rest, and _ipso facto_ directed in its course. That is why formulas
relative to action are so powerful for good or evil; a child feels a
vague temptation, a tendency for which it cannot account. Pronounce in
its hearing the formula, change the blind impulse into the luminous
idea, and this will be a new suggestion which may, perhaps, cause it to
fall in the direction to which it was already inclined. On the other
hand, some formulas of generous sentiments will carry away a vast
audience immediately they are uttered. The genius is often the man who
translates the aspirations of his age into ideas; at the sound of his
voice a whole nation is moved. Great moral, religious, and social
revolutions ensue when the sentiments, long restrained and scarcely
conscious of their own existence, become formulated into ideas and
words; the way is then opened, the means and the goal are visible alike,
selection takes place, all the volitions are simultaneously guided in
the same direction, like a torrent which has found the weakest point in
the dam.
5. Sentiments[164]
We seldom experience the primary emotions in the pure or unmixed forms
in which they are commonly manifested by the animals. Our emotional
states commonly arise from the simultaneous excitement of two or more of
the instinctive dispositions; and the majority of the names currently
used to denote our various emotions are the names of such mixed,
secondary, or complex emotions. That the great variety of our emotional
states may be properly regarded as the result of the compounding of a
relatively small number of primary or simple emotions is no new
discovery. Descartes, for example, recognized only six primary emotions,
or passions as he termed them, namely--admiration, love, hatred, desire,
joy, and sadness, and he wrote, "All the others are composed of some out
of these six and derived from them." He does not seem to have formulated
any principles for the determination of the primaries and the
distinction of them from the secondaries.
The compounding of the primary emotions is largely, though not wholly,
due to the existence of sentiments, and some of the complex emotional
processes can only be generated from sentiments. Before going on to
discuss the complex emotions, we must therefore try to understand as
clearly as possible the nature of a sentiment.
The word "sentiment" is still used in several different senses. M. Ribot
and other French authors use its French equivalent as covering all the
feelings and emotions, as the most general name for the affective aspect
of mental processes. We owe to Mr. A. F. Shand the recognition of
features of our mental constitution of a most important kind that have
been strangely overlooked by other psychologists, and the application of
the word "sentiments" to denote features of this kind. Mr. Shand points
out that our emotions, or, more strictly speaking, our emotional
dispositions, tend to become organized in systems about the various
objects and classes of objects that excite them. Such an organized
system of emotional tendencies is not a fact or mode of experience, but
is a feature of the complexly organized structure of the mind that
underlies all our mental activity. To such an organized system of
emotional tendencies centered about some object Mr. Shand proposes to
apply the name "sentiment." This application of the word is in fair
accordance with its usage in popular speech, and there can be little
doubt that it will rapidly be adopted by psychologists.
The organization of the sentiments in the developing mind is determined
by the course of experience; that is to say, the sentiment is a growth
in the structure of the mind that is not natively given in the inherited
constitution. This is certainly true in the main, though the maternal
sentiment might almost seem to be innate; but we have to remember that
in the human mother this sentiment may, and generally does, begin to
grow up about the idea of its object, before the child is born.
The growth of the sentiments is of the utmost importance for the
character and conduct of individuals and of societies; it is the
organization of the affective and conative life. In the absence of
sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order,
consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our social relations and
conduct, being based on the emotions and their impulses, would be
correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, and unstable. It is only through
the systematic organization of the emotional dispositions in sentiments
that the volitional control of the immediate promptings of the emotions
is rendered possible. Again, our judgments of value and of merit are
rooted in our sentiments; and our moral principles have the same source,
for they are formed by our judgments of moral value.
The sentiments may be classified according to the nature of their
objects; they then fall into three main classes: the concrete
particular, the concrete general, and the abstract sentiments--e.g., the
sentiment of love for a child, of love for children in general, of love
for justice or virtue. Their development in the individual follows this
order, the concrete particular sentiments being, of course, the earliest
and most easily acquired. The number of sentiments a man may acquire,
reckoned according to the number of objects in which they are centered,
may, of course, be very large; but almost every man has a small number
of sentiments--perhaps one only--that greatly surpass all the rest in
strength and as regards the proportion of his conduct that springs from
them.
Each sentiment has a life-history, like every other vital organization.
It is gradually built up, increasing in complexity and strength and may
continue to grow indefinitely, or may enter upon a period of decline,
and may decay slowly or rapidly, partially or completely.
When any one of the emotions is strongly or repeatedly excited by a
particular object, there is formed the rudiment of a sentiment. Suppose
that a child is thrown into the company of some person given to frequent
outbursts of violent anger, say, a violent-tempered father who is
otherwise indifferent to the child and takes no further notice of him
than to threaten, scold, and, perhaps, beat him. At first the child
experiences fear at each exhibition of violence, but repetition of these
incidents very soon creates the habit of fear, and in the presence of
his father, even in his mildest moods, the child is timorous; that is to
say, the mere presence of the father throws the child's fear-disposition
into a condition of sub-excitement, which increases on the slightest
occasion until it produces all the subjective and objective
manifestations of fear. As a further stage, the mere idea of the father
becomes capable of producing the same effects as his presence; this idea
has become associated with the emotion; or, in stricter language, the
psychophysical disposition whose excitement involves the rise to
consciousness of this idea, has become associated or intimately
connected with the psychophysical disposition whose excitement produces
the bodily and mental symptoms of fear. Such an association constitutes
a rudimentary sentiment that we can only call a sentiment of fear.
In a similar way, a single act of kindness done by A to B may evoke in B
the emotion of gratitude; and if A repeats his kindly acts, conferring
benefits on B, the gratitude of B may become habitual, may become an
enduring emotional attitude of B towards A--a sentiment of gratitude.
Or, in either case, a single act--one evoking very intense fear or
gratitude--may suffice to render the association more or less durable
and the attitude of fear, or gratitude, of B toward A more or less
permanent.
6. Social Attitudes[165]
"Consciousness," says Jacques Loeb, "is only a metaphysical term for
phenomena which are determined by associative memory. By associative
memory I mean that mechanism by which a stimulus brings about not only
the effects which its nature and the specific structure of the irritable
organ call for, but by which it brings about also the effects of other
stimuli which formerly acted upon the organism almost or quite
simultaneously with the stimulus in question. If an animal can be
trained, if it can learn, it possesses associative memory." In short,
because we have memories we are able to profit by experiences.
It is the memories that determine, on the whole, what objects shall mean
to us, and how we shall behave toward them. We cannot say, however, that
a perception or an object is ever wholly without meaning to us. The
flame to which the child stretches out its hand means, even before he
has any experience of it, "something to be reached for, something to be
handled." After the first experience of touching it, however, it means
"something naturally attractive but still to be avoided." Each new
experience, so far as it is preserved in memory, adds new meanings to
the objects with which it is associated.
Our perceptions and our ideas embody our experiences of objects and so
serve as signs of what we may expect of them. They are the means by
which we are enabled to control our behavior toward them. On the other
hand, if we lose our memories, either temporarily or permanently, we
lose at the same time our control over our actions and are still able to
respond to objects, but only in accordance with our inborn tendencies.
After all our memories are gone, we still have our original nature to
fall back upon.
There is a remarkable case reported by Sidis and Goodhart which
illustrates the rôle that memory plays in giving us control over our
inherited tendencies. It is that of Rev. Thomas C. Hanna, who, while
attempting to alight from a carriage, lost his footing, fell to the
ground and was picked up unconscious. When he awoke it was found that he
had not only lost the faculty of speech but he had lost all voluntary
control of his limbs. He had forgotten how to walk. He had not lost his
senses. He could feel and see, but he was not able to distinguish
objects. He had no sense of distance. He was in a state of complete
"mental blindness." At first he did not distinguish between his own
movements and those of other objects. "He was as much interested in the
movements of his own limbs as in that of external things." He had no
conception of time. "Seconds, minutes, and hours were alike to him." He
felt hunger but he did not know how to interpret the feeling and had no
notion of how to satisfy it. When food was offered him he did not know
what to do with it. In order to get him to swallow food it had to be
placed far back in his throat, in order to provoke reflex swallowing
movements. In their report of the case the authors say:
Like an infant, he did not know the meaning of the simplest
words, nor did he understand the use of language. Imitation was
the factor in his first education. He learned the meaning of
words by imitating definite articulate sounds made in
connection with certain objects and activities. The
pronunciation of words and their combination into whole phrases
he acquired in the same imitative way. At first he simply
repeated any word and sentence heard, thinking that this meant
something to others. This manner of blind repetition and
unintelligent imitation was, however, soon given up, and he
began systematically to learn the meaning of words in
connection with the objective content they signified. As in the
case of children who, in their early developmental stage, use
one word to indicate many objects different in their nature,
but having some common point of superficial resemblance, so was
it in the case of Mr. Hanna: the first word he acquired was
used by him to indicate all the objects he wanted.
The first word he learned was "apple" and for a time apple was the only
word he knew. At first he learned only the names of particular objects.
He did not seem able to learn words with an abstract or general
significance. But although he was reduced to a state of mental infancy,
his "intelligence" remained, and he learned with astonishing rapidity.
"His faculty of judgment, his power of reasoning, were as sound and
vigorous as ever," continues the report. "The content of knowledge
seemed to have been lost, but the form of knowledge remained as active
as before the accident and was perhaps even more precise and definite."
One reason why man is superior to the brutes is probably that he has a
better natural memory. Another reason is that there are more things that
he can do, and so he has an opportunity to gain a wider and more varied
experience. Consider what a man can do with his hands! To this he has
added tools and machinery, which are an extension of the hand and have
multiplied its powers enormously. It is now pretty well agreed, however,
that the chief advantage which mankind has over the brutes is in the
possession of speech by which he can communicate his ideas. In
comparatively recent times he has supplemented this means of
communication by the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and
the telephone. In this way he has been able not only to communicate his
experiences but to fund and transmit them from one generation to
another.
As soon as man began to point out objects and associate them with vocal
sounds, he had obtained possession of a symbol by which he was able to
deliberately communicate his desires and his intentions to other men in
a more precise and definite way than he had been able to do through the
medium of spontaneous emotional expression.
The first words, we may suppose, were onomatopoetic, that is to say,
vocal imitations of the objects to which they referred. At any rate they
arose spontaneously in connection with the situation that inspired them.
They were then imitated by others and thus became the common and
permanent possession of the group. Language thus assumed for the group
the rôle of perception in the individual. It became the sign and symbol
of those meanings which were the common possession of the group.
As the number of such symbols was relatively small in comparison to the
number of ideas, words inevitably came to have different meanings in
different contexts. In the long run the effect of this was to detach the
words from the particular contexts in which they arose and loosen their
connections with the particular sentiments and attitudes with which they
were associated. They came to have thus a more distinctively symbolic
and formal character. It was thus possible to give them more precise
definitions, to make of them abstractions and mental toys, which the
individual could play with freely and disinterestedly. Like the child
who builds houses with blocks, he was able to arrange them in orders and
systems, create ideal structures, like the constructions of mathematics,
which he was then able to employ as means of ordering and systematizing
his more concrete experiences.
All this served to give the individual a more complete control over his
own experience and that of the group. It made it possible to analyze and
classify his own experiences and compare them with those of his fellows
and so, eventually, to erect the vast structure of formal and scientific
knowledge on the basis of which men are able to live and work together
in co-operation upon the structure of a common civilization.
The point is that the breadth of the experience over which man has
control and the disinterestedness with which he is able to view it is
the basis of the intellectual attainment of the individual, as of the
race.
If human beings were thoroughly rational creatures, we may presume that
they would act, at every instant, on the basis of all their experience
and all the knowledge that they were able to obtain from the experience
of others. The truth is, however, that we are never able, at any one
time, to mobilize, control, and use all the experience and all the
knowledge that we now possess and which, if we were less human than we
are, might serve to guide and control our actions. It is precisely the
function of science to collect, organize, and make available for our
practical uses the fund of experience and of knowledge we do possess.
Not only do we already have more knowledge than we can use, but much of
our personal and individual experience drops out and is lost in the
course of a lifetime. Meanwhile, later experiences are constantly adding
themselves to the earlier ones. In this way the meaning of the world is
constantly changing for us, much as the surface of the earth is
constantly under the influence of the weather.
The actual constellation of our memories and ideas is determined at any
given moment not merely by processes of association but also by
processes of dissociation. Practical interests, sentiments, and
emotional outbursts--love, fear, and anger--are constantly interrupting
the logical and constructive processes of the mind. These forces tend to
dissolve established connections between ideas and disintegrate our
memories so that they rarely function as a whole or as a unit, but
rather as more or less dissociated systems.
The mere act of attention, for example, so far as it focuses the
activities upon a single object, tends to narrow the range of
associations, check deliberation, and, by isolating one idea or system
of ideas, prepares us to act in accordance with them without regard to
the demands of other ideas in the wider but now suppressed context of
our experience. The isolation of one group of ideas implies the
suppression of other groups which are inconsistent with them or hinder
the indicated action.
When the fundamental instinct-emotions are aroused, they invariably have
the effect of isolating the ideas with which they are associated and of
inhibiting the contrary emotions. This is the explanation of war. When
the fighting instincts are stirred, men lose the fear of death and the
horror of killing.
When an idea, particularly one that is associated with some original
tendency of human nature, is thus isolated in consciousness, the
tendency is to respond to it automatically, just as one would respond to
a simple reflex. This explains the phenomena of suggestion. A state of
suggestibility is always a pre-condition of suggestion, and
suggestibility means just such an isolation and dissociation of the
suggested idea as has been described. Hypnotic trance may be defined as
a condition of abnormal suggestibility, in which the subject tends to
carry out automatically the commands of the experimenter, "as if," as
the familiar phrase puts it, "he had no will of his own," or rather, as
if the will of the experimenter had been substituted for that of the
subject. In fact the phenomena of auto-suggestion, in which one obeys
his own suggestion, seems to differ from other forms of the same
phenomena only in the fact that the subject obeys his own commands
instead of those of the experimenter. Not only suggestion and
auto-suggestion, but imitation, which is nothing more than another form
of suggestion, are made possible by the existence of mental mechanisms
created by dissociation.
Hypnotism represents an extreme but temporary form of dissociation of
the memories, artificially produced. Fascination and abstraction
(absent-mindedness) are milder forms of the same phenomena with this
difference, that they occur "in nature" and without artificial
stimulation.
A more permanent dissociation is represented in moods. The memories
which connect themselves with moods are invariably such as will support
the dominant emotion. At the same time memories which tend in any way to
modify the prevailing tone of the mood are spontaneously suppressed.
It is a familiar fact that persons whose occupations or whose mode of
life brings them habitually into different worlds, so that the
experiences in one have little or nothing in common with those of the
other, inevitably develop something akin to a dual personality. The
business man, for example, is one person in the city and another at his
home in the suburbs.
The most striking and instructive instances of dissociation, however,
are the cases of dual or multiple personality in which the same
individual lives successively or simultaneously two separate lives, each
of which is wholly oblivious of the other. The classic instance of this
kind is the case of the Rev. Ansel Bourne reported by William James in
his _Principles of Psychology_. Ansel Bourne was an itinerant preacher
living at Greene, Rhode Island. On January 19, 1887, he drew $551.00
from a bank in Providence and entered a Pawtucket horse car and
disappeared. He was advertised as missing, foul play being suspected.
On the morning of March 24, at Norristown, Pennsylvania, a man calling
himself A. J. Brown awoke in a fright and called on the people of the
house to tell him who he was. Later he said he was Ansel Bourne. Nothing
was known of him in Norristown except that six weeks before he had
rented a small shop, stocked it with stationery, confectionery, and
other small articles, and was carrying on a quiet trade "without seeming
to anyone unnatural or eccentric." At first it was thought he was
insane, but his story was confirmed and he was returned to his home. It
was then deemed that he had lost all memory of the period which had
elapsed since he boarded the Pawtucket car. What he had done or where he
had been between the time he left Providence and arrived in Norristown,
no one had the slightest information.
In 1890 he was induced by William James to submit to hypnotism in order
to see whether in his trance state his "Brown" memories would come back.
The experiment was so successful that, as James remarks, "it proved
quite impossible to make him, while in hypnosis, remember any of the
facts of his normal life." The report continues:
He had heard of Ansel Bourne, but "didn't know as he had ever
met the man." When confronted with Mrs. Bourne he said that he
had "never seen the woman before," etc. On the other hand, he
told of his peregrinations during the lost fortnight, and gave
all sorts of details about the Norristown episode. The whole
thing was prosaic enough; and the Brown-personality seems to be
nothing but a rather shrunken, dejected, and amnesic extract of
Mr. Bourne himself. He gave no motive for the wandering except
that there was "trouble back there" and he "wanted rest."
During the trance he looks old, the corners of his mouth are
drawn down, his voice is slow and weak, and he sits screening
his eyes and trying vainly to remember what lay before and
after the two months of the Brown experience. "I'm all hedged
in," he says, "I can't get out at either end. I don't know what
set me down in that Pawtucket horse-car, and I don't know how I
ever left that store or what became of it." His eyes are
practically normal, and all his sensibilities (save for tardier
response) about the same in hypnosis as in waking. I had hoped
by suggestion to run the two personalities into one, and make
the memories continuous, but no artifice would avail to
accomplish this, and Mr. Bourne's skull today still covers two
distinct personal selves.
An interesting circumstance with respect to this case and others is that
the different personalities, although they inhabit the same body and
divide between them the experiences of a single individual, not only
regard themselves as distinct and independent persons but they exhibit
marked differences in character, temperament, and tastes, and frequently
profess for one another a decided antipathy. The contrasts in
temperament and character displayed by these split-off personalities are
illustrated in the case of Miss Beauchamp, to whose strange and
fantastic history Morton Prince has devoted a volume of nearly six
hundred pages.
In this case, the source of whose morbidity was investigated by means of
hypnotism, not less than three distinct personalities in addition to
that of the original and real Miss Beauchamp were evolved. Each one of
these was distinctly different and decidedly antipathetic to the others.
Pierre Janet's patient, Madam B, however, is the classic illustration of
this dissociated personality. From the time she was sixteen years of
age, Léonie, as she was called, had been so frequently hypnotized and
subjected to so much clinical experimentation that a well-organized
secondary personality was elaborated, which was designated as Léontine.
Léonie was a poor peasant woman, serious, timid, and melancholy.
Léontine was gay, noisy, restless, and ironical. Léontine did not
recognize that she had any relationship with Léonie, whom she referred
to as "that good woman," "the other," who "is not I, she is too stupid."
Eventually a third personality, known as Léonore, appeared who did not
wish to be mistaken for either that "good but stupid woman" Léonie, nor
for the "foolish babbler" Léontine.
Of these personalities Léonie possessed only her own memories, Léontine
possessed the memories of Léonie and her own, while the memories of
Léonore, who was superior to them both, included Madam B's whole life.
What is particularly interesting in connection with this phenomenon of
multiple personality is the fact that it reveals in a striking way the
relation of the subconscious to the conscious. The term subconscious, as
it occurs in the literature of psychology, is a word of various
meanings. In general, however, we mean by subconscious a region of
consciousness in which the dissociated memories, the "suppressed
complexes," as they are called, maintain some sort of conscious
existence and exercise an indirect though very positive influence upon
the ideas in the focus of consciousness, and so upon the behavior of the
individual. The subconscious, in short, is the region of the suppressed
memories. They are suppressed because they have come into conflict with
the dominant complex in consciousness which represents the personality
of the individual.
"Emotional conflicts" have long been the theme of literary analysis and
discussion. In recent years they have become the subject of scientific
investigation. In fact a new school of medical psychology with a vast
literature has grown up around and out of the investigations of the
effects of the suppression of a single instinct--the sexual impulse. A
whole class of nervous disorders, what are known as psychoneuroses, are
directly attributed by Dr. Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytic school,
as it is called, to these suppressions, many of which consist of
memories that go back to the period of early childhood before the sexual
instinct had attained the form that it has in adults.
The theory of Freud, stated briefly, amounts to this: As a result of
emotional conflicts considerable portions of the memories of certain
individuals, with the motor impulses connected with them, are thrust
into the background of the mind, that is to say, the subconscious. Such
suppressed memories, with the connected motor dispositions, he first
named "suppressed complexes." Now it is found that these suppressed
complexes, which no longer respond to stimulations as they would under
normal conditions, may still exercise an indirect influence upon the
ideas which are in the focus of consciousness. Under certain conditions
they may not get into consciousness at all but manifest themselves, for
example, in the form of hysterical tics, twitchings, and muscular
convulsions.
Under other circumstances the ideas associated with the suppressed
complexes tend to have a dominating and controlling place in the life of
the individual. All our ideas that have a sentimental setting are of
this character. We are all of us a little wild and insane upon certain
subjects or in regard to certain persons or objects. In such cases a
very trivial remark or even a gesture will fire one of these loaded
ideas. The result is an emotional explosion, a sudden burst of weeping,
a gust of violent, angry, and irrelevant emotion, or, in case the
feelings are more under control, merely a bitter remark or a chilling
and ironical laugh. It is an interesting fact that a jest may serve as
well to give expression to the "feelings" as an expletive or any other
emotional expression. All forms of fanaticism, fixed ideas, phobias,
ideals, and cherished illusions may be explained as the effects of
mental mechanisms created by the suppressed complexes.
From what has been said we are not to assume that there is any necessary
and inevitable conflict among ideas. In our dreams and day-dreams, as in
fairyland, our memories come and go in the most disorderly and fantastic
way, so that we may seem to be in two places at the same time, or we may
even be two persons, ourselves and someone else. Everything trips
lightly along, in a fantastic pageant without rhyme or reason. We
discover something of the same freedom when we sit down to speculate
about any subject. All sorts of ideas present themselves; we entertain
them for a moment, then dismiss them and turn our attention to some
other mental picture which suits our purpose better. At such times we do
not observe any particular conflict between one set of ideas and
another. The lion and the lamb lie down peacefully together, and even if
the lamb happens to be inside we are not particularly disturbed.
Conflict arises between memories when our personal interests are
affected, when our sentiments are touched, when some favorite opinion is
challenged. Conflict arises between our memories when they are connected
with some of our motor dispositions, that is to say, when we begin to
act. Memories which are suppressed as a result of emotional conflicts,
memories associated with established motor dispositions, inevitably tend
to find some sort of direct or symbolic expression. In this way they
give rise to the symptoms which we meet in hysteria and
psychasthenia--fears, phobias, obsessions, and tics, like stammering.
The suppressed complexes do not manifest themselves in the pathological
forms only, but neither do the activities of the normal complexes give
any clear and unequivocal evidence of themselves in ordinary
consciousness. We are invariably moved to act by motives of which we are
only partially conscious or wholly unaware. Not only is this true, but
the accounts we give to ourselves and others of the motives upon which
we acted are often wholly fictitious, although they may be given in
perfect good faith.
A simple illustration will serve, however, to indicate how this can be
effected. In what is called post-hypnotic suggestion we have an
illustration of the manner in which the waking mind may be influenced by
impulses of whose origin and significance the subject is wholly unaware.
In a state of hypnotic slumber the suggestion is given that after
awaking the subject will, upon a certain signal, rise and open the
window or turn out the light. He is accordingly awakened and, at the
signal agreed upon while he was in the hypnotic slumber but of which he
is now wholly unconscious, he will immediately carry out the command as
previously given. If the subject is then asked why he opened the window
or turned out the light, he will, in evident good faith, make some
ordinary explanation, as that "it seemed too hot in the room," or that
he "thought the light in the room was disagreeable." In some cases, when
the command given seems too absurd, the subject may not carry it out,
but he will then show signs of restlessness and discomfort, just for
instance as one feels when he is conscious that he has left something
undone which he intended to do, although he can no longer recall what it
was. Sometimes when the subject is not disposed to carry out the command
actually given, he will perform some other related act as a substitute,
just as persons who have an uneasy conscience, while still unwilling to
make restitution or right the wrong which they have committed, will
perform some other act by way of expiation.
Our moral sentiments and social attitudes are very largely fixed and
determined by our past experiences of which we are only vaguely
conscious.
"This same principle," as Morton Prince suggests, "underlies what is
called the 'social conscience,' the 'civic' and 'national conscience,'
'patriotism,' 'public opinion,' what the Germans call 'Sittlichkeit,'
the war attitude of mind, etc. All these mental attitudes may be reduced
to common habits of thought and conduct derived from mental experiences
common to a given community and conserved as complexes in the
unconscious of the several individuals of the community."
Sentiments were first defined and distinguished from the emotions by
Shand, who conceived of them as organizations of the emotions about some
particular object or type of object. Maternal love, for example,
includes the emotions of fear, anger, joy, or sorrow, all organized
about the child. This maternal love is made up of innate tendencies but
is not itself a part of original nature. It is the mother's fostering
care of the child which develops her sentiments toward it, and the
sentiment attaches to any object that is bound up with the life of the
child. The cradle is dear to the mother because it is connected with her
occupation in caring for the child. The material fears for its welfare,
her joy in its achievements, her anger with those who injure or even
disparage it, are all part of the maternal sentiment.
The mother's sentiment determines her attitude toward her child, toward
other children, and toward children in general. Just as back of every
sensation, perception, or idea there is some sort of motor disposition,
so our attitudes are supported by our sentiments. Back of every
political opinion there is a political sentiment and it is the sentiment
which gives force and meaning to the opinion.
Thus we may think of opinions merely as representative of a
psycho-physical mechanism, which we may call the sentiment-attitude.
These sentiment-attitudes are to be regarded in turn as organizations of
the original tendencies, the instinct-emotions, about some memory, idea,
or object which is, or once was, the focus and the end for which the
original tendencies thus organized exist. In this way opinions turn out,
in the long run, to rest on original nature, albeit original nature
modified by experience and tradition.
C. THE FOUR WISHES: A CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL FORCES
1. The Wish, the Social Atom[166]
The Freudian psychology is based on the doctrine of the "wish," just as
physical science is based, today, on the concept of function. Both of
these are what may be called dynamic concepts, rather than static; they
envisage natural phenomena not as things but as processes and largely to
this fact is due their pre-eminent explanatory value. Through the "wish"
the "thing" aspect of mental phenomena, the more substantive "content of
consciousness," becomes somewhat modified and reinterpreted. This
"wish," which as a concept Freud does not analyze, includes all that
would commonly be so classed, and also whatever would be called impulse,
tendency, desire, purpose, attitude, and the like, not including,
however, any emotional components thereof. Freud also acknowledges the
existence of what he calls "negative wishes," and these are not fears
but negative purposes. An exact definition of the "wish" is that it is
_a course of action_ which some mechanism of the body is _set_ to carry
out, whether it actually does so or does not. All emotions, as well as
the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, are separable from the
"wishes," and this precludes any thought of a merely hedonistic
psychology. The wish is any purpose of project for _a course of action_,
whether it is being merely entertained by the mind or is being actually
executed--a distinction which is really of little importance. We shall
do well if we consider this to be, as in fact it is, dependent on a
_motor attitude_ of the physical body, which goes over into overt action
and _conduct_ when the wish is carried into execution.
It is this "wish" which transforms the principal doctrines of psychology
and recasts the science, much as the "atomic theory" and later the
"ionic theory" have reshaped earlier conceptions of chemistry. This
so-called "wish" becomes the unit of psychology, replacing the older
unit commonly called "sensation," which latter, it is to be noted, was a
_content_ of consciousness unit, whereas the "wish" is a more dynamic
affair.
Unquestionably the mind is somehow "embodied" in the body. But how?
Well, if the unit of mind and character is a "wish," it is easy enough
to perceive how it is incorporated. It is, this "wish," something which
the body as a piece of mechanism can do--a course of action with regard
to the environment which the machinery of the body is capable of
carrying out. This capacity resides clearly in the parts of which the
body consists and in the way in which these are put together, not so
much in the matter of which the body is composed, as in the forms which
this matter assumes when organized.
In order to look at this more closely we must go a bit down the
evolutionary series to the fields of biology and physiology. Here we
find much talk of nerves and muscles, sense-organs, reflex arcs,
stimulation, and muscular response, and we feel that somehow these
things do not reach the core of the matter, and that they never can;
that spirit is not nerve or muscle; and that intelligent conduct, to say
nothing of conscious thought, can never be reduced to reflex arcs and
the like--just as a printing press is not merely wheels and rollers,
and still less is it chunks of iron. The biologist has only himself to
thank if he has overlooked a thing which lay directly under his nose. He
has overlooked the _form of organization_ of these his reflex arcs, has
left out of account that step which assembles wheels and rollers into a
printing press, and that which organizes reflex arcs, as we shall
presently see, into an intelligent, conscious creature. Evolution took
this important little step of organization ages ago, and thereby
produced the rudimentary "wish."
Now in the reflex arc a sense-organ is stimulated and the energy of
stimulation is transformed into nervous energy, which then passes along
an afferent nerve to the central nervous system, passes through this and
out by an efferent or motor nerve to a muscle, where the energy is again
transformed and the muscle contracts. Stimulation at one point of the
animal organism produces contraction at another. The principles of
irritability and of motility are involved, but all further study of
_this_ process will lead us only to the physics and chemistry of the
energy transformations--will lead us, that is, in the direction of
_analysis_. If, however, we inquire in what way such reflexes are
combined or "integrated" into more complicated processes, we shall be
led in exactly the opposite direction, that of _synthesis_, and here we
soon come, as is not surprising, to a synthetic novelty. This is
_specific response_ or _behavior_.
In this single reflex something is done to a sense-organ and the process
within the organ is comparable to the process in any unstable substance
when the foreign energy strikes it; it is strictly a chemical process,
and so for the conducting nerve, likewise for the contracting muscle. It
happens, as a physiological fact, that in this process stored energy is
released so that a reflex contraction is literally comparable to the
firing of a pistol. But the reflex arc is not "aware" of anything, and
indeed there is nothing more to say about the process unless we should
begin to analyze it. But even two such processes going on together in
one organism are a very different matter. Two such processes require two
sense-organs, two conduction paths, and two muscles; and since we are
considering the result of the two in combination, the relative
anatomical location of these six members is of importance. For
simplicity I will take a hypothetical but strictly possible case. A
small water animal has an eyespot located on each side of its anterior
end; each spot is connected by a nerve with a vibratory silium or fin
on the side of the posterior end; the thrust exerted by each fin is
toward the rear. If, now, light strikes one eye, say the right, the left
fin is set in motion and the animal's body is set rotating toward the
right like a rowboat with one oar. This is all that one such reflex arc
could do for the animal. Since, however, there are now two, when the
animal comes to be turned far enough toward the right so that some of
the light strikes the second eyespot (as will happen when the animal
comes around facing the light), the second fin, on the right side, is
set in motion, and the two together propel the animal forward in a
straight line. The direction of this line will be that in which the
animal lies when its two eyes receive equal amounts of light. In other
words, by the combined operation of two reflexes the animal swims
_toward the light_, while either reflex alone would only have set it
spinning like a top. It now responds specifically in the direction of
the light, whereas before it merely spun when lashed.
Suppose, now, that it possess a _third_ reflex arc--a "heat spot" so
connected with the same or other fins that when stimulated by a certain
intensity of heat it initiates a nervous impulse which stops the forward
propulsion. The animal is still "lashed," but nevertheless no light can
force it to swim "blindly to its death" by scalding. It has the
rudiments of "intelligence." But so it had before. For as soon as two
reflex arcs capacitate it mechanically to swim _toward light_, it was no
longer exactly like a pinwheel; it could respond specifically toward at
least one thing in its environment.
It is this objective reference of a process of release that is
significant. The mere reflex does not refer to anything beyond itself;
if it drives an organism in a certain direction, it is only as a rocket
ignited at random shoots off in some direction, depending on how it
happened to lie. But specific response is not merely in some random
direction, it is _toward an object_, and if this object is moved, the
responding organism changes its direction and still moves after it. And
the objective reference is that the organism is _moving with reference
to some object or fact of the environment_. For the organism, while a
very interesting mechanism in itself, is one whose movements turn on
objects outside of itself, much as the orbit of the earth turns upon the
sun; and these external, and sometimes very distant, objects are as much
_constituents_ of the behavior process as is the organism which does
the turning. It is this _pivotal outer object_, the object of specific
response, which seems to me to have been overneglected.
It is not surprising, then, that in animals as highly organized reflexly
as are many of the invertebrates, even though they should possess no
other principle of action than that of specific response, the various
life-activities should present an appearance of considerable
intelligence. And I believe that in fact this intelligence is solely the
product of accumulated specific responses. Our present point is that the
specific response and the "wish" as Freud uses the term, are one and the
same thing.
2. The Freudian Wish[167]
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a nursery saw which, in
the light of recent developments in psychology, has come to have a much
more universal application than it was formerly supposed to have. If the
followers of the Freudian school of psychologists can be believed--and
there are many reasons for believing them--all of us, no matter how
apparently contented we are and how well we are supplied with the good
things of the earth, are "beggars," because at one time or another and
in one way or another we are daily betraying the presence of unfulfilled
wishes. Many of these wishes are of such a character that we ourselves
cannot put them into words. Indeed, if they were put into words for us,
we should straightway deny that such a wish is or was ever harbored by
us in our waking moments. But the stretch of time indicated by "waking
moments" is only a minor part of the twenty-four hours. Even during the
time we are not asleep we are often abstracted, day-dreaming, letting
moments go by in reverie. Only during a limited part of our waking
moments are we keenly and alertly "all there" in the possession of our
faculties. There are thus, even apart from sleep, many unguarded moments
when these so-called "repressed wishes" may show themselves.
In waking moments we wish only for the conventional things which will
not run counter to our social traditions or code of living. But these
open and above-board wishes are not very interesting to the
psychologist. Since they are harmless and call for the kinds of things
that everybody in our circle wishes for, we do not mind admitting them
and talking about them. Open and uncensored wishes are best seen in
children (though children at an early age begin to show repressions).
Only tonight I heard a little girl of nine say: "I wish I were a boy and
were sixteen years old--I'd marry Ann" (her nine-year old companion).
And recently I heard a boy of eight say to his father: "I wish you would
go away forever; then I could marry mother." The spontaneous and
uncensored wishes of children gradually disappear as the children take
on the speech conventions of the adult. But even though the crassness of
the form of expression of the wish disappears with age, there is no
reason to suppose that the human organism ever gets to the point where
wishes just as unconventional as the above do not rise to trouble it.
Such wishes, though, are immediately repressed; we never harbor them nor
do we express them clearly to ourselves in our waking moments.
The steps by which repression takes place in the simpler cases are not
especially difficult to understand. When the child wants something it
ought not to have, its mother hands it something else and moves the
object about until the child reaches out for it. When the adult strives
for something which society denies him, his environment offers him, if
he is normal, something which is "almost as good," although it may not
wholly take the place of the thing he originally strove for. This in
general is the process of substitution or sublimation. It is never
complete from the first moment of childhood. Consequently it is natural
to suppose that many of the things which have been denied us should at
times beckon to us. But since they are banned they must beckon in
devious ways. These sometime grim specters both of the present and of
the past cannot break through the barriers of our staid and sober waking
moments, so they exhibit themselves, at least to the initiated, in
shadowy form in reverie, and in more substantial form in the slips we
make in conversation and in writing, and in the things we laugh at; but
clearest of all in dreams. I say the meaning is clear to the initiated
because it does require special training and experience to analyze these
seemingly nonsensical slips of tongue and pen, these highly elaborated
and apparently meaningless dreams, into the wishes (instinct and habit
impulses) which gave them birth. It is fortunate for us that we are
protected in this way from having to face openly many of our own wishes
and the wishes of our friends.
We get our clue to the dream as being a wish fulfilment by taking the
dreams of children. Their dreams are as uncensored as is their
conversation. Before Christmas my own children dreamed nightly that they
had received the things they wanted for Christmas. The dreams were
clear, logical, and open wishes. Why should the dreams of adults be less
logical and less open unless they are to act as concealers of the wish?
If the dream processes in the child run in an orderly and logical way,
would it indeed not be curious to find the dream processes of the adult
less logical and full of meaning?
This argument gives us good a priori grounds for supposing that the
dreams of adults too are full of meaning and are logical; that there is
a wish in every dream and that the wish is fulfilled in the dream. The
reason dreams appear illogical is due to the fact that if the wish were
to be expressed in its logical form it would not square with our
everyday habits of thought and action. We should be disinclined to admit
even to ourselves that we have such dreams. Immediately upon waking only
so much of the dream is remembered, that is, put into ordinary speech,
as will square with our life at the time. The dream is "censored," in
other words.
The question immediately arises, who is the censor or what part of us
does the censoring? The Freudians have made more or less of a
"metaphysical entity" out of the censor. They suppose that when wishes
are repressed, they are repressed into the "unconscious," and that this
mysterious censor stands at the trapdoor lying between the conscious and
the unconscious. Many of us do not believe in a world of the unconscious
(a few of us even have grave doubts about the usefulness of the term
consciousness), hence we try to explain censorship along ordinary
biological lines. We believe that one group of habits can "down" another
group of habits--or instincts. In this case our ordinary system of
habits--those which we call expressive of our "real selves"--inhibit or
quench (keep inactive or partially inactive) those habits and
instinctive tendencies which belong largely in the past.
This conception of the dream as having both censored and uncensored
features has led us to divide the dream into its specious or manifest
content (face value, which is usually nonsensical) and its latent or
logical content. We should say that while the manifest content of the
dream is nonsensical, its true or latent content is usually logical and
expressive of some wish that has been suppressed in the waking state.
On examination the manifest content of dreams is found to be full of
symbols. As long as the dream does not have to be put into customary
language, it is allowed to stand as it is dreamed--the symbolic features
are uncensored. Symbolism is much more common than is ordinarily
supposed. All early language was symbolic. The language of children and
of savages abounds in symbolism. Symbolic modes of expression both in
art and in literature are among the earliest forms of treating difficult
situations in delicate and inoffensive ways. In other words, symbols in
art are a necessity and serve the same purpose as does the censor in the
dreams. Even those of us who have not an artistic education, however,
have become familiar with the commoner forms of symbolism through our
acquaintance with literature. In the dream, when the more finely
controlled physiological processes are in abeyance, there is a tendency
to revert to the symbolic modes of expression. This has its use, because
on awaking the dream does not shock us, since we make no attempt to
analyze or trace back in the dream the symbol's original meaning. Hence
we find that the manifest content is often filled with symbols which
occasionally give us the clue to the dream analysis.
The dream then brings surcease from our maladjustments: If we are denied
power, influence, or love by society or by individuals, we can obtain
these desiderata in our dreams. We can possess in dreams the things
which we cannot have by day. In sleep the poor man becomes a Midas, the
ugly woman handsome, the childless woman surrounded by children, and
those who in daily life live upon a crust in their dreams dine like
princes (after living upon canned goods for two months in the Dry
Tortugas, the burden of my every dream was food). Where the wished-for
things are compatible with our daily code, they are remembered on
awaking as they were dreamed. Society, however, will not allow the
unmarried woman to have children, however keen her desire for them.
Hence her dreams in which the wish is gratified are remembered in
meaningless words and symbols.
Long before the time Freud's doctrine saw the light of day, William
James gave the key to what I believed to be the true explanation of the
wish. Thirty years ago he wrote:
I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my
selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I
could, be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great
athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a _bon vivant_,
and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher, a philanthropist,
a statesman, a warrior, and African explorer, as well as a
"tone-poet" and a saint. But the thing is simply impossible.
The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the
_bon vivant_ and the philanthropist would trip each other up;
the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house
in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may
conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man.
But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less
be suppressed.
What James is particularly emphasizing here is that the human organism
is instinctively capable of developing along many different lines, but
that due to the stress of civilization some of these instinctive
capacities must be thwarted. In addition to these impulses which are
instinctive, and therefore hereditary, there are many habit impulses
which are equally strong and which for similar reasons must be given up.
The systems of habits we form (i.e., the acts we learn to perform) at
four years of age will not serve us when we are twelve, and those formed
at the age of twelve will not serve us when we become adults. As we pass
from childhood to man's estate, we are constantly having to give up
thousands of activities which our nervous and muscular systems have a
tendency to perform. Some of these instinctive tendencies born with use
are poor heritages; some of the habits we early develop are equally poor
possessions. But, whether they are "good" or "bad," they must give way
as we put on the habits required of adults. Some of them yield with
difficulty and we often get badly twisted in attempting to put them
away, as every psychiatric clinic can testify. It is among these
frustrated impulses that I would find the biological basis of the
unfulfilled wish. Such "wishes" need never have been "conscious" and
_need never have been suppressed into Freud's realm of the unconscious_.
It may be inferred from this that there is no particular reason for
applying the term "wish" to such tendencies. What we discover then in
dreams and in conversational slips and other lapses are really at heart
"reaction tendencies"--tendencies which we need never have faced nor put
into words at any time. On Freud's theory these "wishes" have at one
time been faced and put into words by the individual, and when faced
they were recognized as not squaring with his ethical code. They were
then immediately "repressed into the unconscious."
A few illustrations may help in understanding how thwarted tendencies
may lay the basis for the so-called unfulfilled wish which later appears
in the dream. One individual becomes a psychologist in spite of his
strong interest in becoming a medical man, because at the time it was
easier for him to get the training along psychological lines. Another
pursues a business career, when, if he had had his choice, he would have
become a writer of plays. Sometimes on account of the care of a mother
or of younger brothers and sisters, a young man cannot marry, even
though the mating instinct is normal; such a course of action
necessarily leaves unfulfilled wishes and frustrated impulses in its
train. Again a young man will marry and settle down when mature
consideration would show that his career would advance much more rapidly
if he were not burdened with a family. Again, an individual marries and
without even admitting to himself that his marriage is a failure he
gradually shuts himself off from any emotional expression--protects
himself from the married state by sublimating his natural domestic ties,
usually in some kind of engrossing work, but often in questionable
ways--by hobbies, speed manias, and excesses of various kinds. In
connection with this it is interesting to note that the automobile,
quite apart from its utilitarian value, is coming to be a widely used
means of repression or wish sublimation. I have been struck by the
enormously increasing number of women drivers. Women in the present
state of society have not the same access to absorbing kinds of works
that men have (which will shortly come to be realized as a crime far
worse than that of the Inquisition). Hence their chances of normal
sublimation are limited. For this reason women seek an outlet by rushing
to the war as nurses, in becoming social workers, pursuing aviation,
etc. Now if I am right in this analysis these unexercised tendencies to
do things other than we are doing are never quite got rid of. We cannot
get rid of them unless we could build ourselves over again so that our
organic machinery would work only along certain lines and only for
certain occupations. Since we cannot completely live these tendencies
down, we are all more or less "unadjusted" and ill adapted. These
maladjustments are exhibited whenever the brakes are off, that is,
whenever our higher and well-developed habits of speech and action are
dormant, as in sleep, in emotional disturbances, etc.
Many but not all of these "wishes" can be traced to early childhood or
to adolescence, which is a time of stress and strain and a period of
great excitement. In childhood the boy often puts himself in his
father's place; he wishes that he were grown like his father and could
take his father's place, for then his mother would notice him more and
he would not have to feel the weight of authority. The girl likewise
often becomes closely attached to her father and wishes her mother would
die (which in childhood means to disappear or go away) so that she could
be all in all to her father. These wishes, from the standpoint of
popular morality, are perfectly innocent; but as the children grow older
they are told that such wishes are wrong and that they should not speak
in such a "dreadful" way. Such wishes are, then, gradually
suppressed--replaced by some other mode of expression. But the
replacement is often imperfect. The apostle's saying, "When we become
men we put away childish things" was written before the days of
psychoanalysis.
3. The Person and His Wishes[168]
The human being has a great variety of "wishes," ranging from the desire
to have food to the wish to serve humanity.
Anything capable of being appreciated (wished for) is a "value." Food,
money, a poem, a political doctrine, a religious creed, a member of the
other sex, etc., are values.
There are also negative values--things which exist but which the
individual does not want, which he may even despise. Liquor or the
Yiddish language may be a positive value for one person and a negative
value for another.
The state of mind of the individual toward a value is an "attitude."
Love of money, desire for fame, appreciation of a given poem, reverence
for God, hatred of the Jew, are attitudes.
We divide wishes into four classes: (1) the desire for new experience;
(2) the desire for security; (3) the desire for recognition; (4) the
desire for response.
1. The desire for new experience is seen in simple forms in the prowling
and meddling activities of the child, and the love of adventure and
travel in the boy and the man. It ranges in moral quality from the
pursuit of game and the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of knowledge
and the pursuit of ideals. It is found equally in the vagabond and the
scientific explorer. Novels, theaters, motion pictures, etc., are means
of satisfying this desire vicariously, and their popularity is a sign of
the elemental force of this desire.
In its pure form the desire for new experience implies motion, change,
danger, instability, social irresponsibility. The individual dominated
by it shows a tendency to disregard prevailing standards and group
interests. He may be a complete failure, on account of his instability;
or a conspicuous success, if he converts his experiences into social
values--puts them in the form of a poem, makes of them a contribution to
science, etc.
2. The desire for security is opposed to the desire for new experience.
It implies avoidance of danger and death, caution, conservatism.
Incorporation in an organization (family, community, state) provides the
greatest security. In certain animal societies (e.g., the ants) the
organization and co-operation are very rigid. Similarly among the
peasants of Europe, represented by our immigrant groups, all lines of
behavior are predetermined for the individual by tradition. In such a
group the individual is secure as long as the group organization is
secure, but evidently he shows little originality or creativeness.
3. The desire for recognition expresses itself in devices for securing
distinction in the eyes of the public. A list of the different modes of
seeking recognition would be very long. It would include courageous
behavior, showing off through ornament and dress, the pomp of kings, the
display of opinions and knowledge, the possession of special
attainments--in the arts, for example. It is expressed alike in
arrogance and in humility, even in martyrdom. Certain modes of seeking
recognition we define as "vanity," others as "ambition." The "will to
power" belongs here. Perhaps there has been no spur to human activity so
keen and no motive so naïvely avowed as the desire for "undying fame,"
and it would be difficult to estimate the rôle the desire for
recognition has played in the creation of social values.
4. The desire for response is a craving, not for the recognition of the
public at large, but for the more intimate appreciation of individuals.
It is exemplified in mother-love (touch plays an important rôle in this
connection), in romantic love, family affection, and other personal
attachments. Homesickness and loneliness are expressions of it. Many of
the devices for securing recognition are used also in securing response.
Apparently these four classes comprehend all the positive wishes. Such
attitudes as anger, fear, hate, and prejudice are attitudes toward those
objects which may frustrate a wish.
Our hopes, fears, inspirations, joys, sorrows are bound up with these
wishes and issue from them. There is, of course, a kaleidoscopic
mingling of wishes throughout life, and a single given act may contain a
plurality of them. Thus when a peasant emigrates to America he may
expect to have a good time and learn many things (new experience), to
make a fortune (greater security), to have a higher social standing on
his return (recognition), and to induce a certain person to marry him
(response).
The "character" of the individual is determined by the nature of the
organization of his wishes. The dominance of any one of the four types
of wishes is the basis of our ordinary judgment of his character. Our
appreciation (positive or negative) of the character of the individual
is based on his display of certain wishes as against others, and on his
modes of seeking their realization.
The individual's attitude toward the totality of his attitudes
constitutes his conscious "personality." The conscious personality
represents the conception of self, the individual's appreciation of his
own character.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
Literature on the concept of social forces falls under four heads: (1)
popular notions of social forces; (2) social forces and history; (3)
interests, sentiments, and attitudes as social forces; and (4) wishes as
social forces.
1. Popular Notions of Social Forces
The term "social forces" first gained currency in America with the rise
of the "reformers," so called, and with the growth of popular interest
in the problems of city life; that is, labor and capital, municipal
reform and social welfare, problems of social politics.
In the rural community the individual had counted; in the city he is
likely to be lost. It was this declining weight of the individual in the
life of great cities, as compared with that of impersonal social
organizations, the parties, the unions, and the clubs, that first
suggested, perhaps, the propriety of the term social forces. In 1897
Washington Gladden published a volume entitled _Social Facts and Forces:
the Factory, the Labor Union, the Corporation, the Railway, the City,
the Church_. The term soon gained wide currency and general acceptance.
At the twenty-eighth annual National Conference of Charities and
Correction, at Washington, D.C., Mary E. Richmond read a paper upon
"Charitable Co-operation" in which she presented a diagram and a
classification of the social forces of the community from the point of
view of the social worker[169] given on page 492.
Beginning in October, 1906, there appeared for several years in the
journal of social workers, _Charities and Commons_, now _The Survey_,
editorial essays upon social, industrial, and civic questions under the
heading "Social Forces." In the first article E. T. Devine made the
following statement: "In this column the editor intends to have his say
from month to month about the persons, books, and events which have
significance as social forces.... Not all the social forces are
obviously forces of good, although they are all under the ultimate
control of a power which makes for righteousness."
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF FORCES WITH WHICH THE CHARITY WORKER MAY
CO-OPERATE
A. Family Forces B. Personal Forces C. Neighborhood Forces D. Civic
Forces E. Private Charitable Forces F. Public Relief Forces
A.--_Family Forces._
Capacity of each member for
Affection
Training
Endeavor
Social development.
B.--_Personal Forces._
Kindred.
Friends.
C.--_Neighborhood Forces._
Neighbors, landlords, tradesmen.
Former and present employers.
Clergymen, Sunday-school teachers, fellow church members.
Doctors.
Trade-unions, fraternal and benefit societies, social clubs,
fellow-workmen.
Libraries, educational clubs, classes, settlements, etc.
Thrift agencies, savings-banks, stamp-savings, building and
loan associations.
D.--_Civic Forces._
School-teachers, truant officers.
Police, police magistrates, probation officers, reformatories.
Health department, sanitary inspectors, factory inspectors.
Postmen.
Parks, baths, etc.
E.--_Private Charitable Forces._
Charity organization society.
Church of denomination to which family belongs.
Benevolent individuals.
National, special, and general relief societies.
Charitable employment agencies and work-rooms.
Fresh-air society, children's aid society, society for protection of
children, children's homes, etc.
District nurses, sick-diet kitchens, dispensaries, hospitals, etc.
Society for suppression of vice, prisoner's aid society, etc.
F.--_Public Relief Forces._
Almshouses.
Outdoor poor department.
Public hospitals and dispensaries.]
Ten years later a group of members in the National Conference of Social
Work formed a division under the title "The Organization of the Social
Forces of the Community." The term community, in connection with that of
social forces, suggests that every community may be conceived as a
definite constellation of social forces. In this form the notion has
been fruitful in suggesting a more abstract, intelligible, and, at the
same time, sounder conception of the community life.
Most of the social surveys made in recent years are based upon this
conception of the community as a complex of social forces embodied in
institutions and organizations. It is the specific task of every
community survey to reveal the community in its separated and often
isolated organs. The references to the literature on the community
surveys at the conclusion of chapter iii, "Society and the Group,"[170]
will be of service in a further study of the application of the concept
of social forces to the study of the community.
2. Social Forces and History
Historians, particularly in recent years, have frequently used the
expression "social forces" although they have nowhere defined it. Kuno
Francke, in the Preface of his book entitled _A History of German
Literature as Determined by Social Forces_, states that it "is an honest
attempt to analyze the social, religious, and moral forces which
determined the growth of German literature as a whole." Taine in the
Preface to _The Ancient Régime_ says: "Without taking any side,
curiosity becomes scientific and centres on the secret forces which
direct the wonderful process. These forces consist of the situations,
the passions, the ideas, and the wills of each group of actors, and
which can be defined and almost measured."[171]
It is in the writings of historians, like Taine in France, Buckle in
England, and Karl Lamprecht in Germany, who started out with the
deliberate intention of writing history as if it were natural history,
that we find the first serious attempts to use the concept of social
forces in historical analysis. Writers of this school are quite as much
interested in the historical process as they are in historical fact, and
there is a constant striving to treat the individual as representative
of the class, and to define historical tendencies in general and
abstract terms.
But history conceived in those terms tends to become sociology.
"History," says Lamprecht, "is a _socio-psychological science_. In the
conflict between the old and the new tendencies in historical
investigation, the main question has to do with social-psychic, as
compared and contrasted with individual-psychic factors; or to speak
somewhat generally, the understanding on the one hand of conditions, on
the other of heroes, as the motive powers in the course of
history."[172] It was Carlyle--whose conception of history is farthest
removed from that of Lamprecht--who said, "Universal history is at
bottom the history of great men."
The criticism of history by historians and the attempts, never quite
successful, to make history positive furnish further interesting comment
on this topic.[173]
3. Interest, Sentiments, and Attitudes as Social Forces
More had been written, first and last, about human motives than any
other aspect of human life. Only in very recent years, however, have
psychologists and social psychologists had either a point of view or
methods of investigation which enabled them to analyze and explain the
facts. The tendency of the older introspective psychology was to refer
in general terms to the motor tendencies and the will, but in the
analysis of sensation and the intellectual processes, will disappeared.
The literature on this subject covers all that has been written by the
students of animal behavior and instinct, Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike,
Watson, and Loeb. It includes the interesting studies of human behavior
by Bechterew, Pavlow, and the so-called objective school of psychology
in Russia. It should include likewise writers like Graham Wallas in
England, Carleton Parker and Ordway Tead in America, who are seeking to
apply the new science of human nature to the problems of society.[174]
Every social science has been based upon some theory, implicit or
explicit, of human motives. Economics, political science, and ethics,
before any systematic attempt had been made to study the matter
empirically, had formulated theories of human nature to justify their
presuppositions and procedures.
In classical political economy the single motive of human action was
embodied in the abstraction "the economic man." The utilitarian school
of ethics reduced all human motives to self-interest. Disinterested
conduct was explained as enlightened self-interest. This theory was
criticized as reducing the person to "an intellectual calculating
machine." The theory of evolution suggested to Herbert Spencer a new
interpretation of human motives which reasserted their individualistic
origin, but explained altruistic sentiments as the slowly accumulated
products of evolution. Altruism to Spencer was the enlightened
self-interest of the race.
It was the English economists of the eighteenth century who gave us the
first systematic account of modern society in deterministic terms. The
conception of society implicit in Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_
reflects at once the temper of the English people and of the age in
which he lived.[175] The eighteenth century was the age of
individualism, laissez faire and freedom. Everything was in process of
emancipation except woman.
The attention of economists at this time was directed to that region of
social life in which the behavior of the individual is most
individualistic and least controlled, namely, the market place. The
economic man, as the classical economists conceived him, is more
completely embodied in the trader in the auction pit, than in any other
figure in any other situation in society. And the trader in that
position performs a very important social function.[176]
There are, however, other social situations which have created other
social types, and the sociologists have, from the very first, directed
their attention to a very different aspect of social life, namely, its
unity and solidarity. Comte conceived humanity in terms of the family,
and most sociologists have been disposed to take the family as
representative of the type of relations they are willing to call social.
Not the auction pit but the family has been the basis of the
sociological conception of society. Not competition but control has been
the central fact and problem of sociology.
Socialization, when that word is used as a term of appreciation rather
than of description, sets up as the goal of social effort a world in
which conflict, competition, and the externality of individuals, if they
do not disappear altogether, will be so diminished that all men may live
together as members of one family. This, also, is the goal of progress
according to our present major prophet, H. G. Wells.[177]
It is intelligible, therefore, that sociologists should conceive of
social forces in other terms than self-interest. If there had been no
other human motives than those attributed to the economic man there
would have been economics but no sociology, at least in the sense in
which we conceive it today.
In the writings of Ratzenhofer and Small human interests are postulated
as both the unconscious motives and the conscious ends of behavior.
Small's classification of interests--health, wealth, sociability,
knowledge, beauty, rightness--has secured general acceptance.
"Sentiment" was used by French writers, Ribot, Binet, and others, as a
general term for the entire field of affective life. A. F. Shand in two
articles in _Mind_, "Character and the Emotions" and "Ribot's Theory of
the Passions," has made a distinct contribution by distinguishing the
sentiments from the emotions. Shand pointed out that the sentiment, as a
product of social experience, is an organization of emotions around the
idea of an object. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ adopted Shand's
definition and described the organization of typical sentiments, as love
and hate.
Thomas was the first to make fruitful use of the term attitude, which he
defined as a "tendency to act." Incidentally he points out that
attitudes are social, that is, the product of interaction.
4. Wishes and Social Forces
Ward had stated that "The social forces are wants seeking satisfaction
through efforts, and are thus social motives or motors inspiring
activities which either create social structures through social synergy
or modify the structures already created through innovation and
conation."[178] Elsewhere Ward says that "desire is the only motive to
action."[179]
The psychoanalytic school of psychiatrists have attempted to reduce all
motives to one--the wish, or _libido_. Freud conceived that sex appetite
and memories connected with it were the unconscious sources of some if
not all of the significant forms of human behavior. Freud's
interpretation of sex, however, seemed to include the whole field of
desires that have their origin in touch stimulations. To Jung the
_libido_ is vital energy motivating the life-adjustments of the person.
Adler from his study of organic inferiority interpreted the _libido_ as
the wish for completeness or perfection. Curiously enough, these critics
of Freud, while not accepting his interpretation of the unconscious
wish, still seek to reduce all motives to a single unit. To explain all
behavior by one formula, however, is to explain nothing.
On the other hand, interpretation by a multitude of unrelated conscious
desires in the fashion of the older sociological literature is no great
advance beyond the findings of common sense. The distinctive value of
the definition, and classification, of Thomas lies in the fact that it
reduces the multitude of desires to four. These four wishes, however,
determine the simplest as well as the most complex behavior of persons.
The use made of this method in his study of the Polish peasant indicated
its possibilities for the analysis of the organization of the life of
persons and of social groups.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. POPULAR NOTION OF SOCIAL FORCES
(1) Patten, Simon N. _The Theory of Social Forces._ Philadelphia, 1896.
(2) Gladden, Washington. _Social Facts and Forces._ The factory, the
labor union, the corporation, the railway, the city, the church. New
York, 1897.
(3) Richmond, Mary. "Charitable Co-operation," _Proceedings of the
National Conference of Charities and Correction_, 1901, pp. 298-313.
(Contains "Diagram of Forces with which Charity Worker may Co-operate.")
(4) Devine, Edward T. _Social Forces._ From the editor's page of _The
Survey_. New York, 1910.
(5) Edie, Lionel D., Editor. _Current Social and Industrial Forces._
Introduction by James Harvey Robinson. New York, 1920.
(6) Burns, Allen T. "Organization of Community Forces for the Promotion
of Social Programs," _Proceedings of the National Conference of
Charities and Correction_, 1916, pp. 62-78.
(7) _Social Forces._ A topical outline with bibliography. Wisconsin
Woman's Suffrage Association, Educational Committee. Madison, Wis.,
1915.
(8) Wells, H. G. _Social Forces in England and America._ London and New
York, 1914.
II. HISTORICAL TENDENCIES AS SOCIAL FORCES
(1) Lamprecht, Karl. _What Is History?_ Five lectures on the modern
science of history. Translated from the German by E. A. Andrews. London
and New York, 1905.
(2) Loria, A. _The Economic Foundations of Society._ Translated from the
2d French ed. by L. M. Keasbey. London and New York, 1899.
(3) Beard, Charles A. _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of
the United States._ New York, 1913.
(4) Brandes, Georg. _Main Currents in Nineteenth-Century Literature._ 6
vols. London, 1906.
(5) Taine, H. A. _The Ancient Régime._ Translated from the French by
John Durand. New York, 1891.
(6) Buckle, Henry Thomas. _History of Civilization in England._ 2 vols.
New York, 1892.
(7) Lacombe, Paul. _De l'histoire considérée comme science._ Paris,
1894.
(8) Francke, Kuno. _Social Forces in German Literature._ A study in the
history of civilization. New York, 1896.
(9) Hart, A. B. _Social and Economic Forces in American History._ From
_The American Nation, A History_. London and New York, 1904.
(10) Turner, Frederick J. _Social Forces in American History, The
American Historical Review_, XVI (1910-11), 217-33.
(11) Woods, F. A. _The Influence of Monarchs._ Steps in a new science of
history. New York, 1913.
III. INTERESTS AND WANTS
A. _Interests, Desires, and Wants as Defined by the Sociologist_
(1) Ward, Lester F. _Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science._ As
based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences. "The Social
Forces," I, 468-699. New York, 1883.
(2) ----. _Pure Sociology._ A treatise on the origin and spontaneous
development of society. Chap. xii, "Classification of the Social
Forces," pp. 256-65. New York, 1903.
(3) ----. _The Psychic Factors of Civilization._ Chap. ix, "The
Philosophy of Desire," pp. 50-58, chap. xviii, "The Social Forces," pp.
116-24. Boston, 1901.
(4) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chaps. xxvii and xxxi, pp.
372-94; 425-42. Chicago, 1905.
(5) Ross, Edward A. _The Principles of Sociology._ Part II, "Social
Forces," pp. 41-73. New York, 1920.
(6) Blackmar, F. W., and Gillin, J. L. _Outlines of Sociology._ Part
III, chap ii, "Social Forces," pp. 283-315. New York, 1915.
(7) Hayes, Edward C. "The 'Social Forces' Error," _American Journal of
Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 613-25; 636-44.
(8) Fouillée, Alfred. _Education from a National Standpoint._ Translated
from the French by W. J. Greenstreet. Chap. i, pp. 10-27. New York,
1892.
(9) ----. _Morale des idées-forces._ 2d ed. Paris, 1908. [Book II, Part
II, chap. iii, pp. 290-311, describes opinion, custom, law, education
from the point of view of "Idea-Forces."]
B. _Interests and Wants as Defined by the Economist_
(1) Hermann, F. B. W. v. _Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen._ Chap.
ii. München, 1870. [First of the modern attempts to classify wants.]
(2) Walker, F. A. _Political Economy._ 3d ed. New York, 1888. [See
discussion of competition, pp. 91-111.]
(3) Marshall, Alfred. _Principles of Economics._ An introductory volume.
Chap. ii, "Wants in Relation to Activities," pp. 86-91. 6th ed. London,
1910.
(4) ----. "Some Aspects of Competition," _Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society._ Sec. VII, "Modern Analysis of the Motives of
Business Competition," LIII (1890), 634-37. [See also Sec. VIII,
"Growing Importance of Public Opinion as an Economic Force," pp.
637-41.]
(5) Menger, Karl. _Grundsatze der Volkswirthschaftslehre._ Chap. ii,
Wien, 1871.
(6) ----. _Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und
der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere._ Chap. vii, "Über das Dogma,"
etc. Leipzig, 1883.
(7) Jevons, W. S. _The Theory of Political Economy._ Chap. ii, "Theory
of Pleasure and Pain," pp. 28-36; "The Laws of Human Wants," pp. 39-43.
4th ed. London, 1911.
(8) Bentham, Jeremy. "A Table of the Springs of Action." Showing the
several species of pleasures and pains of which man's nature is
susceptible; together with the several species of _interests_, _desires_
and _motives_ respectively corresponding to them; and the several sets
of appellatives, _neutral_, _eulogistic_, and _dyslogistic_, by which
each species of _motive_ is wont to be designated. [First published in
1817.] _The Works of Jeremy Bentham_, I, 195-219. London, 1843.
C. _Wants and Values_
(1) Kreibig, Josef K. _Psychologische Grundlegung eines Systems der
Wert-Theorie._ Wien, 1902.
(2) Simmel, Georg. _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft._ Eine Kritik
der ethischen Grundbegriffe. Vol. I, chap. iv, "Die Glückseligkeit." 2
vols. Berlin, 1904-05.
(3) Meinong, Alexius. _Psychologische-ethische Untersuchungen zur
Wert-Theorie._ Graz, 1894.
(4) Ehrenfels, Chrn. v. _System der Wert-Theorie._ 2 vols. Leipzig,
1897-98.
(5) Brentano, Franz. _Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte._ Chap.
vi-ix, pp. 256-350. Leipzig, 1874.
(6) Urban, Wilbur Marshall. _Valuation, Its Nature and Laws._ Being an
introduction to the general theory of value. London, 1909.
(7) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Process._ Part VI, "Valuation," pp.
283-348. New York, 1918.
IV. SENTIMENTS, ATTITUDES, AND WISHES
(1) White, W. A. _Mechanisms of Character Formation._ An introduction to
psychoanalysis. New York, 1916.
(2) Pfister, Oskar. _The Psychoanalytic Method._ Translated from the
German by Dr. C.R. Payne. New York, 1917.
(3) Jung, Carl G. _Analytical Psychology._ Translated from the German by
Dr. Constance E. Long. New York, 1916.
(4) Adler, Alfred. _The Neurotic Constitution._ Outlines of a
comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy. Translated
from the German by Bernard Glueck. New York, 1917.
(5) Freud, Sigmund. _General Introduction to Psychoanalysis._ New York,
1920.
(6) Tridon, André. _Psychoanalysis and Behavior._ New York, 1920.
(7) Holt, Edwin B. _The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics._ New
York, 1915.
(8) Mercier, C.A. _Conduct and Its Disorders Biologically Considered._
London, 1911.
(9) Bechterew, W. v. _La psychologie objective._ Translated from the
Russian. Paris, 1913.
(10) Kostyleff, N. _Le mécanisme cérébral de la pensée._ Paris, 1914.
(11) Bentley, A. F. _The Process of Government._ A study of social
pressures. Chicago, 1908.
(12) Veblen, T. _The Theory of the Leisure Class._ An economic study in
the evolution of institutions. New York, 1899. [Discusses the wish for
recognition.]
(13) ----. _The Instinct of Workmanship._ And the state of the
industrial arts. New York, 1914. [Discusses the wish for recognition.]
(14) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chaps.
v-vi, pp. 121-73. 13th ed. Boston, 1918.
(15) Shand, A. F. "Character and the Emotions," _Mind._, n. s., V
(1896), 203-26.
(16) ----. "M. Ribot's Theory of the Passions," _Mind._, n. s., XVI
(1907), 477-505.
(17) ----. _The Foundations of Character._ Being a study of the
tendencies of the emotions and sentiments. Chaps. iv-v, "The Systems of
the Sentiments," pp. 35-63. London, 1914.
(18) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ III, 5-81. Boston, 1919.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The Concept of Forces in the Natural Sciences.
2. Historical Interpretation and Social Forces.
3. The Concept of Social Forces in Recent Studies of the Local
Community.
4. Institutions as Social Forces: The Church, the Press, the School,
etc.
5. Institutions as Organizations of Social Forces: Analysis of a Typical
Institution, Its Organization, Dominant Personalities, etc.
6. Persons as Social Forces: Analysis of the Motives determining the
Behavior of a Dominant Personality in a Typical Social Group.
7. Group Opinion as a Social Force.
8. Tendencies, Trends, and the Spirit of the Age.
9. History of the Concepts of Attitudes, Sentiments, and Wishes as
Defined in Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Sociology.
10. Attitudes as the Organizations of Wishes.
11. The Freudian Wish.
12. Personal and Social Disorganization from the Standpoint of the Four
Wishes.
13. The Law of the Four Wishes: All the Wishes Must Be Realized. A Wish
of One Type, Recognition, Is Not a Substitute for a Wish of Another
Type, Response.
14. The Dominant Wish: Its Rôle in the Organization of the Person and of
the Group.
15. Typical Attitudes: Familism, Individualism, "Oppressed Nationality
Psychosis," Race Prejudice.
16. The Mutability of the Sentiment-Attitude: Love and Hate, Self-esteem
and Humility, etc.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Make a list of the outstanding social forces affecting social life in
a community which you know. What is the value of such an analysis?
2. How does Simons use the term "social forces" in analyzing the course
of events in American history?
3. In what sense do you understand Ely to use the term "social forces"?
4. Would there be, in your opinion, a social tendency without conflict
with other tendencies?
5. How far is it correct to predict from present tendencies what the
future will be?
6. What do you understand by _Zeitgeist_, "trend of the times," "spirit
of the age"?
7. What do you understand by public opinion? How does it originate?
8. Is legislation in the United States always a result of public
opinion?
9. Does the trend of public opinion determine corporate action?
10. Is public opinion the same as the sum of the opinion of the members
of the group?
11. What is the relation of social forces to interaction?
12. Is it possible to study trends, tendencies, and public opinion as
integrations of interests, sentiments, and attitudes?
13. Are desires the fundamental "social elements"?
14. What do you understand Small to mean when he says, "The last
elements to which we can reduce the actions of human beings are units
which we may conveniently name 'interests'"?
15. What is Small's classification of interests? Do you regard it as
satisfactory?
16. What do you think is the difference between an impulse and an
interest?
17. Do people behave according to their interests or their impulses?
18. Make a chart showing the difference in interests of six persons with
whom you are acquainted.
19. Make a chart indicating the variations in interests of six selected
groups.
20. What difference is there, in your opinion, between interests and
social pressures?
21. Do you consider the following statement of Bentley's correct: "No
slaves, not the worst abused of all, but help to form the government"?
22. Does the group exert social pressure upon its members? Give
illustrations.
23. What do you understand to be the differences between an idea and an
idea-force?
24. Give illustrations of idea-forces.
25. Are there any ideas that are not idea-forces?
26. What do you understand by a sentiment?
27. What is the difference between an interest and a sentiment? Give an
illustration of each.
28. Are sentiments or interests more powerful in influencing the
behavior of a person or of a group?
29. What do you understand by a social attitude?
30. What is a mental conflict?
31. To what extent does unconsciousness rather than consciousness
determine the behavior of a person? Give an illustration where the
behavior of a person was inconsistent with his rational determination.
32. What do you understand by mental complexes?
33. What is the relation of memory to mental complexes?
34. What do you understand by personality? What is its relation to
mental complexes?
35. What is meant by common sense?
36. How does Holt define the Freudian wish?
37. What distinction does he make between the wish and the motor
attitude?
38. How would you illustrate the difference between an attitude and a
wish as defined in the introduction?
39. How far would you say that the attitude may be described as an
organization of the wishes?
40. How far is the analogy between the wish as the social atom and the
attitude as the social element justified?
41 What is the "psychic censor"?
42. What is the Freudian theory of repression? Is repression conscious
or unconscious?
43. What is the relation of wishes to occupational selection?
44. Give illustrations of the "four wishes."
45. Describe a person in terms of the type of expression of these four
wishes.
46. What social problems arise because of the repression of certain
wishes?
47. "Wishes in one class cannot be substituted for wishes in another."
Do you agree? Elaborate your position.
48. Analyze the organization of a group from the standpoint of the four
wishes.
FOOTNOTES:
[157] Adapted from A. M. Simons, in the Preface to _Social Forces in
American History_, pp. vii-viii. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1912.
Reprinted by permission.)
[158] Adapted from Richard T. Ely, _Evolution of Industrial Society_,
pp. 456-84. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1903. Reprinted by
permission.)
[159] Adapted from A. V. Dicey, _Law and Public Opinion in England_, pp.
19-41. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1905. Reprinted by permission.)
[160] Adapted from Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 532-36.
(The University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[161] Adapted from Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 425-36.
(The University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[162] Adapted from Arthur F. Bentley, _The Process of Government_, pp.
258-381. (The University of Chicago Press, 1908.)
[163] Adapted from Alfred Fouillée, _Education from a National
Standpoint_, pp. 10-16. (D. Appleton & Co., 1897.)
[164] Adapted from William McDougall, _An Introduction to Social
Psychology_, pp. 121-64. (John W. Luce & Co., 1916.)
[165] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 18-34.
(The Zalaz Corporation, 1915.)
[166] Adapted from Edwin B. Holt, _The Freudian Wish and Its Place in
Ethics_, pp. 3-56. (Henry Holt & Co., 1915.)
[167] Adapted from John B. Watson, "The Psychology of Wish Fulfillment,"
in the _Scientific Monthly_, III (1916), 479-86.
[168] A restatement from a paper by William I. Thomas, "The Persistence
of Primary-Group Norms in Present-Day Society," in Jennings, Watson,
Meyer, and Thomas, _Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education_.
(Published by The Macmillan Co., 1917. Reprinted by permission.)
[169] _Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and
Correction_, 1901, p. 300.
[170] See p. 219.
[171] H. A. Taine, _The Ancient Régime_, Preface, p. viii. (New York,
1891.)
[172] Karl Lamprecht, _What Is History?_ p. 3. (New York, 1905.)
[173] See chap. i, _Sociology and the Social Sciences_, pp. 6-12.
[174] See references, chap. ii, "Human Nature," p. 149.
[175] For a discussion of the philosophical background of Adam Smith's
political philosophy see Wilhelm Hasbach, _Untersuchungen über Adam
Smith_. (Leipzig, 1891.)
[176] "The science of Political Economy as we have it in England may be
defined as the science of business, such as business is in large
productive and trading communities. It is an analysis of that world so
familiar to many Englishmen--the 'great commerce' by which England has
become rich. It assumes the principal facts which make that commerce
possible, and as is the way of an abstract science it isolates and
simplifies them: it detaches them from the confusion with which they are
mixed in fact. And it deals too with the men who carry on that commerce,
and who make it possible. It assumes a sort of human nature such as we
see everywhere around us, and again it simplifies that human nature; it
looks at one part of it only. Dealing with matters of 'business,' it
assumes that man is actuated only by motives of business. It assumes
that every man who makes anything, makes it for money, that he always
makes that which brings him in most at least cost, and that he will make
it in the way that will produce most and spend least; it assumes that
every man who buys, buys with his whole heart, and that he who sells,
sells with his whole heart, each wanting to gain all possible advantage.
Of course we know that this is not so, that men are not like this; but
we assume it for simplicity's sake, as an hypothesis."--Walter Bagehot,
_The Postulates of English Political Economy_. (New York and London,
1885.)
[177] H. G. Wells, _The Outline of History_, Vol. II, pp. 579-95. (New
York, 1920.)
[178] _Pure Sociology_, p. 261. (New York, 1903.)
[179] _Dynamic Sociology_, II, 90.(New York, 1883.)
CHAPTER VIII
COMPETITION
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Popular Conception of Competition
Competition, as a universal phenomenon, was first clearly conceived and
adequately described by the biologists. As defined in the evolutionary
formula "the struggle for existence" the notion captured the popular
imagination and became a commonplace of familiar discourse. Prior to
that time competition had been regarded as an economic rather than a
biological phenomenon.
It was in the eighteenth century and in England that we first find any
general recognition of the new rôle that commerce and the middleman were
to play in the modern world. "Competition is the life of trade" is a
trader's maxim, and the sort of qualified approval that it gives to the
conception of competition contains the germ of the whole philosophy of
modern industrial society as that doctrine was formulated by Adam Smith
and the physiocrats.
The economists of the eighteenth century were the first to attempt to
rationalize and justify the social order that is based on competition
and individual freedom. They taught that there was a natural harmony in
the interests of men, which once liberated would inevitably bring about,
in the best of all possible worlds, the greatest good to the greatest
number.
The individual man, in seeking his own profit, will necessarily seek to
produce and sell that which has most value for the community, and so "he
is in this, as in many other cases," as Adam Smith puts it, "led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."
The conception has been stated with even greater unction by the French
writer, Frédéric Bastiat.
Since goods which seem at first to be the exclusive property of
individuals become by the estimable decrees of a wise
providence [competition] the common possession of all; since
the natural advantages of situation, the fertility,
temperature, mineral richness of the soil and even industrial
skill do not accrue to the producers, because of competition
among themselves, but contribute so much the more to the profit
of the consumer; it follows that there is no country that is
not interested in the advancement of all the others.[180]
The freedom which commerce sought and gained upon the principle of
laissez faire has enormously extended the area of competition and in
doing so has created a world-economy where previously there were only
local markets. It has created at the same time a division of labor that
includes all the nations and races of men and incidentally has raised
the despised middleman to a position of affluence and power undreamed of
by superior classes of any earlier age. And now there is a new demand
for the control of competition in the interest, not merely of those who
have not shared in the general prosperity, but in the interest of
competition itself.
"Unfair competition" is an expression that is heard at the present time
with increasing frequency. This suggests that there are rules governing
competition by which, in its own interest, it can and should be
controlled. The same notion has found expression in the demand for
"freedom of competition" from those who would safeguard competition by
controlling it. Other voices have been raised in denunciation of
competition because "competition creates monopoly." In other words,
competition, if carried to its logical conclusion, ends in the
annihilation of competition. In this destruction of competition by
competition we seem to have a loss of freedom by freedom, or, to state
it in more general terms, unlimited liberty, without social control,
ends in the negation of freedom and the slavery of the individual. But
the limitation of competition by competition, it needs to be said, means
simply that the process of competition tends invariably to establish an
equilibrium.
The more fundamental objection is that in giving freedom to economic
competition society has sacrificed other fundamental interests that are
not directly involved in the economic process. In any case economic
freedom exists in an order that has been created and maintained by
society. Economic competition, as we know it, presupposes the existence
of the right of private property, which is a creation of the state. It
is upon this premise that the more radical social doctrines, communism
and socialism, seek to abolish competition altogether.
2. Competition a Process of Interaction
Of the four great types of interaction--competition, conflict,
accommodation, and assimilation--competition is the elementary,
universal and fundamental form. Social contact, as we have seen,
initiates interaction. But competition, strictly speaking, is
_interaction without social contact_. If this seems, in view of what has
already been said, something of a paradox, it is because in human
society competition is always complicated with other processes, that is
to say, with conflict, assimilation, and accommodation.
It is only in the plant community that we can observe the process of
competition in isolation, uncomplicated with other social processes. The
members of a plant community live together in a relation of mutual
interdependence which we call social probably because, while it is close
and vital, it is not biological. It is not biological because the
relation is a merely external one and the plants that compose it are not
even of the same species. They do not interbreed. The members of a plant
community adapt themselves to one another as all living things adapt
themselves to their environment, but there is no conflict between them
because they are not conscious. Competition takes the form of conflict
or rivalry only when it becomes conscious, when competitors identify one
another as rivals or as enemies.
This suggests what is meant by the statement that competition is
interaction _without social contact_. It is only when minds meet, only
when the meaning that is in one mind is communicated to another mind so
that these minds mutually influence one another, that social contact,
properly speaking, may be said to exist.
On the other hand, social contacts are not limited to contacts of touch
or sense or speech, and they are likely to be more intimate and more
pervasive than we imagine. Some years ago the Japanese, who are brown,
defeated the Russians, who are white. In the course of the next few
months the news of this remarkable event penetrated, as we afterward
learned, uttermost ends of the earth. It sent a thrill through all Asia
and it was known in the darkest corners of Central Africa. Everywhere it
awakened strange and fantastic dreams. This is what is meant by social
contact.
a) _Competition and competitive co-operation._--Social contact, which
inevitably initiates conflict, accommodation, or assimilation,
invariably creates also sympathies, prejudices, personal and moral
relations which modify, complicate, and control competition. On the
other hand, within the limits which the cultural process creates, and
custom, law, and tradition impose, competition invariably tends to
create an impersonal social order in which each individual, being free
to pursue his own profit, and, in a sense, compelled to do so, makes
every other individual a means to that end. In doing so, however, he
inevitably contributes through the mutual exchange of services so
established to the common welfare. It is just the nature of the trading
transaction to isolate the motive of profit and make it the basis of
business organization, and so far as this motive becomes dominant and
exclusive, business relations inevitably assume the impersonal character
so generally ascribed to them.
"Competition," says Walker, "is opposed to sentiment. Whenever any
economic agent does or forbears anything under the influence of any
sentiment other than the desire of giving the least and gaining the most
he can in exchange, be that sentiment patriotism, or gratitude, or
charity, or vanity, leading him to do otherwise than as self interest
would prompt, in that case also, the rule of competition is departed
from. Another rule is for the time substituted."[181]
This is the significance of the familiar sayings to the effect that one
"must not mix business with sentiment," that "business is business,"
"corporations are heartless," etc. It is just because corporations are
"heartless," that is to say impersonal, that they represent the most
advanced, efficient, and responsible form of business organization. But
it is for this same reason that they can and need to be regulated in
behalf of those interests of the community that cannot be translated
immediately into terms of profit and loss to the individual.
The plant community is the best illustration of the type of social
organization that is created by competitive co-operation because in the
plant community competition is unrestricted.
b) _Competition and freedom._--The economic organization of society,
so far as it is an effect of free competition, is an ecological
organization. There is a human as well as a plant and an animal ecology.
If we are to assume that the economic order is fundamentally ecological,
that is, created by the struggle for existence, an organization like
that of the plant community in which the relations between individuals
are conceivably at least wholly external, the question may be very
properly raised why the competition and the organization it has created
should be regarded as social at all. As a matter of fact sociologists
have generally identified the social with the moral order, and Dewey, in
his _Democracy and Education_, makes statements which suggest that the
purely economic order, in which man becomes a means rather than an end
to other men, is unsocial, if not anti-social.
The fact is, however, that this character of _externality_ in human
relations is a fundamental aspect of society and social life. It is
merely another manifestation of what has been referred to as the
distributive aspect of society. Society is made up of individuals
spatially separated, territorially distributed, and capable of
independent locomotion. This capacity of independent locomotion is the
basis and the symbol of every other form of independence. Freedom is
fundamentally freedom to move and individuality is inconceivable without
the capacity and the opportunity to gain an individual experience as a
result of independent action.
On the other hand, it is quite as true that society may be said to exist
only so far as this independent activity of the individual is
_controlled_ in the interest of the group as a whole. That is the reason
why the problem of control, using that term in its evident significance,
inevitably becomes the central problem of sociology.
c) _Competition and control._--Conflict, assimilation and
accommodation as distinguished from competition are all intimately
related to control. Competition is the process through which the
distributive and ecological organization of society is created.
Competition determines the distribution of population territorially and
vocationally. The division of labor and all the vast organized economic
interdependence of individuals and groups of individuals characteristic
of modern life are a product of competition. On the other hand, the
moral and political order, which imposes itself upon this competitive
organization, is a product of conflict, accommodation and assimilation.
Competition is universal in the world of living things. Under ordinary
circumstances it goes on unobserved even by the individuals who are most
concerned. It is only in periods of crisis, when men are making new and
conscious efforts to control the conditions of their common life, that
the forces with which they are competing get identified with persons,
and competition is converted into conflict. It is in what has been
described as the _political process_ that society consciously deals with
its crises.[182] War is the political process par excellence. It is in
war that the great decisions are made. Political organizations exist for
the purpose of dealing with conflict situations. Parties, parliaments
and courts, public discussion and voting are to be considered simply as
substitutes for war.
d) _Accommodation, assimilation, and competition._--Accommodation, on
the other hand, is the process by which the individuals and groups make
the necessary internal adjustments to social situations which have been
created by competition and conflict. War and elections change
situations. When changes thus effected are decisive and are accepted,
conflict subsides and the tensions it created are resolved in the
process of accommodation into profound modifications of the competing
units, i.e., individuals and groups. A man once thoroughly defeated is,
as has often been noted, "never the same again." Conquest, subjugation,
and defeat are psychological as well as social processes. They establish
a new order by changing, not merely the status, but the attitudes of the
parties involved. Eventually the new order gets itself fixed in habit
and custom and is then transmitted as part of the established social
order to succeeding generations. Neither the physical nor the social
world is made to satisfy at once all the wishes of the natural man. The
rights of property, vested interests of every sort, the family
organization, slavery, caste and class, the whole social organization,
in fact, represent accommodations, that is to say, limitations of the
natural wishes of the individual. These socially inherited
accommodations have presumably grown up in the pains and struggles of
previous generations, but they have been transmitted to and accepted by
succeeding generations as part of the natural, inevitable social order.
All of these are forms of control in which competition is limited by
status.
Conflict is then to be identified with the political order and with
conscious control. Accommodation, on the other hand, is associated with
the social order that is fixed and established in custom and the mores.
Assimilation, as distinguished from accommodation, implies a more
thoroughgoing transformation of the personality--a transformation which
takes place gradually under the influence of social contacts of the most
concrete and intimate sort.
Accommodation may be regarded, like religious conversion, as a kind of
mutation. The wishes are the same but their organization is different.
Assimilation takes place not so much as a result of changes in the
organization as in the content, i.e., the memories, of the personality.
The individual units, as a result of intimate association,
interpenetrate, so to speak, and come in this way into possession of a
common experience and a common tradition. The permanence and solidarity
of the group rest finally upon this body of common experience and
tradition. It is the rôle of history to preserve this body of common
experience and tradition, to criticise and reinterpret it in the light
of new experience and changing conditions, and in this way to preserve
the continuity of the social and political life.
The relation of social structures to the processes of competition,
conflict, accommodation, and assimilation may be represented
schematically as follows:
SOCIAL PROCESS SOCIAL ORDER
Competition The economic equilibrium
Conflict The political order
Accommodation Social organization
Assimilation Personality and the cultural heritage
3. Classification of the Materials
The materials in this chapter have been selected to exhibit (1) the rôle
which competition plays in social life and all life, and (2) the types
of organization that competition has everywhere created as a result of
the division of labor it has everywhere enforced. These materials fall
naturally under the following heads: (a) the struggle for existence;
(b) competition and segregation; and (c) economic competition.
This order of the materials serves the purpose of indicating the stages
in the growth and extension of man's control over nature and over man
himself. The evolution of society has been the progressive extension of
control over nature and the substitution of a moral for the natural
order.
Competition has its setting in the struggle for existence. This struggle
is ordinarily represented as a chaos of contending individuals in which
the unfit perish in order that the fit may survive. This conception of
the natural order as one of anarchy, "the war of each against all,"
familiar since Hobbes to the students of society, is recent in biology.
Before Darwin, students of plant and animal life saw in nature, not
disorder, but order; not selection, but design. The difference between
the older and the newer interpretation is not so much a difference of
fact as of point of view. Looking at the plant and animal species with
reference to their classification they present a series of relatively
fixed and stable types. The same thing may be said of the plant and
animal communities. Under ordinary circumstances the adjustment between
the members of the plant and animal communities and the environment is
so complete that the observer interprets it as an order of co-operation
rather than a condition of competitive anarchy.
Upon investigation it turns out, however, that the plant and animal
communities are in a state of unstable equilibrium, such that any change
in the environment may destroy them. Communities of this type are not
organized to resist or adapt themselves as communities to changes in the
environment. The plant community, for example, is a mere product of
segregation, an aggregate without nerves or means of communication that
would permit the individuals to be controlled in the interest of the
community as a whole.[183]
The situation is different in the so-called animal societies. Animals
are adapted in part to the situation of competition, but in part also to
the situation of co-operation. With the animal, maternal instinct,
gregariousness, sex attraction restrict competition to a greater or less
extent among individuals of the same family, herd, or species. In the
case of the ant community competition is at a minimum and co-operation
at a maximum.
With man the free play of competition is restrained by sentiment,
custom, and moral standards, not to speak of the more conscious control
through law.
It is a characteristic of competition, when unrestricted, that it is
invariably more severe among organisms of the same than of different
species. Man's greatest competitor is man. On the other hand, man's
control over the plant and animal world is now well-nigh complete, so
that, generally speaking, only such plants and animals are permitted to
exist as serve man's purpose.
Competition among men, on the other hand, has been very largely
converted into rivalry and conflict. The effect of conflict has been to
extend progressively the area of control and to modify and limit the
struggle for existence within these areas. The effect of war has been,
on the whole, to extend the area over which there is peace. Competition
has been restricted by custom, tradition, and law, and the struggle for
existence has assumed the form of struggle for a livelihood and for
status.
Absolute free play of competition is neither desirable nor even
possible. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the individual,
competition means mobility, freedom, and, from the point of view of
society, pragmatic or experimental change. Restriction of competition is
synonymous with limitation of movement, acquiescence in control, and
telesis, Ward's term for changes ordained by society in distinction from
the natural process of change.
The political problem of every society is the practical one: how to
secure the maximum values of competition, that is, personal freedom,
initiative, and originality, and at the same time to control the
energies which competition has released in the interest of the
community.
II. MATERIALS
A. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
1. Different Forms of the Struggle for Existence[184]
The formula "struggle for existence," familiar in human affairs, was
used by Darwin in his interpretation of organic life, and he showed
that we gain clearness in our outlook on animate nature if we recognize
there, in continual process, a struggle for existence not merely
analogous to, but fundamentally the same as, that which goes on in human
life. He projected on organic life a sociological idea, and showed that
it fitted. But while he thus vindicated the relevancy and utility of the
sociological idea within the biological realm, he declared explicitly
that the phrase "struggle for existence" was meant to be a shorthand
formula, summing up a vast variety of strife and endeavor, of thrust and
parry, of action and reaction.
Some of Darwin's successors have taken pains to distinguish a great many
different forms of the struggle for existence, and this kind of analysis
is useful in keeping us aware of the complexities of the process. Darwin
himself does not seem to have cared much for this logical mapping out
and defining; it was enough for him to insist that the phrase was used
"in a large and metaphorical sense," and to give full illustrations of
its various modes. For our present purpose it is enough for us to follow
his example.
a) _Struggle between fellows._--When the locusts of a huge swarm have
eaten up every green thing, they sometimes turn on one another. This
cannibalism among fellows of the same species--illustrated, for
instance, among many fishes--is the most intense form of the struggle
for existence. The struggle does not need to be direct to be real; the
essential point is that the competitors seek after the same desiderata,
of which there is a limited supply.
As an instance of keen struggle between nearly related species, Darwin
referred to the combats of rats. The black rat was in possession of many
European towns before the brown rat crossed the Volga in 1727; whenever
the brown rat arrived, the black rat had to go to the wall. Thus at the
present day there are practically no black rats in Great Britain. Here
the struggle for existence is again directly competitive. It is
difficult to separate the struggle for food and foothold from the
struggle for mates, and it seems clearest to include here the battles of
the stags and the capercailzies, or the extraordinary lek of the
blackcock, showing off their beauty at sunrise on the hills.
b) _Struggle between foes._--In the locust swarm and in the rats'
combats there is competition between fellows of the same or nearly
related species, but the struggle for existence includes much wider
antipathies. We see it between foes of entirely different nature,
between carnivores and herbivores, between birds of prey and small
mammals. In both these cases there may be a stand-up fight, for instance
between wolf and stag, or between hawk and ermine; but neither the logic
nor the biology of the process is different when all the fight is on one
side. As the lemmings, which have overpopulated the Scandinavian
valleys, go on the march they are followed by birds and beasts of prey,
which thin their ranks. Moreover, the competition between species need
not be direct; it will come to the same result if both types seek after
the same things. The victory will be with the more effective and the
more prolific.
c) _Struggle with fate._--Our sweep widens still further, and we pass
beyond the idea of competition altogether to cases where the struggle
for existence is between the living organism and the inanimate
conditions of its life--for instance, between birds and the winter's
cold, between aquatic animals and changes in the water, between plants
and drought, between plants and frost--in a wide sense, between Life and
Fate.
We cannot here pursue the suggestive idea that, besides struggle between
individuals, there is struggle between groups of individuals--the latter
most noticeably developed in mankind. Similarly, working in the other
direction, there is struggle between parts or tissues in the body,
between cells in the body, between equivalent germ-cells, and, perhaps,
as Weismann pictures, between the various multiplicate items that make
up our inheritance.
2. Competition and Natural Selection[185]
The term "struggle for existence" is used in a large and metaphorical
sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including
(which is more important) not only the life of the individual but
success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time of dearth may
be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live.
But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against
the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on
the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which
only one of an average comes to maturity, may be more truly said to
struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already
clothe the ground. The mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a few
other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle
with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites grow on the same
tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes growing
close together on the same branch may more truly be said to struggle
with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its
existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle
with other fruit-bearing plants in tempting the birds to devour and thus
disseminate its seeds. In these several senses which pass into each
other, I use for convenience' sake the general term of "struggle for
existence."
A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which
all organic beings tend to increase. Every being which during its
natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds must suffer destruction
during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional
year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers
would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support
the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly
survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either
one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals
of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the
doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and
vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase
of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some
species may be now increasing more or less rapidly in numbers, all
cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.
There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally
increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon
be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has
doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate in less than a thousand
years there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.
Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two
seeds--and there is no plant so unproductive as this--and their
seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there
would be a million plants. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder
of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its
probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume
that it begins breeding when thirty years old and goes on breeding till
ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval and surviving
till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to
750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive,
descended from the first pair.
The struggle for life is most severe between individuals and varieties
of the same species. As the species of the same genus usually have,
though by no means invariably, much similarity in habits and
constitution, and always similarity in structure, the struggle will
generally be more severe between them if they come into competition with
each other than between the species of distinct genera. We see this in
the recent extension over parts of the United States of one species of
swallow having caused the decrease of another species. The recent
increase of the missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the
decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently we hear of one species of
rat taking the place of another species under the most different
climates! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven
before it its great congener. In Australia the imported hive-bee is
rapidly exterminating the small, stingless native bee. We can dimly see
why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which
fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature; but probably in no
one case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over
another in the great battle of life.
A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing
remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related,
in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other
organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or
residence or from which it has to escape or on which it preys. This is
obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in
that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on
the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion,
and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation
seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the
advantage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relations to
the land being already thickly clothed with other plants; so that the
seeds may be widely distributed and fall on unoccupied ground. In the
water beetle, the structure of its legs, so well adapted for diving,
allows it to compete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for its own
prey, and to escape serving as prey to other animals.
The store of nutriment laid up within the seeds of many plants seems at
first sight to have no sort of relation to other plants. But from the
strong growth of young plants produced from such seeds, as peas and
beans, when sown in the midst of long grass, it may be suspected that
the chief use of the nutriment in the seed is to favor the growth of
seedlings whilst struggling with other plants growing vigorously all
around.
Look at a plant in the midst of its range; why does it not double or
quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a
little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges
into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier, districts. In this case
we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the
power of increasing in number, we should have to give it some advantage
over its competitors, or over the animals which prey upon it. On the
confines of its geographical range, a change of constitution with
respect to climate would clearly be an advantage to our plant; but we
have reason to believe that only a few plants or animals range so far,
that they are destroyed exclusively by the rigor of the climate. Not
until we reach the extreme confines of life, in the Arctic regions or on
the borders of an utter desert, will competition cease. The land may be
extremely cold or dry, yet there will be competition between some few
species, or between the individuals of the same species, for the warmest
or dampest spots.
Hence we can see that when a plant or an animal is placed in a new
country amongst new competitors, the conditions of its life will
generally be changed in an essential manner, although the climate may be
exactly the same as in its former home. If its average numbers are to
increase in its new home, we should have to modify it in a different way
to what we should have had to do in its native country; for we should
have to give it some advantage over a different set of competitors or
enemies.
It is good thus to try in imagination to give to any one species an
advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know
what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual
relations of all organic beings, a conviction as necessary as it is
difficult to acquire. All that we can do is to keep steadily in mind
that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio;
that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year,
during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to
suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may
console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not
incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and
that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.
3. Competition, Specialization, and Organization[186]
Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation
of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic
conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life. The
ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more
improved in relation to its conditions. This improvement inevitably
leads to the gradual advancement of the organization of the greater
number of living beings throughout the world.
But here we enter on a very intricate subject, for naturalists have not
defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by an advance in
organization. Amongst the vertebrata the degree of intellect and an
approach in structure to man clearly come into play. It might be thought
that the amount of change which the various parts and organs pass
through in their development from the embryo to maturity would suffice
as a standard of comparison; but there are cases, as with certain
parasitic crustaceans, in which several parts of the structure become
less perfect, so that the mature animal cannot be called higher than its
larva. Von Baer's standard seems the most widely applicable and the
best, namely, the amount of differentiation of the parts of the same
organic being, in the adult state, as I should be inclined to add, and
their specialization for different functions; or, as Milne Edwards would
express it, the completeness of the division of physiological labor. But
we shall see how obscure this subject is if we look, for instance, to
fishes, amongst which some naturalists rank those as highest which, like
the sharks, approach nearest to amphibians; whilst other naturalists
rank the common bony or teleostean fishes as the highest, inasmuch as
they are most strictly fishlike and differ most from the other
vertebrate classes. We see still more plainly the obscurity of the
subject by turning to plants, amongst which the standard of intellect
is, of course, quite excluded; and here some botanists rank those plants
as highest which have every organ, as sepals, petals, stamens, and
pistils, fully developed in each flower; whereas other botanists,
probably with more truth, look at the plants which have their several
organs much modified and reduced in number as the highest.
If we take as the standard of high organization the amount of
differentiation and specialization of the several organs in each being
when adult (and this will include the advancement of the brain for
intellectual purposes), natural selection clearly leads toward this
standard; for all physiologists admit that the specialization of organs,
inasmuch as in this state they perform their functions better, is an
advantage to each being; and hence the accumulation of variations
tending toward specialization is within the scope of natural selection.
On the other hand, we can see, bearing in mind that all organic beings
are striving to increase at a high ratio and to seize on every
unoccupied or less well-occupied place in the economy of nature, that it
is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit a being to a
situation in which several organs would be superfluous or useless: in
such cases there would be retrogression in the scale of organization.
But it may be objected that if all organic beings thus tend to rise in
the scale, how is it that throughout the world a multitude of the lowest
forms still exist; and how is it that in each great class some forms are
far more highly developed than others? Why have not the more highly
developed forms everywhere supplanted and exterminated the lower? On our
theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty
for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest does not
necessarily include progressive development--it only takes advantage of
such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its
complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage, as far as
we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule--to an intestinal
worm, or even to an earthworm--to be highly organized. If it were no
advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved
or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their
present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of the lowest
forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous
period in nearly their present state. But to suppose that most of the
many low forms now existing have not in the least advanced since the
first dawn of life would be extremely rash; for every naturalist who has
dissected some of the beings now ranked as very low in the scale must
have been struck with their really wondrous and beautiful organization.
Nearly the same remarks are applicable if we look to the different
grades of organization within the same great group; for instance, in the
vertebrata to the coexistence of mammals and fish; amongst mammalia to
the coexistence of man and the ornithorhynchus; amongst fishes to the
coexistence of the shark and the lancelet (Amphioxus), which later fish
in the extreme simplicity of its structure approaches the invertebrate
classes. But mammals and fish hardly come into competition with each
other; the advancement of the whole class of mammals, or of certain
members in this class, to the highest grade would not lead to their
taking the place of fishes. Physiologists believe that the brain must be
bathed by warm blood to be highly active, and this requires aerial
respiration; so that warm-blooded mammals when inhabiting the water lie
under a disadvantage in having to come continually to the surface to
breathe. With fishes, members of the shark family would not tend to
supplant the lancelet; for the lancelet, as I hear from Fritz Müller,
has as sole companion and competitor on the barren sandy shore of South
Brazil an anomalous annelid. The three lowest orders of mammals, namely,
marsupials, edentata, and rodents, coexist in South America in the same
region with numerous monkeys, and probably interfere little with each
other.
Although organization, on the whole, may have advanced and may be still
advancing throughout the world, yet the scale will always present many
degrees of perfection; for the high advancement of certain whole
classes, or of certain members of each class, does not at all
necessarily lead to the extinction of those groups with which they do
not enter into close competition. In some cases, lowly organized forms
appear to have been preserved to the present day from inhabiting
confined or peculiar stations, where they have been subjected to less
severe competition and where their scanty numbers have retarded the
chance of favorable variations arising.
Finally, I believe that many lowly organized forms now exist throughout
the world from various causes. In some cases variations or individual
differences of a favorable nature may never have arisen for natural
selection to act on and accumulate. In no case, probably, has time
sufficed for the utmost possible amount of development. In some few
cases there has been what we must call retrogression of organization.
But the main cause lies in the fact that under very simple conditions of
life a high organization would be of no service--possibly would be of
actual disservice, as being of a more delicate nature and more liable to
be put out of order and injured.
4. Man: An Adaptive Mechanism[187]
Everything in nature, living or not living, exists and develops at the
expense of some other thing, living or not living. The plant borrows
from the soil; the soil from the rocks and the atmosphere; men and
animals take from the plants and from each other the elements which they
in death return to the soil, the atmosphere, and the plants. Year after
year, century after century, eon after eon, the mighty, immeasurable,
ceaseless round of elements goes on, in the stupendous process of
chemical change, which marks the eternal life of matter.
To the superficial observer, nature in all her parts seems imbued with a
spirit of profound peace and harmony; to the scientist it is obvious
that every infinitesimal particle of the immense concourse is in a state
of desperate and ceaseless struggle to obtain such share of the
available supply of matter and energy as will suffice to maintain its
present ephemeral form in a state of equilibrium with its surroundings.
Not only is this struggle manifest among living forms, among birds and
beasts and insects in their competition for food and habitat, but--if we
may believe the revelations of the science of radio-activity--a process
of transmutation, of disintegration of the atoms of one element with
simultaneous formation of another element, is taking place in every
fragment of inanimate matter, a process which parallels in character the
more transitory processes of life and death in organisms and is
probably a representation of the primary steps in that great process of
evolution by which all terrestrial forms, organic and inorganic, have
been evolved from the original ether by an action inconceivably slow,
continuous, and admitting of no break in the series from inanimate to
animate forms.
From colloidal slime to man is a long road, the conception of which
taxes our imaginations to the utmost, but it is an ascent which is now
fairly well demonstrated. Indeed, the problems of the missing links are
not so difficult as is the problem of the origin of the organs and
functions which man has acquired as products of adaptation. For whether
we look upon the component parts of our present bodies as useful or
useless mechanisms, we must regard them as the result of age-long
conflicts between environmental forces and organisms.
Everywhere something is pursuing and something is escaping another
creature. It is a constant drama of getting food and of seeking to
escape being made food, evolving in the conflict structures fitted to
accomplish both reactions. Everywhere the strong prey upon the weak, the
swift upon the slow, the clever upon the stupid; and the weak, the slow,
the stupid, retaliate by evolving mechanisms of defense, which more or
less adequately repel or render futile the oppressor's attack. For each
must live, and those already living have proved their right to existence
by a more or less complete adaptation to their environment. The result
of this twofold conflict between living beings is to evolve the manifold
structures and functions--teeth, claws, skin, color, fur, feathers,
horns, tusks, wily instincts, strength, stealth, deceit, and
humility--which make up character in the animal world. According to the
nature and number of each being's enemies has its own special mechanism
been evolved, distinguishing it from its fellows and enabling it to get
a living in its particular environment.
In every case the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon
one mechanism. The tiger by its teeth and claws, the elephant and the
rhinoceros by their strength, the bird by its wings, the deer by its
fleetness, the turtle by its carapace--all are enabled to counter the
attacks of enemies and to procreate. Where there is a negative defense,
such as a shell or quills, there is little need and no evidence of
intelligence: where a rank odor, no need and no presence of claws or
carapace; where sting or venom, no need and no possession of odor,
claws, shell, extraordinary strength, or sagacity. Where the struggle is
most bitter, there exist the most complex and most numerous contrivances
for living.
Throughout its whole course the process of evolution, where it is
visible in the struggle of organisms, has been marked by a progressive
victory of brain over brawn. And this, in turn, may be regarded as but a
manifestation of the process of survival by _lability_ rather than by
_stability_. Everywhere the organism that exhibits the qualities of
quick response, of extreme sensibility to stimuli, of capacity to
change, is the individual that survives, "conquers," "advances." The
quality most useful in nature, from the point of view of the domination
of a wider environment, is the quality of _changeableness_,
_plasticity_, _mobility_, or _versatility_. Man's particular means of
adaptation to his environment is this quality of versatility. By means
of this quality expressed through the manifold reactions of his highly
organized central nervous system, man has been able to dominate the
beasts and to maintain himself in an environment many times more
extensive than theirs. Like the defensive mechanisms of shells, poisons,
and odors, man's particular defensive mechanism--his versatility of
nervous response (mind)--was acquired automatically as a result of a
particular combination of circumstances in his environment.
In the Tertiary era--some twenty millions of years ago--the earth,
basking in the warmth of a tropical climate, had produced a luxuriant
vegetation and a swarming progeny of gigantic small-brained animals for
which the exuberant vegetation provided abundant and easily acquired
sustenance. They were a breed of huge, clumsy, and grotesque monsters,
vast in bulk and strength, but of little intelligence, that wandered
heavily on the land and gorged lazily on the abundant food at hand. With
the advance of the carnivora, the primitive forerunners of our tigers,
wolves, hyenas, and foxes, came a period of stress, comparable to a
seven years of famine following a seven years of plenty, which subjected
the stolid herbivorous monsters to a severe selective struggle.
Before the active onslaught of lighter, lither, more intelligent foes,
the clumsy, inelastic types succumbed, those only surviving which,
through the fortunate possession of more varied reactions, were able to
evolve modes of defense equal to the modes of attack possessed by their
enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs
necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and
acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat,
escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took
refuge in the trees.
It was in this concourse of weak creatures which fled to the trees
because they lacked adequate means of offense, defense, or escape on the
ground that the lineaments of man's ancient ancestor might have been
discerned. One can imagine what must have been the pressure from the
carnivora that forced a selective transformation of the feet of the
progenitor of the anthropoids into grasping hands. Coincidentally with
the tree life, man's special line of adaptation--_versatility_--was
undoubtedly rapidly evolved. Increased versatility and the evolution of
hands enabled man to come down from the trees millions of years
thereafter, to conquer the world by the further evolution and exercise
of his organ of strategy--the brain. Thus we may suppose have arisen the
intricate reactions we now call mind, reason, foresight, invention, etc.
Man's claim to a superior place among animals depends less upon
_different_ reactions than upon a _greater number_ of reactions as
compared with the reactions of "lower" animals. Ability to respond
adaptively to more elements in the environment gives a larger dominion,
that is all.
The same measure applies within the human species--the number of nervous
reactions of the artist, the financier, the statesman, the scientist,
being invariably greater than the reactions of the stolid savage. That
man alone of all animals should have achieved the degree of versatility
sufficient for such advance is no more remarkable than that the elephant
should have evolved a larger trunk and tusks than the boar; that the
legs of the deer should be fleeter than those of the ox; that the wings
of the swallow should outfly those of the bat. Each organism, in
evolving the combination of characters commensurate with safety in its
particular environment, has touched the limit of both its necessity and
its power to "advance." There exists abundant and reliable evidence of
the fact that wherever man has been subjected to the stunting influences
of an unchanging environment fairly favorable to life, he has shown no
more disposition to progress than the most stolid animals. Indeed, he
has usually retrograded. The need to fight for food and home has been
the spur that has ever driven man forward to establish the manifold
forms of physical and mental life which make up human existence today.
Like the simple adaptive mechanisms of the plant by which it gets air,
and of the animal by which it overcomes its rivals in battle, the
supremely differentiated functions of thought and human relations are
the outcome of the necessity of the organism to become adapted to
entities in its environment.
B. COMPETITION AND SEGREGATION
1. Plant Migration, Competition, and Segregation[188]
Invasion is the complete or complex process of which migration, ecesis
(the adjustment of a plant to a new home), and competition are the
essential parts. It embraces the whole movement of a plant or group of
plants from one area into another and their colonization in the latter.
From the very nature of migration, invasion is going on at all times and
in all directions.
Effective invasion is predominantly local. It operates in mass only
between bare areas and adjacent communities which contain species
capable of pioneering, or between contiguous communities which offer
somewhat similar conditions or contain species of wide range of
adjustment. Invasion into a remote region rarely has any successional
effect (effect tending to transform the character of a plant community),
as the invaders are too few to make headway against the plants in
possession or against those much nearer a new area. Invasion into a new
area or a plant community begins with migration when this is followed by
ecesis. In new areas, ecesis produces reaction (the effect which a plant
or a community exerts upon its habitat) at once, and this is followed by
aggregation and competition, with increasing reaction. In an area
already occupied by plants, ecesis and competition are concomitant and
quickly produce reactions. Throughout the development migrants are
entering and leaving, and the interactions of the various processes come
to be complex in the highest degree.
Local invasion in force is essentially _continuous_ or _recurrent_.
Between contiguous communities it is _mutual_, unless they are too
dissimilar. The result is a transition area or ecotone which epitomizes
the next stage in development. By far the greater amount of invasion
into existing vegetation is of this sort. The movement into a bare area
is likewise continuous, though it is necessarily not mutual, and hence
there is no ecotone during the earlier stages. The significant feature
of continuous invasion is that an outpost may be repeatedly reinforced,
permitting rapid aggregation and ecesis, and the production of new
centers from which the species may be extended over a wide area.
Contrasted with continuous invasion is intermittent or periodic movement
into distant regions, but this is rarely concerned in succession. When
the movement of invaders into a community is so great that the original
occupants are driven out, the invasion is _complete_.
A topographic feature or a physical or a biological agency that
restricts or prevents invasions is a barrier. Topographic features are
usually permanent and produce permanent barriers. Biological ones are
often temporary and exist for a few years or even a single season.
Temporary barriers are often recurrent, however. Barriers are complete
or incomplete with respect to the thoroughness of their action. They may
affect invasion either by limiting migration or by preventing ecesis.
Biological barriers comprise plant communities, man and animals, and
parasitic plants. The limiting effect of a plant community is exhibited
in two ways. In the first place, an association acts as a barrier to the
ecesis of species invading it from associations of another type, on
account of the physical differences of the habitats. Whether such a
barrier be complete or partial will depend upon the relative unlikeness
of the two areas. Shade plants are unable to invade a prairie, though
the species of open thickets or woodland may do so to a certain degree.
Closed communities (one in which all the soil is occupied) likewise
exert a marked influence in decreasing invasion by reason of the intense
and successful competition which all invaders must meet. Closed
associations usually act as complete barriers, while more open ones
restrict invasion in direct proportion to the degree of occupation. To
this fact may be traced the fundamental law of succession (the law by
which one type of community or formation is succeeded by another) that
the number of stages is determined largely by the increasing difficulty
of invasion as the area becomes stabilized. Man and animals affect
invasion by the destruction of germules. Both in bare areas and in seral
stages the action of rodents and birds is often decisive to the extent
of altering the whole course of development. Man and animals operate as
marked barriers to ecesis wherever they alter conditions unfavorably to
invaders or where they turn the scale in competition by cultivating,
grazing, camping, parasitism, etc. The absence of pollinating insects is
sometimes a curious barrier to the complete ecesis of species far out of
their usual habitat or region. Parasitic fungi decrease migration in so
far as they affect seed production. They restrict or prevent ecesis
either by the destruction of invaders or by placing them at a
disadvantage with respect to the occupants.
By the term _reaction_ is understood the effect which a plant or a
community exerts upon its habitat. In connection with succession, the
term is restricted to this special sense alone. It is entirely distinct
from the response of the plant or group, i.e., its adjustment and
adaptation to the habitat. In short, the habitat causes the plant to
function and grow, and the plant then reacts upon the habitat, changing
one or more of its factors in decisive or appreciable degree. The two
processes are mutually complementary and often interact in most complex
fashion.
The reaction of a community is usually more than the sum of the
reactions of the component species and individuals. It is the individual
plant which produces the reaction, though the latter usually becomes
recognizable through the combined action of the group. In most cases the
action of the group accumulates or emphasizes an effect which would
otherwise be insignificant or temporary. A community of trees casts less
shade than the same number of isolated individuals, but the shade is
constant and continuous, and hence controlling. The significance of the
community reaction is especially well shown in the case of leaf mold and
duff. The leaf litter is again only the total of the fallen leaves of
all the individuals but its formation is completely dependent upon the
community. The reaction of plants upon wind-borne sand and silt-laden
waters illustrates the same fact.
2. Migration and Segregation[189]
All prehistoric investigation, as far as it relates to the phenomena of
the animate world, necessarily rests upon the hypothesis of migration.
The distribution of plants, of the lower animals, and of men over the
surface of the earth; the relationships existing between the different
languages, religious conceptions, myths and legends, customs and social
institutions--all these seem in this one assumption to find their common
explanation.
Each fresh advance in culture commences, so to speak, with a new period
of wandering. The most primitive agriculture is nomadic, with a yearly
abandonment of the cultivated area; the earliest trade is migratory
trade; the first industries that free themselves from the household
husbandry and become the special occupations of separate individuals are
carried on itinerantly. The great founders of religion, the earliest
poets and philosophers, the musicians and actors of past epochs, are all
great wanderers. Even today, do not the inventor, the preacher of a new
doctrine, and the virtuoso travel from place to place in search of
adherents and admirers--notwithstanding the immense recent development
in the means of communicating information?
As civilization grows older, settlement becomes more permanent. The
Greek was more settled than the Phoenician, the Roman than the Greek,
because one was always the inheritor of the culture of the other.
Conditions have not changed. The German is more migratory than the
Latin, the Slav than the German. The Frenchman cleaves to his native
soil; the Russian leaves it with a light heart to seek in other parts of
his broad fatherland more favorable conditions of living. Even the
factory workman is but a periodically wandering peasant.
To all that can be adduced from experience in support of the statement
that in the course of history mankind has been ever growing more
settled, there comes a general consideration of a twofold nature. In the
first place, the extent of fixed capital grows with advancing culture;
the producer becomes stationary with his means of production. The
itinerant smith of the southern Slav countries and the Westphalian iron
works, the pack-horses of the Middle Ages and the great warehouses of
our cities, the Thespian carts and the resident theater mark the
starting and the terminal points of this evolution. In the second place,
the modern machinery of transportation has in a far higher degree
facilitated the transport of goods than of persons. The distribution of
labor determined by locality thereby attains greater importance than the
natural distribution of the means of production; the latter in many
cases draws the former after it, where previously the reverse occurred.
The migrations occurring at the opening of the history of European
peoples are migrations of whole tribes, a pushing and pressing of
collective units from east to west, which lasted for centuries. The
migrations of the Middle Ages ever affect individual classes alone; the
knights in the crusades, the merchants, the wage-craftsmen, the
journeymen hand-workers, the jugglers and minstrels, the villeins
seeking protection within the walls of a town. Modern migrations, on the
contrary, are generally a matter of private concern, the individuals
being led by the most varied motives. They are almost invariably without
organization. The process repeating itself daily a thousand times is
united only through the one characteristic, that it is everywhere a
question of change of locality by persons seeking more favorable
conditions of life.
Among all the phenomena of masses in social life suited to statistical
treatment, there is without doubt scarcely one that appears to fall of
itself so completely under the general law of causality as migrations;
and likewise hardly one concerning whose real cause such misty
conceptions prevail.
The whole department of migrations has never yet undergone systematic
statistical observation; exclusive attention has hitherto been centered
upon remarkable individual occurrences of such phenomena. Even a
rational classification of migrations in accord with the demand of
social science is at the present moment lacking.
Such a classification would have to take as its starting-point the
result of migrations from the point of view of population. On this basis
they would fall into these groups: (1) migrations with continuous change
of locality; (2) migrations with temporary change of settlement; (3)
migrations with permanent settlement.
To the _first_ group belong gypsy life, peddling, the carrying on of
itinerant trades, tramp life; to the _second_, the wandering of
journeymen craftsmen, domestic servants, tradesmen seeking the most
favorable spots for temporary undertakings, officials to whom a definite
office is for a time entrusted, scholars attending foreign institutions
of learning; to the _third_, migration from place to place within the
same country or province and to foreign parts, especially across the
ocean.
An intermediate stage between the first and second group is found in the
_periodical migrations_. To this stage belong the migrations of farm
laborers at harvest time, of the sugar laborers at the time of the
_campagne_, of the masons of Upper Italy and the Ticino district, common
day-laborers, potters, chimney-sweeps, chestnut-roasters, etc., which
occur at definite seasons.
In this division the influence of the natural and political insulation
of the different countries is, it is true, neglected. It must not,
however, be overlooked that in the era of nationalism and protection of
national labor political allegiance has a certain importance in
connection with the objective point of the migrations. It would,
therefore, in our opinion, be more just to make another division, taking
as a basis the politico-geographical extent of the migrations. From this
point of view migrations would fall into _internal_ and _foreign_ types.
Internal migrations are those whose points of departure and destination
lie within the same national limits; foreign, those extending beyond
these. The foreign may again be divided into _continental_ and
_extra-European_ (generally transmaritime) emigration. One can, however,
in a larger sense designate all migrations that do not leave the limits
of the Continent as internal, and contrast with them real emigration, or
transfer of domicile to other parts of the globe.
Of all these manifold kinds of migration, the transmaritime alone has
regularly been the subject of official statistics; and even it has been
but imperfectly treated, as every student of this subject knows. The
periodic emigrations of labor and the peddling trade have occasionally
been also subjected to statistical investigation--mostly with the
secondary aim of legislative restriction. Yet these migrations from
place to place within the same country are vastly more numerous and in
their consequences vastly more important than all other kinds of
migration put together.
Of the total population of the kingdom of Belgium there were, according
to the results of the census of December 31, 1880, not less than 32.8
per cent who were born outside the municipality in which they had their
temporary domicile; of the population of Austria (1890), 34.8 per cent.
In Prussia, of 27,279,111 persons, 11,552,033, or 42.4 per cent, were
born outside the municipality where they were domiciled. More than
two-fifths of the population had changed their municipality at least
once.
If we call the total population born in a given place and domiciled
anywhere within the borders of the country that locality's _native_
population, then according to the conditions of interchange of
population just presented the native population of the country places is
greater than their actual population; that of the cities, smaller.
A balancing of the account of the internal migrations in the grand duchy
of Oldenburg gives the cities a surplus, and country municipalities a
deficit, of 15,162 persons. In the economy of population one is the
complement of the other, just as in the case of two brothers of
different temperament, one of whom regularly spends what the other has
laboriously saved. To this extent, then, we are quite justified from the
point of view of population in designating the cities man-consuming and
the country municipalities man-producing social organisms.
There is a very natural explanation for this condition of affairs in the
country. Where the peasant, on account of the small population of his
place of residence, is much restricted in his local choice of help,
adjoining communities must supplement one another. In like manner the
inhabitants of small places will intermarry more frequently than the
inhabitants of larger places where there is a greater choice among the
native population. Here we have the occasion for very numerous
migrations to places not far removed. Such migrations, however, only
mean a local exchange of socially allied elements.
This absorption of the surplus of emigration over immigration is the
characteristic of modern cities. If in our consideration of this problem
we pay particular attention to this urban characteristic and to a like
feature of the factory districts--where the conditions as to internal
migrations are almost similar--we shall be amply repaid by the
discovery that in such settlements the result of internal shiftings of
population receives its clearest expression. Here, where the immigrant
elements are most numerous, there develops between them and the native
population a social struggle--a struggle for the best conditions of
earning a livelihood or, if you will, for existence, which ends with the
adaptation of one part to the other, or perhaps with the final
subjugation of the one by the other. Thus, according to Schliemann, the
city of Smyrna had in the year 1846 a population of 80,000 Turks and
8,000 Greeks; in the year 1881, on the contrary, there were 23,000 Turks
and 76,000 Greeks. The Turkish portion of the population had thus in
thirty-five years decreased by 71 per cent, while the Greeks had
increased ninefold.
Not everywhere, to be sure, do those struggles take the form of such a
general process of displacement; but in individual cases it will occur
with endless frequency within a country that the stronger and
better-equipped element will overcome the weaker and less well-equipped.
Thus we have here a case similar to that occurring so frequently in
nature: on the same terrain where a more highly organized plant or
animal has no longer room for subsistence, others less exacting in their
demands take up their position and flourish. The coming of the new is in
fact not infrequently the cause of the disappearance of those already
there and of their withdrawal to more favorable surroundings.
If these considerations show that by no means the majority of internal
migrations find their objective point in the cities, they at the same
time prove that the trend toward the great centers of population can, in
itself be looked upon as having an extensive social and economic
importance. It produces an alteration in the distribution of population
throughout the state; and at its originating and objective points it
gives rise to difficulties which legislative and executive authority has
hitherto labored, usually with but very moderate success, to overcome.
It transfers large numbers of persons almost directly from a sphere of
life where barter predominates into one where money and credit exchange
prevail, thereby affecting the social conditions of life and the social
customs of the manual laboring classes in a manner to fill the
philanthropist with grave anxiety.
3. Demographic Segregation and Social Selection[190]
There are two ways in which demographic crystallization may have taken
place. A people may have become rigid horizontally, divided into castes,
or social strata; or it may be geographically segregated into localized
communities, varying in size all the way from the isolated hamlet to the
highly individualized nation. Both of these forms of crystallization are
breaking down today under the pressure of modern industrialism and
democracy, in Europe as well as in America.
The sudden growth of great cities is the first result of the phenomenon
of migration which we have to note. We think of this as essentially an
American problem. We comfort ourselves in our failures of municipal
administration with that thought. This is a grievous deception. Most of
the European cities have increased in population more rapidly than in
America. This is particularly true of great German urban centers. Berlin
has outgrown our own metropolis, New York, in less than a generation,
having in twenty-five years added as many actual new residents as
Chicago, and twice as many as Philadelphia. Hamburg has gained twice as
many in population since 1875 as Boston; Leipzig has distanced St.
Louis. The same demographic outburst has occurred in the smaller German
cities as well. Beyond the confines of the German Empire, from Norway to
Italy, the same is true.
Contemporaneously with this marvellous growth of urban centers we
observe a progressive depopulation of the rural districts. What is going
on in our New England states, especially in Massachusetts, is entirely
characteristic of large areas in Europe. Take France, for example. The
towns are absorbing even more than the natural increment of country
population; they are drawing off the middle-aged as well as the young.
Thus great areas are being actually depopulated.
A process of selection is at work on a grand scale. The great majority
today who are pouring into the cities are those who, like the emigrants
to the United States in the old days of natural migration, come because
they have the physical equipment and the mental disposition to seek a
betterment of their fortunes away from home. Of course, an appreciable
contingent of such migrant types is composed of the merely discontented,
of the restless, and the adventurous; but, in the main, the best blood
of the land it is which feeds into the arteries of city life.
Another more certain mode of proof is possible for demonstrating that
the population of cities is largely made up either of direct immigrants
from the country or of their immediate descendants. In German cities,
Hansen found that nearly one-half their residents were of direct country
descent. In London it has been shown that over one-third of its
population are immigrants; and in Paris the same is true. For thirty of
the principal cities of Europe it has been calculated that only about
one-fifth of their increase is from the loins of their own people, the
overwhelming majority being of country birth.
The first physical characteristic of urban populations, as compared with
those of country districts, which we have to note, is their tendency
toward that shape of head characteristic of two of our racial types,
Teutonic and Mediterranean respectively. It seems as if for some reason
the broad-headed Alpine race was a distinctly rural type. Thirty years
ago an observer in the ethnically Alpine district of south central
France noted an appreciable difference between town and country in the
head form of the people. In a half-dozen of the smaller cities his
observations pointed to a greater prevalence of the long-headed type
than in the country roundabout. Dr. Ammon of Carlsruhe, working upon
measurements of thousands of conscripts of the Grand Duchy of Baden,
discovered radical differences here between the head form in city and
country, and between the upper and lower classes in the larger towns.
Several explanations for this were possible. The direct influence of
urban life might conceivably have brought it about, acting through
superior education, habits of life, and the like. There was no
psychological basis for this assumption. Another tenable hypothesis was
that in these cities, situated, as we have endeavored to show, in a land
where two racial types of population were existing side by side, the
city for some reason exerted superior powers of attraction upon the
long-headed race. If this were true, then by a combined process of
social and racial selection, the towns would be continually drawing unto
themselves that tall and blond Teutonic type of population which, as
history teaches us, has dominated social and political affairs in Europe
for centuries. This suggested itself as the probable solution of the
question; and investigations all over Europe during the last five years
have been directed to the further analysis of the matter.
Is this phenomenon, the segregation of a long-headed physical type in
city populations, merely the manifestation of a restless tendency on the
part of the Teutonic race to reassert itself in the new phases of
nineteenth-century competition? All through history this type has been
characteristic of the dominant classes, especially in military and
political, perhaps rather than purely intellectual, affairs. All the
leading dynasties of Europe have long been recruited from its ranks. The
contrast of this type, whose energy has carried it all over Europe, with
the persistently sedentary Alpine race is very marked. A certain
passivity, or patience, is characteristic of the Alpine peasantry. As a
rule, not characterized by the domineering spirit of the Teuton, this
Alpine type makes a comfortable and contented neighbor, a resigned and
peaceful subject. Whether this rather negative character of the Alpine
race is entirely innate, or whether it is in part, like many of its
social phenomena, merely a reflection from the almost invariably
inhospitable habitat in which it has long been isolated, we may not
pretend to decide.
Let us now for a moment take up the consideration of a second physical
characteristic of city populations--viz., stature. If there be a law at
all in respect of average statures, it demonstrates rather the
depressing effects of city life than the reverse. For example, Hamburg
is far below the average for Germany. All over Britain there are
indications of this law, that town populations are, on the average,
comparatively short of stature. Dr. Beddoe, the great authority upon
this subject, concludes his investigation of the population of Great
Britain thus: "It may therefore be taken as _proved_ that the stature of
men in the large towns of Britain is lowered considerably below the
standard of the nation, and as _probable_ that such degradation is
hereditary and progressive."
A most important point in this connection is the great variability of
city populations in size. All observers comment upon this. It is of
profound significance. The people of the west and east ends in each city
differ widely. The population of the aristocratic quarters is often
found to exceed in stature the people of the tenement districts. We
should expect this, of course, as a direct result of the depressing
influence of unfavorable environment. Yet there is apparently another
factor underlying that--viz., social selection. While cities contain so
large a proportion of degenerate physical types as on the average to
fall below the surrounding country in stature, nevertheless they also
are found to include an inordinately large number of very tall and
well-developed individuals. In other words, compared with the rural
districts, where all men are subject to the same conditions of life, we
discover in the city that the population has differentiated into the
very tall and the very short.
The explanation for this phenomenon is simple. Yet it is not direct, as
in Topinard's suggestion that it is a matter of race or that a change of
environment operates to stimulate growth. Rather does it appear that it
is the growth which suggests the change. The tall men are in the main
those vigorous, mettlesome, presumably healthy individuals who have
themselves, or in the person of their fathers, come to the city in
search of the prizes which urban life has to offer to the successful. On
the other hand, the degenerate, the stunted, those who entirely
outnumber the others so far as to drag the average for the city as a
whole below the normal, are the grist turned out by the city mill. They
are the product of the tenement, the sweat shop, vice, and crime. Of
course, normally developed men, as ever, constitute the main bulk of the
population, but these two widely divergent classes attain a very
considerable representation.
We have seen thus far that evidence seems to point to an aggregation of
the Teutonic long-headed population in the urban centers of Europe.
Perhaps a part of the tall stature in some cities may be due to such
racial causes. A curious anomaly now remains, however, to be noted. City
populations appear to manifest a distinct tendency toward
brunetness--that is to say, they seem to comprise an abnormal proportion
of brunet traits, as compared with the neighboring rural districts. This
tendency was strikingly shown to characterize the entire German Empire
when its six million school children were examined under Virchow's
direction. In twenty-five out of thirty-three of the larger cities were
the brunet traits more frequent than in the country.
Austria offers confirmation of the same tendency toward brunetness in
twenty-four out of its thirty-three principal cities. Farther south, in
Italy, it was noted much earlier that cities contained fewer blonds than
were common in the rural districts roundabout. In conclusion let us add,
not as additional testimony, for the data are too defective, that among
five hundred American students at the Institute of Technology in Boston,
roughly classified, there were 9 per cent of pure brunet type among
those of country birth and training, while among those of urban birth
and parentage the percentage of such brunet type rose as high as 15.
It is not improbable that there is in brunetness, in the dark hair and
eye, some indication of vital superiority. If this were so, it would
serve as a partial explanation for the social phenomena which we have
been at so much pains to describe. If in the same community there were a
slight vital advantage in brunetness, we should expect to find that type
slowly aggregating in the cities; for it requires energy and courage,
physical as well as mental, not only to break the ties of home and
migrate, but also to maintain one's self afterward under the stress of
urban life.
From the preceding formidable array of testimony it appears that the
tendency of urban populations is certainly not toward the pure blond,
long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection
is something more complex than a mere migration of a single racial
element in the population toward the cities. The physical
characteristics of townsmen are too contradictory for ethnic
explanations alone. To be sure, the tendencies are slight; we are not
even certain of their universal existence at all. We are merely watching
for their verification or disproof. There is, however, nothing
improbable in the phenomena we have noted. Naturalists have always
turned to the environment for the final solution of many of the great
problems of nature. In this case we have to do with one of the most
sudden and radical changes of environment known to man. Every condition
of city life, mental as well as physical, is at the polar extreme from
those which prevail in the country. To deny that great modifications in
human structure and functions may be effected by a change from one to
the other is to gainsay all the facts of natural history.
4. Inter-racial Competition and Race Suicide[191]
I have thus far spoken of the foreign arrivals at our ports, as
estimated. Beginning with 1820, however, we have custom-house statistics
of the numbers of persons annually landing upon our shores. Some of
these, indeed, did not remain here; yet, rudely speaking, we may call
them all immigrants. Between 1820 and 1830, population grew to
12,866,020. The number of foreigners arriving in the ten years was
151,000. Here, then, we have for forty years an increase, substantially
all out of the loins of the four millions of our own people living in
1790, amounting to almost nine millions, or 227 per cent. Such a rate of
increase was never known before or since, among any considerable
population over any extensive region.
About this time, however, we reach a turning-point in the history of our
population. In the decade 1830-40 the number of foreign arrivals greatly
increased. Immigration had not, indeed, reached the enormous dimensions
of these later days. Yet, during the decade in question, the foreigners
coming to the United States were almost exactly fourfold those coming in
the decade preceding, or 599,000. The question now of vital importance
is this: Was the population of the country correspondingly increased? I
answer, No! The population of 1840 was almost exactly what, by
computation, it would have been had no increase in foreign arrivals
taken place. Again, between 1840 and 1850, a still further access of
foreigners occurred, this time of enormous dimensions, the arrivals of
the decade amounting to not less than 1,713,000. Of this gigantic total,
1,048,000 were from the British Isles, the Irish famine of 1846-47
having driven hundreds of thousands of miserable peasants to seek food
upon our shores. Again we ask, Did this excess constitute a net gain to
the population of the country? Again the answer is, No! Population
showed no increase over the proportions established before immigration
set in like a flood. In other words, as the foreigners began to come in
larger numbers, the native population more and more withheld their own
increase.
Now this correspondence might be accounted for in three different ways:
(1) It might be said that it was a mere coincidence, no relation of
cause and effect existing between the two phenomena. (2) It might be
said that the foreigners came because the native population was
relatively declining, that is, failing to keep up its pristine rate of
increase. (3) It might be said that the growth of the native population
was checked by the incoming of the foreign elements in such large
numbers.
The view that the correspondence referred to was a mere coincidence,
purely accidental in origin, is perhaps that most commonly taken. If
this be the true explanation, the coincidence is a most remarkable one.
In the June number of this magazine, I cited the predictions as to the
future population of the country made by Elkanah Watson, on the basis of
the censuses of 1790, 1800, and 1810, while immigration still remained
at a minimum. Now let us place together the actual census figures for
1840 and 1850, Watson's estimates for those years, and the foreign
arrivals during the preceding decade:
1840 1850
The census 17,069,453 23,191,876
Watson's estimates 17,116,526 23,185,368
___________ ___________
The difference -47,073 +6,508
Foreign arrivals during the preceding
decade 599,000 1,713,000
Here we see that, in spite of the arrival of 500,000 foreigners during
the period 1830-40, four times as many as had arrived during any
preceding decade, the figures of the census coincided closely with the
estimate of Watson, based on the growth of population in the
pre-immigration era, falling short of it by only 47,073 in a total of
17,000,000; while in 1850 the actual population, in spite of the arrival
of 1,713,000 more immigrants, exceeded Watson's estimates by only 6,508
in a total of 23,000,000. Surely, if this correspondence between the
increase of the foreign element and the relative decline of the native
element is a mere coincidence, it is one of the most astonishing in
human history. The actuarial degree of improbability as to a coincidence
so close, over a range so vast, I will not undertake to compute.
If, on the other hand, it be alleged that the relation of cause and
effect existed between the two phenomena, this might be put in two
widely different ways: either that the foreigners came in increasing
numbers because the native element was relatively declining, or that the
native element failed to maintain its previous rate of increase because
the foreigners came in such swarms. What shall we say of the former of
these explanations? Does anything more need to be said than that it is
too fine to be the real explanation of a big human fact like this we are
considering? To assume that at such a distance in space, in the then
state of news-communication and ocean-transportation, and in spite of
the ignorance and extreme poverty of the peasantries of Europe from
which the immigrants were then generally drawn, there was so exact a
degree of knowledge not only of the fact that the native element here
was not keeping up its rate of increase but also of the precise ratio of
that decline as to enable those peasantries, with or without a mutual
understanding, to supply just the numbers necessary to bring our
population up to its due proportions, would be little less than
laughable. Today, with quick passages, cheap freights, and ocean
transportation there is not a single wholesale trade in the world
carried on with this degree of knowledge, or attaining anything like
this point of precision in results.
The true explanation of the remarkable fact we are considering I believe
to be the last of the three suggested. The access of foreigners, at the
time and under the circumstances, constituted a shock to the principle
of population among the native element. That principle is always acutely
sensitive alike to sentimental and to economic conditions. And it is to
be noted, in passing, that not only did the decline in the native
element, as a whole, take place in singular correspondence with the
excess of foreign arrivals, but it occurred chiefly in just those
regions to which the newcomers most freely resorted.
But what possible reason can be suggested why the incoming of the
foreigner should have checked the disposition of the native toward the
increase of population at the traditional rate? I answer that the best
of good reasons can be assigned. Throughout the northeastern and
northern middle states, into which, during the period under
consideration, the newcomers poured in such numbers, the standard of
material living, of general intelligence, of social decency, had been
singularly high. Life, even at its hardest, had always had its luxuries;
the babe had been a thing of beauty, to be delicately nurtured and
proudly exhibited; the growing child had been decently dressed, at
least for school and church; the house had been kept in order, at
whatever cost, the gate hung, the shutters in place, while the front
yard had been made to bloom with simple flowers; the village church, the
public schoolhouse, had been the best which the community, with great
exertions and sacrifices, could erect and maintain. Then came the
foreigner, making his way into the little village, bringing--small blame
to him!--not only a vastly lower standard of living, but too often an
actual present incapacity even to understand the refinements of life and
thought in the community in which he sought a home. Our people had to
look upon houses that were mere shells for human habitations, the gate
unhung, the shutters flapping or falling, green pools in the yard, babes
and young children rolling about half naked or worse, neglected, dirty,
unkempt. Was there not in this a sentimental reason strong enough to
give a shock to the principle of population? But there was, besides, an
economic reason for a check to the native increase. The American shrank
from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling
himself to engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new
elements of the population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and
daughters into the world to enter into that competition. For the first
time in our history, the people of the free states became divided into
classes. Those classes were natives and foreigners. Politically, the
distinction had only a certain force, which yielded more or less readily
under partisan pressure; but socially and industrially that distinction
has been a tremendous power, and its chief effects have been wrought
upon population. Neither the social companionship nor the industrial
competition of the foreigner has, broadly speaking, been welcome to the
native.
It hardly needs to be said that the foregoing descriptions are not
intended to apply to all of the vast body of immigrants during this
period. Thousands came over from good homes; many had all the advantages
of education and culture; some possessed the highest qualities of
manhood and citizenship.
But let us proceed with the census. By 1860 the causes operating to
reduce the growth of the native element--to which had then manifestly
been added the force of important changes in the manner of living, the
introduction of more luxurious habits, the influence of city life, and
the custom of "boarding"--had reached such a height as, in spite of a
still-increasing immigration, to leave the population of the country
310,503 below the estimate. The fearful losses of the Civil War and the
rapid extension of habits unfavorable to increase of numbers make any
further use of Watson's computations uninstructive; yet still the great
fact protrudes through all the subsequent history of our population that
the more rapidly foreigners came into the United States, the smaller was
the rate of increase, not merely among the native population separately,
but throughout the population of the country, as a whole, including the
foreigners. The climax of this movement was reached when, during the
decade 1880-90, the foreign arrivals rose to the monstrous total of five
and a quarter millions (twice what had ever before been known), while
the population, even including this enormous re-enforcement, increased
more slowly than in any other period of our history except, possibly,
that of the great Civil War.
If the foregoing views are true, or contain any considerable degree of
truth, foreign immigration into this country has, from the time it first
assumed large proportions, amounted, not to a reinforcement of our
population, but to a replacement of native by foreign stock. That if the
foreigners had not come the native element would long have filled the
places the foreigners usurped, I entertain not a doubt. The competency
of the American stock to do this it would be absurd to question, in the
face of such a record as that for 1790 to 1830. During the period from
1830 to 1860 the material conditions of existence in this country were
continually becoming more and more favorable to the increase of
population from domestic sources. The old man-slaughtering medicine was
being driven out of civilized communities; houses were becoming larger;
the food and clothing of the people were becoming ampler and better. Nor
was the cause which, about 1840 or 1850, began to retard the growth of
population here to be found in the climate which Mr. Clibborne
stigmatizes so severely. The climate of the United States has been
benign enough to enable us to take the English shorthorn and greatly to
improve it, as the re-exportation of that animal to England at monstrous
prices abundantly proves; to take the English race-horse and to improve
him to a degree of which the startling victories of Parole, Iroquois,
and Foxhall afford but a suggestion; to take the Englishman and to
improve him, too, adding agility to his strength, making his eye keener
and his hand steadier, so that in rowing, in riding, in shooting, and in
boxing, the American of pure English stock is today the better animal.
No! Whatever were the causes which checked the growth of the native
population, they were neither physiological nor climatic. They were
mainly social and economic; and chief among them was the access of vast
hordes of foreign immigrants, bringing with them a standard of living at
which our own people revolted.
C. ECONOMIC COMPETITION
1. Changing Forms of Economic Competition[192]
There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political
economy is eternally true. Conclusions reached by valid reasoning are
always as true as the hypotheses from which they are deduced. It will
remain forever true that if unlimited competition existed, most of the
traditional laws would be realized in the practical world. It will also
be true that in those corners of the industrial field which still show
an approximation to Ricardian competition there will be seen as much of
correspondence between theory and fact as candid reasoners claim. If
political economy will but content itself with this kind of truth, it
need never be disturbed by industrial revolutions. The science need not
trouble itself to progress.
This hypothetical truth, or science of what would take place if society
were fashioned after an ideal pattern, is not what Ricardo believed that
he had discovered. His system was positive; actual life suggested it by
developing tendencies for which the scientific formulas which at that
time were traditional could not account. It was a new industrial world
which called for a modernized system of economic doctrine. Ricardo was
the first to understand the situation, to trace the new tendencies to
their consummation, and to create a scientific system by insight and
foresight. He outran history in the process, and mentally created a
world more relentlessly competitive than any which has existed; and yet
it was fact and not imagination that lay at the basis of the whole
system. Steam had been utilized, machines were supplanting hand labor,
workmen were migrating to new centers of production, guild regulations
were giving way, and competition of a type unheard of before was
beginning to prevail.
A struggle for existence had commenced between parties of unequal
strength. In manufacturing industries the balance of power had been
disturbed by steam, and the little shops of former times were
disappearing. The science adapted to such conditions was an economic
Darwinism; it embodied the laws of a struggle for existence between
competitors of the new and predatory type and those of the peaceable
type which formerly possessed the field. Though the process was savage,
the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil. The survival of crude
strength was, in the long run, desirable. Machines and factories meant,
to every social class, cheapened goods and more comfortable living.
Efficient working establishments were developing; the social organism
was perfecting itself for its contest with crude nature. It was a fuller
and speedier dominion over the earth which was to result from the
concentration of human energy now termed centralization.
The error unavoidable to the theorists of the time lay in basing a
scientific system on the facts afforded by a state of revolution. This
was attempting to derive permanent principles from transient phenomena.
Some of these principles must become obsolete; and the work demanded of
modern economists consists in separating the transient from the
permanent in the Ricardian system. How much of the doctrine holds true
when the struggle between unequal competitors is over, and when a few of
the very strongest have possession of the field?
In most branches of manufacturing, and in other than local
transportation, the contest between the strong and the weak is either
settled or in process of rapid settlement. The survivors are becoming so
few, so powerful, and so nearly equal that if the strife were to
continue, it would bid fair to involve them all in a common ruin. What
has actually developed is not such a battle of giants but a system of
armed neutralities and federations of giants. The new era is distinctly
one of consolidated forces; rival establishments are forming
combinations, and the principle of union is extending itself to the
labor and the capital in each of them. Laborers who once competed with
each other are now making their bargains collectively with their
employers. Employers who under the old régime would have worked
independently are merging their capital in corporations and allowing it
to be managed as by a single hand.
Predatory competition between unequal parties was the basis of the
Ricardian system. This process was vaguely conceived and never fully
analyzed; what was prominent in the thought of men in connection with it
was the single element of struggle. Mere effort to survive, the
Darwinian feature of the process, was all that, in some uses, the term
"competition" was made to designate. Yet the competitive action of an
organized society is systematic; each part of it is limited to a
specific field, and tends, within these limits, to self-annihilation.
An effort to attain a conception of competition that should remove some
of the confusion was made by Professor Cairnes. His system of
"non-competing groups" is a feature of his value theory, which is a
noteworthy contribution to economic thought. Mr. Mill had followed
Ricardo in teaching that the natural price of commodities is governed by
the cost of producing them. Professor Cairnes accepts this statement,
but attaches to it a meaning altogether new. He says, in effect:
Commodities do indeed exchange according to their cost of
production; but cost is something quite different from what
currently passes by that name. That is merely the outlay
incurred by the capitalist-employer for raw materials, labor,
etc. The real cost is the personal sacrifice made by the
producing parties, workmen as well as employers. It is not a
mercantile but a psychological phenomenon, a reaction upon the
men themselves occasioned by the effort of the laborer and the
abstinence of the capitalist. These personal sacrifices gauge
the market value of commodities within the fields in which, in
the terms of the theory, competition is free. The adjustment
takes place through the spontaneous movement of capital and
labor from employments that yield small returns to those that
give larger ones. Capital migrates freely from place to place
and from occupation to occupation. If one industry is
abnormally profitable, capital seeks it, increases and cheapens
its product, and reduces its profits to the prevailing level.
Profits tend to a general uniformity.
Wages are said to tend to equality only within limits. The transfer of
labor from one employment to another is checked by barriers.
What we find, in effect [continues Professor Cairnes], is not a
whole population competing indiscriminately for all
occupations, but a series of industrial layers, superimposed on
one another, within each of which the various candidates for
employment possess a real and effective power of selection,
while those occupying the several strata are, for all purposes
of effective competition, practically isolated from each other.
We may perhaps venture to arrange them in some such order as
this: first, at the bottom of the scale there would be the
large group of unskilled or nearly unskilled laborers,
comprising agricultural laborers, laborers engaged in
miscellaneous occupations in towns, or acting in attendance on
skilled labor. Secondly, there would be the artisan group,
comprising skilled laborers of the secondary order--carpenters,
joiners, smiths, masons, shoemakers, tailors, hatters, etc.,
etc.--with whom might be included the very large class of small
retail dealers, whose means and position place them within the
reach of the same industrial opportunities as the class of
artisans. The third layer would contain producers and dealers
of a higher order, whose work would demand qualifications only
obtainable by persons of substantial means and fair educational
opportunities; for example, civil and mechanical engineers,
chemists, opticians, watchmakers, and others of the same
industrial grade, in which might also find a place the superior
class of retail tradesmen; while above these there would be a
fourth, comprising persons still more favorably circumstanced,
whose ampler means would give them a still wider choice. This
last group would contain members of the learned professions, as
well as persons engaged in the various careers of science and
art, and in the higher branches of mercantile business.
It is essential to the theory that not only workmen but their children
should be confined to a producing group. The equalizing process may take
place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter
another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet
committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will
gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is
not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice
versa, but only that the children of both classes of artisans should be
free to enter the trade that is best rewarded.
Professor Cairnes does not claim that his classification is exhaustive,
nor that the demarcation is absolute:
No doubt the various ranks and classes fade into each other by
imperceptible gradations, and individuals from all classes are
constantly passing up or dropping down; but while this is so,
it is nevertheless true that the average workman, from whatever
rank he be taken, finds his power of competition limited for
practical purposes to a certain range of occupations, so that,
however high the rates of remuneration in those which lie
beyond may rise, he is excluded from sharing them. We are thus
compelled to recognize the existence of non-competing
industrial groups as a feature of our social economy.
It will be seen that the competition which is here under discussion is
of an extraordinary kind; and the fact that the general term is applied
to it without explanation is a proof of the vagueness of the conceptions
of competition with which acute writers have contented themselves.
Actual competition consists invariably in an effort to undersell a rival
producer. A carpenter competes with a carpenter because he creates a
similar utility and offers it in the market. In the theory of Professor
Cairnes the carpenter is the competitor of the blacksmith, because his
children may enter the blacksmith's calling. In the actual practice of
his own trade, the one artisan in no wise affects the other. It is
potential competition rather than actual that is here under discussion;
and even this depends for its effectiveness on the action of the rising
generation.
Modern methods of production have obliterated Professor Cairnes's
dividing lines. Potential competition extends to every part of the
industrial field in which men work in organized companies. Throwing out
of account the professions, a few trades of the highest sort, and the
class of labor which is performed by employers themselves and their
salaried assistants, it is practically true that labor is in a universal
ebb and flow; it passes freely to occupations which are, for the time
being, highly paid, and reduces their rewards to the general level.
This objection to the proposed grouping is not theoretical. The question
is one of fact; it is the development of actual industry that has
invalidated the theory which, in the seventies, expressed an important
truth concerning economic relations in England. Moreover, the author of
the theory anticipated one change which would somewhat lessen its
applicability to future conditions. He recorded his belief that
education would prove a leveler, and that it would merge to some extent
the strata of industrial society. The children of hod-carriers might
become machinists, accountants, or lawyers when they could acquire the
needed education. He admitted also that new countries afford conditions
in which the lines of demarcation are faint. He was not in a position to
appreciate the chief leveling agency, namely, the machine method of
production as now extended and perfected. Education makes the laborer
capable of things relatively difficult, and machines render the
processes which he needs to master relatively easy. The so-called
unskilled workmen stand on a higher personal level than those of former
times; and the new methods of manufacturing are reducing class after
class to that level. Mechanical labor is resolving itself into processes
so simple that anyone may learn them. An old-time shoemaker could not
become a watchmaker, and even his children would have found difficulties
in their way had they attempted to master the higher trade; but a laster
in a Lynn shoe factory can, if he will, learn one of the minute trades
that are involved in the making of a Waltham watch. His children may do
so without difficulty; and this is all that is necessary for maintaining
the normal balance between the trades.
The largest surviving differences between workmen are moral. Bodily
strength still counts for something, and mental strength for more; but
the consideration which chiefly determines the value of a workman to the
employer who intrusts to him costly materials and a delicate machine is
the question of fidelity. Character is not monopolized by any social
class; it is of universal growth, and tends by the prominent part which
it plays in modern industry, to reduce to their lowest terms the class
differences of the former era.
The rewards of professional life are gauged primarily by character and
native endowment, and are, to this extent, open to the children of
workmen. New barriers, however, arise here in the ampler education
which, as time advances, is demanded of persons in these pursuits; and
these barriers give to a part of the fourth and highest class in the
scheme that we are criticising a permanent basis of existence. Another
variety of labor retains a pre-eminence based on native adaptations and
special opportunities. It is the work of the employer himself. It is an
organizing and directing function, and in large industries is performed
only in part by the owners. A portion of this work is committed to hired
assistants. Strictly speaking, the entrepreneur, or employer, of a great
establishment is not one man, but many, who work in a collective
capacity, and who receive a reward that, taken in the aggregate,
constitutes the "wages of superintendence." To some members of this
administrative body the returns come in the form of salaries, while to
others they come partly in the form of dividends; but if we regard their
work in its entirety, and consider their wages in a single sum, we must
class it with entrepreneur's profits rather than with ordinary wages. It
is a different part of the product from the sum distributed among day
laborers; and this fact separates the administrative group from the
class considered in our present inquiry. Positions of the higher sort
are usually gained either through the possession of capital or through
relations to persons who possess it. Though clerkships of the lower
grade demand no attainments which the children of workmen cannot gain,
and though promotion to the higher grades is still open, the tendency of
the time is to make the transition from the ranks of labor to those of
administration more and more difficult. The true laboring class is
merging its subdivisions, while it is separating more sharply from the
class whose interests, in test questions, place them on the side of
capital.
2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193]
The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of
the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in
employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to
his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by
all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the
whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion. No
regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any
society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part
of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and
it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be
more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone
of its own accord.
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most
advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his
own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in
view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather
necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most
advantageous to the society.
As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to
employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct
that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every
individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the
society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to
promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. By
preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he
intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a
manner that its product may be of the greatest value, he intends only
his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor
is it always worse for the society that it was no part of it. By
pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society
more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never
known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very
few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ,
and of which the product is likely to be of the greatest value, every
individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much
better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who
should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to
employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most
unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be
trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate
whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a
man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
exercise it.
3. Competition and Freedom[194]
What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of
itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of
oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I _prefer_ to
choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against
my will; that's all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment
for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of
substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What
guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is
evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to
destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing,
judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill
man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern
reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to
annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is
the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the
source of all good.
4. Money and Freedom[195]
Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more
independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations
and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject
to an entirely new process of differentiation.
The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human
interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals
which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a
community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in
many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be
grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and
lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the
association.
In contrast to this form of organization the capitalistic system has
made possible innumerable associations which either require from their
members merely money contributions or are directed toward mere money
interests. In the case of the business corporation, especially, the
basis of organization of members is exclusively an interest in the
dividends, so exclusively that it is a matter of entire indifference to
the individual what the society (enterprise) actually produces.
The independence of the person of the concrete objects, in which he has
a mere money interest, is reflected, likewise, in his independence, in
his personal relations, of the other individuals with whom he is
connected by an exclusive money interest. This has produced one of the
most effective cultural formations--one which makes it possible for
individuals to take part in an association whose objective aim it will
promote, use, and enjoy without this association bringing with it any
further personal connection or imposing any further obligation. Money
has brought it about that one individual may unite himself with others
without being compelled to surrender any of his personal freedom or
reserve. That is the fundamental and unspeakably significant difference
between the medieval form of organization which made no difference
between the association of men as men and the association of men as
members of an organization. The medieval form or organization united
equally in one circle the entire business, religious, political, and
friendly interests of the individuals who composed it.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Biological Competition
The conception of competition has had a twofold origin: in the notions
(a) of the struggle for existence and (b) of the struggle for
livelihood. Naturally, then, the concept of competition has had a
parallel development in biology and in economics. The growth of the
notion in these two fields of thought, although parallel, is not
independent. Indeed, the fruitful process of interaction between the
differing formulations of the concept in biology and economics is a
significant illustration of the cross-fertilization of the sciences.
Although Malthus was a political economist, his principle of population
is essentially biological rather than economic. He is concerned with the
struggle for existence rather than for livelihood. Reacting against the
theories of Condorcet and of Godwin concerning the natural equality,
perfectability, and inevitable progress of man, Malthus in 1798 stated
the dismal law that population tends to increase in geometrical
progression and subsistence in arithmetical progression. In the preface
to the second edition of his _Essay on the Principle of Population_
Malthus acknowledged his indebtedness to "Hume, Wallace, Dr. Adam Smith
and Dr. Price." Adam Smith no doubt anticipated and perhaps suggested to
Malthus his thesis in such passages in the _Wealth of Nations_ as,
"Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the
means of their subsistence," "The demand for men necessarily regulates
the production of men." These statements of the relation of population
to food supply, however, are incidental to Smith's general theories of
economics; the contribution of Malthus lay in taking this principle out
of its limited context, giving it the character of scientific
generalization, and applying it to current theories and programs of
social reform.
The debt of biology to Malthus is acknowledged both by Darwin and by
Wallace. Fifteen months after Darwin had commenced his inquiry a chance
reading of Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_ gave him the
clue to the explanation of the origin of species through the struggle
for existence. During an attack of intermittent fever Wallace recalled
Malthus' theory which he had read twelve years before and in it found
the solution of the problem of biological evolution.
Although the phrase "the struggle for existence" was actually used by
Malthus: Darwin, Wallace, and their followers first gave it a general
application to all forms of life. Darwin in his _The Origin of Species_,
published in 1859, analyzed with a wealth of detail the struggle for
existence, the nature and forms of competition, natural selection, the
survival of the fittest, the segregation and consequent specialization
of species.
Biological research in recent years has directed attention away from the
theory of evolution to field study of plant and animal communities.
Warming, Adams, Wheeler, and others have described, in their plant and
animal ecologies, the processes of competition and segregation by which
communities are formed. Clements in two studies, _Plant Succession_ and
_Plant Indicators_, has described in detail the life-histories of some
of these communities. His analysis of the succession of plant
communities within the same geographical area and of the relations of
competitive co-operation of the different species of which these
communities are composed might well serve as a model for similar studies
in human ecology.
2. Economic Competition
Research upon competition in economics falls under two heads: (a) the
natural history of competition, and (b) the history of theories of
competition.
a) Competition on the economic level, i.e., of struggle for
livelihood, had its origins in the market place. Sir Henry Maine, on the
basis of his study of village communities, states in effect that the
beginnings of economic behavior are first to be seen in neutral meeting
places of strangers and foes.
In order to understand what a market originally was, you must
try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by
village-communities, self-acting and as yet autonomous, each
cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and
each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neighbour.
But at several points, points probably where the domains of two
or three villages converged, there appear to have been spaces
of what we should now call neutral ground. These were the
Markets. They were probably the only places at which the
members of the different primitive groups met for any purpose
except warfare, and the persons who came to them were doubtless
at first persons especially empowered to exchange the produce
and manufactures of one little village-community for those of
another. But, besides the notion of neutrality, another idea
was anciently associated with markets. This was the idea of
sharp practice and hard bargaining.
What is the real origin of the feeling that it is not
creditable to drive a hard bargain with a near relative or
friend? It can hardly be that there is any rule of morality to
forbid it. The feeling seems to me to bear the traces of the
old notion that men united in natural groups do not deal with
one another on principles of trade. The only natural group in
which men are now joined is the family; and the only bond of
union resembling that of the family is that which men create
for themselves by friendship.
The general proposition which is the basis of Political
Economy, made its first approach to truth under the only
circumstances which admitted of men meeting at arm's length,
not as members of the same group, but as strangers. Gradually
the assumption of the right to get the best price has
penetrated into the interior of these groups, but it is never
completely received so long as the bond of connection between
man and man is assumed to be that of family or clan connection.
The rule only triumphs when the primitive community is in
ruins. What are the causes which have generalized a Rule of the
Market until it has been supposed to express an original and
fundamental tendency of human nature, it is impossible to state
fully, so multifarious have they been. Everything which has
helped to convert a society into a collection of individuals
from being an assemblage of families has helped to add to the
truth of the assertion made of human nature by the Political
Economists.[196]
The extension of the relations of the market place to practically all
aspects of life having to do with livelihood has been the outcome of the
industrial revolution and the growth of Great Society. Standardization
of commodities, of prices, and of wages, the impersonal nature of
business relations, the "cash-nexus" and the credit basis of all human
relations has greatly extended the external competitive forms of
interaction. Money, with its abstract standards of value, is not only a
medium of exchange, but at the same time symbol par excellence of the
economic nature of modern competitive society.
The literature describing change from the familial communism, typical of
primitive society, to the competitive economy of modern capitalistic
society is indicated in the bibliography.
b) The history of competition as a concept in political economy goes
back to the Physiocrats. This French school of economists, laying stress
upon the food supply as the basis and the measure of the wealth of the
nation, demanded the abolition of restrictions upon agricultural
production and commerce. The Physiocrats based their theories upon the
natural rights of individuals to liberty.
The miserable state of the nation seemed to demand a _volte
face_. Taxes were many and indirect. Let them be single and
direct. Liberty of enterprise was shackled. Let it be free.
State-regulation was excessive. _Laissez-faire!_ Their economic
plea for liberty is buttressed by an appeal to Nature, greater
than kings or ministers, and by an assertion of the natural,
inherent rights of man to be unimpeded in his freedom except so
far as he infringes upon that of others.[197]
While the Physiocrats emphasized the beneficent effects of freedom in
industry to which the individual has a natural right, Adam Smith, in his
book _The Wealth of Nations_, emphasized the advantages of competition.
To him competition was a protection against monopoly. "It [competition]
can never hurt either the consumer or the producer; on the contrary it
must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer than if
the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons!"[198] It was at
the same time of benefit to both producer and consumer. "Monopoly is a
great enemy to good management which can never be universally
established but in consequence of that free and universal competition
which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of
self-defence."[199]
Before Darwin, competition had been conceived in terms of freedom and of
the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into
competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the
fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a
fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez
faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and
destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy.
The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine of
evolution, contain a powerful massing of evidence in favor of laissez
faire as a conclusion to be drawn from a scientific study of human
behavior. "Nothing but the slow modifications of human nature by the
discipline of social life," he said, "can produce permanently
advantageous changes. A fundamental error pervading the thinking of
nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of
immediate and radical remedies."[200]
With the growth of large-scale production with the tendency to the
formation of combinations and monopolies, as a result of freedom of
competition, works began to appear on the subject of unrestricted
competition. The expressions "unfair" and "cut-throat" competition,
which occur frequently in recent literature, suggest the new point of
view. Another euphemism under which other and more far-reaching
proposals for the limitation of competition and laissez faire have been
proposed is "social justice." In the meantime the trend of legislation
in England for a hundred years, as Mr. A. V. Dicey[201] has pointed out,
has been, in spite of Herbert Spencer, away from the individualistic and
in the direction of a collectivistic social order. This means more
legislation, more control, and less individual liberty.
The full meaning of this change in law and opinion can only be fully
understood, however, when it is considered in connection with the growth
of communication, economic organization, and cities, all of which have
so increased the mutual interdependence of all members of society as to
render illusory and unreal the old freedoms and liberties which the
system of laissez faire was supposed to guarantee.
3. Competition and Human Ecology
The ecological conception of society is that of a society created by
competitive co-operation. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was a
description of society in so far as it is a product of economic
competition. David Ricardo, in his _Principles of Political Economy_,
defined the process of competition more abstractly and states its
consequences with more ruthless precision and consistency. "His theory,"
says Kolthamer in his introduction, "seems to be an everlasting
justification of the _status quo_. As such at least it was used."
But Ricardo's doctrines were both "a prop and a menace to the middle
classes," and the errors which they canonized have been the
presuppositions of most of the radical and revolutionary programs since
that time.
The socialists, adopting his theories of value and wages,
interpreted Ricardo's crude expressions to their own advantage.
To alter the Ricardian conclusions, they said, alter the social
conditions upon which they depend: to improve upon subsistence
wage, deprive capital of what it steals from labour--the value
which labour creates. The land-taxers similarly used the
Ricardian theory of rent: rent is a surplus for the existence
of which no single individual is responsible--take it therefore
for the benefit of all, whose presence creates it.[202]
The anarchistic, socialistic, and communistic doctrines, to which
reference is made in the bibliography, are to be regarded as themselves
sociological phenomena, without reference to their value as programs.
They are based on ecological and economic conceptions of society in
which competition is the fundamental fact and, from the point of view of
these doctrines, the fundamental evil of society. What is sociologically
important in these doctrines is the wishes that they express. They
exhibit among other things, at any rate, the character which the hopes
and the wishes of men take in this vast, new, restless world, the Great
Society, in which men find themselves but in which they are not yet, and
perhaps never will be, at home.
4. Competition and the "Inner Enemies": the Defectives, the Dependents,
and the Delinquents
Georg Simmel, referring, in his essay on "The Stranger," to the poor and
the criminal, bestowed upon them the suggestive title of "The Inner
Enemies." The criminal has at all times been regarded as a rebel against
society, but only recently has the existence of the dependent and the
defective been recognized as inimical to the social order.[203]
Modern society, so far as it is free, has been organized on the basis of
competition. Since the status of the poor, the criminal, and the
dependent, has been largely determined by their ability or willingness
to compete, the literature upon defectiveness, dependency, and
delinquency may be surveyed in its relation to the process of
competition. For the purposes of this survey the dependent may be
defined as one who is unable to compete; the defective as the person who
is, if not unable, at least handicapped, in his efforts to compete. The
criminal, on the other hand, is one who is perhaps unable, but at any
rate refuses, to compete according to the rules which society lays down.
Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_ first called attention
to the pathological effects of the struggle for existence in modern
society and emphasized the necessity of control, not merely in the
interest of the defeated and rejected members of society, but in the
interest of society itself. Malthus sought a mitigation, if not a
remedy, for the evils of overpopulation by what he called "moral
restraint," that is, "a restraint from marriage, from prudential
motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint."
The alternatives were war, famine, and pestilence. These latter have, in
fact, been up to very recent times the effective means through which the
problem of overpopulation has been solved.
The Neo-Malthusian movement, under the leadership of Francis Place,
Richard Carlile, and Robert Dale Owen in the decade of 1820-30 and of
Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in the decade of 1870-80, advocated
the artificial restriction of the family. The differential decline in
the birth-rate, that is, the greater decrease in the number of children
in the well-to-do and educated classes as compared with the poor and
uneducated masses, was disclosed through investigations by the Galton
Eugenics Laboratory in England and characterized as a national menace.
In the words of David Heron, a study of districts in London showed that
"one-fourth of the married population was producing one-half of the next
generation." In United States less exhaustive investigation showed the
same tendency at work and the alarm which the facts created found a
popular expression in the term "race-suicide."
It is under these circumstances and as a result of investigations and
agitations of the eugenists, that the poor, the defective, and the
delinquent have come to be regarded as "inner enemies" in a sense that
would scarcely have been understood a hundred years ago.
Poverty and dependency in modern society have a totally different
significance from that which they have had in societies in the past. The
literature descriptive of primitive communities indicated that in the
economic communism of a society based on kinship, famines were frequent
but poverty was unknown. In ancient and medieval societies the
dependency, where it was not professional, as in the case of the
mendicant religious orders, was intimate and personal. In this respect
it differed widely from the organized, official, and supervised
philanthropy of our modern cities.
With the abolition of serfdom, the break-up of the medieval guilds, and
the inauguration of a period of individual freedom and relatively
unrestricted competition (laissez faire) which ushered in the modern
industrial order, the struggle for existence ceased to be communal, and
became individual. The new order based on individual freedom, as
contrasted with the old order based on control, has been described as a
system in which every individual was permitted to "go to hell in his own
individual way." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,"
said Mill, "is to prevent harm to others. His own good either physical
or moral is not a sufficient warranty." Only when the individual became
a criminal or a pauper did the state or organized society attempt to
control or assist him in the competitive struggle for existence.[204]
Since competitive industry has its beginnings in England, the study of
the English poor laws is instructive. Under the influence of Malthus
and of the classical economists the early writers upon poverty regarded
it as an inevitable and natural consequence of the operation of the
"iron laws" of political economy. For example, when Harriet Martineau
was forced to admit, by the evidence collected by the Factory
Commissioners in 1833, that "the case of these wretched factory children
seems desperate," she goes on to add "the only hope seems to be that the
race will die out in two or three generations."
Karl Marx, accepting the Ricardian economics, emphasized the misery and
destitution resulting from the competitive process, and demanded the
abolition of competition and the substitution therefor of the absolute
control of a socialistic state.
Recent studies treat poverty and dependency as a disease and look to its
prevention and cure. Trade unions, trade associations, and social
insurance are movements designed to safeguard industry and the worker
against the now generally recognized consequences of unlimited
competition. The conceptions of industrial democracy and citizenship in
industry have led to interesting and promising experiments.
In this connection, the efforts of employers to protect themselves as
well as the community from accidents and occupational diseases may be
properly considered. During and since the Great War efforts have been
made on a grand scale to rehabilitate, re-educate, and restore to
usefulness the war's wounded soldiers. This interest in the former
soldiers and the success of the efforts already made has led to an
increased interest in all classes of the industrially handicapped. A
number of surveys have been made, in different parts of the country, of
the crippled, and efforts are in progress to discover occupations and
professions in which the deaf, the blind, and otherwise industrially
handicapped can be employed and thus restored to usefulness and relative
independence.
The wide extension of the police power in recent times in the interest
of public health, sanitation, and general public welfare represents the
effort of the government, in an individualistic society in which the
older sanctions and securities no longer exist, to protect the
individual as well as the community from the effects of unrestricted
competition.
The literature of criminology has sought an answer to the enigma of the
criminal. The writings of the European criminologists run the gamut of
explanation from Lombroso, who explained crime as an inborn tendency of
the criminal, to Tarde, who defines the criminal as a purely social
product.
W. A. Bonger,[205] a socialist, has sought to show that criminality is a
direct product of the modern economic system. Without accepting either
the evidence or the conclusions of Bonger, it cannot be gainsaid that
the modern offender must be studied from the standpoint of his failure
to participate in a wholesome and normal way in our competitive,
secondary society which rests upon the institution of private property
and individual competition.
The failure of the delinquent to conform to the social code may be
studied from two standpoints: (a) that of the individual as an
organization of original mental and temperamental traits, and (b) that
of a person with a status and a rôle in the social group. The book _The
Individual Delinquent_, by William Healy, placed the study of the
offender as an individual upon a sound scientific basis. That the person
can and should be regarded as part and parcel of his social milieu has
been strikingly illustrated by T. M. Osborne in two books, _Within
Prison Walls_ and _Society and Prisons_. The fact seems to be that the
problem of crime is essentially like that of the other major problems of
our social order, and its solution involves three elements, namely:
(a) the analysis of the aptitudes of the individual and the wishes of
the person; (b) the analysis of the activities of our society with its
specialization and division of labor; and (c) the accommodation or
adjustment of the individual to the social and economic environment.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. BIOLOGICAL COMPETITION
(1) Crile, George W. _Man an Adaptive Mechanism._ New York, 1901.
(2) Darwin, Charles. _The Origin of Species._ London, 1859.
(3) Wallace, Alfred Russel. _Studies Scientific and Social._ 2 vols. New
York, 1900.
(4) ----. _Darwinism._ An exposition of the theory of natural selection
with some of its applications. Chap. iv, "The Struggle for Existence,"
pp. 14-40; chap. v, "Natural Selection by Variation and Survival of the
Fittest," pp. 102-25. 3d ed. London, 1901.
(5) Weismann, August. _On Germinal Selection as a Source of Definite
Variation._ Translated from the German. Chicago, 1896.
(6) Malthus, T. R. _An Essay on the Principle of Population._ Or a view
of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into
our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils
which it occasions. 2d ed. London, 1803. [1st ed., 1798.]
(7) Knapp, G. F. "Darwin und Socialwissenschaften," _Jahrbücher für
Nationalökonomie und Statistik_. Erste Folge, XVIII (1872), 233-47.
(8) Thomson, J. Arthur. _Darwinism and Human Life._ New York, 1918.
II. ECONOMIC COMPETITION
(1) Wagner, Adolf. _Grundlegung der politischen Ökonomie._ Pp. 794-828.
[The modern private industrial system of free competition.] Pp. 71-137.
[The industrial nature of men.] Leipzig, 1892-94.
(2) Effertz, Otto. _Arbeit und Boden._ System der politischen Ökonomie.
Vol. II, chaps, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, pp. 237-320. Berlin, 1897.
(3) Marshall, Alfred. _Principles of Economics._ Appendix A, "The Growth
of Free Industry and Enterprise," pp. 723-54. London, 1910.
(4) Seligman, E. R. A. _Principles of Economics._ Chap, x, pp. 139-53.
New York, 1905.
(5) Schatz, Albert. _L'Individualisme économique et social, ses
origines, son évolution, ses formes contemporaines._ Paris, 1907.
(6) Cunningham, William. _An Essay on Western Civilization in Its
Economic Aspects._ Medieval and modern times. Cambridge, 1913.
III. FREEDOM AND LAISSEZ FAIRE
(1) Simmel, Georg. _Philosophie des Geldes._ Chap. iv, "Die individuelle
Freiheit," pp. 279-364. Leipzig, 1900.
(2) Bagehot, Walter. _Postulates of English Political Economics._ With a
preface by Alfred Marshall. New York and London, 1885.
(3) Oncken, August. _Die Maxime Laissez Faire et Laissez Passer, ihr
Ursprung, ihr Werden._ Bern, 1886.
(4) Bastiat, Frédéric. _Harmonies économiques._ 9th ed. Paris, 1884.
(5) Cunningham, William. _The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in
Modern Times._ Vol. III, "Laissez Faire." 3 vols. 3d ed. Cambridge,
1903.
(6) Ingram, John K. _A History of Political Economy._ Chap. v, "Third
Modern Phase; System of Natural Liberty." 2d ed. New York, 1908.
(7) Hall, W. P. "Certain Early Reactions against Laissez Faire," _Annual
Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913._ I,
127-38. Washington, 1915.
(8) Adams, Henry C. "Relation of the State to Industrial Action,"
_Publications of the American Economic Association_, I (1887), 471-549.
IV. THE MARKETS
(1) Walker, Francis A. _Political Economy._ Chap. ii, pp. 97-102. 3d ed.
New York, 1887. [Market defined.]
(2) Grierson, P. J. H. _The Silent Trade._ A contribution to the early
history of human intercourse. Edinburgh, 1903. [Bibliography.]
(3) Maine, Henry S. _Village Communities in the East and West._ Lecture
VI, "The Early History of Price and Rent," pp. 175-203. New York, 1885.
(4) Walford, Cornelius. _Fairs, Past and Present._ A chapter in the
history of commerce. London, 1883.
(5) Bourne, H. R. F. _English Merchants._ Memoirs in illustration of the
progress of British commerce. New ed. London, 1898.
(6) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. _Industrial Democracy._ Part III, chap.
ii, "The Higgling of the Market," pp. 654-702. New ed. London, 1902.
(7) Bagehot, Walter. _Lombard Street._ A description of the money
market. New York, 1876.
V. COMPETITION AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
(1) Crowell, John F. _Trusts and Competition._ Chicago, 1915.
[Bibliography.]
(2) Macrosty, Henry W. _Trusts and the State._ A sketch of competition.
London, 1901.
(3) Carter, George R. _The Tendency toward Industrial Combination._ A
study of the modern movement toward industrial combination in some
spheres of British industry; its forms and developments, their causes,
and their determinant circumstances. London, 1913.
(4) Levy, Hermann. _Monopoly and Competition._ A study in English
industrial organization. London, 1911.
(5) Haney, Lewis H. _Business Organization and Combination._ An analysis
of the evolution and nature of business organization in the United
States and a tentative solution of the corporation and trust problems.
New York, 1914.
(6) Van Hise, Charles R. _Concentration and Control._ A solution of the
trust problem in the United States. New York, 1912.
(7) Kohler, Josef. _Der unlautere Wettbewerb._ Darstellung des
Wettbewerbsrechts. Berlin und Leipzig, 1914.
(8) Nims, Harry D. _The Law of Unfair Business Competition._ Including
chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair
interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of
merchandise, trade names and business credit and reputation. New York,
1909.
(9) Stevens, W. H. S. _Unfair Competition._ A study of certain practices
with some reference to the trust problem in the United States of
America. Chicago, 1917.
(10) Eddy, Arthur J. _The New Competition._ An examination of the
conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the
commercial and industrial world; the change from a competitive to a
co-operative basis. New York, 1912.
(11) Willoughby, W. W. _Social Justice._ A critical essay. Chap. ix,
"The Ethics of the Competitive Process," pp. 269-315. New York, 1900.
(12) Rogers, Edward S. _Good Will, Trade-Marks and Unfair Trading._
Chicago, 1914.
VI. SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM
(1) Stirner, Max. (Kaspar Schmidt). _The Ego and His Own._ Translated
from the German by S. T. Byington. New York, 1918.
(2) Godwin, William. _An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its
Influence on General Virtue and Happiness._ Book V, chap. xxiv. London,
1793.
(3) Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. _What Is Property?_ An inquiry into the
principle of right and of government. Translated from the French by B.
R. Tucker. New York, 189-?
(4) Zenker, E. V. _Anarchism._ A criticism and history of the anarchist
theory. Translated from the German. New York, 1897. [With
bibliographical references.]
(5) Bailie, William. _Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist._ A
sociological study. Boston, 1906.
(6) Russell, B. A. W. _Proposed Roads to Freedom._ Socialism, anarchism,
and syndicalism. New York, 1919.
(7) Mackay, Thomas, editor. _A Plea for Liberty._ An argument against
socialism and socialistic legislation. New York, 1891.
(8) Spencer, Herbert. "The Man _versus_ the State," Appendix to _Social
Statics_. New York, 1897.
(9) Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. _Manifesto of the Communist
Party._ Authorized English translation edited and annotated by Frederick
Engels. London, 1888.
(10) Stein, L. _Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen
Frankreichs._ Ein Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte. Leipzig, 1848.
(11) Guyot, Édouard. _Le Socialisme et l'évolution de l'Angleterre
contemporaine_ (1880-1911). Paris, 1913.
(12) Flint, Robert. _Socialism._ 2d ed. London, 1908.
(13) Beer, M. _A History of British Socialism._ Vol. I, "From the Days
of the Schoolmen to the Birth of Chartism." Vol. II, "From Chartism to
1920." London, 1919-21.
(14) Levine, Louis. _Syndicalism in France._ 2d ed. New York, 1914.
(15) Brissenden, Paul F. _The I. W. W._ A study of American syndicalism.
New York, 1919. [Bibliography.]
(16) Brooks, John Graham. _American Syndicalism._ New York, 1913.
(17) ----. _Labor's Challenge to the Social Order._ Democracy its own
critic and educator. New York, 1920.
VII. COMPETITION AND "THE INNER ENEMIES"
A. _The Struggle for Existence and Its Social Consequences_
(1) Henderson, Charles R. _Introduction to the Study of the Dependent,
Defective, and Delinquent Classes, and of Their Social Treatment._ 2d
ed. Boston, 1908.
(2) Grotjahn, Alfred. _Soziale Pathologie._ Versuch einer Lehre von den
sozialen Beziehungen der menschlichen Krankheiten als Grundlage der
sozialen Medizin und der sozialen Hygiene. Berlin, 1912.
(3) Lilienfeld, Paul de. _La Pathologie sociale._ Avec une préface de
René Worms. Paris, 1896.
(4) Thompson, Warren S. _Population._ A study in Malthusianism. New
York, 1915.
(5) Field, James A. "The Early Propagandist Movement in English
Population Theory," _American Economic Association Bulletin_, 4th Ser.,
I (1911), 207-36.
(6) Heron, David. _On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social
Status._ And on the changes in this relation that have taken place
during the last fifty years. London, 1906.
(7) Elderton, Ethel M. "Report on the English Birthrate." University of
London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. _Eugenics
Laboratory Memoirs_, XIX-XX. London, 1914.
(8) D'Ambrosio, Manlio A. _Passività Economica._ Primi principi di una
teoria sociologica della popolazione economicamente passiva. Napoli,
1909.
(9) Ellwood, Charles A. _Sociology and Modern Social Problems._ Rev. ed.
New York, 1913.
B. _Poverty, Labor, and the Proletariat_
(1) Woods, Robert A., Elsing, W. T., and others. _The Poor in Great
Cities._ Their problems and what is being done to solve them. New York,
1895.
(2) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. _Poverty, a Study of Town Life._ London, 1901.
(3) Devine, Edward T. _Misery and Its Causes._ New York, 1909.
(4) Marx, Karl. _Capital._ A critical analysis of capitalist production.
Chap. xv, "Machinery and Modern Industry." Translated from the third
German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by
Frederick Engels. London, 1908.
(5) Hobson, John A. _Problems of Poverty._ An inquiry into the
industrial condition of the poor. London, 1891.
(6) Kydd, Samuel [Alfred, pseud.] _The History of the Factory Movement._
From the year 1802 to the enactment of the ten hours' bill in 1847. 2
vols. London, 1857.
(7) Rowntree, B. S., and Lasker, Bruno. _Unemployment, a Social Study._
London, 1911.
(8) Beveridge, William Henry. _Unemployment._ A problem of industry. 3d
ed. London, 1912.
(9) Parmelee, Maurice. _Poverty and Social Progress._ New York, 1916.
(10) Gillin, John L. _Poverty and Dependency._ Their relief and
prevention. New York, 1921.
(11) Sombart, Werner. _Das Proletariat; Bilder und Studien._ Frankfurt
am Main, 1906.
(12) Riis, Jacob A. _How the Other Half Lives._ Studies among the
tenements of New York. New York, 1890.
(13) Nevinson, Margaret W. _Workhouse Characters and Other Sketches of
the Life of the Poor._ London, 1918.
(14) Sims, George R. _How the Poor Live; and Horrible London._ London,
1898.
C. _The Industrially Handicapped_
(1) Best, Harry. _The Deaf._ Their position in society and the provision
for their education in the United States. New York, 1914.
(2) ----. _The Blind._ Their condition and the work being done for them
in the United States. New York, 1919.
(3) United States Bureau of the Census. _The Blind and the Deaf, 1900._
Washington, 1906.
(4) ----. _Deaf-Mutes in the United States._ Analysis of the census of
1910 with summary of state laws relating to the deaf as of January 1,
1918. Washington, 1918.
(5) ----. _The Blind in the United States 1910._ Washington, 1917.
(6) Niceforo, Alfredo. _Les Classes pauvres._ Recherches
anthropologiques et sociales. Paris, 1905.
(7) Goddard, Henry H. _Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Consequences._
Chap. i, "Social Problems," pp. 1-20. New York, 1914.
(8) Popenoe, Paul B., and Johnson, Roswell H. _Applied Eugenics._ Chap.
ix, "The Dysgenic Classes," pp. 176-83. New York, 1918.
(9) Pintner, Rudolph, and Toops, Herbert A. "Mental Test of Unemployed
Men," _Journal of Applied Psychology_, I (1917), 325-41; II (1918),
15-25.
(10) Oliver, Thomas. _Dangerous Trades._ The historical, social, and
legal aspects of industrial occupations affecting health, by a number of
experts. New York, 1902.
(11) Jarrett, Mary C. "The Psychopathic Employee: a Problem of
Industry," _Bulletin of the Massachusetts Commission on Mental
Diseases_, I (1917-18), Nos. 3-4, 223-38. Boston, 1918.
(12) Thompson, W. Gilman. _The Occupational Diseases._ Their causation,
treatment, and prevention. New York, 1914.
(13) Kober, George M., and Hanson, William C., editors. _Diseases of
Occupation and Vocational Hygiene._ Philadelphia, 1916.
(14) Great Britain. Ministry of Munitions. _Health of Munition Workers
Committee._ Hours, fatigue, and health in British munition factories.
Reprints of the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers
Committee, April, 1917. Washington, 1917.
(15) Great Britain Home Department. _Report of the Committee on
Compensation for Industrial Diseases._ London, 1907.
(16) McMurtrie, Douglas C. _The Disabled Soldier._ With an introduction
by Jeremiah Milbank. New York, 1919.
(17) Rubinow, I. M. "A Statistical Consideration of the Number of Men
Crippled in War and Disabled in Industry," _Publication of Red Cross
Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men_. Series I, No. 4, Feb. 14,
1918.
(18) Love, Albert G., and Davenport, C. B. _Defects Found in Drafted
Men._ Statistical information compiled from the draft records showing
the physical condition of the men registered and examined in pursuance
of the requirements of the selective-service act. War Department, U.S.
Surgeon General's Office, Washington, 1920.
D. _Alcoholism and Drug Addiction_
(1) Partridge, George E. _Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance._
New York, 1912.
(2) Kelynack, T. N. _The Drink Problem of Today in Its
Medicosociological Aspects._ New York, 1916.
(3) Kerr, Norman S. _Inebriety or Narcomania._ Its etiology, pathology,
treatment, and jurisprudence. 3d ed. London, 1894.
(4) Elderton, Ethel M. "A First Study of the Influence of Parental
Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring." _Eugenics
Laboratory Memoirs_, University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for
National Eugenics. London, 1910.
(5) Koren, John. _Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem._ An
investigation made for the Committee of Fifty under the direction of
Henry W. Farnam. Boston, 1899.
(6) Towns, Charles B. _Habits that Handicap._ The menace of opium,
alcohol, and tobacco, and the remedy. New York, 1916.
(7) Wilbert, Martin I. "The Number and Kind of Drug Addicts," _U.S.
Public Health Reprint_, No. 294. Washington, 1915.
(8) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium._ Chap.
xxvi, "The Drink Problem." London, 1910.
(9) McIver, J., and Price, G. F. "Drug Addiction," _Journal of the
American Medical Association_, LXVI (1915), 476-80. [A study of 147
cases.]
(10) Stanley, L. L. "Drug Addictions," _Journal of the American
Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology_, X (1919), 62-70. [Four case
studies.]
E. _Crime and Competition_
(1) Parmelee, Maurice. _Criminology._ Chap. vi, pp. 67-91. New York,
1918.
(2) Bonger, William A. _Criminality and Economic Conditions._ Translated
from the French by H. P. Horton, with editorial preface by Edward
Lindsey and with an introduction by Frank H. Norcross. Boston, 1916.
(3) Tarde, G. "La Criminalité et les phénomènes économiques," _Archives
d'anthropologie criminelle_, XVI (1901), 565-75.
(4) Van Kan, J. _Les Causes économiques de la criminalité._ Étude
historique et critique d'étiologie criminelle. Lyon, 1903.
(5) Fornasári di Verce, E. _La Criminalità e le vicende economiche
d'Italia, dal 1873 al 1890, con prefazione di Ces. Lombroso._ Torino,
1894.
(6) Devon, J. _The Criminal and the Community._ London and New York,
1912.
(7) Breckinridge, Sophonisba, and Abbott, Edith. _The Delinquent Child
and the Home._ Chap. iv, "The Poor Child: The Problem of Poverty," pp.
70-89. New York, 1912.
(8) Donovan, Frances. _The Woman Who Waits._ Boston, 1920.
(9) Fernald, Mabel R., Hayes, Mary H. S., and Dawley, Almena. _A Study
of Women Delinquents in New York State._ With statistical chapter by
Beardsley Ruml; preface by Katharine Bement Davis. Chap. xi,
"Occupational History and Economic Efficiency," pp. 304-79. New York,
1920.
(10) Miner, Maude. _The Slavery of Prostitution._ A plea for
emancipation. Chap. iii, "Social Factors Leading to Prostitution," pp.
53-88. New York, 1916.
(11) Ryckère, Raymond de. _La Servante criminelle._ Étude de
criminologie professionelle. Paris, 1908.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest.
2. Economic Competition and the Economic Equilibrium.
3. "Unfair" Competition and Social Control.
4. Competition versus Sentiment.
5. The History of the Market, the Exchange, the Board of Trade.
6. The Natural History of the Laissez-Faire Theory in Economics and
Politics.
7. Competition, Money, and Freedom.
8. Competition and Segregation in Industry and in Society.
9. The Neo-Malthusian Movement and Race Suicide.
10. The Economic Order of Competition and "the Inner Enemies."
11. The History of the English Poor Law.
12. Unemployment and Poverty in a Competitive, Secondary Society.
13. Modern Economy and the Psychology of Intemperance.
14. Modern Industry, the Physically Handicapped and Programs of
Rehabilitation.
15. Crime in Relation to Economic Conditions.
16. Methods of Social Amelioration: Philanthropy, Welfare Work in
Industry, Social Insurance, etc.
17. Experiments in the Limitation of Competition: Collective Bargaining,
Trade Associations, Trade Boards, etc.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In what fields did the popular conceptions of competition originate?
2. In what way does competition as a form of interaction differ from
conflict, accommodation, and assimilation?
3. What do you understand to be the difference between struggle,
conflict, competition, and rivalry?
4. What are the different forms of the struggle for existence?
5. In what different meanings do you understand Darwin to use the term
"the struggle for existence"? How many of these are applicable to human
society?
6. What do you understand Darwin to mean when he says: "The structure of
every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden
manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into
competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on
which it preys"? Does his principle, in your opinion, also apply to the
structure of social groups?
7. What examples of competition occur to you in human or social
relations? In what respects are they (a) alike, (b) different, from
competition in plant communities?
8. To what extent is biological competition present in modern human
society?
9. Does competition always lead to increased specialization and higher
organization?
10. What evidences are there in society of the effect of competition
upon specialization and organization?
11. What do you understand Crile to mean by the sentence: "In every case
the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism"?
What is this mechanism with man?
12. Do you think that Crile has given an adequate explanation of the
evolution of mind?
13. Is there a difference in the character of the struggle for existence
of animals and of man?
14. What is the difference in competition within a community based on
likenesses and one based on diversities?
15. Compare the ecological concept "reaction" with the sociological
conception "control."
16. What do you understand by the expression "the reaction of a
community is usually more than the sum of the reaction of the component
species and individuals"? Explain.
17. How far can the terms migration, ecesis, and competition, as used by
Clements in his analysis of the invasion of one plant community by
another, be used in the analysis of the process by which immigrants
"invade" this country, i.e., migrate, settle, and are assimilated,
"Americanized"?
18. What are the social forces involved in (a) internal, (b)
foreign, migrations?
19. What do you understand by the term segregation? To what extent are
the social forces making for segregation (a) economic, (b)
sentimental? Illustrate.
20. In what ways has immigration to the United States resulted in
segregation?
21. Does the segregation of the immigrant in our American cities make
for or against (a) competition, (b) conflict, (c) social control,
(d) accommodation, and (e) assimilation?
22. What are the factors producing internal migration in the United
States?
23. In what sense is the drift to the cities a result of competition?
24. What is Ripley's conclusion in regard to urban selection and the
ethnic composition of cities?
25. What are the outstanding results of demographic segregation and
social selection in the United States?
26. What, in your judgment, are the chief characteristics of
inter-racial competition?
27. To what extent do you agree with Walker's analysis of the social
forces involved in race suicide in the United States?
28. In what specific ways is competition now a factor in race suicide?
29. What will be the future effects of inter-racial competition upon the
ethnic stock of the American people?
30. "There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political
economy is eternally true." Explain.
31. To what extent and in what sense is economic competition
unconscious?
32. What differences other than innate mental ability enter into
competition between different social groups and different persons?
33. Who are your competitors?
34. Of the existence (as identified persons) of what proportion of these
competitors are you unconscious?
35. What is meant by competitive co-operation? Illustrate. (See pp. 508,
558.)
36. What do you understand by the term "economic equilibrium"?
37. Is "economic equilibrium" identical with "social solidarity"? What
is the relation, if any, between the two concepts?
38. To what extent does competition make for a natural harmony of
individual interests?
39. What did Adam Smith mean by "an invisible hand"?
40. "Civilization is the resultant not of conscious co-operation but of
the unconscious competition of individuals." Do you agree or disagree
with this statement?
41. "By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the
society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
What is the argument for and against this position?
42. Why has the laissez-faire theory in economics been largely
abandoned?
43. What do you understand by the term "freedom"? How far may freedom be
identified with freedom of competition?
44. Do you accept the conception of Bastiat that "competition is
liberty"?
45. How does money make for freedom? Does it make for or against
co-operation? Are co-operation and competition mutually antagonistic
terms?
46. Under what circumstances do you have competition between individuals
and competition between groups?
47. What do you understand by the statement that anarchism, socialism,
and communism are based upon the ecological conceptions of society?
48. What is the difference between an opinion or a doctrine taken (a)
as a datum, and (b) as a value?
49. From what point of view may the dependent, the delinquent, and the
defective be regarded as "inner enemies"? Is this notion
individualistic, socialistic, or how would you characterize it?
FOOTNOTES:
[180] Bastiat, Frédéric, _Oeuvres complètes_, tome VI, "Harmonies
économiques," 9e édition, p. 381. (Paris, 1884.)
[181] Walker, Francis A., _Political Economy_, p. 92. (New York, 1887.)
[182] See chap. i, pp. 51-54.
[183] The introduction of the rabbit into Australia, where predatory
competitors are absent, has resulted in so great a multiplication of the
members of this species that their numbers have become an economic
menace. The appearance of the boll weevil, an insect which attacks the
cotton boll, has materially changed the character of agriculture in
areas of cotton culture in the South. Scientists are now looking for
some insect enemy of the boll weevil that will restore the equilibrium.
[184] Adapted from J. Arthur Thomson, _Darwinism and Human Life_, pp.
72-75. (Henry Holt & Co., 1910.)
[185] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_, pp. 50-61.
(D. Appleton & Co., 1878.)
[186] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_, pp. 97-100.
(D. Appleton & Co., 1878.)
[187] Adapted from George W. Crile, _Man: An Adaptive Mechanism_, pp.
17-39. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1916. Reprinted by permission.)
[188] Adapted from F. E. Clements, _Plant Succession_. An analysis of
the development of vegetation, pp. 75-79. (Carnegie Institution of
Washington, 1916.)
[189] Adapted from Carl Bücher, _Industrial Evolution_, pp. 345-69.
(Henry Holt & Co., 1907.)
[190] From William Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 537-59. (D.
Appleton & Co., 1899.)
[191] Adapted from Francis A. Walker, _Economics and Statistics_, II,
421-26. (Henry Holt & Co., 1899.)
[192] Adapted from John B. Clark, "The Limits of Competition," in Clark
and Giddings, _The Modern Distributive Process_, pp. 2-8. (Ginn & Co.,
1888.)
[193] Adapted from Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations_, I (1904), 419, 421. (By kind permission of
Messrs. Methuen & Co., Ltd.)
[194] Translated from Frédéric Bastiat, _Oeuvres complètes_, tome VI,
"Harmonies économiques," 9e édition, p. 350. (Paris, 1884.)
[195] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Philosophie des Geldes_, pp.
351-52. (Duncker und Humblot, 1900.)
[196] Henry S. Maine, _Village-Communities in the East and West_, pp.
192-97. (New York, 1889.)
[197] Henry Higgs, _The Physiocrats_, p. 142. (London, 1897.)
[198] Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ (Cannan's edition), I, 342.
London, 1904.
[199] _Ibid._ I, 148.
[200] Thomas Mackay, _A Plea for Liberty_. An argument against socialism
and socialistic legislation, consisting of an introduction by Herbert
Spencer and essays by various writers, p. 24. (New York, 1891.)
[201] _Lectures on the Relation between Law and Opinion in England,
during the Nineteenth Century._ 2d ed. (London, 1914).
[202] _The Principles of Taxation._ Everyman's Library. Preface by F. W.
Kolthamer, p. xii.
[203] _Soziologie_, p. 686. (Leipzig, 1908.)
[204] John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_. (London, 1859.)
[205] _Criminality and Economic Conditions._ (Boston, 1916.)
CHAPTER IX
CONFLICT
I. INTRODUCTION
1. The Concept of Conflict
The distinction between competition and conflict has already been
indicated. Both are forms of interaction, but competition is a struggle
between individuals, or groups of individuals, who are not necessarily
in contact and communication; while conflict is a contest in which
contact is an indispensable condition. Competition, unqualified and
uncontrolled as with plants, and in the great impersonal life-struggle
of man with his kind and with all animate nature, is unconscious.
Conflict is always conscious, indeed, it evokes the deepest emotions and
strongest passions and enlists the greatest concentration of attention
and of effort. Both competition and conflict are forms of struggle.
Competition, however, is continuous and impersonal, conflict is
intermittent and personal.
Competition is a struggle for position in an economic order. The
distribution of populations in the world-economy, the industrial
organization in the national economy, and the vocation of the individual
in the division of labor--all these are determined, in the long run, by
competition. The status of the individual, or a group of individuals, in
the social order, on the other hand, is determined by rivalry; by war,
or by subtler forms of conflict.
"Two is company, three is a crowd" suggests how easily the social
equilibrium is disturbed by the entrance of a new factor in a social
situation. The delicate nuances and grades of attention given to
different individuals moving in the same social circle are the
superficial reflections of rivalries and conflicts beneath the smooth
and decorous surfaces of polite society.
In general, we may say that competition determines the position of the
individual in the community; conflict fixes his place in society.
Location, position, ecological interdependence--these are the
characteristics of the community. Status, subordination and
superordination, control--these are the distinctive marks of a society.
The notion of conflict, like the fact, has its roots deep in human
interest. Mars has always held a high rank in the hierarchy of the gods.
Whenever and wherever struggle has taken the form of conflict, whether
of races, of nations, or of individual men, it has invariably captured
and held the attention of spectators. And these spectators, when they
did not take part in the fight, always took sides. It was this conflict
of the non-combatants that made public opinion, and public opinion has
always played an important rôle in the struggles of men. It is this that
has raised war from a mere play of physical forces and given it the
tragic significance of a moral struggle, a conflict of good and evil.
The result is that war tends to assume the character of litigation, a
judicial procedure, in which custom determines the method of procedure,
and the issue of the struggle is accepted as a judgment in the case.
The duello, as distinguished from the wager of battle, although it never
had the character of a judicial procedure, developed a strict code which
made it morally binding upon the individual to seek redress for wrongs,
and determined in advance the methods of procedure by which such redress
could and should be obtained. The penalty was a loss of status in the
particular group of which the individual was a member.
It was the presence of the public, the ceremonial character of the
proceedings, and the conviction that the invisible powers were on the
side of truth and justice that gave the trial by ordeal and the trial by
battle a significance that neither the duello nor any other form of
private vengeance ever had.
It is interesting in this connection, also, that political and judicial
forms of procedure are conducted on a conflict pattern. An election is a
contest in which we count noses when we do not break heads. A trial by
jury is a contest in which the parties are represented by champions, as
in the judicial duels of an earlier time.
In general, then, one may say competition becomes conscious and personal
in conflict. In the process of transition competitors are transformed
into rivals and enemies. In its higher forms, however, conflict becomes
impersonal--a struggle to establish and maintain rules of justice and a
moral order. In this case the welfare not merely of individual men but
of the community is involved. Such are the struggles of political
parties and religious sects. Here the issues are not determined by the
force and weight of the contestants immediately involved, but to a
greater or less extent, by the force and weight of public opinion of the
community, and eventually by the judgment of mankind.
2. Classification of the Materials
The materials on conflict have been organized in the readings under four
heads: (a) conflict as conscious competition; (b) war, instincts,
and ideals; (c) rivalry, cultural conflicts, and social organization;
and (d) race conflicts.
a) _Conscious competition._--Self-consciousness in the individual
arises in the contacts and conflicts of the person with other persons.
It manifests itself variously in pride and in humility, vanity and
self-respect, modesty and arrogance, pity and disdain, as well as in
race prejudice, chauvinism, class and caste distinctions, and in every
other social device by which the social distances are maintained.
It is in these various responses called forth by social contacts and
intercourse that the personality of the individual is developed and his
status defined. It is in the effort to maintain this status or improve
it; to defend this personality, enlarge its possessions, extend its
privileges, and maintain its prestige that conflicts arise. This applies
to all conflicts, whether they are personal and party squabbles,
sectarian differences, or national and patriotic wars, for the
personality of the individual is invariably so bound up with the
interests and order of his group and clan, that, in a struggle, he makes
the group cause his own.
Much has been said and written about the economic causes of war, but
whatever may be the ultimate sources of our sentiments, it is probably
true that men never go to war for economic reasons merely. It is because
wealth and possessions are bound up with prestige, honor, and position
in the world, that men and nations fight about them.
b) _War, instincts, and ideals._--War is the outstanding and the
typical example of conflict. In war, where hostility prevails over
every interest of sentiment or utility which would otherwise unite the
contending parties or groups, the motives and the rôle of conflict in
social life present themselves in their clearest outline. There is,
moreover, a practical reason for fixing upon war as an illustration of
conflict. The tremendous interest in all times manifested in war, the
amazing energies and resources released in peoples organized for
military aggression or defense, the colossal losses and sacrifices
endured for the glory, the honor, or the security of the fatherland have
made wars memorable. Of no other of the larger aspects of collective
life have we such adequate records.
The problem of the relation of war to human instincts, on the one hand,
and to human ideals, on the other, is the issue about which most recent
observation and discussion has centered. It seems idle to assert that
hostility has no roots in man's original nature. The concrete materials
given in this chapter show beyond question how readily the wishes and
the instincts of the person may take the form of the fighting pattern.
On the other hand, the notion that tradition, culture, and collective
representations have no part in determining the attitudes of nations
toward war seems equally untenable. The significant sociological inquiry
is to determine just in what ways a conjunction of the tendencies in
original nature, the forces of tradition and culture, and the exigencies
of the situation determine the organization of the fighting pattern. We
have historical examples of warlike peoples becoming peaceful and of
pacific nations militaristic. An understanding of the mechanism of the
process is a first condition to any exercise of control.
c) _Rivalry, cultural conflicts, and social organization._--Rivalry is
a sublimated form of conflict where the struggle of individuals is
subordinated to the welfare of the group. In the rivalry of groups,
likewise, conflict or competition is subordinated to the interests of an
inclusive group. Rivalry may then be defined as conflict controlled by
the group in its interest. A survey of the phenomena of rivalry brings
out its rôle as an organizing force in group life.
In the study of conflict groups it is not always easy to apply with
certainty the distinction between rivalry and conflict made here. The
sect is a conflict group. In its struggle for survival and success with
other groups, its aim is the highest welfare of the inclusive society.
Actually, however, sectarian warfare may be against the moral, social,
and religious interests of the community. The denomination, which is an
accommodation group, strives through rivalry and competition, not only
to promote the welfare of the inclusive society, but also of its other
component groups.
In cultural and political conflict the function of conflict in social
life becomes understandable and reasonable. The rôle of mental conflicts
in the life of the individual is for the purpose of making adjustments
to changing situations and of assimilating new experiences. It is
through this process of conflict of divergent impulses to act that the
individual arrives at decisions--as we say, "makes up his mind." Only
where there is conflict is behavior conscious and self-conscious; only
here are the conditions for rational conduct.
d) _Race conflicts._--Nowhere do social contacts so readily provoke
conflicts as in the relations between the races, particularly when
racial differences are re-enforced, not merely by differences of
culture, but of color. Nowhere, it might be added, are the responses to
social contact so obvious and, at the same time, so difficult to analyze
and define.
Race prejudice, as we call the sentiments that support the racial
taboos, is not, in America at least, an obscure phenomenon. But no one
has yet succeeded in making it wholly intelligible. It is evident that
there is in race prejudice, as distinguished from class and caste
prejudice, an instinctive factor based on the fear of the unfamiliar and
the uncomprehended. Color, or any other racial mark that emphasizes
physical differences, becomes the symbol of moral divergences which
perhaps do not exist. We at once fear and are fascinated by the
stranger, and an individual of a different race always seems more of a
stranger to us than one of our own. This naïve prejudice, unless it is
re-enforced by other factors, is easily modified, as the intimate
relations of the Negroes and white man in slavery show.
A more positive factor in racial antagonism is the conflict of cultures:
the unwillingness of one race to enter into personal competition with a
race of a different or inferior culture. This turns out, in the long
run, to be the unwillingness of a people or a class occupying a superior
status to compete on equal terms with a people of a lower status. Race
conflicts like wars are fundamentally the struggles of racial groups for
status. In this sense and from this point of view the struggles of the
European nationalities and the so-called "subject peoples" for
independence and self-determination are actually struggles for status in
the family of nations.
Under the conditions of this struggle, racial or national consciousness
as it manifests itself, for example, in Irish nationalism, Jewish
Zionism, and Negro race consciousness, is the natural and obvious
response to a conflict situation. The nationalistic movements in Europe,
in India, and in Egypt are, like war, rivalry and more personal forms of
conflict, mainly struggles for recognition--that is, honor, glory, and
prestige.
II. MATERIALS
A. CONFLICT AS CONSCIOUS COMPETITION
1. The Natural History of Conflict[206]
All classes of society, and the two sexes to about the same degree, are
deeply interested in all forms of contest involving skill and chance,
especially where the danger or risk is great. Everybody will stop to
watch a street fight, and the same persons would show an equal interest
in a prize fight or a bull fight, if certain scruples did not stand in
the way of their looking on. Our socially developed sympathy and pity
may recoil from witnessing a scene where physical hurt is the object of
the game, but the depth of our interest in the conflict type of activity
is attested by the fascination which such a game as football has for the
masses, where our instinctive emotional reaction to a conflict situation
is gratified to an intense degree by a scene of the conflict pattern.
If we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of elation
and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to instincts
developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates. The structure
of the organism has been built up gradually through the survival of the
most efficient structures. Corresponding with a structure mechanically
adapted to successful movements, there is developed on the psychic side
an interest in the conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the
structure itself. The emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations
for action, corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or
retreat; and a connection has even been made out between pleasurable
states and the extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor
muscles. We can have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the
experiments made in nature before the development of these types of
structure and interest of the conflict pattern, but we know from the
geological records that the time and experiments were long and many, and
the competition so sharp that finally, not in man alone, but in all the
higher classes of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were
working perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a
life of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been
developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements for
food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or
precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been
defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development.
The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in situations
of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations which arouse
them most readily. War is simply an organized form of fight, and as such
is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses the interests
powerfully. With the accumulation of property and the growth of
sensibility and intelligence it becomes apparent that war is a wasteful
and unsafe process, and public and personal interests lead us to avoid
it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war may be deprecated, it
is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders in this country
recently, and more recently the young men of the aristocracy of England,
went to war from motives of patriotism, no doubt, but there are
unmistakable evidences that they also regarded it as the greatest sport
they were likely to have a chance at in a lifetime. And there is
evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude of women toward war is no
less intense. Grey relates that half a dozen old women among the
Australians will drive the men to war with a neighboring tribe over a
fancied injury. The Jewish maidens went out with music and dancing and
sang that Saul had slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands. The
young women of Havana are alleged, during the late Spanish War, to have
sent pieces of their wardrobe to young men of their acquaintance who
hesitated to join the rebellion, with the suggestion that they wear
these until they went to the war.
The feud is another mode of reaction of the violent, instinctive, and
attractive type. The feud was originally of defensive value to the
individual and to the tribe, since in the absence of criminal law the
feeling that retaliation would follow was a deterrent from acts of
aggression. But it was an expensive method of obtaining order in early
society, since response to stimulus reinstated the stimulus, and every
death called for another death; so, finally, after many experiments and
devices, the state has forbidden the individual to take justice into his
own hands. In out-of-the-way places, however, where governmental control
is weak, men still settle their disputes personally, and one who is
familiar with the course of a feud cannot avoid the conclusion that this
practice is kept up, not because there is no law to resort to, but
because the older mode is more immediate and fascinating. I mean simply
that the emotional possibilities and actual emotional reactions in the
feud are far more powerful than in due legal process.
Gladiatorial shows, bear baiting, bull fighting, dog and cock fighting,
and prize fighting afford an opportunity to gratify the interest in
conflict. The spectator has by suggestion emotional reactions analogous
to those of the combatant, but without personal danger; and vicarious
contests between slaves, captives, and animals, whose blood and life are
cheap, are a pleasure which the race allowed itself until a higher stage
of morality was reached. Pugilism is the modification of the fight in a
slightly different way. The combatants are members of society, not
slaves or captives, but the conflict is so qualified as to safeguard
their lives, though injury is possible and is actually planned. The
intention to do hurt is the point to which society and the law object.
But the prize fight is a fight as far as it goes, and the difficulties
which men will surmount to "pull off" and to witness these contests are
sufficient proof of their fascination. A football game is also a fight,
with the additional qualification that no injury is planned, and with an
advantage over the prize fight in the fact that it is not a
single-handed conflict, but an organized mêlée--a battle where the
action is more massive and complex and the strategic opportunities are
multiplied. It is a fact of interest in this connection that, unless
appearances are deceptive, altogether the larger number of visitors to a
university during the year are visitors to the football field. It is the
only phase of university life which appeals directly and powerfully to
the instincts, and it is consequently the only phase of university life
which appeals equally to the man of culture, the artist, the business
man, the man about town, the all-round sport, and, in fact, to all the
world.
The instincts of man are congenital; the arts and industries are
acquired by the race and must be learned by the individual after birth.
We have seen why the instinctive activities are pleasurable and the
acquired habits irksome. The gambler represents a class of men who have
not been weaned from their instincts. There are in every species
biological "sports" and reversions, and there are individuals of this
kind among sporting men who are not reached by ordinary social
suggestion and stimuli. But granting that what we may call the
instinctive interests are disproportionately strong in the sporting
class, as compared with, say, the merchant class, yet these instincts
are also strongly marked in what may roughly be called the artist class
and in spite of a marked psychic disposition for stimuli of the
emotional type; and precisely because of this disposition, the artist
class has a very high social value. Art products are, indeed, perhaps
more highly esteemed than any other products whatever. The artist class
is not, therefore, socially unmanageable because of its instinctive
interest, though perhaps we may say that some of its members are saved
from social vagabondage only because their emotional predisposition has
found an expression in emotional activities to which some social value
can be attached.
2. Conflict as a Type of Social Interaction[207]
That conflict has sociological significance inasmuch as it either
produces or modifies communities of interest, unifications,
organizations, is in principle never contested. On the other hand, it
must appear paradoxical to the ordinary mode of thinking to ask whether
conflict itself, without reference to its consequences or its
accompaniments, is not a form of socialization. This seems, at first
glance, to be merely a verbal question. If every reaction among men is a
socialization, of course conflict must count as such, since it is one of
the most intense reactions and is logically impossible if restricted to
a single element. The actually dissociating elements are the causes of
the conflict--hatred and envy, want and desire. If, however, from these
impulses conflict has once broken out, it is in reality the way to
remove the dualism and to arrive at some form of unity, even if through
annihilation of one of the parties. The case is, in a way, illustrated
by the most violent symptoms of disease. They frequently represent the
efforts of the organism to free itself from disorders and injuries. This
is by no means equivalent merely to the triviality, _si vis pacem para
bellum_, but it is the wide generalization of which that special case is
a particular. Conflict itself is the resolution of the tension between
the contraries. That it eventuates in peace is only a single, specially
obvious and evident, expression of the fact that it is a conjunction of
elements.
As the individual achieves the unity of his personality, not in such
fashion that its contents invariably harmonize according to logical or
material, religious or ethical, standards, but rather as contradiction
and strife not merely precede that unity but are operative in it at
every moment of life; so it is hardly to be expected that there should
be any social unity in which the converging tendencies of the elements
are not incessantly shot through with elements of divergence. A group
which was entirely centripetal and harmonious--that is, "unification"
merely--is not only impossible empirically, but it would also display no
essential life-process and no stable structure. As the cosmos requires
_Liebe und Hass_, attraction and repulsion, in order to have a form,
society likewise requires some quantitative relation of harmony and
disharmony, association and dissociation, liking and disliking, in order
to attain to a definite formation. Society, as it is given in fact, is
the result of both categories of reactions, and in so far both act in a
completely positive way. The misconception that the one factor tears
down what the other builds up, and that what at last remains is the
result of subtracting the one from the other (while in reality it is
much rather to be regarded as the addition of one to the other),
doubtless springs from the equivocal sense of the concept of unity.
We describe as unity the agreement and the conjunction of social
elements in contrast with their disjunctions, separations, disharmonies.
We also use the term unity, however, for the total synthesis of the
persons, energies, and forms in a group, in which the final wholeness
is made up, not merely of those factors which are unifying in the
narrower sense, but also of those which are, in the narrower sense,
dualistic. We associate a corresponding double meaning with disunity or
opposition. Since the latter displays its nullifying or destructive
sense _between the individual elements_, the conclusion is hastily drawn
that it must work in the same manner upon the _total relationship_. In
reality, however, it by no means follows that the factor which is
something negative and diminutive in its action between individuals,
considered in a given direction and separately, has the same working
throughout the totality of its relationships. In this larger circle of
relationships the perspective may be quite different. That which was
negative and dualistic may, after deduction of its destructive action in
particular relationships, on the whole, play an entirely positive rôle.
This visibly appears especially in those instances where the social
structure is characterized by exactness and carefully conserved purity
of social divisions and gradations.
The social system of India rests not only upon the hierarchy of the
castes but also directly upon the reciprocal repulsion. Enmities not
merely prevent gradual disappearance of the boundaries within the
society--and for this reason these enmities may be consciously promoted,
as guaranty of the existing social constitution--but more than this, the
enmities are directly productive sociologically. They give classes and
personalities their position toward each other, which they would not
have found if these objective causes of hostility had been present and
effective in precisely the same way but had not been accompanied by the
feeling of enmity. It is by no means certain that a secure and complete
community life would always result if these energies should disappear
which, looked at in detail, seem repulsive and destructive, just as a
qualitatively unchanged and richer property results when unproductive
elements disappear; but there would ensue rather a condition as changed,
and often as unrealizable, as after the elimination of the forces of
co-operation--sympathy, assistance, harmony of interests.
The opposition of one individual element to another in the same
association is by no means merely a negative social factor, but it is in
many ways the only means through which coexistence with individuals
intolerable in themselves could be possible. If we had not power and
right to oppose tyranny and obstinacy, caprice and tactlessness, we
could not endure relations with people who betray such characteristics.
We should be driven to deeds of desperation which would put the
relationships to an end. This follows not alone for the self-evident
reason--which, however, is not here essential--that such disagreeable
circumstances tend to become intensified if they are endured quietly and
without protest; but, more than this, opposition affords us a subjective
satisfaction, diversion, relief, just as under other psychological
conditions, whose variations need not here be discussed, the same
results are brought about by humility and patience. Our opposition gives
us the feeling that we are not completely crushed in the relationship.
It permits us to preserve a consciousness of energy, and thus lends a
vitality and a reciprocity to relationships from which, without this
corrective, we should have extricated ourselves at any price. In case
the relationships are purely external, and consequently do not reach
deeply into the practical, the latent form of conflict discharges this
service, i.e., aversion, the feeling of reciprocal alienation and
repulsion, which in the moment of a more intimate contact of any sort is
at once transformed into positive hatred and conflict. Without this
aversion life in a great city, which daily brings each into contact with
countless others, would have no thinkable form. The activity of our
minds responds to almost every impression received from other people in
some sort of a definite feeling, all the unconsciousness, transience,
and variability of which seem to remain only in the form of a certain
indifference. In fact, this latter would be as unnatural for us as it
would be intolerable to be swamped under a multitude of suggestions
among which we have no choice. Antipathy protects us against these two
typical dangers of the great city. It is the initial stage of practical
antagonism. It produces the distances and the buffers without which this
kind of life could not be led at all. The mass and the mixtures of this
life, the forms in which it is carried on, the rhythm of its rise and
fall--these unite with the unifying motives, in the narrower sense, to
give to a great city the character of an indissoluble whole. Whatever in
this whole seems to be an element of division is thus in reality only
one of its elementary forms of socialization.
A struggle for struggle's sake seems to have its natural basis in a
certain formal impulse of hostility, which forces itself sometimes upon
psychological observation, and in various forms. In the first place, it
appears as that natural enmity between man and man which is often
emphasized by skeptical moralists. The argument is: Since there is
something not wholly displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best
friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance,
conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an
a priori hostility, to that _homo homini lupus_, as the frequently
veiled, but perhaps never inoperative, basis of all our relationships.
3. Types of Conflict Situations[208]
a) _War._--The reciprocal relationship of primitive groups is
notoriously, and for reasons frequently discussed almost invariably, one
of hostility. The decisive illustration is furnished perhaps by the
American Indians, among whom every tribe on general principles was
supposed to be on a war footing toward every other tribe with which it
had no express treaty of peace. It is, however, not to be forgotten that
in early stages of culture war constitutes almost the only form in which
contact with an alien group occurs. So long as inter-territorial trade
was undeveloped, individual tourneys unknown, and intellectual community
did not extend beyond the group boundaries, there was, outside of war,
no sociological relationship whatever between the various groups. In
this case the relationship of the elements of the group to each other
and that of the primitive groups to each other present completely
contrasted forms. Within the closed circle hostility signifies, as a
rule, the severing of relationships, voluntary isolation, and the
avoidance of contact. Along with these negative phenomena there will
also appear the phenomena of the passionate reaction of open struggle.
On the other hand, the group as a whole remains indifferently side by
side with similar groups so long as peace exists. The consequence is
that these groups become significant for each other only when war breaks
out. That the attitude of hostility, considered likewise from this point
of view, may arise independently in the soul is the less to be doubted
since it represents here, as in many another easily observable
situation, the embodiment of an impulse which is in the first place
quite general, but which also occurs in quite peculiar forms, namely,
_the impulse to act in relationships with others_.
In spite of this spontaneity and independence, which we may thus
attribute to the antagonistic impulse, there still remains the question
whether it suffices to account for the total phenomena of hostility.
This question must be answered in the negative. In the first place, the
spontaneous impulse does not exercise itself upon every object but only
upon those that are in some way promising. Hunger, for example, springs
from the subject. It does not have its origin in the object.
Nevertheless, it will not attempt to satisfy itself with wood or stone
but it will select only edible objects. In the same way, love and
hatred, however little their impulses may depend upon external stimuli,
will yet need some sort of opposing object, and only with such
co-operation will the complete phenomena appear. On the other hand, it
seems to me probable that the hostile impulse, on account of its formal
character, in general intervenes, only as a reinforcement of conflicts
stimulated by material interest, and at the same time furnishes a
foundation for the conflict. And where a struggle springs up from sheer
formal love of fighting, which is also entirely impersonal and
indifferent both to the material at issue and to the personal opponent,
hatred and fury against the opponent as a person unavoidably increase in
the course of the conflict, and probably also the interest in the stake
at issue, because these affections stimulate and feed the psychical
energy of the struggle. It is advantageous to hate the opponent with
whom one is for any reason struggling, as it is useful to love him with
whom one's lot is united and with whom one must co-operate. The
reciprocal attitude of men is often intelligible only on the basis of
the perception that actual adaptation to a situation teaches us those
feelings which are appropriate to it; feelings which are the most
appropriate to the employment or the overcoming of the circumstances of
the situation; feelings which bring us, through psychical association,
the energies necessary for discharging the momentary task and for
defeating the opposing impulses.
Accordingly, no serious struggle can long continue without being
supported by a complex of psychic impulses. These may, to be sure,
gradually develop into effectiveness in the course of the struggle. The
purity of conflict merely for conflict's sake, accordingly, undergoes
adulteration, partly through the admixture of objective interests,
partly by the introduction of impulses which may be satisfied otherwise
than by struggle, and which, in practice, form a bridge between struggle
and other forms of reciprocal relationship. I know in fact only a single
case in which the stimulus of struggle and of victory in itself
constitutes the exclusive motive, namely, the war game, and only in the
case that no further gain is to arise than is included in the outcome of
the game itself. In this case the pure sociological attraction of
self-assertion and predominance over another in a struggle of skill is
combined with purely individual pleasure in the exercise of purposeful
and successful activity, together with the excitement of taking risks
with the hazard of fortune which stimulates us with a sense of mystic
harmony of relationship to powers beyond the individual, as well as the
social occurrences. At all events, the war game, _in its sociological
motivation_, contains absolutely nothing but struggle itself. The
worthless markers, for the sake of which men often play with the same
earnestness with which they play for gold pieces, indicate the formalism
of this impulse which, even in the play for gold pieces, often far
outweighs the material interest. The thing to be noticed, however, is
that, in order that the foregoing situations may occur, certain
sociological forms--in the narrower sense, unifications--are
presupposed. There must be agreement in order to struggle, and the
struggle occurs under reciprocal recognition of norms and rules. In the
motivation of the whole procedure these unifications, as said above, do
not appear, but the whole transaction shapes itself under the forms
which these explicit or implicit agreements furnish. They create the
technique. Without this, such a conflict, excluding all heterogeneous or
objective factors, would not be possible. Indeed, the conduct of the war
game is often so rigorous, so impersonal, and observed on both sides
with such nice sense of honor that unities of a corporate order can
seldom in these respects compare with it.
b) _Feud and faction._--The occasion for separate discussion of the
feud is that here, instead of the consciousness of difference, an
entirely new motive emerges--the peculiar phenomenon of social hatred,
that is, of hatred toward a member of a group, not from personal
motives, but because he threatens the existence of the group. In so far
as such a danger threatens through feud within the group, the one party
hates the other, not alone on the material ground which instigated the
quarrel, but also on the sociological ground, namely, that we hate the
enemy of the group as such; that is, the one from whom danger to its
unity threatens. Inasmuch as this is a reciprocal matter, and each
attributes the fault of endangering the whole to the other, the
antagonism acquires a severity which does not occur when membership in a
group-unity is not a factor in the situation. Most characteristic in
this connection are the cases in which an actual dismemberment of the
group has not yet occurred. If this dismemberment has already taken
place, it signifies a certain termination of the conflict. The
individual difference has found its sociological termination, and the
stimulus to constantly renewed friction is removed. To this result the
tension between antagonism and still persisting unity must directly
work. As it is fearful to be at enmity with a person to whom one is
nevertheless bound, from whom one cannot be freed, whether externally or
subjectively, even if one will, so there is increased bitterness if one
will not detach himself from the community because he is not willing to
give up the value of membership in the containing unity, or because he
feels this unity as an objective good, the threatening of which deserves
conflict and hatred. From such a correlation as this springs the
embittering with which, for example, quarrels are fought out within a
political faction or a trade union or a family.
The individual soul offers an analogy. The feeling that a conflict
between sensuous and ascetic feelings, or selfish and moral impulses, or
practical and intellectual ambitions, within us not merely lowers the
claims of one or both parties and permits neither to come to quite free
self-realization but also threatens the unity, the equilibrium, and the
total energy of the soul as a whole--this feeling may in many cases
repress conflict from the beginning. In case the feeling cannot avail to
that extent, it, on the contrary, impresses upon the conflict a
character of bitterness and desperation, an emphasis as though a
struggle were really taking place for something much more essential than
the immediate issue of the controversy. The energy with which each of
these tendencies seeks to subdue the others is nourished not only by
their egoistic interest but by the interest which goes much farther than
that and attaches itself to the unity of the ego, for which this
struggle means dismemberment and destruction if it does not end with a
victory for unity. Accordingly, struggle within a closely integrated
group often enough grows beyond the measure which its object and its
immediate interest for the parties could justify. The feeling
accumulates that this struggle is an affair not merely of the party but
of the group as a whole; that each party must hate in its opponent, not
an opponent merely, but at the same time the enemy of its higher
sociological unity.
c) _Litigation._--Moreover, what we are accustomed to call the joy and
passion of conflict in the case of a legal process is probably, in most
cases, something quite different, namely, the energetic sense of
justice, the impossibility of tolerating an actual or supposed invasion
of the sphere of right with which the ego feels a sense of solidarity.
The whole obstinacy and uncompromising persistence with which parties in
such struggles often maintain the controversy to their own hurt has,
even in the case of the aggressive party, scarcely the character of an
attack in the proper sense, but rather of a defense in a deeper
significance. The point at issue is the self-preservation of the
personality which so identifies itself with its possessions and its
rights that any invasion of them seems to be a destruction of the
personality; and the struggle to protect them at the risk of the whole
existence is thoroughly consistent. This individualistic impulse, and
not the sociological motive of struggle, will consequently characterize
such cases.
With respect to the form of the struggle itself, however, judicial
conflict is, to be sure, of an absolute sort; that is, the reciprocal
claims are asserted with a relentless objectivity and with employment of
all available means, without being diverted or modified by personal or
other extraneous considerations. The judicial conflict is, therefore,
absolute conflict in so far as nothing enters the whole action which
does not properly belong in the conflict and which does not serve the
ends of conflict; whereas, otherwise, even in the most savage struggles,
something subjective, some pure freak of fortune, some sort of
interposition from a third side, is at least possible. In the legal
struggle everything of the kind is excluded by the matter-of-factness
with which the contention, and absolutely nothing outside the
contention, is kept in view. This exclusion from the judicial
controversy of everything which is not material to the conflict may, to
be sure, lead to a formalism of the struggle which may come to have an
independent character in contrast with the content itself. This occurs,
on the one hand, when real elements are not weighed against each other
at all but only quite abstract notions maintain controversy with each
other. On the other hand, the controversy is often shifted to elements
which have no relation whatever to the subject which is to be decided by
the struggle. Where legal controversies, accordingly, in higher
civilizations are fought out by attorneys, the device serves to abstract
the controversy from all personal associations which are essentially
irrelevant. If, on the other hand, Otto the Great ordains that a legal
controversy shall be settled by judicial duel between professional
fighters, there remains of the whole struggle of interests only the bare
form, namely, that there shall be struggle and victory.
This latter case portrays, in the exaggeration of caricature, the
reduction of the judicial conflict to the mere struggle element. But
precisely through its pure objectivity because it stands quite beyond
the subjective antitheses of pity and cruelty, this unpitying type of
struggle, as a whole, rests on the presupposition of a unity and a
community of the parties never elsewhere so severely and constantly
maintained. The common subordination to the law, the reciprocal
recognition that the decision can be made only according to the
objective weight of the evidence, the observance of forms which are held
to be inviolable by both parties, the consciousness throughout the whole
procedure of being encompassed by a social power and order which are the
means of giving to the procedure its significance and security--all this
makes the legal controversy rest upon a broad basis of community and
consensus between the opponents. It is really a unity of a lesser degree
which is constituted by the parties to a compact or to a commercial
transaction, a presupposition of which is the recognition, along with
the antithesis of interests, that they are subject to certain common,
constraining, and obligatory rules. The common presuppositions, which
exclude everything that is merely personal from the legal controversy,
have that character of pure objectivity to which, on its side, the
sharpness, the inexorableness, and the absoluteness of the species of
struggle correspond. The reciprocity between the dualism and the unity
of the sociological relationship is accordingly shown by the judicial
struggle not less than by the war game. Precisely the most extreme and
unlimited phases of struggle occur in both cases, since the struggle is
surrounded and maintained by the severe unity of common norms and
limitations.
d) _The conflict of impersonal ideals._--Finally, there is the
situation in which the parties are moved by an objective interest; that
is, where the interest of the struggle, and consequently the struggle
itself, is differentiated from the personality. The consciousness of
being merely the representative of superindividual claims--that is, of
fighting not for self but only for the thing itself--may lend to the
struggle a radicalism and mercilessness which have their analogy in the
total conduct of many very unselfish and high-minded men. Because they
grant themselves no consideration, they likewise have none for others
and hold themselves entirely justified in sacrificing everybody else to
the idea to which they are themselves a sacrifice. Such a struggle, into
which all the powers of the person are thrown, while victory accrues
only to the cause, carries the character of respectability, for the
reputable man is the wholly personal, who, however, understands how to
hold his personality entirely in check. Hence objectivity operates as
_noblesse_. When, however, this differentiation is accomplished, and
struggle is objectified, it is not subjected to a further reserve, which
would be quite inconsistent; indeed, that would be a sin against the
content of the interest itself upon which the struggle had been
localized. On the basis of this common element between the
parties--namely, that each defends merely the issue and its right, and
excludes from consideration everything selfishly personal--the struggle
is fought out without the sharpness, but also without the mollifyings,
which come from intermingling of the personal element. Merely the
immanent logic of the situation is obeyed with absolute precision. This
form of antithesis between unity and antagonism intensifies conflict
perhaps most perceptibly in cases where both parties actually pursue one
and the same purpose; for example, in the case of scientific
controversies, in which the issue is the establishment of the truth. In
such a case, every concession, every polite consent to stop short of
exposing the errors of the opponent in the most unpitying fashion, every
conclusion of peace previous to decisive victory, would be treason
against that reality for the sake of which the personal element is
excluded from the conflict.
With endless varieties otherwise, the social struggles since Marx have
developed themselves in the above form. Since it is recognized that the
situation of laborers is determined by the objective organization and
formulas of the productive system, independent of the will and power of
individual persons, the personal embitterment incident to the struggle
in general and to local conflicts exemplifying the general conflict
necessarily diminishes. The entrepreneur is no longer, as such, a
blood-sucker and damnable egotist; the laborer is no longer universally
assumed to act from sinful greed; both parties begin, at least, to
abandon the program of charging the other with demands and tactics
inspired by personal malevolence. This literalizing of the conflict has
come about in Germany rather along the lines of theory; in England,
through the operation of the trade unions, in the course of which the
individually personal element of the antagonism has been overcome. In
Germany this was effected largely through the more abstract
generalization of the historical and class movement. In England it came
about through the severe superindividual unity in the actions of the
unions and of the combinations of employers. The intensity of the
struggle, however, has not on that account diminished. On the contrary,
it has become much more conscious of its purpose, more concentrated, and
at the same time more aggressive, through the consciousness of the
individual that he is struggling not merely, and often not at all, for
himself but rather for a vast superpersonal end.
A most interesting symptom of this correlation was presented by the
boycotting of the Berlin breweries by the labor body in the year 1894.
This was one of the most intense local struggles of the last decade. It
was carried on by both sides with extraordinary energy, yet without any
personal offensiveness on either side toward the other, although the
stimulus was close at hand. Indeed, two of the party leaders, in the
midst of the struggle, published their opinions about it in the same
journal. They agreed in their formulation of the objective facts, and
disagreed in a partisan spirit only in the practical conclusions drawn
from the facts. Inasmuch as the struggle eliminated everything
irrelevantly personal, and thereby restricted antagonism quantitatively,
facilitating an understanding about everything personal, producing a
recognition of being impelled on both sides by historical necessities,
this common basis did not reduce but rather increased, the intensity,
the irreconcilability, and the obstinate consistency of the struggle.
B. WAR, INSTINCTS, AND IDEALS
1. War and Human Nature[209]
What can be said of the causes of war--not its political and economic
causes, nor yet the causes that are put forth by the nations engaged in
the conflict, but its psychological causes?
The fact that war to no small extent removes cultural repressions and
allows the instincts to come to expression in full force is undoubtedly
a considerable factor. In his unconscious man really takes pleasure in
throwing aside restraints and permitting himself the luxury of the
untrammeled expression of his primitive animal tendencies. The social
conventions, the customs, the forms, and institutions which he has built
up in the path of his cultural progress represent so much energy in the
service of repression. Repression represents continuous effort, while a
state of war permits a relaxation of this effort and therefore relief.
We are familiar, in other fields, with the phenomena of the unconscious,
instinctive tendencies breaking through the bounds imposed upon them by
repression. The phenomena of crime and of so-called "insanity" represent
such examples, while drunkenness is one instance familiar to all. _In
vino veritas_ expresses the state of the drunken man when his real, that
is, his primitive, self frees itself from restraint and runs riot. The
psychology of the crowd shows this mechanism at work, particularly in
such sinister instances as lynching, while every crowd of college
students marching yelling and howling down the main street of the town
after a successful cane rush exhibits the joy of unbottling the emotions
in ways that no individual would for a moment think of availing himself.
In addition to these active demonstrations of the unconscious there are
those of a more passive sort. Not a few men are only too glad to step
aside from the burden of responsibilities which they are forced to carry
and seek refuge in a situation in which they no longer have to take the
initiative but must only do as they are directed by a superior
authority. The government in some of its agencies takes over certain of
their obligations, such as the support of wife and children, and they
clear out, free from the whole sordid problem of poverty, into a
situation filled with dramatic interest. Then, too, if anything goes
wrong at home they are not to blame, they have done their best, and what
they have done meets with public approval. Is it any wonder that an
inhabitant of the slums should be glad to exchange poverty and dirt, a
sick wife and half-starved children, for glorious freedom, especially
when he is urged by every sort of appeal to patriotism and duty to do
so?
But all these are individual factors that enter into the causes of war.
They represent some of the reasons why men like to fight, for it is
difficult not to believe that if no one wanted to fight war would be
possible at all. They too represent the darker side of the picture. War
as already indicated offers, on the positive side, the greatest
opportunities for the altruistic tendencies; it offers the most glorious
occasion for service and returns for such acts the greatest possible
premium in social esteem. But it seems to me that the causes of war lie
much deeper, that they involve primarily the problems of the herd rather
than the individual, and I think there are good biological analogies
which make this highly probable.
The mechanism of integration explains how the development of the group
was dependent upon the subordination of the parts to the whole. This
process of integration tends to solve more and more effectively the
problems of adjustment, particularly in some aspects, in the direction
of ever-increasing stability. It is the process of the structuralization
of function. This increase in stability, however, while it has the
advantage of greater certainty of reaction, has the disadvantage of a
lessened capacity for variation, and so is dependent for its efficiency
upon a stable environment. As long as nothing unusual is asked of such a
mechanism it works admirably, but as soon as the unusual arises it tends
to break down completely. Life, however, is not stable; it is fluid, in
a continuous state of flux, so, while the development of structure to
meet certain demands of adaptation is highly desirable and necessary, it
of necessity has limits which must sooner or later be reached in every
instance. The most typical example of this is the process of growing
old. The child is highly adjustable and for that reason not to be
depended upon; the adult is more dependable but less adjustable; the old
man has become stereotyped in his reactions. Nature's solution of this
_impasse_ is death. Death insures the continual removal of the no longer
adjustable, and the places of those who die are filled by new material
capable of the new demands. But it is the means that nature takes to
secure the renewal of material still capable of adjustment that is of
significance. From each adult sometime during the course of his life
nature provides that a small bit shall be detached which, in the higher
animals, in union with a similar detached bit of another individual will
develop into a child and ultimately be ready to replace the adult when
he becomes senile and dies. Life is thus maintained by a continuous
stream of germ plasm and is not periodically interrupted in its course,
as it seems to be, by death.
The characteristics of this detached bit of germ plasm are interesting.
It does not manifest any of that complicated structure which we meet
with in the other parts of the body. The several parts of the body are
highly differentiated, each for a specific function. Gland cells are
developed to secrete, muscle cells to contract, bone cells to withstand
mechanical stresses, etc. Manifestly development along any one of these
lines would not produce an individual possessing, in its several parts,
all of these qualities. Development has to go back of the point of
origin of these several variations in order to include them all. In
other words, regeneration has to start with relatively undifferentiated
material. This is excellently illustrated by many of the lower,
particularly the unicellular, animals, in which reproduction is not yet
sexual, but by the simple method of division. A cell comes to rest,
divides into two, and each half then leads an independent existence.
Before such a division and while the cell is quiescent--in the resting
stage, as it is called--the differentiations of structure which it had
acquired in its lifetime disappear; it becomes undifferentiated,
relatively simple in structure. This process has been called
dedifferentiation. When all the differentiations which had been acquired
have been eliminated, then division--rejuvenescence--takes place.
From this point of view we may see in war the preliminary process of
rejuvenescence. International adjustments and compromises are made until
they can be made no longer; a condition is brought about which in Europe
has been termed the balance of power, until the situation becomes so
complicated that each new adjustment has such wide ramifications that it
threatens the whole structure. Finally, as the result of the accumulated
structure of diplomatic relations and precedents, a situation arises to
which adjustment, with the machinery that has been developed, is
impossible and the whole house of cards collapses. The collapse is a
process of dedifferentiation during which the old structures are
destroyed, precedents are disavowed, new situations occur with
bewildering rapidity, for dealing with which there is no recognized
machinery available. Society reverts from a state in which a high grade
of individual initiative and development was possible to a relatively
communistic and paternalistic state, the slate is wiped clear, and a
start can be made anew along lines of progress mapped out by the new
conditions--rejuvenescence is possible.
War, from this point of view, is a precondition for development along
new lines of necessity, and the dedifferentiation is the first stage of
a constructive process. Old institutions have to be torn down before the
bricks with which they were built can be made available for new
structures. This accounts for the periodicity of war, which thus is the
outward and evident aspect of the progress of the life-force which in
human societies, as elsewhere, advances in cycles. It is only by such
means that an _impasse_ can be overcome.
War is an example of ambivalency on the grandest scale. That is, it is
at once potent for the greatest good and the greatest evil: in the very
midst of death it calls for the most intense living; in the face of the
greatest renunciation it offers the greatest premium; for the maximum of
freedom it demands the utmost giving of one's self; in order to live at
one's best it demands the giving of life itself. "No man has reached his
ethical majority who would not die if the real interests of the
community could thus be furthered. What would the world be without the
values that have been bought at the price of death?" In this sense the
great creative force, love, and the supreme negation, death, become one.
That the larger life of the race should go forward to greater things,
the smaller life of the individual must perish. In order that man shall
be born again, he must first die.
Does all this necessarily mean that war, from time to time, in the
process of readjustment, is essential? I think no one can doubt that it
has been necessary in the past. Whether it will be in the future depends
upon whether some sublimated form of procedure can adequately be
substituted. We have succeeded to a large extent in dealing with our
combative instincts by developing sports and the competition of
business, and we have largely sublimated our hate instinct in dealing
with various forms of anti-social conduct as exhibited in the so-called
"criminal." It remains to be seen whether nations can unite to a similar
end and perhaps, by the establishment of an international court, and by
other means, deal in a similar way with infractions of international
law.
2. War as a Form of Relaxation[210]
The fact is that it does not take a very careful reader of the human
mind to see that all the utopias and all the socialistic schemes are
based on a mistaken notion of the nature of this mind.
It is by no means sure that what man wants is peace and quiet and
tranquillity. That is too close to ennui, which is his greatest dread.
What man wants is not peace but a battle. He must pit his force against
someone or something. Every language is most rich in synonyms for
battle, war, contest, conflict, quarrel, combat, fight. German children
play all day long with their toy soldiers. Our sports take the form of
contests in football, baseball, and hundreds of others. Prize fights,
dog fights, cock fights, have pleased in all ages. When Rome for a
season was not engaged in real war, Claudius staged a sea fight for the
delectation of an immense concourse, in which 19,000 gladiators were
compelled to take a tragic part, so that the ships were broken to pieces
and the waters of the lake were red with blood.
You may perhaps recall Professor James's astonishing picture of his
visit to a Chautauqua. Here he found modern culture at its best, no
poverty, no drunkenness, no zymotic diseases, no crime, no police, only
polite and refined and harmless people. Here was a middle-class
paradise, kindergarten and model schools, lectures and classes and
music, bicycling and swimming, and culture and kindness and elysian
peace. But at the end of a week he came out into the real world, and he
said:
Ouf! What a relief! Now for something primordial and savage,
even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the
balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture
too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. This human
drama, without a villain or a pang; this community so refined
that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to
the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid
lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things--I
cannot abide with them.
What men want, he says, is something more precipitous, something with
more zest in it, with more adventure. Nearly all the Utopias paint the
life of the future as a kind of giant Chautauqua, in which every man and
woman is at work, all are well fed, satisfied, and cultivated. But as
man is now constituted he would probably find such a life flat, stale,
and unprofitable.
Man is not originally a working animal. Civilization has imposed work
upon man, and if you work him too hard he will quit work and go to war.
Nietzsche says man wants two things--danger and play. War represents
danger.
It follows that all our social utopias are wrongly conceived. They are
all based on a theory of pleasure economy. But history and evolution
show that man has come up from the lower animals through a pain economy.
He has struggled up--fought his way up through never-ceasing pain and
effort and struggle and battle. The utopias picture a society in which
man has ceased to struggle. He works his eight hours a day--everybody
works--and he sleeps and enjoys himself the other hours. But man is not
a working animal, he is a fighting animal. The utopias are ideal--but
they are not psychological. The citizens for such an ideal social order
are lacking. Human beings will not serve.
Our present society tends more and more in its outward form in time of
peace toward the Chautauqua plan, but meanwhile striving and passion
burn in the brain of the human units, till the time comes when they find
this insipid life unendurable. They resort to amusement crazes, to
narcotic drugs, to political strife, to epidemics of crime, and finally
to war. The alcohol question well illustrates the tendencies we are
pointing out. Science and hygiene have at last shown beyond all
question that alcohol, whether in large or smaller doses, exerts a
damaging effect upon both mind and body. It lessens physical and mental
efficiency, shortens life, and encourages social disorder. In spite of
this fact and, what is still more amazing, in spite of the colossal
effort now being put forth to suppress by legislative means the traffic
in liquor, the per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks in the United
States increases from year to year. From a per capita consumption of
four gallons in 1850, it has steadily risen to nearly twenty-five
gallons in 1913.
Narcotic drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, relieve in an artificial
way the tension upon the brain by slightly paralyzing temporarily the
higher and more recently developed brain centers. The increase in the
use of these drugs is therefore both an index of the tension of modern
life and at the same time a means of relieving it to some extent. Were
the use of these drugs suddenly checked, no student of psychology or of
history could doubt that there would be an immediate increase of social
irritability, tending to social instability and social upheavals.
Psychology, therefore, forces upon us this conclusion. Neither war nor
alcohol can be banished from the world by summary means nor direct
suppressions. The mind of man must be made over. As the mind of man is
constituted, he will never be content to be a mere laborer, a producer
and a consumer. He loves adventure, self-sacrifice, heroism, relaxation.
These things must somehow be provided. And then there must be a system
of education of our young differing widely from our present system. The
new education will not look to efficiency merely and ever more
efficiency, but to the production of a harmonized and balanced
personality. We must cease our worship of American efficiency and German
_Streberthum_ and go back to Aristotle and his teaching of "the mean."
3. The Fighting Animal and the Great Society[211]
We must agree that man as he has existed, so far as we can read the
story of his development, has been, and as he exists today still is, a
fighting animal--that is to say that he has in the past answered, and
still answers, certain stimuli by the immediate reactions which
constitute fighting.
We find evidence of the existence of this fighting instinct in the
ordinary men around us. Remove but for a moment the restraints given in
our civilized lands and this tendency is likely to become prominent upon
the slightest stimulation. We see this exemplified in the lives of the
pioneer and adventurer the world over: in that of the cowboy of the far
West, in that of the rubber collector on the Amazon, in that of the
ivory trader on the Congo.
Then, too, the prize fighter is still a prominent person in our
community, taken as a whole, and even in our sports, as engaged in by
"gentlemen amateurs," we find it necessary to make rigid rules to
prevent the friendly contest from developing into a fierce struggle for
individual physical dominance.
But man gained his pre-eminent position among the animals mainly through
his ability to form co-operative groups working to common ends; and long
before the times of which anthropological research give us any clear
knowledge, man had turned his individualistic fighting instincts to the
service of his group or clan. That is to say, he had become a warrior,
giving his best strength to co-operative aggression in behalf of
satisfactions that could not be won by him as an individual acting for
himself.
Our earlier studies have taught us also that if man's instinctive
tendencies could in any manner be inhibited or modified, so that he came
to display other characteristics than those observed in the present
expression of these inborn instincts, then the law of his nature would
in that very fact be changed. We are thus led to ask whether the
biologist finds evidence that an animal's instincts can be thus changed
in mode of expression.
The biologist speaks to us somewhat as follows. Although new racial
characteristics have very rarely, if ever, been gained by the
obliteration of instincts, changes in racial characteristics have not
infrequently occurred as the result of the control, rather than the
loss, of these inherited instincts.
This control may become effective in either one of two ways: first, by
the thwarting or inhibition of the expression of the instincts; or
secondly, by the turning of its expression to other uses than that which
originally resulted in its fixation.
As an example of the thwarting of the expression of an instinct we may
take the functioning of the sexual instinct, which, as we see it in
animals in general, has been inhibited in the human animal by the habits
acquired by man as he has risen in the scale.
This mode of change--that of the mere chaining of the instinctive
tendency--is subject to one great difficulty. The chain may by chance be
broken; the inhibition may be removed; then the natural instinctive
tendency at once shows itself. Remove the restraints of civilized
society but a little, and manifestations of the sexual instinct of our
race appear in forms that are not far removed from those observed in the
animal. Place a man under conditions of starvation and he shows himself
as greedy as the dog.
The second mode of change--that of the transference of functioning of
the instincts into new channels--meets this special difficulty, for it
does not depend upon the chaining of the instinct. It actually makes use
of the instinct. And the more important to the race the newer reference
of the instinct's functioning turns out to be, the more certain is it to
replace the original reference. If the new mode of functioning brings
marked advantage that is lost by reversion to the earlier manifestation
of the instinct, so that such a reversion to this earlier manifestation
is a detriment to the race, then the change is likely to become a
permanent one.
No better example of this second mode of change of an instinct's
functioning can be found than in the very existence of war itself. The
basic instinct is one that led the savage man to fight to protect
himself or to gain something for himself by aggressive attack. War has
come into being as the result of a transfer of the functioning of this
instinct, which at first had only an individualistic reference, so that
it has come to have a clan or national reference. The early man found he
could not have success as an individual unless he joined with his
fellow-men in defense and aggression; and that meant war.
And note that this transfer of reference of the expression of this
fighting instinct soon became so important to the race that reversion to
its primal individualistic reference had to be inhibited. Aggressive
attack by an individual upon another of his own clan or nation
necessarily tended to weaken the social unit and to reduce its strength
in its protective and aggressive wars; and thus such attacks by
individuals came to be discountenanced and finally in large measure
repressed.
Here, it will be observed, the fighting instinct of the individual has
not been obliterated; it has not even been bound with chains; but its
modes of expression have been altered to have racial significance, and
to have so great a significance in this new relation that reversion to
its primary form of expression has become a serious obstacle to racial
advance.
So it appears after all that, although instincts can rarely if ever be
obliterated, their manifestations may be so altered as to give the
animal quite new characteristics. And this means that if the
characteristics which we describe as the expressions of man's fighting
instincts could be so changed that these expressions were inhibited or
turned into quite new channels, the man would no longer be describable
as a fighting animal.
The first indication in our conscious life of any tendency to inhibit or
modify the functioning of any instinct or habit must appear in the form
of a dislike of, a revulsion from, the resultants of this functioning;
and in the creation of an ideal of functioning that shall avoid the
discomforts attendant upon this revulsion. And when such an ideal has
once been gained, it is possible, as we have seen, that the
characteristics of nature may be changed by our creative efficiency
through the devising of means looking to the realization of the ideal.
We have the clearest evidence that this process is developing in
connection with these special instincts that make for war; for we men
and women in these later times are repelled by the results of the
functioning of these fighting instincts, and we have created the ideal
of peace, the conception of a condition that is not now realized in
nature, but which we think of as possible of realization.
But the very existence of an ideal is indicative of a tendency, on the
part of the man who entertains it, to modify his characteristic
activities. Thus it appears that we have in the very existence of this
ideal of peace the evidence that we may look for a change in man's
nature, the result of which will be that we shall no longer be warranted
in describing him as a fighting animal.
C. RIVALRY, CULTURAL CONFLICTS, AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
1. Animal Rivalry[212]
Among mammals the instinct of one and all is to lord it over the others,
with the result that the one more powerful or domineering gets the
mastery, to keep it thereafter as long as he can. The lower animals are,
in this respect, very much like us; and in all kinds that are at all
fierce-tempered the mastery of one over all, and of a few under him over
the others, is most salutary; indeed, it is inconceivable that they
should be able to exist together under any other system.
On cattle-breeding establishments on the pampas, where it is usual to
keep a large number of fierce-tempered dogs, I have observed these
animals a great deal and presume they are much like feral dogs and
wolves in their habits. Their quarrels are incessant; but when a fight
begins, the head of the pack as a rule rushes to the spot, whereupon the
fighters separate and march off in different directions or else cast
themselves down and deprecate their tyrant's wrath with abject gestures
and whines. If the combatants are both strong and have worked themselves
into a mad rage before their head puts in an appearance, it may go hard
with him; they know him no longer and all he can do is to join in the
fray; then if the fighters turn on him he may be so injured that his
power is gone and the next best dog in the pack takes his place. The
hottest contests are always between dogs that are well matched; neither
will give place to the other and so they fight it out; but from the
foremost in power down to the weakest there is a gradation of authority;
each one knows just how far he can go, which companion he can bully when
he is in a bad temper or wishes to assert himself, and to which he must
humbly yield in his turn. In such a state the weakest one must yield to
all the others and cast himself down, seeming to call himself a slave
and worshiper of any other member of the pack that chances to snarl at
him or command him to give up his bone with good grace.
This masterful or domineering temper, so common among social mammals, is
the cause of the persecution of the sick and weakly. When an animal
begins to ail he can no longer hold his own; he ceases to resent the
occasional ill-natured attacks made on him; his non-combative condition
is quickly discovered, and he at once drops down to a place below the
lowest; it is common knowledge in the herd that he may be buffeted with
impunity by all, even by those that have hitherto suffered buffets but
have given none. But judging from my own observation, this persecution
is not, as a rule, severe, and is seldom fatal.
2. The Rivalry of Social Groups[213]
Conflict, competition, and rivalry are the chief causes which force
human beings into groups and largely determine what goes on within them.
Conflicts, like wars, revolutions, riots, still persist, but possibly
they may be thought of as gradually yielding to competitions which are
chiefly economic. Many of these strivings seem almost wholly individual,
but most of them on careful analysis turn out to be intimately related
to group competition. A third form, rivalry, describes struggle for
status, for social prestige, for the approval of inclusive publics which
form the spectators for such contests. The nation is an arena of
competition and rivalry.
Much of this emulation is of a concealed sort. Beneath the union
services of churches there is an element, for the most part unconscious,
of rivalry to secure the approval of a public which in these days
demands brotherliness and good will rather than proselyting and
polemics. Many public subscriptions for a common cause are based upon
group rivalry or upon individual competition which is group-determined.
The Rhodes scholarships are in one sense a means of furthering imperial
interest. Christmas presents lavished upon children often have a bearing
upon the ambition of the family to make an impression upon rival
domestic groups. In the liberal policy of universities which by adding
to the list of admission subjects desire to come into closer relations
with the public schools, there is some trace of competition for students
and popular applause. The interest which nations manifest in the Hague
Tribunal is tinged with a desire to gain the good will of the
international, peace-praising public. The professed eagerness of one or
both parties in a labor dispute to have the differences settled by
arbitration is a form of competition for the favor of the onlooking
community. Thus in international relationships and in the life-process
of each nation countless groups are in conflict, competition, or
rivalry.
This idea of the group seeking survival, mastery, aggrandizement,
prestige, in its struggles with other groups is a valuable means of
interpretation. Let us survey rapidly the conditions of success as a
group carries on its life of strife and emulation. In order to survive
or to succeed the group must organize, cozen, discipline, and stimulate
its members. Fortunately it finds human nature in a great measure
fashioned for control.
Collective pride or group egotism is an essential source of strength in
conflict. Every efficient group cultivates this sense of honor,
importance, superiority, by many devices of symbol, phrase, and legend,
as well as by scorn and ridicule of rivals. The college fraternity's
sublime self-esteem gives it strength in its competition for members and
prestige. There is a chauvinism of "boom" towns and religious sects, as
well as of nations. What pride and self-confidence are to the
individual, ethnocentrism, patriotism, local loyalty are to social
unities. Diffidence, humility, self-distrust, tolerance, are as
dangerous to militant groups as to fighting men.
Then too the group works out types of personality, hero types to be
emulated, traitor types to be execrated. These personality types merge
into abstract ideals and standards. "Booster" and "knocker" bring up
pictures of a struggling community which must preserve its hopefulness
and self-esteem at all hazards. "Statesman" and "demagogue" recall the
problem of selection which every self-governing community must face.
"Defender of the faith" and "heretic" are eloquent of the Church's
dilemma between rigid orthodoxy and flexible accommodation to a changing
order.
With a shifting in the conflict or rivalry crises, types change in value
or emphasis, or new types are created in adjustment to the new needs.
The United Stated at war with Spain sought martial heroes. The economic
and political ideals of personality, the captains of industry, the
fascinating financiers, the party idols, were for the time retired to
make way for generals and admirals, soldiers and sailors, the heroes of
camp and battleship. The war once over, the displaced types reappeared
along with others which are being created to meet new administrative,
economic, and ethical problems. The competing church retires its
militant and disputatious leaders in an age which gives its applause to
apostles of concord, fraternal feeling, and co-operation. At a given
time the heroes and traitors of a group reflect its competitions and
rivalries with other groups.
Struggle forces upon the group the necessity of cozening, beguiling,
managing its members. The vast majority of these fall into a broad zone
of mediocrity which embodies group character and represents a general
adjustment to life-conditions. From this medial area individuals vary,
some in ways which aid the group in its competition, others in a fashion
which imperils group success. It is the task of the group both to
preserve the solidarity of the medial zone and to discriminate between
the serviceable and the menacing variants. The latter must be coerced or
suppressed, the former encouraged and given opportunity. In Plato's
_Republic_ the guardians did this work of selection which in modern
groups is cared for by processes which seem only slightly conscious and
purposeful.
The competing group in seeking to insure acquiescence and loyalty
elaborates a protective philosophy by which it creates within its
members the belief that their lot is much to be preferred to that of
other comradeships and associations. Western Americans take satisfaction
in living in a free, progressive, hospitable way in "God's country."
They try not to be pharisaical about the narrowness of the East, but
they achieve a sincere scorn for the hidebound conventions of an effete
society. Easterners in turn count themselves fortunate in having a
highly developed civilization, and they usually attain real pity for
those who seem to live upon a psychic, if not a geographic, frontier.
The middle class have a philosophy with which they protect themselves
against the insidious suggestions that come from the life of the
conspicuous rich. These, on the other hand, half expecting that
simplicity and domesticity may have some virtue, speak superciliously of
middle-class smugness and the bourgeois "home." The less prosperous of
the professional classes are prone to lay a good deal of stress upon
their intellectual resources as compared with the presumptive spiritual
poverty of the affluent. Country folk encourage themselves by asserting
their fundamental value to society and by extolling their own simple
straightforward virtues, which present so marked a contrast to the
devious machinations of city-dwellers. Booker Washington's reiterated
assertion that if he were to be born again he would choose to be a
Negro because the Negro race is the only one which has a great problem
contains a suggestion of this protective philosophy. This tendency of a
group to fortify itself by a satisfying theory of its lot is obviously
related to group egotism and is immediately connected with group
rivalry.
The competing group derides many a dissenter into conformity. This
derision may be spontaneous, or reflective and concerted. The loud
guffaw which greets one who varies in dress or speech or idea may come
instantly or there may be a planned and co-operative ridicule
systematically applied to the recalcitrant. Derision is one of the most
effective devices by which the group sifts and tests the variants.
Upon the small number of rebels who turn a deaf ear to epithets,
ostracism is brought to bear. This may vary from the "cold shoulder" to
the complete "boycott." Losing the friendship and approval of comrades,
being cut off from social sympathy, is a familiar form of group
pressure. Ridicule and derision are a kind of evanescent ostracism, a
temporary exclusion from the comradeship. There are many degrees in the
lowering of the social temperature: coolness, formality of intercourse,
averted looks, "cutting dead," "sending to Coventry," form a progressive
series. Economic pressure is more and more a resort of modern groups.
Loss of employment, trade, or professional practice brings many a rebel
to time. All coercion obviously increases as the group is hard pressed
in its conflicts, competitions, and rivalries.
These crises and conflicts of a competing group present problems which
must be solved--problems of organization, of inventions of many kinds,
of new ideas and philosophies, of methods of adjustment. The conditions
of competition or rivalry upset an equilibrium of habit and custom, and
a process of problem-solving ensues. A typhoid epidemic forces the
village to protect itself against the competition of a more healthful
rival. The resourceful labor union facing a corporation which offers
profit-sharing and retiring allowances must formulate a protective
theory and practice. A society clique too closely imitated by a lower
stratum must regain its distinction and supremacy. A nation must be
constantly alert to adjust itself to the changing conditions of
international trade and to the war equipment and training of its
rivals.
The theory of group rivalry throws light upon the individual. The person
has as many selves as there are groups to which he belongs. He is simple
or complex as his groups are few and harmonious or many and conflicting.
What skilful management is required to keep business and moral selves
from looking each other in the eye, to prevent scientific and
theological selves from falling into discussion! Most men of many groups
learn, like tactful hosts, to invite at a given time only congenial
companies of selves. A few brave souls resolve to set their house in
order and to entertain only such selves as can live together with good
will and mutual respect. With these earnest folk their groups have to
reckon. The conflicts of conscience are group conflicts.
Tolerance is a sign that once vital issues within the group are losing
their significance, or that the group feels secure, or that it is
slowly, even unconsciously, merging into a wider grouping. Theological
liberality affords a case in point. In the earlier days of sectarian
struggle tolerance was a danger both to group loyalty and to the
militant spirit. Cynicism for other reasons is also a menace. It means
loss of faith in the collective ego, in the traditions, shibboleths,
symbols, and destiny of the group. Fighting groups cannot be tolerant;
nor can they harbor cynics. Tolerance and cynicism are at once causes
and results of group decay. They portend dissolution or they foreshadow
new groupings for struggle over other issues on another plane.
Evangelical churches are drawing together with mutual tolerance to
present a united front against modern skepticism and cynicism which are
directed against the older faiths and moralities.
The subjective side of group rivalry offers an important study. The
reflection of the process of control in personal consciousness is full
of interest. The means by which the rebellious variant protects himself
against the coercion of his comrades have been already suggested in the
description of ridicule and epithet. These protective methods resolve
themselves into setting one group against another in the mind of the
derided or stigmatized individual.
A national group is to be thought of as an inclusive unity with a
fundamental character, upon the basis of which a multitude of groups
compete with and rival each other. It is the task of the nation to
control and to utilize this group struggle, to keep it on as high a
plane as possible, to turn it to the common account. Government gets its
chief meaning from the rivalry of groups to grasp political power in
their own interests. Aristocracy and democracy may be interpreted in
terms of group antagonism, the specialized few versus the
undifferentiated many. The ideal merges the two elements of efficiency
and solidarity in one larger group within which mutual confidence and
emulation take the place of conflict. Just as persons must be
disciplined into serving their groups, groups must be subordinated to
the welfare of the nation. It is in conflict or competition with other
nations that a country becomes a vivid unity to the members of
constituent groups. It is rivalry which brings out the sense of team
work, the social consciousness.
3. Cultural Conflicts and the Organization of Sects[214]
It is assumed, I suppose, that contradictions among ideas and beliefs
are of various degrees and of various modes besides that specific one
which we call logical incompatibility. A perception, for example, may be
pictorially inconsistent or tonically discordant with another
perception; a mere faith unsupported by objective evidence may be
emotionally antagonistic to another mere faith, as truly as a judgment
may be logically irreconcilable with another judgment. And this wide
possibility of contradiction is particularly to be recognized when the
differing ideas or beliefs have arisen not within the same individual
mind but in different minds, and are therefore colored by personal or
partisan interest and warped by idiosyncrasy of mental constitution. The
contradictions of, or rather _among_, ideas and beliefs, with which we
are now concerned, are more extensive and more varied than mere logical
duels; they are also less definite, less precise. In reality they are
culture conflicts in which the opposing forces, so far from being
specific ideas only or pristine beliefs only, are in fact more or less
bewildering complexes of ideas, beliefs, prejudices, sympathies,
antipathies, and personal interests.
It is assumed also, I suppose, that any idea or group of ideas, any
belief or group of beliefs, may happen to be or may become a common
interest, shared by a small or a large number of individuals. It may
draw and hold them together in bonds of acquaintance, of association,
even of co-operation. It thus may play a group-making rôle.
Contradictory ideas or beliefs, therefore, may play a group-making rôle
in a double sense. Each draws into association the individual minds that
entertain it or find it attractive. Each also repels those minds to whom
it is repugnant, and drives them toward the group which is being formed
about the contradictory idea or belief. Contradictions among ideas and
beliefs, then, it may be assumed, tend on the whole to sharpen the lines
of demarcation between group and group.
These assumptions are, I suppose, so fully justified by the everyday
observation of mankind and so confirmed by history that it is
unnecessary now to discuss them or in any way to dwell upon them. The
question before us therefore becomes specific: "Are contradictions among
ideas and beliefs likely to play an _important_ group-making rôle in the
future?" I shall interpret the word important as connoting quality as
well as quantity. I shall, in fact, attempt to answer the question set
for me by translating it into this inquiry, namely: What kind or type of
groups are the inevitable contradictions among ideas and beliefs most
likely to create and to maintain within the progressive populations of
the world from this time forth?
Somewhat more than three hundred years ago, Protestantism and
geographical discovery had combined to create conditions extraordinarily
favorable to the formation of groups or associations about various
conflicting ideas and beliefs functioning as nuclei; and for nearly
three hundred years the world has been observing a remarkable
multiplication of culture groups of two fundamentally different types.
One type is a sect, or denomination, having no restricted local
habitation but winning adherents here and there in various communes,
provinces, or nations, and having, therefore, a membership either
locally concentrated or more or less widely dispersed; either regularly
or most irregularly distributed. The culture group of the other type, or
kind, is a self-sufficing community. It may be a village, a colony, a
state, or a nation. Its membership is concentrated, its habitat is
defined.
To a very great extent, as everybody knows, American colonization
proceeded through the formation of religious communities. Such were the
Pilgrim and the Puritan commonwealths. Such were the Quaker groups of
Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Such were the localized societies of the
Dunkards, the Moravians, and the Mennonites.
As late as the middle of the nineteenth century the American people
witnessed the birth and growth of one of the most remarkable religious
communities known in history. The Mormon community of Utah, which,
originating in 1830 as a band of relatives and acquaintances, clustered
by an idea that quickly became a dogma, had become in fifty years a
commonwealth _de facto_, defying the authority _de jure_ of the United
States.
We are not likely, however, again to witness a phenomenon of this kind
in the civilized world. Recently we have seen the rise and the
astonishingly rapid spread of another American religion, namely, the
Christian Science faith. But it has created no community group. It has
created only a dispersed sect. It is obvious to any intelligent
observer, however untrained in sociological discrimination he may be,
that the forces of Protestantism, still dividing and differentiating as
they are, no longer to any great extent create new self-sufficing
communities. They create only associations of irregular geographical
dispersion, of more or less unstable or shifting membership. In a word,
the conflicting-idea forces, which in our colonial days tended to create
community groups as well as sects, tend now to create sectarian bodies
only--mere denominational or partisan associations.
A similar contrast between an earlier and a later stage of culture
group-making may be observed if we go back to centuries before the
Protestant Reformation, there to survey a wider field and a longer
series of historical periods.
It is a commonplace of historical knowledge that in all of the earliest
civilizations there was an approximate identification of religion with
ethnic consciousness and of political consciousness with both religious
and race feeling. Each people had its own tribal or national gods, who
were inventoried as national assets at valuations quite as high as those
attached to tribal or national territory.
When, however, Roman imperial rule had been extended over the civilized
world, the culture conflicts that then arose expended their
group-creating force in simply bringing together like believers in
sectarian association. Christianity, appealing to all bloods, in some
measure to all economic classes, and spreading into all sections of the
eastern Mediterranean region, did not to any great extent create
communities. And what was true of Christianity was in like manner true
of the Mithras cult, widely diffused in the second Christian century.
Even Mohammedanism, a faith seemingly well calculated to create
autonomous states, in contact with a world prepared by Roman
organization could not completely identify itself with definite
political boundaries.
The proximate causes of these contrasts are not obscure. We must suppose
that a self-sufficing community might at one time, as well as at
another, be drawn together by formative beliefs. But that it may take
root somewhere and, by protecting itself against destructive external
influences, succeed for a relatively long time in maintaining its
integrity and its solidarity, it must enjoy a relative isolation. In a
literal sense it must be beyond easy reach of those antagonistic forces
which constitute for it the outer world of unbelief and darkness.
Such isolation is easily and often possible, however, only in the early
stages of political integration. It is always difficult and unusual in
those advanced stages wherein nations are combined in world-empires. It
is becoming well-nigh impossible, now that all the continents have been
brought under the sovereignty of the so-called civilized peoples, while
these peoples themselves, freely communicating and intermingling,
maintain with one another that good understanding which constitutes
them, in a certain broad sense of the term, a world-society. The
proximate effects also of the contrast that has been sketched are
generally recognized.
So long as blood sympathy, religious faith, and political consciousness
are approximately coterminous, the groups that they form, whether local
communities or nations, must necessarily be rather sharply delimited.
They must be characterized also by internal solidarity. Their membership
is stable because to break the bond of blood is not only to make one's
self an outcast but is also to be unfaithful to the ancestral gods; to
change one's religion is not only to be impious but is also to commit
treason; to expatriate one's self is not only to commit treason but is
also to blaspheme against high heaven.
But when associations of believers or of persons holding in common any
philosophy or doctrine whatsoever are no longer self-sufficing
communities, and when nations composite in blood have become compound in
structure, all social groups, clusters, or organizations, not only the
cultural ones drawn together by formative ideas, but also the economic
and the political ones, become in some degree plastic. Their membership
then becomes to some extent shifting and renewable. Under these
circumstances any given association of men, let it be a village, a
religious group, a trade union, a corporation, or a political party, not
only takes into itself new members from time to time; it also permits
old members to depart. Men come and men go, yet the association or the
group itself persists. As group or as organization it remains
unimpaired.
The economic advantage secured by this plasticity and renewableness is
beyond calculation enormous. It permits and facilitates the drafting of
men at any moment from points where they are least needed, for
concentration upon points where they are needed most. The spiritual or
idealistic advantage is not less great. The concentration of attention
and of enthusiasm upon strategic points gives ever-increasing impetus to
progressive movements.
Let us turn now from these merely proximate causes and effects of group
formation to take note of certain developmental processes which lie
farther back in the evolutionary sequence and which also have
significance for our inquiry, since, when we understand them, they may
aid us in our attempt to answer the question, What kind of group-making
is likely to be accomplished by cultural conflicts from this time forth?
The most readily perceived, because the most pictorial, of the conflicts
arising between one belief and another are those that are waged between
beliefs that have been localized and then through geographical expansion
have come into competition throughout wide frontier areas. Of all such
conflicts, that upon which the world has now fully entered between
occidental and oriental ideas is not merely the most extensive; it is
also by far the most interesting and picturesque.
Less picturesque but often more dramatic are the conflicts that arise
within each geographical region, within each nation, between old beliefs
and new--the conflicts of sequent, in distinction from coexistent,
ideas; the conflicts in time, in distinction from the conflicts in
space. A new knowledge is attained which compels us to question old
dogmas. A new faith arises which would displace the ancient traditions.
As the new waxes strong in some region favorable to it, it begins there,
within local limits, to supersede the old. Only then, when the conflict
between the old as old and the new as new is practically over, does the
triumphant new begin to go forth spatially as a conquering influence
from the home of its youth into regions outlying and remote.
Whatever the form, however, that the culture conflict assumes, whether
serial and dramatic or geographical and picturesque, its antecedent
psychological conditions are in certain great essentials the same. Men
array themselves in hostile camps on questions of theory and belief, not
merely because they are variously and conflictingly informed, but far
more because they are mentally unlike, their minds having been prepared
by structural differentiation to seize upon different views and to
cherish opposing convictions. That is to say, some minds have become
rational, critical, plastic, open, outlooking, above all, intuitive of
objective facts and relations. Others in their fundamental constitution
have remained dogmatic, intuitive only of personal attitudes or of
subjective moods, temperamentally conservative and instinctive. Minds of
the one kind welcome the new and wider knowledge; they go forth to
embrace it. Minds of the other kind resist it.
In the segregation thus arising, there is usually discoverable a certain
tendency toward grouping by sex.
Whether the mental and moral traits of women are inherent and therefore
permanent, or whether they are but passing effects of circumscribed
experience and therefore possibly destined to be modified, is immaterial
for my present purpose. It is not certain that either the biologist or
the psychologist is prepared to answer the question. It is certain that
the sociologist is not. It is enough for the analysis that I am making
now if we can say that, as a merely descriptive fact, women thus far in
the history of the race have generally been more instinctive, more
intuitive of subjective states, more emotional, more conservative than
men; and that men, more generally than women, have been intuitive of
objective relations, inclined therefore to break with instinct and to
rely on the later-developed reasoning processes of the brain, and
willing, consequently, to take chances, to experiment, and to innovate.
If so much be granted, we may perhaps say that it is because of these
mental differences that in conflicts between new and old ideas, between
new knowledge and old traditions, it usually happens that a large
majority of all women are found in the camp of the old, and that the
camp of the new is composed mainly of men.
In the camp of the new, however, are always to be found women of alert
intelligence, who happen also to be temperamentally radical; women in
whom the reasoning habit has asserted sway over instinct, and in whom
intuition has become the true scientific power to discern objective
relations. And in the camp of the old, together with a majority of all
women, are to be found most of the men of conservative instinct, and
most of those also whose intuitive and reasoning powers are unequal to
the effort of thinking about the world or anything in it in terms of
impersonal causation. Associated with all of these elements, both male
and female, may usually be discovered, finally, a contingent of priestly
personalities; not necessarily religious priests, but men who love to
assert spiritual dominion, to wield authority, to be reverenced and
obeyed, and who naturally look for a following among the non-skeptical
and easily impressed.
Such, very broadly and rudely sketched, is the psychological background
of culture conflict. It is, however, a background only, a certain
persistent grouping of forces and conditions; it is not the cause from
which culture conflicts proceed.
D. RACIAL CONFLICTS
1. Social Contacts and Race Conflict[215]
There is a conviction, widespread in America at the present time, that
among the most fruitful sources of international wars are racial
prejudice and national egotism. This conviction is the nerve of much
present-day pacifism. It has been the inspiration of such unofficial
diplomacy, for example, as that of the Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in its effort to bring about a better understanding between
the Japanese and America. This book, _The Japanese Invasion_, by Jesse
F. Steiner, is an attempt to study this phenomenon of race prejudice and
national egotism, so far as it reveals itself in the relations of the
Japanese and the Americans in this country, and to estimate the rôle it
is likely to play in the future relations of the two countries.
So far as I know, an investigation of precisely this nature has not
hitherto been made. One reason for this is, perhaps, that not until very
recent times did the problem present itself in precisely this form. So
long as the nations lived in practical isolation, carrying on their
intercourse through the medium of professional diplomats, and knowing
each other mainly through the products they exchanged, census reports,
and the discreet observations of polite travelers, racial prejudice did
not disturb international relations. With the extension of international
commerce, the increase of immigration, and the interpenetration of
peoples, the scene changes. The railway, the steamship, and the
telegraph are rapidly mobilizing the peoples of the earth. The nations
are coming out of their isolation, and distances which separated the
different races are rapidly giving way before the extension of
communication.
The same human motives which have led men to spread a network of
trade-communication over the whole earth in order to bring about an
exchange of commodities are now bringing about a new distribution of
populations. When these populations become as mobile as the commodities
of commerce, there will be practically no limits--except those
artificial barriers, like the customs and immigration restrictions,
maintained by individual states--to a world-wide economic and personal
competition. Furthermore when the natural barriers are broken down,
artificial barriers will be maintained with increasing difficulty.
Some conception of the extent of the changes which are taking place in
the world under the influence of these forces may be gathered from the
fact that in 1870 the cost of transporting a bushel of grain in Europe
was so great as to prohibit its sale beyond a radius of two hundred
miles from a primary market. By 1883 the importation of grains from the
virgin soil of the western prairies in the United States had brought
about an agricultural crisis in every country in western Europe.
One may illustrate, but it is scarcely possible to estimate, the
economic changes which have been brought about by the enormous increase
in ocean transportation. In 1840 the first Cunard liner, of 740
horse-power with a speed of 8.5 knots per hour, was launched. In 1907,
when the Lusitania was built, ocean-going vessels had attained a speed
of 25 knots an hour and were drawn by engines of 70,000 horse-power.
It is difficult to estimate the economic changes which have been brought
about by the changes in ocean transportation represented by these
figures. It is still less possible to predict the political effects of
the steadily increasing mobility of the peoples of the earth. At the
present time this mobility has already reached a point at which it is
often easier and cheaper to transport the world's population to the
source of raw materials than to carry the world's manufactures to the
established seats of population.
With the progressive rapidity, ease, and security of transportation, and
the increase in communication, there follows an increasing detachment of
the population from the soil and a concurrent concentration in great
cities. These cities in time become the centers of vast numbers of
uprooted individuals, casual and seasonal laborers, tenement and
apartment-house dwellers, sophisticated and emancipated urbanites, who
are bound together neither by local attachment nor by ties of family,
clan, religion, or nationality. Under such conditions it is reasonable
to expect that the same economic motive which leads every trader to sell
in the highest market and to buy in the lowest will steadily increase
and intensify the tendency, which has already reached enormous
proportions of the population in overcrowded regions with diminished
resources, to seek their fortunes, either permanently or temporarily, in
the new countries of undeveloped resources.
Already the extension of commerce and the increase of immigration have
brought about an international and inter-racial situation that has
strained the inherited political order of the United States. It is this
same expansive movement of population and of commerce, together with the
racial and national rivalries that have sprung from them, which first
destroyed the traditional balance of power in Europe and then broke up
the scheme of international control which rested on it. Whatever may
have been the immediate causes of the world-war, the more remote sources
of the conflict must undoubtedly be sought in the great cosmic forces
which have broken down the barriers which formerly separated the races
and nationalities of the world, and forced them into new intimacies and
new forms of competition, rivalry, and conflict.
Since 1870 the conditions which I have attempted to sketch have steadily
forced upon America and the nations of Europe the problem of
assimilating their heterogeneous populations. What we call the race
problem is at once an incident of this process of assimilation and an
evidence of its failure.
The present volume, _The Japanese Invasion: A Study in the Psychology of
Inter-racial Contact_, touches but does not deal with the general
situation which I have briefly sketched. It is, as its title suggests, a
study in "racial contacts," and is an attempt to distinguish and trace
to their sources the attitudes and the sentiments--that is to say,
mutual prejudices--which have been and still are a source of mutual
irritation and misunderstanding between the Japanese and American
peoples.
Fundamentally, prejudice against the Japanese in the United States is
merely the prejudice which attaches to every alien and immigrant people.
The immigrant from Europe, like the immigrant from Asia, comes to this
country because he finds here a freedom of individual action and an
economic opportunity which he did not find at home. It is an instance of
the general tendency of populations to move from an area of relatively
closed, to one of relatively open, resources. The movement is as
inevitable and, in the long run, as resistless as that which draws water
from its mountain sources to the sea. It is one way of redressing the
economic balance and bringing about an economic equilibrium.
The very circumstances under which this modern movement of population
has arisen implies then that the standard of living, if not the cultural
level, of the immigrant is lower than that of the native population. The
consequence is that immigration brings with it a new and disturbing form
of competition, the competition, namely, of peoples of a lower and of a
higher standard of living. The effect of this competition, where it is
free and unrestricted, is either to lower the living standards of the
native population; to expel them from the vocations in which the
immigrants are able or permitted to compete; or what may, perhaps, be
regarded as a more sinister consequence, to induce such a restriction of
the birth rate of the native population as to insure its ultimate
extinction. The latter is, in fact, what seems to be happening in the
New England manufacturing towns where the birth rate in the native
population for some years past has fallen below the death rate, so that
the native stock has long since ceased to reproduce itself. The foreign
peoples, on the other hand, are rapidly replacing the native stocks, not
merely by the influence of new immigration, but because of a relatively
high excess of births over deaths.
It has been assumed that the prejudice which blinds the people of one
race to the virtues of another and leads them to exaggerate that other's
faults is in the nature of a misunderstanding which further knowledge
will dispel. This is so far from true that it would be more exact to say
that our racial misunderstandings are merely the expression of our
racial antipathies. Behind these antipathies are deep-seated, vital, and
instinctive impulses. Racial antipathies represent the collision of
invisible forces, the clash of interests, dimly felt but not yet clearly
perceived. They are present in every situation where the fundamental
interests of races and peoples are not yet regulated by some law,
custom, or any other _modus vivendi_ which commands the assent and the
mutual support of both parties. We hate people because we fear them,
because our interests, as we understand them at any rate, run counter to
theirs. On the other hand, good will is founded in the long run upon
co-operation. The extension of our so-called altruistic sentiments is
made possible only by the organization of our otherwise conflicting
interests and by the extension of the machinery of co-operation and
social control.
Race prejudice may be regarded as a spontaneous, more or less
instinctive, defense-reaction, the practical effect of which is to
restrict free competition between races. Its importance as a social
function is due to the fact that free competition, particularly between
people with different standards of living, seems to be, if not the
original source, at least the stimulus to which race prejudice is the
response.
From this point of view we may regard caste, or even slavery, as one of
those accommodations through which the race problem found a natural
solution. Caste, by relegating the subject race to an inferior status,
gives to each race at any rate a monopoly of its own tasks. When this
status is accepted by the subject people, as is the case where the caste
or slavery systems become fully established, racial competition ceases
and racial animosity tends to disappear. That is the explanation of the
intimate and friendly relations which so often existed in slavery
between master and servant. It is for this reason that we hear it said
today that the Negro is all right in his place. In his place he is a
convenience and not a competitor. Each race being in its place, no
obstacle to racial co-operation exists.
The fact that race prejudice is due to, or is in some sense dependent
upon, race competition is further manifest by a fact that Mr. Steiner
has emphasized, namely, that prejudice against the Japanese is nowhere
uniform throughout the United States. It is only where the Japanese are
present in sufficient numbers to actually disturb the economic status of
the white population that prejudice has manifested itself to such a
degree as to demand serious consideration. It is an interesting fact
also that prejudice against the Japanese is now more intense than it is
against any other oriental people. The reason for this, as Mr. Steiner
has pointed out, is that the Japanese are more aggressive, more disposed
to test the sincerity of that statement of the Declaration of
Independence which declares that all men are equally entitled to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--a statement, by the way, which
was merely a forensic assertion of the laissez faire doctrine of free
and unrestricted competition as applied to the relations of individual
men.
The Japanese, the Chinese, they too would be all right in their place,
no doubt. That place, if they find it, will be one in which they do not
greatly intensify and so embitter the struggle for existence of the
white man. The difficulty is that the Japanese is still less disposed
than the Negro or the Chinese to submit to the regulations of a caste
system and to stay in his place. The Japanese are an organized and
morally efficient nation. They have the national pride and the national
egotism which rests on the consciousness of this efficiency. In fact, it
is not too much to say that national egotism, if one pleases to call it
such, is essential to national efficiency, just as a certain
irascibility of temper seems to be essential to a good fighter.
Another difficulty is that caste and the limitation of free competition
is economically unsound, even though it be politically desirable. A
national policy of national efficiency demands that every individual
have not merely the opportunity but the preparation necessary to perform
that particular service for the community for which his natural
disposition and aptitude fit him, irrespective of race or "previous
condition."
Finally, caste and the limitation of economic opportunity is contrary,
if not to our traditions, at least to our political principles. That
means that there will always be an active minority opposed to any
settlement based on the caste system as applied to either the black or
the brown races, on grounds of political sentiment. This minority will
be small in parts of the country immediately adversely affected by the
competition of the invading race. It will be larger in regions which are
not greatly affected. It will be increased if immigration is so rapid as
to make the competition more acute. We must look to other measures for
the solution of the Japanese problem, if it should prove true, as seems
probable, that we are not able or, for various reasons, do not care
permanently to hold back the rising tide of the oriental invasion.
I have said that fundamentally and in principle prejudice against the
Japanese in America today was identical with the prejudice which
attaches to any immigrant people. There is, as Mr. Steiner has pointed
out, a difference. This is due to the existence in the human mind of a
mechanism by which we inevitably and automatically classify every
individual human being we meet. When a race bears an external mark by
which every individual member of it can infallibly be identified, that
race is by that fact set apart and segregated. Japanese, Chinese, and
Negroes cannot move among us with the same freedom as the members of
other races because they bear marks which identify them as members of
their race. This fact isolates them. In the end the effect of this
isolation, both in its effects upon the Japanese themselves and upon the
human environment in which they live, is profound. Isolation is at once
a cause and an effect of race prejudice. It is a vicious
circle--isolation, prejudice; prejudice, isolation. Were there no other
reasons which urge us to consider the case of the Japanese and the
oriental peoples in a category different from that of the European
immigrant, this fact, that they are bound to live in the American
community a more or less isolated life, would impel us to do so.
In conclusion, I may perhaps say in a word what seems to me the
practical bearing of Mr. Steiner's book. Race prejudice is a mechanism
of the group mind which acts reflexly and automatically in response to
its proper stimulus. That stimulus seems to be, in the cases where I
have met it, unrestricted competition of peoples with different
standards of living. Racial animosities and the so-called racial
misunderstandings that grow out of them cannot be explained or argued
away. They can only be affected when there has been a readjustment of
relations and an organization of interests in such a way as to bring
about a larger measure of co-operation and a lesser amount of friction
and conflict. This demands something more than a diplomacy of kind
words. It demands a national policy based on an unflinching examination
of the facts.
2. Conflict and Race Consciousness[216]
The Civil War weakened but did not fully destroy the _modus vivendi_
which slavery had established between the slave and his master. With
emancipation the authority which had formerly been exercised by the
master was transferred to the state, and Washington, D.C., began to
assume in the mind of the freedman the position that formerly had been
occupied by the "big house" on the plantation. The masses of the Negro
people still maintained their habit of dependence, however, and after
the first confusion of the change had passed, life went on, for most of
them, much as it had before the war. As one old farmer explained, the
only difference he could see was that in slavery he "was working for old
Marster and now he was working for himself."
There was one difference between slavery and freedom, nevertheless,
which was very real to the freedman. And this was the liberty to move.
To move from one plantation to another in case he was discontented was
one of the ways in which a freedman was able to realize his freedom and
to make sure that he possessed it. This liberty to move meant a good
deal more to the plantation Negro than one not acquainted with the
situation in the South is likely to understand.
If there had been an abundance of labor in the South; if the situation
had been such that the Negro laborer was seeking the opportunity to
work, or such that the Negro tenant farmers were competing for the
opportunity to get a place on the land, as is so frequently the case in
Europe, the situation would have been fundamentally different from what
it actually was. But the South was, and is today, what Nieboer called a
country of "open," in contradistinction to a country of "closed"
resources. In other words, there is more land in the South than there is
labor to till it. Land owners are driven to competing for laborers and
tenants to work their plantations.
Owing to his ignorance of business matters and to a long-established
habit of submission, the Negro after emancipation was placed at a great
disadvantage in his dealings with the white man. His right to move from
one plantation to another became, therefore, the Negro tenant's method
of enforcing consideration from the planter. He might not dispute the
planter's accounts, because he was not capable of doing so, and it was
unprofitable to attempt it, but if he felt aggrieved he could move.
This was the significance of the exodus in some of the southern states
which took place about 1879, when 40,000 people left the plantations in
the Black Belts of Louisiana and Mississippi and went to Kansas. The
masses of the colored people were dissatisfied with the treatment they
were receiving from the planters and made up their minds to move to "a
free country," as they described it. At the same time it was the attempt
of the planter to bind the Negro tenant who was in debt to him to his
place on the plantation that gave rise to the system of peonage that
still exists in a mitigated form in the South today.
When the Negro moved off the plantation upon which he was reared he
severed the personal relations which bound him to his master's people.
It was just at this point that the two races began to lose touch with
each other. From this time on the relations of the black man and white,
which in slavery had been direct and personal, became every year, as the
old associations were broken, more and more indirect and secondary.
There lingers still the disposition on the part of the white man to
treat every Negro familiarly, and the disposition on the part of every
Negro to treat every white man respectfully. But these are habits which
are gradually disappearing. The breaking down of the instincts and
habits of servitude and the acquisition by the masses of the Negro
people of the instincts and habits of freedom have proceeded slowly but
steadily. The reason the change seems to have gone on more rapidly in
some cases than others is explained by the fact that at the time of
emancipation 10 per cent of the Negroes in the United States were
already free, and others, those who had worked in trades, many of whom
had hired their own time from their masters, had become more or less
adapted to the competitive conditions of free society.
One of the effects of the mobilization of the Negro has been to bring
him into closer and more intimate contact with his own people. Common
interests have drawn the blacks together, and caste sentiment has kept
the black and white apart. The segregation of the races, which began as
a spontaneous movement on the part of both, has been fostered by the
policy of the dominant race. The agitation of the Reconstruction period
made the division between the races in politics absolute. Segregation
and separation in other matters have gone on steadily ever since. The
Negro at the present time has separate churches, schools, libraries,
hospitals, Y.M.C.A. associations, and even separate towns. There are,
perhaps, a half-dozen communities in the United States, every inhabitant
of which is a Negro. Most of these so-called Negro towns are suburban
villages; two of them, at any rate, are the centers of a considerable
Negro farming population. In general it may be said that where the Negro
schools, churches, and Y.M.C.A. associations are not separate they do
not exist.
It is hard to estimate the ultimate effect of this isolation of the
black man. One of the most important effects has been to establish a
common interest among all the different colors and classes of the race.
This sense of solidarity has grown up gradually with the organization of
the Negro people. It is stronger in the South, where segregation is more
complete, than it is in the North where, twenty years ago, it would have
been safe to say it did not exist. Gradually, imperceptibly, within the
larger world of the white man, a smaller world, the world of the black
man, is silently taking form and shape.
Every advance in education and intelligence puts the Negro in possession
of the technique of communication and organization of the white man, and
so contributes to the extension and consolidation of the Negro world
within the white.
The motive for this increasing solidarity is furnished by the increasing
pressure, or perhaps I should say by the increasing sensibility of
Negroes to the pressure and the prejudice without. The sentiment of
racial loyalty, which is a comparatively recent manifestation of the
growing self-consciousness of the race, must be regarded as a response
and "accommodation" to changing internal and external relations of the
race. The sentiment which Negroes are beginning to call "race pride"
does not exist to the same extent in the North as in the South, but an
increasing disposition to enforce racial distinctions in the North, as
in the South, is bringing it into existence.
One or two incidents in this connection are significant. A few years ago
a man who is the head of the largest Negro publishing business in this
country sent to Germany and had a number of Negro dolls manufactured
according to specifications of his own. At the time this company was
started, Negro children were in the habit of playing with white dolls.
There were already Negro dolls on the market, but they were for white
children and represented the white man's conception of the Negro and not
the Negro's ideal of himself. The new Negro doll was a mulatto with
regular features slightly modified in favor of the conventional Negro
type. It was a neat, prim, well-dressed, well-behaved, self-respecting
doll. Later on, as I understand, there were other dolls, equally tidy
and respectable in appearance, but in darker shades, with Negro features
a little more pronounced. The man who designed these dolls was perfectly
clear in regard to the significance of the substitution that he was
making. He said that he thought it was a good thing to let Negro girls
become accustomed to dolls of their own color. He thought it important,
as long as the races were to be segregated, that the dolls, which, like
other forms of art, are patterns and represent ideals, should be
segregated also.
This substitution of the Negro model for the white is a very interesting
and a very significant fact. It means that the Negro has begun to
fashion his own ideals and in his own image rather than in that of the
white man. It is also interesting to know that the Negro doll company
has been a success and that these dolls are now widely sold in every
part of the United States. Nothing exhibits more clearly the extent to
which the Negro had become assimilated in slavery or the extent to
which he has broken with the past in recent years than this episode of
the Negro doll.
The incident is typical. It is an indication of the nature of tendencies
and of forces that are stirring in the background of the Negro's mind,
although they have not succeeded in forcing themselves, except in
special instances, into clear consciousness.
In this same category must be reckoned the poetry of Paul Lawrence
Dunbar, in whom, as William Dean Howells has said, the Negro "attained
civilization." Before Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Negro literature had been
either apologetic or self-assertive, but Dunbar "studied the Negro
objectively." He represented him as he found him, not only without
apology, but with an affectionate understanding and sympathy which one
can have only for what is one's own. In Dunbar, Negro literature
attained an ethnocentric point of view. Through the medium of his verses
the ordinary shapes and forms of the Negro's life have taken on the
color of his affections and sentiments, and we see the black man, not as
he looks, but as he feels and is.
It is a significant fact that a certain number of educated--or rather
the so-called educated--Negroes were not at first disposed to accept at
their full value either Dunbar's dialect verse or the familiar pictures
of Negro life which are the symbols in which his poetry usually found
expression. The explanation sometimes offered for the dialect poems was
that "they were made to please white folk." The assumption seems to have
been that if they had been written for Negroes it would have been
impossible in his poetry to distinguish black people from white. This
was a sentiment which was never shared by the masses of the people, who,
upon the occasions when Dunbar recited to them, were fairly bowled over
with amusement and delight because of the authenticity of the portraits
he offered them. At the present time Dunbar is so far accepted as to
have hundreds of imitators.
Literature and art have played a similar and perhaps more important rôle
in the racial struggles of Europe than of America. One reason seems to
be that racial conflicts, as they occur in secondary groups, are
primarily sentimental and secondarily economic. Literature and art, when
they are employed to give expression to racial sentiment and form to
racial ideals, serve, along with other agencies, to mobilize the group
and put the masses _en rapport_ with their leaders and with each other.
In such cases art and literature are like silent drummers which summon
into action the latent instincts and energies of the race.
These struggles, I might add, in which a submerged people seek to rise
and make for themselves a place in a world occupied by superior and
privileged races, are not less vital or less important because they are
bloodless. They serve to stimulate ambitions and inspire ideals which
years, perhaps, of subjection and subordination have suppressed. In
fact, it seems as if it were through conflicts of this kind, rather than
through war, that the minor peoples were destined to gain the moral
concentration and discipline that fit them to share, on anything like
equal terms, in the conscious life of the civilized world.
Until the beginning of the last century the European peasant, like the
Negro slave, bound as he was to the soil, lived in the little world of
direct and personal relations, under what we may call a domestic régime.
It was military necessity that first turned the attention of statesmen
like Frederick the Great of Prussia to the welfare of the peasant. It
was the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon in 1807 that brought about his
final emancipation in that country. In recent years it has been the
international struggle for economic efficiency which has contributed
most to mobilize the peasant and laboring classes in Europe.
As the peasant slowly emerged from serfdom he found himself a member of
a depressed class, without education, political privileges, or capital.
It was the struggle of this class for wider opportunity and better
conditions of life that made most of the history of the previous
century. Among the peoples in the racial borderland the effect of this
struggle has been, on the whole, to substitute for a horizontal
organization of society--in which the upper strata, that is to say, the
wealthy or privileged class, was mainly of one race and the poorer and
subject class was mainly of another--a vertical organization in which
all classes of each racial group were united under the title of their
respective nationalities. Thus organized, the nationalities represent,
on the one hand, intractable minorities engaged in a ruthless partisan
struggle for political privilege or economic advantage and, on the
other, they represent cultural groups, each struggling to maintain a
sentiment of loyalty to the distinctive traditions, language, and
institutions of the race they represent.
This sketch of the racial situation in Europe is, of course, the barest
abstraction and should not be accepted realistically. It is intended
merely as an indication of similarities, in the broader outlines, of the
motives that have produced nationalities in Europe and are making the
Negro in America, as Booker Washington says, "a nation within a nation."
It may be said that there is one profound difference between the Negro
and the European nationalities, namely, that the Negro has had his
separateness and consequent race consciousness thrust upon him because
of his exclusion and forcible isolation from white society. The Slavic
nationalities, on the contrary, have segregated themselves in order to
escape assimilation and escape racial extinction in the larger
cosmopolitan states.
The difference is, however, not so great as it seems. With the exception
of the Poles, nationalistic sentiment may be said hardly to have existed
fifty years ago. Forty years ago when German was the language of the
educated classes, educated Bohemians were a little ashamed to speak
their own language in public. Now nationalist sentiment is so strong
that, where the Czech nationality has gained control, it has sought to
wipe out every vestige of the German language. It has changed the names
of streets, buildings, and public places. In the city of Prag, for
example, all that formerly held German associations now fairly reeks
with the sentiment of Bohemian nationality.
On the other hand, the masses of the Polish people cherished very little
nationalist sentiment until after the Franco-Prussian War. The fact is
that nationalist sentiment among the Slavs, like racial sentiment among
the Negroes, has sprung up as the result of a struggle against privilege
and discrimination based upon racial distinctions. The movement is not
so far advanced among Negroes; sentiment is not so intense, and for
several reasons probably never will be.
From what has been said it seems fair to draw one conclusion, namely:
under conditions of secondary contact, that is to say, conditions of
individual liberty and individual competition, characteristic of modern
civilization, depressed racial groups tend to assume the form of
nationalities. A nationality, in this narrower sense, may be defined as
the racial group which has attained self-consciousness, no matter
whether it has at the same time gained political independence or not.
In societies organized along horizontal lines the disposition of
individuals in the lower strata is to seek their models in the strata
above them. Loyalty attaches to individuals, particularly to the upper
classes, who furnish, in their persons and in their lives, the models
for the masses of the people below them. Long after the nobility has
lost every other social function connected with its vocation the ideals
of the nobility have survived in our conception of the gentleman,
genteel manners and bearing--gentility.
The sentiment of the Negro slave was, in a certain sense, not merely
loyalty to his master but to the white race. Negroes of the older
generations speak very frequently, with a sense of proprietorship, of
"our white folks." This sentiment was not always confined to the
ignorant masses. An educated colored man once explained to me "that we
colored people always want our white folks to be superior." He was
shocked when I showed no particular enthusiasm for that form of
sentiment.
The fundamental significance of the nationalist movement must be sought
in the effort of subject races, sometimes consciously, sometimes
unconsciously, to substitute, for those supplied them by aliens, models
based on their own racial individuality and embodying sentiments and
ideals which spring naturally out of their own lives.
After a race has achieved in this way its moral independence,
assimilation, in the sense of copying, will still continue. Nations and
races borrow from those whom they fear as well as from those whom they
admire. Materials taken over in this way, however, are inevitably
stamped with the individuality of the nationalities that appropriate
them. These materials will contribute to the dignity, to the prestige,
and to the solidarity of the nationality which borrows them, but they
will no longer inspire loyalty to the race from which they are borrowed.
A race which has attained the character of a nationality may still
retain its loyalty to the state of which it is a part, but only in so
far as that state incorporates, as an integral part of its organization,
the practical interests, the aspirations and ideals of that
nationality.
The aim of the contending nationalities in Austria-Hungary at the
present time seems to be a federation, like that of Switzerland, based
upon the autonomy of the different races composing the empire. In the
South, similarly, the races seem to be tending in the direction of a
bi-racial organization of society, in which the Negro is gradually
gaining a limited autonomy. What the ultimate outcome of this movement
may be it is not safe to predict.
3. Conflict and Accommodation[217]
In the first place, what is race friction? To answer this elementary
question it is necessary to define the abstract mental quality upon
which race friction finally rests. This is racial "antipathy," popularly
spoken of as "race prejudice." Whereas prejudice means mere
predilection, either for or against, antipathy means "natural
contrariety," "incompatibility," or "repugnance of qualities." To quote
the Century Dictionary, antipathy "expresses most of constitutional
feeling and least of volition"; "it is a dislike that seems
constitutional toward persons, things, conduct, etc.; hence it involves
a dislike for which sometimes no good reason can be given." I would
define racial antipathy, then, as a natural contrariety, repugnancy of
qualities, or incompatibility between individuals or groups which are
sufficiently differentiated to constitute what, for want of a more exact
term, we call races. What is most important is that it involves an
instinctive feeling of dislike, distaste, or repugnance, for which
sometimes no good reason can be given. Friction is defined primarily as
a "lack of harmony," or a "mutual irritation." In the case of races it
is accentuated by antipathy. We do not have to depend on race riots or
other acts of violence as a measure of the growth of race friction. Its
existence may be manifested by a look or a gesture as well as by a word
or an act.
A verbal cause of much useless and unnecessary controversy is found in
the use of the word "race." When we speak of "race problems" or "racial
antipathies," what do we mean by "race"? Clearly nothing scientifically
definite, since ethnologists themselves are not agreed upon any
classification of the human family along racial lines. Nor would this
so-called race prejudice have the slightest regard for such
classification, if one were agreed upon. It is something which is not
bounded by the confines of a philological or ethnological definition.
The British scientist may tell the British soldier in India that the
native is in reality his brother, and that it is wholly absurd and
illogical and unscientific for such a thing as "race prejudice" to exist
between them. Tommy Atkins simply replies with a shrug that to him and
his messmates the native is a "nigger"; and in so far as their attitude
is concerned, that is the end of the matter. The same suggestion,
regardless of the scientific accuracy of the parallel, if made to the
American soldier in the Philippines, meets with the same reply. We have
wasted an infinite amount of time in interminable controversies over the
relative superiority and inferiority of different races. Such
discussions have a certain value when conducted by scientific men in a
purely scientific spirit. But for the purpose of explaining or
establishing any fixed principle of race relations they are little
better than worthless. The Japanese is doubtless quite well satisfied of
the superiority of his people over the mushroom growths of western
civilization, and finds no difficulty in borrowing from the latter
whatever is worth reproducing, and improving on it in adapting it to his
own racial needs. The Chinese do not waste their time in idle chatter
over the relative status of their race as compared with the white
barbarians who have intruded themselves upon them with their grotesque
customs, their heathenish ideas, and their childishly new religion. The
Hindu regards with veiled contempt the racial pretensions of his
conqueror, and, while biding the time when the darker races of the earth
shall once more come into their own, does not bother himself with such
an idle question as whether his temporary overlord is his racial equal.
Only the white man writes volumes to establish on paper the fact of a
superiority which is either self-evident and not in need of
demonstration, on the one hand, or is not a fact and is not
demonstrable, on the other. The really important matter is one about
which there need be little dispute--the fact of racial differences. It
is the practical question of differences--the fundamental differences of
physical appearance, of mental habit and thought, of social customs and
religious beliefs, of the thousand and one things keenly and clearly
appreciable, yet sometimes elusive and undefinable--these are the things
which at once create and find expression in what we call race problems
and race prejudices, for want of better terms. In just so far as these
differences are fixed and permanently associated characteristics of two
groups of people will the antipathies and problems between the two be
permanent.
Probably the closest approach we shall ever make to a satisfactory
classification of races as a basis of antipathy will be that of grouping
men according to color, along certain broad lines, the color being
accompanied by various and often widely different, but always fairly
persistent, differentiating physical and mental characteristics. This
would give us substantially the white--not Caucasian, the yellow--not
Chinese or Japanese, and the dark--not Negro, races. The antipathies
between these general groups and between certain of their subdivisions
will be found to be essentially fundamental, but they will also be found
to present almost endless differences of degrees of actual and potential
acuteness. Here elementary psychology also plays its part. One of the
subdivisions of the Negro race is composed of persons of mixed blood. In
many instances these are more white than black, yet the association of
ideas has through several generations identified them with the
Negro--and in this country friction between this class and white people
is on some lines even greater than between whites and blacks.
Race conflicts are merely the more pronounced concrete expressions of
such friction. They are the visible phenomena of the abstract quality of
racial antipathy--the tangible evidence of the existence of racial
problems. The form of such expressions of antipathy varies with the
nature of the racial contact in each instance. Their different and
widely varying aspects are the confusing and often contradictory
phenomena of race relations. They are dependent upon diverse conditions,
and are no more susceptible of rigid and permanent classification than
are the whims and moods of human nature. It is more than a truism to say
that a condition precedent to race friction or race conflict is contact
between sufficient numbers of two diverse racial groups. There is a
definite and positive difference between contact between individuals and
contact between masses. The association between two isolated individual
members of two races may be wholly different from contact between masses
of the same race groups. The factor of numbers embraces, indeed, the
very crux of the problems arising from contact between different races.
A primary cause of race friction is the vague, rather intangible, but
wholly real, feeling of "pressure" which comes to the white man almost
instinctively in the presence of a mass of people of a different race.
In a certain important sense all racial problems are distinctly problems
of racial distribution. Certainly the definite action of the controlling
race, particularly as expressed in laws, is determined by the factor of
the numerical difference between its population and that of the inferior
group. This fact stands out prominently in the history of our colonial
legislation for the control of Negro slaves. These laws increased in
severity up to a certain point as the slave population increased in
numbers. The same condition is disclosed in the history of the
ante-bellum legislation of the southern, eastern, New England, and
middle western states for the control of the free Negro population. So
today no state in the Union would have separate car laws where the Negro
constituted only 10 or 15 per cent of its total population. No state
would burden itself with the maintenance of two separate school systems
with a negro element of less than 10 per cent. Means of local separation
might be found, but there would be no expression of law on the subject.
Just as a heavy increase of Negro population makes for an increase of
friction, direct legislation, the protection of drastic social customs,
and a general feeling of unrest or uneasiness on the part of the white
population, so a decrease of such population, or a relatively small
increase as compared with the whites, makes for less friction, greater
racial tolerance, and a lessening of the feeling of necessity for
severely discriminating laws or customs. And this quite aside from the
fact of a difference of increase or decrease of actual points of
contact, varying with differences of numbers. The statement will
scarcely be questioned that the general attitude of the white race, as a
whole, toward the Negro would become much less uncompromising if we were
to discover that through two census periods the race had shown a
positive decrease in numbers. Racial antipathy would not decrease, but
the conditions which provoke its outward expression would undergo a
change for the better. There is a direct relation between the mollified
attitude of the people of the Pacific coast toward the Chinese
population and the fact that the Chinese population decreased between
1890 and 1900. There would in time be a difference of feeling toward the
Japanese now there if the immigration of more were prohibited by treaty
stipulation. There is the same immediate relation between the tolerant
attitude of whites toward the natives in the Hawaiian Islands and the
feeling that the native is a decadent and dying race. Aside from the
influence of the Indian's warlike qualities and of his refusal to submit
to slavery, the attitude and disposition of the white race toward him
have been influenced by considerations similar to those which today
operate in Hawaii. And the same influence has been a factor in
determining the attitude of the English toward the slowly dying Maoris
of New Zealand.
At no time in the history of the English-speaking people and at no place
of which we have any record where large numbers of them have been
brought into contact with an approximately equal number of Negroes have
the former granted to the latter absolute equality, either political,
social, or economic. With the exception of five New England states, with
a total Negro population of only 16,084 in 1860, every state in the
Union discriminated against the Negro politically before the Civil War.
The white people continued to do so--North as well as South--as long as
they retained control of the suffrage regulations of their states. The
determination to do so renders one whole section of the country
practically a political unit to this day. In South Africa we see the
same determination of the white man to rule, regardless of the numerical
superiority of the black. The same determination made Jamaica surrender
the right of self-government and renders her satisfied with a hybrid
political arrangement today. The presence of practically 100,000 Negroes
in the District of Columbia makes 200,000 white people content to live
under an anomaly in a self-governing country. The proposition is too
elementary for discussion that the white man when confronted with a
sufficient number of Negroes to create in his mind a sense of political
unrest or danger either alters his form of government in order to be rid
of the incubus or destroys the political strength of the Negro by force,
by evasion, or by direct action.
In the main, the millions in the South live at peace with their white
neighbors. The masses, just one generation out of slavery and thousands
of them still largely controlled by its influences, accept the
superiority of the white race as a race, whatever may be their private
opinion of some of its members. And, furthermore, they accept this
relation of superior and inferior as a mere matter of course--as part
of their lives--as something neither to be questioned, wondered at, or
worried over. Despite apparent impressions to the contrary, the average
southern white man gives no more thought to the matter than does the
Negro. As I tried to make clear at the outset, the status of superior
and inferior is simply an inherited part of his instinctive mental
equipment--a concept which he does not have to reason out. The
respective attitudes are complementary, and under the mutual acceptance
and understanding there still exist unnumbered thousands of instances of
kindly and affectionate relations--relations of which the outside world
knows nothing and understands nothing. In the mass, the southern Negro
has not bothered himself about the ballot for more than twenty years,
not since his so-called political leaders let him alone; he is not
disturbed over the matter of separate schools and cars, and he neither
knows nor cares anything about "social equality."
But what of the other class? The "masses" is at best an unsatisfactory
and indefinite term. It is very far from embracing even the southern
Negro, and we need not forget that seven years ago there were 900,000
members of the race living outside of the South. What of the class,
mainly urban and large in number, who have lost the typical habit and
attitude of the Negro of the mass, and who, more and more, are becoming
restless and chafing under existing conditions? There is an intimate and
very natural relation between the social and intellectual advance of the
so-called Negro and the matter of friction along social lines. It is, in
fact, only as we touch the higher groups that we can appreciate the
potential results of contact upon a different plane from that common to
the masses in the South. There is a large and steadily increasing group
of men, more or less related to the Negro by blood and wholly identified
with him by American social usage, who refuse to accept quietly the
white man's attitude toward the race. I appreciate the mistake of laying
too great stress upon the utterances of any one man or group of men, but
the mistakes in this case lie the other way. The American white man
knows little or nothing about the thought and opinion of the colored men
and women who today largely mold and direct Negro public opinion in this
country. Even the white man who considers himself a student of "the race
question" rarely exhibits anything more than profound ignorance of the
Negro's side of the problem. He does not know what the other man is
thinking and saying on the subject. This composite type which we
poetically call "black," but which in reality is every shade from black
to white, is slowly developing a consciousness of its own racial
solidarity. It is finding its own distinctive voice, and through its own
books and papers and magazines, and through its own social
organizations, is at once giving utterance to its discontent and making
known its demands.
And with this dawning consciousness of race there is likewise coming an
appreciation of the limitations and restrictions which hem in its
unfolding and development. One of the best indices to the possibilities
of increased racial friction is the Negro's own recognition of the
universality of the white man's racial antipathy toward him. This is the
one clear note above the storm of protest against the things that are,
that in his highest aspirations everywhere the white man's "prejudice"
blocks the colored man's path. And the white man may with possible
profit pause long enough to ask the deeper significance of the Negro's
finding of himself. May it not be only part of a general awakening of
the darker races of the earth? Captain H. A. Wilson, of the English
army, says that through all Africa there has penetrated in some way a
vague confused report that far off somewhere, in the unknown, outside
world, a great war has been fought between a white and a yellow race,
and won by the yellow man. And even before the Japanese-Russian
conflict, "Ethiopianism" and the cry of "Africa for the Africans" had
begun to disturb the English in South Africa. It is said time and again
that the dissatisfaction and unrest in India are accentuated by the
results of this same war. There can be no doubt in the mind of any man
who carefully reads American Negro journals that their rejoicing over
the Japanese victory sounded a very different note from that of the
white American. It was far from being a mere expression of sympathy with
a people fighting for national existence against a power which had made
itself odious to the civilized world by its treatment of its subjects.
It was, instead, a quite clear cry of exultation over the defeat of a
white race by a dark one. The white man is no wiser than the ostrich if
he refuses to see the truth that in the possibilities of race friction
the Negro's increasing consciousness of race is to play a part scarcely
less important than the white man's racial antipathies, prejudices, or
whatever we may elect to call them.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. The Psychology and Sociology of Conflict, Conscious Competition, and
Rivalry
Consciousness has been described as an effect of conflict--conflict of
motor tendencies in the individual, conflict of sentiments, attitudes,
and cultures in the group. The individual, activated in a given
situation by opposing tendencies, is compelled to redefine his attitude.
Consciousness is an incident of this readjustment.
Frequently adjustment involves a suppression of one tendency in the
interest of another, of one wish in favor of another. Where these
suppressions are permanent, they frequently result in disorders of
conduct and disorganization of the personality. The suppressed wish,
when suppression results in disturbances of the conscious life, has been
called by psychoanalysts a _complex_. Freud and his colleagues have
isolated and described certain of these complexes. Most familiar of
these are the Oedipus complex, which is explained as an effect of the
unconscious conflict of father and son for the love of the mother; and
the Electra complex, which similarly has as its source the unconscious
struggle of mother and daughter for the affection of the father. Adler,
in his description of the "inferiority" complex, explains it as an
effect of the conflict growing out of the contrast between the ideal and
the actual status of the person. Other mental conflicts described by the
psychoanalysts are referred to the "adopted child" complex, the
Narcissus complex, the sex shock, etc. These conflicts which disturb the
mental life of the person are all the reflections of social relations
and are to be explained in terms of status and the rôle of the
individual in the group.
Emulation and rivalry represent conflict at higher social levels, where
competition has been translated into forms that inure to the survival
and success of the group. Research in this field, fragmentary as it is,
confirms the current impression of the stimulation of effort in the
person through conscious competition with his fellows. Adler's theory of
"psychic compensation" is based on the observation that handicapped
individuals frequently excel in the very fields in which they are
apparently least qualified to compete. Demosthenes, for example, became
a great orator in spite of the fact that he stuttered. Ordahl presents
the only comprehensive survey of the literature in this field.
Simmel has made the outstanding contribution to the sociological
conception of conflict. Just as the attitudes of the individual person
represent an organization of antagonistic elements, society, as he
interprets it, is a unity of which the elements are conflicting
tendencies. Society, he insists, would be quite other than it is, were
it not for the aversions, antagonisms, differences, as well as the
sympathies, affections, and similarities between individuals and groups
of individuals. The unity of society includes these opposing forces,
and, as a matter of fact, society is organized upon the basis of
conflict.
Conflict is an organizing principle in society. Just as the individual,
under the influences of contact and conflict with other individuals,
acquires a status and develops a personality, so groups of individuals,
in conflict with other groups, achieve unity, organization, group
consciousness, and assume the forms characteristic of conflict
groups--that is to say, they become parties, sects, and nationalities,
etc.
2. Types of Conflict
Simmel, in his study of conflict, distinguished four types--namely, war,
feud and faction, litigation, and discussion, i.e., the impersonal
struggles of parties and causes. This classification, while
discriminating, is certainly not complete. There are, for example, the
varied forms of sport, in which conflict assumes the form of rivalry.
These are nevertheless organized on a conflict pattern. Particularly
interesting in this connection are games of chance, gambling and
gambling devices which appeal to human traits so fundamental that no
people is without example of them in its folkways.
Gambling is, according to Groos, "a fighting play," and the universal
human interest in this sport is due to the fact that "no other form of
play displays in so many-sided a fashion the combativeness of human
nature."[218]
The history of the duel, either in the form of the judicial combat, the
wager of battle of the Middle Ages, or as a form of private vengeance,
offers interesting material for psychological or sociological
investigation. The transition from private vengeance to public
prosecution, of which the passing of the duel is an example, has not
been completed. In fact, new forms are in some cases gradually gaining
social sanction. We still have our "unwritten laws" for certain
offenses. It is proverbially difficult to secure the conviction, in
certain parts of the country, Chicago, for example, of a woman who kills
her husband or her lover. The practice of lynching Negroes in the
southern states, for offenses against women, and for any other form of
conduct that is construed as a challenge to the dominant race, is an
illustration from a somewhat different field, not merely of the
persistence, but the gradual development of the so-called unwritten law.
The circumstances under which these and all other unwritten laws arise,
in which custom controls in contravention of the formal written code,
have not been investigated from the point of view of sociology and in
their human-nature aspects.
Several studies of games and gambling, in some respects the most unique
objectivations of human interest, have been made from the point of view
of the fundamental human traits involved, notably Thomas' article on
_The Gaming Instinct_, Groos's chapter on "Fighting Play," in his _Play
of Man_, and G. T. W. Patrick's _Psychology of Relaxation_, in which the
theory of catharsis, familiar since Aristotle, is employed to explain
play, laughter, profanity, the drink habit, and war.
Original materials exist in abundance for the study of feud, litigation,
and war. No attempt seems to have been made to study feud and litigation
comparatively, as Westermarck has studied marriage institutions.
Something has indeed been done in this direction with the subject of
war, notably by Letourneau in France and by Frobenius in Germany.
Sumner's notable essay on _War_ is likewise an important contribution to
the subject. The literature upon war, however, is so voluminous and so
important that it will be discussed later, separately, and in greater
detail.
Quite as interesting and important as that of war is the natural history
of discussion, including under that term political and religious
controversy and social agitation, already referred to as impersonal or
secondary conflict.
The history of discussion, however, is the history of freedom--freedom,
at any rate, of thought and of speech. It is only when peace and
freedom have been established that discussion is practicable or
possible. A number of histories have been written in recent years
describing the rise of rationalism, as it is called, and the rôle of
discussion and agitation in social life. Draper's _History of the
Intellectual Development of Europe_ and Lecky's _History of the Rise and
Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ are among the earlier
works in this field. Robertson's _History of Free Thought_ is mainly a
survey of religious skepticism but contains important and suggestive
references to the natural processes by which abstract thought has arisen
out of the cultural contacts and conflicts among peoples, which conquest
and commerce have brought into the same universe of discourse. What we
seem to have in these works are materials for the study of the communal
processes through which thought is formulated. Once formulated it
becomes a permanent factor in the life of the group. The rôle of
discussion in the communal process will be considered later in
connection with the newspaper, the press agent, propaganda, and the
various factors and mechanisms determining the formation of public
opinion.
3. The Literature of War
The emphasis upon the struggle for existence which followed the
publication of Darwin's _The Origin of Species_, in 1859, seemed to many
thinkers to give a biological basis for the necessity and the
inevitability of war. No distinction was made by writers of this school
of thought between competition and conflict. Both were supposed to be
based on instinct. Nicolai's _The Biology of War_ is an essay with the
avowed design of refuting the biological justification of war.
Psychological studies of war have explained war either as an expression
of instinct or as a reversion to a primordial animal-human type of
behavior. Patrick, who is representative of this latter school,
interprets war as a form of relaxation. G. W. Crile has offered a
mechanistic interpretation of war and peace based on studies of the
chemical changes which men undergo in warfare. Crile comes to the
conclusion, however, that war is an action pattern, fixed in the social
heredity of the national group, and not a type of behavior determined
biologically.
The human nature of war and the motives which impel the person to the
great adventure and the supreme risk of war have not been subjected to
sociological study. A mass of material, however, consisting of personal
documents of all types, letters, common-sense observation, and diaries
is now available for such study.
Much of the literature of war has been concentrated on this problem of
the abolition of war. There are the idealists and the conscientious
objectors who look to good will, humanitarian sentiment, and pacificism
to end war by the transformation of attitudes of men and the policies of
nations. On the other hand, there are the hard-headed and practical
thinkers and statesmen who believe, with Hobbes, that war will not end
until there is established a power strong enough to overawe a
recalcitrant state. Finally, there is a third group of social thinkers
who emphasize the significance of the formation of a world public
opinion. This "international mind" they regard of far greater
significance for the future of humanity than the problem of war or
peace, of national rivalries, or of future race conflicts.
4. Race Conflict
A European school of sociologists emphasizes conflict as the fundamental
social process. Gumplowicz, in his book _Die Rassenkampf_, formulated a
theory of social contacts and conflicts upon the conception of original
ethnic groups in terms of whose interaction the history of humanity
might be written. Novicow and Ratzenhofer maintain similar, though not
so extreme, theories of social origins and historical developments.
With the tremendous extension of communication and growth of commerce,
the world is today a great community in a sense that could not have been
understood a century ago. But the world, if it is now one community, is
not yet one society. Commerce has created an economic interdependence,
but contact and communication have not resulted in either a political or
a cultural solidarity. Indeed, the first evidences of the effects of
social contacts appear to be disruptive rather than unifying. In every
part of the world in which the white and colored races have come into
intimate contact, race problems have presented the most intractable of
all social problems.
Interest in this problem manifests itself in the enormous literature on
the subject. Most of all that has been written, however, is superficial.
Much is merely sentimental, interesting for the attitudes it exhibits,
but otherwise adding nothing to our knowledge of the facts. The best
account of the American situation is undoubtedly Ray Stannard Baker's
_Following the Color Line_. The South African situation is interestingly
and objectively described by Maurice Evans in _Black and White in South
East Africa_. Steiner's book, _The Japanese Invasion_, is, perhaps, the
best account of the Japanese-American situation.
The race problem merges into the problem of the nationalities and the
so-called subject races. The struggles of the minor nationalities for
self-determination is a phase of racial conflict; a phase, however, in
which language rather than color is the basis of division and conflict.
5. Conflict Groups
In chapter i conflict groups were divided into gangs, labor
organizations, sects, parties, and nationalities.[219] Common to these
groups is an organization and orientation with reference to conflict
with other groups of the same kind or with a more or less hostile social
environment, as in the case of religious sects.
The spontaneous organizations of boys and youths called gangs attracted
public attention in American communities because of the relation of
these gangs to juvenile delinquency and adolescent crime. An interesting
but superficial literature upon the gang has developed in recent years,
represented typically by J. Adams Puffer _The Boy and his Gang_. The
brief but picturesque descriptions of individual gangs seem to indicate
that the play group tends to pass over into the gang when it comes into
conflict with other groups of like type or with the community. The fully
developed gang appears to possess a restricted membership, a natural
leader, a name--usually that of a leader or a locality--a body of
tradition, custom and a ritual, a rendezvous, a territorial area which
it holds as a sort of possession and defends against invasion by other
groups. Attention was early called, as by Mr. Brewster Adams in an
article _The Street Gang as a Factor in Politics_, to the facility with
which the gang graduates into a local political organization,
representing thus the sources of political power of the typical American
city.
Although the conflict of economic groups is not a new nor even a modern
phenomenon, no such permanent conflict groups as those represented by
capital and labor existed until recent times. Veblen has made an acute
observation upon this point. The American Federation of Labor, he
states, "is not organized for production but for bargaining." It is, in
effect, an organization for the strategic defeat of employers and rival
organizations, by recourse to enforced unemployment and obstruction; not
for the production of goods and services.[220]
Research in the labor problem by the Webbs in England and by Commons,
Hoxie, and others in this country has been primarily concerned with the
history and with the structure and functions of trade unions. At present
there is a tendency to investigate the human-nature aspects of the
causes of the industrial conflict. The current phrases "instincts in
industry," "the human factor in economics," "the psychology of the labor
movement," "industry, emotion, and unrest" indicate the change in
attitude. The essential struggle is seen to lie not in the conflict of
classes, intense and ruthless as it is, but more and more in the
fundamental struggle between a mechanical and impersonal system, on the
one hand, and the person with his wishes unsatisfied and insatiable on
the other. All attempts to put the relations of capital and labor upon a
moral basis have failed hitherto. The latest and most promising
experiment in this direction is the so-called labor courts established
by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and their employees.
The literature upon sects and parties has been written for the most part
with the purpose of justifying, to a critical and often hostile public,
the sectarian and partisan aims and acts of their several organizations.
In a few works such as Sighele's _Psychologie des sectes_ and Michels'
_Political Parties_ an attempt has been made at objective description
and analysis of the mechanisms of the behavior of the sect and of the
party.
The natural history of the state from the tribe to the modern nation has
been that of a political society based on conflict. Franz Oppenheimer
maintains the thesis in his book _The State: Its History and Development
Viewed Sociologically_, that conquest has been the historical basis of
the state. The state is, in other words, an organization of groups that
have been in conflict, i.e., classes and castes; or of groups that are
in conflict, i.e., political parties.
A nationality, as distinct from a nation, as for instance the Irish
nationality, is a language and cultural group which has become group
conscious through its struggle for status in the larger imperial or
international group. Nationalism is, in other words, a phenomenon of
internationalism.
The literature upon this subject is enormous. The most interesting
recent works on the general topic are Dominian's _The Frontiers of
Language and Nationality in Europe_, Pillsbury's _The Psychology of
Nationality and Internationalism_, and Oakesmith's _Race and
Nationality_.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT
A. _Conflict and Social Process_
(1) Simmel, Georg. "The Sociology of Conflict." Translated from the
German by Albion W. Small. _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4),
490-525; 672-89; 798-811.
(2) Gumplowicz, Ludwig. _Der Rassenkampf._ Sociologische Untersuchungen.
Innsbruck, 1883.
(3) Novicow, J. _Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines et leurs phases
successives._ Paris, 1893.
(4) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Wesen und Zweck der Politik._ Als Theil der
Sociologie und Grundlage der Staatswissenschaften. 3 vols. Leipzig,
1893.
(5) ----. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis._ Positive Philosophie des
Socialen Lebens. Leipzig, 1898.
(6) Sorel, Georges. _Reflections on Violence._ New York, 1914.
B. _Conflict and Mental Conflict_
(1) Healy, William. _Mental Conflicts and Misconduct._ Boston, 1917.
(2) Prince, Morton. _The Unconscious._ The fundamentals of personality,
normal and abnormal. Chap. xv, "Instincts, Sentiments, and Conflicts,"
pp. 446-87; chap, xvi, "General Phenomena Resulting from Emotional
Conflicts," pp. 488-528. New York, 1914.
(3) Adler, Alfred. _The Neurotic Constitution._ Outlines of a
comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy. Translated by
Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind. New York, 1917.
(4) Adler, Alfred. _A Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical
Compensation._ A contribution to clinical medicine. Translated by S. E.
Jelliffe. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 24. New
York, 1917.
(5) Lay, Wilfrid. _Man's Unconscious Conflict._ A popular exposition of
psychoanalysis. New York, 1917.
(6) Blanchard, Phyllis. _The Adolescent Girl._ A study from the
psychoanalytic viewpoint. Chap. iii, "The Adolescent Conflict," pp.
87-115. New York, 1920.
(7) Weeks, Arland D. _Social Antagonisms._ Chicago, 1918.
C. _Rivalry_
(1) Baldwin, J. Mark, editor. _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology._
Article on "Rivalry." Vol. II, pp. 476-78.
(2) Vincent, George E. "The Rivalry of Social Groups," _American Journal
of Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 469-84.
(3) Ordahl, George. "Rivalry: Its Genetic Development and Pedagogy,"
_The Pedagogical Seminary_, XV (1908), 492-549. [Bibliography.]
(4) Ely, Richard T. _Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society._
Chap. ii, "Rivalry and Success in Economic Life," pp. 152-63. New York,
1903.
(5) Cooley, Charles H. _Personal Competition: Its Place in the Social
Order and Effect upon Individuals; with Some Considerations on Success._
"Economic Studies," Vol. IV, No. 2. New York, 1899.
(6) Triplett, Norman. "The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and
Competition," _American Journal of Psychology_, IX (1897-98), 507-33.
(7) Baldwin, J. Mark. "La Concurrence sociale et l'individualisme,"
_Revue Internationale de sociologie_, XVIII (1910), 641-57.
(8) Groos, Karl. _The Play of Man._ Translated with author's
co-operation by Elizabeth L. Baldwin with a preface by J. Mark Baldwin.
New York, 1901.
D. _Discussion_
(1) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics._ Or thoughts on the
application of the principles of "Natural Selection" and "Inheritance"
to political society. Chap. v, "The Age of Discussion," pp. 156-204. New
York, 1875.
(2) Robertson, John M. _A Short History of Free Thought, Ancient and
Modern._ 2 vols. New York, 1906.
(3) Windelband, Wilhelm. _Geschichte der alten Philosophie._ "Die
Sophistik und Sokrates," pp. 63-92. München, 1894.
(4) Mackay, R. W. _The Progress of the Intellect as Exemplified in the
Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews._ 2 vols. London, 1850.
(5) Stephen, Sir Leslie. _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century._ 2d ed., 2 vols. London, 1881.
(6) Damiron, J. Ph. _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie
au 18ième siècle._ 3 vols. Paris, 1858-64.
(7) Draper, J. W. _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe._
Rev. ed., 2 vols. New York, 1904.
(8) ----. _History of the Conflict between Religion and Science._ New
York, 1873.
(9) Lecky, W. E. H. _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe._ Rev. ed., 2 vols. New York, 1903.
(10) White, Andrew D. _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology._
An expansion of an earlier essay, "The Warfare of Science," 2d. ed.,
1877. 2 vols. New York, 1896.
(11) Haynes, E. S. P. _Religious Persecution._ A study in political
psychology. London, 1904.
II. TYPES OF CONFLICT
A. _War_
1. Psychology and Sociology of War:
(1) Darwin, Charles. _The Descent of Man._ Chaps. xvii and xviii.
"Secondary Sexual Characters of Mammals," pp. 511-67. (Gives account of
the fighting instinct in males and the methods of fighting of animals.)
2d rev. ed. New York, 1907.
(2) Johnson, George E. "The Fighting Instinct: Its Place in Life,"
_Survey_, XXXV (1915-16), 243-48.
(3) Thorndike, Edward L. _The Original Nature of Man._ "Fighting," pp.
68-75. New York, 1913.
(4) Hall, G. Stanley. "A Study of Anger," _American Journal of
Psychology_, X (1898-99), 516-91.
(5) Patrick, G. T. W. _The Psychology of Social Reconstruction._ Boston,
1920.
(6) ----. _The Psychology of Relaxation._ Chap. vi, "The Psychology of
War," pp. 219-52. Boston, 1916.
(7) Pillsbury, W. B. _The Psychology of Nationalism and
Internationalism._ New York, 1919.
(8) Trotter, W. _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War._ London, 1916.
(9) La Grasserie, R. de. "De l'intolerance comme phénomène social,"
_Revue International de Sociologie_, XVIII (1910), 76-113.
(10) Percin, Alexandra. _Le Combat._ Paris, 1914.
(11) Huot, Louis, and Voivenel, Paul. _Le Courage._ Paris, 1917.
(12) Porter, W. T. _Shock at the Front._ Boston, 1918.
(13) Lord, Herbert Gardiner. _The Psychology of Courage._ Boston, 1918.
(14) Hall, G. Stanley. _Morale, the Supreme Standard of Life and
Conduct._ New York, 1920.
(15) Roussy, G., and Lhermitte, J. _The Psychoneuroses of War._
Translated by W. B. Christopherson. London, 1918.
(16) Babinski, J. F., and Froment, J. _Hysteria or Pithiatism, and
Reflex Nervous Disorders in the Neurology of the War._ Translated by J.
D. Rolleston, with a preface by E. Farquhar Buzzard. London, 1918.
2. The Natural History of War:
(1) Sumner, William G. _War and Other Essays._ Edited with an
introduction by Albert Galloway Keller. New Haven, 1911.
(2) Letourneau, Ch. _La Guerre dans les diverses races humaines._ Paris,
1895.
(3) Frobenius, Leo. _Weltgeschichte des Krieges._ Unter Mitwirkung von
Oberstleutnant a. D. H. Frobenius u. Korvetten-Kapitän a. D. E.
Kohlhauer. Hannover, 1903.
(4) Bakeless, John. _The Economic Causes of Modern Wars._ A study of the
period 1878-1918. New York, 1921.
(5) Crosby, Oscar T. _International War, Its Causes and Its Cure._
London, 1919.
(6) Sombart, Werner. _Krieg und Kapitalismus._ Studien zur
Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Kapitalismus. Vol. II, München,
1913.
(7) Lagorgette, Jean. _Le Rôle de la guerre._ Étude de sociologie
générale. Préface de M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. Paris, 1906.
(8) Steinmetz, S. R. _Der Krieg als sociologisches Problem._ Pp. 21 ff.
Amsterdam, 1899.
(9) ----. _Die Philosophie des Krieges._ "Natur- und
kultur-philosophische Bibliothek," Band VI. Leipzig, 1907.
(10) Constantin, A. _Le rôle sociologique de la guerre et le sentiment
national._ Suivi de la guerre comme moyen de sélection collective, par
S. R. Steinmetz. "Bibliothèque scientifique internationale," Tome CVIII.
Paris. 1907.
(11) Keller, Albert G. _Through War to Peace._ New York, 1918.
(12) Worms, René, editor. "Les luttes sociales." Études et paroles de E.
Levasseur, Lord Avebury, René Worms, J. Novicow, Lester F. Ward, A. P.
Xénopol, Louis Gumplowicz, Ferdinand Tönnies, Raoul de la Grasserie,
Simon Halpércine, Ludwig Stein, Émile Worms, Charles M. Limousin,
Frederick Harrison, C. L. Loch, G. Arcoleo, R. Garofalo, J. K.
Kochanowski, Léon Phillipe, Alfredo Niceforo, N. A. Abrikossof, Adolphe
Landry. _Annales de l'institut international de sociologie._ Tome XI.
Paris, 1907.
(13) Fielding-Hall, H. _Nature of War and Its Causes._ London, 1917.
(14) Oliver, Frederick S. _Ordeal by Battle._ London, 1915.
3. War and Human Nature:
(1) Petit-Dutaillis, C. E. "L'Appel de guerre en Dauphiné Ier 2 août
1914," _Annales de l'Université de Grenoble_, XXVII (1915), 1-59.
[Documents consisting of letters written by instructors and others
describing the sentiments with which the declaration of war was
received.]
(2) Wood, Walter, editor. _Soldiers' Stories of the War._ London, 1915.
(3) Buswell, Leslie. _Ambulance No. 10: Personal Letters from the
Front._ Boston, 1916.
(4) Kilpatrick, James A. _Tommy Atkins at War as Told in His Own
Letters._ New York, 1914.
(5) Fadl, Said Memun Abul. "Die Frauen des Islams und der Weltkrieg,"
_Nord und Süd_, CLV (Nov. 1915), 171-74. [Contains a letter from a
Turkish mother to her son at the front.]
(6) Maublanc, René. "La guerre vue par des enfants (septembre, 1914)."
(Recits par des enfants de campagne.) _Revue de Paris_, XXII
(septembre-octobre, 1915), 396-418.
(7) Daudet, Ernest, editor. "L'âme française et l'âme allemande."
Lettres de soldats. _Documents pour l'histoire de la guerre._ Paris,
1915.
(8) "Heimatsbriefe an russische Soldaten." (Neue philologische
Rundschau; hrsg. von dr. C. Wagener und dr. E. Ludwig in Bremen, jahrg.
1886-1908.) _Die neue Rundschau_, II (1915), 1673-83.
(9) "The Attack at Loos," by a French Lieutenant. "Under Shell-Fire at
Dunkirk," by an American Nurse. "The Winter's War," by a British
Captain. "The Bitter Experience of Lorraine," by the Prefect of
Meurthe-et-Moselle. _Atlantic Monthly_, CXVI (1915), 688-711.
(10) Böhme, Margarete. _Kriegsbriefe der Familie Wimmel._ (Personal
experiences in the Great War). Dresden, 1915.
(11) Chevillon, André. "Lettres d'un soldat," _Revue de Paris_, XXII
(juillet-août, 1915), 471-95.
(12) Boutroux, Pierre. "Les soldats allemands en campagne, d'après leur
correspondance," _Revue de Paris_, XXII (septembre-octobre, 1915),
323-43; 470-91
(13) West, Arthur Graeme. _The Diary of a Dead Officer._ Posthumous
papers. London, 1918.
(14) Mayer, Émile. "Emotions des chefs en campagne," _Bibliothèque
universelle et Revue Suisse_, LXIX (1913), 98-131.
(15) Wehrhan, K. "Volksdichtung über unsere gefallenen Helden," _Die
Grenzboten_, LXXIV (No. 28, July 14, 1915), 58-64. [Calls attention to
growth of a usage (anfangs, wagte sich der Brauch nur schüchtern, hier
und da, hervor) of printing verses, some original, some quoted, in the
death notices.]
(16) Naumann, Friedrich. "Der Kriegsglaube," _Die Hilfe_, XXI (No. 36,
Sept. 9, 1915), 576. [Sketches the forces that have created a war creed,
in which all confessions participate, immediately and without
formalities.]
(17) Roepke, Dr. Fritz. "Der Religiöse Geist in deutschen
Soldatenbriefen," _Die Grenzboten_, LXXIV (No. 30, July 28, 1915),
124-28. [An interesting analysis of letters which are not reproduced in
full.]
(18) Wendland, Walter, "Krieg und Religion," _Die Grenzboten_, LXXIV
(No. 33, Sept. 11, 1915), 212-19. [Reviews the literature of war and
religion.]
(19) Bang, J. P. _Hurrah and Hallelujah._ The teaching of Germany's
poets, prophets, professors, and preachers; a documentation. From the
Danish by Jessie Bröchner. London and New York, 1917.
B. _Race Conflict_
1. Race Relations in General:
(1) Bryce, James. _The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races
of Mankind._ Oxford, 1903.
(2) Simpson, Bertram L. _The Conflict of Colour._ The threatened
upheaval throughout the world, by Weale, B. L. P. [_pseud._]. London,
1910.
(3) Steiner, Jesse F. _The Japanese Invasion._ A study in the psychology
of inter-racial contacts. Chicago, 1917.
(4) Stoddard, T. Lothrop. _The Rising Tide of Color against White
World-Supremacy._ New York, 1920.
(5) Blyden, Edward W. _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race._ London,
1888.
(6) Spiller, G., editor. _Papers on Inter-racial Problems._ Communicated
to the First Universal Races Congress, London, 1911, pp. 463-77. Boston,
1911. [Bibliography on Race Problems.]
(7) Baker, Ray Stannard. _Following the Color Line._ An account of Negro
citizenship in the American democracy. New York, 1908.
(8) Miller, Kelly. _Race Adjustment._ Essays on the Negro in America.
New York, 1908.
(9) Stephenson, Gilbert T. _Race Distinctions in American Law._ New
York, 1910.
(10) Mecklin, John M. _Democracy and Race Friction._ A study in social
ethics. New York, 1914.
(11) Evans, Maurice. _Black and White in South East Africa._ London,
1911.
(12) ----. _Black and White in the Southern States._ A study of the race
problem in the United States from a South African point of view. London,
1915.
(13) Brailsford, H. N. _Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future._ London,
1906.
(14) Means, Philip A. _Racial Factors in Democracy._ Boston, 1918.
2. Race Prejudice:
(1) Crawley, Ernest. _The Mystic Rose._ A study of primitive marriage.
Pp. 33-58; 76-235. London, 1902. [Taboo as a mechanism for regulating
contacts.]
(2) Thomas, W. I. "The Psychology of Race-Prejudice," _American Journal
of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 593-611.
(3) Finot, Jean. _Race Prejudice._ Translated from the French by
Florence Wade-Evans. London, 1906.
(4) Pillsbury, W. B. _The Psychology of Nationality and
Internationalism._ Chap. iii, "Hate as a Social Force," pp. 63-89. New
York, 1919.
(5) Shaler, N. S. "Race Prejudices," _Atlantic Monthly_, LVIII (1886),
510-18.
(6) Stone, Alfred H. _Studies in the American Race Problem._ Chap. vi,
"Race Friction," pp. 211-41. New York, 1908.
(7) Mecklin, John M. _Democracy and Race Friction._ A study in social
ethics. Chap v, "Race-Prejudice," pp. 123-56. New York, 1914.
(8) Bailey, T. P. _Race Orthodoxy in the South._ And other aspects of
the negro question. New York, 1914.
(9) Parton, James. "Antipathy to the Negro," _North American Review_,
CXXVII (1878), 476-91.
(10) Duncan, Sara Jeannette. "Eurasia," _Popular Science Monthly_, XLII
(1892), 1-9.
(11) Morse, Josiah. "The Psychology of Prejudice," _International
Journal of Ethics_, XVII (1906-7), 490-506.
(12) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chap.
xi, "The Instinct of Pugnacity," pp. 279-95; "The Instinct of Pugnacity
and the Emotion of Anger," pp. 49-61. 4th rev. ed. Boston, 1912.
(13) Royce, Josiah. _Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American
Problems._ Chap. i, "Race Questions and Prejudices," pp. 1-53. New York,
1908.
(14) Thomas, William I. "Race Psychology: Standpoint and Questionnaire,
with Particular Reference to the Immigrant and the Negro," _American
Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1912-13), 725-75.
(15) Bryce, James. _Race Sentiment as a Factor in History._ A lecture
delivered before the University of London, February 22, 1915. London,
1915.
3. Strikes:
(1) Schwittau, G. _Die Formen des wirtschaftlichen Kampfes, Streik,
Boykott, Aussperung, usw._ Eine volkswirtschaftliche Untersuchung auf
dem Gebiete der gegenwärtigen Arbeitspolitik. Berlin, 1912.
[Bibliography.]
(2) Hall, Frederick S. _Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts._
"Columbia University Studies in Political Science." Vol. X. New York,
1898. [Bibliography.]
(3) Bing, Alexander M. _War-time Strikes and Their Adjustment._ With an
introduction by Felix Adler. New York, 1921.
(4) Egerton, Charles E., and Durand, E. Dana. _U. S. Industrial
Commission Reports of the Industrial Commission on Labor Organizations._
"Labor Disputes and Arbitration." Washington, 1901.
(5) Janes, George M. _The Control of Strikes in American Trade Unions._
Baltimore, 1916.
(6) United States Strike Commission, 1895. _Report on the Chicago Strike
of June-July, 1894, by the United States Strike Commission._ Washington,
1895.
(7) Warne, Frank J. "The Anthracite Coal Strike," _Annals of the
American Academy_, XVII (1901), 15-52.
(8) Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902-3. _Report to the President
on the Anthracite Coal Strike of May-October, 1902, by the Anthracite
Coal Strike Commission._ Washington, 1903.
(9) Hanford, Benjamin. _The Labor War in Colorado._ New York, 1904.
(10) Rastall, B. M. _The Labor History of the Cripple Creek District._ A
study in industrial evolution. Madison, Wis., 1908.
(11) United States Bureau of Labor. _Report on Strike at Bethlehem Steel
Works, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania._ Prepared under the direction of
Charles P. Neill, commissioner of labor. Washington, 1910.
(12) Wright, Arnold. _Disturbed Dublin._ The story of the great strike
of 1913-14, with a description of the industries of the Irish Capital.
London, 1914.
(13) Seattle General Strike Committee. _The Seattle General Strike._ An
account of what happened in the Seattle labor movement, during the
general strike, February 6-11, 1919. Seattle, 1919.
(14) Interchurch World Movement. _Report on the Steel Strike of 1919._
New York, 1920.
(15) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. _Report in Regard to the Strike of
Mine Workers in the Michigan Copper District._ Bulletin No. 139.
February 7, 1914.
(16) ----. _Strikes and Lockouts, 1881-1905._ Twenty-first annual
report, 1906.
(17) Foster, William Z. _The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons._ New
York, 1920.
(18) Wolman, Leo. "The Boycott in American Trade Unions," _Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science_, Vol. XXXIV.
Baltimore, 1916.
(19) Laidler, Harry W. _Boycotts and the Labor Struggle._ Economic and
legal aspects. With an introduction by Henry R. Seager. New York and
London, 1914.
(20) Hunter, Robert. _Violence and the Labour Movement._ New York, 1914.
[Bibliography.]
4. Lynch Law and Lynching:
(1) Walling, W. E. "The Race War in the North," _Independent_, LXV
(July-Sept. 1908), 529-34.
(2) "The So-Called Race Riot at Springfield," by an Eye Witness.
_Charities_, XX (1908), 709-11.
(3) Seligmann, H. J. "Race War?" _New Republic_, XX (1919), 48-50. [The
Washington race riot.]
(4) Leonard, O. "The East St. Louis Pogrom," _Survey_, XXXVIII (1917),
331-33.
(5) Sandburg, Carl. _The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919._ New York,
1919.
(6) Chicago Commission on Race Relations. _Report on the Chicago Race
Riot._ [In Press.]
(7) Cutler, James E. _Lynch-Law._ An investigation into the history of
lynching in the United States. New York, 1905.
(8) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. _Thirty
Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918._ New York, 1919.
(9) ----. _Burning at Stake in the United States._ A record of the
public burning by mobs of six men, during the first six months of 1919,
in the states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. New
York, 1919.
C. _Feuds_
(1) Miklosich, Franz. _Die Blutrache bei den Slaven._ Wien, 1887.
(2) Johnston, C. "The Land of the Blood Feud," _Harper's Weekly_, LVII
(Jan. 11, 1913), 42.
(3) Davis, H., and Smyth, C. "The Land of Feuds," _Munseys'_, XXX
(1903-4), 161-72.
(4) "Avenging Her Father's Death," _Literary Digest_, XLV (November 9,
1912), 864-70.
(5) Campbell, John C. _The Southern Highlander and His Homeland._ Pp.
110-13. New York, 1921.
(6) Wermert, Georg. _Die Insel Sicilien, in volkswirtschaftlicher,
kultureller, und sozialer Beziehung._ Chap. xxvii, "Volkscharacter und
Mafia." Berlin, 1901.
(7) Heijningen, Hendrik M. K. van. _Het Straf- en Wraakrecht in den
Indischen Archipel._ Leiden, 1916.
(8) Steinmetz, S. R. _Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der
Strafe, nebst einer psychologischen Abhandlung über Grausamkeit und
Rachsucht._ 2 vols. Leiden, 1894.
(9) Wesnitsch, Milenko R. _Die Blutrache bei den Südslaven._ Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte des Strafrechts. Stuttgart, 1889.
(10) Bourde, Paul. _En Corse._ L'esprit de clan--les moeurs
politiques--les vendettas--le banditisme. Correspondances adressées au
"Temps." Cinquième édition. Paris, 1906.
(11) Dorsey, J. Owen. "Omaha Sociology," chap. xii, "The Law," sec. 310,
"Murder," p. 369. In _Third Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of American
Ethnology, 1881-82._ Washington, 1884.
(12) Woods, A. "The Problem of the Black Hand," _McClure's_, XXXIII
(1909), 40-47.
(13) Park, Robert E., and Miller, Herbert A. _Old World Traits
Transplanted._ New York, 1921. [See pp. 241-58 for details of rise and
decline of Black Hand in New York.]
(14) White, F. M. "The Passing of the Black Hand," _Century_, XCV, N. S.
73 (1917-18), 331-37.
(15) Cutrera, A. _La Mafia e i mafiosi._ Origini e manifestazioni.
Studio di sociologia criminale, con una carta a colori su la densità
della Mafia in Sicilia. Palermo, 1900.
D. _The Duel and the Ordeal of Battle_
(1) Millingen, J. G. _The History of Duelling._ Including narratives of
the most remarkable personal encounters that have taken place from the
earliest period to the present time. 2 vols. London, 1841.
(2) Steinmetz, Andrew. _The Romance of Duelling in All Times and
Countries._ London, 1868.
(3) Sabine, Lorenzo. _Notes on Duels and Duelling._ Boston, 1855.
(4) Patetta, F. _Le Ordalie._ Studio di storia del diritto e scienza del
diritto comparato. Turino, 1890.
(5) Lea, Henry C. _Superstition and Force._ Essays on the wager of law,
the wager of battle, the ordeal, torture. 4th ed., rev., Philadelphia,
1892.
(6) Neilson, George. _Trial by Combat._ In Great Britain. Glasgow and
London, 1890.
E. _Games and Gambling_
(1) Culin, Stewart. "Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.," _The
Journal of American Folk-Lore_, IV (1891), 221-37.
(2) ----. _Korean Games._ With notes on the corresponding games of China
and Japan. Philadelphia, 1895.
(3) ----. "Games of the North American Indians," _Twenty-fourth Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1902-3._ Washington, 1907.
(4) Steinmetz, Andrew. _The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims, in
all Times and Countries, Especially in England and in France._ London,
1870.
(5) Thomas, W. I. "The Gaming Instinct," _American Journal of
Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 750-63.
(6) O'Brien, Frederick. _White Shadows in the South Seas._ Chap. xxii,
pp. 240-48. [Memorable Game for Matches in the Cocoanut Grove of Lano
Kaioo].
III. CONFLICT GROUPS
A. _Gangs_
(1) Johnson, John H. _Rudimentary Society Among Boys._ "Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science," 2d series, XI,
491-546. Baltimore, 1884.
(2) Puffer, J. Adams. _The Boy and His Gang._ Boston, 1912.
(3) Sheldon, H. D., "Institutional Activities of American Children,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, IX (1899), 425-48.
(4) Thurston, Henry W. _Delinquency and Spare Time._ A study of a few
stories written into the court records of the City of Cleveland.
Cleveland, Ohio., 1918.
(5) Woods, Robert A., editor. _The City Wilderness._ A settlement study
by residents and associates of the South End House. Chap. vi, "The Roots
of Political Power," pp. 114-47. Boston, 1898.
(6) Hoyt, F. C. "The Gang in Embryo," _Scribner's_, LXVIII (1920),
146-54. [Presiding justice of the Children's Court of the city of New
York.]
(7) _Boyhood and Lawlessness._ Chap. iv, "His Gangs," pp. 39-54. Russell
Sage Foundation, New York, 1914.
(8) Culin, Stewart. "Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.," _The
Journal of American Folklore_, IV (1891), 221-37. [For observations on
gangs see p. 235.]
(9) Adams, Brewster. "The Street Gang as a Factor in Politics,"
_Outlook_ LXXIV (1903), 985-88.
(10) Lane, W. D. "The Four Gunmen," _The Survey_, XXXII (1914), 13-16.
(11) Rhodes, J. F. "The Molly Maguires in the Anthracite Region of
Pennsylvania," _American Historical Review_, XV (1909-10) 547-61.
(12) Train, Arthur. "Imported Crime: The Story of the Camorra in
America," _McClure's_, XXXIX (1912), 82-94.
B. _Sects_
(1) Nordhoff, Charles. _The Communistic Societies of the United States
from Personal Visit and Observation._ Including chapters on "The Amana
Society," "The Separatists of Zoar," "The Shakers," "The Oneida and
Wallingford Perfectionists," "The Aurora and Bethel Communes." New York,
1875.
(2) Gillin, John L. _The Dunkers: A Sociological Interpretation._ New
York, 1906. [Columbia University dissertation, V, 2.]
(3) Milmine, Georgine. _The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History
of Christian Science._ New York, 1909.
(4) Gehring, Johannes. _Die Sekten der russischen Kirche, 1003-1897._
Nach ihrem Ursprunge und inneren Zusammenhange dargestellt. Leipzig,
1898.
(5) Grass, K. K. _Die russischen Sekten._ I, "Die Gottesleute oder
Chlüsten"; II, "Die weissen Tauben oder Skopzen." Leipzig, 1907-9.
(6) Lea, Henry Charles. _The Moriscos of Spain._ Their conversion and
expulsion. Philadelphia, 1901.
(7) Friesen, P. M. _Geschichte der alt-evangelischen mennoniten
Brüderschaft in Russland (1789-1910) im Rahmen der mennonitischen
Gesamtgeschichte._ Halbstadt, 1911.
(8) Kalb, Ernst. _Kirchen und Sekten der Gegenwart._ Unter Mitarbeit
verschiedener evangelischer Theologen. Stuttgart, 1905.
(9) Mathiez, Albert. _Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires._
(1789-92). Paris, 1904.
(10) Rossi, Pasquale. _Mistici e Settarii._ Studio di psicopatologia
collettiva. Milan, 1900.
(11) Rohde, Erwin. _Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der
Griechen._ Freiburg, 1890.
C. _Economic Conflict Groups_
(1) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. _Industrial Democracy._ London, 1897.
(2) ----. _The History of Trade Unionism._ (Revised edition extended to
1920.) New York and London, 1920.
(3) Commons, John R., editor. _Trade Unionism and Labor Problems_,
Boston, 1905.
(4) ----. _History of Labor in the United States._ 2 vols. New York,
1918.
(5) Groat, George G. _An Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor in
America._ New York, 1916.
(6) Hoxie, Robert F. _Trade Unionism in the United States._ New York,
1917.
(7) Marot, Helen. _American Labor Unions._ By a member. New York, 1914.
(8) Carlton, Frank T. _Organized Labor in American History._ New York,
1920.
(9) Levine, Louis. _Syndicalism in France._ 2d rev. ed. of _The Labor
Movement in France._ New York and London, 1914.
(10) Brissenden, Paul Frederick. _The I.W.W., A Study of American
Syndicalism._ New York, 1919. [Bibliography.]
(11) Brooks, John Graham. _American Syndicalism; the I.W.W._ New York,
1913.
(12) ----. _Labor's Challenge to the Social Order._ Democracy its own
critic and educator. New York, 1920.
(13) Baker, Ray Stannard. _The New Industrial Unrest._ Reasons and
remedies. New York, 1920.
(14) Commons, John R. _Industrial Democracy._ New York, 1921.
(15) Brentano, Lujo. _On the History and Development of Gilds and the
Origin of Trade Unions._ London, 1870.
D. _Parties_
(1) Bluntschli, Johann K. _Charakter und Geist der politischen
Parteien._ Nördlingen, 1869.
(2) Ostrogorskïi, Moisei. _Democracy and the Organization of Political
Parties._ Translated from the French by F. Clarke with a preface by
Right Hon. James Bryce. New York and London, 1902.
(3) Lowell, A. Lawrence. _Governments and Parties in Continental
Europe._ 2 vols. Boston, 1896.
(4) Merriam, C. E. _The American Party System._ In press.
(5) Haynes, Frederick E. _Third Party Movements since the Civil War,
with Special Reference to Iowa._ A study in social politics. Iowa City,
1916.
(6) Ray, P. O. _An Introduction to Political Parties and Practical
Politics._ New York, 1913.
(7) Bryce, James. _The American Commonwealth._ 2 vols. New rev. ed. New
York, 1911.
(8) Hadley, Arthur T. _Undercurrents in American Politics._ Being the
Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford University, and the Barbour-Page
Lectures, delivered at the University of Virginia in the spring of 1914.
New Haven, 1915.
(9) Lowell, A. Lawrence. _Annual Report of the American Historical
Association, 1901._ 2 vols. "The Influence of Party upon Legislation in
England and America" (with four diagrams), I, 319-542. Washington, 1902.
(10) Beard, Charles A. _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy._ New
York, 1915.
(11) Morgan, W. T. _English Political Parties and Leaders in the Reign
of Queen Anne, 1702-1710._ New Haven, 1920.
(12) Michels, Robert. _Political Parties._ A sociological study of the
oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy. Translated by Eden and
Cedar Paul. New York, 1915.
(13) Haines, Lynn. _Your Congress._ An interpretation of the political
and parliamentary influences that dominate law-making in America.
Washington, D.C., 1915.
(14) Hichborn, Franklin. _Story of the Session of the California
Legislature._ San Francisco, 1909, 1911, 1913, 1915.
(15) Myers, Gustavus. _The History of Tammany Hall._ 2d ed. rev. and
enl. New York, 1917.
(16) Roosevelt, Theodore. _An Autobiography._ New York, 1913.
(17) Platt, Thomas C. _Autobiography._ Compiled and edited by Louis J.
Lang. New York, 1910.
(18) Older, Fremont. _My Own Story._ San Francisco, 1919.
(19) Orth, Samuel P. _The Boss and the Machine._ A chronicle of the
politicians and party organization. New Haven, 1919.
(20) Riordon, William L. _Plunkitt of Tammany Hall._ A series of very
plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-Senator George
Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum--the New
York County Court House boot-black stand. New York, 1905.
E. _Nationalities_
(1) Oakesmith, John. _Race and Nationality._ An inquiry into the origin
and growth of patriotism. New York, 1919.
(2) Lillehei, Ingebrigt. "Landsmaal and the Language Movement in
Norway," _Journal of English and Germanic Philology_, XIII (1914),
60-87.
(3) Morris, Lloyd R. _The Celtic Dawn._ A survey of the renascence in
Ireland, 1889-1916. New York, 1917.
(4) Keith, Arthur. _Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point
of View._ London, 1919.
(5) Barnes, Harry E. "Nationality and Historiography" in the article
"History, Its Rise and Development," _Encyclopedia Americana_, XIV,
234-43.
(6) Fisher, H. A. "French Nationalism," _Hibbert Journal_, XV (1916-17),
217-29.
(7) Ellis, H. "The Psychology of the English," _Edinburgh Review_,
CCXXIII (April, 1916), 223-43.
(8) Bevan, Edwyn R. _Indian Nationalism._ An independent estimate.
London, 1913.
(9) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Psychology of Peoples._ London, 1898.
(10) Francke, K. "The Study of National Culture," _Atlantic Monthly_,
XCIX (1907), 409-16.
(11) Auerbach, Bertrand. _Les races et nationalités en
Autriche-Hongrie._ Deuxième édition revisée. Paris, 1917.
(12) Butler, Ralph. _The New Eastern Europe._ London, 1919.
(13) Kerlin, Robert T. _The Voice of the Negro 1919._ New York, 1920. [A
compilation from the colored press of America for the four months
immediately succeeding the Washington riots.]
(14) Boas, F. "Nationalism," _Dial_, LXVI (March 8, 1919), 232-37.
(15) Buck, Carl D. "Language and the Sentiment of Nationality," _The
American Political Science Review_, X (1916), 44-69.
(16) McLaren, A. D. "National Hate," _Hibbert Journal_, XV (1916-17),
407-18.
(17) Miller, Herbert A. "The Rising National Individualism,"
_Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 49-65.
(18) Zimmern, Alfred E. _Nationality and Government._ With other wartime
essays. London and New York, 1918.
(19) Small, Albion W. "Bonds of Nationality," _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1915-16), 629-83.
(20) Faber, Geoffrey. "The War and Personality in Nations," _Fortnightly
Review_, CIII (1915), 538-46. Also in _Living Age_, CCLXXXV (1915),
265-72.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The History of Conflict as a Sociological Concept
2. Types of Conflict: War, the Duello, Litigation, Gambling, the Feud,
Discussion, etc.
3. Conflict Groups: Gangs, Labor Organizations, Sects, Parties,
Nationalities, etc.
4. Mental Conflicts and the Development of Personality
5. Sex Differences in Conflict
6. Subtler Forms of Conflict: Rivalry, Emulation, Jealousy, Aversion,
etc.
7. Personal Rivalry in Polite Society
8. Conflict and Social Status
9. The Strike as an Expression of the Wish for Recognition
10. Popular Justice: the History of the Molly Maguires, of the Night
Riders, etc.
11. The Sociology of Race Prejudice
12. Race Riots in the North and the South
13. War as an Action Pattern, Biological or Social?
14. War as a Form of Relaxation
15. The Great War Interpreted by Personal Documents
16. Conflict and Social Organization
17. Conflict and Social Progress
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How do you differentiate between competition and conflict?
2. Is conflict always conscious?
3. How do you explain the emotional interest in conflict?
4. In your opinion, are the sexes in about the same degree interested in
conflict?
5. In what way do you understand Simmel to relate conflict to social
process?
6. What are the interrelations of war and social contacts?
7. "Without aversion life in a great city would have no thinkable form."
Explain.
8. "It is advantageous to hate the opponent with whom one is
struggling." Explain.
9. Give illustrations of feuds not mentioned by Simmel.
10. How do you distinguish between feuds and litigation?
11. What examples occur to you of conflicts of impersonal ideals?
12. What are the psychological causes of war?
13. "We may see in war the preliminary process of rejuvenescence."
Explain.
14. Has war been essential to the process of social adjustment? Is it
still essential?
15. What do you understand by war as a form of relaxation?
16. How do you interpret Professor James's reaction to the Chautauqua?
17. What is the rôle of conflict in recreation?
18. Is it possible to provide psychic equivalents for war?
19. What application of the sociological theory of the relation of
ideals to instinct would you make to war?
20. How do you distinguish rivalry from competition and conflict?
21. What bearing have the facts of animal rivalry upon an understanding
of rivalry in human society?
22. What are the different devices by which the group achieves and
maintains solidarity? How many of these were characteristic of the
war-time situation?
23. In what way is group rivalry related to the development of
personality?
24. How does rivalry contribute to social organization?
25. What do you understand by Giddings' distinction between cultural
conflicts and "logical duels"?
26. Have you reason for thinking that culture conflict will play a
lesser rôle in the future than in the past?
27. To what extent was the world-war a culture conflict?
28. Under what circumstances do social contacts make (a) for conflict,
and (b) for co-operation?
29. What has been the effect of the extension of communication upon the
relations of nations? Elaborate.
30. What do you understand by race prejudice as a "more or less
instinctive defense-reaction"?
31. To what extent is race prejudice based upon race competition?
32. Do you believe that it is possible to remove the causes of race
prejudice?
33. In what ways does race conflict make for race consciousness?
34. What are the different elements or forces in the interaction of
races making for race conflict and race consciousness?
35. Is a heightening of race consciousness of value or of disadvantage
to a racial group?
36. How do you explain the present tendency of the Negro to substitute
the copying of colored models for the imitation of white models?
37. "In the South, the races seem to be tending in the direction of a
bi-racial organization of society, in which the Negro is gradually
gaining a limited autonomy." Interpret.
38. "All racial problems are distinctly problems of racial
distribution." Explain with reference to relative proportion of Negroes,
Chinese, and Japanese in certain sections of the United States.
39. Why have few or no race riots occurred in the South?
40. Under what circumstances have race riots occurred in the North?
FOOTNOTES:
[206] Adapted from William I. Thomas, "The Gaming Instinct," in the
_American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 750-63.
[207] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, by
Albion W. Small, "The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal
of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 490-501.
[208] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, by
Albion W. Small, "The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal
of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 505-8.
[209] Adapted from William A. White, _Thoughts of a Psychiatrist on the
War and After_, pp. 75-87. (Paul B. Hoeber, 1919.)
[210] From G. T. W. Patrick, "The Psychology of War," in the _Popular
Science Monthly_, LXXXVII (1915), 166-68.
[211] Adapted from Henry Rutgers Marshall, _War and the Ideal of Peace_,
pp. 96-110. (Duffield & Co., 1915.)
[212] Adapted from William H. Hudson, "The Strange Instincts of Cattle,"
_Longman's Magazine_, XVIII (1891), 393-94.
[213] Adapted from George E. Vincent, "The Rivalry of Social Groups," in
the _American Journal of Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 471-84.
[214] Adapted from Franklin H. Giddings, "Are Contradictions of Ideas
and Beliefs Likely to Play an Important Group-making Rôle in the
Future?" in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XIII (1907-8), 784-91.
[215] From Robert E. Park, Introduction to Jesse F. Steiner, _The
Japanese Invasion_. (A. C. McClurg & Co., 1917.)
[216] From Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in
_Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 75-82.
[217] Adapted from Alfred H. Stone, "Is Race Friction between Blacks and
Whites in the United States Growing and Inevitable?" in the _American
Journal of Sociology_, XIII (1907-8), 677-96.
[218] Karl Groos, _The Play of Man_, p. 213. (New York, 1901.)
[219] _Supra_, p. 50.
[220] _The Dial_, LXVII (Oct. 4, 1919), 297.
CHAPTER X
ACCOMMODATION
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Adaptation and Accommodation
The term _adaptation_ came into vogue with Darwin's theory of the origin
of the species by natural selection. This theory was based upon the
observation that no two members of a biological species or of a family
are ever exactly alike. Everywhere there is variation and individuality.
Darwin's theory assumed this variation and explained the species as the
result of natural selection. The individuals best fitted to live under
the conditions of life which the environment offered, survived and
produced the existing species. The others perished and the species which
they represented disappeared. The differences in the species were
explained as the result of the accumulation and perpetuation of the
individual variations which had "survival value." Adaptations were the
variations which had been in this way selected and transmitted.
The term _accommodation_ is a kindred concept with a slightly different
meaning. The distinction is that adaptation is applied to organic
modifications which are transmitted biologically; while accommodation is
used with reference to changes in habit, which are transmitted, or may
be transmitted, sociologically, that is, in the form of social
tradition. The term first used in this sense by Baldwin is defined in
the _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_.
In view of modern biological theory and discussion, two modes of
adaptation should be distinguished: (a) adaptation through variation
[hereditary]; (b) adaptation through modification [acquired]. For the
functional adjustment of the individual to its environment [(b) above]
J. Mark Baldwin has suggested the term "accommodation," recommending
that adaptation be confined to the structural adjustments which are
congenital and heredity [(a) above]. The term "accommodation" applies
to any acquired alteration of function resulting in better adjustment
to environment and to the functional changes which are thus
effected.[221]
The term accommodation, while it has a limited field of application in
biology, has a wide and varied use in sociology. All the social
heritages, traditions, sentiments, culture, technique, are
accommodations--that is, acquired adjustments that are socially and not
biologically transmitted. They are not a part of the racial inheritance
of the individual, but are acquired by the person in social experience.
The two conceptions are further distinguished in this, that adaptation
is an effect of competition, while accommodation, or more properly
social accommodation, is the result of conflict.
The outcome of the adaptations and accommodations, which the struggle
for existence enforces, is a state of relative equilibrium among the
competing species and individual members of these species. The
equilibrium which is established by adaptation is biological, which
means that, in so far as it is permanent and fixed in the race or the
species, it will be transmitted by biological inheritance.
The equilibrium based on accommodation, however, is not biological; it
is economic and social and is transmitted, if at all, by tradition. The
nature of the economic equilibrium which results from competition has
been fully described in chapter viii. The plant community is this
equilibrium in its absolute form.
In animal and human societies the community has, so to speak, become
incorporated in the individual members of the group. The individuals are
adapted to a specific type of communal life, and these adaptations, in
animal as distinguished from human societies, are represented in the
division of labor between the sexes, in the instincts which secure the
protection and welfare of the young, in the so-called gregarious
instinct, and all these represent traits that are transmitted
biologically. But human societies, although providing for the expression
of original tendencies, are organized about tradition, mores, collective
representations, in short, _consensus_. And consensus represents, not
biological adaptations, but social accommodations.
Social organization, with the exception of the order based on
competition and adaptation, is essentially an accommodation of
differences through conflicts. This fact explains why diverse-mindedness
rather than like-mindedness is characteristic of human as distinguished
from animal society. Professor Cooley's statement of this point is
clear:
The unity of the social mind consists not in agreement but in
organization, in the fact of reciprocal influence or causation
among its parts, by virtue of which everything that takes place
in it is connected with everything else, and so is an outcome
of the whole.[222]
The distinction between accommodation and adaptation is illustrated in
the difference between domestication and taming. Through domestication
and breeding man has modified the original inheritable traits of plants
and animals. He has changed the character of the species. Through
taming, individuals of species naturally in conflict with man have
become accommodated to him. Eugenics may be regarded as a program of
biological adaptation of the human race in conscious realization of
social ideals. Education, on the other hand, represents a program of
accommodation or an organization, modification, and culture of original
traits.
Every society represents an organization of elements more or less
antagonistic to each other but united for the moment, at least, by an
arrangement which defines the reciprocal relations and respective
spheres of action of each. This accommodation, this _modus vivendi_, may
be relatively permanent as in a society constituted by castes, or quite
transitory as in societies made up of open classes. In either case, the
accommodation, while it is maintained, secures for the individual or for
the group a recognized status.
Accommodation is the natural issue of conflicts. In an accommodation the
antagonism of the hostile elements is, for the time being, regulated,
and conflict disappears as overt action, although it remains latent as a
potential force. With a change in the situation, the adjustment that had
hitherto successfully held in control the antagonistic forces fails.
There is confusion and unrest which may issue in open conflict.
Conflict, whether a war or a strike or a mere exchange of polite
innuendoes, invariably issues in a new accommodation or social order,
which in general involves a changed status in the relations among the
participants. It is only with assimilation that this antagonism, latent
in the organization of individuals or groups, is likely to be wholly
dissolved.
2. Classification of the Materials
The selections on accommodation in the materials are organized under the
following heads: (a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and
superordination; (c) conflict and accommodation; and (d)
competition, status, and social solidarity.
a) _Forms of accommodation._--There are many forms of accommodation.
One of the most subtle is that which in human geography is called
acclimatization, "accommodation to new climatic conditions." Recent
studies like those of Huntington in his "Climate and Civilization" have
emphasized the effects of climate upon human behavior. The selection
upon acclimatization by Brinton states the problems involved in the
adjustment of racial groups to different climatic environments. The
answers which he gives to the questions raised are not to be regarded as
conclusive but only as representative of one school of investigators and
as contested by other authorities in this field.
Naturalization, which in its original sense means the process by which a
person is made "natural," that is, familiar and at home in a strange
social milieu, is a term used in America to describe the legal process
by which a foreigner acquires the rights of citizenship. Naturalization,
as a social process, is naturally something more fundamental than the
legal ceremony of naturalization. It includes accommodation to the
folkways, the mores, the conventions, and the social ritual
(_Sittlichkeit_). It assumes also participation, to a certain extent at
least, in the memories, the tradition, and the culture of a new social
group. The proverb "In Rome do as the Romans do" is a basic principle of
naturalization. The cosmopolitan is the person who readily accommodates
himself to the codes of conduct of new social milieus.[223]
The difficulty of social accommodation to a new social milieu is not
always fully appreciated. The literature on homesickness and nostalgia
indicates the emotional dependence of the person upon familiar
associations and upon early intimate personal relations. Leaving home
for the first time, the intense lonesomeness of the rural lad in the
crowds of the city, the perplexity of the immigrant in the confusing
maze of strange, and to him inexplicable, customs are common enough
instances of the personal and social barriers to naturalization. But the
obstacles to most social adjustments for a person in a new social world
are even more baffling because of their subtle and intangible nature.
Just as in biology balance represents "a state of relatively good
adjustment due to structural adaptation of the organism as a whole" so
accommodation, when applied to groups rather than individuals, signifies
their satisfactory co-ordination from the standpoint of the inclusive
social organization.
Historically, the organization of the more inclusive society--i.e.,
states, confederations, empires, social and political units composed of
groups accommodated but not fully assimilated--presents four typical
constellations of the component group. Primitive society was an
organization of kinship groups. Ancient society was composed of masters
and slaves, with some special form of accommodation for the freeman and
the stranger, who was not a citizen, to be sure, but was not a slave
either.
Medieval society rested upon a system of class, approaching castes in
the distances it enforced. In all these different situations competition
took place only between individuals of the same status.
In contrast with this, modern society is made up of economic and social
classes with freedom of economic competition and freedom in passage,
therefore, from one class to the other.
b) _Subordination and superordination._--Accommodation, in the area of
personal relations, tends to take the form of subordination and
superordination. Even where accommodation has been imposed, as in the
case of slavery, by force, the personal relations of master and slave
are invariably supported by appropriate attitudes and sentiments. The
selection "Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner" is a
convincing exhibit of the way in which attitudes of superordination and
subordination may find expression in the sentiments of a conscientious
and self-complacent paternalism on the part of the master and of an
ingratiating and reverential loyalty on the part of the slave. In a like
manner the selection from the "Memories of an Old Servant" indicates the
natural way in which sentiments of subordination which have grown up in
conformity with an accepted situation eventually become the basis of a
life-philosophy of the person.
Slavery and caste are manifestly forms of accommodation. The facts of
subordination are quite as real, though not as obvious, in other phases
of social life. The peculiar intimacy which exists, for example, between
lovers, between husband and wife, or between physician and patient,
involves relations of subordination and superordination, though not
recognized as such. The personal domination which a coach exercises over
the members of a ball team, a minister over his congregation, the
political leader over his party followers are instances of the same
phenomena.
Simmel in his interesting discussion of the subject points out the fact
that the relations of subordination and superordination are reciprocal.
In order to impose his will upon his slaves it was necessary for the
master to retain their respect. No one had a keener appreciation of the
aristocracy nor a greater scorn for the "poor white" than the Negro
slaves in the South before the war.
The leader of the gang, although he seems to have decisions absolutely
in his hand, has a sense of the attitudes of his followers. So the
successful political leader, who sometimes appears to be taking risks in
his advocacy of new issues, keeps "his ear close to the grass roots of
public opinion."
In the selection upon "The Psychology of Subordination and
Superordination" Münsterberg interprets suggestion, imitation, and
sympathy in terms of domination and submission. Personal influence,
prestige, and authority, in whatever form they find expression, are
based, to a greater or less extent, on the subtle influences of
suggestion.
The natural affections are social bonds which not infrequently assume
the form of bondage. Many a mother has been reduced to a condition of
abject subjection through her affection for a son or a daughter. The
same thing is notoriously true of the relations between the sexes. It is
in social complexes of this sort, rather than in the formal procedures
of governments, that we must look for the fundamental mechanism of
social control.
The conflicts and accommodations of persons with persons and of groups
with groups have their prototypes in the conflicts and accommodations of
the wishes of the person. The conflicts and accommodations in the mental
life of the person have received the name in psychoanalysis of
_sublimation_. The sublimation of a wish means its expression in a form
which represents an accommodation with another conflicting wish which
had repressed the original response of the first wish. The progressive
organization of personality depends upon the successful functioning of
this process of sublimation. The wishes of the person at birth are
inchoate; with mental development these wishes come into conflict with
each other and with the enveloping social milieu. Adolescence is
peculiarly the period of "storm and stress." Youth lives in a maze of
mental conflicts, of insurgent and aspiring wishes. Conversion is the
sudden mutation of life-attitudes through a reorganization or
transformation of the wishes.
c) _Conflict and accommodation._--The intrinsic relation between
conflict and accommodation is stated in the materials by Simmel in his
analysis of war and peace and the problems of compromise. "The
situations existing in time of peace are precisely the conditions out of
which war emerges." War, on the other hand, brings about the adjustments
in the relations of competing and conflict groups which make peace
possible. The problem, therefore, must find a solution in some method by
which the conflicts which are latent in, or develop out of, the
conditions of peace may be adjusted without a resort to war. In so far
as war is an effect of the mere inhibitions which the conditions of
peace impose, substitutes for war must provide, as William James has
suggested, for the expression of the expanding energies of individuals
and nations in ways that will contribute to the welfare of the community
and eventually of mankind as a whole. The intention is to make life more
interesting and at the same time more secure.
The difficulty is that the devices which render life more secure
frequently make it less interesting and harder to bear. Competition, the
struggle for existence and for, what is often more important than mere
existence, namely, status, may become so bitter that peace is
unendurable.
More than that, under the condition of peace, peoples whose life-habits
and traditions have been formed upon a basis of war frequently multiply
under conditions of peace to such an extent as to make an ultimate war
inevitable. The natives of South Africa, since the tribal wars have
ceased, have so increased in numbers as to be an increasing menace to
the white population. Any amelioration of the condition of mankind that
tends to disturb the racial equilibrium is likely to disturb the peace
of nations. When representatives of the Rockefeller Medical Foundation
proposed to introduce a rational system of medicine in China, certain of
the wise men of that country, it is reported, shook their heads
dubiously over the consequences that were likely to follow any large
decrease in the death-rate, seeing that China was already overpopulated.
In the same way education, which is now in a way to become a heritage of
all mankind, rather than the privilege of so-called superior peoples,
undoubtedly has had the effect of greatly increasing the mobility and
restlessness of the world's population. In so far as this is true, it
has made the problem of maintaining peace more difficult and dangerous.
On the other hand, education and the extension of intelligence
undoubtedly increase the possibility of compromise and conciliation
which, as Simmel points out, represent ways in which peace may be
restored and maintained other than by complete victory and subjugation
of the conquered people. It is considerations of this kind that have led
men like von Moltke to say that "universal peace is a dream and not even
a happy one," and has led other men like Carnegie to build peace palaces
in which the nations of the world might settle their differences by
compromise and according to law.
d) _Competition, status, and social solidarity._--Under the title
"Competition, Status, and Social Solidarity" selections are introduced
in the materials which emphasize the relation of competition to
accommodation. Up to this point in the materials only the relations of
conflict to accommodation have been considered. Status has been
described as an effect of conflict. But it is clear that economic
competition frequently becomes conscious and so passes over into some of
the milder forms of conflict. Aside from this it is evident that
competition in so far as it determines the vocation of the individual,
determines indirectly also his status, since it determines the class of
which he is destined to be a member. In the same way competition is
indirectly responsible for the organization of society in so far as it
determines the character of the accommodations and understandings which
are likely to exist between conflict groups. Social types as well as
status are indirectly determined by competition, since most of them are
vocational. The social types of the modern city, as indicated by the
selection on "Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual
Types," are an outcome of the division of labor. Durkheim points out
that the division of labor in multiplying the vocations has increased
and not diminished the unity of society. The interdependence of
differentiated individuals and groups has made possible a social
solidarity that otherwise would not exist.
II. MATERIALS
A. FORMS OF ACCOMMODATION
1. Acclimatization[224]
The most important ethnic question in connection with climate is that of
the possibility of a race adapting itself to climatic conditions widely
different from those to which it has been accustomed. This is the
question of acclimatization.
Its bearings on ethnic psychology can be made at once evident by posing
a few practical inquiries: Can the English people flourish in India?
Will the French colonize successfully the Sudan? Have the Europeans lost
or gained in power by their migration to the United States? Can the
white or any other race ultimately become the sole residents of the
globe?
It will be seen that on the answers to such questions depends the
destiny of races and the consequences to the species of the facilities
of transportation offered by modern inventions. The subject has
therefore received the careful study of medical geographers and
statisticians.
I can give but a brief statement of their conclusions. They are to the
effect, first, that when the migration takes place along approximately
the same isothermal lines, the changes in the system are slight; but as
the mean annual temperature rises, the body becomes increasingly unable
to resist its deleterious action until a difference of 18° F. is
reached, at which continued existence of the more northern races
becomes impossible. They suffer from a chemical change in the condition
of the blood cells, leading to anemia in the individual and to
extinction of the lineage in the third generation.
This is the general law of the relation to race and climate. Like most
laws it has its exceptions, depending on special conditions. A stock
which has long been accustomed to change of climate adapts itself to any
with greater facility. This explains the singular readiness of the Jews
to settle and flourish in all zones. For a similar reason a people who
at home are accustomed to a climate of wide and sudden changes, like
that of the eastern United States, supports others with less loss of
power than the average.
A locality may be extremely hot but unusually free from other malefic
influences, being dry with regular and moderate winds, and well drained,
such as certain areas between the Red Sea and the Nile, which are also
quite salubrious.
Finally, certain individuals and certain families, owing to some
fortunate power of resistance which we cannot explain, acclimate
successfully where their companions perish. Most of the instances of
alleged successful acclimatization of Europeans in the tropics are due
to such exceptions, the far greater number of the victims being left out
of the count.
If these alleged successful cases, or that of the Jews or Arabs, be
closely examined, it will almost surely be discovered that another
physiological element has been active in bringing about acclimatization,
and that is the mingling of blood with the native race. In the American
tropics the Spaniards have survived for four centuries; but how many of
the _Ladinos_ can truthfully claim an unmixed descent? In Guatemala, for
example, says a close observer, _not any_. The Jews of the Malabar coast
have actually become black, and so has also in Africa many an Arab
claiming direct descent from the Prophet himself.
But along with this process of adaptation by amalgamation comes
unquestionably a lowering of the mental vitality of the higher race.
That is the price it has to pay for the privilege of survival under the
new conditions. But, in conformity to the principles already laid down
as accepted by all anthropologists, such a lowering must correspond to a
degeneration in the highest grades of structure, the brain cells.
We are forced, therefore, to reach the decision that the human species
attains its highest development only under moderate conditions of heat,
such as prevail in the temperate zones (an annual mean of 8°-12° C.);
and the more startling conclusion that the races now native to the polar
and tropical areas are distinctly _pathological_, are types of
degeneracy, having forfeited their highest physiological elements in
order to purchase immunity from the unfavorable climatic conditions to
which they are subject. We must agree with a French writer, that "man is
not cosmopolitan," and if he insists on becoming a "citizen of the
world" he is taxed heavily in his best estate for his presumption.
The inferences in racial psychology which follow this opinion are too
evident to require detailed mention. Natural selection has fitted the
Eskimo and the Sudanese for their respective abodes, but it has been by
the process of regressive evolution; progressive evolution in man has
confined itself to less extreme climatic areas.
The facts of acclimatization stand in close connection with another
doctrine in anthropology which is interesting for my theme, that of
"ethno-geographic provinces." Alexander von Humboldt seems to have been
the first to give expression to this system of human grouping, and it
has been diligently cultivated by his disciple, Professor Bastian. It
rests upon the application to the human species of two general
principles recognized as true in zoölogy and botany. The one is that
every organism is directly dependent on its environment (the _milieu_),
action and reaction going on constantly between them; the other is, that
no two faunal or floral regions are of equal rank in their capacity for
the development of a given type of organism.
The features which distinguish one ethno-geographic province from
another are chiefly, according to Bastian, meteorological, and they
permit, he claims, a much closer division of human groups than the
general continental areas which give us an African, a European, and an
American subspecies.
It is possible that more extended researches may enable ethnographers to
map out, in this sense, the distribution of our species; but the secular
alterations in meteorologic conditions, combined with the migratory
habits of most early communities, must greatly interfere with a rigid
application of these principles in ethnography.
The historic theory of "centres of civilisation" is allied to that of
ethno-geographic provinces. The stock examples of such are familiar. The
Babylonian plain, the valley of the Nile, in America the plateaus of
Mexico and of Tiahuanuco are constantly quoted as such. The geographic
advantages these situations offered--a fertile soil, protection from
enemies, domesticable plants, and a moderate climate--are offered as
reasons why an advanced culture rapidly developed in them, and from them
extended over adjacent regions.
Without denying the advantages of such surroundings, the most recent
researches in both hemispheres tend to reduce materially their
influence. The cultures in question did not begin at one point and
radiate from it, but arose simultaneously over wide areas, in different
linguistic stocks, with slight connections; and only later, and
secondarily, was it successfully concentrated by some one tribe--by the
agency, it is now believed, of cognatic rather than geographic aids.
Assyriologists no longer believe that Sumerian culture originated in the
delta of the Euphrates, and Egyptologists look for the sources of the
civilization of the Nile Valley among the Libyans; while in the New
World not one but seven stocks partook of the Aztec learning, and half a
dozen contributed to that of the Incas. The prehistoric culture of
Europe was not one of Carthaginians or Phoenicians, but was
self-developed.
2. Slavery Defined[225]
In most branches of knowledge the phenomena the man of science has to
deal with have their technical names, and, when using a scientific
term, he need not have regard to the meaning this term conveys in
ordinary language; he knows he will not be misunderstood by his
fellow-scientists. For instance, the Germans call a whale _Wallfisch_,
and the English speak of shellfish; but a zoölogist, using the word
fish, need not fear that any competent person will think he means whales
or shellfish.
In ethnology the state of things is quite different. There are a few
scientific names bearing a definite meaning, such as the terms "animism"
and "survival," happily introduced by Professor Tylor. But most
phenomena belonging to our science have not yet been investigated, so
it is no wonder that different writers (sometimes even the same writer
on different pages) give different names to the same phenomenon,
whereas, on the other hand, sometimes the same term (e.g., matriarchate)
is applied to widely different phenomena. As for the subject we are
about to treat of, we shall presently see that several writers have
given a definition of slavery; but no one has taken the trouble to
inquire whether his definition can be of any practical use in social
science. Therefore, we shall try to give a good definition and justify
it.
But we may not content ourselves with this; we must also pay attention
to the meaning of the term "slavery" as commonly employed. There are two
reasons for this. First, we must always rely upon the statements of
ethnographers. If an ethnographer states that some savage tribe carries
on slavery, without defining in what this "slavery" consists, we have to
ask: What may our informant have meant? And as he is likely to have used
the word in the sense generally attached to it, we have to inquire: What
is the ordinary meaning of the term "slavery"?
The second reason is this. Several theoretical writers speak of slavery
without defining what they mean by it; and we cannot avail ourselves of
their remarks without knowing what meaning they attach to this term. And
as they too may be supposed to have used it in the sense in which it is
generally used, we have again to inquire: What is the meaning of the
term "slavery" in ordinary language?
The general use of the word, as is so often the case, is rather
inaccurate. Ingram says:
Careless or rhetorical writers use the words "slave" and
"slavery" in a very lax way. Thus, when protesting against the
so-called "Subjection of Women," they absurdly apply those
terms to the condition of the wife in the modern society of the
west--designations which are inappropriate even in the case of
the inmate of Indian zenanas; and they speak of the modern
worker as a "wage-slave," even though he is backed by a
powerful trade-union. Passion has a language of its own, and
poets and orators must doubtless be permitted to denote by the
word "slavery" the position of subjects of a state who labor
under civil disabilities or are excluded from the exercise of
political power; but in sociological study things ought to have
their right names, and those names should, as far as possible,
be uniformly employed.
But this use of the word we may safely regard as a metaphor; nobody will
assert that these laborers and women are really slaves. Whoever uses the
term slavery in its ordinary sense attaches a fairly distinct idea to
it. What is this idea? We can express it most generally thus: a slave is
one who is not free. There are never slaves without there being freemen
too; and nobody can be at the same time a slave and a freeman. We must,
however, be careful to remember that, man being a "social animal," no
man is literally free; all members of a community are restricted in
their behavior toward each other by social rules and customs. But
freemen at any rate are relatively free; so a slave must be one who does
not share in the common amount of liberty, compatible with the social
connection.
The condition of the slave as opposed to that of the freeman presents
itself to us under the three following aspects:
First, every slave has his master to whom he is subjected. And this
subjection is of a peculiar kind. Unlike the authority one freeman
sometimes has over another, the master's power over his slave is
unlimited, at least in principle; any restriction put upon the master's
free exercise of his power is a mitigation of slavery, not belonging to
its nature, just as in Roman law the proprietor may do with his property
whatever he is not by special laws forbidden to do. The relation between
master and slave is therefore properly expressed by the slave being
called the master's "possession" or "property"--expressions we
frequently meet with.
Secondly, slaves are in a lower condition as compared with freemen. The
slave has no political rights; he does not choose his government, he
does not attend the public councils. Socially he is despised.
In the third place, we always connect with slavery the idea of
compulsory labor. The slave is compelled to work; the free laborer may
leave off working if he likes, be it at the cost of starving. All
compulsory labor, however, is not slave labor; the latter requires that
peculiar kind of compulsion that is expressed by the word "possession"
or "property" as has been said before.
Recapitulating, we may define a slave in the ordinary sense of the word
as a man who is the property of another, politically and socially at a
lower level than the mass of the people, and performing compulsory
labor.
The great function of slavery can be no other than a _division of
labor_. Division of labor is taken here in the widest sense, as
including not only a qualitative division, by which one man does one
kind of work and another a different kind, but also a quantitative one,
by which one man's wants are provided for, not by his own work only, but
by another's. A society without any division of labor would be one in
which each man worked for his own wants, and nobody for another's; in
any case but this there is a division of labor in this wider sense of
the word. Now this division can be brought about by two means. "There
are two ways" says Puchta "in which we can avail ourselves of the
strength of other men which we are in need of. One is the way of free
commerce, that does not interfere with the liberty of the person who
serves us, the making of contracts by which we exchange the strength and
skill of another, or their products, for other performances on our part:
hire of services, purchase of manufactures, etc. The other way is the
subjugation of such persons, which enables us to dispose of their
strength in our behalf but at the same time injures the personality of
the subjected. This subjection can be imagined as being restricted to
certain purposes, for instance to the cultivation of the land, as with
soil-tilling serfs, the result of which is that this subjection, for the
very reason that it has a definite and limited aim, does not quite annul
the liberty of the subjected. But the subjection can also be an
unlimited one, as is the case when the subjected person, in the whole of
his outward life, is treated as but a means to the purposes of the man
of power, and so his personality is entirely absorbed. This is the
institution of slavery."
3. Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner[226]
Soon after nine o'clock we reached Savannah la Mar, where I found my
trustee, and a whole cavalcade, waiting to conduct me to my own estate;
for he had brought with him a curricle and pair for myself, a gig for my
servant, two black boys upon mules, and a cart with eight oxen to convey
my baggage. The road was excellent, and we had not above five miles to
travel; and as soon as the carriage entered my gates, the uproar and
confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. The works were
instantly all abandoned; everything that had life came flocking to the
house from all quarters; and not only the men, and the women, and the
children, but, "by a bland assimilation," the hogs, and the dogs, and
the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by
instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be
afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was
sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest that I ever
witnessed: they all talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and, in the
violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each other, and rolled
about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once enquired after uncles, and
aunts, and grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been
buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most
of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black
child to me, grinning from ear to ear, "Look, Massa, look here! him nice
lilly neger for Massa!" Another complained, "So long since none come see
we, Massa; good Massa, come at last." As for the old people, they were
all in one and the same story: now they had lived once to see Massa,
they were ready for dying tomorrow, "them no care."
The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their strange and sudden
bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in
large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-colored
handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle
of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied,
formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth.
Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet
there was something in it by which I could not help being affected;
perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my
_slaves_;--to be sure, I never saw people look more happy in my life;
and I believe their condition to be much more comfortable than that of
the laborers of Great Britain; and, after all, slavery, in _their_ case,
is but another name for servitude, now that no more negroes can be
forcibly carried away from Africa and subjected to the horrors of the
voyage and of the seasoning after their arrival; but still I had already
experienced, in the morning, that Juliet was wrong in saying "What's in
a name?" For soon after my reaching the lodging-house at Savannah la
Mar, a remarkably clean-looking negro lad presented himself with some
water and a towel--I concluded him to belong to the inn--and, on my
returning the towel, as he found that I took no notice of him, he at
length ventured to introduce himself by saying, "Massa not know me; _me
your slave!_"--and really the sound made me feel a pang at the heart.
The lad appeared all gaiety and good humor, and his whole countenance
expressed anxiety to recommend himself to my notice, but the word
"slave" seemed to imply that, although he did feel pleasure then in
serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really
felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him, "Do
not say that again; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself
my slave."
As I was returning this morning from Montego Bay, about a mile from my
own estate, a figure presented itself before me, I really think the most
picturesque that I ever beheld: it was a mulatto girl, born upon
Cornwall, but whom the overseer of a neighboring estate had obtained my
permission to exchange for another slave, as well as two little
children, whom she had borne to him; but, as yet, he had been unable to
procure a substitute, owing to the difficulty of purchasing single
negroes, and Mary Wiggins is still my slave. However, as she is
considered as being manumitted, she had not dared to present herself at
Cornwall on my arrival, lest she should have been considered as an
intruder; but she now threw herself in my way to tell me how glad she
was to see me, for that she had always thought till now (which is the
general complaint) that "_she had no massa_;" and also to obtain a
regular invitation to my negro festival tomorrow. By this universal
complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their
hard fate in being subject to a master, _their_ greatest fear is the not
having a master whom they know; and that to be told by the negroes of
another estate that "they belong to no massa," is one of the most
contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when
they happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered
for Montego Bay the next morning, they fancied that I was going away for
good and all, and came up to the house in such a hubbub that my agent
was obliged to speak to them, and pacify them with the assurance that I
should come back on Friday without fail.
But to return to Mary Wiggins: she was much too pretty not to obtain her
invitation to Cornwall; on the contrary, I _insisted_ upon her coming,
and bade her tell her _husband_ that I admired his taste very much for
having chosen her. I really think that her form and features were the
most _statue-like_ that I ever met with; her complexion had no yellow in
it and yet was not brown enough to be dark--it was more of an ash-dove
color than anything else; her teeth were admirable, both for color and
shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad
enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour: her
air and countenance would have suited Yarico; but she reminded me most
of Grassini in "La Vergine del Sole," only that Mary Wiggins was a
thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of a white robe, she
wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonized
excellently with her complexion; while one of her beautiful arms was
thrown across her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of rings on
her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. Mary Wiggins and an old cotton
tree are the most picturesque objects that I have seen for these twenty
years.
I really believe that the negresses can produce children at pleasure,
and where they are barren, it is just as hens will frequently not lay
eggs on shipboard, because they do not like their situation. Cubina's
wife is in a family way, and I told him that if the child should live, I
would christen it for him, if he wished it. "Tank you, kind massa, me
like it very much: much oblige if massa do that for _me_, too." So I
promised to baptize the father and the baby on the same day, and said
that I would be godfather to any children that might be born on the
estate during my residence in Jamaica. This was soon spread about, and,
although I have not yet been here a week, two women are in the straw
already, Jug Betty and Minerva: the first is wife to my head driver, The
Duke of Sully, but my sense of propriety was much gratified at finding
that Minerva's husband was called Captain. I think nobody will be able
to accuse me of neglecting the religious education of my negroes, for I
have not only promised to baptize all the infants, but, meeting a little
black boy this morning, who said that his name was Moses, I gave him a
piece of silver, and told him that it was for the sake of Aaron; which,
I flatter myself, was planting in his young mind the rudiments of
Christianity.
On my former visit to Jamaica, I found on my estate a poor woman nearly
one hundred years old, and stone blind. She was too infirm to walk, but
two young negroes brought her on their backs to the steps of my house,
in order, as she said, that she might at least touch massa, although she
could not see him. When she had kissed my hand, "that was enough," she
said: "now me hab once kiss a massa's hand, me willing to die tomorrow,
me no care." She had a woman appropriated to her service and was shown
the greatest care and attention; however, she did not live many months
after my departure. There was also a mulatto, about thirty years of age,
named Bob, who had been almost deprived of the use of his limbs by the
horrible cocoa-bay, and had never done the least work since he was
fifteen. He was so gentle and humble and so fearful, from the
consciousness of his total inability of soliciting my notice, that I
could not help pitying the poor fellow; and whenever he came in my way I
always sought to encourage him by little presents and other trifling
marks of favor. His thus unexpectedly meeting with distinguishing
kindness, where he expected to be treated as a worthless incumbrance,
made a strong impression on his mind.
4. The Origin of Caste in India[227]
If it were possible to compress into a single paragraph a theory so
complex as that which would explain the origin and nature of Indian
caste, I should attempt to sum it up in some such words as the
following: A caste is a marriage union, the constituents of which were
drawn from various different tribes (or from various other castes
similarly formed) in virtue of some industry, craft, or function, either
secular or religious, which they possessed in common. The internal
discipline, by which the conditions of membership in regard to connubial
and convivial rights are defined and enforced, has been borrowed from
the tribal period which preceded the period of castes by many centuries,
and which was brought to a close by the amalgamation of tribes into a
nation under a common scepter. The differentia of _caste_ as a marriage
union consists in some community of function; while the differentia of
_tribe_ as a marriage union consisted in a common ancestry, or a common
worship, or a common totem, or in fact in any kind of common property
except that of a common function.
Long before castes were formed on Indian soil, most of the industrial
classes, to which they now correspond, had existed for centuries, and as
a rule most of the industries which they practiced were hereditary on
the male side of the parentage. These hereditary classes were and are
simply the concrete embodiments of those successive stages of culture
which have marked the industrial development of mankind in every part of
the world. Everywhere (except at least in those countries where he is
still a savage), man has advanced from the stage of hunting and fishing
to that of nomadism and cattle-grazing, and from nomadism to agriculture
proper. Everywhere has the age of metallurgy and of the arts and
industries which are coeval with it been preceded by a ruder age, when
only those arts were known or practiced which sufficed for the hunting,
fishing, and nomad states. Everywhere has the class of ritualistic
priests and lettered theosophists been preceded by a class of
less-cultivated worshipers, who paid simple offerings of flesh and wine
to the personified powers of the visible universe without the aid of a
hereditary professional priesthood. Everywhere has the class of nobles
and territorial chieftains been preceded by a humbler class of small
peasant proprietors, who placed themselves under their protection and
paid tribute or rent in return. Everywhere has this class of nobles and
chieftains sought to ally itself with that of the priests or sacerdotal
order; and everywhere has the priestly order sought to bring under its
control those chiefs and rulers under whose protection it lives.
All these classes had been in existence for centuries before any such
thing as caste was known on Indian soil; and the only thing that was
needed to convert them into castes, such as they now are, was that the
Brahman, who possessed the highest of all functions--the
priestly--should set the example. This he did by establishing for the
first time the rule that no child, either male or female, could inherit
the name and status of Brahman, unless he or she was of Brahman
parentage on _both_ sides. By the establishment of this rule the
principle of marriage unionship was superadded to that of functional
unionship; and it was only by the combination of these two principles
that a caste in the strict sense of the term could or can be formed. The
Brahman, therefore, as the Hindu books inform us, was "the first-born
of castes." When the example had thus been set by an arrogant and
overbearing priesthood, whose pretensions it was impossible to put down,
the other hereditary classes followed in regular order downward, partly
in imitation and partly in self-defence. Immediately behind the
Brahman came the Kshatriya, the military chieftain or landlord. He
therefore was the "second-born of castes." Then followed the bankers or
upper trading classes (the Agarwal, Khattri, etc.); the scientific
musician and singer (Kathak); the writing or literary class
(Kayasth); the bard or genealogist (Bhat); and the class of
inferior nobles (Taga and Bhuinhar) who paid no rent to the landed
aristocracy. These, then, were the third-born of castes. Next in order
came those artisan classes, who were coeval with the age and art of
metallurgy; the metallurgic classes themselves; the middle trading
classes; the middle agricultural classes, who placed themselves under
the protection of the Kshatriya and paid him rent in return (Kurmi,
Kachhi, Mali, Tamboli); and the middle serving classes, such as
Napit and Baidya, who attended to the bodily wants of their equals and
superiors. These, then, were the fourth-born of castes; and their rank
in the social scale has been determined by the fact that their manners
and notions are farther removed than those of the preceding castes from
the Brahmanical ideal. Next came the inferior artisan classes, those
who preceded the age and art of metallurgy (Teli, Kumhar, Kalwar,
etc.); the partly nomad and partly agricultural classes (Jat,
Gujar, Ahir, etc.); the inferior serving classes, such as Kahar;
and the inferior trading classes, such as Bhunja. These, then, were the
fifth-born of castes, and their mode of life is still farther removed
from the Brahmanical ideal than that of the preceding. The last-born,
and therefore the lowest, of all the classes are those semisavage
communities, partly tribes and partly castes, whose function consists in
hunting or fishing, or in acting as butcher for the general community,
or in rearing swine and fowls, or in discharging the meanest domestic
services, such as sweeping and washing, or in practicing the lowest of
human arts, such as basket-making, hide-tanning, etc. Thus throughout
the whole series of Indian castes a double test of social precedence has
been in active force, the industrial and the Brahmanical; and these
two have kept pace together almost as evenly as a pair of horses
harnessed to a single carriage. In proportion as the function practiced
by any given caste stands high or low in the scale of industrial
development, in the same proportion does the caste itself, impelled by
the general tone of society by which it is surrounded, approximate more
nearly or more remotely to the Brahmanical idea of life. It is these
two criteria combined which have determined the relative ranks of the
various castes in the Hindu social scale.
5. Caste and the Sentiments of Caste Reflected in Popular Speech[228]
No one indeed can fail to be struck by the intensely popular character
of Indian proverbial philosophy and by its freedom from the note of
pedantry which is so conspicuous in Indian literature. These quaint
sayings have dropped fresh from the lips of the Indian rustic; they
convey a vivid impression of the anxieties, the troubles, the
annoyances, and the humors of his daily life; and any sympathetic
observer who has felt the fascination of an oriental village would have
little difficulty in constructing from these materials a fairly accurate
picture of rural society in India. The _mise en scène_ is not altogether
a cheerful one. It shows us the average peasant dependent upon the
vicissitudes of the season and the vagaries of the monsoon, and watching
from day to day to see what the year may bring forth. Should rain fall
at the critical moment his wife will get golden earrings, but one short
fortnight of drought may spell calamity when "God takes all at once."
Then the forestalling Baniya flourishes by selling rotten grain, and the
Jat cultivator is ruined. First die the improvident Musalman
weavers, then the oil-pressers for whose wares there is no demand; the
carts lie idle, for the bullocks are dead, and the bride goes to her
husband without the accustomed rites. But be the season good or bad, the
pious Hindu's life is ever overshadowed by the exactions of the
Brahman--"a thing with a string round its neck" (a profane hit at the
sacred thread), a priest by appearance, a butcher at heart, the chief of
a trio of tormentors gibbeted in the rhyming proverb:
Blood-suckers three on earth there be,
The bug, the Brahman, and the flea.
Before the Brahman starves the king's larder will be empty; cakes
must be given to him while the children of the house may lick the
grindstone for a meal; his stomach is a bottomless pit; he eats so
immoderately that he dies from wind. He will beg with a lakh of rupees
in his pocket, and a silver begging-bowl in his hand. In his greed for
funeral fees he spies out corpses like a vulture, and rejoices in the
misfortunes of his clients. A village with a Brahman in it is like a
tank full of crabs; to have him as a neighbor is worse than leprosy; if
a snake has to be killed the Brahman should be set to do it, for no
one will miss him. If circumstances compel you to perjure yourself, why
swear on the head of your son, when there is a Brahman handy? Should
he die (as is the popular belief) the world will be none the poorer.
Like the devil in English proverbial philosophy, the Brahman can cite
scripture for his purpose; he demands worship himself but does not
scruple to kick his low-caste brethren; he washes his sacred thread but
does not cleanse his inner man; and so great is his avarice that a man
of another caste is supposed to pray "O God, let me not be reborn as a
Brahman priest, who is always begging and is never satisfied." He
defrauds even the gods; Vishnu gets the barren prayers while the
Brahman devours the offerings. So Pan complains in one of Lucian's
dialogues that he is done out of the good things which men offer at his
shrine.
The next most prominent figure in our gallery of popular portraits is
that of the Baniya, money-lender, grain-dealer, and monopolist, who
dominates the material world as the Brahman does the spiritual. His
heart, we are told, is no bigger than a coriander seed; he has the jaws
of an alligator and a stomach of wax; he is less to be trusted than a
tiger, a scorpion, or a snake; he goes in like a needle and comes out
like a sword; as a neighbor he is as bad as a boil in the armpit. If a
Baniya is on the other side of a river you should leave your bundle on
this side, for fear he should steal it. When four Baniyas meet they rob
the whole world. If a Baniya is drowning you should not give him a hand:
he is sure to have some base motive for drifting down stream. He uses
light weights and swears that the scales tip themselves; he keeps his
accounts in a character that no one but God can read; if you borrow from
him, your debt mounts up like a refuse heap or gallops like a horse; if
he talks to a customer he "draws a line" and debits the conversation;
when his own credit is shaky he writes up his transactions on the wall
so that they can easily be rubbed out. He is so stingy that the dogs
starve at his feast, and he scolds his wife if she spends a farthing on
betel-nut. A Jain Baniya drinks dirty water and shrinks from killing
ants and flies, but will not stick at murder in pursuit of gain. As a
druggist the Baniya is in league with the doctor; he buys weeds at a
nominal price and sells them very dear. Finally, he is always a shocking
coward: eighty-four Khatris will run away from four thieves.
Nor does the clerical caste fare better at the hands of the popular
epigrammatist. Where three Kayasths are gathered together a
thunderbolt is sure to fall; when honest men fall out the Kayasth
gets his chance. When a Kayasth takes to money-lending he is a
merciless creditor. He is a man of figures; he lives by the point of his
pen; in his house even the cat learns two letters and a half. He is a
versatile creature, and where there are no tigers he will become a
shikari; but he is no more to be trusted than a crow or a snake
without a tail. One of the failings sometimes imputed to the educated
Indian is attacked in the saying, "Drinking comes to a Kayasth with
his mother's milk."
Considering the enormous strength of the agricultural population of
India, one would have expected to find more proverbs directed against
the great cultivating castes. Possibly the reason may be that they made
most of the proverbs, and people can hardly be expected to sharpen their
wit on their own shortcomings. In two provinces, however, the rural
Pasquin has let out very freely at the morals and manners of the Jat,
the typical peasant of the eastern Punjab and the western districts of
the United Provinces. You may as well, we are told, look for good in a
Jat as for weevils in a stone. He is your friend only so long as you
have a stick in your hand. If he cannot harm you he will leave a bad
smell as he goes by. To be civil to him is like giving treacle to a
donkey. If he runs amuck it takes God to hold him. A Jat's laugh
would break an ordinary man's ribs. When he learns manners, he blows his
nose with a mat, and there is a great run on the garlic. His baby has a
plowtail for a plaything. The Jat stood on his own corn heap and
called out to the King's elephant-drivers, "Hi there, what will you take
for those little donkeys?" He is credited with practicing fraternal
polyandry, like the Venetian nobility of the early eighteenth century,
as a measure of domestic economy, and a whole family are said to have
one wife between them.
The Doms, among whom we find scavengers, vermin-eaters, executioners,
basket-makers, musicians, and professional burglars, probably represent
the remnants of a Dravidian tribe crushed out of recognition by the
invading Aryans and condemned to menial and degrading occupations. Sir
G. Grierson has thrown out the picturesque suggestion that they are the
ancestors of the European gypsies and that Rom or Romany is nothing more
than a variant of Dom. In the ironical language of the proverbs the Dom
figures as "the lord of death" because he provides the wood for the
Hindu funeral pyre. He is ranked with Brahmans and goats as a
creature useless in time of need. A common and peculiarly offensive form
of abuse is to tell a man that he has eaten a Dom's leavings. A series
of proverbs represents him as making friends with members of various
castes and faring ill or well in the process. Thus the Kanjar steals his
dog, and the Gujar loots his house; on the other hand, the barber
shaves him for nothing, and the silly Jolahaa makes him a suit of
clothes. His traditions associate him with donkeys, and it is said that
if these animals could excrete sugar, Doms would no longer be beggars.
"A Dom in a palanquin and a Brahman on foot" is a type of society
turned upside down. Nevertheless, outcast as he is, the Dom occupies a
place of his own in the fabric of Indian society. At funerals he
provides the wood and gets the corpse clothes as his perquisite; he
makes the discordant music that accompanies a marriage procession; and
baskets, winnowing-fans, and wicker articles in general are the work of
his hands.
In the west of India, Mahars and Dheds hold much the same place as
the Dom. In the walled villages of the Maratha country the
Mahar is the scavenger, watchman, and gate-keeper. His presence
pollutes; he is not allowed to live in the village; and his miserable
shanty is huddled up against the wall outside. But he challenges the
stranger who comes to the gate, and for this and other services he is
allowed various perquisites, among them that of begging for broken
victuals from house to house. He offers old blankets to his god, and his
child's playthings are bones. The Dhed's status is equally low. If he
looks at a water jar he pollutes its contents; if you run up against him
by accident, you must go off and bathe. If you annoy a Dhed he sweeps up
the dust in your face. When he dies, the world is so much the cleaner.
If you go to the Dheds' quarter you find there nothing but a heap of
bones.
This relegation of the low castes to a sort of ghetto is carried to
great lengths in the south of India where the intolerance of the
Brahman is very conspicuous. In the typical Madras village the
Pariahs--"dwellers in the quarter" (_para_) as this broken tribe
is now called--live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm
leaves known as the _parchery_, the squalor and untidiness of which
present the sharpest contrasts to the trim street of tiled masonry
houses where the Brahmans congregate. "Every village," says the
proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet"--a place of pollution the census of
which is even now taken with difficulty owing to the reluctance of the
high-caste enumerator to enter its unclean precincts. "A palm tree,"
says another, "casts no shade; a Pariah has no caste and rules." The
popular estimate of the morals of the Pariah comes out in the saying,
"He that breaks his word is a Pariah at heart"; while the note of irony
predominates in the pious question, "If a Pariah offers boiled rice will
not the god take it?" the implication being that the Brahman priests
who take the offerings to idols are too greedy to inquire by whom they
are presented.
B. SUBORDINATION AND SUPERORDINATION
1. The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination[229]
The typical suggestion is given by words. But the impulse to act under
the influence of another person arises no less when the action is
proposed in the more direct form of showing the action itself. The
submission then takes the form of imitation. This is the earliest type
of subordination. It plays a fundamental rôle in the infant's life, long
before the suggestion through words can begin its influence. The infant
imitates involuntarily as soon as connections between the movement
impulses and the movement impressions have been formed. At first
automatic reflexes produce all kinds of motions, and each movement
awakes kinesthetic and muscle sensations. Through association these
impressions become bound up with the motor impulses. As soon as the
movements of other persons arouse similar visual sensations the
kinesthetic sensations are associated and realize the corresponding
movement. Very soon the associative irradiation becomes more complex,
and whole groups of emotional reactions are imitated. The child cries
and laughs in imitation.
Most important is the imitation of the speech movement. The sound awakes
the impulse to produce the same vocal sound long before the meaning of
the word is understood. Imitation is thus the condition for the
acquiring of speech, and later the condition for the learning of all
other abilities. But while the imitation is at first simply automatic,
it becomes more and more volitional. The child intends to imitate what
the teacher shows as an example. This intentional imitation is certainly
one of the most important vehicles of social organization. The desire to
act like certain models becomes the most powerful social energy. But
even the highest differentiation of society does not eliminate the
constant working of the automatic, impulsive imitation.
The inner relation between imitation and suggestion shows itself in the
similarity of conditions under which they are most effective. Every
increase of suggestibility facilitates imitation. In any emotional
excitement of a group every member submits to the suggestion of the
others, but the suggestion is taken from the actual movements. A crowd
in a panic or a mob in a riot shows an increased suggestibility by which
each individual automatically repeats what his neighbors are doing. Even
an army in battle may become, either through enthusiasm or through fear,
a group in which all individuality is lost and everyone is forced by
imitative impulses to fight or escape. The psychophysical experiment
leaves no doubt that this imitative response releases the sources of
strongest energy in the mental mechanism. If the arm lifts the weight of
an ergograph until the will cannot overcome the fatigue, the mere seeing
of the movement carried out by others whips the motor centers to new
efficiency.
We saw that our feeling states are both causes and effects of our
actions. We cannot experience the impulse to action without a new
shading of our emotional setting. Imitative acting involves, therefore,
an inner imitation of feelings too. The child who smiles in response to
the smile of his mother shares her pleasant feeling. The adult who is
witness of an accident in which someone is hurt imitates instinctively
the cramping muscle contractions of the victim, and as a result he feels
an intense dislike without having the pain sensations themselves. From
such elementary experiences an imitative emotional life develops,
controlled by a general sympathetic tendency. We share the pleasures and
the displeasures of others through an inner imitation which remains
automatic. In its richer forms this sympathy becomes an _altruistic
sentiment_; it stirs the desire to remove the misery around us and
unfolds to a general mental setting through which every action is
directed toward the service to others. But from the faintest echoing of
feelings in the infant to the highest self-sacrifice from altruistic
impulse, we have the common element of submission. The individual is
feeling, and accordingly acting, not in the realization of his
individual impulses, but under the influence of other personalities.
This subordination to the feelings of others through sympathy and pity
and common joy takes a new psychological form in the affection of
tenderness and especially parental love. The relation of parents to
children involves certainly an element of superordination, but the
mentally strongest factor remains the subordination, the complete
submission to the feelings of those who are dependent upon the parents'
care. In its higher development the parental love will not yield to
every momentary like or dislike of the child, but will adjust the
educative influence to the lasting satisfactions and to the later
sources of unhappiness. But the submission of the parents to the feeling
tones in the child's life remains the fundamental principle of the
family instinct. While the parents' love and tenderness mean that the
stronger submits to the weaker, even up to the highest points of
self-sacrifice, the loving child submits to his parents from feelings
which are held together by a sense of dependence. This feeling of
dependence as a motive of subordination enters into numberless human
relations. Everywhere the weak lean on the strong, and choose their
actions under the influence of those in whom they have confidence. The
corresponding feelings show the manifold shades of modesty, admiration,
gratitude, and hopefulness. Yet it is only another aspect of the social
relation if the consciousness of dependence upon the more powerful is
felt with fear and revolt, or with the nearly related emotion of envy.
The desire to assert oneself is no less powerful, in the social
interplay, than the impulse to submission. Society needs the leaders as
well as the followers. Self-assertion presupposes contact with other
individuals. Man protects himself against the dangers of nature, and
man masters nature; but he asserts himself against men who interfere
with him or whom he wants to force to obedience. The most immediate
reaction in the compass of self-assertion is indeed the _rejection of
interference_. It is a form in which even the infant shows the opposite
of submission. He repels any effort to disturb him in the realization of
the instinctive impulses. From the simplest reaction of the infant
disturbed in his play or his meal, a straight line of development leads
to the fighting spirit of man, whose pugnaciousness and whose longing
for vengeance force his will on his enemies. Every form of rivalry,
jealousy, and intolerance finds in this feeling group its source of
automatic response. The most complex intellectual processes may be made
subservient to this self-asserting emotion.
But the effort to impose one's will on others certainly does not result
only from conflict. An entirely different emotional center is given by
the mere desire for _self-expression_. In every field of human activity
the individual may show his inventiveness, his ability to be different
from others, to be a model, to be imitated by his fellows. The normal
man has a healthy, instinctive desire to claim recognition from the
members of the social group. This interferes neither with the spirit of
co-ordination nor with the subordination of modesty. In so far as the
individual demands acknowledgement of his personal behavior and his
personal achievement, he raises himself by that act above others. He
wants his mental attitude to influence and control the social
surroundings. In its fuller development this inner setting becomes the
ambition for leadership in the affairs of practical life or in the
sphere of cultural work.
The superficial counterpart is the desire for _self-display_ with all
its variations of vanity and boastfulness. From the most bashful
submission to the most ostentatious self-assertion, from the
self-sacrifice of motherly love to the pugnaciousness of despotic
egotism, the social psychologist can trace the human impulses through
all the intensities of the human energies which interfere with equality
in the group. Each variation has its emotional background and its
impulsive discharge. Within normal limits they are all equally useful
for the biological existence of the group and through the usefulness for
the group ultimately serviceable to its members. Only through
superordination and subordination does the group receive the inner
firmness which transforms the mere combination of men into working
units. They give to human society that strong and yet flexible
organization which is the necessary condition for its successful
development.
2. Social Attitudes in Subordination: Memories of an Old Servant[230]
Work is a great blessing, and it has been wisely arranged by our divine
Master that all his creatures should have a work to do of some kind.
Some are weak and some are strong. Old and young, rich and poor, there
is that work expected from us, and how much happier we are when we are
at our work.
There are so many things to learn, so many different kinds of work that
must be done to make the world go on right. And some work is easier than
others; but all ought to be well done, and in a cheerful, contented
manner. Some prefer working with hands and feet; they say it is easier
than the head work; but surely both are heavy work, for it does depend
on your ability.
Boys and girls do not leave school so early as they did fifty or sixty
years ago. The boys went out quite happy and manly to do their herding
at some farm, and would be very useful for some years till they
preferred learning some trade, etc.; then a younger boy just filled his
place; and by doing this they did learn farming a good bit, and this
helped them on in after years if they wanted to go back to farming
again. We regret to see that the page-boy is not wanted so much as he
used to be; and what a help that used to be for a young boy. He learns a
great deal by being first of all a while in the stable yard or garage
before he goes into the gentleman's house, and he is neat and tidy at
all times for messages. We have seen many of them in our young days; and
even the waif has been picked up by a good master, and began in the
stables and worked his way up to be a respected valet in the same
household, and often and often told the story of his waif life in the
servants' hall.
The old servant has seen many changes and in many cases prefers the good
old ways; there may be some better arrangements made, we cannot doubt
that, but we are surprised at good old practices that our late beloved
employers had ignored by their own children after they have so far
grown up. Servants need the good example from their superiors, and when
they hear the world speak well of them they do look for the good ways in
the home life. We all like to hold up an employer's good name, surely we
do if we are interested at all in our work, and if we feel that we
cannot do our duty to them we ought to go elsewhere and not deceive
them. We are trusted with a very great deal, and it is well for us if we
are doing all we can as faithful servants, and in the end lay down our
tools with the feeling that we have tried to do our best.
We must remember that each one is born in his station in life, wisely
arranged by "One Who Knows and Who Is Our Supreme Ruler." No one can
alter this nor say to him, "What Doest Thou?" so we must each and all
keep our station and honor the rich man and the poor man who humbly
tries to live a Christian life, and when their faults are seen by us may
we at once turn to ourselves and look if we are not human, too, and may
be as vile as they.
We have noticed some visitors very rude to the servants and so different
to our own employers, and we set a mark on them, for we would not go to
serve them. We remember once when our lady's brother was showing a
visiting lady some old relics near the front door they came upon the
head housemaid who was cleaning the church pew chairs (they were carried
in while the church was being repaired), and she was near a very old
grand piano. The lady asked in such a jeer, "And is this the housemaid's
piano"? The gentleman looked very hard at the housemaid, for we were
sure that he was very annoyed at her, but we did not hear his answer;
but the housemaid had the good sense to keep quiet, but she could have
told her to keep her jeers, for we were not her class of servant,
neither was she our class of employer. We heard her character after, and
never cared to see her. Some servants take great liberties, and then all
are supposed to be alike; but we are glad that all ladies are not like
this, for the world would be poor indeed; they would soon ruin all the
girls--and no wonder her husband had left her. We heard of a gentleman
who fancied his laundry-maid, so he called his servants together and
told them that he was to marry her and bring her home as the lady of his
house, and he hoped they would all stay where they were; but if they
felt that they could not look upon her as their mistress and his wife,
they were free to go away. And not one of them left, for they stayed on
with them for years. This is a true story from one who knew them and
could show us their London house. Now we have lived with superior
servants, and we would much rather serve them even now in our old age
than serve any lady who can never respect a servant.
Nothing brings master and servant closer together than the sudden sore
bereavement, and very likely this book could not be written so sad were
it not for the many sad days that have been spent in service, and now so
very few of the employers are to be seen; and when they are with us we
feel that we are still respected by them, for there is the usual
welcome--for they would look back the same as we do on days that are
gone by. In our young days the curtsy was fashionable; you would see
every man's daughter bobbing whenever they met the lady or gentlemen or
when they met their teacher. The custom is gone now, and we wonder why;
but the days are changed, and some call it education that is so far
doing this; it cannot be education, for we do look for more respect from
the educated than from the class that we called the ignorant.
How well off the servants are in these years of war, for they have no
rent to worry about and no anxiety about their coal bill, nor how food,
etc., is to be got in and paid for, no taxes nor cares like so many poor
working men; they are also sure of their wages when quarter day comes
round. It is true she may have a widow mother who requires some help
with rent, coals, or food, but there are many who ought to value a good
situation, whether in the small comfortable house as general or in
larger good situations where a few servants are, for we have seen them
all and know what they have been like, and so, we say that all as a rule
ought to be very thankful that they are the domestic servant and so
study to show gratitude by good deeds to all around, as there is work
just now for everyone to do.
A great deal more could easily be written, and we hope some old servant
may also speak out in favor of domestic service, and so let it be again
what it has been, and when both will look on each other as they ought,
for there has always been master and servant, and we have the number of
servants, or near the number, given here by one who knows, 1,330,783
female domestic servants at the last census in 1911, and so the domestic
service is the largest single industry that is; there are more people
employed as domestic servants than any other class of employment.
Before closing this book the writer would ask that a kinder interest may
be taken in girls who may have at one time been in disgrace; many of
them have no homes and we might try to help them into situations. This
appeal is from the old housekeeper and so from one who has had many a
talk with young girls for their good; but they have often been led far
astray. We ought to give them the chance again, by trying to get them
situations, and if the lady is not her friend, nor the housekeeper, we
pity her.
3. The Reciprocal Character of Subordination and Superordination[231]
Every social occurrence consists of an interaction between individuals.
In other words, each individual is at the same time an active and a
passive agent in a transaction. In case of superiority and inferiority,
however, the relation assumes the appearance of a one-sided operation;
the one party appears to exert, while the other seems merely to receive,
an influence. Such, however, is not in fact the case. No one would give
himself the trouble to gain or to maintain superiority if it afforded
him no advantage or enjoyment. This return to the superior can be
derived from the relation, however, only by virtue of the fact that
there is a reciprocal action of the inferior upon the superior. The
decisive characteristic of the relation at this point is this, that the
effect which the inferior actually exerts upon the superior is
determined by the latter. The superior causes the inferior to produce a
given effect which the superior shall experience. In this operation, in
case the subordination is really absolute, no sort of spontaneity is
present on the part of the subordinate. The reciprocal influence is
rather the same as that between a man and a lifeless external object
with which the former performs an act for his own use. That is, the
person acts upon the object in order that the latter may react upon
himself. In this reaction of the object no spontaneity on the part of
the object is to be observed, but merely the further operation of the
spontaneity of the person. Such an extreme case of superiority and
inferiority will scarcely occur among human beings. Rather will a
certain measure of independence, a certain direction of the relation
proceed also from the self-will and the character of the subordinate.
The different cases of superiority and inferiority will accordingly be
characterized by differences in the relative amount of spontaneity which
the subordinates and the superiors bring to bear upon the total
relation. In exemplification of this reciprocal action of the inferior,
through which superiority and inferiority manifests itself as proper
socialization, I will mention only a few cases, in which the reciprocity
is difficult to discern.
When in the case of an absolute despotism the ruler attaches to his
edicts the threat of penalty or the promise of reward, the meaning is
that the monarch himself will be bound by the regulation which he has
ordained. The inferior shall have the right, on the other hand, to
demand something from the lawgiver. Whether the latter subsequently
grants the promised reward or protection is another question. The spirit
of the relation as contemplated by the law is that the superior
completely controls the inferior, to be sure, but that a certain claim
is assured to the latter, which claim he may press or may allow to
lapse, so that even this most definite form of the relation still
contains an element of spontaneity on the part of the inferior.
Still farther; the concept "law" seems to connote that he who gives the
law is in so far unqualifiedly superior. Apart from those cases in which
the law is instituted by those who will be its subjects, there appears
in lawgiving as such no sign of spontaneity on the part of the subject
of the law. It is, nevertheless, very interesting to observe how the
Roman conception of law makes prominent the reciprocity between the
superior and the subordinate elements. Thus _lex_ means originally
"compact," in the sense, to be sure, that the terms of the same are
fixed by the proponent, and the other party can accept or reject it only
_en bloc_. The _lex publica populi Romani_ meant originally that the
king proposed and the people accepted the same. Thus even here, where
the conception itself seems to express the complete one-sidedness of the
superior, the nice social instinct of the Romans pointed in the verbal
expression to the co-operation of the subordinate. In consequence of
like feeling of the nature of socialization the later Roman jurists
declared that the _societas leonina_ is not to be regarded as a social
compact. Where the one absolutely controls the other, that is, where all
spontaneity of the subordinate is excluded, there is no longer any
socialization.
Once more, the orator who confronts the assembly, or the teacher his
class, seems to be the sole leader, the temporary superior. Nevertheless
everyone who finds himself in that situation is conscious of the
limiting and controlling reaction of the mass which is apparently merely
passive and submissive to his guidance. This is the case not merely when
the parties immediately confront each other. All leaders are also led,
as in countless cases the master is the slave of his slaves. "I am your
leader, therefore I must follow you," said one of the most eminent
German parliamentarians, with reference to his party. Every journalist
is influenced by the public upon which he seems to exert an influence
entirely without reaction. The most characteristic case of actual
reciprocal influence, in spite of what appears to be subordination
without corresponding reaction, is that of hypnotic suggestion. An
eminent hypnotist recently asserted that in every hypnosis there occurs
an actual if not easily defined influence of the hypnotized upon the
hypnotist, and that without this the effect would not be produced.
4. Three Types of Subordination and Superordination[232]
Three possible types of superiority present themselves. Superiority may
be exercised (a) by an individual, (b) by a group, (c) by an
objective principle higher than individuals.
a) _Subordination to an individual._--The subordination of a group to
a single person implies a very decided unification of the group. This is
equally the case with both the characteristic forms of this
subordination, viz.: (1) when the group with its head constitutes a real
internal unity; when the superior is more a leader than a master and
only represents in himself the power and the will of the group; (2) when
the group is conscious of opposition between itself and its head, when a
party opposed to the head is formed. In both cases the unity of the
supreme head tends to bring about an inner unification of the group. The
elements of the latter are conscious of themselves as belonging
together, because their interests converge at one point. Moreover the
opposition to this unified controlling power compels the group to
collect itself, to condense itself into unity. This is true not alone
of the political group. In the factory, the ecclesiastical community, a
school class, and in associated bodies of every sort it is to be
observed that the termination of the organization in a head, whether in
case of harmony or of opposition, helps to effect unification of the
group. This is most conspicuous to be sure in the political sphere.
History has shown it to be the enormous advantage of monarchies that
they unify the political interests of the popular mass. The totality has
a common interest in holding the prerogatives of the crown within their
boundaries, possibly in restricting them; or there is a common field of
conflict between those whose interests are with the crown and those who
are opposed. Thus there is a supreme point with reference to which the
whole people constitutes either a single party or, at most, two. Upon
the disappearance of its head, to which all are subordinate--with the
end of this political pressure--all political unity often likewise
ceases. There spring up a great number of party factions which
previously, in view of that supreme political interest for or against
the monarchy, found no room.
Wonder has often been felt over the irrationality of the condition in
which a single person exercises lordship over a great mass of others.
The contradiction will be modified when we reflect that the ruler and
the individual subject in the controlled mass by no means enter into the
relationship with an equal _quantum_ of their personality. The mass is
composed through the fact that many individuals unite fractions of their
personality--one-sided purposes, interests and powers, while that which
each personality as such actually is towers above this common level and
does not at all enter into that "mass," i.e., into that which is really
ruled by the single person. Hence it is also that frequently in very
despotically ruled groups individuality may develop itself very freely,
in those aspects particularly which are not in participation with the
mass. Thus began the development of modern individuality in the
despotisms of the Italian Renaissance. Here, as in other similar cases
(for example, under Napoleon I and Napoleon III), it was for the direct
interest of the despots to allow the largest freedom to all those
aspects of personality which were not identified with the regulated
mass, i.e., to those aspects most apart from politics. Thus
subordination was more tolerable.
b) _Subordination to a group._--In the second place the group may
assume the form of a pyramid. In this case the subordinates stand over
against the superior not in an equalized mass but in very nicely graded
strata of power. These strata grow constantly smaller in extent but
greater in significance. They lead up from the inferior mass to the
head, the single ruler.
This form of the group may come into existence in two ways. It may
emerge from the autocratic supremacy of an individual. The latter often
loses the substance of his power and allows it to slip downward, while
retaining its form and titles. In this case more of the power is
retained by the orders nearest to the former autocrat than is acquired
by those more distant. Since the power thus gradually percolates, a
continuity and graduation of superiority and inferiority must develop
itself. This is, in fact, the way in which in oriental states the social
forms often arise. The power of the superior orders disintegrates,
either because it is essentially incoherent and does not know how to
attain the above-emphasized proportion between subordination and
individual freedom; or because the persons comprising the administration
are too indolent or too ignorant of governmental technique to preserve
supreme power. For the power which is exercised over a large circle is
never a constant possession. It must be constantly acquired and defended
anew if anything more than its shadow and name is to remain.
The other way in which a scale of power is constructed up to a supreme
head is the reverse of that just described. Starting with a relative
equality of the social elements, certain elements gain greater
significance; within the circle of influence thus constituted certain
especially powerful individuals differentiate themselves until this
development accommodates itself to one or to a few heads. The pyramid of
superiority and inferiority is built in this case from below upward,
while in the former case the development was from above downward. This
second form of development is often found in economic relationships,
where at first there exists a certain equality between the persons
carrying on the work of a certain industrial society. Presently some of
the number acquire wealth; others become poor; others fall into
intermediate conditions which are as dependent upon an aristocracy of
property as the lower orders are upon the middle strata; this
aristocracy rises in manifold gradations to the magnates, of whom
sometimes a single individual is appropriately designated as the "king"
of a branch of industry. By a sort of combination of the two ways in
which graded superiority and inferiority of the group come into being
the feudalism of the Middle Ages arose. So long as the full
citizen--either Greek, Roman, or Teutonic--knew no subordination under
an individual, there existed for him on the one hand complete equality
with those of his own order, but on the other hand rigid exclusiveness
toward those of lower orders. Feudalism remodeled this characteristic
social form into the equally characteristic arrangement which filled the
gap between freedom and bondage with a scale of classes.
A peculiar form of subordination to a number of individuals is
determination by vote of a majority. The presumption of majority rule is
that there is a collection of elements originally possessing equal
rights. In the process of voting the individual places himself in
subordination to a power of which he is a part, but in this way, that it
is left to his own volition whether he will belong to the superior or
the inferior, i.e., the outvoted party. We are not now interested in
cases of this complex problem in which the superiority is entirely
formal, as, for example, in resolves of scientific congresses, but only
with those in which the individual is constrained to an action by the
will of the party outvoting him, that is, in which he must practically
subordinate himself to the majority. This dominance of numbers through
the fact that others, though only equal in right, have another opinion,
is by no means the matter of course which it seems to us today in our
time of determinations by masses. Ancient German law knew nothing of it.
If one did not agree with the resolve of the community, he was not bound
by it. As an application of this principle, unanimity was later
necessary in the choice of king, evidently because it could not be
expected or required that one who had not chosen the king would obey
him. The English baron who had opposed authorizing a levy, or who had
not been present, often refused to pay it. In the tribal council of the
Iroquois, as in the Polish Parliament, decisions had to be unanimous.
There was therefore no subordination of an individual to a majority,
unless we consider the fact that a proposition was regarded as rejected
if it did not receive unanimous approval, a subordination, an outvoting,
of the person proposing the measure.
When, on the contrary, majority rule exists, two modes of subordination
of the minority are possible, and discrimination between them is of the
highest sociological significance. Control of the minority may, in the
first place, arise from the fact that the many are more powerful than
the few. Although, or rather because, the individuals participating in a
vote are supposed to be equals, the majority have the physical power to
coerce the minority. The taking of a vote and the subjection of the
minority serves the purpose of avoiding such actual measurement of
strength, but accomplishes practically the same result through the count
of votes, since the minority is convinced of the futility of such resort
to force. There exist in the group two parties in opposition as though
they were two groups, between which relative strength, represented by
the vote, is to decide.
Quite another principle is in force, however, in the second place, where
the group as a unity predominates over all individuals and so proceeds
that the passing of votes shall _merely give expression to the unitary
group will_. In the transition from the former to this second principle
the enormously important step is taken from a unity made up merely of
the sum of individuals to recognition and operation of an abstract
objective group unity. Classic antiquity took this step much
earlier--not only absolutely but relatively earlier--than the German
peoples. Among the latter the oneness of the community did not exist
over and against the individuals who composed it but entirely in them.
Consequently the group will was not only not enacted but it did not even
exist so long as a single member dissented. The group was not complete
unless all its members were united, since it was only in the sum of its
members that the group consisted. In case the group, however, is a
self-existent structure--whether consciously or merely in point of
fact--in case the group organization effected by union of the
individuals remains along with and in spite of the individual changes,
this self-existent unity--state, community, association for a
distinctive purpose--must surely will and act in a definite manner.
Since, however, only one of two contradictory opinions can ultimately
prevail, it is assumed as more probable that the majority knows or
represents this will better than the minority. According to the
presumptive principle involved the minority is, in this case, not
excluded but included. The subordination of the minority is thus in this
stage of sociological development quite different from that in case the
majority simply represents the stronger power. In the case in hand the
majority does not speak in its own name but in that of the ideal unity
and totality. It is only to this unity, which speaks by the mouth of the
majority, that the minority subordinates itself. This is the immanent
principle of our parliamentary decisions.
c) _Subordination to an impersonal principle._--To these must be
joined, third, those formations in which subordination is neither to an
individual nor yet to a majority, but to an impersonal objective
principle. Here, where we seem to be estopped from speaking of a
_reciprocal influence_ between the superior and the subordinate, a
sociological interest enters in but two cases: first, when this ideal
superior principle is to be interpreted as the psychological
consolidation of a real social power; second, when the principle
establishes specific and characteristic relationships between those who
are subject to it in common. The former case appears chiefly in
connection with the moral imperatives. In the moral consciousness we
feel ourselves subject to a decree which does not appear to be issued by
any personal human power; we hear the voice of conscience only in
ourselves, although with a force and definiteness, in contrast with all
subjective egoism, which, as it seems, could have had its source only
from an authority outside the subject. As is well known, the attempt has
been made to resolve this contradiction by the assumption that we have
derived the content of morality from social decrees. Whatever is
serviceable to the species and to the group, whatever on that account is
demanded of the members for the self-preservation of the group, is
gradually bred into individuals as an instinct, so that it asserts
itself as a peculiar autonomous impression by the side of the properly
personal, and consequently often contradictory, impulses. Thus would be
explained the double character of the moral command. On the one side it
appears to us as an impersonal order to which we have simply to yield.
On the other side, however, no visible external power but only our own
most real and personal instinct enforces it upon us. Sociologically this
is of interest as an example of a wholly peculiar form of reaction
between the individual and his group. The social force is here
completely grown into the individual himself.
We now turn to the second sociological question raised by the case of
subordination to an impersonal ideal principle. How does this
subordination affect the reciprocal relation of the persons thus
subordinated in common? The development of the position of the _pater
familias_ among the Aryans exhibits this process clearly. The power of
the _pater familias_ was originally unlimited and entirely subjective;
that is, his momentary desire, his personal advantage, was permitted to
give the decision upon all regulations. But this arbitrary power
gradually became limited by a feeling of responsibility. The unity of
the domestic group, embodied in the _spiritus familiaris_, grew into the
ideal power, in relation to which the lord of the whole came to regard
himself as merely an obedient agent. Accordingly it follows that morals
and custom, instead of subjective preference, determine his acts, his
decisions, his judicial judgments; that he no longer behaves as though
he were absolute lord of the family property, but rather the manager of
it in the interest of the whole; that his position bears more the
character of an official station than that of an unlimited right. Thus
the relation between superiors and inferiors is placed upon an entirely
new basis. The family is thought of as standing above all the individual
members. The guiding patriarch himself is, like every other member,
subordinate to the family idea. He may give directions to the other
members of the family only in the name of the higher ideal unity.
C. CONFLICT AND ACCOMMODATION
1. War and Peace as Types of Conflict and Accommodation[233]
It is obvious that the transition from war to peace must present a more
considerable problem than the reverse, i.e., the transition from peace
to war. The latter really needs no particular scrutiny. For the
situations existing in time of peace are precisely the conditions out of
which war emerges and contain in themselves struggle in a diffused,
unobserved, or latent form. For instance, if the economic advantage
which the southern states of the American Union had over the northern
states in the Civil War as a consequence of the slave system was also
the reason for this war, still, so long as no antagonism arises from it,
but is merely immanent in the existing conditions, this source of
conflict did not become specifically a question of war and peace. At the
moment, however, at which the antagonism began to assume a color which
meant war, an accumulation of antagonisms, feelings of hatred,
newspaper polemics, frictions between private persons, and on the
borders reciprocal moral equivocations in matters outside of the central
antithesis at once manifested themselves. The transition from peace to
war is thus not distinguished by a special sociological situation.
Rather out of relationships existing within a peaceful situation
antagonism is developed immediately, in its most visible and, energetic
form. The case is different, however, if the matter is viewed from the
opposite direction. Peace does not follow so immediately upon conflict.
The termination of strife is a special undertaking which belongs neither
in the one category nor in the other, like a bridge which is of a
different nature from that of either bank which it unites. The sociology
of struggle demands, therefore, at least as an appendix, an analysis of
the forms in which conflict is terminated, and these exhibit certain
special forms of reaction not to be observed in other circumstances.
The particular motive which in most cases corresponds with the
transition from war to peace is the simple longing for peace. With the
emergence of this factor there comes into being, as a matter of fact,
peace itself, at first in the form of the wish immediately parallel with
the struggle itself, and it may without any special transitional form
displace struggle. We need not pause long to observe that the desire for
peace may spring up both directly and indirectly; the former may occur
either through the return to power of this peaceful character in the
party which is essentially in favor of peace; or through the fact that,
through the mere change of the formal stimulus of struggle and of peace
which is peculiar to all natures, although in different rhythms, the
latter comes to the surface and assumes a control which is sanctioned by
its own nature alone. In the case of the indirect motive, however, we
may distinguish, on the one hand, the exhaustion of resources which,
without removal of the persistent contentiousness, may instal the demand
for peace; and, on the other hand, the withdrawal of interest from
struggle through a higher interest in some other object. The latter case
begets all sorts of hypocrisies and self-deceptions. It is asserted and
believed that peace is desired from ideal interest in peace itself and
the suppression of antagonism, while in reality only the object fought
for has lost its interest and the fighters would prefer to have their
powers free for other kinds of activity.
The simplest and most radical sort of passage from war to peace is
victory--a quite unique phenomenon in life, of which there are, to be
sure, countless individual forms and measures, which, however, have no
resemblance to any of the otherwise mentioned forms which may occur
between persons. Victory is a mere watershed between war and peace; when
considered absolutely, only an ideal structure which extends itself over
no considerable time. For so long as struggle endures there is no
definitive victor, and when peace exists a victory _has been_ gained but
the act of victory has ceased to exist. Of the many shadings of victory,
through which it qualifies the following peace, I mention here merely as
an illustration the one which is brought about, not exclusively by the
preponderance of the one party, but, at least in part, through the
resignation of the other. This confession of inferiority, this
acknowledgment of defeat, or this consent that victory shall go to the
other party without complete exhaustion of the resources and chances for
struggle, is by no means always a simple phenomenon. A certain ascetic
tendency may also enter in as a purely individual factor, the tendency
to self-humiliation and to self-sacrifice, not strong enough to
surrender one's self from the start without a struggle, but emerging so
soon as the consciousness of being vanquished begins to take possession
of the soul; or another variation may be that of finding its supreme
charm in the contrast to the still vital and active disposition to
struggle. Still further, there is impulse to the same conclusion in the
feeling that it is worthier to yield rather than to trust to the last
moment in the improbable chance of a fortunate turn of affairs. To throw
away this chance and to elude at this price the final consequences that
would be involved in utter defeat--this has something of the great and
noble qualities of men who are sure, not merely of their strengths, but
also of their weaknesses, without making it necessary for them in each
case to make these perceptibly conscious. Finally, in this voluntariness
of confessed defeat there is a last proof of power on the part of the
agent; the latter has of himself been able to act. He has therewith
virtually made a gift to the conqueror. Consequently, it is often to be
observed in personal conflicts that the concession of the one party,
before the other has actually been able to compel it, is regarded by the
latter as a sort of insult, as though this latter party were really the
weaker, to whom, however, for some reason or other, there is made a
concession without its being really necessary. Behind the objective
reasons for yielding "for the sake of sweet peace" a mixture of these
subjective motives is not seldom concealed. The latter may not be
entirely without visible consequences, however, for the further
sociological attitude of the parties. In complete antithesis with the
end of strife by victory is its ending by compromise. One of the most
characteristic ways of subdividing struggles is on the basis of whether
they are of a nature which admits of compromise or not.
2. Compromise and Accommodation[234]
On the whole, compromise, especially of that type which is brought to
pass through negotiation, however commonplace and matter of fact it has
come to be in the processes of modern life, is one of the most important
inventions for the uses of civilization. The impulse of uncivilized men,
like that of children, is to seize upon every desirable object without
further consideration, even though it be already in the possession of
another. Robbery and gift are the most naïve forms of transfer of
possession, and under primitive conditions change of possession seldom
takes place without a struggle. It is the beginning of all civilized
industry and commerce to find a way of avoiding this struggle through a
process in which there is offered to the possessor of a desired object
some other object from the possessions of the person desiring the
exchange. Through this arrangement a reduction is made in the total
expenditure of energy as compared with the process of continuing or
beginning a struggle. All exchange is a compromise. We are told of
certain social conditions in which it is accounted as knightly to rob
and to fight for the sake of robbery; while exchange and purchase are
regarded in the same society as undignified and vulgar. The
psychological explanation of this situation is to be found partly in the
fact of the element of compromise in exchange, the factors of withdrawal
and renunciation which make exchange the opposite pole to all struggle
and conquest. Every exchange presupposes that values and interest have
assumed an objective character. The decisive element is accordingly no
longer the mere subjective passion of desire, to which struggle alone
corresponds, but the value of the object, which is recognized by both
interested parties but which without essential modification may be
represented by various objects. Renunciation of the valued object in
question, because one receives in another form the quantum of value
contained in the same, is an admirable reason, wonderful also in its
simplicity, whereby opposed interests are brought to accommodation
without struggle. It certainly required a long historical development to
make such means available, because it presupposes a psychological
generalization of the universal valuation of the individual object, an
abstraction, in other words, of the value for the objects with which it
is at first identified; that is, it presupposes ability to rise above
the prejudices of immediate desire. Compromise by representation, of
which exchange is a special case, signifies in principle, although
realized only in part, the possibility of avoiding struggle or of
setting a limit to it before the mere force of the interested parties
has decided the issue.
In distinction from the objective character of accommodation of struggle
through compromise, we should notice that conciliation is a purely
subjective method of avoiding struggle. I refer here not to that sort of
conciliation which is the consequence of a compromise or of any other
adjournment of struggle but rather to the reasons for this adjournment.
The state of mind which makes conciliation possible is an elementary
attitude which, entirely apart from objective grounds, seeks to end
struggle, just as, on the other hand, a disposition to quarrel, even
without any real occasion, promotes struggle. Probably both mental
attitudes have been developed as matters of utility in connection with
certain situations; at any rate, they have been developed
psychologically to the extent of independent impulses, each of which is
likely to make itself felt where the other would be more practically
useful. We may even say that in the countless cases in which struggle is
ended otherwise than in the pitiless consistency of the exercise of
force, this quite elementary and unreasoned tendency to conciliation is
a factor in the result--a factor quite distinct from weakness, or good
fellowship; from social morality or fellow-feeling. This tendency to
conciliation is, in fact, a quite specific sociological impulse which
manifests itself exclusively as a pacificator, and is not even identical
with the peaceful disposition in general. The latter avoids strife under
all circumstances, or carries it on, if it is once undertaken, without
going to extremes, and always with the undercurrents of longing for
peace. The spirit of conciliation, however, manifests itself frequently
in its full peculiarity precisely after complete surrender to the
struggle, after the conflicting energies have exercised themselves to
the full in the conflict.
Conciliation depends very definitely upon the external situation. It can
occur both after the complete victory of the one party and after the
progress of indecisive struggle, as well as after the arrangement of the
compromise. Either of these situations may end the struggle without the
added conciliation of the opponents. To bring about the latter it is not
necessary that there shall be a supplementary repudiation or expression
of regret with reference to the struggle. Moreover, conciliation is to
be distinguished from the situation which may follow it. This may be
either a relationship of attachment or alliance, and reciprocal respect,
or a certain permanent distance which avoids all positive contacts.
Conciliation is thus a removal of the roots of conflict, without
reference to the fruits which these formerly bore, as well as to that
which may later be planted in their place.
D. COMPETITION, STATUS, AND SOCIAL SOLIDARITY
1. Personal Competition, Social Selection, and Status[235]
The function of personal competition, considered as a part of the social
system, is to assign to each individual his place in that system. If
"all the world's a stage," this is a process that distributes the parts
among the players. It may do it well or ill, but after some fashion it
does it. Some may be cast in parts unsuited to them; good actors may be
discharged altogether and worse ones retained; but nevertheless the
thing is arranged in some way and the play goes on.
That such a process must exist can hardly, it seems to me, admit of
question; in fact, I believe that those who speak of doing away with
competition use the word in another sense than is here intended. Within
the course of the longest human life there is necessarily a complete
renewal of the persons whose communication and co-operation make up the
life of society. The new members come into the world without any legible
sign to indicate what they are fit for, a mystery to others from the
first and to themselves as soon as they are capable of reflection: the
young man does not know for what he is adapted, and no one else can tell
him. The only possible way to get light upon the matter is to adopt the
method of experiment. By trying one thing and another and by reflecting
upon his experience, he begins to find out about himself, and the world
begins to find out about him. His field of investigation is of course
restricted, and his own judgment and that of others liable to error, but
the tendency of it all can hardly be other than to guide his choice to
that one of the available careers in which he is best adapted to hold
his own. I may say this much, perhaps, without assuming anything
regarding the efficiency or justice of competition as a distributor of
social functions, a matter regarding which I shall offer some
suggestions later. All I wish to say here is that the necessity of some
selective process is inherent in the conditions of social life.
It will be apparent that, in the sense in which I use the term,
competition is not necessarily a hostile contention, nor even something
of which the competing individual is always conscious. From our infancy
onward throughout life judgments are daily forming regarding us of which
we are unaware, but which go to determine our careers. "The world is
full of judgment days." A and B, for instance, are under consideration
for some appointment; the experience and personal qualifications of each
are duly weighed by those having the appointment to make, and A, we will
say, is chosen. Neither of the two need know anything about the matter
until the selection is made. It is eligibility to perform some social
function that makes a man a competitor, and he may or may not be aware
of it, or, if aware of it, he may or may not be consciously opposed to
others. I trust that the reader will bear in mind that I always use the
word competition in the sense here explained.
There is but one alternative to competition as a means of determining
the place of the individual in the social system, and that is some form
of status, some fixed, mechanical rule, usually a rule of inheritance,
which decides the function of the individual without reference to his
personal traits, and thus dispenses with any process of comparison. It
is possible to conceive of a society organized entirely upon the basis
of the inheritance of functions, and indeed societies exist which may be
said to approach this condition. In India, for example, the prevalent
idea regarding the social function of the individual is that it is
unalterably determined by his parentage, and the village blacksmith,
shoemaker, accountant, or priest has his place assigned to him by a rule
of descent as rigid as that which governs the transmission of one of the
crowns of Europe. If all functions were handed down in this way, if
there were never any deficiency or surplus of children to take the place
of their parents, if there were no progress or decay in the social
system making necessary new activities or dispensing with old ones, then
there would be no use for a selective process. But precisely in the
measure that a society departs from this condition, that individual
traits are recognized and made available, or social change of any sort
comes to pass, in that measure must there be competition.
Status is not an active process, as competition is; it is simply a rule
of conservation, a makeshift to avoid the inconveniences of continual
readjustment in the social structure. Competition or selection is the
only constructive principle, and everything worthy the name of
organization had at some time or other a competitive origin. At the
present day the eldest son of a peer may succeed to a seat in the House
of Lords simply by right of birth; but his ancestor got the seat by
competition, by some exercise of personal qualities that made him valued
or loved or feared by a king or a minister.
Sir Henry Maine has pointed out that the increase of competition is a
characteristic trait of modern life, and that the powerful ancient
societies of the old world were for the most part non-competitive in
their structure. While this is true, it would be a mistake to draw the
inference that status is a peculiarly natural or primitive principle of
organization and competition a comparatively recent discovery. On the
contrary the spontaneous relations among men, as we see in the case of
children, and as we may infer from the life of the lower animals, are
highly competitive, personal prowess and ascendency being everything and
little regard being paid to descent simply as such. The régime of
inherited status, on the other hand, is a comparatively complex and
artificial product, necessarily of later growth, whose very general
prevalence among the successful societies of the old world is doubtless
to be explained by the stability and consequently the power which it was
calculated to give to the social system. It survived because under
certain conditions it was the fittest. It was not and is not
universally predominant among savages or barbarous peoples. With the
American Indians, for example, the definiteness and authority of status
were comparatively small, personal prowess and initiative being
correspondingly important. The interesting monograph on Omaha sociology,
by Dorsey, published by the United States Bureau of Ethnology, contains
many facts showing that the life of this people was highly competitive.
When the tribe was at war any brave could organize an expedition against
the enemy, if he could induce enough others to join him, and this
organizer usually assumed the command. In a similar way the managers of
the hunt were chosen because of personal skill; and, in general, "any
man can win a name and rank in the state by becoming 'wacuce' or brave,
either in war or by the bestowal of gifts and the frequent giving of
feasts."
Throughout history there has been a struggle between the principles of
status and competition regarding the part that each should play in the
social system. Generally speaking the advantage of status is in its
power to give order and continuity. As Gibbon informs us, "The superior
prerogative of birth, when it has obtained the sanction of time and
popular opinion, is the plainest and least invidious of all distinctions
among mankind," and he is doubtless right in ascribing the confusion of
the later Roman Empire largely to the lack of an established rule for
the transmission of imperial authority. The chief danger of status is
that of suppressing personal development, and so of causing social
enfeeblement, rigidity, and ultimate decay. On the other hand,
competition develops the individual and gives flexibility and animation
to the social order, its danger being chiefly that of disintegration in
some form or other. The general tendency in modern times has been toward
the relative increase of the free or competitive principle, owing to the
fact that the rise of other means of securing stability has diminished
the need for status. The latter persists, however, even in the freest
countries, as the method by which wealth is transmitted, and also in
social classes, which, so far as they exist at all, are based chiefly
upon inherited wealth and the culture and opportunities that go with it.
The ultimate reason for this persistence--without very serious
opposition--in the face of the obvious inequalities and limitations
upon liberty that it perpetuates is perhaps the fact that no other
method of transmission has arisen that has shown itself capable of
giving continuity and order to the control of wealth.
2. Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types[236]
The ancient city was primarily a fortress, a place of refuge in time of
war. The modern city, on the contrary, is primarily a convenience of
commerce and owes its existence to the market place around which it
sprang up. Industrial competition and the division of labor, which have
probably done most to develop the latent powers of mankind, are possible
only upon condition of the existence of markets, of money and other
devices for the facilitation of trade and commerce.
The old adage which describes the city as the natural environment, of
the free man still holds so far as the individual man finds in the
chances, the diversity of interests and tasks, and in the vast
unconscious co-operation of city life, the opportunity to choose his own
vocation and develop his peculiar individual talents. The city offers a
market for the special talents of individual men. Personal competition
tends to select for each special task the individual who is best suited
to perform it.
The difference of natural talents in different men is, in
reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different
genius which appears to distinguish men of different
professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many
occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of
labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters,
between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example,
seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom
and education. When they came into the world, and for the first
six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very
much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could
perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon
after, they come to be employed in different occupations. The
difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and
widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher
is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without
the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must
have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of
life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to
perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no
such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to
any great difference of talent.
As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the
division of labour, so the extent of this division must always
be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by
the extent of the market.... There are some sorts of industry,
even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere but in
a great town.
Success, under conditions of personal competition, depends upon
concentration upon some single task, and this concentration stimulates
the demand for rational methods, technical devices, and exceptional
skill. Exceptional skill, while based on natural talent, requires
special preparation, and it has called into existence the trade and
professional schools, and finally bureaus for vocational guidance. All
of these, either directly or indirectly, serve at once to select and
emphasize individual differences.
Every device which facilitates trade and industry prepares the way for a
further division of labor and so tends further to specialize the tasks
in which men find their vocations.
The outcome of this process is to break down or modify the older
organization of society, which was based on family ties, on local
associations, on culture, caste, and status, and to substitute for it an
organization based on vocational interests.
In the city every vocation, even that of a beggar, tends to assume the
character of a profession, and the discipline which success in any
vocation imposes, together with the associations that it enforces,
emphasizes this tendency.
The effect of the vocations and the division of labor is to produce, in
the first instance, not social groups but vocational types--the actor,
the plumber, and the lumber-jack. The organizations, like the trade and
labor unions, which men of the same trade or profession form are based
on common interests. In this respect they differ from forms of
association like the neighborhood, which are based on contiguity,
personal association, and the common ties of humanity. The different
trades and professions seem disposed to group themselves in classes,
that is to say, the artisan, business, and professional classes. But in
the modern democratic state the classes have as yet attained no
effective organization. Socialism, founded on an effort to create an
organization based on "class consciousness," has never succeeded in
creating more than a political party.
The effects of the division of labor as a discipline may therefore be
best studied in the vocational types it has produced. Among the types
which it would be interesting to study are: the shopgirl, the policeman,
the peddler, the cabman, the night watchman, the clairvoyant, the
vaudeville performer, the quack doctor, the bartender, the ward boss,
the strike-breaker, the labor agitator, the school teacher, the
reporter, the stockbroker, the pawnbroker; all of these are
characteristic products of the conditions of city life; each with its
special experience, insight, and point of view determines for each
vocational group and for the city as a whole its individuality.
3. Division of Labor and Social Solidarity[237]
The most remarkable effect of the division of labor is not that it
accentuates the distinction of functions already divided but that it
makes them interdependent. Its rôle in every case is not simply to
embellish or perfect existing societies but to make possible societies
which, without it, would not exist. Should the division of labor between
the sexes be diminished beyond a certain point, the family would cease
to exist and only ephemeral sexual relations would remain. If the sexes
had never been separated at all, no form of social life would ever have
arisen. It is possible that the economic utility of the division of
labor has been a factor in producing the existing form of conjugal
society. Nevertheless, the society thus created is not limited to merely
economic interests; it represents a unique social and moral order.
Individuals are mutually bound together who otherwise would be
independent. Instead of developing separately, they concert their
efforts; they are interdependent parts of a unity which is effective not
only in the brief moments during which there is an interchange of
services but afterward indefinitely. For example, does not conjugal
solidarity of the type which exists today among the most cultivated
people exert its influence constantly and in all the details of life? On
the other hand, societies which are created by the division of labor
inevitably bear the mark of their origin. Having this special origin, it
is not possible that they should resemble those societies which have
their origin in the attraction of like for like; the latter are
inevitably constituted in another manner, repose on other foundations,
and appeal to other sentiments.
The assumption that the social relations resulting from the division of
labor consist in an exchange of services merely is a misconception of
what this exchange implies and of the effects it produces. It assumes
that two beings are mutually dependent the one on the other, because
they are both incomplete without the other. It interprets this mutual
dependence as a purely external relation. Actually this is merely the
superficial expression of an internal and more profound state. Precisely
because this state is constant, it provokes a complex of mental images
which function with a continuity independent of the series of external
relations. The image of that which completes us is inseparable from the
image of ourselves, not only because it is associated with us, but
especially because it is our natural complement. It becomes then a
permanent and integral part of self-consciousness to such an extent that
we cannot do without it and seek by every possible means to emphasize
and intensify it. We like the society of the one whose image haunts us,
because the presence of the object reinforces the actual perception and
gives us comfort. We suffer, on the contrary, from every circumstance
which, like separation and death, is likely to prevent the return or
diminish the vivacity of the idea which has become identified with our
idea of ourselves.
Short as this analysis is, it suffices to show that this complex is not
identical with that which rests on sentiments of sympathy which have
their source in mere likeness. Unquestionably there can be the sense of
solidarity between others and ourselves only so far as we conceive
others united with ourselves. When the union results from a perception
of likeness, it is a cohesion. The two representations become
consolidated because, being undistinguished totally or in part, they are
mingled and are no more than one, and are consolidated only in the
measure in which they are mingled. On the contrary, in the case of the
division of labor, each is outside the other, and they are united only
because they are distinct. It is not possible that sentiments should be
the same in the two cases, nor the social relations which are derived
from them the same.
We are then led to ask ourselves if the division of labor does not play
the same rôle in more extended groups; if, in the contemporaneous
societies where it has had a development with which we are familiar, it
does not function in such a way as to integrate the social body and to
assure its unity. It is quite legitimate to assume that the facts which
we have observed reproduce themselves there, but on a larger scale. The
great political societies, like smaller ones, we may assume maintain
themselves in equilibrium, thanks to the specialization of their tasks.
The division of labor is here, again, if not the only, at least the
principal, source of the social solidarity. Comte had already reached
this point of view. Of all the sociologists, so far as we know, he is
the first who has pointed out in the division of labor anything other
than a purely economic phenomenon. He has seen there "the most essential
condition of the social life," provided that one conceives it "in all
its rational extent, that is to say, that one applies the conception to
the ensemble of all our diverse operations whatsoever, instead of
limiting it, as we so often do, to the simple material usages."
Considered under this aspect, he says:
It immediately leads us to regard not only individuals and
classes but also, in many respects, the different peoples as
constantly participating, in their own characteristic ways and
in their own proper degree, in an immense and common work whose
inevitable development gradually unites the actual co-operators
in a series with their predecessors and at the same time in a
series with their successors. It is, then, the continuous
redivison of our diverse human labors which mainly constitutes
social solidarity and which becomes the elementary cause of the
extension and increasing complexity of the social organism.
If this hypothesis is demonstrated, division of labor plays a rôle much
more important than that which has ordinarily been attributed to it. It
is not to be regarded as a mere luxury, desirable perhaps, but not
indispensable to society; it is rather a condition of its very
existence. It is this, or at least it is mainly this, that assures the
solidarity of social groups; it determines the essential traits of their
constitution. It follows--even though we are not yet prepared to give a
final solution to the problem, we can nevertheless foresee from this
point--that, if such is really the function of the division of labor, it
may be expected to have a moral character, because the needs of order,
of harmony, of social solidarity generally, are what we understand by
moral needs.
Social life is derived from a double source: (a) from a similarity of
minds, and (b) from the division of labor. The individual is
socialized in the first case, because, not having his own individuality,
he is confused, along with his fellows, in the bosom of the same
collective type; in the second case, because, even though he possesses a
physiognomy and a temperament which distinguish him from others, he is
dependent upon these in the same measure in which he is distinguished
from them. Society results from this union.
Like-mindedness gives birth to judicial regulations which, under the
menace of measures of repression, impose upon everybody uniform beliefs
and practices. The more pronounced this like-mindedness, the more
completely the social is confused with the religious life, the more
nearly economic institutions approach communism.
The division of labor, on the other hand, gives birth to regulations and
laws which determine the nature and the relations of the divided
functions, but the violation of which entails only punitive measures not
of an expiatory character.
Every code of laws is accompanied by a body of regulations purely moral.
Where the penal law is voluminous, moral consensus is very extended;
that is to say, a multitude of collective activities is under the
guardianship of public opinion. Where the right of reparation is well
developed, there each profession maintains a code of professional
ethics. In a group of workers there invariably exists a body of opinion,
diffused throughout the limits of the group, which, although not
fortified with legal sanctions, still enforces its decrees. There are
manners and customs, recognized by all the members of a profession,
which no one of them could infringe without incurring the blame of
society. Certainly this code of morals is distinguished from the
preceding by differences analogous to those which separate the two
corresponding kinds of laws. It is, in fact, a code localized in a
limited region of society. Furthermore, the repressive character of the
sanctions which are attached to it is sensibly less accentuated.
Professional faults arouse a much feebler response than offenses against
the mores of the larger society.
Nevertheless, the customs and code of a profession are imperative. They
oblige the individual to act in accordance with ends which to him are
not his own, to make concessions, to consent to compromises, to take
account of interests superior to his own. The consequence is that, even
where the society rests most completely upon the division of labor, it
does not disintegrate into a dust of atoms, between which there can
exist only external and temporary contacts. Every function which one
individual exercises is invariably dependent upon functions exercised by
others and forms with them a system of interdependent parts. It follows
that, from the nature of the task one chooses, corresponding duties
follow. Because we fill this or that domestic or social function, we are
imprisoned in a net of obligations from which we do not have the right
to free ourselves. There is especially one organ toward which our state
of dependencies is ever increasing--the state. The points at which we
are in contact with it are multiplying. So are the occasions in which it
takes upon itself to recall us to a sense of the common solidarity.
There are then two great currents in the social life, collectivism and
individualism, corresponding to which we discover two types of structure
not less different. Of these currents, that which has its origin in
like-mindedness is at first alone and without rival. At this moment it
is identified with the very life of the society; little by little it
finds its separate channels and diminishes, whilst the second becomes
ever larger. In the same way, the segmentary structure of society is
more and more overlaid by the other, but without ever disappearing
completely.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Forms of Accommodation
The literature upon accommodation will be surveyed under four heads;
(a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and superordination;
(c) accommodation groups; and (d) social organization.
The term accommodation, as has been noted, developed as a
differentiation within the field of the biological concept of
adaptation. Ward's dictum that "the environment transforms the animal,
while man transforms the environment"[238] contained the distinction.
Thomas similarly distinguished between the animal with its method of
adaptation and man with his method of control. Bristol in his work on
_Social Adaptation_ is concerned, as the subtitle of the volume
indicates, "with the development of the doctrine of adaptation as a
theory of social progress." Of the several types of adaptation that he
proposes, however, all but the first represent accommodations. Baldwin,
though not the first to make the distinction, was the first student to
use the separate term accommodation. "By accommodation old habits are
broken up, and new co-ordinations are made which are more complex."[239]
Baldwin suggested a division of accommodation into the three fields:
acclimatization, naturalization, and equilibrium. The term equilibrium
accurately describes the type of organization established by competition
between the different biological species and the environment, but not
the more permanent organizations of individuals and groups which we find
in human society. In human society equilibrium means organization. The
research upon acclimatization is considerable, although there is far
from unanimity of opinion in regard to its findings.
Closely related to acclimatization but in the field of social
naturalization are the accommodations that take place in colonization
and immigration. In colonization the adjustment is not only to climatic
conditions but to the means of livelihood and habits of life required by
the new situation. Historic colonial settlements have most infrequently
been made in inhospitable areas, and that involved accommodations to
primitive peoples of different and generally lower cultural level than
the settlers. Professor Keller's work on _Colonization_ surveys the
differences in types of colonial ventures and describes the adjustments
involved. It includes also a valuable bibliography of the literature of
the subject.
In immigration the accommodation to the economic situation and to the
folkways and mores of the native society are more important than in
colonization. The voluminous literature upon immigration deals but
slightly with the interesting accommodations of the newcomer to his new
environment. One of the important factors in the process, as emphasized
in the recent "Americanization Study" of the Carnegie Corporation, is
the immigrant community which serves as a mediating agency between the
familiar and the strange. The greater readiness of accommodation of
recent immigrants as compared with that of an earlier period has been
explained in terms of facilities of transportation, communication, and
even more in the mobility of employment in large-scale modern industry
with its minute subdivision of labor and its slight demand for skill and
training on the part of the employees.
The more subtle forms of accommodation to new social situations have not
been subjected to analysis, although there is a small but important
number of studies upon homesickness. In fiction, to be sure, the
difficulties of the tenderfoot in the frontier community, or the awkward
rural lad in an urban environment and the _nouveau riche_ in their
successful entrée among the social élite are often accuately and
sympathetically described. The recent immigrant autobiographies contain
materials which throw much new light on the situation of the immigrant
in process of accommodation to the American environment.
The whole process of social organization is involved in the processes by
which persons find their places in groups and groups are articulated
into the life of the larger and more inclusive societies. The literature
on the taming of animals, the education of juveniles and adults, and on
social control belongs in this field. The writings on diplomacy, on
statescraft, and upon adjudication of disputes are also to be considered
here. The problem of the person whether in the narrow field of social
work or the broader fields of human relations is fundamentally a problem
of the adjustment of the person to his social milieu, to his family, to
his primary social groups, to industry, and to cultural, civic, and
religious institutions. The problems of community organization are for
the most part problems of accommodation, of articulation of groups
within the community and of the adjustment of the local Community to the
life of the wider community of which it is a part.
Adjustments of personal and social relations in the past have been made
unreflectively and with a minimum of personal and social consciousness.
The extant literature reveals rather an insistent demand for these
accommodations than any systematic study of the processes by which the
accommodations take place. Simmel's observation upon subordination and
superordination is almost the only attempt that has been made to deal
with the subject from the point of view of sociology.
2. Subordination and Superordination
Materials upon subordination and superordination may be found in the
literature under widely different names. Thorndike, McDougall, and
others have reported upon the original tendencies in the individual to
domination and submission or to self-assertion and self-abasement.
Veblen approaches nearer to a sociological explanation in his analysis
of the self-conscious attitudes of invidious comparison and conspicuous
waste in the leisure class.
The application of our knowledge of rapport, esprit de corps, and morale
to an explanation of personal conduct and group behavior is one of the
most promising fields for future research. In the family, rapport and
consensus represent the most complete co-ordination of its members. The
life of the family should be studied intensively in order to define more
exactly the nature of the family consensus, the mechanism of family
rapport, and minor accommodations made to minimize conflict and to avert
tendencies to disintegration in the interest of this real unity.
Strachey's _Life of Queen Victoria_ sketches an interesting case of
subordination and superordination in which the queen is the subordinate,
and her adroit but cynical minister, Disraeli, is the master.
Future research will provide a more adequate sociology of subordination
and superordination. A survey of the present output of material upon the
nature and the effects of personal contacts reinforces the need for such
a fundamental study. The obsolete writings upon personal magnetism have
been replaced by the so-called "psychology of salesmanship," "scientific
methods of character reading," and "the psychology of leadership." The
wide sale of these books indicates the popular interest, quite as much
as the lack of any fundamental understanding of the technique of human
relations.
3. Accommodation Groups
The field of investigation available for the study of accommodation
groups and their relation to conflict groups may perhaps be best
illustrated by the table on page 722.
The existence of conflict groups like parties, sects, nationalities,
represents the area in any society of unstable equilibrium.
Accommodation groups, classes, castes, and denominations on the other
hand, represent in this same society the areas of stable equilibrium. A
boys' club carries on contests, under recognized rules, with similar
organizations. A denomination engages in fraternal rivalry with other
denominations for the advancement of common interests of the church
universal. A nation possesses status, rights, and responsibilities only
in a commonwealth of nations of which it is a member.
Conflict Groups Accommodation Groups
1. Gangs 1. Clubs
2. Labor organizations, employers' 2. Social classes, vocational
associations, middle-class unions, groups
tenant protective unions
3. Races 3. Castes
4. Sects 4. Denominations
5. Nationalities 5. Nations
The works upon accommodation groups are concerned almost exclusively
with the principles, methods, and technique of organization. There are,
indeed, one or two important descriptive works upon secret organizations
in primitive and modern times. The books and articles, however, on
organized boys' groups deal with the plan of organization of Boy Scouts,
Boys' Brotherhood Republic, George Junior Republics, Knights of King
Arthur, and many other clubs of these types. They are not studies of
natural groups.
The comparative study of social classes and vocational groups is an
unworked field. The differentiation of social types, especially in urban
life, and the complexity and subtlety of the social distinctions
separating social and vocational classes, opens a fruitful prospect for
investigation. Scattered through a wide literature, ranging from
official inquiries to works of fiction, there are, in occasional
paragraphs, pages, and chapters, observations of value.
In the field of castes the work of research is well under way. The caste
system of India has been the subject of careful examination and
analysis. Sighele points out that the prohibition of intermarriage
observed in its most rigid and absolute form is a fundamental
distinction of the caste. If this be regarded as the fundamental
criterion, the Negro race in the United States occupies the position of
a caste. The prostitute, in America, until recently constituted a
separate caste. With the systematic breaking up of the segregated vice
districts in our great cities prostitution, as a caste, seems to have
disappeared. The place of the prostitute seems to have been occupied by
the demimondaine who lives on the outskirts of society but who is not by
any means an outcast.
It is difficult to dissociate the materials upon nationalities from
those upon nations. The studies, however, of the internal organization
of the state, made to promote law and order, would come under the latter
head. Here, also, would be included studies of the extension of the
police power to promote the national welfare. In international relations
studies of international law, of international courts of arbitration, of
leagues or associations of nations manifest the increasing interest in
the accommodations that would avert or postpone conflicts of militant
nationalities.
In the United States there is considerable literature upon church
federation and the community church. This literature is one expression
of the transition of the Protestant churches from sectarian bodies,
engaged in warfare for the support of distinctive doctrines and dogmas,
to co-operating denominations organized into the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America.
4. Social Organization
Until recently there has been more interest manifested in elaborating
theories of the stages in the evolution of society than in analyzing the
structure of different types of societies. Durkheim, however, in _De la
division du travail social_, indicated how the division of labor and the
social attitudes, or the mental accommodations to the life-situation,
shape social organization. Cooley, on the other hand, in his work
_Social Organization_ conceived the structure of society to be "the
larger mind," or an outgrowth of human nature and human ideals.
The increasing number of studies of individual primitive communities has
furnished data for the comparative study of different kinds of social
organization. Schurtz, Vierkandt, Rivers, Lowie, and others in the last
twenty years have made important comparative studies in this field. The
work of these scholars has led to the abandonment of the earlier notions
of uniform evolutionary stages of culture in which all peoples,
primitive, ancient, and modern alike, might be classified. New light has
been thrown upon the actual accommodations in the small family, in the
larger family group, the clan, gens or sib, in the secret society, and
in the tribe which determined the patterns of life of primitive peoples
under different geographical and historical conditions.
At the present time, the investigations of social organization of
current and popular interest have to do with the problems of social work
and of community life. "Community organization," "community action,"
"know your own community" are phrases which express the practical
motives behind the attempts at community study. Such investigations as
have been made, with a few shining exceptions, the Pittsburgh Survey and
the community studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, have been
superficial. All, perhaps, have been tentative and experimental. The
community has not been studied from a fundamental standpoint. Indeed,
there was not available, as a background of method and of orientation,
any adequate analysis of social organization.
A penetrating analysis of the social structure of a community must quite
naturally be based upon studies of human geography. Plant and animal
geography has been studied, but slight attention has been given to human
geography, that is, to the local distribution of persons who constitute
a community and the accommodations that are made because of the
consequent physical distances and social relationships.
Ethnological and historical studies of individual communities furnish
valuable comparative materials for a treatise upon human ecology which
would serve as a guidebook for studies in community organization. C. J.
Galpin's _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_ is an example
of the recognition of ecological factors as basic in the study of social
organization.
In the bibliography of this chapter is given a list of references to
certain of the experiments in community organization. Students should
study this literature in the light of the more fundamental studies of
types of social groups and studies of individual communities listed in
an earlier bibliography.[240] It is at once apparent that the rural
community has been more carefully studied than has the urban community.
Yet more experiments in community organization have been tried out in
the city than in the country. Reports upon social-center activities,
upon community councils, and other types of community organization have
tended to be enthusiastic rather than factual and critical. The most
notable experiment of community organization, the Social Unit Plan,
tried out in Cincinnati, was what the theatrical critics call a _succès
d'estime_, but after the experiment had been tried it was abandoned.
Control of conditions of community life is not likely to meet with
success unless based on an appreciation and understanding of human
nature on the one hand, and of the natural or ecological organization of
community life on the other.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. THE PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY OF ACCOMMODATION
A. _Accommodation Defined_
(1) Morgan, C. Lloyd, and Baldwin, J. Mark. Articles on "Accommodation
and Adaptation," _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, I, 7-8,
14-15.
(2) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._
Methods and processes. Chap, xvi, "Habit and Accommodation," pp. 476-88.
New York, 1895.
(3) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der
Vergesellschaftung. "Kompromiss und Versöhnung," pp. 330-36. Leipzig,
1908.
(4) Bristol, L. M. _Social Adaptation._ A study in the development of
the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress. Cambridge,
Mass., 1915.
(5) Ross, E. A. _Principles of Sociology._ "Toleration," "Compromise,"
"Accommodation," pp. 225-34. New York, 1920.
(6) Ritchie, David G. _Natural Rights._ A criticism of some political
and ethical conceptions. Chap. viii, "Toleration," pp. 157-209. London,
1895.
(7) Morley, John. _On Compromise._ London, 1874.
(8) Tardieu, É. "Le cynisme: étude psychologique," _Revue
philosophique_, LVII (1904), 1-28.
(9) Jellinek, Georg. _Die Lehre von den Staatenverbindungen._ Berlin,
1882.
B. _Acclimatization and Colonization_
(1) Wallace, Alfred R. Article on "Acclimatization." _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, I, 114-19.
(2) Brinton, D. G. _The Basis of Social Relations._ A study in ethnic
psychology. Part II, chap. iv, "The Influence of Geographic
Environment," pp. 180-99. New York, 1902.
(3) Ripley, W. Z. _The Races of Europe._ A sociological study. Chap.
xxi, "Acclimatization: the Geographical Future of the European Races,"
pp. 560-89. New York, 1899. [Bibliography.]
(4) Virchow, Rudolph. "Acclimatization," _Popular Science Monthly_,
XXVIII (1886), 507-17.
(5) Boas, Franz. "Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants,"
_Report of Immigration Commission, 1907._ Washington, 1911.
(6) Keller, Albert G. _Colonization._ A study of the founding of new
societies. Boston, 1908. [Bibliography.]
(7) ----. "The Value of the Study of Colonies for Sociology," _American
Journal of Sociology_, XII (1906), 417-20.
(8) Roscher, W., and Jannasch, R. _Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und
Auswanderung._ 3d ed. Leipzig, 1885.
(9) Leroy-Beaulieu, P. _De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes._
5th ed., 2 vols. Paris, 1902.
(10) Huntington, Ellsworth. _Civilization and Climate._ Chap. iii, "The
White Man in the Tropics," pp. 35-48. New Haven, 1915.
(11) Ward, Robert De C. _Climate._ Considered especially in relation to
man. Chap. viii, "The Life of Man in the Tropics," pp. 220-71. New York,
1908.
(12) Bryce, James. "British Experience in the Government of Colonies,"
_Century_, LVII (1898-99), 718-29.
C. _Superordination and Subordination_
(1) Simmel, Georg. "Superiority and Subordination as Subject Matter of
Sociology," translated from the German by Albion W. Small, _American
Journal of Sociology_, II (1896-97), 167-89, 392-415.
(2) Thorndike, E. L. _The Original Nature of Man._ "Mastering and
Submissive Behavior," pp. 92-97. New York, 1913.
(3) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ "The
Instincts of Self-Abasement (or Subjection) and of Self-Assertion (or
Self-Display) and the Emotions of Subjection and Elation," pp. 62-66.
12th ed. Boston, 1917.
(4) Münsterberg, Hugo. _Psychology, General and Applied._ Chap. xviii,
"Submission," pp. 254-64. New York, 1914.
(5) Galton, Francis. _Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development._
"Gregarious and Slavish Instincts," pp. 68-82. New York, 1883.
(6) Ellis, Havelock. _Studies in the Psychology of Sex._ Vol. III,
"Analysis of the Sexual Impulse." "Sexual Subjection," pp. 60-71; 85-87.
Philadelphia, 1914.
(7) Calhoun, Arthur W. _A Social History of the American Family._ From
colonial times to the present. Vol. II, "From Independence through the
Civil War." Chap. iv, "The Social Subordination of Woman," pp. 79-101. 3
vols. Cincinnati, 1918.
(8) Galton, Francis. "The First Steps toward the Domestication of
Animals," _Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London_, III,
122-38.
D. _Conversion_
(1) Starbuck, Edwin D. _The Psychology of Religion._ London, 1899.
(2) James, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience._ Lectures ix
and x, "Conversion," pp. 189-258. London, 1902.
(3) Coe, George A. _The Psychology of Religion._ Chap. x, "Conversion,"
pp. 152-74. Chicago, 1916.
(4) Prince, Morton. "The Psychology of Sudden Religious Conversion,"
_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, I (1906-7), 42-54.
(5) Tawney, G. A. "The Period of Conversion," _Psychological Review_, XI
(1904), 210-16.
(6) Partridge, G. E. _Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance._ Pp.
152-63. New York, 1912. [Mental cures of alcoholism.]
(7) Begbie, Harold. _Twice-born Men._ A clinic in regeneration. A
footnote in narrative to Professor William James's _The Varieties of
Religious Experience_. New York, 1909.
(8) Burr, Anna R. _Religious Confessions and Confessants._ With a
chapter on the history of introspection. Boston, 1914.
(9) Patterson, R. J. _Catch-My-Pal._ A story of Good Samaritanship. New
York, 1913.
(10) Weber, John L. "A Modern Miracle, the Remarkable Conversion of
Former Governor Patterson of Tennessee," _Congregationalist_, XCIX
(1914), 6, 8. [See also "The Conversion of Governor Patterson,"
_Literary Digest_, XLVIII (1914), 111-12.]
II. FORMS OF ACCOMMODATION
A. _Slavery_
(1) Letourneau, Ch. _L'évolution de l'esclavage dans les diverses races
humaines._ Paris, 1897.
(2) Nieboer, Dr. H. J. _Slavery as an Industrial System._ Ethnological
researches. The Hague, 1900. [Bibliography.]
(3) Wallon, H. _Historie de l'esclavage dans l'antiquité._ 2d ed., 3
vols. Paris, 1879.
(4) Sugenheim, S. _Geschichte der Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft und
Hörigkeit in Europa bis um die Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts._ St.
Petersburg, 1861.
(5) Edwards, Bryan. _The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British
Colonies in the West Indies._ 3 vols. London, 1793-1801.
(6) Helps, Arthur. _Life of Las Casas, "the Apostle of the Indies."_ 5th
ed. London, 1890.
(7) Phillips, Ulrich B. _American Negro Slavery._ A survey of the
supply, employment, and control of Negro labor as determined by the
plantation régime. New York, 1918.
(8) ----. _Plantation and Frontier, 1649-1863._ Documentary history of
American industrial society. Vols. I-II. Cleveland, 1910-11.
(9) _A Professional Planter._ Practical rules for the management and
medical treatment of Negro slaves in the Sugar Colonies. London, 1803.
[Excerpt in Phillips, U. B., _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 129-30.]
(10) Russell, J. H. "Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865," _Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science._ Baltimore,
1913.
(11) Olmsted, F. L. _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States._ With
remarks on their economy. New York, 1856.
(12) Smedes, Susan D. _Memorials of a Southern Planter._ Baltimore,
1887.
(13) Sartorius von Walterhausen, August. _Die Arbeitsverfassung der
englischen Kolonien in Nordamerika._ Strassburg, 1894.
(14) Ballagh, James C. "A History of Slavery in Virginia," _Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science_.
Baltimore, 1902.
(15) McCormac, E. I. "White Servitude in Maryland, 1634-1820," _Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science_.
Baltimore, 1904.
(16) Kemble, Frances A. _Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation
in 1838-1839._ New York, 1863.
B. _Caste_
(1) Risley, Herbert H. _The People of India._ Calcutta and London, 1915.
(2) ----. _India._ Ethnographic Appendices, being the data upon which
the caste chapter of the report is based. Appendix IV. Typical Tribes
and Castes. Calcutta, 1903.
(3) Bouglé, M. C. "Remarques générales sur le régime des castes,"
_L'Année sociologique_, IV (1899-1900), 1-64.
(4) Crooke, W. "The Stability of Caste and Tribal Groups in India,"
_Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, XLIV (1914), 270-81.
(5) Bhattacharya, Jogendra Nath. _Hindu Castes and Sects._ An exposition
of the origin of the Hindu caste system and the bearing of the sects
toward each other and toward other religious systems. Calcutta, 1896.
(6) Somló, F. _Der Güterverkehr in der Urgesellschaft._ "Zum Ursprung
der Kastenbildung," pp. 157-59. Instituts Solvay: Travaux de l'Institut
de Sociologie. _Notes et mémoires_, Fascicule 8. Bruxelles, 1909.
(7) Ratzel, Friedrich. _Völkerkunde._ I, 81. 2d rev. ed. Leipzig and
Wien, 1894. [The origin of caste in the difference of occupation.]
(8) Iyer, L. K. Anantha Krishna. _The Cochin Tribes and Castes._ London,
1909.
(9) Bailey, Thomas P. _Race Orthodoxy in the South._ And other aspects
of the Negro question. New York, 1914.
C. _Classes_
(1) Bücher, Carl. _Industrial Evolution._ Translated from the 3d German
edition by S. Morley Wickett. Chap. ix, "Organization of Work and the
Formation of Social Classes," pp. 315-44. New York, 1907.
(2) Hobhouse, L. T. _Morals in Evolution._ A study in comparative
ethics. Part I, chap. vii, "Class Relations," pp. 270-317. New York,
1915.
(3) Schmoller, Gustav. _Grundriss der allgemeinen
Volkswirtschaftslehre._ Vol. I, Book II, chap. vi, "Die
gesellschaftliche Klassenbildung," pp. 391-411. 6. Aufl. Leipzig, 1901.
(4) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Organization._ Part IV, "Social Classes,"
pp. 209-309. New York, 1909.
(5) Bauer, Arthur. "Les classes sociales," _Revue internationale de
sociologie_, XI (1903), 119-35; 243-58; 301-16; 398-413; 474-98; 576-87.
[Includes discussions at successive meetings of the Société de
Sociologie de Paris by G. Tarde, Ch. Limousin, H. Monin, René Worms, E.
Delbet, L. Philippe, M. Coicou, H. Blondel, G. Pinet, P. Vavin, E. de
Roberty, G. Lafargue, M. le Gouix, M. Kovalewsky, I. Loutschisky, E.
Séménoff, Mme. de Mouromtzeff, R. de la Grasserie, E. Cheysson, D.
Draghicesco.]
(6) Bouglé, C. _Les idées égalitaires._ Étude sociologique. Paris, 1899.
(7) Thomas, William I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ "The Relation
of the Medicine Man to the Origin of the Professional Occupations," pp.
281-303. Chicago, 1909.
(8) Tarde, Gabriel. "L'hérédité des professions," _Revue internationale
de sociologie_, VIII (1900), 50-59. [Discussion of the subject was
continued under the title "L'hérédité et la continuité des professions,"
pp. 117-24, 196-207.]
(9) Knapp, Georg F. _Die Bauernbefreiung und der Ursprung der
Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preussens._ Leipzig, 1887.
(10) Zimmern, Alfred E. _The Greek Commonwealth._ Politics and economics
in fifth-century Athens. Pp. 255-73, 323-47, 378-94. 2d rev. ed. Oxford,
1915.
(11) Mallock, W. H. _Aristocracy and Evolution._ A study of the rights,
the origin, and the social functions of the wealthier classes. New York,
1898.
(12) Veblen, Thorstein. _The Theory of the Leisure Class._ An economic
study in the evolution of institutions. New York, 1899.
(13) D'Aeth, F. G. "Present Tendencies of Class Differentiation,"
_Sociological Review_, III (1910), 267-76.
III. ACCOMMODATION AND ORGANIZATION
A. _Social Organization_
(1) Durkheim, É. _De la division du travail social._ 2d ed. Paris, 1902.
(2) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Organization._ A study of the larger
mind. Part V, "Institutions," pp. 313-92. New York, 1909.
(3) Salz, Arthur. "Zur Geschichte der Berufsidee," _Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft_, XXXVII (1913), 380-423.
(4) Rivers, W. H. R. _Kinship and Social Organization._ Studies in
economic and political science. London, 1914.
(5) Schurtz, Heinrich. _Altersklassen und Männerbünde._ Eine Darstellung
der Grundformen der Gesellschaft. Berlin, 1902.
(6) Vierkandt, A. "Die politischen Verhältnisse der Naturvölker,"
_Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft_, IV, 417-26, 497-510.
(7) Lowie, Robert H. _Primitive Society._ Chap. x, "Associations," chap.
xi, "Theory of Associations," pp. 257-337. New York, 1920.
(8) Zimmern, Alfred E. _The Greek Commonwealth._ Politics and economics
in fifth-century Athens. 2d rev. ed. Oxford, 1915.
(9) Thomas, William I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ Ethnological
materials, psychological standpoint, classified and annotated
bibliographies for the interpretation of savage society. Part VII,
"Social Organization, Morals, the State," pp. 753-869. Chicago, 1909.
[Bibliography.]
B. _Secret Societies_
(1) Simmel, Georg. "The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies,"
translated from the German by Albion W. Small, _American Journal of
Sociology_, XI (1905-6), 441-98.
(2) Heckethorn, C. W. _The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries._
A comprehensive account of upwards of one hundred and sixty secret
organizations--religious, political, and social--from the most remote
ages down to the present time. New ed., rev. and enl., 2 vols. London,
1897.
(3) Webster, Hutton. _Primitive Secret Societies._ A study in early
politics and religion. New York, 1908.
(4) Schuster, G. _Die geheimen Gesellschaften, Verbindungen und Orden._
2 vols. Leipzig, 1906.
(5) Boas, Franz. "The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of
the Kwakiutl Indians," _U.S. National Museum, Annual Report, 1895_, pp.
311-738. Washington, 1897.
(6) Frobenius, L. "Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas," _Abhandlungen
der Kaiserlichen Leopoldinisch-Carolinischen deutschen Akademie der
Naturforscher_, LXXIV, 1-278.
(7) Pfleiderer, Otto. _Primitive Christianity, Its Writings and
Teachings in Their Historical Connections._ Vol. III, chap, i, "The
Therapeutae and the Essenes," pp. 1-22. Translated from the German by W.
Montgomery. New York, 1910.
(8) Jennings, Hargrave. _The Rosicrucians, Their Rites and Mysteries._
3d rev. and enl. ed., 2 vols. London, 1887.
(9) Stillson, Henry L., and Klein, Henri F. Article on "The Masonic
Fraternity," _The Americana_, XVIII, 383-89. [Bibliography.]
(10) Johnston, R. M. _The Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy and the
Rise of the Secret Societies._ Part II, "The Rise of the Secret
Societies," Vol. II, pp. 3-139, 153-55; especially chap. ii, "Origin and
Rites of the Carbonari," Vol. II, pp. 19-44. London, 1904.
[Bibliography.]
(11) Fleming, Walter L. _Documentary History of Reconstruction._ Vol.
II, chap. xii, "The Ku Klux Movement," pp. 327-77. Cleveland, 1907.
(12) Lester, J. C., and Wilson, D. L. _The Ku Klux Klan._ Its origin,
growth, and disbandment. With appendices containing the prescripts of
the Ku Klux Klan, specimen orders and warnings. With introduction and
notes by Walter L. Fleming. New York and Washington, 1905.
(13) La Hodde, Lucien de. _The Cradle of Rebellions._ A history of the
secret societies of France. Translated from the French by J. W. Phelps.
New York, 1864.
(14) Spadoni, D. _Sètte, cospirazioni e cospiratori nello Stato
Pontificio all'indomani della restaurazioni._ Torino, 1904.
(15) "Societies, Criminal," _The Americana_, XXV, 201-5.
(16) Clark, Thomas A. _The Fraternity and the College._ Being a series
of papers dealing with fraternity problems. Menasha, Wis., 1915.
C. _Social Types_
(1) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. III, "Life Record of an
Immigrant." Boston, 1919. ["Introduction," pp. 5-88, analyzes and
interprets three social types: the philistine, the bohemian, and the
creative.]
(2) Paulhan, Fr. _Les caractères._ Livre II, "Les types déterminés par
les tendances sociales," pp. 143-89. Paris, 1902.
(3) Rousiers, Paul de. _L'élite dans la société moderne._ Son rôle, etc.
Paris, 1914.
(4) Bradford, Gamaliel, Jr. _Types of American Character._ New York,
1895.
(5) Kellogg, Walter G. _The Conscientious Objector._ Introduction by
Newton D. Baker. New York, 1919.
(6) Hapgood, Hutchins. _Types from City Streets._ New York, 1910.
(7) Bab, Julius. _Die Berliner Bohème._ Berlin, 1905.
(8) Cory, H. E. _The Intellectuals and the Wage Workers._ A study in
educational psychoanalysis. New York, 1919.
(9) Buchanan, J. R. _The Story of a Labor Agitator._ New York, 1903.
(10) Taussig, F. W. _Inventors and Money-Makers._ New York, 1915.
(11) Stoker, Bram. _Famous Impostors._ London, 1910.
D. _Community Organization_
(1) Galpin, Charles J. "Rural Relations of the Village and Small City,"
_University of Wisconsin Bulletin No. 411._
(2) ----. _Rural Life._ Chaps. vii-xi, pp. 153-314. New York, 1918.
(3) Hayes, A. W. _Rural Community Organization._ Chicago, 1921. [In
Press.]
(4) Morgan, E. L. "Mobilizing a Rural Community," _Massachusetts
Agricultural College, Extension Bulletin No. 23._ Amherst, 1918.
(5) "Rural Organization," _Proceedings of the Third National Country
Life Conference, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1920._ Chicago, 1921.
(6) Hart, Joseph K. _Community Organization._ New York, 1920.
(7) _National Social Unit Organization, Bulletins 1, 2, 2a, 3, 4, 5._
Cincinnati, 1917-19.
(8) Devine, Edward T. "Social Unit in Cincinnati," _Survey_, XLIII
(1919), 115-26.
(9) Hicks, Mary L., and Eastman, Rae S. "Block Workers as Developed
under the Social Unit Experiment in Cincinnati," _Survey_ XLIV (1920),
671-74.
(10) Ward, E. J. _The Social Center._ New York, 1913. [Bibliography.]
(11) Collier, John. "Community Councils--Democracy Every Day," _Survey_,
XL (1918), 604-6; 689-91; 709-11. [Describes community defense
organizations formed in rural and urban districts during the war.]
(12) Weller, Charles F. "Democratic Community Organization," An
after-the-war experiment in Chester, _Survey_, XLIV (1920), 77-79.
(13) Rainwater, Clarence E. _Community Organization._ Sociological
Monograph No. 15, University of Southern California. Los Angeles, 1920.
[Bibliography.]
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Biological Accommodation and Social Accommodation.
2. Acclimatization as Accommodation.
3. The Psychology of Accommodation.
4. Conversion as a Form of Accommodation: A Study of Mutations of
Attitudes in Religion, Politics, Morals, Personal Relation, etc.
5. The Psychology and Sociology of Homesickness and Nostalgia.
6. Conflict and Accommodation: War and Peace, Enmity and Conciliation,
Rivalry and Status.
7. Compromise as a Form of Accommodation.
8. The Subtler Forms of Accommodation: Flattery, "Front," Ceremony, etc.
9. The Organization of Attitudes in Accommodation: Prestige, Taboo,
Rapport, Prejudice, Fear, etc.
10. Slavery, Caste, and Class as Forms of Accommodation.
11. The Description and Analysis of Typical Examples of Accommodation:
the Political "Boss" and the Voter, Physician and Patient, the Coach and
the Members of the Team, the Town Magnate and His Fellow-Citizens, "The
Four Hundred" and "Hoi Polloi," etc.
12. Social Solidarity as the Organization of Competing Groups.
13. Division of Labor as a Form of Accommodation.
14. A Survey of Historical Types of the Family in Terms of the Changes
in Forms of Subordination and Superordination of Its Members.
15. Social Types as Accommodations: the Quack Doctor, the Reporter, the
Strike Breaker, the Schoolteacher, the Stockbroker, etc.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How do you distinguish between biological adaptation and social
accommodation?
2. Is domestication biological adaptation or accommodation?
3. Give illustrations of acclimatization as a form of accommodation.
4. Discuss phenomena of colonization with reference to accommodation.
5. What is the relation of lonesomeness to accommodation?
6. Do you agree with Nieboer's definition of slavery? Is the slave a
person? If so, to what extent? How would you compare the serf with the
slave in respect to his status?
7. To what extent do slavery and caste as forms of accommodation rest
upon (a) physical force, (b) mental attitudes?
8. What is the psychology of subordination and superordination?
9. What do you understand to be the relation of suggestion and rapport
to subordination and superordination?
10. What is meant by a person "knowing his place"?
11. How do you explain the attitude of "the old servant" to society? Do
you agree with her in lamenting the change in attitude of persons
engaged in domestic service?
12. What types of the subtler forms of accommodation occur to you?
13. What arguments would you advance for the proposition that the
relation of superiority and inferiority is reciprocal?
14. "All leaders are also led, as in countless cases the master is the
slave of his slaves." Explain.
15. What illustrations, apart from the text, occur to you of reciprocal
relations in superiority and subordination?
16. What do you understand to be the characteristic differences of the
three types of superordination and subordination?
17. How would you classify the following groups according to these three
types: the patriarchal family, the modern family, England from 1660 to
1830, manufacturing enterprise, labor union, army, boys' gang, boys'
club, Christianity, humanitarian movement?
18. What do you think Simmel means by the term "accommodation"?
19. How is accommodation related to peace?
20. Does accommodation end struggle?
21. In what sense does commerce imply accommodation?
22. What type of interaction is involved in compromise? What
illustrations would you suggest to bring out your point?
23. Does compromise make for progress?
24. Is a compromise better or worse than either or both of the proposals
involved in it?
25. What, in your judgment, is the relation of personal competition to
the division of labor?
26. What examples of division of labor outside the economic field would
you suggest?
27. What do you understand to be the relation of personal competition
and group competition?
28. In what different ways does status (a) grow out of, and (b)
prevent, the processes of personal competition and group competition?
29. To what extent, at the present time, is success in life determined
by personal competition, and social selection by status?
30. In what ways does the division of labor make for social solidarity?
31. What is the difference between social solidarity based upon
like-mindedness and based upon diverse-mindedness?
FOOTNOTES:
[221] _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, I, 15, 8.
[222] _Social Organization_, p. 4.
[223] A teacher in the public schools of Chicago came in possession of
the following letter written to a friend in Mississippi by a Negro boy
who had come to the city from the South two months previously. It
illustrates his rapid accommodation to the situation including the
hostile Irish group (the Wentworth Avenue "Mickeys").
Dear leon I write to you--to let you hear from me--Boy you
don't know the time we have with Sled. it Snow up here Regular.
We Play foot Ball. But Now we have So much Snow we don't Play
foot Ball any More. We Ride on Sled. Boy I have a Sled call The
king of The hill and She king to. tell Mrs. Sara that Coln
Roscoe Conklin Simon Spoke at St Mark the church we Belong to.
Gus I havnt got chance to Beat But to Boy. Sack we show Runs
them Mickeys. Boy them scoundle is bad on Wentworth Avenue.
Add 3123a Breton St Chi ill.
[224] From Daniel G. Brinton, _The Basis of Social Relations_, pp.
194-99. (Courtesy of G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1902.)
[225] From Dr. H. J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial System_, pp.
1-7. (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1910.)
[226] From Matthew G. Lewis, _Journal of a West India Proprietor_, pp.
60-337. (John Murray, 1834.)
[227] From "Modern Theories of Caste: Mr. Nesfield's Theory," Appendix
V, in Sir Herbert Risley, _The People of India_, pp. 407-8. (W. Thacker
& Co., 1915.)
[228] From Sir Herbert Risley, _The People of India_, pp. 130-39. (W.
Thacker & Co., 1915.)
[229] From Hugo Münsterberg, _Psychology, General and Applied_, pp.
259-64, (D. Appleton & Co., 1914.)
[230] Adapted from _Domestic Service_, by An Old Servant, pp. 10-110.
(Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917.)
[231] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small,
"Superiority and Subordination," in the _American Journal of Sociology_,
II (1896-97), 169-71.
[232] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small,
"Superiority and Subordination," in the _American Journal of Sociology_,
II (1896-97), 172-86.
[233] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small,
"The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, IX
(1903-4), 799-802.
[234] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small,
"The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, IX
(1903-4), 804-6.
[235] Adapted from Charles H. Cooley, "Personal Competition," in
_Economic Studies_, IV (1899), No. 2, 78-86.
[236] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1915), 584-86.
[237] Translated and adapted from Émile Durkheim, _La division du
travail social_, pp. 24-209. (Félix Alcan, 1902.)
[238] _Pure Sociology_, p. 16.
[239] _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, p. 23.
[240] _Supra_, pp. 218-19.
CHAPTER XI
ASSIMILATION
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Popular Conceptions of Assimilation
The concept assimilation, so far as it has been defined in popular
usage, gets its meaning from its relation to the problem of immigration.
The more concrete and familiar terms are the abstract noun
Americanization and the verbs Americanize, Anglicize, Germanize, and the
like. All of these words are intended to describe the process by which
the culture of a community or a country is transmitted to an adopted
citizen. Negatively, assimilation is a process of denationalization, and
this is, in fact, the form it has taken in Europe.
The difference between Europe and America, in relation to the problem of
cultures, is that in Europe difficulties have arisen from the forcible
incorporation of minor cultural groups, i.e., nationalities, within the
limits of a larger political unit, i.e., an empire. In America the
problem has arisen from the voluntary migration to this country of
peoples who have abandoned the political allegiances of the old country
and are gradually acquiring the culture of the new. In both cases the
problem has its source in an effort to establish and maintain a
political order in a community that has no common culture. Fundamentally
the problem of maintaining a democratic form of government in a southern
village composed of whites and blacks, and the problem of maintaining an
international order based on anything but force are the same. The
ultimate basis of the existing moral and political order is still
kinship and culture. Where neither exist, a political order, not based
on caste or class, is at least problematic.
Assimilation, as popularly conceived in the United States, was expressed
symbolically some years ago in Zangwill's dramatic parable of _The
Melting Pot_. William Jennings Bryan has given oratorical expression to
the faith in the beneficent outcome of the process: "Great has been the
Greek, the Latin, the Slav, the Celt, the Teuton, and the Saxon; but
greater than any of these is the American, who combines the virtues of
them all."
Assimilation, as thus conceived, is a natural and unassisted process,
and practice, if not policy, has been in accord with this laissez faire
conception, which the outcome has apparently justified. In the United
States, at any rate, the tempo of assimilation has been more rapid than
elsewhere.
Closely akin to this "magic crucible" notion of assimilation is the
theory of "like-mindedness." This idea was partly a product of Professor
Giddings' theory of sociology, partly an outcome of the popular notion
that similarities and homogeneity are identical with unity. The ideal of
assimilation was conceived to be that of feeling, thinking, and acting
alike. Assimilation and socialization have both been described in these
terms by contemporary sociologists.
Another and a different notion of assimilation or Americanization is
based on the conviction that the immigrant has contributed in the past
and may be expected in the future to contribute something of his own in
temperament, culture, and philosophy of life to the future American
civilization. This conception had its origin among the immigrants
themselves, and has been formulated and interpreted by persons who are,
like residents in social settlements, in close contact with them. This
recognition of the diversity in the elements entering into the cultural
process is not, of course, inconsistent with the expectation of an
ultimate homogeneity of the product. It has called attention, at any
rate, to the fact that the process of assimilation is concerned with
differences quite as much as with likenesses.
2. The Sociology of Assimilation
Accommodation has been described as a process of adjustment, that is, an
organization of social relations and attitudes to prevent or to reduce
conflict, to control competition, and to maintain a basis of security in
the social order for persons and groups of divergent interests and types
to carry on together their varied life-activities. Accommodation in the
sense of the composition of conflict is invariably the goal of the
political process.
Assimilation is a process of interpenetration and fusion in which
persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of
other persons or groups, and, by sharing their experience and history,
are incorporated with them in a common cultural life. In so far as
assimilation denotes this sharing of tradition, this intimate
participation in common experiences, assimilation is central in the
historical and cultural processes.
This distinction between accommodation and assimilation, with reference
to their rôle in society, explains certain significant formal
differences between the two processes. An accommodation of a conflict,
or an accommodation to a new situation, may take place with rapidity.
The more intimate and subtle changes involved in assimilation are more
gradual. The changes that occur in accommodation are frequently not only
sudden but revolutionary, as in the mutation of attitudes in conversion.
The modifications of attitudes in the process of assimilation are not
only gradual, but moderate, even if they appear considerable in their
accumulation over a long period of time. If mutation is the symbol for
accommodation, growth is the metaphor for assimilation. In accommodation
the person or the group is generally, though not always, highly
conscious of the occasion, as in the peace treaty that ends the war, in
the arbitration of an industrial controversy, in the adjustment of the
person to the formal requirements of life in a new social world. In
assimilation the process is typically unconscious; the person is
incorporated into the common life of the group before he is aware and
with little conception of the course of events which brought this
incorporation about.
James has described the way in which the attitude of the person changes
toward certain subjects, woman's suffrage, for example, not as the
result of conscious reflection, but as the outcome of the unreflective
responses to a series of new experiences. The intimate associations of
the family and of the play group, participation in the ceremonies of
religious worship and in the celebrations of national holidays, all
these activities transmit to the immigrant and to the alien a store of
memories and sentiments common to the native-born, and these memories
are the basis of all that is peculiar and sacred in our cultural life.
As social contact initiates interaction, assimilation is its final
perfect product. The nature of the social contacts is decisive in the
process. Assimilation naturally takes place most rapidly where contacts
are primary, that is, where they are the most intimate and intense, as
in the area of touch relationship, in the family circle and in intimate
congenial groups. Secondary contacts facilitate accommodations, but do
not greatly promote assimilation. The contacts here are external and too
remote.
A common language is indispensable for the most intimate association of
the members of the group; its absence is an insurmountable barrier to
assimilation. The phenomenon "that every group has its own language,"
its peculiar "universe of discourse," and its cultural symbols is
evidence of the interrelation between communication and assimilation.
Through the mechanisms of imitation and suggestion, communication
effects a gradual and unconscious modification of the attitudes and
sentiments of the members of the group. The unity thus achieved is not
necessarily or even normally like-mindedness; it is rather a unity of
experience and of orientation, out of which may develop a community of
purpose and action.
3. Classification of the Materials
The selections in the materials on assimilation have been arranged under
three heads: (a) biological aspects of assimilation; (b) the
conflict and fusion of cultures; and (c) Americanization as a problem
in assimilation. The readings proceed from an analysis of the nature of
assimilation to a survey of its processes, as they have manifested
themselves historically, and finally to a consideration of the problems
of Americanization.
a) _Biological aspects of assimilation._--Assimilation is to be
distinguished from amalgamation, with which it is, however, closely
related. Amalgamation is a biological process, the fusion of races by
interbreeding and intermarriage. Assimilation, on the other hand, is
limited to the fusion of cultures. Miscegenation, or the mingling of
races, is a universal phenomenon among the historical races. There are
no races, in other words, that do not interbreed. Acculturation, or the
transmission of cultural elements from one social group to another,
however, has invariably taken place on a larger scale and over a wider
area than miscegenation.
Amalgamation, while it is limited to the crossing of racial traits
through intermarriage, naturally promotes assimilation or the
cross-fertilization of social heritages. The offspring of a "mixed"
marriage not only biologically inherits physical and temperamental
traits from both parents, but also acquires in the nurture of family
life the attitudes, sentiments, and memories of both father and mother.
Thus amalgamation of races insures the conditions of primary social
contacts most favorable for assimilation.
b) _The conflict and fusion of cultures._--The survey of the process
of what the ethnologists call _acculturation_, as it is exhibited
historically in the conflicts and fusions of cultures, indicates the
wide range of the phenomena in this field.
(1) Social contact, even when slight or indirect, is sufficient for the
transmission from one cultural group to another of the material elements
of civilization. Stimulants and firearms spread rapidly upon the
objective demonstration of their effects. The potato, a native of
America, has preceded the white explorer in its penetration into many
areas of Africa.
(2) The changes in languages in the course of the contacts, conflicts,
and fusions of races and nationalities afford data for a more adequate
description of the process of assimilation. Under what conditions does a
ruling group impose its speech upon the masses, or finally capitulate to
the vulgar tongue of the common people? In modern times the
printing-press, the book, and the newspaper have tended to fix
languages. The press has made feasible language revivals in connection
with national movements on a scale impossible in earlier periods.
The emphasis placed upon language as a medium of cultural transmission
rests upon a sound principle. For the idioms, particularly of a spoken
language, probably reflect more accurately the historical experiences of
a people than history itself. The basis of unity among most historical
peoples is linguistic rather than racial. The Latin peoples are a
convenient example of this fact. The experiment now in progress in the
Philippine Islands is significant in this connection. To what extent
will the national and cultural development of those islands be
determined by native temperament, by Spanish speech and tradition, or by
the English language and the American school system?
(3) Rivers in his study of Melanesian and Hawaiian cultures was
impressed by the persistence of fundamental elements of the social
structure. The basic patterns of family and social life remained
practically unmodified despite profound transformations in technique,
in language, and in religion. Evidently many material devices and formal
expressions of an alien society can be adopted without significant
changes in the native culture.
The question, however, may be raised whether or not the complete
adoption of occidental science and organization of industry would not
produce far-reaching changes in social organization. The trend of
economic, social, and cultural changes in Japan will throw light on this
question. Even if revolutionary social changes actually occur, the point
may well be made that they will be the outcome of the new economic
system, and therefore not effects of acculturation.
(4) The rapidity and completeness of assimilation depends directly upon
the intimacy of social contact. By a curious paradox, slavery, and
particularly household slavery, has probably been, aside from
intermarriage, the most efficient device for promoting assimilation.
Adoption and initiation among primitive peoples provided a ceremonial
method for inducting aliens and strangers into the group, the
significance of which can only be understood after a more adequate study
of ceremonial in general.
c) _Americanization as a problem of assimilation._--Any consideration
of policies, programs, and methods of Americanization gain perspective
when related to the sociology of assimilation. The "Study of Methods of
Americanization," of the Carnegie Corporation, defines Americanization
as "the participation of the immigrant in the life of the community in
which he lives." From this standpoint participation is both the medium
and the goal of assimilation. Participation of the immigrant in American
life in any area of life prepares him for participation in every other.
What the immigrant and the alien need most is an opportunity for
participation. Of first importance, of course, is the language. In
addition he needs to know how to use our institutions for his own
benefit and protection. But participation, to be real, must be
spontaneous and intelligent, and that means, in the long run, that the
immigrant's life in America must be related to the life he already
knows. Not by the suppression of old memories, but by their
incorporation in his new life is assimilation achieved. The failure of
conscious, coercive policies of denationalization in Europe and the
great success of the early, passive phase of Americanization in this
country afford in this connection an impressive contrast. It follows
that assimilation cannot be promoted directly, but only indirectly, that
is, by supplying the conditions that make for participation.
There is no process but life itself that can effectually wipe out the
immigrant's memory of his past. The inclusion of the immigrant in our
common life may perhaps be best reached, therefore, in co-operation that
looks not so much to the past as to the future. The second generation of
the immigrant may share fully in our memories, but practically all that
we can ask of the foreign-born is participation in our ideals, our
wishes, and our common enterprises.
II. MATERIALS
A. BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ASSIMILATION
1. Assimilation and Amalgamation[241]
Writers on historical and social science are just beginning to turn
their attention to the large subject of social assimilation. That the
subject has until recently received little attention is readily seen by
a mere glance at the works of our leading sociologists and historians.
The word itself rarely appears; and when the theme is touched upon, no
clearly defined, stable idea seems to exist, even in the mind of the
author. Thus Giddings at one time identifies assimilation with
"reciprocal accommodation." In another place he defines it as "the
process of growing alike," and once again he tells us it is the method
by which foreigners in the United States society become Americans. Nor
are M. Novicow's ideas on the subject perfectly lucid, for he considers
assimilation sometimes as a _process_, at other times as an _art_, and
again as a _result_. He makes the term "denationalization" coextensive
with our "assimilation," and says that the ensemble of measures which a
government takes for inducing a population to abandon one type of
culture for another is denationalization. Denationalization by the
authority of the state carries with it a certain amount of coercion; it
is always accompanied by a measure of violence. In the next sentence,
however, we are told that the word "denationalization" may also be used
for the non-coercive _process_ by which one nationality is assimilated
with another. M. Novicow further speaks of the _art_ of assimilation,
and he tells us that the _result_ of the intellectual struggle between
races living under the same government, whether free or forced, is in
every case assimilation. Burgess also takes a narrow view of the
subject, restricting the operation of assimilating forces to the present
and considering assimilation a result of modern political union. He
says: "In modern times the political union of different races under the
leadership of the dominant race results in assimilation."
From one point of view assimilation is a process with its active and
passive elements; from another it is a result. In this discussion,
however, assimilation is considered as a process due to prolonged
contact. It may, perhaps, be defined as that process of adjustment or
accommodation which occurs between the members of two different races,
if their contact is prolonged and if the necessary psychic conditions
are present. The result is group homogeneity to a greater or less
degree. Figuratively speaking, it is the process by which the
aggregation of peoples is changed from a mere mechanical mixture into a
chemical compound.
The process of assimilation is of a psychological rather than of a
biological nature, and refers to the growing alike in character,
thoughts, and institutions, rather than to the blood-mingling brought
about by intermarriage. The intellectual results of the process of
assimilation are far more lasting than the physiological. Thus in France
today, though nineteen-twentieths of the blood is that of the aboriginal
races, the language is directly derived from that imposed by the Romans
in their conquest of Gaul. Intermarriage, the inevitable result to a
greater or less extent of race contact, plays its part in the process of
assimilation, but mere mixture of races will not cause assimilation.
Moreover, assimilation is possible, partially at least, without
intermarriage. Instances of this are furnished by the partial
assimilation of the Negro and the Indian of the United States. Thinkers
are beginning to doubt the great importance once attributed to
intermarriage as a factor in civilization. Says Mayo-Smith, "It is not
in unity of blood but in unity of institutions and social habits and
ideals that we are to seek that which we call nationality," and
nationality is the result of assimilation.
2. The Instinctive Basis of Assimilation[242]
It is a striking fact that among animals there are some whose conduct
can be generalized very readily in the categories of self-preservation,
nutrition, and sex, while there are others whose conduct cannot be thus
summarized. The behavior of the tiger and the cat is simple and easily
comprehensible, whereas that of the dog with his conscience, his humor,
his terror of loneliness, his capacity for devotion to a brutal master,
or that of the bee with her selfless devotion to the hive, furnishes
phenomena which no sophistry can assimilate without the aid of a fourth
instinct. But little examination will show that the animals whose
conduct it is difficult to generalize under the three primitive
instinctive categories are gregarious. If, then, it can be shown that
gregariousness is of a biological significance approaching in importance
that of the other instincts we may expect to find in it the source of
these anomalies of conduct, and of the complexity of human behavior.
Gregariousness seems frequently to be regarded as a somewhat superficial
character, scarcely deserving, as it were, the name of an instinct,
advantageous, it is true, but not of fundamental importance or likely to
be deeply ingrained in the inheritance of the species. This attitude may
be due to the fact that among mammals, at any rate, the appearance of
gregariousness has not been accompanied by any very gross physical
changes which are obviously associated with it.
To whatever it may be due, this method of regarding the social habit is,
in the opinion of the present writer, not justified by the facts, and
prevents the attainment of conclusions of considerable fruitfulness.
A study of bees and ants shows at once how fundamental the importance of
gregariousness may become. The individual in such communities is
completely incapable, often physically, of existing apart from the
community, and this fact at once gives rise to the suspicion that, even
in communities less closely knit than those of the ant and the bee, the
individual may in fact be more dependent on communal life than appears
at first sight.
Another very striking piece of general evidence of the significance of
gregariousness as no mere late acquirement is the remarkable coincidence
of its occurrence with that of exceptional grades of intelligence or
the possibility of very complex reactions to environment. It can
scarcely be regarded as an unmeaning accident that the dog, the horse,
the ape, the elephant, and man are all social animals. The instances of
the bee and the ant are perhaps the most amazing. Here the advantages of
gregariousness seem actually to outweigh the most prodigious differences
of structure, and we find a condition which is often thought of as a
mere habit, capable of enabling the insect nervous system to compete in
the complexity of its power of adaptation with that of the higher
vertebrates.
From the biological standpoint the probability of gregariousness being a
primitive and fundamental quality in man seems to be considerable. It
would appear to have the effect of enlarging the advantages of
variation. Varieties not immediately favorable, varieties departing
widely from the standard, varieties even unfavorable to the individual,
may be supposed to be given by it a chance of survival. Now the course
of the development of man seems to present many features incompatible
with its having proceeded among isolated individuals exposed to the
unmodified action of natural selection. Changes so serious as the
assumption of the upright posture, the reduction in the jaw and its
musculature, the reduction in the acuity of smell and hearing, demand,
if the species is to survive, either a delicacy of adjustment with the
compensatingly developing intelligence so minute as to be almost
inconceivable, or the existence of some kind of protective enclosure,
however imperfect, in which the varying individuals may be sheltered
from the direct influence of natural selection. The existence of such a
mechanism would compensate losses of physical strength in the individual
by the greatly increased strength of the larger unit, of the unit, that
is to say, upon which natural selection still acts unmodified.
The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity. It is clear that the
great advantage of the social habit is to enable large numbers to act as
one, whereby in the case of the hunting gregarious animal strength in
pursuit and attack is at once increased beyond that of the creatures
preyed upon, and in protective socialism the sensitiveness of the new
unit to alarms is greatly in excess of that of the individual member of
the flock.
To secure these advantages of homogeneity, it is evident that the
members of the herd must possess sensitiveness to the behavior of their
fellows. The individual isolated will be of no meaning; the individual
as part of the herd will be capable of transmitting the most potent
impulses. Each member of the flock tending to follow his neighbor, and
in turn to be followed, each is in some sense capable of leadership; but
no lead will be followed that departs widely from normal behavior. A
lead will only be followed from its resemblance to the normal. If the
leader go so far ahead as definitely to cease to be in the herd, he will
necessarily be ignored.
The original in conduct, that is to say, resistiveness to the voice of
the herd, will be suppressed by natural selection; the wolf which does
not follow the impulses of the herd will be starved; the sheep which
does not respond to the flock will be eaten.
Again, not only will the individual be responsive to impulses coming
from the herd but he will treat the herd as his normal environment. The
impulse to be in and always to remain with the herd will have the
strongest instinctive weight. Anything which tends to separate him from
his fellows, as soon as it becomes perceptible as such, will be strongly
resisted.
So far we have regarded the gregarious animal objectively. Let us now
try to estimate the mental aspects of these impulses. Suppose a species
in possession of precisely the instinctive endowments which we have been
considering to be also self-conscious, and let us ask what will be the
forms under which these phenomena will present themselves in its mind.
In the first place, it is quite evident that impulses derived from herd
feeling will enter the mind with the value of instincts--they will
present themselves as "a priori syntheses of the most perfect sort
needing no proof but their own evidence." They will not, however, it is
important to remember, necessarily always give this quality to the same
specific acts, but will show this great distinguishing characteristic
that they may give to any opinion whatever the characters of instinctive
belief, making it into an "a priori synthesis"; so that we shall expect
to find acts which it would be absurd to look upon as the results of
specific instincts carried out with all the enthusiasm of instinct and
displaying all the marks of instinctive behavior.
In interpreting into mental terms the consequences of gregariousness we
may conveniently begin with the simplest. The conscious individual will
feel an unanalysable primary sense of comfort in the actual presence of
his fellows and a similar sense of discomfort in their absence. It will
be obvious truth to him that it is not good for man to be alone.
Loneliness will be a real terror insurmountable by reason.
Again, certain conditions will become secondarily associated with
presence with, or absence from, the herd. For example, take the
sensations of heat and cold. The latter is prevented in gregarious
animals by close crowding and experienced in the reverse condition;
hence it comes to be connected in the mind with separation and so
acquires altogether unreasonable associations of harmfulness. Similarly,
the sensation of warmth is associated with feelings of the secure and
salutary.
Slightly more complex manifestations of the same tendency to homogeneity
are seen in the desire for identification with the herd in matters of
opinion. Here we find the biological explanation of the ineradicable
impulse mankind has always displayed toward segregation into classes.
Each one of us in his opinions, and his conduct, in matters of dress,
amusement, religion, and politics, is compelled to obtain the support of
a class, of a herd within the herd. The most eccentric in opinion or
conduct is, we may be sure, supported by the agreement of a class, the
smallness of which accounts for his apparent eccentricity, and the
preciousness of which accounts for his fortitude in defying general
opinion. Again, anything which tends to emphasize difference from the
herd is unpleasant. In the individual mind there will be an analysable
dislike of the novel in action or thought. It will be "wrong," "wicked,"
"foolish," "undesirable," or, as we say, "bad form," according to
varying circumstances which we can already to some extent define.
Manifestations relatively more simple are shown in the dislike of being
conspicuous, in shyness, and in stage fright. It is, however,
sensitiveness to the behavior of the herd which has the most important
effects upon the structure of the mind of the gregarious animal. This
sensitiveness is, as Sidis has clearly seen, closely associated with the
suggestibility of the gregarious animal, and therefore with that of man.
The effect of it will clearly be to make acceptable those suggestions
which come from the herd, and those only. It is of especial importance
to note that this suggestibility is not general, and that it is only
herd suggestions which are rendered acceptable by the action of
instinct.
B. THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF CULTURES
1. The Analysis of Blended Cultures[243]
In the analysis of any culture, a difficulty which soon meets the
investigator is that he has to determine what is due to mere contact and
what is due to intimate intermixture, such intermixture, for instance,
as is produced by the permanent blending of one people with another,
either through warlike invasion or peaceful settlement. The fundamental
weakness of most of the attempts hitherto made to analyze existing
cultures is that they have had their starting-point in the study of
material objects, and the reason for this is obvious. Owing to the fact
that material objects can be collected by anyone and subjected at
leisure to prolonged study by experts, our knowledge of the distribution
of material objects and of the technique of their manufacture has very
far outrun that of the less material elements. What I wish now to point
out is that in distinguishing between the effects of mere contact and
the intermixture of peoples, material objects are the least trustworthy
of all the constituents of culture. Thus in Melanesia we have the
clearest evidence that material objects and processes can spread by mere
contact, without any true admixture of peoples and without influence on
other features of the culture. While the distribution of material
objects is of the utmost importance in suggesting at the outset
community of culture, and while it is of equal importance in the final
process of determining points of contact and in filling in the details
of the mixture of cultures, it is the least satisfactory guide to the
actual blending of peoples which must form the solid foundation of the
ethnological analysis of culture. The case for the value of
magico-religious institutions is not much stronger. Here, again, in
Melanesia there is little doubt that whole cults can pass from one
people to another without any real intermixture of peoples. I do not
wish to imply that such religious institutions can pass from people to
people with the ease of material objects, but to point out that there is
evidence that they can and do so pass with very little, if any,
admixture of peoples or of the deeper and more fundamental elements of
the culture. Much more important is language; and if you will think over
the actual conditions when one people either visit or settle among
another, this greater importance will be obvious. Let us imagine a party
of Melanesians visiting a Polynesian island, staying there for a few
weeks, and then returning home (and here I am not taking a fictitious
occurrence, but one which really happens). We can readily understand
that the visitors may take with them their betel-mixture, and thereby
introduce the custom of betel-chewing into a new home; we can readily
understand that they may introduce an ornament to be worn in the nose
and another to be worn on the chest; that tales which they tell will be
remembered, and dances they perform will be imitated. A few Milanesian
words may pass into the language of the Polynesian island, especially as
names for the objects or processes which the strangers have introduced;
but it is incredible that the strangers should thus in a short visit
produce any extensive change in the vocabulary, and still more that they
should modify the structure of the language. Such changes can never be
the result of mere contact or transient settlement but must always
indicate a far more deeply seated and fundamental process of blending of
peoples and cultures.
Few will perhaps hesitate to accept this position; but I expect my next
proposition to meet with more skepticism, and yet I believe it to be
widely, though not universally, true. This proposition is that the
social structure, the framework of society, is still more fundamentally
important and still less easily changed except as the result of the
intimate blending of peoples, and for that reason furnishes by far the
firmest foundation on which to base the process of analysis of culture.
I cannot hope to establish the truth of this proposition in the course
of a brief address, and I propose to draw your attention to one line of
evidence only.
At the present moment we have before our eyes an object-lesson in the
spread of our own people over the earth's surface, and we are thus able
to study how external influence affects different elements of culture.
What we find is that mere contact is able to transmit much in the way of
material culture. A passing vessel, which does not even anchor, may be
able to transmit iron, while European weapons may be used by people who
have never even seen a white man. Again, missionaries introduce the
Christian religion among people who cannot speak a word of English or
any language but their own or only use such European words as have been
found necessary to express ideas or objects connected with the new
religion. There is evidence how readily language may be affected, and
here again the present day suggests a mechanism by which such a change
takes place. English is now becoming the language of the Pacific and of
other parts of the world through its use as a _lingua franca_, which
enables natives who speak different languages to converse not only with
Europeans but with one another, and I believe that this has often been
the mechanism in the past; that, for instance, the introduction of what
we now call the Melanesian structure of language was due to the fact
that the language of an immigrant people who settled in a region of
great linguistic diversity came to be used as a _lingua franca_, and
thus gradually became the basis of the languages of the whole people.
But now let us turn to social structure. We find in Oceania islands
where Europeans have been settled as missionaries or traders perhaps for
fifty or a hundred years; we find the people wearing European clothes
and European ornaments, using European utensils and even European
weapons when they fight; we find them holding the beliefs and practicing
the ritual of a European religion; we find them speaking a European
language, often even among themselves, and yet investigation shows that
much of their social structure remains thoroughly native and
uninfluenced, not only in its general form, but often even in its minute
details. The external influence has swept away the whole material
culture, so that objects of native origin are manufactured only to sell
to tourists; it has substituted a wholly new religion and destroyed
every material, if not every moral, vestige of the old; it has caused
great modification and degeneration of the old language; and yet it may
have left the social structure in the main untouched. And the reasons
for this are clear. Most of the essential social structure of a people
lies so below the surface, it is so literally the foundation of the
whole life of the people, that it is not seen; it is not obvious, but
can only be reached by patient and laborious exploration. I will give a
few specific instances. In several islands of the Pacific, some of which
have had European settlers on them for more than a century, a most
important position in the community is occupied by the father's sister.
If any native of these islands were asked who is the most important
person in the determination of his life-history, he would answer, "My
father's sister"; and yet the place of this relative in the social
structure has remained absolutely unrecorded, and, I believe, absolutely
unknown, to the European settlers in those islands. Again, Europeans
have settled in Fiji for more than a century, and yet it is only during
this summer that I have heard from Mr. A. M. Hocart, who is working
there at present, that there is the clearest evidence of what is known
as the dual organization of society as a working social institution at
the present time. How unobtrusive such a fundamental fact of social
structure may be comes home to me in this case very strongly, for it
wholly eluded my own observation during a visit three years ago.
Lastly, the most striking example of the permanence of social structure
which I have met is in the Hawaiian Islands. There the original native
culture is reduced to the merest wreckage. So far as material objects
are concerned, the people are like ourselves; the old religion has gone,
though there probably still persists some of the ancient magic. The
people themselves have so dwindled in number, and the political
conditions are so altered, that the social structure has also
necessarily been greatly modified, and yet I was able to ascertain that
one of its elements, an element which I believe to form the deepest
layer of the foundation, the very bedrock of social structure, the
system of relationship, is still in use unchanged. I was able to obtain
a full account of the system as actually used at the present time, and
found it to be exactly the same as that recorded forty years ago by
Morgan and Hyde, and I obtained evidence that the system is still deeply
interwoven with the intimate mental life of the people.
If, then, social structure has this fundamental and deeply seated
character, if it is the least easily changed, and only changed as the
result either of actual blending of peoples or of the most profound
political changes, the obvious inference is that it is with social
structure that we must begin the attempt to analyze culture and to
ascertain how far community of culture is due to the blending of
peoples, how far to transmission through mere contact or transient
settlement.
The considerations I have brought forward have, however, in my opinion
an importance still more fundamental. If social institutions have this
relatively great degree of permanence, if they are so deeply seated and
so closely interwoven with the deepest instincts and sentiments of a
people that they can only gradually suffer change, will not the study
of this change give us our surest criterion of what is early and what is
late in any given culture, and thereby furnish a guide for the analysis
of culture? Such criteria of early and late are necessary if we are to
arrange the cultural elements reached by our analysis in order of time,
and it is very doubtful whether mere geographical distribution itself
will ever furnish a sufficient basis for this purpose. I may remind you
here that before the importance of the complexity of Melanesian culture
had forced itself on my mind, I had already succeeded in tracing out a
course for the development of the structure of Melanesian society, and
after the complexity of the culture had been established, I did not find
it necessary to alter anything of essential importance in this scheme. I
suggest, therefore, that while the ethnological analysis of cultures
must furnish a necessary preliminary to any general evolutionary
speculations, there is one element of culture which has so relatively
high a degree of permanence that its course of development may furnish a
guide to the order in time of the different elements into which it is
possible to analyze a given complex.
If the development of social structure is thus to be taken as a guide to
assist the process of analysis, it is evident that there will be
involved a logical process of considerable complexity in which there
will be the danger of arguing in a circle. If, however, the analysis of
culture is to be the primary task of the anthropologist, it is evident
that the logical methods of the science will attain a complexity far
exceeding those hitherto in vogue. I believe that the only logical
process which will in general be found possible will be the formulation
of hypothetical working schemes into which the facts can be fitted, and
that the test of such schemes will be their capacity to fit in with
themselves, or, as we generally express it, "explain" new facts as they
come to our knowledge. This is the method of other sciences which deal
with conditions as complex as those of human society. In many other
sciences these new facts are discovered by experiment. In our science
they must be found by exploration, not only of the cultures still
existent in living form, but also of the buried cultures of past ages.
2. The Extension of Roman Culture in Gaul[244]
The Roman conquest of Gaul was partially a feat of arms; but it was much
more a triumph of Roman diplomacy and a genius for colonial government.
Roman power in Gaul was centered in the larger cities and in their
strongly fortified camps. There the laws and decrees of Rome were
promulgated and the tribute of the conquered tribes received. There,
too, the law courts were held and justice administered. Rome bent her
efforts to the Latinizing of her newly acquired possessions. Gradually
she forced the inhabitants of the larger cities to use the Latin tongue.
But this forcing was done in a diplomatic, though effective, manner.
Even in the days of Caesar, Latin was made the only medium for the
administration of the law, the promulgation of decrees, the exercise of
the functions of government, the administration of justice, and the
performing of the offices of religion. It was the only medium of
commerce and trade with the Romans, of literature and art, of the
theater and of social relations. Above all, it was the only road to
office under the Roman government and to political preferment. The Roman
officials in Gaul encouraged and rewarded the mastery of the Latin
tongue and the acquirement of Roman culture, customs, and manners.
Thanks to this well-defined policy of the Roman government, native Gauls
were found in important offices even in Caesar's time. The number of
these Gallo-Roman offices increased rapidly, and their influence was
steadily exercised in favor of the acquirement, by the natives, of the
Latin language. A greater inducement still was held out to the Gauls to
acquire the ways and culture of their conquerors. This was the prospect
of employment or political preference and honors in the imperial city of
Rome itself. Under this pressure so diplomatically applied, the study of
the Latin language, grammar, literature, and oratory became a passion
throughout the cities of Gaul, which were full of Roman merchants,
traders, teachers, philosophers, lawyers, artists, sculptors, and
seekers for political and other offices. Latin was the symbol of success
in every avenue of life. Native Gauls became noted merchant princes,
lawyers, soldiers, local potentates at home, and favorites of powerful
political personages in Rome and even in the colonies outside Gaul.
Natives of Gaul, too, reached the highest offices in the land, becoming
even members of the Senate; and later on a native Gaul became one of the
most noted of the Roman emperors. The political policy of Rome made the
imposition of the Latin language upon the cities of Gaul a comparatively
easy matter, requiring only time to assure its accomplishment.
Everywhere throughout the populous cities of Gaul there sprang up
schools that rivaled, in their efficacy and reputation, the most famous
institutions of Rome. Rich Romans sent their sons to these schools
because of their excellence and the added advantage that they could
acquire there a first-hand knowledge of the life and customs of the
natives, whom they might be called upon in the future to govern or to
have political or other relations with. Thus all urban Gaul traveled
Rome-ward--"all roads led to Rome."
The influence of Roman culture extended itself much more slowly over the
rural districts, the inhabitants of which, in addition to being much
more conservative and passionately attached to their native institutions
and language, lacked the incentive of ambition and of commercial and
trade necessity. A powerful Druidical priesthood held the rural Celts
together and set their faces against Roman culture and religion. But
even in the rural districts Latin made its way slowly and in a mangled
form, yet none the less surely. This was accomplished almost entirely
through the natural pressure from without exercised by the growing power
of the Latin tongue, which had greatly increased during the reign of the
Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.). Claudius, who was born in Lyon and
educated in Gaul, opened to the Gauls all the employments and dignities
of the empire. On the construction of the many extensive public works he
employed many inhabitants of Gaul in positions requiring faithfulness,
honesty, and skill. These, in their turn, frequently drew laborers from
the rural districts of Gaul. These latter, during their residence in
Rome or other Italian cities, or in the populous centers of Gaul,
acquired some knowledge of Latin. Thus, in time, through these and other
agencies, a sort of _lingua franca_ sprang up throughout the rural
districts of Gaul and served as a medium of communication between the
Celtic-speaking population and the inhabitants of the cities and towns.
This consisted of a frame of Latin words stripped of most of their
inflections and subjected to word-contractions and other modifications.
Into this frame were fitted many native words which had already become
the property of trade and commerce and the other activities of life in
the city, town, and country. Thus, as the influence of Latin became
stronger in the cities, it continued to exercise greater pressure on the
rural districts. This pressure soon began to react upon the centers of
Latin culture. The uneducated classes of Gaul everywhere, even in the
cities, spoke very imperfect Latin, the genius of which is so different
from that of the native tongues of Gaul. But while the cities afforded
some correction for this universal tendency among the masses to corrupt
the Latin language, the life of the rural districts, where the native
tongues were still universally spoken, made the disintegration of the
highly inflected Roman speech unavoidable. As the masses in the city and
country became more Latinized, at the expense of their native tongues,
the corrupted Latin spoken over immense districts of the country tended
to pass current as the speech of the populace and to crowd out classical
or school Latin. As this corrupted local Latin varied greatly in
different parts of the country, due to linguistic and other influences,
there resulted numerous Roman dialects throughout Gaul, many of which
are still in existence.
The introduction of Christianity gave additional impulse to the study of
Latin, which soon became the official language of the Christian church;
and it was taught everywhere by the priests to the middle and upper
classes, and they also encouraged the masses to learn it. It seemed as
if this was destined to maintain the prestige of Latin as the official
language of the country. But in reality it hastened its downfall by
making it more and more the language of the illiterate masses. Soon the
rural districts furnished priests who spoke their own Roman tongue; and
the struggle to rehabilitate the literary Latin among the masses was
abandoned. The numerous French dialects of Latin had already begun to
assume shape when the decline of the Roman Empire brought the Germanic
tribes down upon Gaul and introduced a new element into the Romanic
speech, which had already worked its will upon the tongue of the
Caesars. Under its influence the loose Latin construction disappeared;
articles and prepositions took the place of the inflectional
terminations brought to a high state of artificial perfection in Latin;
and the wholesale suppression of unaccented syllables had so contracted
the Latin words that they were often scarcely recognizable. The
modification of vowel sounds increased the efficacy of the disguise
assumed by Latin words masquerading in the Romanic dialects throughout
Gaul; and the Celtic and other native words in current use to designate
the interests and occupations of the masses helped to differentiate the
popular speech from the classical Latin. Already Celtic, as a spoken
tongue, had almost entirely disappeared from the cities; and even in the
rural districts it had fallen into a certain amount of neglect, as the
_lingua franca_ of the first centuries of Roman occupation, reaching out
in every direction, became the ever-increasing popular speech.
3. The Competition of the Cultural Languages[245]
Some time ago a typewriter firm, in advertising a machine with Arabic
characters, made the statement that the Arabic alphabet is used by more
people than any other. A professor of Semitic languages was asked: "How
big a lie is that?" He answered: "It is true."
In a certain sense, it is true; the total population of all the
countries whose inhabitants use the Arabic alphabet (if they use any) is
slightly larger than that of those who use the Latin alphabet and its
slight variations, or the Chinese characters (which of course are not an
alphabet), or the Russian alphabet. If, however, the question is how
many people can actually use any alphabet or system of writing, the
Arabic stands lowest of the four.
The question of the relative importance of a language as a literary
medium is a question of how many people want to read it. There are two
classes of these: those to whom it is vernacular, and those who learn it
in addition to their own language. The latter class is of the greater
importance in proportion to its numbers; a man who has education enough
to acquire a foreign language is pretty sure to use it, while many of
the former class, who can read, really do read very little. Those who
count in this matter are those who can get information from a printed
page as easily as by listening to someone talking. A fair index of the
relative number of these in a country is the newspaper circulation
there.
A language must have a recognized literary standard and all the people
in its territory must learn to use it as such before its influence goes
far abroad. English, French, and German, and they alone, have reached
this point. French and German have no new country, and practically the
whole of their country is now literate; their relative share in the
world's reading can only increase as their population increases. Spanish
and Russian, on the other hand, have both new country and room for a
much higher percentage of literacy.
It is probable that all the countries in temperate zones will have
universal literacy by the end of the century. In this case, even if no
one read English outside its vernacular countries, it would still hold
its own as the leading literary language. German and French are bound to
fall off relatively as vernaculars, and this implies a falling off of
their importance as culture languages; but the importance of English in
this respect is bound to grow. The first place among foreign languages
has been given to it in the schools of many European and South American
countries; Mexico and Japan make it compulsory in all schools of upper
grades; and China is to follow Japan in this respect as soon as the work
can be organized.
The number of people who can actually read, or will learn if now too
young, for the various languages of the world appears to be as follows:
Number
in Millions Per Cent
English 136 27.2
German 82 16.4
Chinese[A] 70 14.0
French 28 9.6
Russian 30 6.0
Arabic 25 5.0
Italian 18 4.6
Spanish 12 2.6
Scandinavian 11 2.2
Dutch and Flemish 9 1.9
Minor European[B] 34 6.8
Minor Asiatic[B] 16 3.2
Minor African and Polynesian[B] 2+ 0.5
Total 473+ 100.0
Notes:
[A] Not a spoken language, but a system of writing.
[B] None representing as much as 1 per cent of total.
English, therefore, now leads all other languages in the number of its
readers. Three-fourths of the world's mail matter is addressed in
English. More than half of the world's newspapers are printed in
English, and, as they have a larger circulation than those in other
languages, probably three-fourths of the world's newspaper reading is
done in English.
The languages next in importance, French and German, cannot maintain
their relative positions because English has more than half of the new
land in the temperate zone and they have none. The languages which have
the rest of the new territory, Spanish and Russian, are not established
as culture languages, as English is. No other language, not even French
or German, has a vernacular so uniform and well established, and with so
few variations from the literary language. English is spoken in the
United States by more than fifty million people with so slight
variations that no foreigner would ever notice them. No other language
whatever can show more than a fraction of this number of persons who
speak so nearly alike.
It is then probable that, within the century, English will be the
vernacular of a quarter instead of a tenth of the people of the world,
and be read by a half instead of a quarter of the people who can read.
4. The Assimilation of Races[246]
The race problem has sometimes been described as a problem in
assimilation. It is not always clear, however, what assimilation means.
Historically the word has had two distinct significations. According to
earlier usage it meant "to compare" or "to make like." According to
later usage it signifies "to take up and incorporate."
There is a process that goes on in society by which individuals
spontaneously acquire one another's language, characteristic attitudes,
habits, and modes of behavior. There is also a process by which
individuals and groups of individuals are taken over and incorporated
into larger groups. Both processes have been concerned in the formation
of modern nationalities. The modern Italian, Frenchman, and German is a
composite of the broken fragments of several different racial groups.
Interbreeding has broken up the ancient stocks, and interaction and
imitation have created new national types which exhibit definite
uniformities in language, manners, and formal behavior.
It has sometimes been assumed that the creation of a national type is
the specific function of assimilation and that national solidarity is
based upon national homogeneity and "like-mindedness." The extent and
importance of the kind of homogeneity that individuals of the same
nationality exhibit have been greatly exaggerated. Neither interbreeding
nor interaction has created, in what the French term "nationals," a more
than superficial likeness or like-mindedness. Racial differences have,
to be sure, disappeared or been obscured, but individual differences
remain. Individual differences, again, have been intensified by
education, personal competition, and the division of labor, until
individual members of cosmopolitan groups probably represent greater
variations in disposition, temperament, and mental capacity than those
which distinguished the more homogeneous races and peoples of an earlier
civilization.
What then, precisely, is the nature of the homogeneity which
characterizes cosmopolitan groups?
The growth of modern states exhibits the progressive merging of smaller,
mutually exclusive, into larger and more inclusive, social groups. This
result has been achieved in various ways, but it has usually been
followed or accompanied by a more or less complete adoption by the
members of the smaller groups of the language, technique, and mores of
the larger and more inclusive ones. The immigrant readily takes over the
language, manners, the social ritual, and outward forms of his adopted
country. In America it has become proverbial that a Pole, Lithuanian, or
Norwegian cannot be distinguished, in the second generation, from an
American born of native parents.
There is no reason to assume that this assimilation of alien groups to
native standards has modified to any great extent fundamental racial
characteristics. It has, however, erased the external signs which
formerly distinguished the members of one race from those of another.
On the other hand, the breaking up of the isolation of smaller groups
has had the effect of emancipating the individual man, giving him room
and freedom for the expansion and development of his individual
aptitudes.
What one actually finds in cosmopolitan groups, then, is a superficial
uniformity, a homogeneity in manners and fashion, associated with
relatively profound differences in individual opinions, sentiments, and
beliefs. This is just the reverse of what one meets among primitive
peoples, where diversity in external forms, as between different groups,
is accompanied by a monotonous sameness in the mental attitudes of
individuals. There is a striking similarity in the sentiments and mental
attitudes of peasant peoples in all parts of the world, although the
external differences are often great. In the Black Forest, in Baden,
Germany, almost every valley shows a different style of costume, a
different type of architecture, although in each separate valley every
house is like every other and the costume, as well as the religion, is
for every member of each separate community absolutely after the same
pattern. On the other hand, a German, Russian, or Negro peasant of the
southern states, different as each is in some respects, are all very
much alike in certain habitual attitudes and sentiments.
What, then, is the rôle of homogeneity and like-mindedness, such as we
find them to be, in cosmopolitan states? So far as it makes each
individual look like every other--no matter how different under the
skin--homogeneity mobilizes the individual man. It removes the social
taboo, permits the individual to move into strange groups, and thus
facilitates new and adventurous contacts. In obliterating the external
signs, which in secondary groups seem to be the sole basis of caste and
class distinctions, it realizes, for the individual, the principle of
_laissez faire_, _laissez aller_. Its ultimate economic effect is to
substitute personal for racial competition, and to give free play to
forces that tend to relegate every individual, irrespective of race or
status, to the position he or she is best fitted to fill.
As a matter of fact, the ease and rapidity with which aliens, under
existing conditions in the United States, have been able to assimilate
themselves to the customs and manners of American life have enabled this
country to swallow and digest every sort of normal human difference,
except the purely external ones, like the color of the skin.
It is probably true, also, that like-mindedness of the kind that
expresses itself in national types contributes indirectly by
facilitating the intermingling of the different elements of the
population to the national solidarity. This is due to the fact that the
solidarity of modern states depends less on the homogeneity of
population than, as James Bryce has suggested, upon the thoroughgoing
mixture of heterogeneous elements. Like-mindedness, so far as that term
signifies a standard grade of intelligence, contributes little or
nothing to national solidarity. Likeness is, after all, a purely formal
concept which of itself cannot hold anything together.
In the last analysis social solidarity is based on sentiment and habit.
It is the sentiment of loyalty and the habit of what Sumner calls
"concurrent action" that gives substance and insures unity to the state
as to every other type of social group. This sentiment of loyalty has
its basis in a _modus vivendi_, a working relation and mutual
understanding of the members of the group. Social institutions are not
founded in similarities any more than they are founded in differences,
but in relations, and in the mutual interdependence of parts. When these
relations have the sanction of custom and are fixed in individual habit,
so that the activities of the group are running smoothly, personal
attitudes and sentiments, which are the only forms in which individual
minds collide and clash with one another, easily accommodate themselves
to the existing situation.
It may, perhaps, be said that loyalty itself is a form of
like-mindedness or that it is dependent in some way upon the
like-mindedness of the individuals whom it binds together. This,
however, cannot be true, for there is no greater loyalty than that which
binds the dog to his master, and this is a sentiment which that faithful
animal usually extends to other members of the household to which he
belongs. A dog without a master is a dangerous animal, but the dog that
has been domesticated is a member of society. He is not, of course, a
citizen, although he is not entirely without rights. But he has got into
some sort of practical working relations with the group to which he
belongs.
It is this practical working arrangement, into which individuals with
widely different mental capacities enter as co-ordinate parts, that
gives the corporate character to social groups and insures their
solidarity. It is the process of assimilation by which groups of
individuals, originally indifferent or perhaps hostile, achieve this
corporate character, rather than the process by which they acquire a
formal like-mindedness, with which this paper is mainly concerned.
The difficulty with the conception of assimilation which one ordinarily
meets in discussions of the race problem is that it is based on
observations confined to individualistic groups where the characteristic
relations are indirect and secondary. It takes no account of the kind of
assimilation that takes place in primary groups where relations are
direct and personal--in the tribe, for example, and in the family.
Thus Charles Francis Adams, referring to the race problem in an address
at Richmond, Virginia, in November, 1908, said:
The American system, as we know, was founded on the assumed
basis of a common humanity, that is, absence of absolutely
fundamental racial characteristics was accepted as an
established truth. Those of all races were welcomed to our
shores. They came, aliens; they and their descendants would
become citizens first, natives afterward. It was a process
first of assimilation and then of absorption. On this all
depended. There could be no permanent divisional lines. That
theory is now plainly broken down. We are confronted by the
obvious fact, as undeniable as it is hard, that the African
will only partially assimilate and that he cannot be absorbed.
He remains an alien element in the body politic. A foreign
substance, he can neither be assimilated nor thrown out.
More recently an editorial in the _Outlook_, discussing the Japanese
situation in California, made this statement:
The hundred millions of people now inhabiting the United States
must be a united people, not merely a collection of groups of
different peoples, different in racial cultures and ideals,
agreeing to live together in peace and amity. These hundred
millions must have common ideals, common aims, a common custom,
a common culture, a common language, and common
characteristics, if the nation is to endure.
All this is quite true and interesting, but it does not clearly
recognize the fact that the chief obstacle to the assimilation of the
Negro and the Oriental are not mental but physical traits. It is not
because the Negro and the Japanese are so differently constituted that
they do not assimilate. If they were given an opportunity, the Japanese
are quite as capable as the Italians, the Armenians, or the Slavs of
acquiring our culture and sharing our national ideals. The trouble is
not with the Japanese mind but with the Japanese skin. The Jap is not
the right color.
The fact that the Japanese bears in his features a distinctive racial
hallmark, that he wears, so to speak, a racial uniform, classifies him.
He cannot become a mere individual, indistinguishable in the
cosmopolitan mass of the population, as is true, for example, of the
Irish, and, to a lesser extent, of some of the other immigrant races.
The Japanese, like the Negro, is condemned to remain among us an
abstraction, a symbol--and a symbol not merely of his own race but of
the Orient and of that vague, ill-defined menace we sometimes refer to
as the "yellow peril." This not only determines to a very large extent
the attitude of the white world toward the yellow man but it determines
the attitude of the yellow man toward the white. It puts between the
races the invisible but very real gulf of self-consciousness.
There is another consideration. Peoples we know intimately we respect
and esteem. In our casual contact with aliens, however, it is the
offensive rather than the pleasing traits that impress us. These
impressions accumulate and reinforce natural prejudices. Where races are
distinguished by certain external marks, these furnish a permanent
physical substratum upon which and around which the irritations and
animosities, incidental to all human intercourse, tend to accumulate and
so gain strength and volume.
Assimilation, as the word is here used, brings with it a certain
borrowed significance which it carried over from physiology, where it is
employed to describe the process of nutrition. By a process of
nutrition, somewhat similar to the physiological one, we may conceive
alien peoples to be incorporated with, and made part of, the community
or state. Ordinarily assimilation goes on silently and unconsciously,
and only forces itself into popular conscience when there is some
interruption or disturbance of the process.
At the outset it may be said, then, that assimilation rarely becomes a
problem except in secondary groups. Admission to the primary group, that
is to say, the group in which relationships are direct and personal, as,
for example, in the family and in the tribe, makes assimilation
comparatively easy and almost inevitable.
The most striking illustration of this is the fact of domestic slavery.
Slavery has been, historically, the usual method by which peoples have
been incorporated into alien groups. When a member of an alien race is
adopted into the family as a servant or as a slave, and particularly
when that status is made hereditary, as it was in the case of the Negro
after his importation to America, assimilation followed rapidly and as a
matter of course.
It is difficult to conceive two races farther removed from each other in
temperament and tradition than the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro, and yet
the Negro in the southern states, particularly where he was adopted into
the household as a family servant, learned in a comparatively short time
the manners and customs of his master's family. He very soon possessed
himself of so much of the language, religion, and the technique of the
civilization of his master as, in his station, he was fitted or
permitted to acquire. Eventually, also, Negro slaves transferred their
allegiance to the state of which they were only indirectly members, or
at least to their masters' families, with whom they felt themselves in
most things one in sentiment and interest.
The assimilation of the Negro field hand, where the contact of the slave
with his master and his master's family was less intimate, was naturally
less complete. On the large plantations, where an overseer stood between
the master and the majority of his slaves, and especially on the sea
island plantations off the coast of South Carolina, where the master and
his family were likely to be merely winter visitors, this distance
between master and slave was greatly increased. The consequence is that
the Negroes in these regions are less touched today by the white man's
influence and civilization than elsewhere in the southern states.
C. AMERICANIZATION AS A PROBLEM IN ASSIMILATION[247]
1. Americanization as Assimilation
The Americanization Study has assumed that the fundamental condition of
what we call "Americanization" is the participation of the immigrant in
the life of the community in which he lives. The point here emphasized
is that patriotism, loyalty, and common sense are neither created nor
transmitted by purely intellectual processes. Men must live and work and
fight together in order to create that community of interest and
sentiment which will enable them to meet the crises of their common life
with a common will.
It is evident, however, that the word "participation" as here employed
has a wide application, and it becomes important for working purposes to
give a more definite and concrete meaning to the term.
2. Language as a Means and a Product of Participation
Obviously any organized social activity whatever and any participation
in this activity implies "communication." In human, as distinguished
from animal, society common life is based on a common speech. To share a
common speech does not guarantee participation in the community life but
it is an instrument of participation, and its acquisition by the members
of an immigrant group is rightly considered a sign and a rough index of
Americanization.
It is, however, one of the ordinary experiences of social intercourse
that words and things do not have the same meanings with different
people, in different parts of the country, in different periods of time,
and, in general, in different contexts. The same "thing" has a different
meaning for the naïve person and the sophisticated person, for the child
and the philosopher; the new experience derives its significance from
the character and organization of the previous experiences. To the
peasant a comet, a plague, and an epileptic person may mean a divine
portent, a visitation of God, a possession by the devil; to the
scientific man they mean something quite different. The word "slavery"
had very different connotations in the ancient world and today. It has a
very different significance today in the southern states and in the
northern states. "Socialism" has a very different significance to the
immigrant from the Russian pale living on the "East Side" of New York
City, to the citizen on Riverside Drive, and to the native American in
the hills of Georgia.
Psychologists explain this difference in the connotation of the same
word among people using the same language in terms of difference in the
"apperception mass" in different individuals and different groups of
individuals. In their phraseology the "apperception mass" represents the
body of memories and meanings deposited in the consciousness of the
individual from the totality of his experiences. It is the body of
material with which every new datum of experience comes into contact, to
which it is related, and in connection with which it gets its meaning.
When persons interpret data on different grounds, when the apperception
mass is radically different, we say popularly that they live in
different worlds. The logician expresses this by saying that they occupy
different "universes of discourse"--that is, they cannot talk in the
same terms. The ecclesiastic, the artist, the mystic, the scientist, the
Philistine, the Bohemian, represent more or less different "universes of
discourse." Even social workers occupy universes of discourse not
mutually intelligible.
Similarly, different races and nationalities as wholes represent
different apperception masses and consequently different universes of
discourse and are not mutually intelligible. Even our remote forefathers
are with difficulty intelligible to us, though always more intelligible
than the Eastern immigrant because of the continuity of our tradition.
Still it is almost as difficult for us to comprehend _Elsie Dinsmore_ or
the _Westminster Catechism_ as the Koran or the Talmud.
It is apparent, therefore, that in the wide extension and vast
complexity of modern life, in which peoples of different races and
cultures are now coming into intimate contact, the divergences in the
meanings and values which individuals and groups attach to objects and
forms of behavior are deeper than anything expressed by differences in
language.
Actually common participation in common activities implies a common
"definition of the situation." In fact, every single act, and eventually
all moral life, is dependent upon the definition of the situation. A
definition of the situation precedes and limits any possible action, and
a redefinition of the situation changes the character of the action. An
abusive person, for example, provokes anger and possibly violence, but
if we realize that the man is insane this redefinition of the situation
results in totally different behavior.
Every social group develops systematic and unsystematic means of
defining the situation for its members. Among these means are the
"don'ts" of the mother, the gossip of the community, epithets ("liar,"
"traitor," "scab"), the sneer, the shrug, the newspaper, the theater,
the school, libraries, the law, and the gospel. Education in the widest
sense--intellectual, moral, aesthetic--is the process of defining the
situation. It is the process by which the definitions of an older
generation are transmitted to a younger. In the case of the immigrant it
is the process by which the definitions of one cultural group are
transmitted to another.
Differences in meanings and values, referred to above in terms of the
"apperception mass," grow out of the fact that different individuals and
different peoples have defined the situation in different ways. When we
speak of the different "heritages" or "traditions" which our different
immigrant groups bring, it means that, owing to different historical
circumstances, they have defined the situation differently. Certain
prominent personalities, schools of thought, bodies of doctrine,
historical events, have contributed in defining the situation and
determining the attitudes and values of our various immigrant groups in
characteristic ways in their home countries. To the Sicilian, for
example, marital infidelity means the stiletto; to the American, the
divorce court. And even when the immigrant thinks that he understands
us, he nevertheless does not do this completely. At the best he
interprets our cultural traditions in terms of his own. Actually the
situation is progressively redefined by the consequences of the actions,
provoked by the previous definitions, and a prison experience is
designed to provide a datum toward the redefinition of the situation.
It is evidently important that the people who compose a community and
share in the common life should have a sufficient body of common
memories to understand one another. This is particularly true in a
democracy, where it is intended that the public institutions should be
responsive to public opinion. There can be no public opinion except in
so far as the persons who compose the public are able to live in the
same world and speak and think in the same universe of discourse. For
that reason it seems desirable that the immigrants should not only speak
the language of the country but should know something of the history of
the people among whom they have chosen to dwell. For the same reason it
is important that native Americans should know the history and social
life of the countries from which the immigrants come.
It is important also that every individual should share as fully as
possible a fund of knowledge, experience, sentiments, and ideals common
to the whole community and himself contribute to this fund. It is for
this reason that we maintain and seek to maintain freedom of speech and
free schools. The function of literature, including poetry, romance, and
the newspaper, is to enable all to share victoriously and imaginatively
in the inner life of each. The function of science is to gather up,
classify, digest, and preserve, in a form in which they may become
available to the community as a whole, the ideas, inventions, and
technical experience of the individuals composing it. Thus not merely
the possession of a common language but the wide extension of the
opportunities for education become conditions of Americanization.
The immigration problem is unique in the sense that the immigrant brings
divergent definitions of the situation, and this renders his
participation in our activities difficult. At the same time this problem
is of the same general type as the one exemplified by "syndicalism,"
"bolshevism," "socialism," etc., where the definition of the situation
does not agree with the traditional one. The modern "social unrest,"
like the immigrant problem, is a sign of the lack of participation and
this is true to the degree that certain elements feel that violence is
the only available means of participating.
3. Assimilation and the Mediation of Individual Differences
In general, a period of unrest represents the stage in which a new
definition of the situation is being prepared. Emotion and unrest are
connected with situations where there is loss of control. Control is
secured on the basis of habits and habits are built up on the basis of
the definition of the situation. Habit represents a situation where the
definition is working. When control is lost it means that the habits are
no longer adequate, that the situation has changed and demands a
redefinition. This is the point at which we have unrest--a heightened
emotional state, random movements, unregulated behavior--and this
continues until the situation is redefined. The unrest is associated
with conditions in which the individual or society feels unable to act.
It represents energy, and the problem is to use it constructively.
The older societies tended to treat unrest by defining the situation in
terms of the suppression or postponement of the wish; they tried to make
the repudiation of the wish itself a wish. "Contentment," "conformity
to the will of God," ultimate "salvation" in a better world, are
representative of this. The founders of America defined the situation in
terms of participation, but this has actually taken too exclusively the
form of "political participation." The present tendency is to define the
situation in terms of social participation, including demand for the
improvement of social conditions to a degree which will enable all to
participate.
But, while it is important that the people who are members of the same
community should have a body of common memories and a common
apperception mass, so that they may talk intelligibly to one another, it
is neither possible nor necessary that everything should have the same
meaning for everyone. A perfectly homogeneous consciousness would mean a
tendency to define all situations rigidly and sacredly and once and
forever. Something like this did happen in the Slavic village
communities and among all savage people, and it was the ideal of the
medieval church, but it implies a low level of efficiency and a slow
rate of progress.
Mankind is distinguished, in fact, from the animal world by being
composed of persons of divergent types, of varied tastes and interests,
of different vocations and functions. Civilization is the product of an
association of widely different individuals, and with the progress of
civilization the divergence in individual human types has been and must
continue to be constantly multiplied. Our progress in the arts and
sciences and in the creation of values in general has been dependent on
specialists whose distinctive worth was precisely their divergence from
other individuals. It is even evident that we have been able to use
productively individuals who in a savage or peasant society would have
been classed as insane--who perhaps were indeed insane.
The ability to participate productively implies thus a diversity of
attitudes and values in the participants, but a diversity not so great
as to lower the morals of the community and to prevent effective
co-operation. It is important to have ready definitions for all
immediate situations, but progress is dependent on the constant
redefinitions for all immediate situations, and the ideal condition for
this is the presence of individuals with divergent definitions, who
contribute, in part consciously and in part unconsciously, through their
individualism and labors to a common task and a common end. It is only
in this way that an intelligible world, in which each can participate
according to his intelligence, comes into existence. For it is only
through their consequences that words get their meanings or that
situations become defined. It is through conflict and co-operation, or,
to use a current phrase of economists, through "competitive
co-operation," that a distinctively human type of society does anywhere
exist. Privacy and publicity, "society" and solitude, public ends and
private enterprises, are each and all distinctive factors in human
society everywhere. They are particularly characteristic of historic
American democracy.
In this whole connection it appears that the group consciousness and the
individual himself are formed by communication and participation, and
that the communication and participation are themselves dependent for
their meaning on common interests.
But it would be an error to assume that participation always implies an
intimate personal, face-to-face relation. Specialists participate
notably and productively in our common life, but this is evidently not
on the basis of personal association with their neighbors. Darwin was
assisted by Lyell, Owen, and other contemporaries in working out a new
definition of the situation, but these men were not his neighbors. When
Mayer worked out his theory of the transmutation of energy, his
neighbors in the village of Heilbronn were so far from participating
that they twice confined him in insane asylums. A postage stamp may be a
more efficient instrument of participation than a village meeting.
Defining the situation with reference to the participation of the
immigrant is of course not solving the problem of immigration. This
involves an analysis of the whole significance of the qualitative and
quantitative character of a population, with reference to any given
values--standards of living, individual level of efficiency, liberty and
determinism, etc. We have, for instance, in America a certain level of
culture, depending, let us say as a minimum, on the perpetuation of our
public-school system. But, if by some conceivable _lusus naturae_ the
birth rate was multiplied a hundred fold, or by some conceivable
cataclysm a hundred million African blacks were landed annually on our
eastern coast and an equal number of Chinese coolies on our western
coast, then we should have neither teachers enough nor buildings enough
nor material resources enough to impart even the three R's to a
fraction of the population, and the outlook of democracy, so far as it
is dependent upon participation, would become very dismal. On the other
hand, it is conceivable that certain immigrant populations in certain
numbers, with their special temperaments, endowments, and social
heritages, would contribute positively and increasingly to our stock of
civilization. These are questions to be determined, but certainly if the
immigrant is admitted on any basis whatever the condition of his
Americanization is that he shall have the widest and freest opportunity
to contribute in his own way to the common fund of knowledge, ideas, and
ideals which makes up the culture of our common country. It is only in
this way that the immigrant can "participate" in the fullest sense of
the term.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Assimilation and Amalgamation
The literature upon assimilation falls naturally under three main heads:
(1) assimilation and amalgamation; (2) the conflict and fusion of
cultures; and (3) immigration and Americanization.
Literature on assimilation is very largely a by-product of the
controversy in regard to the relative superiority and inferiority of
races. This controversy owes its existence, in the present century, to
the publication in 1854 of Gobineau's _The Inequality of Human Races_.
This treatise appeared at a time when the dominant peoples of Europe
were engaged in extending their benevolent protection over all the
"unprotected" lesser breeds, and this book offered a justification, on
biological grounds, of the domination of the "inferior" by the
"superior" races.
Gobineau's theory, and that of the schools which have perpetuated and
elaborated his doctrines, defined culture as an essentially racial
trait. Other races might accommodate themselves to, but could not
originate nor maintain a superior culture. This is the aristocratic
theory of the inequalities of races and, as might be expected, was
received with enthusiasm by the chauvinists of the "strong" nations.
The opposing school is disposed to treat the existing civilizations as
largely the result of historical accident. The superior peoples are
those who have had access to the accumulated cultural materials of the
peoples that preceded them. Modern Europe owes its civilization to the
fact that it went to school to the ancients. The inferior peoples are
those who did not have this advantage.
Ratzel was one of the first to venture the theory that the natural and
the cultural peoples were fundamentally alike and that the existing
differences, great as they are, were due to geographical and cultural
isolation of the less advanced races. Boas' _Mind of Primitive Man_ is
the most systematic and critical statement of that view of the matter.
The discussion which these rival theories provoked has led students to
closer studies of the effects of racial contacts and to a more
penetrating analysis of the cultural process.
The contacts of races have invariably led to racial intermixture, and
the mixed breed, as in the case of the mulatto, the result of the
white-Negro cross, has tended to create a distinct cultural as well as a
racial type. E. B. Reuter's volume on _The Mulatto_ is the first serious
attempt to study the mixed blood as a cultural type and define his rôle
in the conflict of races and cultures.
Historical cases of the assimilation of one group by another are
frequent. Kaindl's investigations of the German settlements in the
Carpathian lands are particularly instructive. The story of the manner
in which the early German settlers in Cracow, Galicia, were Polonized
mainly under the influence of the Polish nobility, is all the more
interesting when it is contrasted with the German colonists in the
Siebenbürgen, which have remained strongholds of the German language and
culture in the midst of a population of Roumanian peasants for nearly
eight hundred years. Still more interesting are the recent attempts of
the Prussians to Germanize the former province of Posen, now reunited to
Poland. Prussia's policy of colonization of German peasants in Posen
failed for several reasons, but it failed finally because the German
peasant, finding himself isolated in the midst of a Polish community,
either gave up the land the government had acquired for him and returned
to his native German province, or identified himself with the Polish
community and was thus lost to the cause of German nationalism. The
whole interesting history of that episode is related in Bernard's _Die
Polenfrage_, which is at the same time an account of the organization of
an autonomous Polish community within the limits of a German state.
The competition and survival of languages affords interesting material
for the study of cultural contacts and the conditions that determine
assimilation. Investigations of the racial origins of European peoples
have discovered a great number of curious cultural anomalies. There are
peoples like the Spreewälder who inhabit a little cultural island of
about 240 miles square in the Province of Brandenburg, Prussia.
Surviving remnants of a Slavic people, they still preserve their
language and their tribal costumes, and, although but thirty thousand in
number and surrounded by Germans, maintain a lively literary movement
all their own. On the other hand, the most vigorous and powerful of the
Germanic nationalities, the Prussian, bears the name of a conquered
Slavic people whose language, "Old Prussian," not spoken since the
seventeenth century, is preserved only in a few printed books, including
a catechism and German-Prussian vocabulary, which the German
philologists have rescued from oblivion.
2. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures
The contacts and transmission of cultures have been investigated in
different regions of social life under different titles. The
ethnologists have investigated the process among primitive peoples under
the title acculturation. Among historical peoples, on the other hand,
acculturation has been called assimilation. The aim of missions has
been, on the whole, to bring the world under the domination of a single
moral order; but in seeking to accomplish this task they have
contributed greatly to the fusion and cross-fertilization of racial and
national cultures.
The problem of origin is the first and often the most perplexing problem
which the study of primitive cultures presents.[248] Was a given
cultural trait, i.e., a weapon, a tool, or a myth, borrowed or invented?
For example, there are several independent centers of origin and
propagation of the bow and arrow. Writing approached or reached
perfection in at least five different, widely separated regions. Other
problems of acculturation which have been studied include the following:
the degree and order of transmissibility of different cultural traits;
the persistence or the immunity against change of different traits; the
modification of cultural traits in the process of transmission; the
character of social contacts between cultural groups; the distance that
divides cultural levels; and the rôle of prestige in stimulating
imitation and copying.
The development of a world-commerce, the era of European colonization
and imperial expansion in America, Asia, and Africa and Australia, the
forward drive of occidental science and the Western system of
large-scale competitive industry have created racial contacts, cultural
changes, conflicts, and fusions of unprecedented and unforeseen extent,
intensity, and immediateness. The crash of a fallen social order in
Russia reverberates throughout the world; reports of the capitalization
of new enterprises indicate that India is copying the economic
organization of Europe; the feminist movement has invaded Japan;
representatives of close to fifty nations of the earth meet in conclave
in the assembly of the League of Nations.
So complete has been in recent years the interpenetration of peoples and
cultures that nations are now seeking to preserve their existence not
alone from assault from without by force of arms, but they are equally
concerned to protect themselves from the more insidious attacks of
propaganda from within. Under these circumstances the ancient liberties
of speech and press are being scrutinized and questioned. Particularly
is this true when this freedom of speech and press is exercised by alien
peoples, who criticize our institutions in a foreign tongue and claim
the right to reform native institutions before they have become citizens
and even before they are able to use the native language.
3. Immigration and Americanization
The presence of large groups of foreign-born in the United States was
first conceived of as a problem of immigration. From the period of the
large Irish immigration to this country in the decades following 1820
each new immigrant group called forth a popular literature of protest
against the evils its presence threatened. After 1890 the increasing
volume of immigration and the change in the source of the immigrants
from northwestern Europe to southeastern Europe intensified the general
concern. In 1907 the Congress of the United States created the
Immigration Commission to make "full inquiry, examination, and
investigation into the subject of immigration." The plan and scope of
the work as outlined by the Commission "included a study of the sources
of recent immigration in Europe, the general character of incoming
immigrants, the methods employed here and abroad to prevent the
immigration of persons classed as undesirable in the United States
immigration law, and finally a thorough investigation into the general
status of the more recent immigrants as residents of the United States,
and the effect of such immigration upon the institutions, industries,
and people of this country." In 1910 the Commission made a report of its
investigations and findings together with its conclusions and
recommendations which were published in forty-one volumes.
The European War focused the attention of the country upon the problem
of Americanization. The public mind became conscious of the fact that
"the stranger within our gates," whether naturalized or unnaturalized,
tended to maintain his loyalty to the land of his origin, even when it
seemed to conflict with loyalty to the country of his sojourn or his
adoption. A large number of superficial investigations called "surveys"
were made of immigrant colonies in the larger cities of the country.
Americanization work of many varieties developed apace. A vast
literature sprang up to meet the public demand for information and
instruction on this topic. In view of this situation the Carnegie
Corporation of New York City undertook in 1918 a "Study of the Methods
of Americanization or Fusion of Native and Foreign Born." The point of
view from which the study was made may be inferred from the following
statement by its director, Allen T. Burns:
Americanization is the uniting of new with native born
Americans in fuller common understanding and appreciation to
secure by means of self-government the highest welfare of all.
Such Americanization should produce no unchangeable political,
domestic, and economic régime delivered once for all to the
fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive
of the best wherever found. With all our rich heritages,
Americanism will develop through a mutual giving and taking of
contributions from both newer and older Americans in the
interest of the common weal. This study will follow such an
understanding of Americanization.
The study, as originally planned, was divided into ten divisions, as
follows: the schooling of the immigrant, the press and the theater,
adjustment of homes and family life, legal protection and correction,
health standards and care, naturalization and political life,
industrial and economic amalgamation, treatment of immigrant heritages,
neighborhood agencies, and rural developments. The findings of these
different parts of the study are presented in separate volumes.
This is the most recent important survey-investigation of the immigrant,
although there are many less imposing but significant studies in this
field. Among these are the interesting analyses of the assimilation
process in Julius Drachsler's _Democracy and Assimilation_ and in A. M.
Dushkin's study of _Jewish Education in New York City_.
The natural history of assimilation may be best studied in personal
narratives and documents, such as letters and autobiographies, or in
monographs upon urban and rural immigrant communities. In recent years a
series of personal narrative and autobiographical sketches have revealed
the intimate personal aspects of the assimilation process. The
expectancy and disillusionment of the first experiences, the consequent
nostalgia and homesickness, gradual accommodation to the new situation,
the first participations in American life, the fixation of wishes in the
opportunities of the American social environment, the ultimate
identification of the person with the memories, sentiments, and future
of his adopted country--all these steps in assimilation are portrayed in
such interesting books as _The Far Journey_ by Abraham Rihbany, _The
Promised Land_ by Mary Antin, _Out of the Shadow_ by Rose Cohen, _An
American in the Making_ by M. E. Ravage, _My Mother and I_ by E. C.
Stern.
The most reflective use of personal documents for the study of the
problems of the immigrant has been made by Thomas and Znaniecki in _The
Polish Peasant in Europe and America_. In these studies letters and
life-histories have been, for the first time, methodically employed to
exhibit the processes of adjustment in the transition from a European
peasant village to the immigrant colony of an American industrial
community.
The work of Thomas and Znaniecki is in a real sense a study of the
Polish community in Europe and America. Less ambitious studies have been
made of individual immigrant communities. Several religious communities
composed of isolated and unassimilated groups, such as the German
Mennonites, have been intensively studied.
Materials valuable for the study of certain immigrant communities,
assembled for quite other purposes, are contained in the almanacs,
yearbooks, and local histories of the various immigrant communities. The
most interesting of these are the _Jewish Communal Register_ of New York
and the studies made by the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America under
the direction of O. M. Norlie.[249]
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. ASSIMILATION AND AMALGAMATION
A. _The Psychology and Sociology of Assimilation_
(1) Wundt, Wilhelm. "Bermerkungen zur Associationslehre,"
_Philosophische Studien_, VII (1892), 329-61. ["Complication und
Assimilation," pp. 334-53.]
(2) ----. _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie._ "Assimilationen,"
III, 528-35. 5th ed. Leipzig, 1903.
(3) Ward, James. "Association and Assimilation," _Mind_, N.S., II
(1893), 347-62; III (1894), 509-32.
(4) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._
Methods and processes. "Assimilation, Recognition," pp. 308-19. New
York, 1895.
(5) Novicow, J. _Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines et leur phases
successives._ Book II, chap. vii, "La Dénationalisation," pp. 125-53.
Paris, 1893. [Definition of denationalization.]
(6) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis_, pp. 41-42.
Leipzig, 1898.
(7) Park, Robert E. "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with
Particular Reference to the Negro," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX
(1913-14), 606-23.
(8) Simons, Sarah E. "Social Assimilation," _American Journal of
Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 790-822; VII (1901-2), 53-79, 234-48,
386-404, 539-56. [Bibliography.]
(9) Jenks, Albert E. "Assimilation in the Philippines as Interpreted in
Terms of Assimilation in America," _Publications of the American
Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 140-58.
(10) McKenzie, F. A. "The Assimilation of the American Indian,"
_Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 37-48.
[Bibliography.]
(11) Ciszewski, S. _Kunstliche Verwandschaft bei den Südslaven._
Leipzig, 1897.
(12) Windisch, H. _Taufe und Sünde im ältesten Christentum bis auf
Origines_. Ein Beitrag zur altchristlichen Dogmengeschichte. Tübingen,
1908.
B. _Assimilation and Amalgamation_
(1) Gumplowicz, Ludwig. _Der Rassenkampf._ Sociologische Untersuchungen,
sec. 38, "Wie die Amalgamirung vor sich geht," pp. 253-63. Innsbruck,
1883.
(2) Commons, John R. _Races and Immigrants in America._ Chap. ix,
"Amalgamation and Assimilation," pp. 198-238. New ed. New York, 1920.
[See also pp. 17-21.]
(3) Ripley, William Z. _The Races of Europe._ A sociological study.
Chap. ii, "Language, Nationality, and Race," pp. 15-36. Chap. xviii,
"European Origins: Race and Culture," pp. 486-512. New York, 1899.
(4) Fischer, Eugen. _Die Rehobother Bastards und das
Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen._ Anthropologische und
ethnographische Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Südwest
Afrika. Jena, 1913.
(5) Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Theories of Mixture of Races and
Nationalities," _Yale Review_, III (1894), 166-86.
(6) Smith, G. Elliot. "The Influence of Racial Admixture in Egypt,"
_Eugenics Review_, VII (1915-16), 163-83.
(7) Reuter, E. B. _The Mulatto in the United States._ Including a study
of the rôle of mixed-blood races throughout the world. Boston, 1918.
(8) Weatherly, Ulysses G. "The Racial Element in Social Assimilation,"
_Publications of the American Sociological Society_, V (1910), 57-76.
(9) ----. "Race and Marriage," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV
(1909-10), 433-53.
(10) Roosevelt, Theodore. "Brazil and the Negro," _Outlook_, CVI (1904),
409-11.
II. THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF CULTURES
A. _Process of Acculturation_
(1) Ratzel, Friedrich. _The History of Mankind._ Vol. I, Book I, sec. 4,
"Nature, Rise and Spread of Civilization," pp. 20-30. Vol. II, Book II,
sec. 31, "Origin and Development of the Old American Civilization," pp.
160-70. Translated from the 2d German ed. by A. J. Butler. 3 vols.
London, 1896-98.
(2) Rivers, W. H. R. "The Ethnological Analysis of Culture," _Report of
the 81st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science_, 1911, pp. 490-99.
(3) Frobenius, L. _Der Ursprung der afrikanischen Kulturen._ Berlin,
1898.
(4) Boas, Franz. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ Chap. vi, "The
Universality of Cultural Traits," pp. 155-73. Chap. vii, "The
Evolutionary Viewpoint," pp. 174-96. New York, 1911.
(5) Vierkandt, A. _Die Stetigkeit im Kulturwandel._ Eine sociologische
Studie. Leipzig, 1908.
(6) McGee, W. J. "Piratical Acculturation," _American Anthropologist_,
XI (1898), 243-51.
(7) Crooke, W. "Method of Investigation and Folklore Origins,"
_Folklore_, XXIV (1913), 14-40.
(8) Graebner, F. "Die melanesische Bogenkultur und ihre Verwandten,"
_Anthropos_, IV (1909), 726-80, 998-1032.
(9) Lowie, Robert H. "On the Principle of Convergence in Ethnology,"
_Journal of American Folklore_, XXV (1912), 24-42.
(10) Goldenweiser, A. A. "The Principle of Limited Possibilities in the
Development of Culture," _Journal of American Folklore_, XXVI (1913),
259-90.
(11) Dixon, R. B. "The Independence of the Culture of the American
Indian," _Science_, N.S., XXXV (1912), 46-55.
(12) Johnson, W. _Folk-Memory._ Or the continuity of British
archaeology. Oxford, 1908.
(13) Wundt, Wilhelm. _Völkerpsychologie._ Eine Untersuchung der
Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus, und Sitte. Band I, "Die
Sprache." 3 vols. Leipzig, 1900-1909.
(14) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation._ Translated from the 2d
French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. New York, 1903.
B. _Nationalization and Denationalization_
(1) Bauer, Otto. _Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie._
Wien, 1907. Chap. vi, sec. 30, "Der Sozialismus und das
Nationalitätsprinzip," pp. 507-21. (In: Adler, M. and Hildering, R.
_Marx-Studien; Blätter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen
Sozialismus._ Band II. Wien, 1904.
(2) Kerner, R. J. _Slavic Europe._ A selected bibliography in the
western European languages, comprising history, languages, and
literature. "The Slavs and Germanization," Nos. 2612-13, pp. 193-95.
Cambridge, Mass., 1918.
(3) Delbrück, Hans. "Das Polenthum," _Preussische Jahrbücher_, LXXVI
(April, 1894), 173-86.
(4) Warren, H. C. "Social Forces and International Ethics,"
_International Journal of Ethics_, XXVII (1917), 350-56.
(5) Prince, M. "A World Consciousness and Future Peace," _Journal of
Abnormal Psychology_, XI (1917), 287-304.
(6) Reich, Emil. _General History of Western Nations, from 5000 B.C. to
1900 A.D._ "Europeanization of Humanity," pp. 33-65, 480-82. (Vols. I-II
published.) London, 1908.
(7) Thomas, William I. "The Prussian-Polish Situation: an Experiment in
Assimilation," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1913-14), 624-39.
(8) Parkman, Francis. _Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian Wars after
the Conquest of Canada._ 8th ed., 2 vols. Boston, 1877. [Discusses the
cultural effects of the mingling of French and Indians in Canada.]
(9) Moore, William H. _The Clash._ A study in nationalities. New York,
1919. [French and English cultural contacts in Canada.]
(10) Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Assimilation of Nationalities in the United
States," _Political Science Quarterly_, IX (1894), 426-44, 649-70.
(11) Kelly, J. Liddell. "New Race in the Making; Many Nationalities in
the Territory of Hawaii--Process of Fusion Proceeding--the Coming
Pacific Race," _Westminster Review_, CLXXV (1911), 357-66.
(12) Kallen, H. M. _Structure of Lasting Peace._ An inquiry into the
motives of war and peace. Boston, 1918.
(13) Westermarck, Edward. "Finland and the Czar," _Contemporary Review_,
LXXV (1899), 652-59.
(14) Brandes, Georg. "Denmark and Germany," _Contemporary Review_, LXXVI
(1899), 92-104.
(15) Marvin, Francis S. _The Unity of Western Civilization._ Essays.
London and New York, 1915.
(16) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews: a Study in Race and Environment._
London and New York, 1911. [Chap. xxii deals with assimilation versus
nationalism.]
(17) Bailey, W. F., and Bates, Jean V. "The Early German Settlers in
Transylvania," _Fortnightly Review_, CVII (1917), 661-74.
(18) Auerbach, Bertrand. _Les Races et les nationalités en
Autriche-Hongrie._ Paris, 1898.
(19) Cunningham, William. _Alien Immigrants to England._ London and New
York, 1897.
(20) Kaindl, Raimund Friedrich. _Geschichte der Deutschen in den
Karpathenländern._ Vol. I, "Geschichte der Deutschen in Galizien bis
1772." 3 vols. in 2. Gotha, 1907-11.
C. _Missions_
(1) Moore, Edward C. _The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World._
Chicago, 1919. [Bibliography.]
(2) World Missionary Conference. _Report of the World Missionary
Conference, 1910._ 9 vols. Chicago, 1910.
(3) Robinson, Charles H. _History of Christian Missions._ New York,
1915.
(4) Speer, Robert E. _Missions and Modern History._ A study of the
missionary aspects of some great movements of the nineteenth century. 2
vols. New York, 1904.
(5) Warneck, Gustav. _Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from
the Reformation to the Present Time._ A contribution to modern church
history. Translated from the German by George Robson. Chicago, 1901.
(6) Creighton, Louise. _Missions._ Their rise and development. New York,
1912. [Bibliography.]
(7) Pascoe, C. F. _Two Hundred Years of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel, 1701-1900._ Based on a digest of the Society's records.
London, 1901.
(8) Parkman, Francis. _The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth
Century._ Part II. "France and England in North America." Boston, 1902.
(9) Bryce, James. _Impressions of South Africa._ Chap. xxii, "Missions,"
pp. 384-93. 3d ed. New York, 1900.
(10) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ "Missions and Antagonistic Mores," pp.
111-14, 629-31. New York, 1906.
(11) Coffin, Ernest W. "On the Education of Backward Races,"
_Pedagogical Seminary_, XV (1908), 1-62. [Bibliography.]
(12) Blackmar, Frank W. _Spanish Colonization in the South West._ "The
Mission System," pp. 28-48. "Johns Hopkins University Studies in
Historical and Political Science." Baltimore, 1890.
(13) Johnston, Harry H. _George Grenfell and the Congo._ A history and
description of the Congo Independent State and adjoining districts of
Congoland, together with some account of the native peoples and their
languages, the fauna and flora, and similar notes on the Cameroons, and
the Island of Fernando Pô, the whole founded on the diaries and
researches of the late Rev. George Grenfell, B.M.S., F.R.S.G.; and on
the records of the British Baptist Missionary society; and on additional
information contributed by the author, by the Rev. Lawson Forfeitt, Mr.
Emil Torday, and others. 2 vols. London, 1908.
(14) Kingsley, Mary H. _West African Studies._ Pp. 107-9, 272-75. 2d ed.
London, 1901.
(15) Morel, E. D. _Affairs of West Africa._ Chaps. xxii-xxiii, "Islam in
West Africa," pp. 208-37. London, 1902.
(16) Sapper, Karl. "Der Charakter der mittelamerikanischen Indianer,"
_Globus_, LXXXVII (1905), 128-31.
(17) Fleming, Daniel J. _Devolution in Mission Administration._ As
exemplified by the legislative history of five American missionary
societies in India. New York, 1916. [Bibliography.]
III. IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION
A. _Immigration and the Immigrant_
(1) United States Immigration Commission. _Reports of the Immigration
Commission._ 41 vols. Washington, 1911.
(2) Lauck, William J., and Jenks, Jeremiah. _The Immigration Problem._
New York, 1912.
(3) Commons, John R. _Races and Immigrants in America._ New ed. New
York, 1920.
(4) Fairchild, Henry P. _Immigration._ A world-movement and its American
significance. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.]
(5) Ross, E. A. _The Old World in the New._ The significance of past and
present immigration to the American people. New York, 1914.
(6) Abbott, Grace. _The Immigrant and the Community._ With an
introduction by Judge Julian W. Mack. New York, 1917.
(7) Steiner, Edward A. _On the Trail of the Immigrant._ New York, 1906.
(8) ----. _The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow._ Chicago, 1909.
(9) Brandenburg, Broughton. _Imported Americans._ The story of the
experiences of a disguised American and his wife studying the
immigration question. New York, 1904.
(10) Kapp, Friedrich. _Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration
of the State of New York._ New York, 1880.
B. _Immigrant Communities_
(1) Faust, Albert B. _The German Element in the United States._ With
special reference to its political, moral, social, and educational
influence. New York, 1909.
(2) Green, Samuel S. _The Scotch-Irish in America, 1895._ A paper read
as the report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, at the
semi-annual meeting, April 24, 1895, with correspondence called out by
the paper. Worcester, Mass., 1895.
(3) Hanna, Charles A. _The Scotch-Irish._ Or the Scot in North Britain,
North Ireland, and North America. New York and London, 1902.
(4) Jewish Publication Society of America. _The American Jewish
Yearbook._ Philadelphia, 1899.
(5) _Jewish Communal Register, 1917-1918._ 2d ed. Edited and published
by the Kehillah (Jewish Community) of New York City. New York, 1919.
(6) Balch, Emily G. _Our Slavic Fellow Citizens._ New York, 1910.
(7) Horak, Jakub. _Assimilation of Czechs in Chicago._ [In press.]
(8) Millis, Harry A. _The Japanese Problem in the United States._ An
investigation for the Commission on Relations with Japan appointed by
the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. New York,
1915.
(9) Fairchild, Henry P. _Greek Immigration to the United States._ New
Haven, 1911.
(10) Burgess, Thomas. _Greeks in America._ An account of their coming,
progress, customs, living, and aspirations; with a historical
introduction and the stories of some famous American-Greeks. Boston,
1913.
(11) Coolidge, Mary R. _Chinese Immigration._ New York, 1909.
(12) Foerster, Robert F. _The Italian Emigration of Our Times._
Cambridge, Mass., 1919.
(13) Lord, Eliot, Trenor, John J. D., and Barrows, Samuel J. _The
Italian in America._ New York, 1905.
(14) DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. _The Philadelphia Negro, A Social Study._
Together with a special report on domestic service by Isabel Eaton.
"Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Political
Economy and Public Law," No. 14. Philadelphia, 1899.
(15) Williams, Daniel J. _The Welsh of Columbus, Ohio._ A study in
adaptation and assimilation. Oshkosh, Wis., 1913.
C. _Americanization_
(1) Drachsler, Julius. _Democracy and Assimilation._ The blending of
immigrant heritages in America. New York, 1920. [Bibliography.]
(2) Dushkin, Alexander M. _Jewish Education in New York City._ New York,
1918.
(3) Thompson, Frank V. _Schooling of the Immigrant._ New York, 1920.
(4) Daniels, John. _America via the Neighborhood._ New York, 1920.
(5) Park, Robert E., and Miller, Herbert A. _Old World Traits
Transplanted._ New York, 1921.
(6) Speek, Peter A. _A Stake in the Land._ New York, 1921.
(7) Davis, Michael M. _Immigrant Health and the Community._ New York,
1921.
(8) Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. _New Homes for Old._ New York, 1921.
(9) Leiserson, William M. _Adjusting Immigrant and Industry._ [In
press.]
(10) Gavit, John P. _Americans by Choice._ [In press.]
(11) Claghorn, Kate H. _The Immigrant's Day in Court._ [In press.]
(12) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control._ [In press.]
New York, 1921.
(13) Burns, Allen T. _Summary of the Americanization Studies of the
Carnegie Corporation of New York._ [In press.]
(14) Miller, Herbert A. _The School and the Immigrant._ Cleveland
Education Survey. Cleveland, 1916.
(15) Kallen, Horace M. "Democracy versus the Melting-Pot, a Study of
American Nationality." _Nation_, C (1915), 190-94, 217-20.
(16) Gulick, Sidney L. _American Democracy and Asiatic Citizenship._ New
York, 1918.
(17) Talbot, Winthrop, editor. _Americanization._ Principles
of Americanism; essentials of Americanization; technic of
race-assimilation. New York, 1917. [Annotated bibliography.]
(18) Stead, W. T. _The Americanization of the World._ Or the trend of
the twentieth century. New York and London, 1901.
(19) Aronovici, Carol. _Americanization._ St. Paul, 1919. [Also in
_American Journal of Sociology_, XXV (1919-20), 695-730.]
D. _Personal Documents_
(1) Bridges, Horace. _On Becoming an American._ Some meditations of a
newly naturalized immigrant. Boston, 1919.
(2) Riis, Jacob A. _The Making of an American._ New York, 1901.
(3) Rihbany, Abraham Mitrie. _A Far Journey._ Boston, 1914.
(4) Hasanovitz, Elizabeth. _One of Them._ Chapters from a passionate
autobiography. Boston, 1918.
(5) Cohen, Rose. _Out of the Shadow._ New York, 1918.
(6) Ravage, M. E. _An American in the Making._ The life-story of an
immigrant. New York, 1917.
(7) Cahan, Abraham. _The Rise of David Levinsky._ A novel. New York,
1917.
(8) Antin, Mary. _The Promised Land._ New York, 1912.
(9) ----. _They Who Knock at Our Gates._ A complete gospel of
immigration. New York, 1914.
(10) Washington, Booker T. _Up from Slavery._ An autobiography. New
York, 1901.
(11) Steiner, Edward A. _From Alien to Citizen._ The story of my life in
America. New York, 1914.
(12) Stern, Mrs. Elizabeth Gertrude (Levin). _My Mother and I._ New
York, 1919.
(13) DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. _Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil._
New York, 1920.
(14) ----. _The Souls of Black Folk._ Essays and sketches. Chicago,
1903.
(15) Hapgood, Hutchins. _The Spirit of the Ghetto._ Studies of the
Jewish quarter in New York. Rev. ed. New York, 1909.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Race and Culture, and the Problem of the Relative Superiority and
Inferiority of Races.
2. The Relation of Assimilation to Amalgamation.
3. The Mulatto as a Cultural Type.
4. Language as a Means of Assimilation and a Basis of National
Solidarity.
5. History and Literature as Means for Preserving National Solidarity.
6. Race Prejudice and Segregation in Their Relations to Assimilation and
Accommodation.
7. Domestic Slavery and the Assimilation of the Negro.
8. A Study of Historical Experiments in Denationalization; the
Germanization of Posen, the Russianization of Poland, the Japanese
Policy in Korea, etc.
9. The "Melting-Pot" versus "Hyphen" in Their Relation to
Americanization.
10. A Study of Policies, Programs, and Experiments in Americanization
from the Standpoint of Sociology.
11. The Immigrant Community as a Means of Americanization.
12. The Process of Assimilation as Revealed in Personal Documents, as
Antin, _The Promised Land_; Rihbany, _A Far Journey_; Ravage, _An
American in the Making_; etc.
13. Foreign Missions and Native Cultures.
14. The Rôle of Assimilation and Accommodation in the Personal
Development of the Individual Man.
15. Assimilation and Accommodation in Their Relations to the Educational
Process.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand Simons to mean by the term "assimilation"?
2. What is the difference between amalgamation and assimilation?
3. How are assimilation and amalgamation interrelated?
4. What do you consider to be the difference between Trotter's
explanation of human evolution and that of Crile?
5. What do you understand Trotter to mean by the gregarious instinct as
a mechanism controlling conduct?
6. Of what significance is the distinction made by Trotter between (a)
the three individual instincts, and (b) the gregarious instincts?
7. What is the significance of material and non-material cultural
elements for the study of race contact and intermixture?
8. How do you explain the difference in rapidity of assimilation of the
various types of cultural elements?
9. What factors promoted and impeded the extension of Roman culture in
Gaul?
10. What social factors were involved in the origin of the French
language?
11. To what extent does the extension of a cultural language involve
assimilation?
12. In what sense do the cultural languages compete with each other?
13. Do you agree with the prediction that within a century English will
be the vernacular of a quarter of the people of the world? Justify your
position.
14. Does Park's definition of assimilation differ from that of Simons?
15. What do you understand Park to mean when he says, "Social
institutions are not founded in similarities any more than they are
founded in differences, but in relations, and in the mutual
interdependence of the parts"? What is the relation of this principle to
the process of assimilation?
16. What do you understand to be the difference between the type of
assimilation (a) that makes for group solidarity and corporate action,
and (b) that makes for formal like-mindedness? What conditions favor
the one or the other type of assimilation?
17. What do you understand by the term "Americanization"?
18. Is there a difference between Americanization and Prussianization?
19. With what programs of Americanization are you familiar? Are they
adequate from the standpoint of the sociological interpretation of
assimilation?
20. In what way is language both a means and a product of assimilation?
21. What is meant by the phrases "apperception mass," "universes of
discourse," and "definitions of the situations"? What is their
significance for assimilation?
22. In what way does assimilation involve the mediation of individual
differences?
23. Does the segregation of immigrants make for or against assimilation?
24. In what ways do primary and secondary contacts, imitation and
suggestion, competition, conflict and accommodation, enter into the
process of assimilation?
FOOTNOTES:
[241] Adapted from Sarah E. Simons, "Social Assimilation," in the
_American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1901), 790-801.
[242] Adapted from W. Trotter, "Herd Instinct," in the _Sociological
Review_, I (1908), 231-42.
[243] From W. H. R. Rivers, "The Ethnological Analysis of Culture," in
_Nature_, LXXXVII (1911), 358-60.
[244] From John H. Cornyn, "French Language," in the _Encyclopedia
Americana_, XI (1919), 646-47.
[245] Adapted from E. H. Babbitt, "The Geography of the Great
Languages," in _World's Work_, XV (1907-8), 9903-7.
[246] From Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in
the _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1914),
66-72.
[247] The three selections under this heading are adapted from
_Memorandum on Americanization_, prepared by the Division of Immigrant
Heritages, of the Study of Methods of Americanization, of the Carnegie
Corporation, New York City, 1919.
[248] See chap. i, pp. 16-24.
[249] See _Menighetskalenderen_. (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg
Publishing Co. 1917.)
CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL CONTROL
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Social Control Defined
Social control has been studied, but, in the wide extension that
sociology has given to the term, it has not been defined. All social
problems turn out finally to be problems of social control. In the
introductory chapter to this volume social problems were divided into
three classes: Problems (a) of administration, (b) of policy and
polity, (c) of social forces and human nature.[250] Social control may
be studied in each one of these categories. It is with social forces and
human nature that sociology is mainly concerned. Therefore it is from
this point of view that social control will be considered in this
chapter.
In the four preceding chapters the process of interaction, in its four
typical forms, competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation,
has been analyzed and described. The community and the natural order
within the limits of the community, it appeared, are an effect of
competition. Social control and the mutual subordination of individual
members to the community have their origin in conflict, assume definite
organized forms in the process of accommodation, and are consolidated
and fixed in assimilation.
Through the medium of these processes, a community assumes the form of a
society. Incidentally, however, certain definite and quite spontaneous
forms of social control are developed. These forms are familiar under
various titles: tradition, custom, folkways, mores, ceremonial, myth,
religious and political beliefs, dogmas and creeds, and finally public
opinion and law. In this chapter it is proposed to define a little more
accurately certain of these typical mechanisms through which social
groups are enabled to act. In the chapter on "Collective Behavior" which
follows, materials will be presented to exhibit the group in action.
It is in action that the mechanisms of control are created, and the
materials under the title "Collective Behavior" are intended to
illustrate the stages, (a) social unrest, (b) mass movements, (c)
institutions in which society is formed and reformed. Finally, in the
chapter on "Progress," the relation of social change to social control
will be discussed and the rôle of science and collective representations
in the direction of social changes indicated.
The most obvious fact about social control is the machinery by which
laws are made and enforced, that is, the legislature, the courts, and
the police. When we think of social control, therefore, these are the
images in which we see it embodied and these are the terms in which we
seek to define it.
It is not quite so obvious that legislation and the police must, in the
long run, have the support of public opinion. Hume's statement that
governments, even the most despotic, have nothing but opinion to support
them, cannot be accepted without some definition of terms, but it is
essentially correct. Hume included under opinion what we would
distinguish from it, namely, the mores. He might have added, using
opinion in this broad sense, that the governed, no matter how numerous,
are helpless unless they too are united by "opinion."
A king or a political "boss," having an army or apolitical "machine" at
his command, can do much. It is possible, also, to confuse or mislead
public opinion, but neither the king nor the boss will, if he be wise,
challenge the mores and the common sense of the community.
Public opinion and the mores, however, representing as they do the
responses of the community to changing situations, are themselves
subject to change and variation. They are based, however, upon what we
have called fundamental human nature, that is, certain traits which in
some form or other are reproduced in every form of society.
During the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and
nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the
students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows
that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are
everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the
modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or
the African Hottentots. All have a form of family life, moral
and legal regulations, a religious system, a form of
government, artistic practices, and so forth. An examination
of the moral code of any given group, say the African Kaffirs,
will disclose many identities with that of any other given
group, say the Hebrews. All groups have such "commandments" as
"Honor thy father and mother," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou
shalt not steal." Formerly it was assumed that this similarity
was the result of borrowing between groups. When Bastian
recorded a Hawaiian myth resembling the one of Orpheus and
Eurydice, there was speculation as to how this story had been
carried so far from Greece. But it is now recognized that
similarities of culture are due, in the main, not to imitation,
but to parallel development. The nature of man is everywhere
essentially the same and tends to express itself everywhere in
similar sentiments and institutions.[251]
There are factors in social control more fundamental than the mores.
Herbert Spencer, in his chapter on "Ceremonial Government," has defined
social control from this more fundamental point of view. In that chapter
he refers to "the modified forms of action caused in men by the presence
of their fellows" as a form of control "out of which other more definite
controls are evolved." The spontaneous responses of one individual to
the presence of another which are finally fixed, conventionalized, and
transmitted as social ritual constitute that "primitive undifferentiated
kind of government from which political and religious government are
differentiated, and in which they continue immersed."
In putting this emphasis upon ceremonial and upon those forms of
behavior which spring directly and spontaneously out of the innate and
instinctive responses of the individual to a social situation, Spencer
is basing government on the springs of action which are fundamental, so
far, at any rate, as sociology is concerned.
2. Classification of the Materials
The selections on social control have been classified under three heads:
(a) elementary forms of social control, (b) public opinion, and
(c) institutions. This order of the readings indicates the development
of control from its spontaneous forms in the crowd, in ceremony,
prestige, and taboo; its more explicit expression in gossip, rumor,
news, and public opinion; to its more formal organization in law,
dogma, and in religious and political institutions. Ceremonial, public
opinion, and law are characteristic forms in which social life finds
expression as well as a means by which the actions of the individual are
co-ordinated and collective impulses are organized so that they issue in
behavior, that is, either (a) primarily expressive--play, for
example--or (b) positive action.
A very much larger part of all human behavior than we ordinarily imagine
is merely expressive. Art, play, religious exercises, and political
activity are either wholly or almost wholly forms of expression, and
have, therefore, that symbolic and ceremonial character which belongs
especially to ritual and to art, but is characteristic of every activity
carried on for its own sake. Only work, action which has some ulterior
motive or is performed from a conscious sense of duty, falls wholly and
without reservation into the second class.
a) _Elementary forms of social control._--Control in the crowd, where
rapport is once established and every individual is immediately
responsive to every other, is the most elementary form of control.
Something like this same direct and spontaneous response of the
individual in the crowd to the crowd's dominant mood or impulse may be
seen in the herd and the flock, the "animal crowd."
Under the influence of the vague sense of alarm, or merely as an effect
of heat and thirst, cattle become restless and begin slowly moving about
in circles, "milling." This milling is a sort of collective gesture, an
expression of discomfort or of fear. But the very expression of the
unrest tends to intensify its expression and so increases the tension in
the herd. This continues up to the point where some sudden sound, the
firing of a pistol or a flash of lightning, plunges the herd into a wild
stampede.
Milling in the herd is a visible image of what goes on in subtler and
less obvious ways in human societies. Alarms or discomforts frequently
provoke social unrest. The very expression of this unrest tends to
magnify it. The situation is a vicious circle. Every attempt to deal
with it merely serves to aggravate it. Such a vicious circle we
witnessed in our history from 1830 to 1861, when every attempt to deal
with slavery served only to bring the inevitable conflict between the
states nearer. Finally there transpired what had for twenty years been
visibly preparing and the war broke.
Tolstoi in his great historical romance, _War and Peace_, describes, in
a manner which no historian has equaled, the events that led up to the
Franco-Russian War of 1812, and particularly the manner in which
Napoleon, in spite of his efforts to avoid it, was driven by social
forces over which he had no control to declare war on Russia, and so
bring about his own downfall.
The condition under which France was forced by Bismarck to declare war
on Prussia in 1870, and the circumstances under which Austria declared
war on Serbia in 1914 and so brought on the world-war, exhibit the same
fatal circle. In both cases, given the situation, the preparations that
had been made, the resolutions formed and the agreements entered into,
it seems clear that after a certain point had been reached every move
was forced.
This is the most fundamental and elementary form of control. It is the
control exercised by the mere play of elemental forces. These forces
may, to a certain extent, be manipulated, as is true of other natural
forces; but within certain limits, human nature being what it is, the
issue is fatally determined, just as, given the circumstances and the
nature of cattle, a stampede is inevitable. Historical crises are
invariably created by processes which, looked at abstractly, are very
much like milling in a herd. The vicious circle is the so-called
"psychological factor" in financial depressions and panics and is,
indeed, a factor in all collective action.
The effect of this circular form of interaction is to increase the
tensions in the group and, by creating a state of expectancy, to
mobilize its members for collective action. It is like the attention in
the individual: it is the way in which the group prepares to act.
Back of every other form of control--ceremonial, public opinion, or
law--there is always this interaction of the elementary social forces.
What we ordinarily mean by social control, however, is the arbitrary
intervention of some individual--official, functionary, or leader--in
the social process. A policeman arrests a criminal, an attorney sways
the jury with his eloquence, the judge passes sentence; these are the
familiar formal acts in which social control manifests itself. What
makes the control exercised in this way social, in the strict sense of
that term, is the fact that these acts are supported by custom, law, and
public opinion.
The distinction between control in the crowd and in other forms of
society is that the crowd has no tradition. It has no point of reference
in its own past to which its members can refer for guidance. It has
therefore neither symbols, ceremonies, rites, nor ritual; it imposes no
obligations and creates no loyalties.
Ceremonial is one method of reviving in the group a lively sense of the
past. It is a method of reinstating the excitements and the sentiments
which inspired an earlier collective action. The savage war dance is a
dramatic representation of battle and as such serves to rouse and
reawaken the warlike spirit. This is one way in which ceremonial becomes
a means of control. By reviving the memories of an earlier war, it
mobilizes the warriors for a new one.
Ernst Grosse, in _The Beginnings of Art_, has stated succinctly what has
impressed all first-hand observers, namely, the important rôle which the
dance plays in the lives of primitive peoples.
The dances of the hunting peoples are, as a rule, mass dances.
Generally the men of the tribe, not rarely the members of
several tribes, join in the exercises, and the whole assemblage
then moves according to one law in one time. All who have
described the dances have referred again and again to this
"wonderful" unison of the movements. In the heat of the dance
the several participants are fused together as into a single
being, which is stirred and moved as by one feeling. During the
dance they are in a condition of complete social unification,
and the dancing group feels and acts like a single organism.
_The social significance of the primitive dance lies precisely
in this effect of social unification._ It brings and accustoms
a number of men who, in their loose and precarious conditions
of life, are driven irregularly hither and thither by different
individual needs and desires, to act under one impulse with one
feeling for one object. It introduces order and connection, at
least occasionally, into the rambling, fluctuating life of the
hunting tribes. It is, besides wars, perhaps the only factor
that makes their solidarity vitally perceptible to the
adherents of a primitive tribe, and it is at the same time one
of the best preparations for war, for the gymnastic dances
correspond in more than one respect to our military exercises.
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the
primitive dance in the culture development of mankind. All
higher civilization is conditioned upon the uniformly ordered
co-operation of individual social elements, and primitive men
are trained to this co-operation by the dance.[252]
The dance, which is so characteristic and so universal a feature of the
life of primitive man--at once a mode of collective expression and of
collective representation--is but a conventionalized form of the
circular reaction, which in its most primitive form is represented by
the milling of the herd.
b) _Public opinion._--We ordinarily think of public opinion as a sort
of social weather. At certain times, and under certain circumstances, we
observe strong, steady currents of opinion, moving apparently in a
definite direction and toward a definite goal. At other times, however,
we note flurries and eddies and counter-currents in this movement. Every
now and then there are storms, shifts, or dead calms. These sudden
shifts in public opinion, when expressed in terms of votes, are referred
to by the politicians as "landslides."
In all these movements, cross-currents and changes in direction which a
closer observation of public opinion reveals, it is always possible to
discern, but on a much grander scale, to be sure, that same type of
circular reaction which we have found elsewhere, whenever the group was
preparing to act. Always in the public, as in the crowd, there will be a
circle, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, within which individuals
are mutually responsive to motives and interests of one another, so that
out of this interplay of social forces there may emerge at any time a
common motive and a common purpose that will dominate the whole.
Within the circle of the mutual influence described, there will be no
such complete rapport and no such complete domination of the individual
by the group as exists in a herd or a crowd in a state of excitement,
but there will be sufficient community of interest to insure a common
understanding. A public is, in fact, organized on the basis of a
universe of discourse, and within the limits of this universe of
discourse, language, statements of fact, news will have, for all
practical purposes, the same meanings. It is this circle of mutual
influence within which there is a universe of discourse that defines the
limits of the public.
A public like the crowd is not to be conceived as a formal organization
like a parliament or even a public meeting. It is always the widest area
over which there is conscious participation and consensus in the
formation of public opinion. The public has not only a circumference,
but it has a center. Within the area within which there is
participation and consensus there is always a focus of attention around
which the opinions of the individuals which compose the public seem to
revolve. This focus of attention, under ordinary circumstances, is
constantly shifting. The shifts of attention of the public constitute
what is meant by the changes in public opinion. When these changes take
a definite direction and have or seem to have a definite goal, we call
the phenomenon a social movement. If it were possible to plot this
movement in the form of maps and graphs, it would be possible to show
movement in two dimensions. There would be, for example, a movement in
space. The focus of public opinion, the point namely at which there is
the greatest "intensity" of opinion, tends to move from one part of the
country to another.[253] In America these movements, for reasons that
could perhaps be explained historically, are likely to be along the
meridians, east and west, rather than north and south. In the course of
this geographical movement of public opinion, however, we are likely to
observe changes in intensity and changes in direction (devagation).
Changes in intensity seem to be in direct proportion to the
area over which opinion on a given issue may be said to exist.
In minorities opinion is uniformly more intense than it is in
majorities and this is what gives minorities so much greater
influence in proportion to their numbers than majorities. While
changes in intensity have a definite relation to the area over
which public opinion on an issue may be said to exist, the
devagations of public opinion, as distinguished from the trend,
will probably turn out to have a direct relation to the
character of the parties that participate. Area as applied to
public opinion will have to be measured eventually in terms of
social rather than geographical distance, that is to say, in
terms of isolation and contact. The factor of numbers is also
involved in any such calculation. Geographical area,
communication, and the number of persons involved are in
general the factors that would determine the concept "area" as
it is used here. If party spirit is strong the general
direction or trend of public opinion will probably be
intersected by shifts and sudden transient changes in
direction, and these shifts will be in proportion to the
intensity of the party spirit. Charles E. Merriam's recent
study of political parties indicates that the minority parties
formulate most of the legislation in the United States.[254]
This is because there is not very great divergence in the
policies of the two great parties and party struggles are
fought out on irrelevant issues. So far as this is true it
insures against any sudden change in policy. New legislation is
adopted in response to the trend of public opinion, rather than
in response to the devagations and sudden shifts brought about
by the development of a radical party spirit.
All these phenomena may be observed, for example, in the Prohibition
Movement. Dicey's study of _Law and Public Opinion in England_ showed
that while the direction of opinion in regard to specific issues had
been very irregular, on the whole the movement had been in one general
direction. The trend of public opinion is the name we give to this
general movement. In defining the trend, shifts, cross-currents, and
flurries are not considered. When we speak of the tendency or direction
of public opinion we usually mean the trend over a definite period of
time.
When the focus of public attention ceases to move and shift, when it is
fixed, the circle which defines the limits of the public is narrowed. As
the circle narrows, opinion itself becomes more intense and
concentrated. This is the phenomenon of crisis. It is at this point that
the herd stampedes.
The effect of crisis is invariably to increase the dangers of
precipitate action. The most trivial incident, in such periods of
tension, may plunge a community into irretrievable disaster. It is under
conditions of crisis that dictatorships are at once possible and
necessary, not merely to enable the community to act energetically, but
in order to protect the community from the mere play of external forces.
The manner in which Bismarck, by a slight modification of the famous
telegram of Ems, provoked a crisis in France and compelled Napoleon III,
against his judgment and that of his advisers, to declare war on
Germany, is an illustration of this danger.[255]
It is this narrowing of the area over which a definite public opinion
may be said to exist that at once creates the possibility and defines
the limits of arbitrary control, so far as it is created or determined
by the existence of public opinion.
Thus far the public has been described almost wholly in terms that could
be applied to a crowd. The public has been frequently described as if it
were simply a great crowd, a crowd scattered as widely as news will
circulate and still be news.[256] But there is this difference. In the
heat and excitement of the crowd, as in the choral dances of primitive
people, there is for the moment what may be described as complete fusion
of the social forces. Rapport has, for the time being, made the crowd,
in a peculiarly intimate way, a social unit.
No such unity exists in the public. The sentiment and tendencies which
we call public opinion are never unqualified expressions of emotion. The
difference is that public opinion is determined by conflict and
discussion, and made up of the opinions of individuals not wholly at
one. In any conflict situation, where party spirit is aroused, the
spectators, who constitute the public, are bound to take sides. The
impulse to take sides is, in fact, in direct proportion to the
excitement and party spirit displayed. The result is, however, that both
sides of an issue get considered. Certain contentions are rejected
because they will not stand criticism. Public opinion formed in this way
has the character of a judgment, rather than a mere unmeditated
expression of emotion, as in the crowd. The public is never ecstatic. It
is always more or less rational. It is this fact of conflict, in the
form of discussion, that introduces into the control exercised by public
opinion the elements of rationality and of fact.
In the final judgment of the public upon a conflict or an issue, we
expect, to be sure, some sort of unanimity of judgment, but in the
general consensus there will be some individual differences of opinion
still unmediated, or only partially so, and final agreement of the
public will be more or less qualified by all the different opinions that
co-operated to form its judgment.
In the materials which follow a distinction is made between public
opinion and the mores, and this distinction is important. Custom and the
folkways, like habit in the individual, may be regarded as a mere
residuum of past practices. When folkways assume the character of mores,
they are no longer merely matters of fact and common sense, they are
judgments upon matters which were probably once live issues and as such
they may be regarded as the products of public opinion.
Ritual, religious or social, is probably the crystallization of forms of
behavior which, like the choral dance, are the direct expression of the
emotions and the instincts. The mores, on the other hand, in so far as
they contain a rational element, are the accumulations, the residuum,
not only of past practices, but of judgments such as find expression in
public opinion. The mores, as thus conceived, are the judgments of
public opinion in regard to issues that have been settled and forgotten.
L. T. Hobhouse, in his volume, _Morals in Evolution_, has described, in
a convincing way, the process by which, as he conceives it, custom is
modified and grows under the influence of the personal judgments of
individuals and of the public. Public opinion, as he defines it, is
simply the combined and sublimated judgments of individuals.
Most of these judgments are, to be sure, merely the repetition of old
formulas. But occasionally, when the subject of discussion touches us
more deeply, when it touches upon some matter in which we have had a
deeper and more intimate experience, the ordinary patter that passes as
public opinion is dissipated and we originate a moral judgment that not
only differs from, but is in conflict with, the prevailing opinion. In
that case "we become, as it were, centers from which judgments of one
kind or another radiate and from which they pass forth to fill the
atmosphere of opinion and take their place among the influences that
mould the judgments of men."
The manner in which public opinion issues from the interaction of
individuals, and moral judgments are formed that eventually become the
basis of law, may be gathered from the way in which the process goes on
in the daily life about us.
No sooner has the judgment escaped us--a winged word from our
own lips--than it impinges on the judgment similarly flying
forth to do its work from our next-door neighbor, and if the
subject is an exciting one the air is soon full of the winged
forces clashing, deflecting or reinforcing one another as the
case may be, and generally settling down toward some
preponderating opinion which is society's judgment on the case.
But in the course of the conflict many of the original
judgments are modified. Discussion, further consideration,
above all, the mere influence of our neighbour's opinion reacts
on each of us, with a stress that is proportioned to various
mental and moral characteristics of our own, our clearness of
vision, our firmness, or, perhaps, obstinacy of character, our
self-confidence, and so forth. Thus, the controversy will tend
to leave its mark, small or great, on those who took part in
it. It will tend to modify their modes of judgment, confirming
one, perhaps, in his former ways, shaping the confidence of
another, opening the eyes of a third. Similarly, it will tend
to set a precedent for future judgments. It will affect what
men say and think on the next question that turns up. It adds
its weight, of one grain it may be, to some force that is
turning the scale of opinion and preparing society for some new
departure. In any case, we have here in miniature at work every
day before our eyes the essential process by which moral
judgments arise and grow.[257]
c) _Institutions._--An institution, according to Sumner, consists of a
concept and a structure. The concept defines the purpose, interest, or
function of the institution. The structure embodies the idea of the
institution and furnishes the instrumentalities through which the idea
is put into action. The process by which purposes, whether they are
individual or collective, are embodied in structures is a continuous
one. But the structures thus formed are not physical, at least not
entirely so. Structure, in the sense that Sumner uses the term, belongs,
as he says, to a category of its own. "It is a category in which custom
produces continuity, coherence, and consistency, so that the word
'structure' may properly be applied to the fabric of relations and
prescribed positions with which functions are permanently connected."
Just as every individual member of a community participates in the
process by which custom and public opinion are made, so also he
participates in the creation of the structure, that "cake of custom"
which, when it embodies a definite social function, we call an
institution.
Institutions may be created just as laws are enacted, but only when a
social situation exists to which they correspond will they become
operative and effective. Institutions, like laws, rest upon the mores
and are supported by public opinion. Otherwise they remain mere paper
projects or artefacts that perform no real function. History records the
efforts of conquering peoples to impose upon the conquered their own
laws and institutions. The efforts are instructive, but not encouraging.
The most striking modern instance is the effort of King Leopold of
Belgium to introduce civilization into the Congo Free State.[258]
Law, like public opinion, owes its rational and secular character to the
fact that it arose out of an effort to compromise conflict and to
interpret matters which were in dispute.
To seek vengeance for a wrong committed was a natural impulse, and the
recognition of this fact in custom established it not merely as a right
but as a duty. War, the modern form of trial by battle, the vendetta,
and the duel are examples that have survived down to modern times of
this natural and primitive method of settling disputes.
In all these forms of conflict custom and the mores have tended to limit
the issues and define the conditions under which disputes might be
settled by force. At the same time public opinion, in passing judgment
on the issues, exercised a positive influence on the outcome of the
struggle.
Gradually, as men realized the losses which conflicts incurred, the
community has intervened to prevent them. At a time when the blood feud
was still sanctioned by the mores, cities of refuge and sanctuaries were
established to which one who had incurred a blood feud might flee until
his case could be investigated. If it then appeared that the wrong
committed had been unintentional or if there were other mitigating
circumstances, he might find in the sanctuary protection. Otherwise, if
a crime had been committed in cold blood, "lying in wait," or "in
enmity," as the ancient Jewish law books called it, he might be put to
death by the avenger of blood, "when he meeteth him."[259]
Thus, gradually, the principle became established that the community
might intervene, not merely to insure that vengeance was executed in due
form, but to determine the facts, and thus courts which determined by
legal process the guilt or innocence of the accused were established.
It does not appear that courts of justice were ever set up within the
kinship group for the trial of offenses, although efforts were made
there first of all, by the elders and the headmen, to compromise
quarrels and compose differences.
Courts first came into existence, the evidence indicates, when society
was organized over wider areas and after some authority had been
established outside of the local community. As society was organized
over a wider territory, control was extended to ever wider areas of
human life until we have at present a program for international courts
with power to intervene between nations to prevent wars.[260]
Society, like the individual man, moves and acts under the influence of
a multitude of minor impulses and tendencies which mutually interact to
produce a more general tendency which then dominates all the individuals
of the group. This explains the fact that a group, even a mere casual
collection of individuals like a crowd, is enabled to act more or less
as a unit. The crowd acts under the influence of such a dominant
tendency, unreflectively, without definite reference to a past or a
future. The crowd has no past and no future. The public introduces into
this vortex of impulses the factor of reflection. The public presupposes
the existence of a common impulse such as manifests itself in the crowd,
but it presupposes, also, the existence of individuals and groups of
individuals representing divergent tendencies. These individuals
interact upon one another _critically_. The public is, what the crowd is
not, a discussion group. The very existence of discussion presupposes
objective standards of truth and of fact. The action of the public is
based on a universe of discourse in which things, although they may and
do have for every individual somewhat different value, are describable
at any rate in terms that mean the same to all individuals. The public,
in other words, moves in an objective and intelligible world.
Law is based on custom. Custom is group habit. As the group acts it
creates custom. There is implicit in custom a conception and a rule of
action, which is regarded as right and proper in the circumstances. Law
makes this rule of action explicit. Law grows up, however, out of a
distinction between this rule of action and the facts. Custom is bound
up with the facts under which the custom grew up. Law is the result of
an effort to frame the rule of action implicit in custom in such general
terms that it can be made to apply to new situations, involving new sets
of facts. This distinction between the law and the facts did not exist
in primitive society. The evolution of law and jurisprudence has been in
the direction of an increasingly clearer recognition of this distinction
between law and the facts. This has meant in practice an increasing
recognition by the courts of the facts, and a disposition to act in
accordance with them. The present disposition of courts, as, for
example, the juvenile courts, to call to their assistance experts to
examine the mental condition of children who are brought before them and
to secure the assistance of juvenile-court officers to advise and assist
them in the enforcement of the law, is an illustration of an increasing
disposition to take account of the facts.
The increasing interest in the natural history of the law and of legal
institutions, and the increasing disposition to interpret it in
sociological terms, from the point of view of its function, is another
evidence of the same tendency.
II. MATERIALS
A. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
1. Control in the Crowd and the Public[261]
In August, 1914, I was a cowboy on a ranch in the interior of British
Columbia. How good a cowboy I would not undertake to say, because if
there were any errands off the ranch the foreman seemed better able to
spare me for them than anyone else in the outfit.
One ambition, and one only, possessed me in those days. And it was not
to own the ranch! All in the world I wanted was to accumulate money
enough to carry me to San Francisco when the Panama exposition opened in
the autumn. After that I didn't care. It would be time enough to worry
about another job when I had seen the fair.
Ordinarily I was riding the range five days in the week. Saturdays I was
sent on a 35-mile round trip for the mail. It was the most delightful
day of them all for me. The trail lay down the valley of the Fraser and
although I had been riding it for months it still wove a spell over me
that never could be broken. Slipping rapidly by as though escaping to
the sea from the grasp of the hills that hemmed it in on all sides, the
river always fascinated me. It was new every time I reached its edge.
An early Saturday morning in August found me jogging slowly along the
trail to Dog Creek. Dog Creek was our post-office and trading-center.
This morning, however, my mind was less on the beauties of the Fraser
than on the Dog Creek hotel. Every week I had my dinner there before
starting in mid-afternoon on my return to the ranch, and this day had
succeeded one of misunderstanding with "Cookie" wherein all the boys of
our outfit had come off second-best. I was hungry and that dinner at the
hotel was going to taste mighty good. Out there on the range we had
heard rumors of a war in Europe. We all talked it over in the evening
and decided it was another one of those fights that were always starting
in the Balkans. One had just been finished a few months before and we
thought it was about time another was under way, so we gave the matter
no particular thought. But when I got within sight of Dog Creek I knew
something was up. The first thing I heard was that somebody had
retreated from Mons and that the Germans were chasing them. So, the
Germans were fighting anyway. Then a big Indian came up to me as I was
getting off my pony and told me England's big white chief was going to
war, or had gone, he wasn't certain which, but he was going too. Would
I?
I laughed at him. "What do you mean, go to war?" I asked him.
I wasn't English; I wasn't Canadian. I was from the good old U.S.A. and
from all we could understand the States were neutral. So, I reasoned, I
ought to be neutral too, and I went in to see what there might be to
eat.
There was plenty of excitement in the dining-room. Under its influence I
began to look at the thing in a different light. While I was an alien, I
had lived in Canada. I had enjoyed her hospitality. Much of my education
was acquired in a Canadian school. Canadians were among my dearest
friends. Some of these very fellows, there in Dog Creek, were "going
down" to enlist.
All the afternoon we argued about it. Politics, economics, diplomacy;
none of them entered into the question. In fact we hadn't the faintest
idea what the war was all about. Our discussion hinged solely on what
we, personally, ought to do. England was at war. She had sent out a call
to all the Empire for men; for help. Dog Creek heard and was going to
answer that call. Even if I were an alien I had been in that district
for more than a year and I owed it to Dog Creek and the district to join
up with the rest. By that time I wanted to go. I was crazy to go! It
would be great to see London and maybe Paris and some of the other
famous old towns--if the war lasted long enough for us to get over
there. I began to bubble over with enthusiasm, just thinking about it.
So I made an appointment with some of the boys for the next evening,
rode back to the ranch and threw the mail and my job at the foreman.
A week later we were in Vancouver. Then things began to get plainer--to
some of the fellows. We heard of broken treaties, "scraps of paper,"
"Kultur," the rights of nations, big and small, "freedom of the seas,"
and other phrases that meant less than nothing to most of us. It was
enough for me, then, that the country which had given me the protection
of its laws wanted to help England. I trusted the government to know
what it was doing. Before we were in town an hour we found ourselves at
a recruiting office. By the simple expedient of moving my birthplace a
few hundred miles north I became a Canadian and a member of the
expeditionary force--a big word with a big meaning. Christmas came and I
was in a well-trained battalion of troops with no more knowledge of the
war than the retreat from Mons, the battles of the Marne and the Aisne,
and an occasional newspaper report of the capture of a hundred thousand
troops here and a couple of hundred thousand casualties somewhere else.
We knew, at that rate, it couldn't possibly last until we got to the
other side, but we prayed loudly that it would. In April we heard of the
gassing of the first Canadians at Ypres. Then the casualty lists from
that field arrived and hit Vancouver with a thud. Instantly a change
came over the city. Before that day, war had been a romance, a thing far
away about which to read and over which to wave flags. It was
intangible, impersonal. It was the same attitude the States exhibited in
the autumn of '17. Then suddenly it became real. This chap and that
chap; a neighbor boy, a fellow from the next block or the next desk.
Dead! Gassed! This was war; direct, personal, where you could count the
toll among your friends. Personally, I thought that what the Germans had
done was a terrible thing and I wondered what kind of people they might
be that they could, without warning, deliver such a foul blow. In a
prize ring the Kaiser would have lost the decision then and there. We
wondered about gas and discussed it by the hour in our barracks. Some of
us, bigger fools than the rest, insisted that the German nation would
repudiate its army. But days went by and nothing of the kind occurred.
It was then I began to take my soldiering a little more seriously. If a
nation wanted to win a war so badly that it would damn its good name
forever by using means ruled by all humanity as beyond the bounds of
civilized warfare, it must have a very big object in view. And I
started--late it is true--to obtain some clue to those objects.
May found us at our port of embarkation for the voyage to England. The
news of the "Lusitania" came over the wires and that evening our convoy
steamed. For the first time, I believe, I fully realized I was a soldier
in the greatest war of all the ages.
Between poker, "blackjack," and "crown and anchor" with the crew, we
talked over the two big things that had happened in our soldier
lives--gas and the "Lusitania." And to these we later added liquid fire.
Our arguments, our logic, may have been elemental, but I insist they
struck at the root. I may sum them up thus: Germany was not using the
methods of fighting that could be countenanced by a civilized nation. As
the nation stood behind its army in all this barbarism, there must be
something inherently lacking in it despite its wonderful music, its
divine poetry, its record in the sciences. It, too, must be barbarian at
heart. We agreed that if it should win this war it would be very
uncomfortable to belong to one of the allied nations, or even to live in
the world at all, since it was certain German manners and German methods
would not improve with victory. And we, as a battalion, were ready to
take our places in France to back up our words with deeds.
A week or so later we landed in England. A marked change had come over
the men since the day we left Halifax. Then most of us regarded the
whole war, or our part in it, as more or less of a lark. On landing we
were still for a lark, but something else had come into our
consciousness. We were soldiers fighting for a cause--a cause clear cut
and well defined--the saving of the world from a militarily mad country
without a conscience. At our camp in England we saw those boys of the
first division who had stood in their trenches in front of Ypres one
bright April morning and watched with great curiosity a peculiar looking
bank of fog roll toward them from the enemy's line. It rolled into their
trenches, and in a second those men were choking and gasping for breath.
Their lungs filled with the rotten stuff, and they were dying by dozens
in the most terrible agony, beating off even as they died a part of the
"brave" Prussian army as it came up behind those gas clouds; came up
with gas masks on and bayonets dripping with the blood of men lying on
the ground fighting, true, but for breath. A great army, that Prussian
army! And what a "glorious" victory! Truly should the Hun be proud! So
far as I am concerned, Germany did not lose the war at the battle of the
Marne, at the Aisne, or at the Yser. She lost it there at Ypres, on
April 22, 1915. It is no exaggeration when I say our eagerness to work,
to complete our training, to learn how to kill, so we could take our
places in the line, and help fight off those mad people, grew by the
hour. _They_ stiffened our backs and made us fighting mad. We saw what
they had done to our boys from Canada; they and their gas. The effect on
our battalion was the effect on the whole army, and, I am quite sure, on
the rest of the world. They put themselves beyond the pale. They
compelled the world to look on them as mad dogs, and to treat them as
mad dogs. We trained in England until August, when we went to France. To
all outward appearances we were still happy, carefree soldiers, all out
for a good time. We were happy! We were happy we were there, and down
deep there was solid satisfaction, not on account of the
different-colored books that were issuing from every chancellory in
Europe, but from a feeling rooted in white men's hearts, backed by the
knowledge of Germany's conduct, that we were there in a righteous cause.
Our second stop in our march toward the line was a little village which
had been occupied by the Boches in their mad dash toward Paris. Our
billet was a farm just on the edge of the village. The housewife
permitted us in her kitchen to do our cooking, at the same time selling
us coffee. We stayed there two or three days and became quite friendly
with her, even if she did scold us for our muddy boots. Two pretty
little kiddies played around the house, got in the way, were scolded and
spanked and in the next instant loved to death by Madame. Then she would
parade them before a picture of a clean-cut looking Frenchman in the
uniform of the army, and say something about "après la guerre." In a
little crib to one side of the room was a tiny baby, neglected by
Madame, except that she bathed and fed it. The neglect was so pronounced
that our curiosity was aroused. The explanation came through the
_estaminet_ gossip, and later from Madame herself. A Hun captain of
cavalry had stayed there a few days in August, '14, and not only had he
allowed his detachment full license in the village, but had abused his
position in the house in the accustomed manner of his bestial class. As
Madame told us her story; how her husband had rushed off to his unit
with the first call for reserves, leaving her alone with two children,
and how the blond beast had come, our fists clenched and we boiled with
rage. That is German war! but it is not all. What will be the stories
that come out of what is now occupied France? This Frenchwoman's story
was new to us then, but, like other things in the war, as we moved
through the country it became common enough, with here and there a
revolting detail more horrible than anything we had heard before.
Now and then Germany expresses astonishment at the persistence of the
British and the French. They are a funny people, the Germans. There are
so many things they do not, perhaps cannot, understand. They never could
understand why Americans, such as myself, who enlisted in a spirit of
adventure, and with not a single thought on the justice of the cause,
could experience such a marked change of feeling as to regard this
conflict as the most holy crusade in which a man could engage. It is a
holy crusade! Never in the history of the world was the cause of right
more certainly on the side of an army than it is today on the side of
the allies: We who have been through the furnace of France know this. I
only say what every other American who has been fighting under an alien
flag said when our country came in: "Thank God we have done it. Some
boy, Wilson, believe me!"
2. Ceremonial Control[262]
If, disregarding conduct that is entirely private, we consider only that
species of conduct which involves direct relations with other persons;
and if under the name government we include all control of conduct,
however arising; then we must say that the earliest kind of government,
the most general kind of government, and the government which is ever
spontaneously recommencing, is the government of ceremonial observance.
This kind of government, besides preceding other kinds, and besides
having in all places and times approached nearer to universality of
influence, has ever had, and continues to have, the largest share in
regulating men's lives.
Proof that the modifications of conduct called "manners" and "behavior"
arise before those which political and religious restraints cause is
yielded by the fact that, besides preceding social evolution, they
precede human evolution: they are traceable among the higher animals.
The dog afraid of being beaten comes crawling up to his master clearly
manifesting the desire to show submission. Nor is it solely to human
beings that dogs use such propitiatory actions. They do the like one to
another. All have occasionally seen how, on the approach of some
formidable Newfoundland or mastiff, a small spaniel, in the extremity of
its terror, throws itself on its back with legs in the air. Clearly
then, besides certain modes of behavior expressing affection, which are
established still earlier in creatures lower than man, there are
established certain modes of behavior expressing subjection.
After recognizing this fact, we shall be prepared to recognize the fact
that daily intercourse among the lowest savages, whose small loose
groups, scarcely to be called social, are without political or religious
regulation, is under a considerable amount of ceremonial regulation. No
ruling agency beyond that arising from personal superiority
characterizes a horde of Australians; but every such horde has
imperative observances. Strangers meeting must remain some time silent;
a mile from an encampment approach has to be heralded by loud _cooeys_;
a green bough is used as an emblem of peace; and brotherly feeling is
indicated by exchange of names. Ceremonial control is highly developed
in many places where other forms of control are but rudimentary. The
wild Comanche "exacts the observance of his rules of etiquette from
strangers," and "is greatly offended" by any breach of them. When
Araucanians meet, the inquiries, felicitations, and condolences which
custom demands are so elaborate that "the formality occupies ten or
fifteen minutes."
That ceremonial restraint, preceding other forms of restraint, continues
ever to be the most widely diffused form of restraint we are shown by
such facts as that in all intercourse between members of each society,
the decisively governmental actions are usually prefaced by this
government of observances. The embassy may fail, negotiation may be
brought to a close by war, coercion of one society by another may set up
wider political rule with its peremptory commands; but there is
habitually this more general and vague regulation of conduct preceding
the more special and definite. So within a community acts of relatively
stringent control coming from ruling agencies, civil and religious,
begin with and are qualified by this ceremonial control which not only
initiates but in a sense envelops all other. Functionaries,
ecclesiastical and political, coercive as their proceedings may be,
conform them in large measure to the requirements of courtesy. The
priest, however arrogant his assumption, makes a civil salute; and the
officer of the law performs his duty subject to certain propitiatory
words and movements.
Yet another indication of primordialism may be named. This species of
control establishes itself anew with every fresh relation among
individuals. Even between intimates greetings signifying continuance of
respect begin each renewal of intercourse. And in the presence of a
stranger, say in a railway carriage, a certain self-restraint, joined
with some small act like the offer of a newspaper, shows the spontaneous
rise of a propitiatory behavior such as even the rudest of mankind are
not without. So that the modified forms of action caused in men by the
presence of their fellows constitute that comparatively vague control
out of which other more definite controls are evolved--the primitive
undifferentiated kind of government from which the political and
religious governments are differentiated, and in which they ever
continue immersed.
3. Prestige[263]
Originally _prestige_--here, too, etymology proves to be an _enfant
terrible_--means delusion. It is derived from the Latin _praestigiae_
(_-arum_)--though it is found in the forms _praestigia_ (_-ae_) and
_praestigium_ (_-ii_) too: the juggler himself (dice-player,
rope-walker, "strong man," etc.) was called _praestigiator_ (_-oris_).
Latin authors and mediaeval writers of glossaries took the word to mean
"deceptive juggling tricks," and, as far as we know, did not use it in
its present signification. The _praestigiator_ threw dice or put coins
on a table, then passed them into a small vessel or box, moved the
latter about quickly and adroitly, till finally, when you thought they
were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The
looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to
presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more or less than magic art."
The practice of French writers in the oldest times was, so far as we
have been able to discover, to use the word _prestige_ at first in the
signification above assigned to the Latin "praestigiae" (_prestige_,
_prestigiateur_, _-trice_, _prestigieux_). The use of the word was not
restricted to the prestige of prophets, conjurers, demons, but was
transferred by analogy to delusions the cause of which is not regarded
any longer as supernatural. Diderot actually makes mention of the
prestige of harmony. The word "prestige" became transfigured, ennobled,
and writers and orators refined it so as to make it applicable to
analogies of the remotest character. Rousseau refers to the prestige of
our passions, which dazzles the intellect and deceives wisdom. Prestige
is the name continually given to every kind of spell, the effect of
which reminds us of "prestige" ("cet homme exerce une influence que
rassemble à une prestige"--Littre), and to all magic charms and
attractive power which is capable of dulling the intellect while it
enhances sensation. We may read of the prestige of fame, of the power
which, in default of prestige, is brute force; in 1869 numberless
placards proclaimed through the length and breadth of Paris that
Bourbeau, Minister of Public Instruction, though reputed to be a
splendid lawyer, "lacked prestige"--"Bourbeau manque de prestige." The
English and German languages make use of the word in the latter meaning
as opposed to the imaginary virtue of the conjurer; the same
signification is applied, generally speaking, to the Italian and Spanish
_prestigio_, only that the Italian _prestigiáo_ and the Spanish
_prestigiador_, just like the French _prestigiateur_, have, as opposed
to the more recent meaning, kept the older significance; neither of them
means anything more or less than conjurer or juggler.
The market clown, the rope-walker, the sword-swallower, the reciter of
long poems, the clever manipulator who defies imitation--all possess
prestige: but on the other hand, prestige surrounds demoniacal spells,
wizardry, and all effectiveness not comprehensible by logic.
We state something of someone when we say that he possesses prestige;
but our statement is not clear, and the predicate cannot be
distinguished from the subject. Of what is analysable, well-known,
commonplace, or what we succeed in understanding thoroughly, in
attaining or imitating, we do not say that it possesses prestige.
What is the relation between _prestige_ and _prejudice_? When what is
unintelligible, or mysterious, is at one time received with enthusiasm,
at another with indignation, _what renders necessary these two extreme
sentiments of appreciation_ which, though appearing under apparently
identical circumstances, are diametrically opposed to one another?
The most general form of social prejudice is that of race. A _foreigner_
is received with prejudice, conception, or prestige. If we put
"conception" aside, we find prejudice and prestige facing one another.
We see this split most clearly demonstrated if we observe the
differences of conduct in the reception of strangers by primitive
peoples. In Yrjö Hirn's _Origins of Art_ we are told that those
travellers who have learned the tongues of savages have often observed
that their persons were made the subjects of extemporized poems by the
respective savages. Sometimes these verses are of a derisive character;
at other times they glorify the white man. When do they deride, when
glorify?
Where strong prejudice values are present, as in the case of Negroes,
every conception of equality and nationalism incorporated in the
statute-book is perverted. All that _appears_ permanently divergent is
made the subject of damnatory prejudice; and the more apparent and
seeming, the more primitive the impression that restrains, the more
general the prejudice; smell affects more keenly than form, and form
more than mode of thought. If a member of a nation is not typical, but
exercises an exclusive, personal impression on us, he possesses
prestige; if he is typical, he is indifferent to us, or we look down
upon him and consider him comical. To sum up: the stranger whom we feel
to be divergent as compared with ourselves is indifferent or the object
of prejudice; the stranger whom we feel ourselves unable to measure by
our own standard, whose measure--not his qualities--we feel to be
different, we receive with prestige. We look with prejudice on the
stranger whom we dissociate, and receive with prestige the stranger who
is dissociated.
Even in the animal world we come across individuals consistently treated
with deference, of which, in his work on the psychical world of animals,
Perty has plenty to tell us: "Even in the animal world," he says, "there
are certain eminent individuals, which in comparison with the other
members of their species show a superiority of capability, brain power,
and force of will, and obtain a _predominance_ over the other animals."
Cuvier observed the same in the case of a buck which had only one horn;
Grant tells us of a certain ourang-outang which got the upper hand of
the rest of the monkeys and often threatened them with the stick; from
Naumann we hear of a clever crane which ruled over all the domestic
animals and quickly settled any quarrels that arose among them. Far more
important than these somewhat obscure observations is the peculiar
social mechanism of the animal world to be found in the mechanical
following of the leaders of flocks and herds. But this obedience is so
conspicuously instinctive, so genuine, and so little varying in
substance and intensity, that it can hardly be identified with prestige.
Bees are strong royalists; but the extent to which their selection of a
queen is instinctive and strictly exclusive is proved by the fact that
the smell of a strange queen forced on them makes them hate her; they
kill her or torture her--though the same working bees prefer to die of
hunger rather than allow their own queen to starve.
Things are radically changed when animals are brought face to face with
man. Some animals sympathize with men, and like to take part in their
hunting and fighting, as the dog and the horse; others subject
themselves as a result of force. Consequently men have succeeded in
_domesticating_ a number of species of animals. It is here that we find
the first traces, in the animal world, of phenomena, reactions of
conduct in the course of development, which, to a certain extent, remind
us of the reception of prestige. The behaviour of a dog, says Darwin,
which returns to its master after being absent--or the conduct of a
monkey, when it returns to its beloved keeper--_is far different from
what these animals display towards beings of the same order as
themselves_. In the latter case the expressions of joy seem to be
somewhat less demonstrative, and all their actions evince a feeling of
equality. Even Professor Braubach declares that _a dog looks upon its
master as a divine person_. Brehm gives us a description of the tender
respect shown towards his children by a chimpanzee that had been brought
to his home and domesticated. "When we first introduced my little
six-weeks-old daughter to him," he says, "at first he regarded the child
with evident astonishment, as if desirous to convince himself of its
human character, then touched its face with one finger with remarkable
gentleness, and amiably offered to shake hands. This trifling
characteristic, which I observed in the case of all chimpanzees reared
in my house, is worthy of particular emphasis, because it seems to prove
that _our man-monkey descries and pays homage to that higher being, man,
even in the tiniest child. On the other hand, he by no means shows any
such friendly feelings towards creatures like himself--not even towards
little ones_."
In every stage of the development of savage peoples we come across
classical examples of mock kings--of the "primus inter pares," "duces ex
virtute," _not_ "ex nobilitate reges"--of rational and valued leaders.
The savages of Chile elect as their chief the man who is able to carry
the trunk of a tree farthest. In other places, military prowess, command
of words, crafts, a knowledge of spells are the causal sources of the
usually extremely trifling homage due to the chieftain. "Savage hordes
in the lowest stage of civilization are organized, like troops of
monkeys, on the basis of authority. The strongest old male by virtue of
his strength acquires a certain ascendancy, which lasts as long as his
physical strength is superior to that of every other male...."
Beyond that given by nature, primitive society recognizes no other
prestige, for the society of savages lacks the subjective conditions of
prestige--settlement in large numbers and permanency. The lack of
distance compels the savage to respect only persons who hold their own
in his presence: this conspicuous clearness of the estimation of
primitive peoples is the cause that has prevailed on us to dwell so long
on this point. That the cause of this want of prestige among savages is
the lack of concentration in masses, not any esoteric peculiarity, is
proved by the profound psychological appreciation of the distances
created by nature, and still more by the expansion of tribal life into a
barbarian one. The tenfold increase of the number of a tribe renders
difficult a logical, ethical, or aesthetic selection of a leader, as
well as an intuitive control of spells and superstitions.
The dramatic _mise en scène_ of human prestige coincides with the first
appearance of this concentration in masses, and triumphs with its
triumph.
4. Prestige and Status in South East Africa[264]
In no other land under the British flag, except, perhaps, in the Far
East, certainly in none of the great self-governing colonies with which
we rank ourselves, is the position of white man _qua_ white man so high,
his status so impugnable, as in South East Africa. Differing in much
else, the race instinct binds the whites together to demand recognition
as a member of the ruling and inviolable caste, even for the poorest,
the degraded of their race. And this position connotes freedom from all
manual and menial toil; without hesitation the white man demands this
freedom, without question the black man accedes and takes up the burden,
obeying the race command of one who may be his personal inferior. It is
difficult to convey to one who has never known this distinction the way
in which the very atmosphere is charged with it in South East Africa. A
white oligarchy, every member of the race an aristocrat; a black
proletariat, every member of the race a server; the line of cleavage as
clear and deep as the colours. The less able and vigorous of our race,
thus protected, find here an ease, a comfort, a recognition to which
their personal worth would never entitle them in a homogeneous white
population.
When uncontaminated by contact with the lower forms of our civilization,
the native is courteous and polite. Even today, changed for the worse as
he is declared to be by most authorities, a European could ride or walk
alone, unarmed even with a switch, all through the locations of Natal
and Zululand, scores of miles away from the house of any white man, and
receive nothing but courteous deference from the natives. If he met, as
he certainly would, troops of young men, dressed in all their barbaric
finery, going to wedding or dance, armed with sticks and shields, full
of hot young blood, they would still stand out of the narrow path,
giving to the white man the right of way and saluting as he passed. I
have thus travelled alone all over South East Africa, among thousands of
blacks and never a white man near, and I cannot remember the natives,
even if met in scores or hundreds, ever disputing the way for a moment.
All over Africa, winding and zigzagging over hill and dale, over
grassland and through forest, from kraal to kraal, and tribe to tribe,
go the paths of the natives. In these narrow paths worn in the grass by
the feet of the passers, you could travel from Natal to Benguela and
back again to Mombasa. Only wide enough for one to travel thereon, if
opposite parties meet one must give way; cheerfully, courteously,
without cringing, often with respectful salute, does the native stand on
one side allowing the white man to pass. One accepts it without thought;
it is the expected, but if pondered upon it is suggestive of much.
5. Taboo[265]
Rules of holiness in the sense just explained, i.e., a system of
restrictions on man's arbitrary use of natural things, enforced by the
dread of supernatural penalties, are found among all primitive peoples.
It is convenient to have a distinct name for this primitive institution,
to mark it off from the later developments of the idea of holiness in
advanced religions, and for this purpose the Polynesian term "taboo"
has been selected. The field covered by taboos among savage and
half-savage races is very wide, for there is no part of life in which
the savage does not feel himself to be surrounded by mysterious agencies
and recognise the need of walking warily. Moreover all taboos do not
belong to religion proper, that is, they are not always rules of conduct
for the regulation of man's contact with deities that, when taken in the
right way, may be counted on as friendly, but rather appear in many
cases to be precautions against the approach of malignant
enemies--against contact with evil spirits and the like. Thus alongside
of taboos that exactly correspond to rules of holiness, protecting the
inviolability of idols and sanctuaries, priest and chiefs, and generally
of all persons and things pertaining to the gods and their worship, we
find another kind of taboo which in the Semitic field has its parallel
in rules of uncleanness. Women after childbirth, men who have touched a
dead body, and so forth, are temporarily taboo and separated from human
society, just as the same persons are unclean in Semitic religion. In
these cases the person under taboo is not regarded as holy, for he is
separated from approach to the sanctuary as well as from contact with
men; but his act or condition is somehow associated with supernatural
dangers, arising, according to the common savage explanation, from the
presence of formidable spirits which are shunned like an infectious
disease. In most savage societies no sharp line seems to be drawn
between the two kinds of taboo just indicated, and even in more advanced
nations the notions of holiness and uncleanness often touch. Among the
Syrians, for example, swine's flesh was taboo, but it was an open
question whether this was because the animal was holy or because it was
unclean. But though not precise, the distinction between what is holy
and what is unclean is real; in rules of holiness the motive is respect
for the gods, in rules of uncleanliness it is primarily fear of an
unknown or hostile power, though ultimately, as we see in the Levitical
legislation, the law of clean and unclean may be brought within the
sphere of divine ordinances, on the view that uncleanness is hateful to
God and must be avoided by all that have to do with Him.
The fact that all the Semites have rules of uncleanness as well as rules
of holiness, that the boundary between the two is often vague, and that
the former as well as the latter present the most startling agreement
in point of detail with savage taboos, leaves no reasonable doubt as to
the origin and ultimate relations of the idea of holiness. On the other
hand, the fact that the Semites--or at least the northern
Semites--distinguish between the holy and the unclean, marks a real
advance above savagery. All taboos are inspired by awe of the
supernatural, but there is a great moral difference between precautions
against the invasion of mysterious hostile powers and precautions
founded on respect for the prerogative of a friendly god. The former
belong to magical superstition--the barrenest of all aberrations of the
savage imagination--which, being founded only on fear, acts merely as a
bar to progress and an impediment to the free use of nature by human
energy and industry. But the restrictions on individual licence which
are due to respect for a known and friendly power allied to man, however
trivial and absurd they may appear to us in their details, contain
within them germinant principles of social progress and moral order. To
know that one has the mysterious powers of nature on one's side so long
as one acts in conformity with certain rules, gives a man strength and
courage to pursue the task of the subjugation of nature to his service.
To restrain one's individual licence, not out of slavish fear, but from
respect for a higher and beneficent power, is a moral discipline of
which the value does not altogether depend on the reasonableness of
sacred restrictions; an English schoolboy is subject to many
unreasonable taboos, which are not without value in the formation of
character. But finally, and above all, the very association of the idea
of holiness with a beneficent deity, whose own interests are bound up
with the interests of a community, makes it inevitable that the laws of
social and moral order, as well as mere external precepts of physical
observance, shall be placed under the sanction of the god of the
community. Breaches of social order are recognised as offences against
the holiness of the deity, and the development of law and morals is made
possible, at a stage when human sanctions are still wanting, or too
imperfectly administered to have much power, by the belief that the
restrictions on human licence which are necessary to social well-being
are conditions imposed by the god for the maintenance of a good
understanding between himself and his worshippers.
Various parallels between savage taboos and Semitic rules of holiness
and uncleanness will come before us from time to time; but it may be
useful to bring together at this point some detailed evidences that the
two are in their origin indistinguishable.
Holy and unclean things have this in common, that in both cases certain
restrictions lie on men's use of and contact with them, and that the
breach of these restrictions involves supernatural dangers. The
difference between the two appears, not in their relation to man's
ordinary life, but in their relation to the gods. Holy things are not
free to man, because they pertain to the gods; uncleanness is shunned,
according to the view taken in the higher Semitic religions, because it
is hateful to the god, and therefore not to be tolerated in his
sanctuary, his worshippers, or his land. But that this explanation is
not primitive can hardly be doubted when we consider that the acts that
cause uncleanness are exactly the same which among savage nations place
a man under taboo, and that these acts are often involuntary, and often
innocent, or even necessary to society. The savage, accordingly, imposes
a taboo on a woman in childbed, or during her courses, and on the man
who touches a corpse, not out of any regard for the gods, but simply
because birth and everything connected with the propagation of the
species on the one hand, and disease and death on the other, seem to him
to involve the action of superhuman agencies of a dangerous kind. If he
attempts to explain, he does so by supposing that on these occasions
spirits of deadly power are present; at all events the persons involved
seem to him to be sources of mysterious danger, which has all the
characters of an infection and may extend to other people unless due
precautions are observed. This is not scientific, but it is perfectly
intelligible, and forms the basis of a consistent system of practice;
whereas, when the rules of uncleanness are made to rest on the will of
the gods, they appear altogether arbitrary and meaningless. The affinity
of such taboos with laws of uncleanness comes out most clearly when we
observe that uncleanness is treated like a contagion, which has to be
washed away or otherwise eliminated by physical means. Take the rules
about the uncleanness produced by the carcases of vermin in Lev. 11:32
ff.; whatever they touch must be washed; the water itself is then
unclean, and can propagate the contagion; nay, if the defilement affect
an (unglazed) earthen pot, it is supposed to sink into the pores, and
cannot be washed out, so that the pot must be broken. Rules like this
have nothing in common with the spirit of Hebrew religion; they can
only be remains of a primitive superstition, like that of the savage who
shuns the blood of uncleanness, and such like things, as a supernatural
and deadly virus. The antiquity of the Hebrew taboos, for such they are,
is shown by the way in which many of them reappear in Arabia; cf. for
example Deut. 21:12, 13, with the Arabian ceremonies for removing the
impurity of widowhood. In the Arabian form the ritual is of purely
savage type; the danger to life that made it unsafe for a man to marry
the woman was transferred in the most materialistic way to an animal,
which it was believed generally died in consequence, or to a bird.
B. PUBLIC OPINION
1. The Myth[266]
There is no process by which the future can be predicted scientifically,
nor even one which enables us to discuss whether one hypothesis about it
is better than another; it has been proved by too many memorable
examples that the greatest men have committed prodigious errors in thus
desiring to make predictions about even the least distant future.
And yet, without leaving the present, without reasoning about this
future, which seems forever condemned to escape our reason, we should be
unable to act at all. Experience shows that the _framing of a future, in
some indeterminate time_, may, when it is done in a certain way, be very
effective, and have very few inconveniences; this happens when the
anticipations of the future take the form of those myths, which enclose
with them all the strongest inclinations of a people, of a party, or of
a class, inclinations which recur to the mind with the insistence of
instincts in all the circumstances of life; and which give an aspect of
complete reality to the hopes of immediate action by which, more easily
than by any other method, men can reform their desires, passions, and
mental activity. We know, moreover, that these social myths in no way
prevent a man profiting by the observations which he makes in the course
of his life, and form no obstacle to the pursuit of his normal
occupations.
The truth of this may be shown by numerous examples.
The first Christians expected the return of Christ and the total ruin of
the pagan world, with the inauguration of the kingdom of the saints, at
the end of the first generation. The catastrophe did not come to pass,
but Christian thought profited so greatly from the apocalyptic myth that
certain contemporary scholars maintain that the whole preaching of
Christ referred solely to this one point. The hopes which Luther and
Calvin had formed of the religious exaltation of Europe were by no means
realised; these fathers of the Reformation very soon seemed men of a
past era; for present-day Protestants they belong rather to the Middle
Ages than to modern times, and the problems which troubled them most
occupy very little place in contemporary Protestantism. Must we for that
reason deny the immense result which came from their dreams of Christian
renovation? It must be admitted that the real developments of the
Revolution did not in any way resemble the enchanting pictures which
created the enthusiasm of its first adepts; but without those pictures,
would the Revolution have been victorious? Many Utopias were mixed up
with the Revolutionary myth, because it had been formed by a society
passionately fond of imaginative literature, full of confidence in the
"science," and very little acquainted with the economic history of the
past. These Utopias came to nothing; but it may be asked whether the
Revolution was not a much more profound transformation than those
dreamed of by the people who in the eighteenth century had invented
social Utopias. In our own times Mazzini pursued what the wiseacres of
his time called a mad chimera; but it can no longer be denied that,
without Mazzini, Italy would never have become a great power, and that
he did more for Italian unity than Cavour and all the politicians of his
school.
A knowledge of what the myths contain in the way of details which will
actually form part of the history of the future is then of small
importance; they are not astrological almanacs; it is even possible that
nothing which they contain will ever come to pass--as was the case with
the catastrophe expected by the first Christians. In our own daily life,
are we not familiar with the fact that what actually happens is very
different from our preconceived notion of it? And that does not prevent
us from continuing to make resolutions. Psychologists say that there is
heterogeneity between the ends in view and the ends actually realised:
the slightest experience of life reveals this law to us, which Spencer
transferred into nature, to extract therefrom his theory of the
multiplication of effects.
The myth must be judged as a means of acting on the present; any attempt
to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is devoid
of sense. _It is the myth in its entirety which is alone important:_ its
parts are only of interest in so far as they bring out the main idea. No
useful purpose is served, therefore, in arguing about the incidents
which may occur in the course of a social war, and about the decisive
conflicts which may give victory to the proletariat; even supposing the
revolutionaries to have been wholly and entirely deluded in setting up
this imaginary picture of the general strike, this picture may yet have
been, in the course of the preparation for the revolution, a great
element of strength, if it has embraced all the aspirations of
socialism, and if it has given to the whole body of revolutionary
thought a precision and a rigidity which no other method of thought
could have given.
To estimate, then, the significance of the idea of the general strike,
all the methods of discussion which are current among politicians,
sociologists, or people with pretensions to political science, must be
abandoned. Everything which its opponents endeavour to establish may be
conceded to them, without reducing in any way the value of the theory
which they think they have refuted. The question whether the general
strike is a partial reality, or only a product of popular imagination,
is of little importance. All that it is necessary to know is, whether
the general strike contains everything that the socialist doctrine
expects of the revolutionary proletariat.
To solve this question, we are no longer compelled to argue learnedly
about the future; we are not obliged to indulge in lofty reflections
about philosophy, history, or economics; we are not on the plane of
theories, and we can remain on the level of observable facts. We have to
question men who take a very active part in the real revolutionary
movement amidst the proletariat, men who do not aspire to climb into the
middle class and whose mind is not dominated by corporative prejudices.
These men may be deceived about an infinite number of political,
economical, or moral questions; but their testimony is decisive,
sovereign, and irrefutable when it is a question of knowing what are the
ideas which most powerfully move them and their comrades, which most
appeal to them as being identical with their socialistic conceptions,
and thanks to which their reason, their hopes, and their way of looking
at particular facts seem to make but one indivisible unity.
Thanks to these men, we know that the general strike is indeed what I
have said: the _myth_ in which socialism is wholly comprised, i.e., a
body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments which
correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by
socialism against modern society. Strikes have engendered in the
proletariat the noblest, deepest, and most moving sentiments that they
possess; the general strike groups them all in a co-ordinated picture,
and, by bringing them together, gives to each one of them its maximum of
intensity; appealing to their painful memories of particular conflicts,
it colours with an intense life all the details of the composition
presented to consciousness. We thus obtain that intuition of socialism
which language cannot give us with perfect clearness--and we obtain it
as a whole, perceived instantaneously.
2. The Growth of a Legend[267]
Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange rumors began
to circulate. They spread from place to place, they were reproduced by
the press, and they soon permeated the whole of Germany. It was said
that the Belgian people, instigated by the clergy, had intervened
perfidiously in the hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated
detachments; had indicated to the enemy the positions occupied by the
troops; that women, old men, and even children had been guilty of
horrible atrocities upon wounded and defenseless German soldiers,
tearing out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose, or ears; that the
priests from their pulpits had exhorted the people to commit these
crimes, promising them as a reward the Kingdom of Heaven, and had even
taken the lead in this barbarity.
Public credulity accepted these stories. The highest powers in the state
welcomed them without hesitation and indorsed them with their authority.
Even the Emperor echoed them, and, taking them for a text, advanced, in
the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the President of
the United States, the most terrible accusations against the Belgian
people and clergy.
At the time of the invasion of Belgium, it was the German army which, as
we have seen, constituted the chief breeding ground for legendary
stories. These were disseminated with great rapidity among the troops;
the _liaison_ officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the
victualling posts assured the diffusion of them.
These stories were not delayed in reaching Germany. As in most wars, it
was the returning soldiery who were responsible for the transmission of
them.
From the first day of hostilities in enemy territory the fighting troops
were in constant touch with those behind them. Through the frontier
towns there was a continual passage of convoys, returning empty or
loaded with prisoners and wounded. These last, together with the
escorting soldiers, were immediately surrounded and pressed for news by
an eager crowd. It is they who brought the first stories.
As a silent listener, seated on the boulevards, I have noticed
how curious people, men and women, question the wounded who are
resting there, suggesting to them answers to inquiries on the
subject of the battles, the losses, and the atrocities of war;
how they interpret silence as an affirmative answer and how
they wish to have confirmed things always more terrible. I am
convinced that shortly afterward they will repeat the
conversation, adding that they have heard it as the personal
experience of somebody present at the affair.
In their oral form stories of this kind are not definite, their
substance is malleable; they can be modified according to the taste of
the narrator; they transform themselves; they evolve. To sum up, not
only do the soldiers, returned from the field of battle, insure the
transmission of the stories, they also elaborate them.
The military post links the campaigning army directly with Germany. The
soldiers write home, and in their letters they tell of their adventures,
which people are eager to hear, and naturally they include the rumors
current among the troops. Thus a soldier of the Landsturm writes to his
wife that he has seen at Liége a dozen priests condemned to death
because they put a price on the heads of German soldiers; he had also
seen there civilians who had cut off the breasts of a Red Cross nurse.
Again, a Hessian schoolmaster tells in a letter how his detachment had
been treacherously attacked at Ch----by the inhabitants, with the curé
at their head.
Submitted to the test of the German military inquiry these stories are
shown to be without foundation. Received from the front and narrated by
a soldier who professes to have been an eyewitness, they are
nevertheless clothed in the public view with special authority.
Welcomed without control by the press, the stories recounted in letters
from the front appear, however, in the eyes of the readers of a paper
clothed with a new authority--that which attaches to printed matter.
They lose in the columns of a paper their individual and particular
character. Those who send them have, as the _Kölnische Volkszeitung_
notes, usually effaced all personal allusions. The statements thus
obtain a substance and an objectivity of which they would otherwise be
devoid. Mixed with authentic news, they are accepted by the public
without mistrust. Is not their appearance in the paper a guaranty of
accuracy?
Besides imposing itself on public credulity, the printed story fixes
itself in the mind. It takes a lasting form. It has entered permanently
into consciousness, and more, it has become a source of reference.
All these pseudo-historical publications are, however, only one aspect
of the abundant literary production of the Great War. All the varieties
of popular literature, the romances of cloak and sword, the stories of
adventure, the collections of news and anecdotes, the theater itself,
are in turn devoted to military events. The great public loves lively
activity, extraordinary situations, and sensational circumstances
calculated to strike the imagination and cause a shiver of horror.
So one finds in this literature of the lower classes the principal
legendary episodes of which we have studied the origin and followed the
development; accommodated to a fiction, woven into a web of intrigue,
they have undergone new transformations; they have lost every indication
of their source; they are transposed in the new circumstances imagined
for them; they have usually been dissociated from the circumstances
which individualize them and fix their time and place. The thematic
motives from which they spring nevertheless remain clearly recognizable.
The legendary stories have thus attained the last stage of their
elaboration and completed their diffusion. They have penetrated not only
into the purlieus of the cities but into distant countries; into
centers of education as among the popular classes. Wounded convalescents
and soldiers on leave at home for a time have told them to the city man
and to the peasant. Both have found them in letters from the front; both
have read them in journals and books, both have listened to the warnings
of the government and to the imperial word. The schoolteacher has mixed
these episodes with his teaching; he has nourished with them infantile
imaginations. Scholars have read the text of them in their classbooks
and have enacted them in the games inspired by the war; they have told
them at home in the family circle, giving them the authority attached to
the master's word.
Everywhere these accounts have been the subject of ardent commentaries;
in the village, in the councils held upon doorsteps, and in the barrooms
of inns; in the big cafés, the trams, and the public promenades of
towns. Everywhere they have become an ordinary topic of conversation,
everywhere they have met with ready credence. The term _franc tireur_
has become familiar. Its use is general and its acceptance widespread.
A collection of prayers for the use of the Catholic German soldiers
includes this incredible text: "Shame and malediction on him who wishes
to act like the Belgian and French, perfidious and cruel, who have even
attacked defenseless wounded."
3. Ritual, Myth, and Dogma[268]
The antique religions had for the most part no creed; they consisted
entirely of institutions and practices. No doubt, men will not
habitually follow certain practices without attaching a meaning to them;
but as a rule we find that while the practice was rigorously fixed, the
meaning attached to it was extremely vague, and the same rite was
explained by different people in different ways, without any question of
orthodoxy or heterodoxy arising in consequence. In ancient Greece, for
example, certain things were done at a temple, and people were agreed
that it would be impious not to do them. But if you had asked why they
were done, you would probably have had several mutually contradictory
explanations from different persons, and no one would have thought it a
matter of the least religious importance which of these you chose to
adopt. Indeed, the explanations offered would not have been of a kind to
stir any strong feeling; for in most cases they would have been merely
different stories as to the circumstances under which the rite first
came to be established, by the command or by the direct example of the
god. The rite, in short, was connected not with a dogma but with a myth.
In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that
is, the sacred lore of priests and people, so far as it does not consist
of mere rules for the performance of religious acts, assumes the form of
stories about the gods; and these stories afford the only explanation
that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of
ritual. But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of
ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on
the worshippers. The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and
ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served
to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper; but he
was often offered a choice of several accounts of the same thing, and,
provided that he fulfilled the ritual with accuracy, no one cared what
he believed about its origin. Belief in a certain series of myths was
neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that,
by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour
of the gods. What was obligatory or meritorious was the exact
performance of certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition.
This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent
place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of
ancient faiths. So far as myths consist of explanations of ritual, their
value is altogether secondary, and it may be affirmed with confidence
that in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not
the ritual from the myth; for the ritual was fixed and the myth was
variable, the ritual was obligatory and faith in the myth was at the
discretion of the worshipper. The conclusion is, that in the study of
ancient religions we must begin, not with myth, but with ritual and
traditional usage.
Nor can it be fairly set against this conclusion, that there are certain
myths which are not mere explanations of traditional practices, but
exhibit the beginnings of larger religious speculation, or of an
attempt to systematise and reduce to order the motley variety of local
worships and beliefs. For in this case the secondary character of the
myths is still more clearly marked. They are either products of early
philosophy, reflecting on the nature of the universe; or they are
political in scope, being designed to supply a thread of union between
the various worships of groups, originally distinct, which have been
united into one social or political organism; or, finally, they are due
to the free play of epic imagination. But philosophy, politics, and
poetry are something more, or something less, than religion pure and
simple.
There can be no doubt that, in the later stages of ancient religions,
mythology acquired an increased importance. In the struggle of
heathenism with scepticism on the one hand and Christianity on the
other, the supporters of the old traditional religions were driven to
search for ideas of a modern cast, which they could represent as the
true inner meaning of the traditional rites. To this end they laid hold
of the old myths, and applied to them an allegorical system of
interpretation. Myth interpreted by the aid of allegory became the
favourite means of infusing a new significance into ancient forms. But
the theories thus developed are the falsest of false guides as to the
original meaning of the old religions.
Religion in primitive times was not a system of belief with practical
applications; it was a body of fixed traditional practices, to which
every member of society conformed as a matter of course. Men would not
be men if they agreed to do certain things without having a reason for
their action; but in ancient religion the reason was not first
formulated as a doctrine and then expressed in practice, but conversely,
practice preceded doctrinal theory. Men form general rules of conduct
before they begin to express general principles in words; political
institutions are older than political theories, and in like manner
religious institutions are older than religious theories. This analogy
is not arbitrarily chosen, for in fact the parallelism in ancient
society between religious and political institutions is complete. In
each sphere great importance was attached to form and precedent, but the
explanation why the precedent was followed consisted merely of a legend
as to its first establishment. That the precedent, once established, was
authoritative did not appear to require any proof. The rules of society
were based on precedent, and the continued existence of the society was
sufficient reason why a precedent once set should continue to be
followed.
I say that the oldest religious and political institutions present a
close analogy. It would be more correct to say that they were parts of
one whole of social custom. Religion was a part of the organised social
life into which a man was born, and to which he conformed through life
in the same unconscious way in which men fall into any habitual practice
of the society in which they live. Men took the gods and their worship
for granted, just as they took the other usages of the state for
granted, and if they reasoned or speculated about them, they did so on
the presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed things, behind
which their reasonings must not go, and which no reasoning could be
allowed to overturn. To us moderns religion is above all a matter of
individual conviction and reasoned belief, but to the ancients it was a
part of the citizen's public life, reduced to fixed forms, which he was
not bound to understand and was not at liberty to criticise or to
neglect. Religious non-conformity was an offence against the state; for
if sacred tradition was tampered with the bases of society were
undermined, and the favour of the gods was forfeited. But so long as the
prescribed forms were duly observed, a man was recognised as truly
pious, and no one asked how his religion was rooted in his heart or
affected his reason. Like political duty, of which indeed it was a part,
religion was entirely comprehended in the observance of certain fixed
rules of outward conduct.
From the antique point of view, indeed, the question what the gods are
in themselves is not a religious but a speculative one; what is
requisite to religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on
which the deity acts and on which he expects his worshippers to frame
their conduct--what in II Kings 17:26 is called the "manner" or rather
the "customary law" (_mishpat_) of the god of the land. This is true
even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets speak of the knowledge
of God, they always mean a practical knowledge of the laws and
principles of His government in Israel, and a summary expression for
religion as a whole is "the knowledge and fear of Jehovah," i.e., the
knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined with a reverent
obedience.
The traditional usages of religion had grown up gradually in the course
of many centuries, and reflected habits of thought characteristic of
very diverse stages of man's intellectual and moral development. No one
conception of the nature of the gods could possibly afford the clue to
all parts of that motley complex of rites and ceremonies which the later
paganism had received by inheritance, from a series of ancestors in
every state of culture from pure savagery upwards. The record of the
religious thought of mankind, as it is embodied in religious
institutions, resembles the geological record of the history of the
earth's crust; the new and the old are preserved side by side or rather
layer upon layer. The classification of ritual formations in their
proper sequence is the first step towards their explanation, and that
explanation itself must take the form, not of a speculative theory, but
of a rational life-history.
4. The Nature of Public Opinion[269]
"_Vox populi_ may be _vox Dei_, but very little attention shows that
there has never been any agreement as to what _vox_ means or as to what
_populus_ means." In spite of endless discussions about democracy, this
remark of Sir Henry Maine is still so far true that no other excuse is
needed for studying the conceptions which lie at the very base of
popular government. In doing so one must distinguish the form from the
substance; for the world of politics is full of forms in which the
spirit is dead--mere shams, but sometimes not recognized as such even by
the chief actors, sometimes deceiving the outside multitude, sometimes
no longer misleading anyone. Shams, are, indeed, not without value.
Political shams have done for English government what fictions have done
for English law. They have promoted growth without revolutionary change.
But while shams play an important part in political evolution, they are
snares for the political philosopher who fails to see through them, who
ascribes to the forms a meaning that they do not really possess. Popular
government may in substance exist under the form of a monarchy, and an
autocratic despotism can be set up without destroying the forms of
democracy. If we look through the forms to observe the vital forces
behind them; if we fix our attention, not on the procedure, the extent
of the franchise, the machinery of elections, and such outward things,
but on the essence of the matter, popular government, in one important
aspect at least, may be said to consist of the control of political
affairs by public opinion.
If two highwaymen meet a belated traveler on a dark road and propose to
relieve him of his watch and wallet, it would clearly be an abuse of
terms to say that in the assemblage on that lonely spot there was a
public opinion in favor of a redistribution of property. Nor would it
make any difference, for this purpose, whether there were two highwaymen
and one traveler, or one robber and two victims. The absurdity in such a
case of speaking about the duty of the minority to submit to the verdict
of public opinion is self-evident; and it is not due to the fact that
the three men on the road form part of a larger community, or that they
are subject to the jurisdiction of a common government. The expression
would be quite as inappropriate if no organized state existed; on a
savage island, for example, where two cannibals were greedy to devour
one shipwrecked mariner. In short, the three men in each of the cases
supposed do not form a community that is capable of a public opinion on
the question involved. May this not be equally true under an organized
government, among people that are for certain purposes a community?
To take an illustration nearer home. At the time of the Reconstruction
that followed the American Civil War the question whether public opinion
in a southern state was or was not in favor of extending the suffrage to
the Negroes could not in any true sense be said to depend on which of
the two races had a slight numerical majority. One opinion may have been
public or general in regard to the whites, the other public or general
in regard to the Negroes, but neither opinion was public or general in
regard to the whole population. Examples of this kind could be
multiplied indefinitely. They can be found in Ireland, in
Austria-Hungary, in Turkey, in India, in any country where the cleavage
of race, religion, or politics is sharp and deep enough to cut the
community into fragments too far apart for an accord on fundamental
matters.
In all these instances an opinion cannot be public or general with
respect to both elements in the state. For that purpose they are as
distinct as if they belonged to different commonwealths. You may count
heads, you may break heads, you may impose uniformity by force; but on
the matters at stake the two elements do not form a community capable
of an opinion that is in any rational sense public or general. If we are
to employ the term in a sense that is significant for government, that
imports any obligation moral or political on the part of the minority,
surely enough has been said to show that the opinion of a mere majority
does not by itself always suffice. Something more is clearly needed.
But if the opinion of a majority does not of itself constitute a public
opinion, it is equally certain that unanimity is not required. Unanimous
opinion is of no importance for our purpose, because it is perfectly
sure to be effective in any form of government, however despotic, and it
is, therefore, of no particular interest in the study of democracy.
Legislation by unanimity was actually tried in the kingdom of Poland,
where each member of the assembly had the right of _liberum veto_ on any
measure, and it prevented progress, fostered violence, and spelled
failure. The Polish system has been lauded as the acme of liberty, but
in fact it was directly opposed to the fundamental principle of modern
popular government; that is, the conduct of public affairs in accord
with a public opinion which is general, although not universal, and
which implies under certain conditions a duty on the part of the
minority to submit.
A body of men are politically capable of a public opinion only so far as
they are agreed upon the ends and aims of government and upon the
principles by which those ends shall be attained. They must be united,
also, about the means whereby the action of the government is to be
determined, in a conviction, for example, that the views of a
majority--or it may be some other portion of their numbers--ought to
prevail, and a political community as a whole is capable of public
opinion only when this is true of the great bulk of the citizens. Such
an assumption was implied, though usually not expressed in all theories
of the social compact; and, indeed, it is involved in all theories that
base rightful government upon the consent of the governed, for the
consent required is not a universal approval by all the people of every
measure enacted, but a consensus in regard to the legitimate character
of the ruling authority and its right to decide the questions that
arise.
One more remark must be made before quitting the subject of the relation
of public opinion to the opinion of the majority. The late Gabriel
Tarde, with his habitual keen insight, insisted on the importance of the
intensity of belief as a factor in the spread of opinions. There is a
common impression that public opinion depends upon and is measured by
the mere number of persons to be found on each side of a question; but
this is far from accurate. If 49 per cent of a community feel very
strongly on one side, and 51 per cent are lukewarmly on the other, the
former opinion has the greater public force behind it and is certain to
prevail ultimately, if it does not at once.
One man who holds his belief tenaciously counts for as much as several
men who hold theirs weakly, because he is more aggressive and thereby
compels and overawes others into apparent agreement with him, or at
least into silence and inaction. This is, perhaps, especially true of
moral questions. It is not improbable that a large part of the accepted
moral code is maintained by the earnestness of a minority, while more
than half of the community is indifferent or unconvinced. In short,
public opinion is not strictly the opinion of the numerical majority,
and no form of its expression measures the mere majority, for individual
views are always to some extent weighed as well as counted.
Without attempting to consider how the weight attaching to intensity and
intelligence can be accurately gauged, it is enough for our purpose to
point out that when we speak of the opinion of a majority we mean, not
the numerical, but the effective, majority.
5. Public Opinion and the Mores[270]
We are interested in public opinion, I suppose, because public opinion
is, in the long run, the sovereign power in the state. There is not now,
and probably there never has been a government that did not rest on
public opinion. The best evidence of this is the fact that all
governments have invariably sought either to _control_ or, at least, to
inspire and direct it.
The Kaiser had his "official" and his "semiofficial" organs. The
communists in Russia have taken possession of the schools. It is in the
schoolroom that the bolshevists propose to complete the revolution.
Hume, the English historian, who was also the greatest of English
philosophers, said:
As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors
have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore on
opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends
to the most despotic and the most military governments as well
as to the most free and popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the
emperor of Rome, might drive their helpless subjects, like
brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclinations, but he
must at least have led his mameluks, or praetorian bands, like
men, by their opinions.
Hume's statement is too epigrammatic to be true. Governments can and do
maintain themselves by force rather than consent. They have done this
even when they were greatly inferior in numbers. Witness Cortez in
Mexico, the Belgians in the Congo, and the recent English conquest, with
two hundred aeroplanes, of the Mad Mullah in Somaliland. Civilized
people must be governed in subtle ways. Unpopular governments maintain
themselves sometimes by taking possession of the means of communication,
by polluting the sources of information, by suppressing newspapers, by
propaganda.
Caspar Schmidt, "Max Stirner," the most consistent of anarchists, said
the last tyranny is the tyranny of the idea. The last tyrant, in other
words, is the propagandist, the individual who gives a "slant" to the
facts in order to promote his own conception of the welfare of the
community.
We use the word public opinion in a wider and in a narrower sense. The
public, the popular mind, is controlled by something more than opinion,
or public opinion, in the narrower sense.
We are living today under the subtle tyranny of the advertising man. He
tells us what to wear, and makes us wear it. He tells us what to eat,
and makes us eat it. We do not resent this tyranny. We do not feel it.
We do what we are told; but we do it with the feeling that we are
following our own wild impulses. This does not mean that, under the
inspiration of advertisements, we act irrationally. We have reasons; but
they are sometimes after-thoughts. Or they are supplied by the
advertiser.
Advertising is one form of social control. It is one way of capturing
the public mind. But advertising does not get its results by provoking
discussion. That is one respect in which it differs from public opinion.
Fashion is one of the subtler forms of control to which we all bow. We
all follow the fashions at a greater or less distance. Some of us fall
behind the fashions, but no one ever gets ahead of them. No one ever can
get ahead of the fashions because we never know what they are, until
they arrive.
Fashion, in the broad sense, comes under the head of what Herbert
Spencer called ceremonial government. Ceremony, he said, is the most
primitive and the most effective of all forms of government. There is no
rebellion against fashion; no rebellion against social ritual. At least
these rebellions never make martyrs or heroes. Dr. Mary Walker, who wore
men's clothes, was a heroine no doubt, but never achieved martyrdom.
So far as ceremonial government finds expression in a code it is
etiquette, social ritual, form. We do not realize how powerful an
influence social form is. There are breaches of etiquette that any
ordinary human being would rather die than be guilty of.
We often speak of social usages and the dictates of fashion as if they
were imposed by public opinion. This is not true, if we are to use
public opinion in the narrower sense. Social usages are not matters of
opinion; they are matters of custom. They are fixed in habits. They are
not matters of reflection, but of impulse. They are parts of ourselves.
There is an intimate relation between public opinion and social customs
or the mores, as Sumner calls them. But there is this difference: Public
opinion fluctuates. It wobbles. Social customs, the mores, change
slowly. Prohibition was long in coming; but the custom of drinking has
not disappeared. The mores change slowly; but they change _in one
direction_ and they change _steadily_. Mores change as fashion does; as
language does; by a law of their own.
Fashions must change. It is in their nature to do so. As the existing
thing loses its novelty it is no longer stimulating; no longer
interesting. It is no longer the fashion.
What fashion demands is not something new; but something different. It
demands the old in a new and stimulating form. Every woman who is up
with the fashion wants to be in the fashion; but she desires to be
something different from everyone else, especially from her best friend.
Language changes in response to the same motives and according to the
same law. We are constantly seeking new metaphors for old ideas;
constantly using old metaphors to express new ideas. Consider the way
that slang grows!
There is a fashion or a trend in public opinion. A. V. Dicey, in his
volume on _Law and Opinion in England_, points out that there has been a
constant tendency, for a hundred years, in English legislation, from
individualism to collectivism. This does not mean that public opinion
has changed constantly in one direction. There have been, as he says,
"cross currents." Public opinion has veered, but the changes in the
mores have been steadily in one direction.
There has been a change in the fundamental attitudes. This change has
taken place in response to changed conditions. Change in mores is
something like change in the nest-building habits of certain birds, the
swallows, for example. This change, like the change in bird habits,
takes place without discussion--without clear consciousness--in response
to changed conditions. Furthermore, changes in the mores, like changes
in fashion, are only slightly under our control. They are not the result
of agitation; rather they are responsible for the agitation.
There are profound changes going on in our social organization today.
Industrial democracy, or something corresponding to it, is coming. It is
coming not entirely because of social agitation. It is coming, perhaps,
in spite of agitation. It is a social change, but it is part of the
whole cosmic process.
There is an intimate relation between the mores and opinion. The mores
represent the attitudes in which we agree. Opinion represents these
attitudes in so far as we do not agree. We do not have opinions except
over matters which are in dispute.
So far as we are controlled by habit and custom, by the mores, we do not
have opinions. I find out what my opinion is only after I discover that
I disagree with my fellow. What I call my opinions are for the most part
invented to justify my agreements or disagreements with prevailing
public opinion. The mores do not need justification. As soon as I seek
justification for them they have become matters of opinion.
Public opinion is just the opinion of individuals plus their
differences. There is no public opinion where there is no substantial
agreement. But there is no public opinion where there is not
disagreement. Public opinion presupposes public discussion. When a
matter has reached the stage of public discussion it becomes a matter of
public opinion.
Before war was declared in France there was anxiety, speculation. After
mobilization began, discussion ceased. The national ideal was exalted.
The individual ceased to exist. Men ceased even to think. They simply
obeyed. This is what happened in all the belligerent countries except
America. It did not quite happen here. Under such circumstances public
opinion ceases to exist. This is quite as true in a democracy as it is
in an autocracy.
The difference between an autocracy and a democracy is not that in one
the will of the people finds expression and in the other it does not. It
is simply that in a democracy a larger number of the citizens
participate in the discussions which give rise to public opinion. At
least they are supposed to do so. In a democracy everyone belongs, or is
supposed to belong, to one great public. In an autocracy there are
perhaps many little publics.
What rôle do the schools and colleges play in the formation of public
opinion? The schools transmit the tradition. They standardize our
national prejudices and transmit them. They do this necessarily.
A liberal or college education tends to modify and qualify all our
inherited political, religious, and social prejudices. It does so by
bringing into the field of discussion matters that would not otherwise
get into the public consciousness. In this way a college education puts
us in a way to control our prejudices instead of being controlled by
them. This is the purpose of a liberal education.
The emancipation which history, literature, and a wider experience with
life give us permits us to enter sympathetically into the lives and
interests of others; it widens that area over which public opinion
rather than force exercises control.
It makes it possible to extend the area of political control. It means
the extension of democratic participation in the common life. The
universities, by their special studies in the field of social science,
are seeking to accumulate and bring into the view of public opinion a
larger body of attested fact upon which the public may base its opinion.
It is probably not the business of the universities to agitate reforms
nor to attempt directly to influence public opinion in regard to current
issues. To do this is to relax its critical attitude, lessen its
authority in matters of fact, and jeopardize its hard-won academic
freedom. When a university takes over the function of a political party
or a church it ceases to perform its function as a university.
6. News and Social Control[271]
Everywhere today men are conscious that somehow they must deal with
questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared
them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand
them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly
they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are
wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the
manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise. For in an
exact sense the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in
journalism.
I do not agree with those who think that the sole cause is corruption.
There is plenty of corruption, to be sure, moneyed control, caste
pressure, financial and social bribery, ribbons, dinner parties, clubs,
petty politics. The speculators in Russian rubles who lied on the Paris
Bourse about the capture of Petrograd are not the only example of their
species. And yet corruption does not explain the condition of modern
journalism.
Mr. Franklin P. Adams wrote recently:
Now there is much pettiness--and almost incredible stupidity
and ignorance--in the so-called free press; but it is the
pettiness, etc., common to the so-called human race--a
pettiness found in musicians, steamfitters, landlords, poets,
and waiters. And when Miss Lowell [who had made the usual
aristocratic complaint] speaks of the incurable desire in all
American newspapers to make fun of everything in season and
out, we quarrel again. There is an incurable desire in American
newspapers to take things much more seriously than they
deserve. Does Miss Lowell read the ponderous news from
Washington? Does she read the society news? Does she, we
wonder, read the newspapers?
Mr. Adams does read them, and when he writes that the newspapers take
things much more seriously than they deserve, he has, as the mayor's
wife remarked to the queen, said a mouthful. Since the war, especially,
editors have come to believe that their highest duty is not to report
but to instruct, not to print news but to save civilization, not to
publish what Benjamin Harris calls "the Circumstances of Publique
Affairs, both abroad and at home," but to keep the nation on the
straight and narrow path. Like the kings of England, they have elected
themselves Defenders of the Faith. "For five years," says Mr. Cobb of
the _New York World_, "there has been no free play of public opinion in
the world. Confronted by the inexorable necessities of war, governments
conscripted public opinion. They goose-stepped it. They taught it to
stand at attention and salute. It sometimes seems that, after the
armistice was signed, millions of Americans must have taken a vow that
they would never again do any thinking for themselves. They were willing
to die for their country but not willing to think for it." That
minority, which is proudly prepared to think for it, and not only
prepared but cocksure that it alone knows how to think for it, has
adopted the theory that the public should know what is good for it.
The work of reporters has thus become confused with the work of
preachers, revivalists, prophets, and agitators. The current theory of
American newspaperdom is that an abstraction like the truth and a
grace-like fairness must be sacrificed whenever anyone thinks the
necessities of civilization require the sacrifice. To Archbishop
Whately's dictum that it matters greatly whether you put truth in the
first place or the second, the candid expounder of modern journalism
would reply that he put truth second to what he conceived to be the
national interest. Judged simply by their product, men like Mr. Ochs or
Viscount Northcliffe believe that their respective nations will perish
and civilization decay unless their idea of what is patriotic is
permitted to temper the curiosity of their readers.
They believe that edification is more important than veracity. They
believe it profoundly, violently, relentlessly. They preen themselves
upon it. To patriotism, as they define it from day to day, all other
considerations must yield. That is their pride. And yet what is this but
one more among myriad examples of the doctrine that the end justifies
the means? A more insidiously misleading rule of conduct was, I believe,
never devised among men. It was a plausible rule as long as men believed
that an omniscient and benevolent Providence taught them what end to
seek. But now that men are critically aware of how their purposes are
special to their age, their locality, their interests, and their limited
knowledge, it is blazing arrogance to sacrifice hard-won standards of
credibility to some special purpose. It is nothing but the doctrine that
I want what I want when I want it. Its monuments are the Inquisition
and the invasion of Belgium. It is the reason given for every act of
unreason, the law invoked whenever lawlessness justifies itself. At
bottom it is nothing but the anarchical nature of man imperiously
hacking its way through.
Just as the most poisonous form of disorder is the mob incited from high
places, the most immoral act the immorality of a government, so the most
destructive form of untruth is sophistry and propaganda by those whose
profession it is to report the news. The news columns are common
carriers. When those who control them arrogate to themselves the right
to determine by their own consciences what shall be reported and for
what purpose, democracy is unworkable. Public opinion is blockaded. For
when a people can no longer confidently repair "to the best fountains
for their information," then anyone's guess and anyone's rumor, each
man's hope and each man's whim, become the basis of government. All that
the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true if there is no
steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and
aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster,
must come to any people which is denied an assured access to the facts.
No one can manage anything on pap. Neither can a people.
Few episodes in recent history are more poignant than that of the
British prime minister, sitting at the breakfast table with that
morning's paper before him, protesting that he cannot do the sensible
thing in regard to Russia because a powerful newspaper proprietor has
drugged the public. That incident is a photograph of the supreme danger
which confronts popular government. All other dangers are contingent
upon it, for the news is the chief source of the opinion by which
government now proceeds. So long as there is interposed between the
ordinary citizen and the facts a news organization determining by
entirely private and unexamined standards, no matter how lofty, what he
shall know, and hence what he shall believe, no one will be able to say
that the substance of democratic government is secure. The theory of our
constitution, says Mr. Justice Holmes, is that truth is the only ground
upon which men's wishes safely can be carried out. In so far as those
who purvey the news make of their own beliefs a higher law than truth,
they are attacking the foundations of our constitutional system. There
can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the
devil.
In a few generations it will seem ludicrous to historians that a people
professing government by the will of the people should have made no
serious effort to guarantee the news without which a governing opinion
cannot exist. "Is it possible," they will ask, "that at the beginning of
the twentieth century nations calling themselves democracies were
content to act on what happened to drift across their doorsteps; that
apart from a few sporadic exposures and outcries they made no plans to
bring these common carriers under social control, that they provided no
genuine training schools for the men upon whose sagacity they were
dependent; above all, that their political scientists went on year after
year writing and lecturing about government without producing one
single, significant study of the process of public opinion?" And then
they will recall the centuries in which the church enjoyed immunity from
criticism, and perhaps they will insist that the news structure of
secular society was not seriously examined for analogous reasons.
7. The Psychology of Propaganda[272]
Paper bullets, according to Mr. Creel, won the war. But they have
forever disturbed our peace of mind. The war is long since over, all but
saying so; but our consciousness of the immanence of propaganda bids
fair to be permanent. It has been discovered by individuals, by
associations, and by governments that a certain kind of advertising can
be used to mold public opinion and control democratic majorities. As
long as public opinion rules the destinies of human affairs, there will
be no end to an instrument that controls it.
The tremendous forces of propaganda are now common property. They are
available for the unscrupulous and the destructive as well as for the
constructive and the moral. This gives us a new interest in its
technique, namely, to inquire if anywhere there is an opportunity for
regulative and protective interference with its indiscriminate
exploitation.
Until recently the most famous historical use of the term propaganda
made it synonymous with foreign missions. It was Pope Gregory XV who
almost exactly three centuries ago, after many years of preparation,
finally founded the great Propaganda College to care for the interests
of the church in non-Catholic countries. With its centuries of
experience this is probably the most efficient organization for
propaganda in the world. Probably most apologetics is propaganda. No
religion and no age has been entirely free from it.
One of the classical psychoanalytic case histories is that of Breuer's
water glass and the puppy dog. A young lady patient was utterly unable
to drink water from a glass. It was a deep embarrassment. Even under the
stress of great thirst in warm weather and the earnest effort to break
up a foolish phobia, the glass might be taken and raised, but it
couldn't be drunk from. Psychoanalysis disclosed the following facts.
Underlying this particular phobia was an intense antipathy to dogs. The
young lady's roommate had been discovered giving a dog a drink from the
common drinking-glass. The antipathy to the dog was simply transferred
to the glass.
The case is a commonplace in the annals of hysteria. But let us examine
the mechanism. Suppose that I had wanted to keep that drinking-glass for
my own personal use. A perfectly simple and effective expedient it would
have been in the absence of other good motives to capitalize that
antipathy by allowing her to see the dog drink out of the glass. The
case would then have been a perfect case of propaganda. All propaganda
is capitalized prejudice. It rests on some emotional premise which is
the motive force of the process. The emotional transfer is worked by
some associative process like similarity, use, or the causal
relationship. The derived sympathetic antipathy represents the goal.
The great self-preservative, social, and racial instincts will always
furnish the main reservoir of motive forces at the service of
propaganda. They will have the widest and the most insistent appeal.
Only second to these in importance are the peculiar racial tendencies
and historical traditions that represent the genius of a civilization.
The racial-superiority consciousness of the Germans operated as a
never-ending motive for their "Aushalten" propaganda. We Americans have
a notable cultural premise in our consideration for the underdog. Few
things outside our consciousness of family will arouse us as surely and
as universally as this modification of the protective instinct.
In addition to the group tendencies that arise from a community of
experience, individual propaganda may use every phase of individual
experience, individual bias and prejudice. I am told that first-class
salesmen not infrequently keep family histories of their customers,
producing a favorable attitude toward their merchandise by way of an
apparent personal interest in the children. Apparently any group of
ideas with an emotional valence may become the basis for propaganda.
There are three limitations to the processes of propaganda. The first is
emotional recoil, the second is the exhaustion of available motive
force, the third is the development of internal resistance or
negativism.
The most familiar of the three is emotional recoil. We know only too
well what will happen if we tell a boy all the things that he likes to
do are "bad," while all the things that he dislikes are "good." Up to a
certain point the emotional value of bad and good respectively will be
transferred to the acts as we intend. But each transfer has an emotional
recoil on the concepts good and bad. At the end a most surprising thing
may happen. The moral values may get reversed in the boy's mind. Bad may
come to represent the sum total of the satisfactory and desirable, while
good may represent the sum total of the unsatisfactory and the
undesirable. To the pained adult such a consequence is utterly
inexplicable, only because he fails to realize that all mental products
are developments. There is always a kind of reciprocity in emotional
transfer. The value of the modified factor recoils to the modifying
factor.
The whole mechanism of the transfer and of the recoil may best be
expressed in terms of the conditioned reflex of Pavlov. The flow of
saliva in a dog is a natural consequence to the sight and smell of food.
If concurrently with the smelling of food the dog is pinched, the pinch
ceases to be a matter for resentment. By a process of emotional
transfer, on being pinched the dog may show the lively delight that
belongs to the sight and smell of food. Even the salivary secretions may
be started by the transfigured pinch. It was the great operating
physiologist Sherrington who exclaimed after a visit to Pavlov that at
last he understood the psychology of the martyrs. But it is possible so
to load the smell of food with pain and damage that its positive value
breaks down. Eating-values may succumb to the pain values instead of the
pain to the eating-values. This is the prototype of the concept bad when
it gets overloaded with the emotional value of the intrinsically
desirable. The law of recoil seems to be a mental analogue of the
physical law that action and reaction are equal and in opposite
directions.
The second limitation to propaganda occurs when the reciprocal effects
of transfer exhaust the available motive forces of a mind. Propaganda
certainly weakens the forces that are appealed to too often. We are
living just now in a world of weakened appeals. Many of the great human
motives were exploited to the limit during the war. It is harder to
raise money now than it was, harder to find motives for giving that are
still effective. One of my former colleagues once surprised and shocked
me by replying to some perfectly good propaganda in which I tried to
tell him that certain action was in the line of duty, to the effect that
he was tired of being told that something was his duty, and that he was
resolved not to do another thing because it was his duty. There seems to
be evidence that in some quarters, at least, patriotism, philanthropy,
and civic duty have been exploited as far as the present systems will
carry. It is possible to exhaust our floating capital of social-motive
forces. When that occurs we face a kind of moral bankruptcy.
A final stage of resistance is reached when propaganda develops a
negativistic defensive reaction. To develop such negativisms is always
the aim of counterpropaganda. It calls the opposed propaganda,
prejudiced, half-truth, or, as the Germans did, "Lies, All Lies." There
is evidence that the moral collapse of Germany under the fire of our
paper bullets came with the conviction that they had been systematically
deceived by their own propagandists.
There are two great social dangers in propaganda. Great power in
irresponsible hands is always a social menace. We have some legal
safeguards against careless use of high-powered physical explosives.
Against the greater danger of destructive propaganda there seems to be
little protection without imperiling the sacred principles of free
speech.
The second social danger is the tendency to overload and level down
every great human incentive in the pursuit of relatively trivial ends.
To become _blasé_ is the inevitable penalty of emotional exploitation. I
believe there may well be grave penalties in store for the reckless
commercialized exploitation of human emotions in the cheap
sentimentalism of our moving pictures. But there are even graver
penalties in store for the generation that permits itself to grow
morally _blasé_. One of our social desiderata, it seems to me, is the
protection of the great springs of human action from destructive
exploitation for selfish, commercial, or other trivial ends.
The slow constructive process of building moral credits by systematic
education lacks the picturesqueness of propaganda. It also lacks its
quick results. But just as the short cut of hypnotism proved a dangerous
substitute for moral training, so I believe we shall find that not only
is moral education a necessary precondition for effective propaganda,
but that in the end it is a safer and incomparably more reliable social
instrument.
C. INSTITUTIONS
1. Institutions and the Mores[273]
Institutions and laws are produced out of mores. An institution consists
of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) and a structure. The
structure is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of
functionaries set to co-operate in prescribed ways at a certain
conjuncture. The structure holds the concept and furnishes
instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and action in
a way to serve the interests of men in society. Institutions are either
crescive or enacted. They are crescive when they take shape in the
mores, growing by the instinctive efforts by which the mores are
produced. Then the efforts, through long use, become definite and
specific.
Property, marriage, and religion are the most primary institutions. They
began in folkways. They became customs. They developed into mores by the
addition of some philosophy of welfare, however crude. Then they were
made more definite and specific as regards the rules, the prescribed
acts, and the apparatus to be employed. This produced a structure and
the institution was complete. Enacted institutions are products of
rational invention and intention. They belong to high civilization.
Banks are institutions of credit founded on usages which can be traced
back to barbarism. There came a time when, guided by rational reflection
on experience, men systematized and regulated the usages which had
become current, and thus created positive institutions of credit,
defined by law and sanctioned by the force of the state. Pure enacted
institutions which are strong and prosperous are hard to find. It is too
difficult to invent and create an institution, for a purpose, out of
nothing. The electoral college in the Constitution of the United States
is an example. In that case the democratic mores of the people have
seized upon the device and made of it something quite different from
what the inventors planned. All institutions have come out of mores,
although the rational element in them is sometimes so large that their
origin in the mores is not to be ascertained except by a historical
investigation (legislatures, courts, juries, joint-stock companies, the
stock exchange). Property, marriage, and religion are still almost
entirely in the mores. Amongst nature men any man might capture and hold
a woman at any time, if he could. He did it by superior force which was
its own supreme justification. But his act brought his group and her
group into war, and produced harm to his comrades. They forbade capture,
or set conditions for it. Beyond the limits, the individual might still
use force, but his comrades were no longer responsible. The glory to
him, if he succeeded, might be all the greater. His control over his
captive was absolute. Within the prescribed conditions, "capture" became
technical and institutional, and rights grew out of it. The woman had a
status which was defined by custom, and was very different from the
status of a real captive. Marriage was the institutional relation, in
the society and under its sanction, of a woman to a man, where the woman
had been obtained in the prescribed way. She was then a "wife." What her
rights and duties were was defined by the mores, as they are today in
all civilized society.
Acts of legislation come out of the mores. In low civilization all
societal regulations are customs and taboos, the origin of which is
unknown. Positive laws are impossible until the stage of verification,
reflection, and criticism is reached. Until that point is reached there
is only customary law, or common law. The customary law may be codified
and systematized with respect to some philosophical principles, and yet
remain customary. The codes of Manu and Justinian are examples.
Enactment is not possible until reverence for ancestors has been so much
weakened that it is no longer thought wrong to interfere with
traditional customs by positive enactment. Even then there is
reluctance to make enactments, and there is a stage of transition during
which traditional customs are extended by interpretation to cover new
cases and to prevent evils. Legislation, however, has to seek standing
ground on the existing mores, and it soon becomes apparent that
legislation, to be strong, must be consistent with the mores. Things
which have been in the mores are put under police regulation and later
under positive law. It is sometimes said that "public opinion" must
ratify and approve police regulations, but this statement rests on an
imperfect analysis. The regulations must conform to the mores, so that
the public will not think them too lax or too strict. The mores of our
urban and rural populations are not the same; consequently legislation
about intoxicants which is made by one of these sections of the
population does not succeed when applied to the other. The regulation of
drinking-places, gambling-places, and disorderly houses has passed
through the above-mentioned stages. It is always a question of
expediency whether to leave a subject under the mores, or to make a
police regulation for it, or to put it into the criminal law. Betting,
horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are cases
now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment and out
of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is made
there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic self-adaptation of
custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided with sanctions.
Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are formed, and it is
believed that specific devices can be framed by which to realize such
purposes in the society. Then also prohibitions take the place of
taboos, and punishments are planned to be deterrent rather than
revengeful. The mores of different societies, or of different ages, are
characterized by greater of less readiness and confidence in regard to
the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal purposes.
2. Common Law and Statute Law[274]
It probably would have surprised the early Englishman if he had been
told that either he or anybody else did not know the law--still more
that there was ever any need for any parliament or assembly to tell him
what it was. They all knew the law, and they all knew that they knew
the law, and the law was a thing that they knew as naturally as they
knew fishing and hunting. They had grown up into it. It never occurred
to them as an outside thing.
So it has been found that where you take children, modern children, at
least boys who are sons of educated parents, and put them in large
masses by themselves, they will, without apparently any reading, rapidly
invent a notion of law; that is, they will invent a certain set of
customs which are the same thing to them as law, and which indeed are
the same as law. They have tried in Johns Hopkins University experiments
among children, to leave them entirely alone, without any instruction,
and it is quite singular how soon customs will grow up, and it is also
quite singular, and a thing that always surprises the socialist and
communist, that about the earliest concept at which they will arrive is
that of private property! They will soon get a notion that one child
owns a stick, or toy, or seat, and the others must respect that
property. This I merely use as an illustration to show how simple the
notion of law was among our ancestors in England fifteen hundred years
ago, and how it had grown up with them, of course, from many centuries,
but in much the same way that the notion of custom or law grows up among
children.
The "law" of the free Angelo-Saxon people was regarded as a thing
existing by itself, like the sunlight, or at least as existing like a
universally accepted custom observed by everyone. It was five hundred
years before the notion crept into the minds, even of the members of the
British Parliaments, that they could make a new law. What they supposed
they did, and what they were understood by the people to do, was merely
to declare the law, as it was then and as it had been from time
immemorial; the notion always being--and the farther back you go and the
more simple the people are, the more they have that notion--that their
free laws and customs were something which came from the beginning of
the world, which they always held, which were immutable, no more to be
changed than the forces of nature; and that no Parliament, under the
free Angelo-Saxon government or later under the Norman kings who tried
to make them unfree, no king could ever make a law but could only
declare what the law was. The Latin phrase for that distinction is _jus
dare_, and _jus dicere_. In early England, in Anglo-Saxon times, the
Parliament never did anything but tell what the law was; and, as I have
said, not only what it was then but what it had been, as they supposed,
for thousands of years before. The notion of a legislature to make new
laws is an entirely modern conception of Parliament.
The notion of law as a statute, a thing passed by a legislature, a thing
enacted, made new by representative assembly, is perfectly modern, and
yet it has so thoroughly taken possession of our minds, and particularly
of the American mind (owing to the forty-eight legislatures that we have
at work, besides the national Congress, every year, and to the fact that
they try to do a great deal to deserve their pay in the way of enacting
laws), that statutes have assumed in our minds the main bulk of the
concept of law as we formulate it to ourselves.
Statutes with us are recent, legislatures making statutes are recent
everywhere; legislatures themselves are fairly recent; that is, they
date only from the end of the Dark Ages, at least in Anglo-Saxon
countries. Representative government itself is supposed, by most
scholars, to be the one invention that is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon
people.
I am quite sure that all the American people when they think of law in
the sense I am now speaking of, even when they are not thinking
necessarily of statute law, do mean, nevertheless, a law which is
enforced by somebody with power, somebody with a big stick. They mean a
law, an ordinance, an order or dictate addressed to them by a sovereign,
or at least by a power of some sort, and they mean an ordinance which if
they break they are going to suffer for, either in person or in
property. In other words, they have a notion of law as a written command
addressed by the sovereign to the subject, or at least by one of the
departments of government to the citizen. Now that, I must caution you,
is in the first place rather a modern notion of law, quite modern in
England; it is really Roman, and was not law as it was understood by our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors. He did not think of law as a thing written,
addressed to him by the king. Neither did he necessarily think of it as
a thing which had any definite punishment attached or any code attached,
any "sanction," as we call it, or thing which enforces the law; a
penalty or fine or imprisonment. There are just as good "sanctions" for
law outside of the sanctions that our people usually think of as there
are inside of them, and often very much better; for example, the
sanction of a strong custom. Take any example you like; there are many
states where marriage between blacks and whites is not made unlawful but
where practically it is made tremendously unlawful by the force of
public opinion [mores]. Take the case of debts of honor, so called,
debts of gambling; they are paid far more universally than ordinary
commercial debts, even by the same people; but there is no law enforcing
them--there is no sanction for the collection of gambling debts. And
take any custom that grows up. We know how strong our customs in college
are. Take the mere custom of a club table; no one dares or ventures to
supplant the members at that table. That kind of sanction is just as
good a law as a law made by statute and imposing five or ten dollars'
penalty or a week's imprisonment. And judges or juries recognize those
things as laws, just as much as they do statute laws; when all other
laws are lacking, our courts will ask what is the "custom of the trade."
These be laws, and are often better enforced than the statute law; the
rules of the New York Stock Exchange are better enforced than the laws
of the state legislature. Now all our early Anglo-Saxon law was law of
that kind. For the law was but universal custom, and that custom had no
sanction; but for breach of the custom anybody could make personal
attack, or combine with his friends to make attack, on the person who
committed the breach, and then, when the matter was taken up by the
members of both tribes, and finally by the witenagemot as a judicial
court, the question was, what the law was. That was the working of the
old Anglo-Saxon law, and it was a great many centuries before the notion
of law changed from that in their minds. And this "unwritten law"
perdures in the minds of many of the people today.
3. Religion and Social Control[275]
As a social fact religion is, indeed, not something apart from mores or
social standards; it is these as regarded as "sacred." Strictly speaking
there is no such thing as an unethical religion. We judge some religions
as unethical because the mores of which they approve are not our mores,
that is, the standards of higher civilization. All religions are
ethical, however, in the sense that without exception they support
customary morality, and they do this necessarily because the values
which the religious attitude of mind universalizes and makes absolute
are social values. Social obligations thus early become religious
obligations. In this way religion becomes the chief means of conserving
customs and habits which have been found to be safe by society or which
are believed to conduce to social welfare.
As the guardian of the mores, religion develops prohibitions and
"taboos" of actions of which the group, or its dominant class,
disapproves. It may lend itself, therefore, to maintaining a given
social order longer than that order is necessary, or even after it has
become a stumbling-block to social progress. For the same reason it may
be exploited by a dominant class in their own interest. It is in this
way that religion has often become an impediment to progress and an
instrument of class oppression. This socially conservative side of
religion is so well known and so much emphasized by certain writers that
it scarcely needs even to be mentioned. It is the chief source of the
abuses of religion, and in the modern world is probably the chief cause
of the deep enmity which religion has raised up for itself in a certain
class of thinkers who see nothing but its negative and conservative
side.
There is no necessity, however, for the social control which religion
exerts being of a non-progressive kind. The values which religion
universalizes and makes absolute may as easily be values which are
progressive as those which are static. In a static society which
emphasizes prohibitions and the conservation of mere habit or custom,
religion will also, of course, emphasize the same things; but in a
progressive society religion can as easily attach its sanctions to
social ideals and standards beyond the existing order as to those
actually realized. Such an idealistic religion will, however, have the
disadvantages of appealing mainly to the progressive and idealizing
tendencies of human nature rather than to its conservative and
reactionary tendencies. Necessarily, also, it will appeal more strongly
to those enlightened classes in society who are leading in social
progress rather than to those who are content with things as they are.
This is doubtless the main reason why progressive religions are
exceedingly rare in human history, taking it as a whole, and have
appeared only in the later stages of cultural evolution.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons for believing that the inevitable
evolution of religion has been in a humanitarian direction, and that
there is an intimate connection between social idealism and the higher
religions. There are two reasons for this generalization. The social
life becomes more complex with each succeeding stage of upward
development, and groups have therefore more need of commanding the
unfailing devotion of their members if they are to maintain their unity
and efficiency as groups. More and more, accordingly, religion in its
evolution has come to emphasize the self-effacing devotion of the
individual to the group in times of crisis. And as the complexity of
social life increases, the crises increase in which the group must ask
the unfailing service and devotion of its members. Thus religion in its
upward evolution becomes increasingly social, until it finally comes to
throw supreme emphasis upon the life of service and of self-sacrifice
for the sake of the group; and as the group expands from the clan and
the tribe to humanity, religion necessarily becomes less tribal and more
humanitarian until the supreme object of the devotion which it
inculcates must ultimately be the whole of humanity.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Social Control and Human Nature
Society, so far as it can be distinguished from the individuals that
compose it, performs for those individuals the function of a mind. Like
mind in the individual man, society is a control organization. Evidence
of mind in the animal is the fact that it can make adjustments to new
conditions. The evidence that any group of persons constitutes a society
is the fact that the group is able to act with some consistency, and as
a unit. It follows that the literature on social control, in the widest
extension of that term, embraces most that has been written and all that
is fundamental on the subject of society. In chapter ii, "Human Nature,"
and the later chapters on "Interaction" and its various forms,
"Conflict," "Accommodation," and "Assimilation," points of view and
literature which might properly be included in an adequate study of
social control have already been discussed. The present chapter is
concerned mainly with ceremonial, public opinion, and law, three of the
specific forms in which social control has universally found
expression.
Sociology is indebted to Edward Alsworth Ross for a general term broad
enough to include all the special forms in which the solidarity of the
group manifests itself. It was his brilliant essay on the subject
published in 1906 that popularized the term social control. The
materials for such a general, summary statement had already been brought
together by Sumner and published in 1906 in his _Folkways_. This volume,
in spite of its unsystematic character, must still be regarded as the
most subtle analysis and suggestive statement about human nature and
social relations that has yet been written in English.
A more systematic and thoroughgoing review of the facts and literature,
however, is Hobhouse's _Morals in Evolution_. After Hobhouse the next
most important writer is Westermarck, whose work, _The Origin and
Development of the Moral Ideas_, published in 1906, was a pioneer in
this field.
2. Elementary Forms of Social Control
Literature upon elementary forms of social control includes materials
upon ceremonies, taboo, myth, prestige, and leadership. These are
characterized as elementary because they have arisen spontaneously
everywhere out of original nature. The conventionalized form in which we
now find them has arisen in the course of their repetition and
transmission from one generation to another and from one culture group
to another. The fact that they have been transmitted over long periods
of time and wide areas of territory is an indication that they are the
natural vehicle for the expression of fundamental human impulses.
It is quite as true of leadership, as it is of myth and prestige, that
it springs directly out of an emotional setting. The natural leaders are
never elected and leadership is, in general, a matter that cannot be
rationally controlled.
The materials upon ceremony, social ritual, and fashion are large in
comparison with the attempts at a systematic study of the phenomena.
Herbert Spencer's chapter on "Ceremonial Government," while it
interprets social forms from the point of view of the individual rather
than of the group, is still the only adequate survey of the materials in
this special field.
Ethnology and folklore have accumulated an enormous amount of
information in regard to primitive custom which has yet to be
interpreted from the point of view of more recent studies of human
nature and social life. The most important collections are Frazer's
_Golden Bough_ and his _Totemism and Exogamy_. Crawley's _The Mystic
Rose_ is no such monument of scholarship and learning as Frazer's
_Golden Bough_, but it is suggestive and interesting.
Prestige and taboo represent fundamental human traits whose importance
is by no means confined to the life of primitive man where, almost
exclusively hitherto, they have been observed and studied.
The existing literature on leadership, while serving to emphasize the
importance of the leader as a factor in social organization and social
process, is based on too superficial an analysis to be of permanent
scientific value. Adequate methods for the investigation of leadership
have not been formulated. In general it is clear, however, that
leadership must be studied in connection with the social group in which
it arises and that every type of group will have a different type of
leader. The prophet, the agitator, and the political boss are types of
leaders in regard to whom there already are materials available for
study and interpretation. A study of leadership should include, however,
in addition to the more general types, like the poet, the priest, the
tribal chieftain, and the leader of the gang, consideration of
leadership in the more specific areas of social life, the precinct
captain, the promoter, the banker, the pillar of the church, the
football coach, and the society leader.
3. Public Opinion and Social Control
Public opinion, "the fourth estate" as Burke called it, has been
appreciated, but not studied. The old Roman adage, _Vox populi, vox
dei_, is a recognition of public opinion as the ultimate seat of
authority. Public opinion has been elsewhere identified with the
"general will." Rousseau conceived the general will to be best expressed
through a plebiscite at which a question was presented without the
possibilities of the divisive effects of public discussion. The natural
impulses of human nature would make for more uniform and beneficial
decisions than the calculated self-interest that would follow discussion
and deliberation. English liberals like John Stuart Mill, of the latter
half of the nineteenth century, looked upon freedom of discussion and
free speech as the breath of life of a free society, and that tradition
has come down to us a little shaken by recent experience, but
substantially intact.
The development of advertising and of propaganda, particularly during
and since the world-war, has aroused a great many misgivings,
nevertheless, in regard to the traditional freedom of the press. Walter
Lippmann's thoughtful little volume, _Liberty and the News_, has stated
the whole problem in a new form and has directed attention to an
entirely new field for observation and study.
De Tocqueville, in his study of the early frontier, _Democracy in
America_, and James Bryce, in his _American Commonwealth_, have
contributed a good deal of shrewd observation to our knowledge of the
rôle of political opinion in the United States. The important attempts
in English to define public opinion as a social phenomenon and study it
objectively are A. V. Dicey's _Law and Opinion in England in the
Nineteenth Century_ and A. Lawrence Lowell's _Public Opinion and Popular
Government_. Although Dicey's investigation is confined to England and
to the nineteenth century, his analysis of the facts throws new light on
the nature of public opinion in general. The intimate relation between
the press and parliamentary government in England is revealed in an
interesting historical monograph by Michael Macdonagh, _The Reporters'
Gallery_.
4. Legal Institutions and Law
Public law came into existence in an effort of the community to deal
with conflict. In achieving this result, however, courts of law
invariably have sought to make their decisions first in accordance with
precedent, and second in accordance with common sense. The latter
insured that the law would be administered equitably; the former that
interpretations of the law would be consistent. Post says:
Jural feelings are principally feelings of indignation as when
an injustice is experienced by an individual, a feeling of fear
as when an individual is affected by an inclination to do
wrong, a feeling of penitence as when the individual has
committed a wrong. With the feeling of indignation is joined a
desire for vengeance, with the feeling of penitence a desire of
atonement, the former tending towards an act of vengeance and
the latter towards an act of expiation. The jural judgments of
individuals are not complete judgments; they are based upon an
undefined sense of right and wrong. In the consciousness of the
individual there exists no standard of right and wrong under
which every single circumstance giving rise to the formation of
a jural judgment can be subsumed. A simple instinct impels the
individual to declare an action right or wrong.[276]
If these motives are the materials with which the administration of
justice has to deal, the legal motive which has invariably controlled
the courts is something quite different. The courts in the
administration of law have invariably sought, above all else, to achieve
consistency. It is an ancient maxim of English law that "it is better
that the law should be certain than that the law should be just."[277]
The conception implicit in the law is that the rule laid down in one
case must apply in every similar case. In the effort to preserve this
consistency in a constantly increasing variety of cases the courts have
been driven to the formulation of principles, increasingly general and
abstract, to multiply distinctions and subtleties, and to operate with
legal fictions. All this effort to make the law a rationally consistent
system was itself inconsistent with the conception that law, like
religion, had a natural history and was involved, like language, in a
process of growth and decay. It is only in recent years that comparative
jurisprudence has found its way into the law schools. Although there is
a vast literature upon the subject of the history of the law, Maine's
_Ancient Law_, published in 1861, is still the classic work in this
field in English.
More recently there has sprung up a school of "legal ethnology." The
purpose of these studies is not to trace the historical development, of
the law, but to seek in the forms in use in isolated and primitive
societies materials which will reveal, in their more elementary
expressions, motives and practices that are common to legal institutions
of every people. In the Preface to a recent volume of _Select Readings
on the Origin and Development of Legal Institutions_, the editors
venture the statement, in justification of the materials from sociology
that these volumes include, that "contrary, perhaps, to legal tradition,
the law itself is only a social phenomenon and not to be understood in
detachment from human uses, necessities and forces from which it
arises." Justice Holmes's characterization of law as "a great
anthropological document" seems to support that position.
Law in its origin is related to religion. The first public law was that
which enforced the religious taboos, and the ceremonial purifications
and expiations were intended to protect the community from the divine
punishment for any involuntary disrespect or neglect of the rites due
the gods which were the first crimes to be punished by the community as
a whole, and for the reason that failure to punish or expiate them would
bring disaster upon the community as a whole.
Maine says that the earliest conceptions of law or a rule of life among
the Greeks are contained in the Homeric words _Themis_ and _Themistes_.
When a king decided a dispute by a sentence, the judgment was
assumed to be the result of direct inspiration. The divine
agent, suggesting judicial awards to kings or to gods, the
greatest of kings, was _Themis_. The peculiarity of the
conception is brought out by the use of the plural.
_Themistes_, Themises, the plural of Themis, are the awards
themselves, divinely dictated to the judge. Kings are spoken of
as if they had a store of "Themistes" ready to hand for use;
but it must be distinctly understood that they are not laws,
but judgments. "Zeus, or the human king on earth," says Mr.
Grote, in his _History of Greece_, "is not a law-maker, but a
judge." He is provided with Themistes, but, consistently with
the belief in their emanation from above, they cannot be
supposed to be connected by any thread of principle; they are
separate, isolated judgments.[278]
It is only in recent times, with the gradual separation of the function
of the church and the state, that legal institutions have acquired a
character wholly secular. Within the areas of social life that are
represented on the one hand by religion and on the other by law are
included all the sanctions and the processes by which society maintains
its authority and imposes its will upon its individual members.[279]
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. SOCIAL CONTROL AND HUMAN NATURE
(1) Maine, Henry S. _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_. New York,
1886.
(2) Kocourek, Albert, and Wigmore, John H., editors. _Evolution of Law_.
Select readings on the origin and development of legal institutions.
Vol. I, "Sources of Ancient and Primitive Law." Vol. II, "Primitive and
Ancient Legal Institutions." Vol. III, "Formative Influences of Legal
Development." Boston, 1915.
(3) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways_. A study of the sociological importance of
usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. Boston, 1906.
(4) Letourneau, Ch. _L'Évolution de la morale_. Paris, 1887.
(5) Westermarck, Edward. _The Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas_, 2 vols. London, 1906-8.
(6) Hobhouse, L. T. _Morals in Evolution_. New ed. A study in
comparative ethics. New York, 1915.
(7) Durkheim, Émile. _The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_. A
study in religious sociology. Translated from the French by J. W. Swain.
London, 1915.
(8) Novicow, J. _Conscience et volonté sociales_. Paris, 1897.
(9) Ross, Edward A. _Social Control_. A survey of the foundations of
order. New York, 1906.
(10) Bernard, Luther L. _The Transition to an Objective Standard of
Social Control_. Chicago, 1911.
II. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
A. _Leadership_
(1) Woods, Frederick A. _The Influence of Monarchs_. Steps in a new
science of history. New York, 1913.
(2) Smith, J. M. P. _The Prophet and His Problems_. New York, 1914.
(3) Walter, F. _Die Propheten in ihrem sozialen Beruf und das
Wirtschaftsleben ihrer Zeit_. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Sozialethik. Freiburg-in-Brisgau, 1900.
(4) Vierkandt, A. "Führende Individuen bei den Naturvölkern,"
_Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft_, XI (1908), 542-53, 623-39.
(5) Dixon, Roland B. "Some Aspects of the American Shaman," _The Journal
of American Folk-Lore_, XXI (1908), 1-12.
(6) Kohler, Josef. _Philosophy of Law_. (Albrecht's translation.)
"Cultural Importance of Chieftainry." "Philosophy of Law Series," Vol.
XII. [Reprinted in the _Evolution of Law_, II, 96-103.]
(7) Fustel de Coulanges. _The Ancient City_, Book III, chap. ix, "The
Government of the City. The King," pp. 231-39. Boston, 1896.
(8) Leopold, Lewis. _Prestige_. A psychological study of social
estimates. London, 1913.
(9) Clayton, Joseph. _Leaders of the People_. Studies in democratic
history. London, 1910.
(10) Brent, Charles H. _Leadership_. New York, 1908.
(11) Rothschild, Alonzo. _Lincoln: Master of Men_. A study in character.
Boston, 1906.
(12) Mumford, Eben. _The Origins of Leadership_. Chicago, 1909.
(13) Ely, Richard T. _The World War and Leadership in a Democracy_. New
York, 1918.
(14) Terman, L. M. "A Preliminary Study of the Psychology and Pedagogy
of Leadership," _Pedagogical Seminary_, XI (1904), 413-51.
(15) Miller, Arthur H. _Leadership_. A study and discussion of the
qualities most to be desired in an officer. New York, 1920.
(16) Gowin, Enoch B. _The Executive and His Control of Men_. A study in
personal efficiency. New York, 1915.
(17) Cooley, Charles H. "Genius, Fame and the Comparison of Races,"
_Annals of the American Academy_, IX (1897), 317-58.
(18) Odin, Alfred. _Genèse des grands hommes, gens de lettres français
modernes_. Paris, 1895. [See Ward, Lester F., _Applied Sociology_, for a
statement in English of Odin's study.]
(19) Kostyleff, N. _Le Mécanisme cérébral de la pensée_. Paris, 1914.
[This is a study of the mechanism of the inspiration of poets and
writers of romance.]
(20) Chabaneix, Paul. _Physiologie cérébrale_. Le subconscient chez les
artistes, les savants, et les écrivains. Bordeaux, 1897-98.
B. _Ceremony, Rites, and Ritual_
(1) Spencer, Herbert. _The Principles of Sociology, Part IV_,
"Ceremonial Institutions." Vol. II, pp. 3-225. London, 1893.
(2) Tylor, Edward B. _Primitive Culture_. Researches into the
development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and
custom. Chap. xviii, "Rites and Ceremonies," pp. 362-442. New York,
1874.
(3) Frazer, J. G. _Totemism and Exogamy_. A treatise on certain early
forms of superstition and society. 4 vols. London, 1910.
(4) Freud, Sigmund. _Totem and Taboo_. Resemblances between the psychic
life of savages and neurotics. Authorized translation from the German by
A. A. Brill. New York, 1918.
(5) James, E. O. _Primitive Ritual and Belief_. An anthropological
essay. With an introduction by R. R. Marett. London, 1917.
(6) Brinton, Daniel G. _The Religious Sentiment: Its Source and Aim_. A
contribution to the science and philosophy of religion. Chap. vi, "The
Cult, Its Symbols and Rites," pp. 197-227. New York, 1876.
(7) Frazer, J. G. _Golden Bough_. A study in magic and religion. Part
VI, "The Scapegoat." 3d ed. London, 1913.
(8) Nassau, R. H. _Fetichism in West Africa_. Forty years' observation
of native customs and superstitions. New York, 1907.
(9) Hubert, H., and Mauss, M. "Essai sur la nature et la fonction de
sacrifice," _L'Année sociologique_, II (1897-98), 29-138.
(10) Farnell, L. R. _The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion_. New York,
1912.
(11) ----. _The Cults of the Greek States_. 5 vols. Oxford, 1896-1909.
(12) ----. "Religious and Social Aspects of the Cult of Ancestors and
Heroes," _Hibbert Journal_, VII (1909), 415-35.
(13) Harrison, Jane E. _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_.
Cambridge, 1903.
(14) De-Marchi, A. _Il Culto privato di Roma antica_. Milano, 1896.
(15) Oldenberg, H. _Die Religion des Veda_. Part III, "Der Cultus," pp.
302-523. Berlin, 1894.
C. _Taboo_
(1) Thomas, N. W. Article on "Taboo" in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_,
XXVI, 337-41.
(2) Frazer, J. G. _The Golden Bough_. A study in magic and religion.
Part II, "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul." London, 1911.
(3) Kohler, Josef. _Philosophy of Law_. "Taboo as a Primitive Substitute
for Law." "Philosophy of Law Series," Vol. XII. Boston, 1914. [Reprinted
in _Evolution of Law_, II, 120-21.]
(4) Crawley, A. E. "Sexual Taboo," _Journal of Anthropological
Institute_, XXIV (London, 1894), 116-25, 219-35, 430-45.
(5) Gray, W. "Some Notes on the Tannese," _Internationales Archiv für
Ethnographie_, VII (1894), 232-37.
(6) Waitz, Theodor, und Gerland, Georg. _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_,
VI, 343-63. 6 vols. Leipzig, 1862-77.
(7) Tuchmann, J. "La Fascination," _Mélusine_, II (1884-85), 169-175,
193-98, 241-50, 350-57, 368-76, 385-87, 409-17, 457-64, 517-24; III
(1886-87), 49-56, 105-9, 319-25, 412-14, 506-8.
(8) Durkheim, É. "La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," _L'Année
sociologique_, I (1896-97), 38-70.
(9) Crawley, A. E. "Taboos of Commensality," _Folk-Lore_, VI (1895),
130-44.
(10) Hubert, H., and Mauss, M. "Le Mana," _L'Année sociologique_, VII
(1902-3), 108-22.
(11) Codrington, R. H. _The Melanesians_. Studies in their anthropology
and folklore. "Mana," pp. 51-58, 90, 103, 115, 118-24, 191, 200, 307-8.
Oxford, 1891.
D. _Myths_
(1) Sorel, Georges. _Reflections on Violence_. Chap. iv, "The
Proletarian Strike," pp. 126-67. Translated from the French by T. E.
Hulme. New York, 1912.
(2) Smith, W. Robertson. _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_.
"Ritual, Myth and Dogma," pp. 16-24. New ed. London, 1907.
(3) Harrison, Jane E. _Themis_. A study of the social origins of Greek
religion. Cambridge, 1912.
(4) Clodd, Edward. _The Birth and Growth of Myth_. Humboldt Library of
Popular Science Literature. New York, 1888.
(5) Gennep, A. van. _La Formation des légendes_. Paris, 1910.
(6) Langenhove, Fernand van. _The Growth of a Legend_. A study based
upon the German accounts of _francs-tireurs_ and "atrocities" in
Belgium. With a preface by J. Mark Baldwin. New York, 1916.
(7) Case, S. J. _The Millennial Hope_. Chicago, 1918.
(8) Abraham, Karl. _Dreams and Myths_. Translated from the German by W.
A. White. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 15.
Washington, 1913.
(9) Pfister, Oskar. _The Psychoanalytic Method_. Translated from the
German by C. R. Payne. Pp. 410-15. New York, 1917.
(10) Jung, C. G. _Psychology of the Unconscious_. A study of the
transformations and symbolisms of the libido. A contribution to the
history of the evolution of thought. Authorized translation from the
German by Beatrice M. Hinkle. New York, 1916.
(11) Brinton, Daniel G. _The Religious Sentiment: Its Source and Aim_. A
contribution to the science and philosophy of religion. Chap. v, "The
Myth and the Mythical Cycles," pp. 153-96. New York, 1876.
(12) Rivers, W. H. R. "The Sociological Significance of Myth,"
_Folk-Lore_, XXIII (1912), 306-31.
(13) Rank, Otto. _The Myth of the Birth of the Hero_. A psychological
interpretation of mythology. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph
Series," No. 18. Translated from the German by Drs. F. Robbins and Smith
E. Jelliffe. Washington, 1914.
(14) Freud, Sigmund. "Der Dichter und das Phantasieren," _Sammlung
kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre_. 2d ed. Wien, 1909.
III. PUBLIC OPINION AND SOCIAL CONTROL
A. _Materials for the Study of Public Opinion_
(1) Lowell, A. Lawrence. _Public Opinion and Popular Government_. New
York, 1913.
(2) Tarde, Gabriel. _L'Opinion et la foule_. Paris, 1901.
(3) Le Bon, Gustave. _Les Opinions et les croyances; genèse-évolution_.
Paris, 1911. [Discusses the formation of public opinion, trends, etc.]
(4) Bauer, Wilhelm. _Die öffentliche Meinung und ihre geschichtlichen
Grundlagen_. Tübingen, 1914.
(5) Dicey, A. V. _Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public
Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century_. 2d ed. London, 1914.
(6) Shepard, W. J. "Public Opinion," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV
(1909), 32-60.
(7) Tocqueville, Alexius de. _The Republic of the United States of
America_. Book IV. "Influence of Democratic Opinion on Political
Society," pp. 306-55. 2 vols. in one. New York, 1858.
(8) Bryce, James. _The American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, Part IV, "Public
Opinion," pp. 239-64. Chicago, 1891.
(9) ----. _Modern Democracies_. 2 vols. New York, 1921.
(10) Lecky, W. E. H. _Democracy and Liberty_. New York, 1899.
(11) Godkin, Edwin L. _Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy_. Boston,
1898.
(12) Sageret, J. "L'opinion," _Revue philosophique_, LXXXVI (1918),
19-38.
(13) Bluntschli, Johann K. Article on "Public Opinion," _Lalor's
Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy and of the Political
History of the United States_. Vol. III, pp. 479-80.
(14) Lewis, George C. _An Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters
of Opinion_. London, 1849.
(15) Jephson, Henry. _The Platform_. Its rise and progress. 2 vols.
London, 1892.
(16) Junius. (Pseud.) _The Letters of Junius_. Woodfall's ed., revised
by John Wade. 2 vols. London, 1902.
(17) Woodbury, Margaret. _Public Opinion in Philadelphia, 1789-1801_.
"Smith College Studies in History." Vol. V. Northampton, Mass., 1920.
(18) Heaton, John L. _The Story of a Page_. Thirty years of public
service and public discussion in the editorial columns of _The New York
World_. New York, 1913.
(19) _Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers_. New York, 1906.
(20) Harrison, Shelby M. _Community Action through Surveys_. A paper
describing the main features of the social survey. Russell Sage
Foundation. New York, 1916.
(21) Millioud, Maurice. "La propagation des idées," _Revue
philosophique_, LXIX (1910), 580-600; LXX (1910), 168-91.
(22) Scott, Walter D. _The Theory of Advertising_. Boston, 1903.
B. _The Newspaper as an Organ of Public Opinion_
(1) Dana, Charles A. _The Art of Newspaper Making_. New York, 1895.
(2) Irwin, Will. "The American Newspaper," _Colliers_, XLVI and XLVII
(1911). [A series of fifteen articles beginning in the issue of January
21 and ending in the issue of July 29, 1911.]
(3) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control_. [In Press.]
New York, 1921.
(4) Stead, W. T. "Government by Journalism," _Contemporary Review_, XLIX
(1886), 653-74.
(5) Blowitz, Henri G. S. A. O. de. _Memoirs of M. de Blowitz_. New York,
1903.
(6) Cook, Edward. _Delane of the Times_. New York, 1916.
(7) Trent, William P. _Daniel Defoe: How to Know Him_. Indianapolis,
1916.
(8) Oberholtzer, E. P. _Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Staat und der
Zeitungspresse im Deutschen Reich_. Nebst einigen Umrissen für die
Wissenschaft der Journalistik. Berlin, 1895.
(9) Yarros, Victor S. "The Press and Public Opinion," _American Journal
of Sociology_, V (1899-1900), 372-82.
(10) Macdonagh, Michael. _The Reporters' Gallery_. London, 1913.
(11) Lippmann, Walter. _Liberty and the News_. New York, 1920.
(12) O'Brien, Frank M. _The Story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918_. With
an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell, editor of _The Sun_. New York,
1918.
(13) Hudson, Frederic. _Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to
1872_. New York, 1873.
(14) Bourne, H. R. Fox. _English Newspapers_. London, 1887.
(15) Andrews, Alexander. _The History of British Journalism_. 2 vols.
London, 1859.
(16) Lee, James Melvin. _A History of American Journalism_. Boston,
1917.
IV. LAW AND SOCIAL CONTROL
A. _The Sociological Conception of Law_
(1) Post, Albert H. "Ethnological Jurisprudence." Translated from the
German by Thomas J. McCormack. _Open Court_, XI (1897), 641-53, 718-32.
[Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, II, 10-36.]
(2) Vaccaro, M. A. _Les Bases sociologiques_. Du droit et de l'état.
Translated by J. Gaure. Paris, 1898.
(3) Duguit, Léon. _Law in the Modern State_. With introduction by Harold
Laski. Translated from the French by Frida and Harold Laski. New York,
1919. [The inherent nature of law is to be found in the social needs of
man.]
(4) Picard, Edmond. _Le Droit pur_. Secs. 140-54. Paris, 1908.
[Translated by John H. Wigmore, under the title "Factors of Legal
Evolution," in _Evolution of Law_, III, 163-81.]
(5) Laski, Harold J. _Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty_. New Haven,
1917.
(6) ----. _Authority in the Modern State_. New Haven, 1919.
(7) ----. _The Problem of Administrative Areas_. An essay in
reconstruction. Northampton, Mass., 1918.
B. _Ancient and Primitive Law_
(1) Maine, Henry S. _Ancient Law_. 14th ed. London, 1891.
(2) Fustel de Coulanges. _The Ancient City_. A study on the religion,
laws, and institutions of Greece and Rome. Boston, 1894.
(3) Kocourek, Albert, and Wigmore, J. H., editors. _Sources of Ancient
and Primitive Law_. "Evolution of Law Series." Vol. I. Boston, 1915.
(4) Steinmetz, S. R. _Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in
Afrika und Oceanien_. Berlin, 1903.
(5) Sarbah, John M. _Fanti Customary Law_. A brief introduction to the
principles of the native laws and customs of the Fanti and Akan
districts of the Gold Coast with a report of some cases thereon decided
in the law courts. London, 1904. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I,
326-82.]
(6) McGee, W. J. "The Seri Indians," _Seventeenth Annual Report of the
Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1895-96. Part I, pp. 269-95. [Reprinted
in _Evolution of Law_, I, 257-78.]
(7) Dugmore, H. H. _Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs_. Grahamstown,
South Africa, 1906. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I 292-325.]
(8) Spencer, Baldwin, and Gillen, F. J. _The Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_. London, 1904. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I, 213-326.]
(9) Seebohm, Frederic. _Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law_. Being an
essay supplemental to (1) "The English Village Community," (2) "The
Tribal System in Wales." London, 1903.
C. _The History and Growth of Law_
(1) Wigmore, John H. "Problems of the Law's Evolution," _Virginia Law
Review_, IV (1917), 247-72. [Reprinted, in part, in _Evolution of Law_,
III, 153-58.]
(2) Robertson, John M. _The Evolution of States_. An introduction to
English politics. New York, 1913.
(3) Jhering, Rudolph von. _The Struggle for Law_. Translated from the
German by John J. Lalor. 1st ed. Chicago, 1879. [Chap. i, reprinted in
_Evolution of Law_, III, 440-47.]
(4) Nardi-Greco, Carlo. _Sociologia giuridica_. Chap. viii, pp. 310-24.
Torino, 1907. [Translated by John H. Wigmore under the title "Causes for
the Variation of Jural Phenomena in General," in _Evolution of Law_,
III, 182-97.]
(5) Bryce, James. _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_. Oxford, 1901.
(6) ----. "Influence of National Character and Historical Environment on
the American Law." Annual address to the Bar Association, 1907. _Reports
of American Bar Association_, XXXI (1907), 444-59. [Abridged and
reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, III, 369-77.]
(7) Pollock, Frederick, and Maitland, Frederic W. _The History of
English Law before the Time of Edward I_. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1899.
(8) Jenks, Edward. _Law and Politics in the Middle Ages_. With a
synoptic table of sources. London, 1913.
(9) Holdsworth, W. S. _A History of English Law_. 3 vols. London,
1903-9.
(10) _The Modern Legal Philosophy Series_. Edited by a committee of the
Association of American Law Schools. 13 vols. Boston, 1911-.
(11) _Continental Legal History Series_. Published under the auspices of
the Association of American Law Schools. 11 vols. Boston, 1912-.
(12) _Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History._ Compiled and
edited by a committee of the Association of American Law Schools. 3
vols. Boston, 1907-9.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Social Interaction and Social Control
2. Social Control as the Central Fact and the Central Problem of
Sociology
3. Social Control, Collective Behavior, and Progress
4. Manipulation and Participation as Forms of Social Control
5. Social Control and Self-Control
6. Accommodation as Control
7. Elementary Forms of Social Control: Ceremony, Fashion, Prestige, and
Taboo, etc.
8. Traditional Forms of Control, as Folkways, Mores, Myths, Law,
Education, Religion, etc.
9. Rumors, News, Facts, etc., as Forms of Control
10. Case Studies of the Influence of Myths, Legends, "Vital Lies," etc.,
on Collective Behavior
11. The Newspaper as Controlling and as Controlled by Public Opinion
12. Gossip as Social Control
13. Social Control in the Primary Group in the Village Community as
Compared with Social Control in the Secondary Group in the City
14. An Analysis of Public Opinion in a Selected Community
15. The Politician and Public Opinion
16. The Social Survey as a Mechanism of Social Control
17. A Study of Common Law and Statute Law from the Standpoint of Mores
and Public Opinion
18. A Concrete Example of Social Change Analyzed in Terms of Mores, the
Trend, and Public Opinion, as Woman's Suffrage, Prohibition, the
Abolition of Slavery, Birth Control, etc.
19. The Life History of an Institution from the Standpoint of Its Origin
and Survival as an Agency of Control
20. Unwritten Law; a Case Study
21. Legal Fictions and Their Function in Legal Practice
22. The Sociology of Authority in the Social Group and in the State
23. Maine's Conception of Primitive Law
24. The Greek Conception of Themistes and Their Relation to Code of
Solon
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand by social control?
2. What do you mean by elementary social control? How would you
distinguish it from control exercised by public opinion and law?
3. How does social control in human society differ from that in animal
society?
4. What is the natural history of social control in the crowd and the
public?
5. What is the fundamental mechanism by which control is established in
the group?
6. How do you explain the process by which a crisis develops in a social
group? How is crisis related to control?
7. Under what conditions is a dictatorship a necessary form of control?
Why?
8. In what way does the crowd control its members?
9. Describe and analyze your behavior in a crowd. Were you conscious of
control by the group?
10. What is the mechanism of control in the public?
11. In what sense is ceremony a control?
12. How do music, rhythm, and art enter into social control?
13. Analyze the mechanism of the following forms of ceremonial control:
the salute, the visit, the decoration, forms of address, presents,
greetings. What other forms of ceremonial control occur to you?
14. What is the relation of fashions to ceremonial control?
15. What is the meaning to the individual of ceremony?
16. What are the values and limitations of ceremonial control?
17. What do you understand by "prestige" in interpreting control through
leadership?
18. In what sense is prestige an aspect of personality?
19. What relation, if any, is there between prestige and prejudice?
20. How do you explain the prestige of the white man in South East
Africa? Does the white man always have prestige among colored races?
21. What is the relation of taboo to contact? (See pp. 291-93.)
22. Why does taboo refer both to things "holy" and things "unclean"?
23. How does taboo function for social control?
24. Describe and analyze the mechanism of control through taboo in a
selected group.
25. What examples do you discover of American taboos?
26. What is the mechanism of control by the myth?
27. "Myths are projections of our hopes and of our fears." Explain with
reference to the Freudian wish.
28. How do you explain the growth of a legend? Make an analysis of the
origin and development of the legend.
29. Under what conditions does the press promote the growth of myths and
legends?
30. Does control by public opinion exist outside of democracies?
31. What is the relation of the majority and the minority to public
opinion?
32. What is the distinction made by Lowell between (a) an effective
majority, and (b) a numerical majority, with reference to public
opinion?
33. What is the relation of mores to public opinion?
34. How do you distinguish between public opinion, advertising, and
propaganda as means and forms of social control?
35. What is the relation of news to social control?
36. "The news columns are common carriers." Discuss the implications of
this statement.
37. How do you explain the psychology of propaganda?
38. What is the relation between institutions and the mores?
39. What is the nature of social control exerted by the institution?
40. What is the relation of mores to common law and statute law?
41. "Under the free Anglo-Saxon government, no king could ever make a
law, but could only declare what the law was." Discuss the significance
of this fact.
42. In what different ways does religion control the behavior of the
individual and of the group?
43. Is religion a conservative or a progressive factor in society?
FOOTNOTES:
[250] Chap. i, pp. 46-47.
[251] Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, _Old World Traits
Transplanted_, pp. 1-2. (New York, 1921.)
[252] Ernst Grosse, _The Beginnings of Art_, pp. 228-29. (New York,
1897.)
[253] See A. L. Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, pp.
12-13. (New York, 1913.)
[254] _The American Party System_, chap. viii. (New York, 1922.) [In
press.]
[255] "On the afternoon of July 13, Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke were
seated together in the Chancellor's Room at Berlin. They were depressed
and moody; for Prince Leopold's renunciation had been trumpeted in Paris
as a humiliation for Prussia. They were afraid, too, that King William's
conciliatory temper might lead him to make further concessions, and that
the careful preparations of Prussia for the inevitable war with France
might be wasted, and a unique opportunity lost. A telegram arrived. It
was from the king at Ems, and described his interview that morning with
the French ambassador. The king had met Benedetti's request for the
guarantee required by a firm but courteous refusal; and when the
ambassador had sought to renew the interview, he had sent a polite
message through his aide-de-camp informing him that the subject must be
considered closed. In conclusion, Bismarck was authorized to publish the
message if he saw fit. The Chancellor at once saw his opportunity. In
the royal despatch, though the main incidents were clear enough, there
was still a note of doubt, of hesitancy, which suggested a possibility
of further negotiation. The excision of a few lines would alter, not
indeed the general sense, but certainly the whole tone of the message.
Bismarck, turning to Moltke, asked him if he were ready for a sudden
risk of war; and on his answering in the affirmative, took a blue pencil
and drew it quickly through several parts of the telegram. Without the
alteration or addition of a single word, the message, instead of
appearing a mere 'fragment of a negotiation still pending,' was thus
made to appear decisive. In the actual temper of the French people there
was no doubt that it would not only appear decisive, but insulting, and
that its publication would mean war.
"On July 14 the publication of the 'Ems telegram' became known in Paris,
with the result that Bismarck had expected. The majority of the Cabinet,
hitherto in favour of peace, were swept away by the popular tide; and
Napoleon himself reluctantly yielded to the importunity of his ministers
and of the Empress, who saw in a successful war the best, if not the
only, chance of preserving the throne for her son. On the evening of the
same day, July 14, the declaration of war was signed."--W. Alison
Phillips, _Modern Europe, 1815-1899_, pp. 465-66. (London, 1903.)
[256] G. Tarde, _L'opinion et la foule._ (Paris, 1901.)
[257] L. T. Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution, A Study in Comparative
Ethics_, pp. 13-14. (New York, 1915.)
[258] E. D. Morel, _King Leopold's Rule in Africa_. (London, 1904.)
[259] L. T. Hobhouse, _op. cit._, p. 85.
[260] The whole process of evolution by which a moral order has been
established over ever wider areas of social life has been sketched in a
masterly manner by Hobhouse in his chapter, "Law and Justice," _op.
cit._, pp. 72-131.
[261] From Lieutenant Joseph S. Smith, _Over There and Back_, pp. 9-22.
(E. P. Dutton & Co., 1917.)
[262] From Herbert Spencer, _The Principles of Sociology_, II, 3-6.
(Williams & Norgate, 1893.)
[263] Adapted from Lewis Leopold, _Prestige_, pp. 16-62. (T. Fisher
Unwin, 1913.)
[264] Adapted from Maurice S. Evans, _Black and White in South East
Africa_, pp. 15-35. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.)
[265] From W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, pp.
152-447. (Adam and Charles Black, 1907.)
[266] From Georges Sorel, _Reflections on Violence_, pp. 133-37. (B. W.
Huebsch, 1912.)
[267] Adapted from Fernand van Langenhove, _The Growth of a Legend_, pp.
5-275. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916.)
[268] From W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 16-24.
(Adam and Charles Black, 1907.)
[269] Adapted from A. Lawrence Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular
Government_, pp. 3-14. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1913.)
[270] From Robert E. Park, _The Crowd and the Public_. (Unpublished
manuscript.)
[271] Adapted from Walter Lippmann, _Liberty and the News_, pp. 4-15.
(Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.)
[272] From Raymond Dodge, "The Psychology of Propaganda," _Religious
Education_, XV (1920), 241-52.
[273] From William G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 53-56. (Ginn & Co., 1906.)
[274] Adapted from Frederic J. Stimson, _Popular Law-Making_, pp. 2-16.
(Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912.)
[275] From Charles A. Ellwood, "Religion and Social Control," in the
_Scientific Monthly_, VII (1918), 339-41.
[276] Albert H. Post, _Evolution of Law: Select Readings on the Origin
and Development of Legal Institutions_, Vol. II, "Primitive and Ancient
Legal Institutions," complied by Albert Kocourek and John H. Wigmore;
translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack. Section 2,
"Ethnological Jurisprudence," p. 12. (Boston, 1915.)
[277] Quoted by James Bryce, "Influence of National Character and
Historical Environment on Development of Common Law," annual address to
the American Bar Association, 1907, _Reports of the American Bar
Association_, XXXI (1907), 447.
[278] Henry S. Maine, _Ancient Law_. Its connection with the early
history of society and its relation to modern ideas, pp. 4-5. 14th ed.
(London, 1891.)
[279] For the distinction between the cultural process and the political
process see _supra_, pp. 52-53.
CHAPTER XIII
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Collective Behavior Defined
A collection of individuals is not always, and by the mere fact of its
collectivity, a society. On the other hand, when people come together
anywhere, in the most casual way, on the street corner or at a railway
station, no matter how great the social distances between them, the mere
fact that they are aware of one another's presence sets up a lively
exchange of influences, and the behavior that ensues is both social and
collective. It is social, at the very least, in the sense that the train
of thought and action in each individual is influenced more or less by
the action of every other. It is collective in so far as each individual
acts under the influence of a mood or a state of mind in which each
shares, and in accordance with conventions which all quite unconsciously
accept, and which the presence of each enforces upon the others.
The amount of individual eccentricity or deviation from normal and
accepted modes of behavior which a community will endure without comment
and without protest will vary naturally enough with the character of the
community. A cosmopolitan community like New York City can and does
endure a great deal in the way of individual eccentricity that a smaller
city like Boston would not tolerate. In any case, and this is the point
of these observations, even in the most casual relations of life, people
do not behave in the presence of others as if they were living alone
like Robinson Crusoe, each on his individual island. The very fact of
their consciousness of each other tends to maintain and enforce a great
body of convention and usage which otherwise falls into abeyance and is
forgotten. Collective behavior, then, is the behavior of individuals
under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an
impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction.
2. Social Unrest and Collective Behavior
The most elementary form of collective behavior seems to be what is
ordinarily referred to as "social unrest." Unrest in the individual
becomes social when it is, or seems to be, transmitted from one
individual to another, but more particularly when it produces something
akin to the milling process in the herd, so that the manifestations of
discontent in A communicated to B, and from B reflected back to A,
produce the circular reaction described in the preceding chapter.
The significance of social unrest is that it represents at once a
breaking up of the established routine and a preparation for new
collective action. Social unrest is not of course a new phenomenon; it
is possibly true, however, that it is peculiarly characteristic, as has
been said, of modern life. The contrast between the conditions of modern
life and of primitive society suggests why this may be true.
The conception which we ought to form of primitive society, says Sumner,
is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the
group will be determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence
and the internal organization of each group will correspond (1) to the
size of the group, and (2) to the nature and intensity of the struggle
with its neighbors.
Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed
each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup
relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are,
the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the
internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are
produced to correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it,
hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within,
warlikeness without--all grow together, common products of the
same situation. These relations and sentiments constitute a
social philosophy. It is sanctified by connection with
religion. Men of an others-group are outsiders with whose
ancestors the ancestors of the we-group waged war. The ghosts
of the latter will see with pleasure their descendants keep up
the fight, and will help them. Virtue consists in killing,
plundering, and enslaving outsiders.[280]
The isolation, territorial and cultural, under which alone it is
possible to maintain an organization which corresponds to Sumner's
description, has disappeared within comparatively recent times from all
the more inhabitable portions of the earth. In place of it there has
come, and with increasing rapidity is coming, into existence a society
which includes within its limits the total population of the earth and
is so intimately bound together that the speculation of a grain merchant
in Chicago may increase the price of bread in Bombay, while the act of
an assassin in a provincial town in the Balkans has been sufficient to
plunge the world into a war which changed the political map of three
continents and cost the lives, in Europe alone, of 8,500,000 combatants.
The first effect of modern conditions of life has been to increase and
vastly complicate the economic interdependence of strange and distant
peoples, i.e., to destroy distances and make the world, as far as
national relations are concerned, small and tight.
The second effect has been to break down family, local, and national
ties, and emancipate the individual man.
When the family ceases, as it does in the city, to be an
economic unit, when parents and children have vocations that
not only intercept the traditional relations of family life,
but make them well nigh impossible, the family ceases to
function as an organ of social control. When the different
nationalities, with their different national cultures, have so
far interpenetrated one another that each has permanent
colonies within the territorial limits of the other, it is
inevitable that the old solidarities, the common loyalties and
the common hatreds that formerly bound men together in
primitive kinship and local groups should be undermined.
A survey of the world today shows that vast changes are everywhere in
progress. Not only in Europe but in Asia and in Africa new cultural
contacts have undermined and broken down the old cultures. The effect
has been to loosen all the social bonds and reduce society to its
individual atoms. The energies thus freed have produced a world-wide
ferment. Individuals released from old associations enter all the more
readily into new ones. Out of this confusion new and strange political
and religious movements arise, which represent the groping of men for a
new social order.
3. The Crowd and the Public
Gustave Le Bon, who was the first writer to call attention to the
significance of the crowd as a social phenomenon,[281] said that mass
movements mark the end of an old régime and the beginning of a new.
"When the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is always the masses
that bring about its downfall."[282] On the other hand, "all founders of
religious or political creeds have established them solely because they
were successful in inspiring crowds with those fanatical sentiments
which have as result that men find their happiness in worship and
obedience and are ready to lay down their lives for their idol."[283]
The crowd was, for Le Bon, not merely any group brought together by the
accident of some chance excitement, but it was above all the emancipated
masses whose bonds of loyalty to the old order had been broken by "the
destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which
all the elements of our civilization are rooted." The crowd, in other
words, typified for Le Bon the existing social order. Ours is an age of
crowds, he said, an age in which men, massed and herded together in
great cities without real convictions or fundamental faiths, are likely
to be stampeded in any direction for any chance purpose under the
influence of any passing excitement.
Le Bon did not attempt to distinguish between the crowd and the public.
This distinction was first made by Tarde in a paper entitled "Le Public
et la foule," published first in _La Revue de Paris_ in 1898, and
included with several others on the same general theme under the title
_L'Opinion et la foule_ which appeared in 1901. The public, according to
Tarde, was a product of the printing press. The limits of the crowd are
determined by the length to which a voice will carry or the distance
that the eye can survey. But the public presupposes a higher stage of
social development in which suggestions are transmitted in the form of
ideas and there is "contagion without contact."[284]
The fundamental distinction between the crowd and the public, however,
is not to be measured by numbers nor by means of communication, but by
the form and effects of the interactions. In the public, interaction
takes the form of discussion. Individuals tend to act upon one another
critically; issues are raised and parties form. Opinions clash and thus
modify and moderate one another.
The crowd does not discuss and hence it does not reflect. It simply
"mills." Out of this milling process a collective impulse is formed
which dominates all members of the crowd. Crowds, when they act, do so
impulsively. The crowd, says Le Bon, "is the slave of its impulses."
"The varying impulses which crowds obey may be, according to their
exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will
always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the
interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them."[285]
When the crowd acts it becomes a mob. What happens when two mobs meet?
We have in the literature no definite record. The nearest approach to it
are the occasional accounts we find in the stories of travelers of the
contacts and conflicts of armies of primitive peoples. These
undisciplined hordes are, as compared with the armies of civilized
peoples, little more than armed mobs. Captain S. L. Hinde in his story
of the Belgian conquest of the Congo describes several such battles.
From the descriptions of battles carried on almost wholly between savage
and undisciplined troops it is evident that the morale of an army of
savages is a precarious thing. A very large part of the warfare consists
in alarms and excursions interspersed with wordy duels to keep up the
courage on one side and cause a corresponding depression on the
other.[286]
Gangs are conflict groups. Their organization is usually quite informal
and is determined by the nature and imminence of its conflicts with
other groups. When one crowd encounters another it either goes to pieces
or it changes its character and becomes a conflict group. When
negotiations and palavers take place as they eventually do between
conflict groups, these two groups, together with the neutrals who have
participated vicariously in the conflict, constitute a public. It is
possible that the two opposing savage hordes which seek, by threats and
boastings and beatings of drums, to play upon each other's fears and so
destroy each other's morale, may be said to constitute a very primitive
type of public.
Discussion, as might be expected, takes curious and interesting forms
among primitive peoples. In a volume, _Iz Derevni: 12 Pisem_ ("From the
Country: 12 Letters"), A. N. Engelgardt describes the way in which the
Slavic peasants reach their decisions in the village council.
In the discussion of some questions by the _mir_ [organization
of neighbors] there are no speeches, no debates, no votes. They
shout, they abuse one another--they seem on the point of coming
to blows; apparently they riot in the most senseless manner.
Some one preserves silence, and then suddenly puts in a word,
one word, or an ejaculation, and by this word, this
ejaculation, he turns the whole thing upside down. In the end,
you look into it and find that an admirable decision has been
formed and, what is most important, a unanimous decision....
(In the division of land) the cries, the noise, the hubbub do
not subside until everyone is satisfied and no doubter is
left.[287]
4. Crowds and Sects
Reference has been made to the crowds that act, but crowds do not always
act. Sometimes they merely dance or, at least, make expressive motions
which relieve their feelings. "The purest and most typical expression of
simple feeling," as Hirn remarks, "is that which consists of mere random
movements."[288] When these motions assume, as they so easily do, the
character of a fixed sequence in time, that is to say when they are
rhythmical, they can be and inevitably are, as by a sort of inner
compulsion, imitated by the onlookers. "As soon as the expression is
fixed in rhythmical form its contagious power is incalculably
increased."[289]
This explains at once the function and social importance of the dance
among primitive people. It is the form in which they prepare for battle
and celebrate their victories. It gives the form at once to their
religious ritual and to their art. Under the influence of the memories
and the emotions which these dances stimulate the primitive group
achieves a sense of corporate unity, which makes corporate action
possible outside of the fixed and sacred routine of ordinary daily life.
If it is true, as has been suggested, that art and religion had their
origin in the choral dance, it is also true that in modern times
religious sects and social movements have had their origin in crowd
excitements and spontaneous mass movements. The very names which have
been commonly applied to them--Quakers, Shakers, Convulsionaires, Holy
Rollers--suggest not merely the derision with which they were at one
time regarded, but indicate likewise their origin in ecstatic or
expressive crowds, the crowds that _do not act_.
All great mass movements tend to display, to a greater or less extent,
the characteristics that Le Bon attributes to crowds. Speaking of the
convictions of crowds, Le Bon says:
When these convictions are closely examined, whether at epochs
marked by fervent religious faith, or by great political
upheavals such as those of the last century, it is apparent
that they always assume a peculiar form which I cannot better
define than by giving it the name of a religious
sentiment.[290]
Le Bon's definition of religion and religious sentiment will hardly find
general acceptance but it indicates at any rate his conception of the
extent to which individual personalities are involved in the excitements
that accompany mass movements.
A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity,
but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete
submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of
fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who
becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.[291]
Just as the gang may be regarded as the perpetuation and permanent form
of "the crowd that acts," so the sect, religious or political, may be
regarded as a perpetuation and permanent form of the orgiastic
(ecstatic) or expressive crowd.
"The sect," says Sighele, "is a crowd _triée_, selected, and permanent,
the crowd is a transient sect, which does not select its members. The
sect is the _chronic_ form of the crowd; the crowd is the _acute_ form
of the sect."[292] It is Sighele's conception that the crowd is an
elementary organism, from which the sect issues, like the chick from the
egg, and that all other types of social groups "may, in this same
manner, be deduced from this primitive social protoplasm." This is a
simplification which the facts hardly justify. It is true that, implicit
in the practices and the doctrines of a religious sect, there is the
kernel of a new independent culture.
5. Sects and Institutions
A sect is a religious organization that is at war with the existing
mores. It seeks to cultivate a state of mind and establish a code of
morals different from that of the world about it and for this it claims
divine authority. In order to accomplish this end it invariably seeks to
set itself off in contrast with the rest of the world. The simplest and
most effective way to achieve this is to adopt a peculiar form of dress
and speech. This, however, invariably makes its members objects of scorn
and derision, and eventually of persecution. It would probably do this
even if there was no assumption of moral superiority to the rest of the
world in this adoption of a peculiar manner and dress.
Persecution tends to dignify and sanctify all the external marks of the
sect, and it becomes a cardinal principle of the sect to maintain them.
Any neglect of them is regarded as disloyalty and is punished as heresy.
Persecution may eventually, as was the case with the Puritans, the
Quakers, the Mormons, compel the sect to seek refuge in some part of the
world where it may practice its way of life in peace.
Once the sect has achieved territorial isolation and territorial
solidarity, so that it is the dominant power within the region that it
occupies, it is able to control the civil organization, establish
schools and a press, and so put the impress of a peculiar culture upon
all the civil and political institutions that it controls. In this case
it tends to assume the form of a state, and become a nationality.
Something approaching this was achieved by the Mormons in Utah. The most
striking illustration of the evolution of a nationality from a sect is
Ulster, which now has a position not quite that of a nation within the
English empire.
This sketch suggests that the sect, like most other social institutions,
originates under conditions that are typical for all institutions of the
same species; then it develops in definite and predictable ways, in
accordance with a form or entelechy that is predetermined by
characteristic internal processes and mechanisms, and that has, in
short, a nature and natural history which can be described and explained
in sociological terms. Sects have their origin in social unrest to which
they give a direction and expression in forms and practices that are
largely determined by historical circumstances; movements which were at
first inchoate impulses and aspirations gradually take form; policies
are defined, doctrine and dogmas formulated; and eventually an
administrative machinery and efficiencies are developed to carry into
effect policies and purposes. The Salvation Army, of which we have a
more adequate history than of most other religious movements, is an
example.
A sect in its final form may be described, then, as a movement of social
reform and regeneration that has become institutionalized. Eventually,
when it has succeeded in accommodating itself to the other rival
organizations, when it has become tolerant and is tolerated, it tends to
assume the form of a denomination. Denominations tend and are perhaps
destined to unite in the form of religious federations--a thing which is
inconceivable of a sect.
What is true of the sect, we may assume, and must assume if social
movements are to become subjects for sociological investigation, is true
of other social institutions. Existing institutions represent social
movements that survived the conflict of cultures and the struggle for
existence.
Sects, and that is what characterizes and distinguishes them from
secular institutions, at least, have had their origin in movements that
aimed to reform the mores--movements that sought to renovate and renew
the inner life of the community. They have wrought upon society from
within outwardly. Revolutionary and reform movements, on the contrary,
have been directed against the outward fabric and formal structure of
society. Revolutionary movements in particular have assumed that if the
existing structure could be destroyed it would then be possible to erect
a new moral order upon the ruins of the old social structures.
A cursory survey of the history of revolutions suggests that the most
radical and the most successful of them have been religious. Of this
type of revolution Christianity is the most conspicuous example.
6. Classification of the Materials
The materials in this chapter have been arranged under the headings:
(a) social contagion, (b) the crowd, and (c) types of mass
movements. The order of materials follows, in a general way, the order
of institutional evolution. Social unrest is first communicated, then
takes form in crowd and mass movements, and finally crystallizes in
institutions. The history of almost any single social movement--woman's
suffrage, prohibition, protestantism--exhibit in a general way, if not
in detail, this progressive change in character. There is at first a
vague general discontent and distress. Then a violent, confused, and
disorderly, but enthusiastic and popular movement, and finally the
movement takes form; develops leadership, organization; formulates
doctrines and dogmas. Eventually it is accepted, established, legalized.
The movement dies, but the institution remains.
a) _Social contagion._--The ease and the rapidity with which a
cultural trait originating in one cultural group finds its way to other
distant groups is familiar to students of folklore and ethnology. The
manner in which fashions are initiated in some metropolitan community,
and thence make their way, with more or less rapidity, to the provinces
is an illustration of the same phenomenon in a different context.
Fashion plays a much larger rôle in social life than most of us
imagine. Fashion dominates our manners and dress but it
influences also our sentiments and our modes of thought.
Everything in literature, art or philosophy that was
characteristic of the middle of the nineteenth century, the
"mid-Victorian period," is now quite out of date and no one who
is intelligent now-a-days practices the pruderies, defends the
doctrines, nor shares the enthusiasms of that period.
Philosophy, also, changes with the fashion and Sumner says that
even mathematics and science do the same. Lecky in his history
of Rationalism in Europe describes in great detail how the
belief in witches, so characteristic of the Middle Ages,
gradually disappeared with the period of enlightenment and
progress.[293] But the enlightenment of the eighteenth century
was itself a fashion and is now quite out of date. In the
meantime a new popular and scientific interest is growing up in
obscure mental phenomena which no man with scientific training
would have paid any attention to a few years ago because he did
not believe in such things. It was not good form to do so.
But the changes of fashion are so pervasive, so familiar, and, indeed,
universal phenomena that we do not regard the changes which they bring,
no matter how fantastic, as quite out of the usual and expected order.
Gabriel Tarde, however, regards the "social contagion" represented in
fashion (imitation) as the fundamental social phenomenon.[294]
The term social epidemic, which is, like fashion, a form of social
contagion, has a different origin and a different connotation. J. F. C.
Hecker, whose study of the Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages, published
in 1832, was an incident of his investigation of the Black Death, was
perhaps the first to give currency to the term.[295] Both the Black
Death and the Dancing Mania assumed the form of epidemics and the
latter, the Dancing Mania, was in his estimation the sequel of the
former, the Black Death. It was perhaps this similarity in the manner in
which they spread--the one by physical and the other by psychical
infection--that led him to speak of the spread of a popular delusion in
terms of a physical science. Furthermore, the hysteria was directly
traceable, as he believed, to the prevailing conditions of the time, and
this seemed to put the manifestations in the world of intelligible and
controllable phenomena, where they could be investigated.
It is this notion, then, that unrest which manifests itself in social
epidemics is an indication of pathological social conditions, and the
further, the more general, conception that unrest does not become social
and hence contagious except when there are contributing causes in the
environment--it is this that gives its special significance to the term
and the facts. Unrest in the social organism with the social ferments
that it induces is like fever in the individual organism, a highly
important diagnostic symptom.
b) _The crowd._--Neither Le Bon nor any of the other writers upon the
subject of mass psychology has succeeded in distinguishing clearly
between the organized or "psychological" crowd, as Le Bon calls it, and
other similar types of social groups. These distinctions, if they are to
be made objectively, must be made on the basis of case studies. It is
the purpose of the materials under the general heading of "The 'Animal'
Crowd," not so much to furnish a definition, as to indicate the nature
and sources of materials from which a definition can be formulated. It
is apparent that the different animal groups behave in ways that are
distinctive and characteristic, ways which are predetermined in the
organism to an extent that is not true of human beings.
One other distinction may possibly be made between the so-called
"animal" and the human crowd. The organized crowd is controlled by _a
common purpose_ and acts to achieve, no matter how vaguely it is
defined, a common end. The herd, on the other hand, has apparently no
common purpose. Every sheep in the flock, at least as the behavior of
the flock is ordinarily interpreted, behaves like every other. Action in
a stampede, for example, is collective but it is not concerted. It is
very difficult to understand how there can be concerted action in the
herd or the flock unless it is on an instinctive basis. The crowd,
however, responds to collective representations. The crowd does not
imitate or follow its leader as sheep do a bellwether. On the contrary,
the crowd _carries out the suggestions of the leader_, and even though
there be no division of labor each individual acts more or less in his
own way to achieve a common end.
In the case of a panic or a stampede, however, where there is no common
end, the crowd acts like a flock of sheep. But a stampede or a panic is
not a crowd in Le Bon's sense. It is not a psychological unity, nor a
"single being," subject to "the mental unity of crowds."[296] The panic
is the crowd in dissolution. All effective methods of dispersing crowds
involve some method of distracting attention, breaking up the tension,
and dissolving the mob into its individual units.
c) _Types of mass movements._--The most elementary form of mass
movement is a mass migration. Such a mass movement displays, in fact,
many of the characteristics of the "animal" crowd. It is the "human"
herd. The migration of a people, either as individuals or in organized
groups, may be compared to the swarming of the hive. Peoples migrate in
search of better living conditions, or merely in search of new
experience. It is usually the younger generation, the more restless,
active, and adaptable, who go out from the security of the old home to
seek their fortunes in the new. Once settled on the new land, however,
immigrants inevitably remember and idealize the home they have left.
Their first disposition is to reproduce as far as possible in the new
world the institutions and the social order of the old. Just as the
spider spins his web out of his own body, so the immigrant tends to spin
out of his experience and traditions, a social organization which
reproduces, as far as circumstances will permit, the organization and
the life of the ancestral community. In this way the older culture is
transplanted and renews itself, under somewhat altered circumstances, in
the new home. That explains, in part, at any rate, the fact that
migration tends to follow the isotherms, since all the more fundamental
cultural devices and experience are likely to be accommodations to
geographical and climatic conditions.
In contrast with migrations are movements which are sometimes referred
to as crusades, partly because of the religious fervor and fanaticism
with which they are usually conducted and partly because they are an
appeal to the masses of the people for direct action and depend for
their success upon their ability to appeal to some universal human
interest or to common experiences and interests that are keenly
comprehended by the common man.
The Woman's Christian Temperance Crusade, referred to in the materials,
may be regarded, if we are permitted to compare great things with small,
as an illustration of collective behavior not unlike the crusades of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Crusades are reformatory and religious. This was true at any rate of the
early crusades, inspired by Peter the Hermit, whatever may have been the
political purposes of the popes who encouraged them. It was the same
motive that led the people of the Middle Ages to make pilgrimages which
led them to join the crusades. At bottom it was an inner restlessness,
that sought peace in great hardship and inspiring action, which moved
the masses.
Somewhat the same widespread contagious restlessness is the source of
most of our revolutions. It is not, however, hardships and actual
distress that inspire revolutions but hopes and dreams, dreams which
find expression in those myths and "vital lies," as Vernon Lee calls
them,[297] which according to Sorel are the only means of moving the
masses.
The distinction between crusades, like the Woman's Temperance Crusade,
and revolutions, like the French Revolution, is that one is a radical
attempt to correct a recognized evil and the other is a radical attempt
to reform an existing social order.
II. MATERIALS
A. SOCIAL CONTAGION
1. An Incident in a Lancashire Cotton Mill[298]
At a cotton manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire, a girl, on the
fifteenth of February, 1787, put a mouse into the bosom of another girl,
who had a great dread of mice. The girl was immediately thrown into a
fit, and continued in it with the most violent convulsions for
twenty-four hours. On the following day three more girls were seized in
the same manner; and on the seventeenth, six more. By this time the
alarm was so great that the whole work, in which 200 or 300 were
employed, was totally stopped, and an idea prevailed that a particular
disease had been introduced by a bag of cotton opened in the house. On
Sunday, the eighteenth, Dr. St. Clare was sent for from Preston; before
he arrived three more were seized, and during that night and the morning
of the nineteenth, eleven more, making in all twenty-four. Of these,
twenty-one were young women, two were girls of about ten years of age,
and one man, who had been much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of
the number lived about two miles from the place where the disorder
first broke out, and three at another factory in Clitheroe, about five
miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely from
report, not having seen the other patients, but, like them and the rest
of the country, strongly impressed with the idea of the plague being
caught from the cotton. The symptoms were anxiety, strangulation, and
very strong convulsions; and these were so violent as to last without
any intermission from a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to
require four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their
hair and dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. St. Clare
had taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by electric shocks
the patients were universally relieved without exception. As soon as the
patients and the country were assured that the complaint was merely
nervous, easily cured, and not introduced by the cotton, no fresh person
was affected. To dissipate their apprehension still further, the best
effects were obtained by causing them to take a cheerful glass and join
in a dance. On Tuesday, the twentieth, they danced, and the next day
were all at work, except two or three, who were much weakened by their
fits.
2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages[299]
So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at
Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany and who, united by one
common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the
churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in
hand and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses,
continued dancing, regardless of the by-standers, for hours together in
wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of
exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible
to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions,
their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and
some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been
immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high.
Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour
enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of
the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.
Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with
epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless,
panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly
springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady
doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by
temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but
imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to
confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the
world of spirits.
It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from
Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighboring
Netherlands. Wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in
crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At
length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety
than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they
took possession of the religious houses, processions were everywhere
instituted on their account, and masses were said and hymns were sung,
while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one
entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror.
In Liége the priests had recourse to exorcisms and endeavored by every
means in their power to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to
themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently
poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction.
A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at
Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those
possessed amounted to more than five hundred; and about the same time at
Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with
eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their plows, mechanics their
workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels,
and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous
disorder. Secret desires were excited and but too often found
opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by
vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a
temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and
servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those
possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a
hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and
unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of
idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures
and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place
seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went,
spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in
maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the
appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive
away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the
exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not,
however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to
suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the
original evil. In the meantime, when once called into existence, the
plague crept on and found abundant food in the tone of thought which
prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in
a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a
permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose
inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.
B. THE CROWD
1. The "Animal" Crowd
_a. The Flock_[300]
Understand that a flock is not the same thing as a number of sheep. On
the stark, wild headlands of the White Mountains, as many as thirty
Bighorn are known to run in loose, fluctuating hordes; in fenced
pastures, two to three hundred; close-herded on the range, two to three
thousand; but however artificially augmented, the flock is always a
conscious adjustment. There are always leaders, middlers, and tailers,
each insisting on its own place in the order of going. Should the flock
be rounded up suddenly in alarm it mills within itself until these have
come to their own places.
There is much debate between herders as to the advantage of goats over
sheep as leaders. In any case there are always a few goats in a flock,
and most American owners prefer them; but the Frenchmen choose
bell-wethers. Goats lead naturally by reason of a quicker instinct,
forage more freely, and can find water on their own account. But
wethers, if trained with care, learn what goats abhor, to take broken
ground sedately, to walk through the water rather than set the whole
flock leaping and scrambling; but never to give voice to alarm, as goats
will, and call the herder.
It appears that leaders understand their office, and goats particularly
exhibit a jealousy of their rights to be first over the stepping-stones
or to walk the teetering log-bridges at the roaring creeks. By this
facile reference of the initiative to the wisest one, the shepherd is
served most. The dogs learn to which of the flock to communicate orders,
at which heels a bark or a bite soonest sets the flock in motion. But
the flock-mind obsesses equally the best-trained, flashes as instantly
from the meanest of the flock.
By very little the herder may turn the flock-mind to his advantage, but
chiefly it works against him. Suppose on the open range the impulse to
forward movement overtakes them, set in motion by some eager leaders
that remember enough of what lies ahead to make them oblivious to what
they pass. They press ahead. The flock draws on. The momentum of travel
grows. The bells clang soft and hurriedly; the sheep forget to feed;
they neglect the tender pastures; they will not stay to drink. Under an
unwise or indolent herder the sheep going on an unaccustomed trail will
overtravel and underfeed, until in the midst of good pasture they starve
upon their feet. So it is on the Long Trail you so often see the herder
walking with his dogs ahead of his sheep to hold them back to feed. But
if it should be new ground he must go after and press them skilfully,
for the flock-mind balks chiefly at the unknown.
In sudden attacks from several quarters, or inexplicable man-thwarting
of their instincts, the flock-mind teaches them to turn a solid front,
revolving about in the smallest compass with the lambs in their midst,
narrowing and indrawing until they perish by suffocation. So they did in
the intricate defiles of Red Rock, where Carrier lost 250 in '74, and at
Poison Springs, as Narcisse Duplin told me, where he had to choose
between leaving them to the deadly waters, or, prevented from the
spring, made witless by thirst, to mill about until they piled up and
killed threescore in their midst. By no urgency of the dogs could they
be moved forward or scattered until night fell with coolness and
returning sanity. Nor does the imperfect gregariousness of man always
save us from ill-considered rushes or strangulous in-turnings of the
social mass. Notwithstanding there are those who would have us to be
flock-minded.
It is doubtful if the herder is anything more to the flock than an
incident of the range, except as a giver of salt, for the only cry they
make to him is the salt cry. When the natural craving is at the point of
urgency, they circle about his camp or his cabin, leaving off feeding
for that business; and nothing else offering, they will continue this
headlong circling about a bowlder or any object bulking large in their
immediate neighborhood remotely resembling the appurtenances of man, as
if they had learned nothing since they were free to find licks for
themselves, except that salt comes by bestowal and in conjunction with
the vaguely indeterminate lumps of matter that associate with man. As if
in fifty centuries of man-herding they had made but one step out of the
terrible isolation of brute species, an isolation impenetrable except by
fear to every other brute, but now admitting the fact without knowledge,
of the God of the Salt. Accustomed to receiving this miracle on open
bowlders, when the craving is strong upon them, they seek such as these
to run about, vociferating, as if they said, In such a place our God has
been wont to bless us, come now, let us greatly entreat Him. This one
quavering bleat, unmistakable to the sheepman even at a distance, is the
only new note in the sheep's vocabulary, and the only one which passes
with intention from himself to man. As for the call of distress which a
leader raised by hand may make to his master, it is not new, is not
common to flock usage, and is swamped utterly in the obsession of the
flock-mind.
_b. The Herd_[301]
My purpose in this paper is to discuss a group of curious and useless
emotional instincts of social animals, which have not yet been properly
explained. Excepting two of the number, placed first and last in the
list, they are not related in their origin; consequently they are here
grouped together arbitrarily, only for the reason that we are very
familiar with them on account of their survival in our domestic animals,
and because they are, as I have said, useless; also because they
resemble each other, among the passions and actions of the lower
animals, in their effect on our minds. This is in all cases unpleasant,
and sometimes exceedingly painful, as when species that rank next to
ourselves in their developed intelligence and organized societies, such
as elephants, monkeys, dogs, and cattle, are seen under the domination
of impulses, in some cases resembling insanity, and in others simulating
the darkest passions of man.
These instincts are:
(1) The excitement caused by the smell of blood, noticeable in horses
and cattle among our domestic animals, and varying greatly in degree,
from an emotion so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to the greatest
extremes of rage or terror.
(2) The angry excitement roused in some animals when a scarlet or bright
red cloth is shown to them. So well known is this apparently insane
instinct in our cattle that it has given rise to a proverb and metaphor
familiar in a variety of forms to everyone.
(3) The persecution of a sick or weakly animal by its companions.
(4) The sudden deadly fury that seizes on the herd or family at the
sight of a companion in extreme distress. Herbivorous mammals at such
times will trample and gore the distressed one to death. In the case of
wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed
fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot.
To take the first two together. When we consider that blood is red; that
the smell of it is, or may be, or has been, associated with that vivid
hue in the animal's mind; that blood, seen and smelt, is, or has been,
associated with the sight of wounds and with cries of pain and rage or
terror from the wounded or captive animal, there appears at first sight
to be some reason for connecting these two instinctive passions as
having the same origin--namely, terror and rage caused by the sight of a
member of the herd struck down and bleeding, or struggling for life in
the grasp of an enemy. I do not mean to say that such an image is
actually present in the animal's mind, but that the inherited or
instinctive passion is one in kind and in its working with the passion
of the animal when experience and reason were its guides.
But the more I consider the point, the more am I inclined to regard
these two instincts as separate in their origin, although I retain the
belief that cattle and horses and several wild animals are violently
excited by the smell of blood for the reason just given--namely, their
inherited memory associates the smell of blood with the presence among
them of some powerful enemy that threatens their life.
The following incident will show how violently this blood passion
sometimes affects cattle, when they are permitted to exist in a
half-wild condition, as on the Pampas. I was out with my gun one day, a
few miles from home, when I came across a patch on the ground where the
grass was pressed or trodden down and stained with blood. I concluded
that some thievish Gauchos had slaughtered a fat cow there on the
previous night, and, to avoid detection, had somehow managed to carry
the whole of it away on their horses. As I walked on, a herd of cattle,
numbering about three hundred, appeared moving slowly on to a small
stream a mile away; they were traveling in a thin, long line, and would
pass the blood-stained spot at a distance of seven to eight hundred
yards, but the wind from it would blow across their track. When the
tainted wind struck the leaders of the herd they instantly stood still,
raising their heads, then broke out into loud, excited bellowings; and
finally turning, they started off at a fast trot, following up the scent
in a straight line, until they arrived at the place where one of their
kind had met its death. The contagion spread, and before long all the
cattle were congregated on the fatal spot, and began moving round in a
dense mass, bellowing continually.
It may be remarked here that the animal has a peculiar language on
occasions like this; it emits a succession of short, bellowing cries,
like excited exclamations, followed by a very loud cry, alternately
sinking into a hoarse murmur and rising to a kind of scream that grates
harshly on the sense. Of the ordinary "cow-music" I am a great admirer,
and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and
the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited
by the smell of blood is most distressing to hear.
The animals that had forced their way into the center of the mass to the
spot where the blood was, pawed the earth, and dug it up with their
horns, and trampled each other down in their frantic excitement. It was
terrible to see and hear them. The action of those on the border of the
living mass, in perpetually moving round in a circle with dolorous
bellowings, was like that of the women in an Indian village when a
warrior dies, and all night they shriek and howl with simulated grief,
going round and round the dead man's hut in an endless procession.
_c. The Pack_[302]
Wolves are the most sociable of beasts of prey. Not only do they gather
in bands, but they arrange to render each other assistance, which is the
most important test of sociability. The most gray wolves I ever saw in a
band was five. This was in northern New Mexico in January, 1894. The
most I ever heard of in a band was thirty-two that were seen in the same
region. These bands are apparently formed in winter only. The packs are
probably temporary associations of personal acquaintances, for some
temporary purpose, or passing reason, such as food question or
mating-instinct. As soon as this is settled, they scatter.
An instance in point was related to me by Mr. Gordon Wright of Carberry,
Manitoba. During the winter of 1865 he was logging at Sturgeon Lake,
Ontario. One Sunday he and some companions strolled out on the ice of
the lake to look at the logs there. They heard the hunting-cry of
wolves, then a deer (a female) darted from the woods to the open ice.
Her sides were heaving, her tongue out, and her legs cut by the slight
crust of the snow. Evidently she was hard pressed. She was coming toward
them, but one of the men gave a shout which caused her to sheer off. A
minute later six timber wolves appeared galloping on her trail, heads
low, tails horizontal, and howling continuously. They were uttering
their hunting-cry, but as soon as they saw her they broke into a louder,
different note, left the trail and made straight for her. Five of the
wolves were abreast and one that seemed much darker was behind. Within
half a mile they overtook her and pulled her down, all seemed to seize
her at once. For a few minutes she bleated like a sheep in distress;
after that the only sound was the snarling and the crunching of the
wolves as they feasted. Within fifteen minutes nothing was left of the
deer but hair and some of the larger bones, and the wolves fighting
among themselves for even these. Then they scattered, each going a
quarter of a mile or so, no two in the same direction, and those that
remained in view curled up there on the open lake to sleep. This
happened about ten in the morning within three hundred yards of several
witnesses.
2. The Psychological Crowd[303]
In its ordinary sense the word "crowd" means a gathering of individuals
of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances
that have brought them together. From the psychological point of view
the expression "crowd" assumes quite a different signification. Under
certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an
agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from
those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all
the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their
conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless
transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The
gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I
will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable,
a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the
law of the mental unity of crowds.
It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals
finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the
character of an organized crowd. A thousand individuals accidentally
gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way
constitute a crowd, from the psychological point of view. To acquire the
special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of
certain predisposing causes, of which we shall have to determine the
nature.
The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings
and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary
characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always
involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one
spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments,
and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example,
as a great national event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd.
It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them
together for their acts at once to assume the characteristics peculiar
to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might
constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of
hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an
entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become
a crowd under the action of certain influences.
It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because
its organization varies not only according to race and composition but
also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to
which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty, however, presents
itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels
that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an
unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that
creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere
that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which
may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This
explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French
Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary
circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous
magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of
quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile
servants.
It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of
organization of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with
such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organization. In
this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they
invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organization that
certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying
and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning,
already alluded to, of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity
in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too,
that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity
of crowds comes into play.
The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the
following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or
unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or
their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a
crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes
them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which
each individual of them would feel, think, and act, were he in a state
of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come
into being or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case
of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional
being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined,
exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their
reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from
these possessed by each of the cells singly.
Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the
pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which
constitutes a crowd there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average
struck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination
followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry
certain elements, when brought into contact--bases and acids, for
example--combine to form a new body possessing properties quite
different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.
It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a crowd
differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover
the causes of this difference. To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them
it is necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established
by modern psychology that unconscious phenomena play an altogether
preponderating part not only in organic life but also in the operations
of the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of small
importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle
analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering
more than a very small number of the unconscious motives that determine
his conduct.
The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives
which escape our observation. It is more especially with respect to
those unconscious elements that all the individuals belonging to it
resemble each other, while it is principally in respect to the conscious
elements of their character--the fruit of education, and yet more of
exceptional hereditary conditions--that they differ from each other. Men
most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts,
passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything
that belongs to the realm of sentiment--religion, politics, morality,
the affections and antipathies, etc.--the most eminent men seldom
surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the
intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great
mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of character
the difference is most often slight or nonexistent.
It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces
of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal
individuals of a race in much the same degree, it is precisely these
qualities that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind
the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their
individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the
homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.
This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains
why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of
intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come
to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different
walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be
adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring
to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are
the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity
and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is
so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly
Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world"
crowds are to be understood.
If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common
the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would
merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is
actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that
these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to
investigate.
Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics
peculiar to crowds and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first
is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from
numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows
him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce
have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself
from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous and in consequence
irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls
individuals disappears entirely.
The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the
manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the
same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which
it is easy to establish the presence, but which it is not easy to
explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order.
In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such
a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to
the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his
nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable except when he makes part
of a crowd.
A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the
individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary
at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that
suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is
neither more nor less than an effect.
The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged
for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself--either
in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from
some other cause of which we are ignorant--in a special state, which
much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized
individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer.
Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a
psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case,
as in the case of the hypnotized subject, at the same time that certain
faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of
exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the
accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This
impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that
of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the
same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by
reciprocity. The individualities in the crowd who might possess a
personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in
number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able
to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this
way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked,
have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.
We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the
predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of
suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical
direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas
into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the
individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has
become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.
Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a
man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he
may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian--that is,
a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the
violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive
beings.
An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand,
which the wind stirs up at will. It is for these reasons that juries are
seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would
disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of
which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken
separately, the men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of
peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their
adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most
clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interest, to renounce their
inviolability and to decimate themselves.
The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is that the crowd is
always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that,
from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings
provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be better or worse
than the individual. All depends on the nature of the suggestion to
which the crowd is exposed. This is the point that has been completely
misunderstood by writers who have only studied crowds from the criminal
point of view. Doubtless a crowd is often criminal, but also it is often
heroic. It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be
induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an
idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honor, that are
led on--almost without bread and without arms, as in the age of the
Crusades--to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or, as in '93,
to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt somewhat
unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made. Were
peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in cold
blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them.
3. The Crowd Defined[304]
A crowd in the ordinary sense of that term is any chance collection of
individuals. Such a collectivity becomes a crowd in the sociological
sense only when a condition of _rapport_ has been established among the
individuals who compose it.
_Rapport_ implies the existence of a mutual responsiveness, such that
every member of the group reacts immediately, spontaneously, and
sympathetically to the sentiments and attitudes of every other member.
The fact that A responds sympathetically toward B and C implies the
existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward
the sentiments and attitudes of B and C. Where A, B, and C are mutually
sympathetic, the inhibitions which, under ordinary circumstances, serve
to preserve the isolation and self-consciousness of individuals are
relaxed or completely broken down. Under these circumstances each
individual, in so far as he may be said to reflect, in his own
consciousness and in his emotional reactions, the sentiments and
emotions of all the others, tends at the same time to modify the
sentiments and attitudes of those others. The effect is to produce a
heightened, intensified, and relatively impersonal state of
consciousness in which all seem to share, but which is, at the same
time, relatively independent of each.
The development of this so-called "group-consciousness" represents a
certain amount of loss of self-control on the part of the individual.
Such control as the individual loses over himself is thus automatically
transferred to the group as a whole or to the leader.
What is meant by _rapport_ in the group may be illustrated by a somewhat
similar phenomenon which occurs in hypnosis. In this case a relation is
established between the experimenter and his subject such that the
subject responds automatically to every suggestion of the experimenter
but is apparently oblivious of suggestions coming from other persons
whose existence he does not perceive or ignores. This is the condition
called "isolated rapport."[305]
In the case of the crowd this mutual and exclusive responsiveness of
each member of the crowd to the suggestions emanating from the other
members produces here also a kind of mental isolation which is
accompanied by an inhibition of the stimuli and suggestions that control
the behavior of individuals under the conditions of ordinary life. Under
these conditions impulses long repressed in the individual may find an
expression in the crowd. It is this, no doubt, which accounts for those
so-called criminal and atavistic tendencies of crowds, of which Le Bon
and Sighele speak.[306]
The organization of the crowd is only finally effected when the
attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused upon some
particular object or some particular objective. This object thus fixed
in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character
of a _collective representation_.[307] It becomes this because it is the
focus of the collectively enhanced emotion and sentiment of the group.
It becomes the representation and the symbol of what the crowd feels and
wills at the moment when all members are suffused with a common
collective excitement and dominated by a common and collective idea.
This excitement and this idea with the meanings that attach to it are
called collective because they are a product of the interactions of the
members of the crowd. They are not individual but corporate products.
Le Bon describes the organization thus effected in a chance-met
collection of individuals as a "collective mind," and refers to the
group, transitory and ephemeral though it be, as a "single being."
The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are
then:
(1) A condition of _rapport_ among the members of the group with a
certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility
incident to it.
(2) A certain degree of mental isolation of the group following as a
consequence of the _rapport_ and sympathetic responsiveness of members
of the group.
(3) Focus of attention; and finally the consequent.
(4) Collective representation.
C. TYPES OF MASS MOVEMENTS
1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush[308]
It was near the middle of July when the steamer _Excelsior_ arrived in
San Francisco from St. Michael's, on the west coast of Alaska, with
forty miners, having among them seven hundred and fifty thousand
dollars' worth of gold, brought down from the Klondike. When the bags
and cans and jars containing it had been emptied and the gold piled on
the counters of the establishment to which it was brought, no such sight
had been seen in San Francisco since the famous year of 1849.
On July 18 the _Portland_ arrived in Seattle, on Puget Sound, having on
board sixty-eight miners, who brought ashore bullion worth a million
dollars. The next day it was stated that these miners had in addition
enough gold concealed about their persons and in their baggage to double
the first estimate. Whether all these statements were correct or not
does not signify, for those were the reports that were spread throughout
the states. From this last source alone, the mint at San Francisco
received half a million dollars' worth of gold in one week, and it was
certain that men who had gone away poor had come back with fortunes. It
was stated that a poor blacksmith who had gone up from Seattle returned
with $115,000, and that a man from Fresno, who had failed as a farmer,
had secured $135,000.
The gold fever set in with fury and attacked all classes. Men in good
positions, with plenty of money to spend on an outfit, and men with
little beyond the amount of their fare, country men and city men, clerks
and professional men without the faintest notion of the meaning of
"roughing it," flocked in impossible numbers to secure a passage. There
were no means of taking them. Even in distant New York, the offices of
railroad companies and local agencies were besieged by anxious
inquirers eager to join the throng. On Puget Sound, mills, factories,
and smelting works were deserted by their employees, and all the miners
on the upper Skeena left their work in a body. On July 21 the North
American Transportation Company (one of two companies which monopolized
the trade of the Yukon) was reincorporated in Chicago with a quadrupled
capital, to cope with the demands of traffic. At the different Pacific
ports every available vessel was pressed into the service, and still the
wild rush could not be met. Before the end of July the _Portland_ left
Seattle again for St. Michael's, and the _Mexico_ and _Topeka_ for Dyea;
the _Islander_ and _Tees_ sailed for Dyea from Victoria, and the _G. W.
Elder_ from Portland; while from San Francisco the _Excelsior_, of the
Alaska Company, which had brought the first gold down, left again for
St. Michael's on July 28, being the last of the company's fleet
scheduled to connect with the Yukon river boats for the season. Three
times the original price was offered for the passage, and one passenger
accepted an offer of $1,500 for the ticket for which he had paid only
$150.
This, however, was only the beginning of the rush. Three more steamers
were announced to sail in August for the mouth of the Yukon, and at
least a dozen more for the Lynn Canal, among which were old tubs, which,
after being tied up for years, were now overhauled and refitted for the
voyage north. One of these was the _Williamette_, an old collier with
only sleeping quarters for the officers and crew, which, however, was
fitted up with bunks and left Seattle for Dyea and Skagway with 850
passengers, 1,200 tons of freight, and 300 horses, men, live stock, and
freight being wedged between decks till the atmosphere was like that of
a dungeon; and even with such a prospect in view, it was only by a
lavish amount of tipping that a man could get his effects taken aboard.
Besides all these, there were numerous scows loaded with provisions and
fuel, and barges conveying horses for packing purposes.
A frightful state of congestion followed as each successive steamer on
its arrival at the head of the Lynn Canal poured forth its crowds of
passengers and added to the enormous loads of freight already
accumulated. Matters became so serious that on August 10 the United
States Secretary of the Interior, having received information that 3,000
persons with 2,000 tons of baggage and freight were then waiting to
cross the mountains to Yukon, and that many more were preparing to join
them, issued a warning to the public (following that of the Dominion
Government of the previous week) in which he called attention to the
exposure, privation, suffering, and danger incident to the journey at
that advanced period of the season, and further referred to the gravity
of the possible consequences to people detained in the mountainous
wilderness during five or six months of Arctic winter, where no relief
could reach them.
To come now to the state of things at the head of the Lynn Canal, where
the steamers discharged their loads of passengers, horses, and freight.
This was done either at Dyea or Skagway, the former being the
landing-place for the Chilcoot Pass, and the latter for the White Pass,
the distance between the two places being about four miles by sea. There
were no towns at these places, nor any convenience for landing except a
small wharf at Skagway, which was not completed, the workmen having been
smitten with the gold fever. Every man had to bring with him, if he
wanted to get through and live, supplies for a year: sacks of flour,
slabs of bacon, beans, and so forth, his cooking utensils, his mining
outfit and building tools, his tent, and all the heavy clothing and
blankets suitable for the northern winter, one thousand pounds' weight
at least. Imagine the frightful mass of stuff disgorged as each
successive vessel arrived, with no adequate means of taking it inland!
Before the end of September people were preparing to winter on the
coast, and Skagway was growing into a substantial town. Where in the
beginning of August there were only a couple of shacks, there were in
the middle of October 700 wooden buildings and a population of about
1,500. Businesses of all kinds were carried on, saloons and low gaming
houses and haunts of all sorts abounded, but of law and order there was
none. Dyea also, which at one time was almost deserted, was growing into
a place of importance, but the title of every lot in both towns was in
dispute. Rain was still pouring down, and without high rubber boots
walking was impossible. None indeed but the most hardy could stand
existence in such places, and every steamer from the south carried fresh
loads of people back to their homes.
Of the 6,000 people who went in this fall, 200 at the most got over to
the Dawson Route by the White Pass, and perhaps 700 by the Chilcoot.
There were probably 1,000 camped at Lake Bennett, and all the rest,
except the 1,500 remaining on the coast, had returned home to wait till
midwinter or the spring before venturing up again. The question of which
was the best trail was still undecided, and men vehemently debated it
every day with the assistance of the most powerful language at their
command.
As to the crowds who had gone to St. Michael's, it is doubtful whether
any of them got through to Dawson City, since the lower Yukon is
impassable by the end of September, and, at any rate, in view of the
prospects of short rations, it would have been rash to try. The
consequence would be that they would have to remain on that desolate
island during nine months of almost Arctic winter, for the river does
not open again till the end of June. Here they would be absolutely
without employment unless they chose to stack wood for the steamboat
companies, and their only amusements (save the mark) would be drinking
bad rye whiskey--for Alaska is a "prohibition" country--and
poker-playing. For men with a soul above such delights, the
heart-breaking monotony of a northern winter would be appalling, and it
is only to be understood by those who have had to endure similar
experiences themselves on the western prairies.
2. Mass Movements and the Mores: The Woman's Crusade[309]
On the evening of December 23, 1873, there might have been seen in the
streets of Hillsboro, Ohio, persons singly or in groups wending their
way to Music Hall, where a lecture on temperance was to be delivered by
Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, Massachusetts.
Hillsboro is a small place, containing something more than 3,000 people.
The inhabitants are rather better educated than is usually the case in
small towns, and its society is indeed noted in that part of the country
for its quietude, culture, and refinement.
But Hillsboro was by no means exempt from the prevailing scourge of
intemperance. The early settlers of Hillsboro were mostly from Virginia,
and brought with them the old-fashioned ideas of hospitality. For many
years previous to the crusade the professional men, and especially of
the bar, were nearly all habitual drinkers, and many of them very
dissipated. When a few earnest temperance men, among whom was Governor
Allen Trimble, initiated a total-abstinence movement in or about the
year 1830, the pulpit took up arms against them, and a condemnatory
sermon was preached in one of the churches.
Thus it was that, although from time to time men, good and true, banded
themselves together in efforts to break up this dreadful state of things
and reform society, all endeavors seemed to fail of any permanent
effect.
The plan laid down by Dr. Lewis challenged attention by its novelty at
least. He believed the work of temperance reform might be successfully
carried on by women if they would set about it in the right
manner--going to the saloon-keeper in a spirit of Christian love, and
persuading him for the sake of humanity and his own eternal welfare to
quit the hateful, soul-destroying business. The doctor spoke with
enthusiasm; and seeing him so full of faith, the hearts of the women
seized the hope--a forlorn one, 'tis true, but still a hope--and when
Dr. Lewis asked if they were willing to undertake the task, scores of
women rose to their feet, and there was no lack of good men who pledged
themselves to encourage and sustain the women in their work.
At a subsequent meeting an organization was effected and Mrs. Eliza J.
Thompson, a daughter of ex-Governor Trimble of Ohio, was elected
chairman. Mrs. Thompson gives the following account of the manner in
which the crusade was organized:
My boy came home from Dr. Dio Lewis' lecture and said, "Ma,
they've got you into business"; and went on to tell that Dio
Lewis had incidentally related the successful effort of his
mother, by prayer and persuasion, to close the saloon in a town
where he lived when a boy, and that he had exhorted the women
of Hillsboro to do the same, and fifty had risen up to signify
their willingness, and that they looked to me to help them to
carry out their promise. As I'm talking to you here familiarly,
I'll go on to say that my husband, who had retired, and was in
an adjoining room, raised up on his elbow and called out, "Oh!
that's all tomfoolery!" I remember I answered him something
like this: "Well, husband, the men have been in the tomfoolery
business a long time; perhaps the Lord is going to call us into
partnership with them." I said no more. The next morning my
brother-in-law, Colonel ----, came in and told me about the
meeting, and said, "Now, you must be sure to go to the women's
meeting at the church this morning; they look to see you
there." Our folks talked it all over, and my husband said,
"Well, we all know where your mother'll take this case for
counsel," and then he pointed to the Bible and left the room.
I went into the corner of my room, and knelt down and opened my
Bible to see what God would say to me. Just at that moment
there was a tap on the door and my daughter entered. She was in
tears; she held her Bible in her hand, open to the 146th Psalm.
She said, "Ma, I just opened to this, and I think it is for
you," and then she went away, and I sat down and read
THIS WONDERFUL MESSAGE FROM GOD
"Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom
there is no help. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for
his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God; which keepeth
truth forever; which executeth judgment for the oppressed; the
Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the
blind; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord
loveth the righteous; the Lord relieveth the fatherless and the
widow--_but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down_. The
Lord shall reign forever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all
generations. Praise ye the Lord!"
I knew that was for me, and I got up, put on my shoes, and
started. I went to the church, in this town where I was born. I
sat down quietly in the back part of the audience room, by the
stove. A hundred ladies were assembled. I heard my name--heard
the whisper pass through the company, "Here she is!" "She's
come!" and before I could get to the pulpit, they had put me
"in office"--I was their leader.
Many of our citizens were there, and our ministers also. They
stayed a few minutes, and then rose and went out, saying, "This
is your work--we leave it with the women and the Lord." When
they had gone, I just opened the big pulpit Bible and read that
146th Psalm, and told them the circumstance of my selecting it.
The women sobbed so I could hardly go on. When I had finished,
I felt inspired to call on a dear Presbyterian lady to pray.
She did so without the least hesitation, though it was the
first audible prayer in her life. I can't tell you anything
about that prayer, only that the words were like fire.
When she had prayed, I said--and it all came to me just at the
moment--"Now, ladies, let us file out, two by two, the smallest
first, and let us sing as we go, 'Give to the winds thy
fears.'"
We went first to John ----'s saloon. Now, John was a German,
and his sister had lived in my family thirteen years, and she
was very mild and gentle, and I hoped it might prove a family
trait, but I found out it wasn't. He fumed about dreadfully and
said, "It's awful; it's a sin and a shame to pray in a saloon!"
But we prayed right on just the same.
Next day the ladies held another meeting, but decided not to make any
visitations, it being Christmas day, and the hotel-keepers more than
usually busy and not likely to listen very attentively to our
proposition.
On the twenty-sixth, the hotels and saloons were visited; Mrs. Thompson
presenting the appeal. And it was on this morning, and at the saloon of
Robert Ward, that there came a break in the established routine. "Bob"
was a social, jolly sort of fellow, and his saloon was a favorite
resort, and there were many women in the company that morning whose
hearts were aching in consequence of his wrong-doing. Ward was evidently
touched. He confessed that it was a "bad business," said if he could
only "afford to quit it he would," and then tears began to flow from his
eyes. Many of the ladies were weeping, and at length, as if by
inspiration, Mrs. Thompson kneeled on the floor of the saloon, all
kneeling with her, even the saloonist, and prayed, pleading with
indescribable pathos and earnestness for the conversion and salvation of
this and all saloon-keepers. When the amen was sobbed rather than
spoken, Mrs. Washington Doggett's sweet voice began, "There is a
fountain," etc., in which all joined; the effect was most solemn, and
when the hymn was finished the ladies went quietly away, and that was
the first saloon prayer meeting.
There was a saloon-keeper brought from Greenfield to H---- to be tried
under the Adair law. The poor mother who brought the suit had besought
him not to sell to her son--"her only son." He replied roughly that he
would sell to him "as long as he had a dime." Another mother, an old
lady, made the same request, "lest," she said, "he may some day fill a
drunkard's grave." "Madam," he replied, "your son has as good a right to
fill a drunkard's grave as any other mother's son." And in one of the
Hillsboro saloons a lady saw her nephew. "O, Mr. B----," said she,
"don't sell whiskey to that boy: if he has one drink he will want
another, and he may die a drunkard." "Madam, I will sell to him if it
sends his soul to hell," was the awful reply. The last man is a
peculiarly hard, stony sort of man; his lips look as if chiseled out of
flint, a man to be afraid of. One morning, when the visiting band
reached his door, they found him in a very bad humor. He locked his door
and seated himself on the horse block in front in a perfect rage,
clenched his fist, swore furiously, and ordered us to go home. Some
gentlemen, on the opposite side of the street, afterward said that they
were watching the scene, ready to rush over and defend the ladies from
an attack, and they were sure it would come; but one of the ladies, a
sweet-souled woman, gentle and placid, kneeled just at his feet, and
poured out such a tender, earnest prayer for him, that he quieted down
entirely, and when she rose and offered him her hand in token of kind
feeling, he could not refuse to take it.
During the Crusade, a saloon-keeper (at Ocean Grove) consented
to close his business. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and
interest, and we women decided to compensate the man for his
whiskey and make a bonfire of it in the street. A great crowd
gathered about the saloon, and the barrels of whiskey were
rolled out to the public square where we were to have our
bonfire. Myself and two other little women, who had been chosen
to knock in the heads, and had come to the place with axes
concealed under our shawls, went to our work with a will.
I didn't know I was so strong, but I lifted that axe like a
woodman and brought it down with such force that the first blow
stove in the head of a barrel and splashed the whiskey in every
direction. I was literally baptized with the noxious stuff. The
intention was to set it on fire, and we had brought matches for
that purpose, _but it would not burn_! It was a villainous
compound of some sort, but we had set out to have a fire, and
were determined by some means or other to make it burn, so we
sent for some coal oil and poured it on and we soon had a
blaze. The man who could sell such liquors would not be likely
to keep the pledge. He is selling liquors again.
The crusade began at Washington C.H. only two days later than at
Hillsboro. And Washington C.H. was the first place where the crusade was
made prominent and successful.
On Friday morning, December 26, 1873, after an hour of prayer in the
M.E. Church, forty-four women filed slowly and solemnly down the aisle,
and started forth upon their strange mission with fear and trembling,
while the male portion of the audience remained at the church to pray
for the success of this new undertaking; the tolling of the church-bell
keeping time to the solemn march of the women, as they wended their way
to the first drug-store on the list. (The number of places within the
city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen--eleven
saloons and three drug-stores.) Here, as in every place, they entered
singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the
threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer;
then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and
sign the dealer's pledge.
Thus, all the day long, they went from place to place, without stopping
even for dinner or lunch, till five o'clock, meeting with no marked
success; but invariably courtesy was extended to them; not even their
reiterated promise, "We will call again," seeming to offend.
No woman who has ever entered one of these dens of iniquity on such an
errand needs to be told of the heartsickness that almost over-came them
as they, for the first time, saw behind those painted windows or green
blinds, or entered the little stifling "back room," or found their way
down winding steps into the damp, dark cellars, and realized that into
_such places_ those they loved best were being landed, through the
allurements of the brilliantly lighted drug-store, the fascinating
billiard table, or the enticing beer gardens, with their siren
attractions. A crowded house at night, to hear the report of the day's
work, betrayed the rapidly increasing interest in this mission.
On the twenty-seventh the contest really began, and, at the first place,
the doors were found locked. With hearts full of compassion, the women
knelt in the snow upon the pavement, to plead for the divine influence
upon the heart of the liquor-dealer, and there held their first street
prayer meeting.
At night the weary but zealous workers reported at a mass meeting of the
various rebuffs, and the success in having two druggists sign the pledge
not to sell, except upon the written prescription of a physician.
The Sabbath, was devoted to union mass meeting, with direct reference to
the work in hand; and on Monday the number of ladies had increased to
near one hundred. That day, December 29, is one long to be remembered in
Washington, as the day upon which occurred the first surrender ever made
by a liquor-dealer, of his stock of liquors of every kind and variety,
to the women, in answer to their prayers and entreaties, and by them
poured into the street. Nearly a thousand men, women, and children
witnessed the mingling of beer, ale, wine, and whiskey, as they filled
the gutters and were drunk up by the earth, while the bells were
ringing, men and boys shouting, and women singing and praying to God who
had given the victory. But on the fourth day, "stock sale-day," the
campaign had reached its height, the town being filled with visitors
from all parts of the county and adjoining villages. Another public
surrender, and another pouring into the street of a larger stock of
liquors than on the previous day, and more intense excitement and
enthusiasm.
Mass meetings were held nightly, with new victories reported constantly,
until on Friday, January 21, one week from the beginning of the work, at
the public meeting held in the evening, the secretary's report announced
the unconditional surrender of every liquor-dealer, some having shipped
their liquors back to wholesale dealers, others having poured them into
the gutters, and the druggists as all having signed the pledge. Thus a
campaign of prayer and song had, in eight days, closed eleven saloons,
and pledged three drug-stores to sell only on prescription. At first men
had wondered, scoffed, and laughed, then criticized, respected, and
yielded.
Morning prayer and evening mass meetings continued daily, and the
personal pledge was circulated till over one thousand signatures were
obtained. Physicians were called upon to sign a pledge not to prescribe
ardent spirits when any other substitute could be found, and in no case
without a personal examination of the patient.
Early in the third week the discouraging intelligence came that a new
man had taken out a license to sell liquor in one of the deserted
saloons, and that he was backed by a whiskey house in Cincinnati, to the
amount of $5,000, to break down this movement. On Wednesday, 'the
fourteenth, the whiskey was unloaded at his room. About forty women were
on the ground and followed the liquor in, and remained holding an
uninterrupted prayer meeting all day and until eleven o'clock at night.
The next day, bitterly cold, was spent in the same place and manner,
without fire or chairs, two hours of that time the women being locked
in, while the proprietor was off attending a trial. On the following
day, the coldest of the winter of 1874, the women were locked out, and
stood on the street holding religious services all day long.
Next morning a tabernacle was built in the street, just in front of the
house, and was occupied for the double purpose of _watching_ and prayer
through the day; and before night the sheriff closed the saloon, and the
proprietor surrendered; thus ended the third week.
A short time after, on a dying-bed, this four days' liquor-dealer sent
for some of these women, telling them their songs and prayers had never
ceased to ring in his ears, and urging them to pray again in his behalf;
so he passed away.
Thus, through most of the winter of 1874 no alcoholic drinks were
publicly sold as a beverage in the county.
During the two intervening years weekly temperance-league meetings have
been kept up by the faithful few, while frequent union mass meetings
have been held, thus keeping the subject always before the people. Today
the disgraceful and humiliating fact exists that there are more places
where liquors are sold than before the crusade.
3. Mass Movements and Revolution
_a. The French Revolution_[310]
The outward life of men in every age is molded upon an inward life
consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral
influences which direct their conduct and maintain certain fundamental
notions which they accept without discussion.
Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which
could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain
theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would
have encountered an impregnable wall two centuries earlier.
The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that
the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible
transformations which have slowly gone forward in men's minds. Any
profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil
upon which the ideas that direct its courses have to germinate.
Generally slow in the extreme, the evolution of ideas is often invisible
for a whole generation. Its extent can only be grasped by comparing the
mental condition of the same social classes at the two extremities of
the curve which the mind has followed.
The actual influence of the philosophers in the genesis of the
Revolution was not that which was attributed to them. They revealed
nothing new, but they developed the critical spirit which no dogma can
resist, once the way is prepared for its downfall.
Under the influence of this developing critical spirit things which were
no longer very greatly respected came to be respected less and less.
When tradition and prestige had disappeared, the social edifice suddenly
fell. This progressive disaggregation finally descended to the people,
but was not commenced by them. The people follow examples, but never set
them.
The philosophers, who could not have exerted any influence over the
people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the
nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old
functions and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed
their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to
break with the traditions that were their only _raison d'être_. As
steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the _bourgeoisie_ of
today, they continually sapped their own privileges by their criticisms.
As today, the most ardent reformers were found among the favorites of
fortune. The aristocracy encouraged dissertations on the social
contract, the rights of man, and the equality of citizens. At the
theater it applauded plays which criticized privileges, the
arbitrariness and the incapacity of men in high places, and abuses of
all kinds.
As soon as men lose confidence in the foundations of the mental
framework which guides their conduct, they feel at first uneasy and then
discontented. All classes felt their old motives of action gradually
disappearing. Things that had seemed sacred for centuries were now
sacred no longer.
The censorious spirit of the nobility and of the writers of the day
would not have sufficed to move the heavy load of tradition but that its
action was added to that of other powerful influences. We have already
stated, in citing Bossuet, that under the _ancien régime_ the religious
and civil governments, widely separated in our day, were intimately
connected. To injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now even
before the monarchical idea was shaken, the force of religious tradition
was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant progress of
knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from theology to
science by opposing the truth observed to the truth revealed.
This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient to
show that the traditions which for so many centuries had guided men had
not the value which had been attributed to them, and that it would soon
be necessary to replace them.
But where discover the new elements which might take the place of
tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social
edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men?
Men were agreed in attributing to reason the power that tradition and
the gods seemed to have lost. How could its force be doubted? Its
discoveries having been innumerable, was it not legitimate to suppose
that by applying it to the construction of societies it would entirely
transform them? Its possible function increased very rapidly in the
thoughts of the more enlightened, in proportion as tradition seemed more
and more to be distrusted.
The sovereign power attributed to reason must be regarded as the
culminating idea which not only engendered the Revolution but governed
it throughout. During the whole Revolution men gave themselves up to the
most persevering efforts to break with the past and to erect society
upon a new plan dictated by logic.
Slowly filtering downward, the rationalistic theories of the
philosophers meant to the people simply that all the things which had
been regarded as worthy of respect were now no longer worthy. Men being
declared equal, the old masters need no longer be obeyed. The multitude
easily succeeded in ceasing to respect what the upper classes themselves
no longer respected. When the barrier of respect was down the Revolution
was accomplished.
The first result of this new mentality was a general insubordination.
Mme. Vigée Lebrun relates that on the promenade at Longchamps men of the
people leaped on the footboards of the carriages, saying, "Next year you
will be behind and we shall be inside."
The populace was not alone in manifesting insubordination and
discontent. These sentiments were general on the eve of the Revolution.
"The lesser clergy," says Taine, "are hostile to the prelates; the
provincial gentry to the nobility of the court; the vassals to the
seigneurs; the peasants to the townsmen, etc."
This state of mind, which had been communicated from the nobles and
clergy to the people, also invaded the army. At the moment the States
General were opened, Necker said: "We are not sure of the troops." The
officers were becoming humanitarian and philosophical. The soldiers,
recruited from the lowest class of the population, did not philosophize,
but they no longer obeyed. In their feeble minds the ideas of equality
meant simply the suppression of all leaders and masters, and therefore
of all obedience. In 1790 more than twenty regiments threatened their
officers, and sometimes, as at Nancy, threw them into prison.
The mental anarchy which, after spreading through all classes of
society, finally invaded the army was the principal cause of the
disappearance of the _ancien régime_. "It was the defection of the army
affected by the ideas of the Third Estate," wrote Rivarol, "that
destroyed royalty."
The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was
conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective
nature, each category of which was ruled by a different logic. The
rational element usually invoked as an explanation exerted in reality
but very slight influence. It prepared the way for the Revolution, but
maintained it only at the outset, while it was still exclusively middle
class. Its action was manifested by many measures of the time, such as
the proposals to reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of
a useless nobility, etc.
As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the influence of the
rational elements speedily vanished before that of the affective and
collective elements. As for the mystic elements, the foundation of the
revolutionary faith, they made the army fanatical and propagated the new
belief throughout the world.
We shall see these various elements as they appeared in events and in
the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most important was the mystic
element. The Revolution cannot be clearly comprehended--we cannot repeat
it too often--unless it is considered as the formation of a religious
belief. What I have said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the
Revolution. They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have the
power to polarize men's thoughts and feelings in one direction. Pure
reason had never such a power, for men were never impassioned by reason.
The religious forms rapidly assumed by the Revolution explain its power
of expansion and the prestige which it possessed and has retained. Few
historians have understood that this great monument ought to be regarded
as the foundation of a new religion. The penetrating mind of
Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to perceive as much. He wrote:
The French Revolution was a political revolution which operated
in the manner of and assumed something of the aspect of a
religious revolution. See by what regular and characteristic
traits it finally resembled the latter; not only did it spread
itself far and wide like a religious revolution, but, like the
latter, it spread itself by means of preaching and propaganda.
A political revolution which inspires proselytes, which is
preached as passionately to foreigners as it is accomplished at
home: consider what a novel spectacle was this.
Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain
affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus
serves to group sentiments and passions and interests which belong to
the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify
events in which, however, it played no part whatever.
At the moment of the Revolution everyone, according to his aspirations,
dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw
in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and
hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe
and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of
reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France "to breathe the air of
liberty and to assist at the obsequies of despotism." These intellectual
illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed
the true foundations of the dream.
_b. Bolshevism_[311]
Great mass movements, whether these be religious or political, are at
first always difficult to understand. Invariably they challenge existing
moral and intellectual values, the revaluation of which is, for the
normal mind, an exceedingly difficult and painful task. Moreover the
definition of their aims and policies into exact and comprehensive
programs is generally slowly achieved. At their inception and during the
early stages of their development there must needs be many crude and
tentative statements and many rhetorical exaggerations. It is safe to
assert as a rule that at no stage of its history can a great movement
of the masses be fully understood and fairly interpreted by a study of
its formal statements and authentic expositions only. These must be
supplemented by a careful study of the psychology of the men and women
whose ideals and yearnings these statements and expositions aim to
represent. It is not enough to know and comprehend the creed: it is
essential that we also know and comprehend the spiritual factors, the
discontent, the hopes, the fears, the inarticulate visionings of the
human units in the movement. This is of greater importance in the
initial stages than later, when the articulation of the soul of the
movement has become more certain and clear.
No one who has attended many bolshevist meetings or is acquainted with
many of the individuals to whom bolshevism makes a strong appeal will
seriously question the statement that an impressively large number of
those who profess to be Bolshevists present a striking likeness to
extreme religious zealots, not only in the manner of manifesting their
enthusiasm, but also in their methods of exposition and argument. Just
as in religious hysteria a single text becomes a whole creed to the
exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to
rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything
else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single
phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the
usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but
also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must
be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists are of
this type.
People who possess minds thus affected are generally capable of, and
frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis.
Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant
thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial
ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are
not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The
initial movement is one of feeling, of emotional impulse. The conviction
thereby created is so strong and so dominant that it cannot be affected
by any purely rational functional factors.
People of this type jump at decisions and reach very positive
convictions upon the most difficult matters with bewildering ease. For
them the complexities and intricacies which trouble the normal mind do
not exist. Everything is either black or white: there are no perplexing
intervening grays. Right is right and wrong is wrong; they do not
recognize that there are doubtful twilight zones. Ideas capable of the
most elaborate expansion and the most subtle intricacies of
interpretation are immaturely grasped and preached with naïve assurance.
Statements alleged to be facts, no matter what their source, if they
seem to support the convictions thus emotionally derived, are received
without any examination and used as conclusive proof, notwithstanding
that a brief investigation would prove them to be worthless as evidence.
If we take the group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent
champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to
be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every "ism" as it arose,
seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity's ills. Those of an
older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else
could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in
the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their turn, took up
anarchist-communism, Marxian socialism, industrial unionism,
syndicalism, birth control, feminism, and many other movements and
propagandas, each of which in its turn induced ecstatic visions of a new
heaven and a new earth. The same individuals have grown lyrical in
praise of every bizarre and eccentric art fad. In the banal and
grotesque travesties of art produced by cubists, futurists, _et al._,
they saw transcendent genius. They are forever seeking new gods and
burying old ones.
It would be going too far to say that these individuals are all
hystericals in the pathological sense, but it is strictly accurate to
say that the class exhibits marked hysterical characteristics and that
it closely resembles the large class of over-emotionalized religious
enthusiasts which furnish so many true hystericals. It is probable that
accidents of environment account for the fact that their emotionalism
takes sociological rather than religious forms. If the sociological
impetus were absent, most of them would be religiously motived to a
state not less abnormal.
To understand the spread of bolshevist agitation and sympathy among a
very considerable part of the working class in this country, we must
take into account the fact that its logical and natural nucleus is the
I.W.W. It is necessary also to emancipate our minds from the obsession
that only "ignorant foreigners" are affected. This is not a true
estimate of either the I.W.W. or the bolshevist propaganda as a whole.
There are indeed many of this class in both, but there are also many
native Americans, sturdy, self-reliant, enterprising, and courageous
men. The peculiar group psychology which we are compelled to study is
less the result of those subtle and complex factors which are
comprehended in the vague term "race" than of the political and economic
conditions by which the group concerned is environed.
The typical native-born I.W.W. member, the "Wobbly" one frequently
encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the
hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He
is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some
characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress
rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features
intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation;
movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. There
are thousands of "wobblies" to whom the specifications of this
description will apply. Conversation with these men reveals that, as a
general rule, they are above rather than below the average in sobriety.
They are generally free from family ties, being either unmarried or, as
often happens, wife-deserters. They are not highly educated, few having
attended any school beyond the grammar-school grade. Many of them have,
however, read a great deal more than the average man, though their
reading has been curiously miscellaneous in selection and nearly always
badly balanced. Theology, philosophy, sociology, and economics seem to
attract most attention. In discussion--and every "Wobbly" seems to
possess a passion for disputation--men of this type will manifest a
surprising familiarity with the broad outlines of certain theological
problems, as well as with the scriptural texts bearing upon them. It is
very likely to be the case, however, that they have only read a few
popular classics of what used to be called rationalism--Paine's _Age of
Reason_, Ingersoll's lectures in pamphlet form, and Haeckel's _Riddle of
the Universe_ are typical. A surprisingly large number can quote
extensively from Buckle's _History of Civilization_ and from the
writings of Marx. They quote statistics freely--statistics of wages,
poverty, crime, vice, and so on--generally derived from the radical
press and implicitly believed because so published, with what they
accept as adequate authority.
Their most marked peculiarity is the migratory nature of their lives.
Whether this is self-determined, a matter of temperament and habit, or
due to uncontrollable factors, it is largely responsible for the
contempt in which they are popularly held. It naturally brings upon them
the reproach and resentment everywhere visited upon "tramps" and
"vagabonds." They rarely remain long enough in any one place to form
local attachments and ties or anything like civic pride. They move from
job to job, city to city, state to state, sometimes tramping afoot,
begging as they go; sometimes stealing rides on railway trains, in
freight cars--"side-door Pullmans"--or on the rods underneath the cars.
Frequently arrested for begging, trespassing, or stealing rides, they
are often victims of injustice at the hands of local judges and
justices. The absence of friends, combined with the prejudice against
vagrants which everywhere exists, subjects them to arbitrary and
high-handed injustice such as no other body of American citizens has to
endure. Moreover, through the conditions of their existence they are
readily suspected of crimes they do not commit; it is all too easy for
the hard-pushed police officer or sheriff to impute a crime to the lone
and defenseless "Wobbly," who frequently can produce no testimony to
prove his innocence, simply because he has no friends in the
neighborhood and has been at pains to conceal his movements. In this
manner the "Wobbly" becomes a veritable son of Ishmael, his hand against
the hand of nearly every man in conventional society. In particular he
becomes a rebel by habit, hating the police and the courts as his
constant enemies.
Doubtless the great majority of these men are temperamentally
predisposed to the unanchored, adventurous, migratory existence which
they lead. Boys so constituted run away to sea, take jobs with traveling
circuses, or enlist as soldiers. The type is familiar and not uncommon.
Such individuals cannot be content with the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous
life of regular employment. As a rule we do not look upon this trait in
boy or man as criminal.
Many a hardworking, intelligent American, who from choice or from
necessity is a migratory worker, following his job, never has an
opportunity to vote for state legislators, for governor, for
congressman or president. He is just as effectively excluded from the
actual electorate as if he were a Chinese coolie, ignorant of our
customs and our speech.
We cannot wonder that such conditions prove prolific breeders of
bolshevism and similar "isms." It would be strange indeed if it were
otherwise. We have no right to expect that men who are so constantly the
victims of arbitrary, unjust, and even brutal treatment at the hands of
our police and our courts will manifest any reverence for the law and
the judicial system. Respect for majority rule in government cannot
fairly be demanded from a disfranchised group. It is not to be wondered
at that the old slogan of socialism, "Strike at the ballot-box!"--the
call to lift the struggle of the classes to the parliamentary level for
peaceful settlement--becomes the desperate, anarchistic I.W.W. slogan,
"Strike at the ballot-box with an ax!" Men who can have no family life
cannot justly be expected to bother about school administration. Men who
can have no home life but only dreary shelter in crowded work-camps or
dirty doss-houses are not going to bother themselves with municipal
housing reforms.
In short, we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our
problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile,
red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of
life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of
reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little
concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to
our intellectuals seem to be the essence of bolshevism. They are vitally
concerned only with action. Syndicalism and bolshevism involve speedy
and drastic action--hence the force of their appeal.
Finally, if we would understand why millions of people in all lands have
turned away from old ideals, old loyalties, and old faiths to
bolshevism, with something of the passion and frenzy characteristic of
great messianic movements, we must take into account the intense
spiritual agony and hunger which the Great War has brought into the
lives of civilized men. The old gods are dead and men are everywhere
expectantly waiting for the new gods to arise. The aftermath of the war
is a spiritual cataclysm such as civilized mankind has never before
known. The old religions and moralities are shattered and men are
waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth
of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some
sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning
for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were
some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new
Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new
society, he would find an eager, soul-hungry world already predisposed
to believe.
4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism[312]
The corruption of manners which has been general since the restoration
was combated by societies for "the reformation of manners," which in the
last years of the seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions.
They began in certain private societies which arose in the reign of
James II, chiefly under the auspices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck.
These societies were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have
been almost identical in character with those of the early Methodists.
They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and Bible-readings; they
sustained charities and distributed religious books, and they cultivated
a warmer and more ascetic type of devotion than was common in the
Church. Societies of this description sprang up in almost every
considerable city in England and even in several of those in Ireland. In
the last years of the seventeenth century we find no less than ten of
them in Dublin. Without, however, altogether discarding their first
character, they assumed, about 1695, new and very important functions.
They divided themselves into several distinct groups, undertaking the
discovery and suppression of houses of ill fame, and the prosecution of
swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. They became a kind of
voluntary police, acting largely as spies, and enforcing the laws
against religious offenses. The energy with which this scheme was
carried out is very remarkable. As many as seventy or eighty persons
were often prosecuted in London and Westminster for cursing and
swearing, in a single week. Sunday markets, which had hitherto been not
uncommon, were effectually suppressed. Hundreds of disorderly houses
were closed. Forty or fifty night-walkers were sent every week to
Bridewell, and numbers were induced to emigrate to the colonies. A great
part of the fines levied for these offenses was bestowed on the poor. In
the fortieth annual report of the "Societies for the Reformation of
Manners" which appeared in 1735, it was stated that the number of
prosecutions for debauchery and profaneness in London and Westminster
alone, since the foundation of the societies, had been 99,380.
The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society
of students at Oxford, who met together between 1729 and 1735 for the
purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every
week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, and on most days
during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from
most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons and
prisoners in the gaol. John Wesley, the future leader of the religious
revival of the eighteenth century, was the master-spirit of this
society. The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was
the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men
who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was
Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the
favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and
more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for
the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the
movement, and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles
Wesley appears to have originated the society at Oxford; he brought
Whitefield into its pale, and besides being the most popular poet he was
one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement.
In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already
formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia, Charles Wesley had begun
to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in
Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist
societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. They were in
part a continuation of the society at Oxford, in part a revival of those
religious societies that have been already noticed as so common after
the Revolution. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a
seedplot of a more fervent piety, the center of a stricter discipline
and a more energetic propagandism than existed in religious communities
at large. In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts
was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the
most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual
tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They
were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of
every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts,
words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at
every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last
meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered?
What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be
sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?"
Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an
overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the
judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in
1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to
dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense
or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five
or ten people everything without reserve that concerns the person's
conscience how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married
persons to be there unless husband and wife be there together?"
From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of
missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to
place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were
admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter
hostility in the Church.
We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all
this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and
Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary
clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. Yet before the end
of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of
the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish
what they considered a Divine mission, to take steps in the direction of
separation.
Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them
was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended not to oppose
or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and
to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught
to the people. The other and still more important event was the
institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to
him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church
in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the
neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was himself excluded from the
pulpits at Bristol, and was thus deprived of the chief normal means of
exercising his talents, his attention was called to the condition of the
colliers at Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at
finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate
neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands, sunk in
the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the
ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address
the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for
field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no
common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke,
and to commence the experiment in the center of a half-savage
population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and
in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text
the first words of the sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he
addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two
hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On
successive occasions, five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were
present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The
lanes were filled with carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom
curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with
humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The
voice of the great preacher pealed with a thrilling power to the
outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion
and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep
sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of
the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity to his eloquence.
His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and
motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters
down cheeks blackened from the coal mine. Then sobs and groans told how
hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the
outcasts of Kingswood which burnt long and fiercely, and was destined
in a few years to overspread the land.
But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great
statesman, Methodism would probably have smouldered and at last perished
like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century.
Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could
alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more
ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and
impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm
had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of
moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching
by Whitefield in the February of 1739 carried the impulse through the
great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of
the same year, of the first Methodist chapel was the beginning of an
organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had
been achieved.
From the time of the institution of lay preachers Methodism became in a
great degree independent of the Established Church. Its chapels
multiplied in the great towns, and its itinerant missionaries penetrated
to the most secluded districts. They were accustomed to preach in fields
and gardens, in streets and lecture-rooms, in market places and
churchyards. On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a
stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing
the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks
at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of
the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the
gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity. Wesley, when
excluded from the pulpit of Epworth, delivered some of his most
impressive sermons in the churchyard, standing on his father's tomb.
Howell Harris, the apostle of Wales, encountering a party of
mountebanks, sprang into their midst exclaiming, in a solemn voice, "Let
us pray," and then proceeded to thunder forth the judgments of the Lord.
Rowland Hill was accustomed to visit the great towns on market day in
order that he might address the people in the market place, and to go
from fair to fair preaching among the revelers from his favorite text,
"Come out from among them." In this manner the Methodist preachers came
in contact with the most savage elements of the population, and there
were few forms of mob violence they did not experience. In 1741 one of
their preachers named Seward, after repeated ill treatment in Wales, was
at last struck on the head while preaching at Monmouth, and died of the
blow. In a riot, while Wheatley was preaching at Norwich, a poor woman
with child perished from the kicks and blows of the mob. At Dublin,
Whitefield was almost stoned to death. At Exeter he was stoned in the
very presence of the bishop. At Plymouth he was violently assaulted and
his life seriously threatened by a naval officer.
Scenes of this kind were of continual occurrence, and they were
interspersed with other persecutions of a less dangerous description.
Drums were beaten, horns blown, guns let off, and blacksmiths hired to
ply their noisy trade in order to drown the voices of the preachers.
Once, at the very moment when Whitefield announced his text, the belfry
gave out a peal loud enough to make him inaudible. On other occasions
packs of hounds were brought with the same object, and once, in order to
excite the dogs to fury, a live cat in a cage was placed in their midst.
Fire engines poured streams of fetid water upon the congregation. Stones
fell so thickly that the faces of many grew crimson with blood. At
Hoxton the mob drove an ox into the midst of the congregation. At
Pensford the rabble, who had been baiting a bull, concluded their sport
by driving the torn and tired animal full against the table on which
Wesley was preaching. Sometimes we find innkeepers refusing to receive
the Methodist leaders in their inns, farmers entering into an agreement
to dismiss every laborer who attended a Methodist preacher, landlords
expelling all Methodists from their cottages, masters dismissing their
servants because they had joined the sect. The magistrates, who knew by
experience that the presence of a Methodist preacher was the usual
precursor of disturbance and riot, looked on them with the greatest
disfavor, and often scandalously connived at the persecutions they
underwent.
It was frequently observed by Wesley that his preaching rarely affected
the rich and the educated. It was over the ignorant and the credulous
that it exercised its most appalling power, and it is difficult to
overrate the mental anguish it must sometimes have produced. Timid and
desponding natures unable to convince themselves that they had undergone
a supernatural change, gentle and affectionate natures who believed that
those who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire,
must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of
the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist
preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their
imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression,
discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror
to the darkness of the grave. Sufferings of this description, though
among the most real and the most terrible that superstition can inflict,
are so hidden in their nature that they leave few traces in history; but
it is impossible to read the journals of Wesley without feeling that
they were most widely diffused. Many were thrown into paroxysms of
extreme, though usually transient, agony; many doubtless nursed a secret
sorrow which corroded all the happiness of their lives, while not a few
became literally insane. On one occasion Wesley was called to the
bedside of a young woman at Kingswood. He tells us:
She was nineteen or twenty years old, but, it seems, could not
write or read. I found her on the bed, two or three persons
holding her. It was a terrible sight. Anguish, horror, and
despair above all description appeared in her pale face. The
thousand distortions of her whole body showed how the dogs of
hell were gnawing at her heart. The shrieks intermixed were
scarce to be endured. But her stony eyes could not weep. She
screamed out as soon as words could find their way, "I am
damned, damned, lost forever: six days ago you might have
helped me. But it is past. I am the devil's now.... I will go
with him to hell. I cannot be saved." They sang a hymn, and for
a time she sank to rest, but soon broke out anew in incoherent
exclamations, "Break, break, poor stony hearts! Will you not
break? What more can be done for stony hearts? I am damned that
you may be saved!"... She then fixed her eyes in the corner of
the ceiling, and said, "There he is, ay, there he is! Come,
good devil, come! Take me away."... We interrupted her by
calling again on God, on which she sank down as before, and
another young woman began to roar out as loud as she had done.
For more than two hours Wesley and his brother continued praying over
her. At last the paroxysms subsided and the patient joined in a hymn of
praise.
In the intense religious enthusiasm that was generated, many of the ties
of life were snapped in twain. Children treated with contempt the
commands of their parents, students the rules of their colleges,
clergymen the discipline of their Church. The whole structure of
society, and almost all the amusements of life, appeared criminal. The
fairs, the mountebanks, the public rejoicings of the people, were all
Satanic. It was sinful for a woman to wear any gold ornament or any
brilliant dress. It was even sinful for a man to exercise the common
prudence of laying by a certain portion of his income. When Whitefield
proposed to a lady to marry him, he thought it necessary to say, "I
bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that
foolish passion which the world calls love." "I trust I love you only
for God, and desire to be joined to you only by His commands, and for
His sake." It is perhaps not very surprising that Whitefield's marriage,
like that of Wesley, proved very unhappy. Theaters and the reading of
plays were absolutely condemned, and Methodists employed all their
influence with the authorities to prevent the erection of the former. It
seems to have been regarded as a divine judgment that once, when
_Macbeth_ was being acted at Drury Lane, a real thunderstorm mingled
with the mimic thunder in the witch scene. Dancing was, if possible,
even worse than the theater. "Dancers," said Whitefield, "please the
devil at every step"; and it was said that his visit to a town usually
put "a stop to the dancing-school, the assemblies, and every pleasant
thing." He made it his mission to "bear testimony against the detestable
diversions of this generation"; and he declared that no "recreations,
considered as such, can be innocent."
Accompanying this asceticism we find an extraordinary revival of the
grossest superstition. It was a natural consequence of the essentially
emotional character of Methodism that its disciples should imagine that
every strong feeling or impulse within them was a direct inspiration of
God or Satan. The language of Whitefield--the language in a great degree
of all the members of the sect--was that of men who were at once
continually inspired and the continual objects of miraculous
interposition. In every perplexity they imagined that, by casting lots
or opening their Bibles at random, they could obtain a supernatural
answer to their inquiries.
In all matters relating to Satanic interference, Wesley was especially
credulous. "I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the
existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred
and profane." He had no doubt that the physical contortions into which
so many of his hearers fell were due to the direct agency of Satan, who
tore the converts as they were coming to Christ. He had himself seen men
and women who were literally possessed by devils; he had witnessed forms
of madness which were not natural, but diabolical, and he had
experienced in his own person the hysterical affections which resulted
from supernatural agency.
If Satanic agencies continually convulsed those who were coming to the
faith, divine judgments as frequently struck down those who opposed it.
Every illness, every misfortune that befell an opponent, was believed to
be supernatural. Molther, the Moravian minister, shortly after the
Methodists had separated from the Moravians, was seized with a passing
illness. "I believe," wrote Wesley, "it was the hand of God that was
upon him." Numerous cases were cited of sudden and fearful judgments
which fell upon the adversaries of the cause. A clergyman at Bristol,
standing up to preach against the Methodists, "was suddenly seized with
a rattling in his throat, attended with a hideous groaning," and on the
next Sunday he died. At Todmorden a minister was struck with a violent
fit of palsy immediately after preaching against the Methodists. At
Enniscorthy a clergyman, having preached for some time against
Methodism, deferred the conclusion of the discourse to the following
Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about
him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he
went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective
against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A
woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed,
"They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the
ground, and next day expired. "A party of young men rode up to Richmond
to disturb the sermons of Rowland Hill. The boat sank, and all of them
were drowned." At Sheffield the captain of a gang who had long troubled
the field-preachers, was bathing with his companions. "Another dip," he
said, "and then for a bit of sport with the Methodists." He dived,
struck his head against a stone, and appeared no more. By such anecdotes
and by such beliefs a fever of enthusiasm was sustained.
But with all its divisions and defects the movement was unquestionably
effecting a great moral revolution in England. It was essentially a
popular movement, exercising its deepest influence over the lower and
middle classes. Some of its leaders were men of real genius, but in
general the Methodist teacher had little sympathy with the more educated
of his fellow-countrymen. To an ordinarily cultivated mind there was
something extremely repulsive in his tears and groans and amorous
ejaculations, in the coarse and anthropomorphic familiarity and the
unwavering dogmatism with which he dealt with the most sacred subjects,
in the narrowness of his theory of life and his utter insensibility to
many of the influences that expand and embellish it, in the mingled
credulity and self-confidence with which he imagined that the whole
course of nature was altered for his convenience. But the very qualities
that impaired his influence in one sphere enhanced it in another. His
impassioned prayers and exhortations stirred the hearts of multitudes
whom a more decorous teaching had left absolutely callous. The
supernatural atmosphere of miracles, judgments, and inspirations in
which he moved, invested the most prosaic life with a halo of romance.
The doctrines he taught, the theory of life he enforced, proved
themselves capable of arousing in great masses of men an enthusiasm of
piety which was hardly surpassed in the first days of Christianity, of
eradicating inveterate vice, of fixing and directing impulsive and
tempestuous natures that were rapidly hastening toward the abyss. Out of
the profligate slave-dealer, John Newton, Methodism formed one of the
purest and most unselfish of saints. It taught criminals in Newgate to
mount the gallows in an ecstasy of rapturous devotion. It planted a
fervid and enduring religious sentiment in the midst of the most brutal
and most neglected portions of the population, and whatever may have
been its vices or its defects, it undoubtedly emancipated great numbers
from the fear of death, and imparted a warmer tone to the devotion and a
greater energy to the philanthropy of every denomination both in England
and the colonies.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Social Unrest
The term collective behavior, which has been used elsewhere to include
all the facts of group life, has been limited for the purposes of this
chapter to those phenomena which exhibit in the most obvious and
elementary way the processes by which societies are disintegrated into
their constituent elements and the processes by which these elements are
brought together again into new relations to form new organizations and
new societies.
Some years ago John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor
situation in the United States. He called the volume _Social Unrest_.
The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word
unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide
usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native
American to move from one part of the country to another, of his
restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait
transmitted in the blood. We speak more often of the "restless age," as
if mobility and the desire for novelty and new experience were
peculiarly characteristic of the twentieth century. We use the word to
describe conditions in different regions of social life in such
expressions as "political," "religious," and "labor" unrest, and in
every case the word is used in a sense that indicates change, but change
that menaces the existing order. Finally, we speak of the "restless
woman," as of a peculiar modern type, characteristic of the changed
status of women in general in the modern world. In all these different
uses we may observe the gradual unfolding of the concept which seems to
have been implicit in the word as it was first used. It is the concept
of an activity in response to some urgent organic impulse which the
activity, however, does not satisfy. It is a diagnostic symptom, a
symptom of what Graham Wallas calls "balked disposition." It is a sign
that in the existing situation some one or more of the four
wishes--security, new experience, recognition, and response--has not
been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is
social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that
provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the
group where the unrest manifests itself. [313] The materials in which
the term unrest is used in the sense indicated are in the popular
discussions of social questions. The term is not defined but it is
frequently used in connection with descriptions of conditions which are
evidently responsible for it. Labor strikes are evidences of social
unrest, and the literature already referred to in the chapter on
"Conflict"[1] shows the conditions under which unrest arises, is
provoked and exploited in labor situations. The relation of unrest to
routine and fatigue has been the subject of a good deal of discussion
and some investigation. The popular conception is that labor unrest is
due to the dull driving routine of machine industry. The matter needs
further study. The actual mental experiences of the different sexes,
ages, temperamental and mental types under the influence of routine
would add a much needed body of fact to our present psychology of the
worker.
2. Psychic Epidemics
If social unrest is a symptom of disorganization, then the psychic
epidemics, in which all the phenomena of social unrest and contagion are
intensified, is evidence positive that disorganization exists. Social
disorganization must be considered in relation to reorganization. All
change involves a certain amount of disorganization. In order that an
individual may make new adjustments and establish new habits it is
inevitable that old habits should be broken up, and in order that
society may reform an existing social order a certain amount of
disorganization is inevitable. Social unrest may be, therefore, a
symptom of health. It is only when the process of disorganization goes
on so rapidly and to such an extent that the whole existing social
structure is impaired, and society is, for that reason, not able to
readjust itself, that unrest is to be regarded as a pathological
symptom.
There is reason to believe, contrary to the popular conception, that the
immigrant in America, particularly in the urban environment,
accommodates himself too quickly rather than too slowly to American
life. Statistics show, particularly in the second generation, a notable
increase in juvenile delinquency, and this seems to be due to the fact
that in America the relation between parents and children is reversed.
Owing to the children's better knowledge of English and their more rapid
accommodation to the conditions of American life, parents become
dependent upon their children rather than the children dependent upon
their parents.
Social epidemics, however, are evidence of a social disintegration due
to more fundamental and widespread disorders. The literature has
recorded the facts but writers have usually interpreted the phenomena in
medical rather than sociological terms. Stoll, in his very interesting
but rather miscellaneous collection of materials upon primitive life,
disposes of the phenomena by giving them another name. His volume is
entitled _Suggestion and Hypnotism in Folk Psychology_.[314] Friedmann,
in his monograph, _Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben_, is disposed as a
psychiatrist to treat the whole matter as a form of "social" insanity.
3. Mass Movements
In spite of the abundance of materials on the subject of mass movements
no attempt has been made as yet to collect and classify them. There have
been a number of interesting books in the field of collective
psychology, so called mainly by French and Italian writers--Sighele,
Rossi, Tarde, and Le Bon--but they are not based on a systematic study
of cases. The general assumption has been that the facts are so obvious
that any attempt to study systematically the mechanisms involved would
amount to little more than academic elaboration of what is already
obvious, a restatement in more abstract terms of what is already
familiar.
On the other hand, shepherds and cowboys, out of their experience in
handling cattle and sheep, have learned that the flock and the herd have
quite peculiar and characteristic modes of collective behavior which it
is necessary to know if one is to handle them successfully. At the same
time, practical politicians who make a profession of herding voters,
getting them out to the polls at the times they are needed and
determining for them, by the familiar campaign devices, the persons and
the issues for which they are to cast their ballots, have worked out
very definite methods for dealing with masses of people, so that they
are able to predict the outcome with considerable accuracy far in
advance of an election and make their dispositions accordingly.
Political manipulation of the movements and tendencies of popular
opinion has now reached a point of perfection where it can and will be
studied systematically. During the world-war it was studied, and all the
knowledge which advertisers, newspaper men, and psychologists possessed
was used to win the war.
Propaganda is now recognized as part of the grand strategy of war. Not
only political and diplomatic victories, but battles were won during the
world-war by the aid of this insidious weapon. The great victory of the
Austrian and German armies at Caporetto which in a few days wiped out
all the hard-won successes of the Italian armies was prepared by a
psychic attack on the morale of the troops at the front and a defeatist
campaign among the Italian population back of the lines.
In the battle of Caporetto the morale of the troops at the
front was undermined by sending postal cards and letters to
individual soldiers stating that their wives were in illicit
relations with officers and soldiers of the allies. Copies of
Roman and Milanese newspapers were forged and absolute
facsimiles of familiar journals were secretly distributed or
dropped from Austrian aeroplanes over the Italian lines. These
papers contained sensational articles telling the Italians that
Austria was in revolt, that Emperor Charles had been killed.
Accompanying these were other articles describing bread riots
throughout Italy and stating that the Italian government,
unable to quell them with its own forces, had sent British and
French re-enforcing troops and even Zulus into the cities, and
that these troops were shooting down women and children and
priests without mercy.
This attack upon the morale of the troops was followed by an
unforeseen assault upon a quiet sector, which succeeded in
piercing the line at numerous points. In the confusion that
followed the whole structure of the defense crumbled, and the
result was disastrous.
When the final history of the world-war comes to be written, one of its
most interesting chapters will be a description of the methods and
devices which were used by the armies on both sides to destroy the will
to war in the troops and among the peoples behind the lines. If the
application of modern science to war has multiplied the engines of
destruction, the increase of communication and the interpenetration of
peoples has given war among civilized peoples the character of an
internal and internecine struggle. Under these circumstances propaganda,
in the sense of an insidious exploitation of the sources of dissension
and unrest, may as completely change the character of wars of peoples as
they were once changed by the invention of gunpowder.
In this field there is room for investigation and study, for almost all
attempts thus far made to put advertising on a scientific basis have
been made by students of individual rather than social psychology.
4. Revivals, Religious and Linguistic
For something more than a hundred years Europe has experienced a series
of linguistic and literary revivals, that is to say revivals of the folk
languages and the folk cultures. The folk languages are the speech of
peoples who have been conquered but not yet culturally absorbed by the
dominant language group. They are mostly isolated rural populations who
have remained to a large extent outside of the cosmopolitan cultures of
the cities. These people while not wholly illiterate have never had
enough education in the language of the dominant peoples of the cities
to enable them to use this alien speech as a medium of education. The
consequence is that, except for a relatively small group of
intellectuals, they have been cut off from the main current of European
life and culture. These linguistic revivals have not been confined to
any one nation, since every nation in Europe turns out upon analysis to
be a mosaic of minor nationalities and smaller cultural enclaves in
which the languages of little and forgotten peoples have been preserved.
Linguistic revivals have, in fact, been well-nigh universal. They have
taken place in France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, in most of the Balkan
States, including Albania, the most isolated of them all, and in all the
smaller nationalities along the Slavic-German border--Finland, Esthonia,
Letvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia, Roumania, and the Ukraine.
Finally, among the Jews of Eastern Europe, there has been the Haskala
Movement, as the Jews of Eastern Europe call their period of
enlightenment, a movement that has quite unintentionally made the
Judeo-German dialect (Yiddish) a literary language.
At first blush, it seems strange that the revivals of the folk
speech should have come at a time when the locomotive and the
telegraph were extending commerce and communication to the
uttermost limits of the earth, when all barriers were breaking
down, and the steady expansion of cosmopolitan life and the
organization of the Great Society, as Graham Wallas has called
it, seemed destined to banish all the minor languages,
dialects, and obsolescent forms of speech, the last props of an
international provincialism, to the limbo of forgotten things.
The competition of the world-languages was already keen; all
the little and forgotten peoples of Europe--the Finns, Letts,
Ukrainians, Russo-Carpathians, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians,
the Catalonians of eastern Spain, whose language, by the way,
dates back to a period before the Roman Conquest, the Czechs,
and the Poles--began to set up presses and establish schools to
revive and perpetuate their several racial languages.
To those who, at this time, were looking forward to
world-organization and a universal peace through the medium of
a universal language, all this agitation had the appearance of
an anachronism, not to say a heresy. It seemed a deliberate
attempt to set up barriers, where progress demanded that they
should be torn down. The success of such a movement, it seemed,
must be to bring about a more complete isolation of the
peoples, to imprison them, so to speak, in their own languages,
and so cut them off from the general culture of Europe.[315]
The actual effect has been different from what was expected. It is
difficult, and for the masses of the people impossible, to learn through
the medium of a language that they do not speak. The results of the
efforts to cultivate Swedish and Russian in Finland, Polish and Russian
in Lithuania, Magyar in Slovakia and at the same time to prohibit the
publication of books and newspapers in the mother-tongue of the country
has been, in the first place, to create an artificial illiteracy and, in
the second, to create in the minds of native peoples a sense of social
and intellectual inferiority to the alien and dominant race.
The effect of the literary revival of the spoken language, however, has
been to create, in spite of the efforts to suppress it, a vernacular
press which opened the gates of western culture to great masses of
people for whom it did not previously exist. The result has been a great
cultural awakening, a genuine renaissance, which has had profound
reverberations on the political and social life of Europe.
The literary revival of the folk speech in Europe has
invariably been a prelude to the revival of the national spirit
in subject peoples. The sentiment of nationality has its roots
in memories that attach to the common possessions of the
people, the land, the religion, and the language, but
particularly the language.
Bohemian patriots have a saying, "As long as the language
lives, the nation is not dead." In an address in 1904 Jorgen
Levland, who was afterward Premier of Norway, in a plea for
"freedom with self-government, home, land, and our own
language," made this statement: "Political freedom is not the
deepest and greatest. Greater is it for a nation to preserve
her intellectual inheritance in her native tongue."
The revival of the national consciousness in the subject
peoples has invariably been connected with the struggle to
maintain a press in the native language. The reason is that it
was through the medium of the national press that the literary
and linguistic revivals took place. Conversely, the efforts to
suppress the rising national consciousness took the form of an
effort to censor or suppress the national press. There were
nowhere attempts to suppress the spoken language as such. On
the other hand, it was only as the spoken language succeeded in
becoming a medium of literary expression that it was possible
to preserve it under modern conditions and maintain in this way
the national solidarity. When the Lithuanians, for example,
were condemned to get their education and their culture through
the medium of a language not their own, the effect was to
denationalize the literate class and to make its members aliens
to their own people. If there was no national press, there
could be no national schools, and, indeed, no national church.
It was for this reason that the struggle to maintain the
national language and the national culture has always been a
struggle to maintain a national press.
European nationalists, seeking to revive among their peoples
the national consciousness, have invariably sought to restore
the national speech, to purge it of foreign idioms, and
emphasize every mark which serves to distinguish it from the
languages with which it tended to fuse.[316]
Investigation of these linguistic revivals and the nationalist movement
that has grown out of them indicates that there is a very intimate
relation between nationalist and religious movements. Both of them are
fundamentally cultural movements with incidental political consequences.
The movement which resulted in the reorganization of rural life in
Denmark, the movement that found expression in so unique an institution
as the rural high schools of Denmark, was begun by Bishop Grundtvig,
called the Luther of Denmark, and was at once a religious and a
nationalist movement. The rural high schools are for this reason not
like anything in the way of education with which people outside of
Denmark are familiar. They are not technical schools but cultural
institutions in the narrowest, or broadest, sense of that term.[317] The
teaching is "scientific," but at the same time "inspirational." They
are what a Sunday school might be if it were not held on Sunday and was
organized as Mr. H. G. Wells would organize it and with such a bible as
he would like to have someone write for us.[318]
The popular accounts which we have of religious revivals do not at first
suggest any very definite relations, either psychological or
sociological, between them and the literary revivals to which reference
has just been made. Religious revivals, particularly as described by
dispassionate observers, have the appearance of something bizarre,
fantastic, and wild, as indeed they often are.
What must strike the thoughtful observer, however, is the marked
similarity of these collective religious excitements, whether among
civilized or savage peoples and at places and periods remote in time and
in space. Frederick Morgan Davenport, who has collected and compared the
materials in this field from contemporary sources, calls attention in
the title of his volume, _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, to
this fundamental similarity of the phenomena. Whatever else the word
"primitive" may mean in this connection it does mean that the phenomena
of religious revivals are fundamentally human.
From the frantic and disheveled dances of the Bacchantes, following a
wine cart through an ancient Greek village, to the shouts and groans of
the mourners' bench of an old-time Methodist camp-meeting, religious
excitement has always stirred human nature more profoundly than any
other emotion except that of passionate love.
In the volume by Jean Pélissier, _The Chief Makers of the National
Lithuanian Renaissance_ (_Les Principaux artisans de la renaissance
nationale lituanienne_), there is a paragraph describing the conversion
of a certain Dr. Kudirka, a Lithuanian patriot, to the cause of
Lithuanian nationality. It reads like a chapter from William James's
_The Varieties of Religious Experience_.[319]
It is materials like this that indicate how close and intimate are the
relations between cultural movements, whether religious or literary and
national, at least in their formal expression. The question that remains
to be answered is: In what ways do they differ?
5. Fashion, Reform and Revolution
A great deal has been written in recent times in regard to fashion. It
has been studied, for example, as an economic phenomenon. Sombart has
written a suggestive little monograph on the subject. It is in the
interest of machine industry that fashions should be standardized over a
wide area, and it is the function of advertising to achieve this result.
It is also of interest to commerce that fashions should change and this
also is largely, but not wholly, a matter of advertising. Tarde
distinguishes between custom and fashion as the two forms in which all
cultural traits are transmitted. "In periods when custom is in the
ascendant, men are more infatuated about their country than about their
time; for it is the past which is pre-eminently praised. In ages when
fashion rules, men are prouder, on the contrary, of their time than of
their country."[320]
The most acute analysis that has been made of fashion is contained in
the observation of Sumner in _Folkways_. Sumner pointed out that fashion
though differing from, is intimately related to, the mores. Fashion
fixes the attention of the community at a given time and place and by so
doing determines what is sometimes called the Spirit of the Age, the
_Zeitgeist_. By the introduction of new fashions the leaders of society
gain that distinction in the community by which they are able to
maintain their prestige and so maintain their position as leaders. But
in doing this, they too are influenced by the fashions which they
introduce. Eventually changes in fashion affect the mores.[321]
Fashion is related to reform and to revolution, because it is one of the
fundamental ways in which social changes take place and because, like
reform and revolution, it also is related to the mores.
Fashion is distinguished from reform by the fact that the changes it
introduces are wholly irrational if not at the same time wholly
unpredictable. Reform, on the other hand, is nothing if not rational. It
achieves its ends by agitation and discussion. Attempts have been made
to introduce fashions by agitation, but they have not succeeded. On the
other hand, reform is itself a fashion and has largely absorbed in
recent years the interest that was formerly bestowed on party politics.
There has been a great deal written about reforms but almost nothing
about _reform_. It is a definite type of collective behavior which has
come into existence and gained popularity under conditions of modern
life. The reformer and the agitator, likewise, are definite,
temperamental, and social types. Reform tends under modern conditions to
become a vocation and a profession like that of the politician. The
profession of the reformer, however, is social, as distinguished from
party politics.
Reform is not revolution. It does not seek to change the mores but
rather to change conditions in conformity with the mores. There have
been revolutionary reformers. Joseph II of Austria and Peter the Great
of Russia were reformers of that type. But revolutionary reforms have
usually failed. They failed lamentably in the case of Joseph II and
produced many very dubious results under Peter.
A revolution is a mass movement which seeks to change the mores by
destroying the existing social order. Great and silent revolutionary
changes have frequently taken place in modern times, but as these
changes were not recognized at the time and were not directly sought by
any party they are not usually called revolutions. They might properly
be called "historical revolutions," since they are not recognized as
revolutions until they are history.
There is probably a definite revolutionary process but it has not been
defined. Le Bon's book on the _Psychology of Revolution_, which is the
sequel to his study of _The Crowd_, is, to be sure, an attempt, but the
best that one can say of it is that it is suggestive. Many attempts have
been made to describe the processes of revolution as part of the whole
historical process. This literature will be considered in the chapter on
"Progress."
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. DISORGANIZATION, SOCIAL UNREST, AND PSYCHIC EPIDEMICS
A. _Social Disorganization_
(1) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Organization._ Chap. xxx, "Formalism and
Disorganization," pp. 342-55; chap. xxxi, "Disorganization: the Family,"
pp. 356-71; chap. xxxii, "Disorganization: the Church," pp. 372-82;
chap. xxxiii, "Disorganization: Other Traditions," pp. 383-92. New York,
1909.
(2) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, Florian. _The Polish Peasant in Europe
and America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. IV, "Disorganization
and Reorganization in Poland," Boston, 1920.
(3) ----. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ Vol. V,
"Organization and Disorganization in America," Part II, "Disorganization
of the Immigrant," pp. 165-345. Boston, 1920.
(4) Friedländer, L. _Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire._
Authorized translation by L. A. Magnus from the 7th rev. ed. of the
Sittengeschichte Roms. 4 vols. London, 1908-13.
(5) Lane-Poole, S. _The Mohammedan Dynasties._ Charts showing "Growth of
the Ottoman Empire" and "Decline of the Ottoman Empire," pp. 190-91.
London, 1894.
(6) Taine, H. _The Ancient Régime._ Translated from the French by John
Durand. New York, 1896.
(7) Wells, H. G. _Russia in the Shadows._ New York, 1921.
(8) Patrick, George T. W. _The Psychology of Social Reconstruction._
Chap. vi, "Our Centripetal Society," pp. 174-98. Boston, 1920.
(9) Ferrero, Guglielmo. "The Crisis of Western Civilization," _Atlantic
Monthly_, CXXV (1920), 700-712.
B. _Social Unrest_
(1) Brooks, John Graham. _The Social Unrest._ Studies in labor and
socialist movements. London, 1903.
(2) Fuller, Bampfylde. _Life and Human Nature._ Chap. ii, "Change," pp.
24-45. London, 1914.
(3) Wallas, Graham. _The Great Society._ A psychological analysis. Chap.
iv, "Disposition and Environment," pp. 57-68. New York, 1914. [Defines
"the baulked disposition," see also pp. 172-74.]
(4) Healy, William. _The Individual Delinquent._ A textbook of diagnosis
and prognosis for all concerned in understanding offenders. "Hypomania,
Constitutional Excitement," pp. 609-13. Boston, 1915.
(5) Janet, Pierre. _The Major Symptoms of Hysteria._ Fifteen lectures
given in the medical school of Harvard University. New York, 1907.
(6) Barr, Martin W., and Maloney, E. F. _Types of Mental Defectives._
"Idiot Savant," pp. 128-35. Philadelphia, 1920.
(7) Thomas, Edward. _Industry, Emotion and Unrest._ New York, 1920.
(8) Parker, Carleton H. _The Casual Laborer and Other Essays._ Chap. i,
"Toward Understanding Labor Unrest," pp. 27-59. New York, 1920.
(9) _The Cause of World Unrest._ With an introduction by the editor of
_The Morning Post_ (of London). New York, 1920.
(10) Ferrero, Guglielmo. _Ancient Rome and Modern America._ A
comparative study of morals and manners. New York, 1914.
(11) Veblen, Thorstein. "The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness
of Labor," _American Journal of Sociology_, IV (1898-99), 187-201.
(12) Lippmann, Walter. "Unrest," _New Republic_, XX (1919), 315-22.
(13) Tannenbaum, Frank. _The Labor Movement._ Its conservative functions
and social consequences. New York, 1921.
(14) Baker, Ray Stannard. _The New Industrial Unrest._ Its reason and
remedy. New York, 1920.
(15) MacCurdy, J. T. "Psychological Aspects of the Present Unrest,"
_Survey_, XLIII (1919-20), 665-68.
(16) Myers, Charles S. _Mind and Work._ The psychological factors in
industry and commerce. Chap. vi, "Industrial Unrest," pp. 137-69. New
York, 1921.
(17) Adler, H. M. "Unemployment and Personality--a Study of Psychopathic
Cases," _Mental Hygiene_, I (1917), 16-24.
(18) Chirol, Valentine. _Indian Unrest._ A reprint, revised and enlarged
from _The Times_, with an introduction by Sir Alfred Lyall. London,
1910.
(19) Münsterberg, Hugo. _Social Studies of Today._ Chap. ii, "The
Educational Unrest," pp. 25-57. London, 1913.
(20) ----. _American Problems._ From the point of view of a
psychologist. Chap. v, "The Intemperance of Women," pp. 103-13. New
York, 1912.
(21) Corelli, Marie. "The Great Unrest," _World Today_, XXI (1912),
1954-59.
(22) Ferrero, Guglielmo. _The Women of the Caesars._ New York, 1911.
(23) Myerson, Abraham. The Nervous Housewife. Boston, 1920.
(24) Mensch, Ella. _Bilderstürmer in der Berliner Frauenbewegung._ 2d
ed. Berlin, 1906.
C. _Psychic Epidemics_
(1) Hecker, J. F. C. _The Black Death and the Dancing Mania._ Translated
from the German by B. G. Babington. Cassell's National Library. New
York, 1888.
(2) Stoll, Otto. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._
2d ed. Leipzig, 1904.
(3) Friedmann, Max. _Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben._ Wiesbaden, 1901.
(4) Regnard, P. _Les maladies épidémiques de l'esprit._ Sorcellerie,
magnétisme, morphinisme, délire des grandeurs. Paris, 1886.
(5) Meyer, J. L. _Schwärmerische Greuelscenen oder Kreuzigungsgeschichte
einer religiösen Schwärmerinn in Wildensbuch, Canton Zürich._ Ein
merkwürdiger Beytrag zur Geschichte des religiösen Fanatismus. 2d ed.
Zürich, 1824.
(6) Gowen, B. S. "Some Aspects of Pestilences and Other Epidemics,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, XVIII (1907), 1-60.
(7) Weygandt, W. _Beitrag zur Lehre von den psychischen Epidemien._
Halle, 1905.
(8) _Histoire des diables de Loudun._ Ou de la possession des
Religieuses Ursulines et de la condamnation et du supplice d'Urbain
Grandier, curé de la même ville, cruels effets de la vengeance du
Cardinal de Richelieu. Amsterdam, 1740.
(9) Finsler, G. "Die religiöse Erweckung der zehner und zwanziger Jahre
unseres Jahrhunderts in der deutschen Schweiz," _Züricher Taschenbuch
auf das Jahr 1890._ Zürich, 1890.
(10) Fauriel, M. C. _Histoire de la croisade centre les hérétiques
Albigeois._ Écrite en vers provençaux par un poête contemporain. (Aiso
es la consos de la crozada contr els ereges Dalbeges.) Paris, 1837.
(11) Mosiman, Eddison. _Das Zungenreden, geschichtlich und psychologisch
untersucht._ Tübingen, 1911. [Bibliography.]
(12) Vigouroux, A., and Juquelier, P. _La contagion mentale._ Paris,
1905.
(13) Kotik, Dr. Naum. "Die Emanation der psychophysischen Energie,"
_Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens._ Wiesbaden, 1908.
(14) Aubry, P. "De l'influence contagieuse de la publicité des faits
criminels," _Archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, VIII (1893), 565-80.
(15) Achelis, T. _Die Ekstase in ihrer kulturetten Bedeutung._
Kulturprobleme der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1902.
(16) Cadière, L. "Sur quelques Faits religieux ou magiques, observés
pendant une épidémie de choléra en Annam," _Anthropos_, V (1910),
519-28, 1125-59.
(17) Hansen, J. _Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter
und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung._ München, 1900.
(18) Hansen, J. _Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des
Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter._ Bonn, 1901.
(19) Rossi, P. _Psicologia collettiva morbosa._ Torino, 1901.
(20) Despine, Prosper. _De la Contagion morale._ Paris, 1870.
(21) Moreau de Tours. _De la Contagion du suicide à propos de l'épidémie
actuelle._ Paris, 1875.
(22) Aubry, P. _La Contagion du meutre._ Étude d'anthropologie
criminelle. 3d ed. Paris, 1896.
(23) Rambosson, J. _Phénomènes nerveux, intellectuels et moraux, leur
transmission par contagion._ Paris, 1883.
(24) Dumas, Georges. "Contagion mentale, épidémies mentales, folies
collectives, folies grégaires," _Revue philosophique_, LXXI (1911),
225-44, 384-407.
II. MUSIC, DANCE, AND RITUAL
(1) Wallaschek, Richard. _Primitive Music._ An inquiry into the origin
and development of music, songs, instruments, dances, and pantomimes of
savage races. London, 1893.
(2) Combarieu, J. _La Musique et le magic._ Étude sur les origines
populaires de l'art musical; son influence et sa fonction dans les
sociétés. Paris, 1908.
(3) Simmel, Georg. "Psychologische und ethnologische Studien über
Musik," _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, XIII
(1882), 261-305.
(4) Boas, F. "Chinook Songs," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, I (1888),
220-26.
(5) Densmore, Frances. "The Music of the Filipinos," _American
Anthropologist_, N.S., VIII (1906), 611-32.
(6) Fletcher, Alice C. _Indian Story and Song from North America._
Boston, 1906.
(7) ----. "Indian Songs and Music," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, XI
(1898), 85-104.
(8) Grinnell, G. B. "Notes on Cheyenne Songs," _American
Anthropologist_, N.S., V (1903), 312-22.
(9) Mathews, W. "Navaho Gambling Songs," _American Anthropologist_, II
(1889), 1-20.
(10) Hearn, Lafcadio. "Three Popular Ballads," _Transactions of the
Asiatic Society of Japan_, XXII (1894), 285-336.
(11) Ellis, Havelock. "The Philosophy of Dancing," _Atlantic Monthly_,
CXIII (1914), 197-207.
(12) Hirn, Yrjö. _The Origins of Art._ A psychological and sociological
inquiry. Chap. xvii, "Erotic Art," pp. 238-48. London, 1900.
(13) Pater, Walter. _Greek Studies._ A series of essays. London, 1911.
(14) Grosse, Ernst. _The Beginnings of Art._ Chap. viii, "The Dance,"
pp. 207-31. New York, 1898.
(15) Bücher, Karl. _Arbeit und Rhythmus._ 3d ed. Leipzig, 1902.
(16) Lhérisson, E. "La Danse du vaudou," _Semaine médicale_, XIX (1899),
xxiv.
(17) Reed, V. Z. "The Ute Bear Dance," _American Anthropologist_, IX
(1896) 237-44.
(18) Gummere, F. B. _The Beginnings of Poetry._ New York, 1901.
(19) Fawkes, J. W. "The Growth of the Hopi Ritual," _Journal of American
Folk-Lore_, XI (1898), 173-94.
(20) Cabrol, F. _Les origines liturgiques._ Paris, 1906.
(21) Gennep, A. van. _Les Rites de passage._ Paris, 1909.
(22) Pitre, Giuseppe. _Feste patronali in Sicilia._ Palermo, 1900.
(23) Murray, W. A. "Organizations of Witches in Great Britain,"
_Folk-Lore_, XXVIII (1917), 228-58.
(24) Taylor, Thomas. _The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries._ New York,
1891.
(25) Tippenhauer, L. G. _Die Insel Haiti._ Leipzig, 1893. [Describes the
Voudou Ritual.]
(26) Wuensch, R. _Das Frühlingsfest der Insel Malta._ Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der antiken Religion. Leipzig, 1902.
(27) Loisy, Alfred. _Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien._ Paris,
1919.
(28) Lummis, Charles F. _The Land of Poco Tiempo._ Chap. iv, "The
Penitent Brothers," pp. 77-108. New York, 1893.
(29) "Los Hermanos Penitentes," _El Palacio_, VIII (1920), 3-20, 73-74.
III. THE CROWD AND THE PUBLIC
A. _The Crowd_
(1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Crowd._ A study of the popular mind. London,
1920.
(2) Tarde, G. _L'Opinion et la foule._ Paris, 1901.
(3) Sighele, S. _Psychologie des Aulaufs und der Massenverbrechen._
Translated from the Italian by Hans Kurella. Leipzig, 1897.
(4) ----. _La foule criminelle._ Essai de psychologie collective. 2d
ed., entièrement refondue. Paris, 1901.
(5) Tarde, Gabriel. "Foules et sectes au point de vue criminel," _Revue
des deux mondes_, CXX (1893), 349-87.
(6) Miceli, V. "La Psicologia della folla," _Rivista italiana di
sociologia_, III (1899), 166-95.
(7) Conway, M. _The Crowd in Peace and War._ New York, 1915.
(8) Martin, E. D. _The Behavior of Crowds._ New York, 1920.
(9) Christensen, A. _Politics and Crowd-Morality._ New York, 1915.
(10) Park, R. E. _Masse und Publikum._ Bern, 1904.
(11) Clark, H. "The Crowd." "University of Illinois Studies."
_Psychological Monograph_, No. 92, XXI (1916), 26-36.
(12) Tawney, G. A. "The Nature of Crowds," _Psychological Bulletin_, II
(1905), 329-33.
(13) Rossi, P. _Le suggesteur et la foule, psychologie du meneur._
Paris, 1904.
(14) ----. _I suggestionatori e la folla._ Torino, 1902.
(15) ----. "Dell'Attenzione collettiva e sociale," _Manicomio_, XXI
(1905), 248 ff.
B. _Political Psychology_
(1) Beecher, Franklin A. "National Politics in Its Psychological
Aspect," _Open Court_, XXXIII (1919), 653-61.
(2) Boutmy, Émile. _The English People._ A study of their political
psychology. London, 1904.
(3) Palanti, G. "L'Esprit de corps. (Remarques sociologiques.)" _Revue
philosophique_, XLVIII (1899), 135-45.
(4) Gardner, Chas. S. "Assemblies," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX
(1914), 531-55.
(5) Bentham, Jeremy. _Essay on Political Tactics._ Containing six of the
principal rules proper to be observed by a political assembly, in the
process of forming a decision: with the reasons on which they are
grounded; and a comparative application of them to British and French
practice. London, 1791.
(6) Tönnies, Ferdinand. "Die grosse Menge und das Volk," _Schmollers
Jahrbuch_, XLIV (1920), 317-45. [Criticism of Le Bon's conception of the
crowd.]
(7) Botsford, George W. _The Roman Assemblies._ From their origin to the
end of the Republic. New York, 1909.
(8) Crothers, T. D. "A Medical Study of the Jury System," _Popular
Science Monthly_, XLVII (1895), 375-82.
(9) Coleman, Charles T. "Origin and Development of Trial by Jury,"
_Virginia Law Review_, VI (1919-20), 77-86.
C. _Collective Psychology in General_
(1) Rossi, P. _Sociologia e psicologia collettiva._ 2d ed. Roma, 1909.
(2) Straticò, A. _La Psicologia collettiva._ Palermo, 1905.
(3) Worms, René. "Psychologie collective et psychologie individuelle,"
_Revue international de sociologie_, VII (1899), 249-74.
(4) Brönner, W. "Zur Theorie der kollektiv-psychischen Erscheinungen,"
_Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik_, CXLI (1911),
1-40.
(5) Newell, W. W. "Individual and Collective Characteristics in
Folk-Lore," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, XIX (1906), 1-15.
(6) Campeano, M. _Essai de psychologie militaire individuelle et
collective._ Avec une préface de M. Th. Ribot. Paris, 1902.
(7) Hartenberg, P. "Les émotions de Bourse. (Notes de psychologie
collective)." _Revue philosophique_, LVIII (1904), 163-70.
(8) Scalinger, G. M. _La Psicologia a teatro._ Napoli, 1896.
(9) Burckhard, M. "Das Theater." Die Gesellschaft. _Sammlung
Sozial-Psychologische Monographien_, 18. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1907.
(10) Woolbert, C. H. "The Audience." "University of Illinois Studies."
_Psychological Monograph_, No. 92, XXI (1916), 36-54.
(11) Howard, G. E. "Social Psychology of the Spectator," _American
Journal of Sociology_, XVIII (1912), 33-50.
(12) Peterson, J. "The Functioning of Ideas in Social Groups,"
_Psychological Review_, XXV (1918), 214-26.
IV. MASS MOVEMENTS
(1) Bryce, James. "Migrations of the Races of Men Considered
Historically," _Contemporary Review_, LXII (1892), 128-49.
(2) Mason, Otis T. "Migration and the Food Quest: A Study in the
Peopling of America," _American Anthropologist_, VII (1894), 275-92.
(3) Pflugk-Harttung, Julius von. _The Great Migrations._ Translated from
the German by John Henry Wright. Philadelphia, 1905.
(4) Bradley, Henry. _The Story of the Goths._ From the earliest times to
the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain. New York, 1888.
(5) Jordanes. _The Origin and Deeds of the Goths._ English version by
Charles C. Mierow. Princeton, 1908.
(6) Archer, T. A., and Kingsford, C. L. _The Crusades._ New York, 1894.
(7) Ireland, W. W. "On the Psychology of the Crusades," _Journal of
Mental Science_, LII (1906), 745-55; LIII (1907), 322-41.
(8) Groves, E. R. "Psychic Causes of Rural Migration," _American Journal
of Sociology_, XXI (1916), 623-27.
(9) Woodson, Carter G. _A Century of Negro Migrations._ Washington,
1918. [Bibliography.]
(10) Fleming, Walter L. "'Pap' Singleton, the Moses of the Colored
Exodus," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909-10), 61-82.
(11) Bancroft, H. H. _History of California._ Vol. VI, 1848-59. Chaps.
ii-ix, pp. 26-163. San Francisco, 1888. [The discovery of gold in
California.]
(12) Down, T. C. "The Rush to the Klondike," _Cornhill Magazine_, IV
(1898), 33-43.
(13) Ziegler, T. _Die geistigen und socialen Strömungen des neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts._ Berlin, 1899.
(14) Zeeb, Frieda B. "Mobility of the German Woman," _American Journal
of Sociology_, XXI (1915-16), 234-62.
(15) Anthony, Katharine S. _Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia._ New
York, 1915. [Bibliography.]
(16) Croly, Jane (Mrs.). _The History of the Woman's Club Movement in
America._ New York, 1898.
(17) Taft, Jessie. _The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social
Consciousness._ Chicago, 1916.
(18) Harnack, Adolf. _The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the
First Three Centuries._ Translated from the 2d rev. German ed. by James
Moffatt. New York, 1908.
(19) Buck, S. J. _The Agrarian Crusade._ A chronicle of the farmer in
politics. New Haven, 1920.
(20) _Labor Movement._ The last six volumes of _The Documentary History
of American Industrial Society_. Vols. V-VI, 1820-40, by John R. Commons
and Helen L. Sumner; Vols. VII-VIII, 1840-60, by John R. Commons; Vols.
IX-X, 1860-80, by John R. Commons and John B. Andrews. Cleveland, 1910.
(21) Begbie, Harold. _The Life of General William Booth._ The Founder of
the Salvation Army. 2 vols. New York, 1920.
(22) Wittenmyer, Annie (Mrs.). _History of the Women's Temperance
Crusade._ A complete official history of the wonderful uprising of the
Christian women of the United States against the liquor traffic which
culminated in the Gospel Temperance Movement. Introduction by Frances E.
Willard. Philadelphia, 1878.
(23) Gordon, Ernest. _The Anti-alcohol Movement in Europe._ New York,
1913.
(24) Cherrington, Ernest H. _The Evolution of Prohibition in the United
States of America._ A chronological history of the liquor problem and
the temperance reform in the United States from the earliest settlements
to the consummation of national prohibition. Westerville, Ohio, 1920.
(25) Woods, Robert A. _English Social Movements._ New York, 1891.
(26) Zimand, Savel. _Modern Social Movements._ Descriptive summaries and
bibliographies. New York, 1921.
V. REVIVALS, RELIGIOUS AND LINGUISTIC
A. _Religious Revivals and the Origin of Sects_
(1) Meader, John R. Article on "Religious Sects," _Encyclopedia
Americana_, XXIII, 355-61. [List of nearly 300 denominations and sects.]
(2) Articles on "sects," _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_, XI,
307-47. [The subject and author of the different articles are "Sects
(Buddhist)," T. W. Rhys Davids; "Sects (Chinese)," T. Richard; "Sects
(Christian)," W. T. Whitley; "Sects (Hindu)," W. Crooke; "Sects
(Jewish)," I. Abrahams; "Sects (Russian)," K. Grass and A. von
Stromberg; "Sects (Samaritan)," N. Schmidt; "Sects (Zoroastrian)," E.
Edwards. Bibliographies.]
(3) United States Bureau of the Census. _Religious Bodies, 1906._ 2
vols. Washington, 1910.
(4) ----. _Religious Bodies, 1916._ 2 vols. Washington, 1919.
(5) Davenport, Frederick M. _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals._ A
study in mental and social evolution. New York, 1905.
(6) Mooney, James. "The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of
1890." _14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_
(1892-93), 653-1136.
(7) Stalker, James. Article on "Revivals of Religion," _Encyclopaedia of
Religion and Ethics_, X, 753-57. [Bibliography.]
(8) Burns, J. _Revivals, Their Laws and Leaders._ London, 1909.
(9) Tracy, J. _The Great Awakening._ A history of the revival of
religion in the time of Edwards and Whitefield. Boston, 1842.
(10) Finney, C. G. _Autobiography._ London, 1892.
(11) Hayes, Samuel P. "An Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, XIII (1902), 550-74.
(12) Maxon, C. H. _The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies._ Chicago,
1920. [Bibliography.]
(13) Gibson, William. _Year of Grace._ Edinburgh, 1860. [Irish revival,
1859.]
(14) Moody, W. R. _The Life of Dwight L. Moody._ New York, 1900.
(15) Bois, Henri. _Le Réveil au pays de Galles._ Paris, 1906. [Welsh
revival of 1904-6.]
(16) ----. _Quelques réflexions sur la psychologie des réveils._ Paris,
1906.
(17) Cartwright, Peter. _Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, the
Backwoods Preacher._ Cincinnati, 1859.
(18) MacLean, J. P. "The Kentucky Revival and Its Influence on the Miami
Valley," _Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications_, XII (1903),
242-86. [Bibliography.]
(19) Cleveland, Catharine C. _The Great Revival in the West, 1797-1805._
Chicago, 1916. [Bibliography.]
(20) Rogers, James B. _The Cane Ridge Meeting-House._ To which is
appended the autobiography of B. W. Stone. Cincinnati, 1910.
(21) Stchoukine, Ivan. _Le Suicide collectif dans le Raskol russe._
Paris, 1903.
(22) Bussell, F. W. _Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages._
London, 1918.
(23) Egli, Emil. _Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformationszeit._
Zürich, 1878.
(24) Bax, Ernest Belfort. _Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists._ New York,
1903.
(25) Schechter, S. _Documents of Jewish Sectaries._ 2 vols. Cambridge,
1910.
(26) Graetz, H. _History of the Jews._ 6 vols. Philadelphia, 1891-98.
(27) Jost, M. _Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Sekten._ 3 vols.
Leipzig, 1857-59.
(28) Farquhar, J. N. _Modern Religious Movements in India._ New York,
1915.
(29) Selbie, W. B. _English Sects._ A history of non-conformity. Home
University Library. New York, 1912.
(30) Barclay, Robert. _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth._ London, 1876. [Bibliography.]
(31) Jones, Rufus M. _Studies in Mystical Religion._ London, 1909.
(32) Braithwaite, W. C. _Beginnings of Quakerism._ London, 1912.
(33) Jones, Rufus M. _The Quakers in the American Colonies._ London,
1911.
(34) Evans, F. W. _Shakers._ Compendium of the origin, history,
principles, rules and regulations, government, and doctrines of the
United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. With
biographies of Ann Lee, William Lee, James Whittaker, J. Hocknell, J.
Meacham, and Lucy Wright. New York, 1859.
(35) Train, J. _The Buchanites from First to Last._ Edinburgh, 1846.
(36) Miller, Edward. _The History and Doctrines of Irvingism._ Or of the
so-called Catholic and Apostolic Church. 2 vols. London, 1878.
(37) Neatby, W. Blair. _A History of the Plymouth Brethren._ London,
1901.
(38) Lockwood, George B. _The New Harmony Movement._ "The Rappites."
Chaps. ii-iv, pp. 7-42. [Bibliography.]
(39) James, B. B. _The Labadist Colony of Maryland._ Baltimore, 1899.
(40) Dixon, W. H. _Spiritual Wives._ 2 vols. London, 1868.
(41) Randall, E. O. _History of the Zoar Society from Its Commencement
to Its Conclusion._ Columbus, 1899.
(42) Loughborough, J. N. _The Great Second Advent Movement._ Its rise
and progress. Nashville, Tenn., 1905. [Adventists.]
(43) Harlan, Rolvix. _John Alexander Dowie and the Christian Catholic
Apostolic Church in Zion._ Evansville, Wis., 1906.
(44) Smith, Henry C. _Mennonites of America._ Mennonite Publishing
House, Scotdale, Pa., 1909. [Bibliography.]
(45) La Rue, William. _The Foundations of Mormonism._ A study of the
fundamental facts in the history and doctrines of the Mormons from
original sources. With introduction by Alfred Williams Anthony. New
York, 1919. [Bibliography.]
B. _Language Revivals and Nationalism_
(1) Dominian, Leon. _Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe._
New York, 1917.
(2) Bourgoing, P. de. _Les Guerres d'idiome et de nationalité._ Paris,
1849.
(3) Meillet, A. "Les Langues et les nationalités," _Scientia_, XVIII,
(1915), 192-201.
(4) Rhys, John, and Brynmor-Jones, David. _The Welsh People._ Chap. xii,
"Language and Literature of Wales," pp. 501-50. London, 1900.
(5) Dinneen, P. S. _Lectures on the Irish Language Movement._ Delivered
under the auspices of various branches of the Gaelic League. London,
1904.
(6) Montgomery, K. L. "Some Writers of the Celtic Renaissance,"
_Fortnightly Review_, XCVI (1911), 545-61.
(7) ----. "Ireland's Psychology: a Study of Facts," _Fortnightly
Review_, CXII (1919), 572-88.
(8) Dubois, L. Paul. _Contemporary Ireland._ With an introduction by T.
M. Kettle, M. P. London, 1908.
(9) _The Teaching of Gaelic in Highland Schools._ Published under the
auspices of the Highland Association. London, 1907.
(10) Fedortchouk, Y. "La Question des nationalités en Austriche-Hongrie:
les Ruthenes de Hongrie," _Annales des nationalités_, VIII (1915),
52-56.
(11) Seton-Watson, R. W. [Scotus Viator, _pseud_.] _Racial Problems in
Hungary._ London, 1908. [Bibliography.]
(12) Samassa, P. "Deutsche und Windische in Sudösterreich," _Deutsche
Erde_, II (1903), 39-41.
(13) Wace, A. J. B., and Thompson, M. S. _The Nomads of the Balkans._
London, 1914.
(14) Tabbé, P. _La vivante Roumanie._ Paris, 1913.
(15) Louis-Jarau, G. _L'Albanie inconnue._ Paris, 1913.
(16) Brancoff, D. M. _La Macédoine et sa population Chrétienne._ Paris,
1905.
(17) Fedortchouk, Y. _Memorandum on the Ukrainian Question in Its
National Aspect._ London, 1914.
(18) Vellay, Charles. "L'Irredentisme hellénique," _La Revue de Paris_,
XX (Juillet-Août, 1913), 884-86.
(19) Sands, B. _The Ukraine._ London, 1914.
(20) Auerbach, B. "La Germanization de la Pologne Prussienne. La loi
d'expropriation," _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, LVII (1908),
109-125.
(21) Bernhard, L. _Das polnische Gemeinwesen im preussischen Staat._ Die
Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910.
(22) Henry, R. "La Frontière linguistique en Alsace-Lorraine," _Les
Marches de l'Est_, 1911-1912, pp. 60-71.
(23) Nitsch, C. "Dialectology of Polish Languages," _Polish
Encyclopaedia_, Vol. III. Cracow, 1915.
(24) Witte, H. "Wendische Bevölkerungsreste in Mecklenburg,"
_Forschungen zur deutschen Landes- und Volkskunde_, XVI (1905), 1-124.
(25) Kaupas, A. "L'Église et les Lituaniens aux États-Unis d'Amérique,"
_Annales des Nationalités_, II (1913), 233 ff.
(26) Pélissier, Jean. _Les Principaux artisans de la renaissance
nationale lituanienne._ Hommes et choses de Lituanie. Lausanne, 1918.
(27) Jakstas, A. "Lituaniens et Polonais." _Annales des nationalités_,
VIII (1915), 219 ff.
(28) Headlam, Cecil. _Provence and Languedoc._ Chap. v, "Frédéric
Mistral and the Félibres." London, 1912.
(29) Belisle, A. _Histoire de la presse franco-américaine._ Comprenant
l'historique de l'émigration des Canadiens-Français aux États-Unis, leur
développement, et leur progrès. Worcester, Mass., 1911.
VI. ECONOMIC CRISES
(1) Wirth, M. _Geschichte der Handelskrisen._ Frankfurt-am-Main, 1890.
(2) Jones, Edward D. _Economic Crises._ New York, 1900.
(3) Gibson, Thomas. _The Cycles of Speculation._ 2d ed. New York, 1909.
(4) Bellet, Daniel. _Crises économique._ Crises commerciales. Crises de
guerre. Leur caractères, leur indices, leurs effects. Paris, 1918.
(5) Clough, H. W. "Synchronous Variations in Solar and Terrestrial
Phenomena," _Astrophysical Journal_, XXII (1905), 42-75.
(6) Clayton, H. H. "Influence of Rainfall on Commerce and Politics,"
_Popular Science Monthly_, LX (1901-2), 158-65.
(7) Mitchell, Wesley C. _Business Cycles._ Berkeley, Cal., 1913.
(8) Moore, Henry L. _Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause._ New York,
1914.
(9) Hurry, Jamieson B. _Vicious Circles in Sociology and Their
Treatment._ London, 1915.
(10) Thiers, Adolphe. _The Mississippi Bubble._ A memoir of John Law. To
which are added authentic accounts of the Darien expedition and the
South Sea scheme. Translated from the French by F. S. Fiske. New York,
1859.
(11) Wiston-Glynn, A. W. _John Law of Lauriston._ Financier and
statesman, founder of the Bank of France, originator of the Mississippi
scheme, etc. London, 1907.
(12) Mackay, Charles. _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and
the Madness of Crowds._ 2 vols. in one. London, 1859. [Vol. I, the
Mississippi scheme, the South Sea bubble, the tulipomania, the
alchymists, modern prophecies, fortune-telling, the magnetisers,
influence of politics and religion on the hair and beard. Vol. II, the
crusades, the witch mania, the slow prisoners, haunted houses, popular
follies of great cities, popular admiration of great thieves, duels and
ordeals, relics.]
VII. FASHION, REFORM, AND REVOLUTION
A. _Fashion_
(1) Spencer, Herbert. _Principles of Sociology._ Part IV, chap. xi,
"Fashion," II, 205-10. London, 1893.
(2) Tarde, Gabriel. _Laws of Imitation._ Translated from the 2d French
ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. vii, "Custom and Fashion," pp.
244-365. New York, 1903.
(3) Simmel, G. _Philosophie der Mode._ Berlin, 1905.
(4) ----. "The Attraction of Fashion," _International Quarterly_, X
(1904), 130-55.
(5) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ "Fashion," pp. 184-220. Boston, 1906.
(6) Sombart, Werner. "Wirtschaft und Mode," _Grenzfragen des Nerven- und
Seelenlebens._ Wiesbaden, 1902.
(7) Clerget, Pierre. "The Economic and Social Rôle of Fashion." _Annual
Report of the Smithsonian Institution_, 1913, pp. 755-65. Washington,
1914.
(8) Squillace, Fausto. _La Moda._ L'abito è l'uomo. Milano, 1912.
(9) Shaler, N. S. "The Law of Fashion," _Atlantic Monthly_, LXI (1888),
386-98.
(10) Patrick, G. T. W. "The Psychology of Crazes," _Popular Science
Monthly_, LVII (1900), 285-94.
(11) Linton, E. L. "The Tyranny of Fashion," _Forum_ III (1887), 59-68.
(12) Bigg, Ada H. "What is 'Fashion'?" _Nineteenth Century_, XXXIII
(1893), 235-48.
(13) Foley, Caroline A. "Fashion," _Economic Journal_, III (1893),
458-74.
(14) Aria, E. "Fashion, Its Survivals and Revivals," _Fortnightly
Review_, CIV (1915), 930-37.
(15) Thomas, W. I. "The Psychology of Woman's Dress," _American
Magazine_, LXVII (1908-9), 66-72.
(16) Schurtz, Heinrich. _Grundzüge einer Philosophie der Tracht._
Stuttgart, 1871.
(17) Wechsler, Alfred. _Psychologie der Mode._ Berlin, 1904.
(18) Stratz, Carl H. _Die Frauenkleidung und ihre natürliche
Entwicklung._ Stuttgart, 1904.
(19) Holmes, William H. "Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in
Ceramic Art," _Fourth Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of American
Ethnology, 1882-83_, pp. 437-65. Washington, 1886.
(20) Kroeber, A. L. "On the Principle of Order in Civilization as
Exemplified by Changes of Fashion," _American Anthropologist_, N.S., XXI
(1919), 235-63.
B. _Reform_
(1) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ "Reform and Revolution," pp. 86-95.
Boston, 1906.
(2) Patrick, G. T. W. _The Psychology of Social Reconstruction._ Chaps.
i-ii, "Psychological Factors in Social Reconstruction," pp. 27-118.
Boston, 1920.
(3) Jevons, William S. _Methods of Social Reform._ And other papers.
London, 1883.
(4) Pearson, Karl. _Social Problems._ Their treatment, past, present,
and future. London, 1912.
(5) Mallock, W. H. _Social Reform as Related to Realities and
Delusions._ An examination of the increase and distribution of wealth
from 1801 to 1910. New York, 1915.
(6) Matthews, Brander. "Reform and Reformers," _North American_,
CLXXXIII (1906), 461-73.
(7) Miller, J. D. "Futilities of Reformers," _Arena_, XXVI (1901),
481-89.
(8) Lippmann, Walter. _A Preface to Politics._ Chap. v, "Well Meaning
but Unmeaning: The Chicago Vice Report," pp. 122-58. New York, 1913.
(9) Stanton, Henry B. _Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great
Britain and Ireland._ 2d rev. ed. New York, 1850.
(10) Stoughton, John. _William Wilberforce._ London, 1880.
(11) Field, J. _The Life of John Howard._ With comments on his character
and philanthropic labours. London, 1850.
(12) Hodder, Edwin. _The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., as Social
Reformer._ New York, 1898.
(13) Atkinson, Charles M. _Jeremy Bentham, His Life and Work._ London,
1905.
(14) Morley, John. _The Life of Richard Cobden._ Boston, 1890.
(15) Bartlett, David W. _Modern Agitators._ Or pen portraits of living
American reformers. New York, 1855.
(16) Greeley, Horace. _Hints toward Reforms._ In lectures, addresses,
and other writing. New York, 1850.
(17) Austin, George L. _The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips._ New ed.
Boston, 1901.
(18) Hill, Georgiana. _Women in English Life._ From medieval to modern
times. Period III, chap. v, "The Philanthropists," Vol. II, pp. 59-74;
Period IV, chap. xi, "The Modern Humanitarian Movement," Vol. II, pp.
227-36. 2 vols. London, 1896.
(19) Yonge, Charlotte M. _Hannah More._ Famous women. Boston, 1888.
(20) Besant, Annie. _An Autobiography._ 2d ed. London, 1908.
(21) Harper, Ida H. _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony._ Including
public addresses, her own lectures and many from her contemporaries
during fifty years. A story of the evolution of the status of woman. 3
vols. Indianapolis, 1898-1908.
(22) Whiting, Lilian. _Women Who Have Ennobled Life._ Philadelphia,
1915.
(23) Willard, Frances E. _Woman and Temperance._ Or the work and workers
of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 3d ed. Hartford, Conn., 1883.
(24) Gordon, Anna A. _The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard._ A
memorial volume. Introduction by Lady Henry Somerset. Chicago, 1898.
C. _Revolution_
(1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Psychology of Revolution._ Translated from the
French by Bernard Miall. New York, 1913.
(2) Petrie, W. M. F. _The Revolutions of Civilisation._ London, 1912.
(3) Hyndman, Henry M. _The Evolution of Revolution._ London, 1920.
(4) Adams, Brooks. _The Theory of Social Revolutions._ New York, 1913.
(5) Landauer, G. _Die Revolution._ "Die Gesellschaft, Sammlung
sozial-psychologischer Monographien." Frankfurt-am-Main, 1907.
(6) Thomas, W. I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ "Crisis and
Control," pp. 13-22. Chicago, 1909.
(7) Ellwood, Charles A. "A Psychological Theory of Revolutions,"
_American Journal of Sociology_, XI (1905-6), 49-59.
(8) ----. _Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chap. viii, "Social
Change under Abnormal Conditions," pp. 170-87. New York, 1917.
(9) King, Irving. "The Influence of the Form of Social Change upon the
Emotional Life of a People," _American Journal of Sociology_, IX
(1903-4), 124-35.
(10) Toynbee, Arnold. _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the
Eighteenth Century in England._ New ed. London, 1908.
(11) Knowles, L. C. A. _The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in
Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century._ London, 1921.
(12) Taine, H. A. _The French Revolution._ Translated from the French by
John Durand. 3 vols. New York, 1878-85.
(13) Olgin, Moissaye J. _The Soul of the Russian Revolution._
Introduction by Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. New York, 1917.
(14) Spargo, John. _The Psychology of Bolshevism._ New York, 1919.
(15) Khoras, P. "La Psychologie de la révolution chinoise," _Revue des
deux mondes_, VIII (1912), 295-331.
(16) Le Bon, Gustave. _The World in Revolt._ A psychological study of
our times. Translated from the French by Bernard Miall. New York, 1921.
(17) Lombroso, Cesare. _Le Crime politique et les révolutions par
rapport au droit, à l'anthropologie criminelle et à science du
gouvernement._ Translated by A. Bouchard. Paris, 1912.
(18) Prince, Samuel H. _Catastrophe and Social Change._ Based upon a
sociological study of the Halifax disaster. "Columbia University Studies
in Political Science." New York, 1920.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. Collective Behavior and Social Control
2. Unrest in the Person and Unrest in the Group
3. The Agitator as a Type of the Restless Person
4. A Study of Adolescent Unrest: the Runaway Boy and the Girl Who Goes
Wrong
5. A Comparison of Physical Epidemics with Social Contagion
6. Case Studies of Psychic Epidemics: the Mississippi Bubble, Gold
Fever, War-Time Psychosis, the Dancing Mania in Modern Times, etc.
7. Propaganda as Social Contagion: an Analysis of a Selected Case
8. A Description and Interpretation of Crowd Behavior: the Orgy, the
Cult, the Mob, the Organized Crowd
9. The "Animal" Crowd: the Flock, the Herd, the Pack
10. A Description of Crowd Behavior on Armistice Day
11. The Criminal Crowd
12. The Jury, the Congenial Group, the Committee, the Legislature, the
Mass Meeting, etc., as Types of Collective Behavior
13. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements
14. A Study of Mass Migrations: the Barbarian Invasions, the Settlement
of Oklahoma, the Migrations of the Mennonnites, the Treks of the Boers,
the Rise of Mohammedanism, the Mormon Migrations, etc.
15. Crusades and Reforms: the Crusades, the Abolition Movement,
Prohibition, the Woman's Temperance Crusades, Moving-Picture Censorship,
etc.
16. Fashions, Revivals, and Revolutions
17. The Social Laws of Fashions
18. Linguistic Revivals and the Nationalist Movements
19. Religious Revivals and the Origin of Sects
20. Social Unrest, Social Movements, and Changes in Mores and
Institutions
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand by collective behavior?
2. Interpret the incident in a Lancashire cotton factory in terms of
sympathy, imitation, and suggestion.
3. What simple forms of social contagion have you observed?
4. In what sense may the dancing mania of the Middle Ages be compared to
an epidemic?
5. Why may propaganda be interpreted as social contagion? Describe a
concrete instance of propaganda and analyze its _modus operandi_.
6. What are the differences in behavior of the flock, the pack, and the
herd?
7. Is it accurate to speak of these animal groups as "crowds"?
8. What do you understand Le Bon to mean by "the mental unity of
crowds"?
9. Describe and analyze the behavior of crowds which you have observed.
10. "The crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated
individual." "The crowd may be better or worse than the individual." Are
these statements consistent? Elaborate your position.
11. In what sense may we speak of sects, castes, and classes as crowds?
12. What do you mean by a social movement?
13. What is the significance of a movement?
14. Why is movement to be regarded as the fundamental form of freedom?
15. How does crowd excitement lead to mass movements?
16. What were the differences in the characteristics of mass movements
in the Klondike Rush, the Woman's Crusade, Methodism, and bolshevism?
17. What are the causes of social unrest?
18. What is the relation of social unrest to social organization?
19. How does Le Bon explain the mental anarchy at the time of the French
Revolution?
20. What was the nature of this mental anarchy in the different social
classes? Are revolutions always preceded by mental anarchy?
21. What was the relative importance of belief and of reason in the
French Revolution?
22. What are the likenesses and differences between the origin and
development of bolshevism and of the French Revolution?
23. Do you agree with Spargo's interpretation of the psychology (a) of
the intellectual Bolshevists, and (b) of the I.W.W.?
24. Are mass movements organizing or disorganizing factors in society?
Illustrate by reference to Methodism, the French Revolution, and
bolshevism.
25. Under what conditions will a mass movement (a) become organized,
and (b) become an institution?
FOOTNOTES:
[280] W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_. A study of the sociological importance
of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals, pp. 12-13. (Boston,
1906.)
[281] Scipio Sighele, in a note to the French edition of his _Psychology
of Sects_, claims that his volume, _La Folla delinquente_, of which the
second edition was published at Turin in 1895, and his article
"Physiologie du succès," in the _Revue des Revues_, October 1, 1894,
were the first attempts to describe the crowd from the point of view of
collective psychology. Le Bon published two articles, "Psychologie des
foules" in the _Revue scientifique_, April 6 and 20, 1895. These were
later gathered together in his volume _Psychologie des foules_, Paris,
1895. See Sighele _Psychologie des sectes_, pp. 25, 39.
[282] Gustave Le Bon, _The Crowd_. A study of the popular mind, p. 19.
(New York, 1900.)
[283] _Ibid._, p. 83.
[284] _L'Opinion et la foule_, pp. 6-7. (Paris, 1901.)
[285] _The Crowd_, p. 41.
[286] Sidney L. Hinde, _The Fall of the Congo Arabs_, p. 147. (London,
1897.) Describing a characteristic incident in one of the strange
confused battles Hinde says: "Wordy war, which also raged, had even more
effect than our rifles. Mahomedi and Sefu led the Arabs, who were
jeering and taunting Lutete's people, saying that they were in a bad
case, and had better desert the white man, who was ignorant of the fact
that Mohara with all the forces of Nyange was camped in his rear.
Lutete's people replied: 'Oh, we know all about Mohara; we ate him the
day before yesterday.'" This news became all the more depressing when it
turned out to be true. See also Hirn, _The Origins of Art_, p. 269, for
an explanation of the rôle of threats and boastings in savage warfare.
[287] Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, _Old World Traits
Transplanted_. Document 23, pp. 32-33. (New York, 1921.)
[288] Yrjö Hirn, _The Origins of Art_. A psychological and sociological
inquiry, p. 87. (London, 1900.)
[289] _Ibid._, p. 89.
[290] Le Bon, _op. cit._, p. 82.
[291] _Ibid._, p. 82.
[292] Scipio Sighele, _Psychologie des sectes_, p. 46. (Paris, 1898.)
[293] W. E. H. Lecky, _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit
of Rationalism in Europe._ 2 vols. (Vol. I.) (New York, 1866.)
[294] See Gabriel Tarde, _Laws of Imitation._
[295] J. F. C. Hecker, _Die Tanzwuth, eine Volkskrankheit im
Mittelalter._ (Berlin, 1832.) See Introduction of _The Black Death and
the Dancing Mania_. Translated from the German by B. G. Babington.
Cassell's National Library. (New York, 1888.)
[296] Le Bon, _op. cit._, p. 26.
[297] Vernon Lee [pseud.], _Vital Lies._ Studies of some varieties of
recent obscurantism. (London, 1912.)
[298] Taken from _Gentleman's Magazine_, March, 1787, p. 268.
[299] Adapted from J. F. C. Hecker, _The Black Death, and the Dancing
Mania_, pp. 106-11. (Cassell & Co., 1888.)
[300] From Mary Austin, _The Flock_, pp. 110-29. (Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1906.)
[301] From W. H. Hudson, "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," in
_Longman's Magazine_, XVIII (1891), 389-91.
[302] From Ernest Thompson Seton, "The Habits of Wolves," in _The
American Magazine_, LXIV (1907), 636.
[303] Adapted from Gustave Le Bon, _The Crowd_, pp. 1-14. (T. Fisher
Unwin, 1897.)
[304] From Robert E. Park, _The Crowd and the Public_. (Unpublished
manuscript.)
[305] Moll, _Hypnotism_, pp. 134-36.
[306] Sighele, _Psychologie des Auflaufs und der Massenverbrechen_
(translated from the Italian), p. 79.
[307] Durkheim, _The Elementary Forms of Religious Life_, pp. 432-37.
[308] Adapted from T. C. Down, "The Rush to the Klondike," in the
_Cornhill Magazine_, IV (1898), 33-43.
[309] Adapted from Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, _History of the Woman's
Temperance Crusade_ (1878), pp. 34-62.
[310] Adapted from Gustave Le Bon, _The Psychology of Revolution_, pp.
147-70. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913.)
[311] Adapted from John Spargo, _The Psychology of Bolshevism_, pp.
1-120. (Harper & Brothers, 1919.)
[312] Adapted from William E. H. Lecky, _A History of England in the
Eighteenth Century_, III, 33-101. (D. Appleton & Co., 1892.)
[313 1] _Supra_, pp. 652-53; 657-58.
[314] Otto Stoll, _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie_.
2d ed. (Leipzig, 1904.)
[315] Robert E. Park, _Immigrant Press and Its Control_, chap. ii,
"Background of the Immigrant Press." (New York, 1921. In press.)
[316] _Ibid._
[317] Anton H. Hollman, _Die dänische Volkshochschule und ihre Bedeutung
für die Entwicklung einer völkischen Kultur in Dänemark_. (Berlin,
1909.)
[318] H. G. Wells, _The Salvaging of Civilization_, chaps. iv-v, "The
Bible of Civilization," pp. 97-140. (New York, 1921.)
[319] See _The Immigrant Press and Its Control_, chap. ii, for a
translation of Dr. Kudirka's so-called "Confession."
[320] Gabriel Tarde, _The Laws of Imitation_. Translated from the 2d
French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons, p. 247. (New York, 1903.)
[321] Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 200-201.
CHAPTER XIV
PROGRESS
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Popular Conceptions of Progress
It seems incredible that there should have been a time when mankind had
no conception of progress. Ever since men first consciously united their
common efforts to improve and conserve their common life, it would seem
there must have been some recognition that life had not always been as
they found it and that it could not be in the future what it then was.
Nevertheless, it has been said that the notion of progress was unknown
in the oriental world, that the opposite conception of deterioration
pervaded all ancient Asiatic thought. In India the prevailing notion was
that of vast cycles of time "through which the universe and its
inhabitants must pass from perfection to destruction, from strength and
innocence to weakness and depravity until a new mahá-yuga begins."[322]
The Greeks conceived the course of history in various ways, as progress
and as deterioration, but in general they thought of it as a cycle. The
first clear description of the history of mankind as a progression by
various stages, from a condition of primitive savagery to civilization,
is in Lucretius' great poem _De Rerum Natura_. But Lucretius does not
conceive this progress will continue. On the contrary he recognizes that
the world has grown old and already shows signs of decrepitude which
foreshadow its ultimate destruction.
It is only in comparatively recent times that the world has sought to
define progress philosophically, as part of the cosmic process, and has
thought of it abstractly as something to be desired for its own sake.
Today the word progress is in everyone's mouth; still there is no
general agreement as to what progress is, and particularly in recent
years, with all the commonly accepted evidences of progress about them,
skeptics have appeared, who, like the farmer who saw for the first time
a camel with two humps, insisted "there's no such animal."
The reason there is no general understanding in regard to the meaning of
progress, as it has been defined by the philosophers, is not because
there is no progress in detail, but because the conception of progress
in general involves a balancing of the goods against the ills of life.
It raises the question whether the gains which society makes as a whole
are compensation for the individual defeats and losses which progress
inevitably involves. One reason why we believe in progress, perhaps, is
that history is invariably written by the survivors.
In certain aspects and with people of a certain temperament, what we
ordinarily call progress, considering what it costs, will always seem a
very dubious matter. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral,
London, seems to be the most eminent modern example of the skeptic.
Human nature has not been changed by civilization. It has
neither been leveled up nor leveled down, to an average
mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international
fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a
splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a
bloodthirsty savage. Human nature is at once sublime and
horrible, holy and satanic. Apart from the accumulation of
knowledge and experience, which are external and precarious
acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much since
the first stone age.[323]
It must be remembered in this connection that progress, in so far as it
makes the world more comfortable, makes it more complicated. Every new
mechanical device, every advance in business organization or in science,
which makes the world more tolerable for most of us, makes it impossible
for others. Not all the world is able to keep pace with the general
progress of the world. Most of the primitive races have been
exterminated by the advance of civilization, and it is still uncertain
where, and upon what terms, the civilized man will let the remnant of
the primitive peoples live.
It has been estimated that, in the complicated life of modern cities, at
least one-tenth of the population is not competent to maintain an
independent, economic existence, but requires an increasing amount of
care and assistance from the other nine-tenths.[324] To the inferior,
incompetent, and unfortunate, unable to keep pace with progress, the
more rapid advance of the world means disease, despair, and death. In
medicine and surgery alone does progress seem wholly beneficent, but the
eugenists are even now warning us that our indiscriminate efforts to
protect the weak and preserve the incompetent are increasing the burdens
of the superior and competent, who are alone fit to live.
On the other hand, every new invention is a response to some specific
need. Every new form of social control is intended to correct some
existing evil. So far as they are successful they represent progress.
Progress in the concrete has reference to recognized social values.
Values, as Cooley points out, have no meaning except with reference to
an organism.
"The organism is necessary to give meaning to the idea [value];
there must be worth _to_ something. It need not be a person; a
group, an institution, a doctrine, any organized form of life
will do; and that it be conscious of the values that motivates
it is not at all essential."[325]
Any change or adaptation to an existing environment that makes
it easier for a person, group, institution, or other "organized
form of life" to live may be said to represent progress.
Whether the invention is a new plow or a new six-inch gun we
accept it as an evidence of progress if it does the work for
which it is intended more efficiently than any previous device.
In no region of human life have we made greater progress than
in the manufacture of weapons of destruction.
Not everyone would be willing to admit that progress in weapons
of warfare represents "real" progress. That is because some
people do not admit the necessity of war. Once admit that
necessity, then every improvement is an evidence of progress,
at least in that particular field. It is more easy to recognize
progress in those matters where there is no conflict in regard
to the social values. The following excerpt from Charles
Zueblin's preface to his book on American progress is a
concrete indication of what students of society usually
recognize as progress.
Already this century has witnessed the first municipalized
street railways and telephones in American cities; a national
epidemic of street paving and cleaning; the quadrupling of
electric lighting service and the national appropriation of
display lighting; a successful crusade against dirt of all
kinds--smoke, flies, germs,--and the diffusion of constructive
provisions for health like baths, laundries, comfort stations,
milk stations, school nurses and open air schools; fire
prevention; the humanizing of the police and the advent of the
policewomen; the transforming of some municipal courts into
institutions for the prevention of crime and the cure of
offenders; the elaboration of the school curriculum to give
every child a complete education from the kindergarten to the
vocational course in school or university or shop; municipal
reference libraries; the completion of park systems in most
large cities and the acceptance of the principle that the
smallest city without a park and playground is not quite
civilized; the modern playground movement giving organized and
directed play to young and old; the social center; the
democratic art museum; municipal theaters; the commission form
of government; the city manager; home rule for cities; direct
legislation--a greater advance than the whole nineteenth
century compassed.[326]
2. The Problem of Progress
Sociology inherited its conception of progress from the philosophy of
history. That problem seems to have had its origin in the paradox that
progress at retail does not insure progress at wholesale. The progress
of the community as individuals or in specific directions may, for
example, bring about conditions which mean the eventual destruction of
the community as a whole. This is what we mean by saying that
civilizations are born, grow, and decay. We may see the phenomenon in
its simplest form in the plant community, where the very growth of the
community creates a soil in which the community is no longer able to
exist. But the decay and death of one community creates a soil in which
another community will live and grow. This gives us the interesting
phenomenon of what the ecologists call "succession." So individuals
build their homes, communities are formed, and eventually there comes
into existence a great city. But the very existence of a great city
creates problems of health, of family life, and social control which did
not exist when men lived in the open, or in villages. Just as the human
body generates the poisons that eventually destroy it, so the communal
life, in the very process of growth and as a result of its efforts to
meet the changes that its growth involves, creates diseases and vices
which tend to destroy the community. This raises the problem in another
form. Communities may and do grow old and die, but new communities
profiting by the experience of their predecessors are enabled to create
social organizations, more adequate and better able to resist social
diseases and corrupting vices. But in order to do this, succeeding
communities have had to accumulate more experience, exercise more
forethought, employ more special knowledge and a greater division of
labor. In the meantime, life is becoming constantly more complex. In
place of the simple spontaneous modes of behavior which enable the lower
animals to live without education and without anxiety, men are compelled
to supplement original nature with special training and with more and
more elaborate machinery, until life, losing its spontaneity, seems in
danger of losing all its joy.
Knowledge accumulates apace and its applications threaten the
very existence of civilized man. The production of the flying
machine represented a considerable advance in mechanical
knowledge; but I am unaware of any respect in which human
welfare has been increased by its existence; whereas it has not
only intensified enormously the horrors of war, and, by
furnishing criminal and other undesirable characters with a
convenient means of rapid and secret movement, markedly
diminished social security, but it threatens, by its inevitable
advance in construction, to make any future conflict virtually
equivalent to the extermination of civilized man. And the
maleficent change in the conditions of human life which the
flying machine has produced from the air, the submarine
parallels from the depths of the sea; indeed, the perception of
this truth has led to the very doubtfully practicable
suggestion that the building of submarines be made illegal....
Moreover if life itself is more secure, there is at the present
moment a distinct tendency towards a diminution of personal
liberty. The increasing control by the state over the conduct
and activities of the individual; the management of his
children, the details of his diet and the conduct of his
ordinary affairs; tend more and more to limit his personal
freedom. But the restriction of his liberty amounts to a
reduction of his available life just as complete loss of
liberty differs little from complete loss of life.[327]
It is this condition which, in spite of progress in details, has raised
in men's minds a question whether there is progress in general, and if
there is, whether the mass of mankind is better or worse because of it.
3. History of the Concept of Progress
The great task of mankind has been to create an organization which would
enable men to realize their wishes. This organization we call
civilization. In achieving this result man has very slowly at first, but
more rapidly in recent times, established his control over external
nature and over himself. He has done this in order that he might remake
the world as he found it more after his own heart.
But the world which man has thus remade has in turn reacted back upon
man and in doing so has made him human. Men build houses to protect them
from the weather and as places of refuge. In the end these houses have
become homes, and man has become a domesticated animal, endowed with the
sentiments, virtues, and lasting affections that the home inevitably
cultivates and maintains.
Men made for themselves clothing for ornament and for comfort, and
men's, and especially women's, clothes have become so much a part of
their personalities that without them they cease to be persons and have
no status in human society. Except under very exceptional circumstances
a man who appeared without clothing would be treated as a madman, and
hunted like a wild animal.
Men have built cities for security and for trade, and cities have made
necessary and possible a division of labor and an economic organization.
This economic organization, on the other hand, has been the basis of a
society and a social order which imposes standards of conduct and
enforces minute regulations of the individual life. Out of the
conditions of this common life there has grown a body of general and
ruling ideas: liberty, equality, democracy, fate, providence, personal
immortality, and progress.
J. B. Bury, who has written a history of the idea of progress, says that
progress is "the animating and controlling idea of western
civilization." But in defining progress he makes a distinction between
ideas like progress, providence, and fate and ideas like liberty,
toleration, and socialism. The latter are approved or condemned because
they are good or bad. The former are not approved or condemned. They are
matters of fact, they are true or false. He says:
When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive
power in history, we are generally thinking of those ideas
which express human aims and depend for their realisation on
the human will, such as liberty, toleration, equality of
opportunity, socialism. Some of these have been partly
realised, and there is no reason why any of them should not be
fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were the
united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it. They
are approved or condemned because they are held to be good or
bad, not because they are true or false. But there is another
order of ideas that play a great part in determining and
directing the course of man's conduct but do not depend on his
will--ideas which bear upon the mystery of life, such as Fate,
Providence, or personal immortality. Such ideas may operate in
important ways on the forms of social action, but they involve
a question of fact and they are accepted or rejected not
because they are believed to be useful or injurious, but
because they are believed to be true or false.
The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind,
and it is important to be quite clear on the point.[328]
All of the ideas mentioned are of such a general nature, embody so much
of the hopes, the strivings, and the sentiments of the modern world,
that they have, or did have until very recently, something of the
sanctity and authority of religious dogmas. All are expressions of
wishes, but there is this difference: ideas, like liberty, toleration,
etc., reflect the will of the people who accept them; ideas like
providence and progress, on the contrary, represent their hopes. The
question of the progress of humanity like that of personal immortality
is, as Bury points out, a question of fact. "It is true or false but it
cannot be proved whether true or false. Belief in it is an act of
faith." When we hypostatize our hopes and wishes and treat them as
matters of fact, even though they cannot be proved to be either true or
false, they assume a form which Sorel describes as myth. The progress of
humanity, as Herbert Spencer and the other Victorians understood it, is
such a myth. Dean Inge calls it a "superstition" and adds: "To become a
popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a
philosophy. The superstition of progress had the singular good fortune
to enslave at least three philosophies--those of Hegel, of Comte, and of
Darwin."[329]
The conception of progress, if a superstition, is one of recent origin.
It was not until the eighteenth century that it gained general
acceptance and became part of what Inge describes as the popular
religion. The conception which it replaced was that of providence. But
the Greeks and Romans knew nothing of providence. They were under the
influence of another idea of a different character, the idea, namely, of
nemesis and fate. And before them there were more primitive peoples who
had no conception of man's destiny at all. In a paper, not yet
published, Ellsworth Faris has sketched the natural history of the idea
of progress and its predecessors and of a new conception, control, that
is perhaps destined to take its place.
The idea of progress which has been so influential in modern
times is not a very old conception. In its distinctive form it
came into existence in the rationalistic period which
accompanied the Renaissance. Progress, in this sense, means a
theory as to the way in which the whole cosmic process is
developing. It is the belief that the world as a whole is
growing better through definite stages, and is moving "to one
far-off divine event."
The stages preceding this idea may be thought of under several
heads. The first may be called "cosmic anarchy," in which we
find "primitive people" now living. It is a world of chaos,
without meaning, and without purpose. There is no direction in
which human life is thought of as developing. Death and
misfortune are for the most part due to witchcraft and the evil
designs of enemies; good luck and bad luck are the forces which
make a rational existence hopeless.
Another stage of thinking is that which was found among the
Greeks, the conception of the cosmic process as proceeding in
cycles. The golden age of the Greeks lay in the past, the
universe was considered to be following a set course, and the
whole round of human experience was governed and controlled by
an inexorable fate that was totally indifferent to human
wishes. The formula which finally arose to meet this situation
was "conformity to nature," a submission to the iron laws of
the world which it was vain to attempt to change.
This idea was succeeded in medieval Europe by the idea of
providence, in which the world was thought of as a theater on
which the drama of human redemption was enacted. God has
created man free, but man was corrupted by the fall, given an
opportunity to be redeemed by the gospel, and the world was
soon to know the final triumph and happiness of the saved. Most
of the early church fathers expected the end of the world very
soon, many of them in their own lifetime. This is distinctly
different from the preceding two ideas. All life had meaning to
them, for the evil in the world was but God's way to
accomplish his good purposes. It was man's duty to submit, but
submission was to take the form of faith in an all-wise
beneficent and perfect power, who was governing the world and
who would make everything for the best.
The idea of progress arose on the ruins of this concept of
providence. In the fourteenth century, progress did not mean
merely the satisfaction of all human desires either individual
or collective. The idea meant far more than that. It was the
conviction that the world as a whole was proceeding onward
indefinitely to greater and greater perfection. The atmosphere
of progress was congenial to the construction of utopias and
schemes of perfection which were believed to be in harmony with
the nature of the world itself. The atmosphere of progress
produced also optimists who were quite sure everything was in
the long run to be for the best, and that every temporary evil
was sure to be overcome by an ultimate good.
The difficulty in demonstrating the fact of progress has become
very real as the problem has been presented to modern minds. It
is possible to prove that the world has become more complex. It
is hardly possible to prove that it has become better, and
quite impossible to prove that it will continue to do so. From
the standpoint of the Mohammedan Turks, the last two hundred
years of the world's history have not been years of marked
progress; from the standpoint of their enemies, the reverse
statement is obviously true.
The conception which seems to be superseding the idea of
progress in our day is that of control. Each problem whether
personal or social is thought of as a separate enterprise.
Poverty, disease, crime, vice, intemperance, or war, these are
definite situations which challenge human effort and human
ingenuity. Many problems are unsolved; many failures are
recorded. The future is a challenge to creative intelligence
and collective heroism. The future is thought of as still to be
made. And there is no assurance that progress will take place.
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that progress
will not take place unless men are able by their skill and
devotion to find solutions for their present problems, and for
the newer ones that shall arise.
The modern man finds this idea quite as stimulating to him as
the idea of progress was to his ancestor of the Renaissance or
the idea of providence to his medieval forebears. For while he
does not blindly believe nor feel optimistically certain things
will come about all right, yet he is nerved to square his
shoulders, to think, to contrive, and to exert himself to the
utmost in his effort to conquer the difficulties ahead, and to
control the forces of nature and man. The idea of providence
was not merely a generalization on life, it was a force that
inspired hope. The idea of progress was likewise not merely a
concept, it was also an energizing influence in a time of great
intellectual activity. The idea that the forces of nature can
be controlled in the service of man, differs from the others,
but is also a dynamic potency that seems to be equally well
adapted to the twentieth century.
The conception that man's fate lies somehow in his own hands, if it
gains general acceptance, will still be, so far as it inspires men to
work and strive, an article of faith, and the image in which he pictures
the future of mankind, toward which he directs his efforts, will still
have the character of myth. That is the function of myths. It is this
that lends an interest to those ideal states in which men at different
times have sought to visualize the world of their hopes and dreams.
4. Classification of the Materials
The purpose of the materials in this chapter is to exhibit the variety
and diversity of men's thought with reference to the concept of
progress. What they show is that there is as yet no general agreement in
regard to the meaning of the term. In all the special fields of social
reform there are relatively definite conceptions of what is desirable
and what is not desirable. In the matter of _progress in general_ there
is no such definition. Except for philosophical speculation there is no
such thing as "progress in general." In practice, progress turns out to
be a number of special tasks.
The "progress of civilization" is, to be sure, a concept in good
standing in history. It is, however, a concept of appreciation rather
than one of description. If history has to be rewritten for every new
generation of men, it is due not merely to the discovery of new
historical materials, but just to the fact that there is a new
generation. Every generation has its own notion of the values of life,
and every generation has to have its own interpretation of the facts of
life.
It is incredible that Strachey's _Life of Queen Victoria_ could have
been written forty years ago. It is incredible that the mass of men
should have been able to see the Victorian Age, as it is here presented,
while they were living it.
The materials in this chapter fall under three heads: (a) the concept
of progress, (b) progress and science, (c) progress and human
nature.
a) _The concept of progress._--The first difficulty in the study of
progress is one of definition. What are the signs and symptoms, the
criteria of progress? Until we have framed some sort of a definition we
cannot know. Herbert Spencer identified progress with evolution. The law
of organic progress is the law of all progress. Intelligence, if we
understand by that the mere accumulations of knowledge, does not
represent progress. Rather it consists in "those internal modifications
of which this larger knowledge is an expression." In so far, Spencer's
conception is that of the eugenists. Real progress is in the breed--in
the germ plasm. For men like Galton, Karl Pearson, and Madison
Grant,[330] what we call civilization is merely the efflorescence of
race. Civilizations may pass away, but if the racial stock is preserved,
civilization will reproduce itself. In recent years, a school of
political philosophy has sprung up in Europe and in the United States,
which is seeking to define our social policy toward the "inner enemies,"
the dependents, the defectives, and the delinquents, and a foreign
policy toward immigrant races and foreign peoples, on the general
conception that the chief aim of society and the state is to preserve
the germ plasm of the Nordic race.[331] For Spencer, however, the
conception that all values were in the organism was modified by the
conviction that all life was involved in an irreversible process called
evolution which would eventually purge the race and society of the weak,
the wicked, and the unfit.
In contrast, both with the views of Spencer and of the eugenists,
Hobhouse, voicing a conviction that was first expressed by Huxley,[332]
believes that man is bound to intervene in the beneficent law of natural
selection. He insists, in fact, that social development is something
quite distinct and relatively independent of the organic changes in the
individual. It is, in other words, a sociological rather than a
biological product. It is an effect of the interaction of individuals
and is best represented by organized society and by the social tradition
in which that organization is handed on from earlier to later
generations.
b) _Progress and science._--In contrast with other conceptions of
progress is that of Dewey, who emphasizes science and social control,
or, as he puts it, the "problem of discovering the needs and capacities
of collective human nature as we find it aggregated in racial or
national groups on the surface of the globe." The distinction between
Hobhouse and Dewey is less in substance than in point of view. Hobhouse,
looking backward, is interested in progress itself rather than in its
methods and processes. Dewey, on the other hand, looking forward, is
interested in a present program and in the application of scientific
method to the problems of social welfare and world-organization.
Arthur James Balfour, the most intellectual of the elder statesmen of
England, looking at progress through the experience of a politician,
speaks in a less prophetic and authoritative tone, but with a wisdom
born of long experience with men. For him, as for many other thoughtful
minds, the future of the race is "encompassed with darkness," and the
wise man is he who is content to act in "a sober and a cautious spirit,"
seeking to deal with problems as they arise.
c) _Progress and human nature._--Progress, which is much a matter of
interpretation, is also very largely a matter of temperament. The
purpose of the material upon human nature and progress is to call
attention to this fact. Progress is with most people an article of
faith, and men's faiths, as to their content, at least, are matters of
temperament. The conservative who perhaps takes a mild interest in
progress is usually "a sober and cautious" person, fairly content with
the present and not very sure about the future. The radical, on the
other hand, is usually a naturally hopeful and enthusiastic individual,
profoundly pessimistic about the present, but with a boundless
confidence in even the most impossible future.
Philosophy, like literature, is, in the final analysis, the expression
of a temperament, more or less modified by experience. The selections
from Schopenhauer and Bergson may be regarded, therefore, as the
characteristic reactions of two strikingly different temperaments to the
conception of progress and to life. The descriptions which they give of
the cosmic process are, considered formally, not unlike. Their
interpretations and the practical bearings of these interpretations are
profoundly different.
It is not necessary for the students of sociology to discuss the merits
of these different doctrines. We may accept them as human documents.
They throw light, at any rate, upon the idea of progress, and upon all
the other fundamental ideas in which men have sought to formulate their
common hopes and guide their common life.
II. MATERIALS
A. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS
1. The Earliest Conception of Progress[333]
The word "progress," like the word "humanity," is one of the most
significant. It is a Latin word, not used in its current abstract sense
until after the Roman incorporation of the Mediterranean world. The
first writer who expounds the notion with sufficient breadth of view and
sufficiently accurate and concrete observation to provide a preliminary
sketch was the great Roman poet, Lucretius.
He begins by describing a struggle for existence in which the less
well-adapted creatures died off, those who wanted either the power to
protect themselves or the means of adapting themselves to the purposes
of man. In this stage, however, man was a hardier creature than he
afterward became. He lived like the beasts of the field and was ignorant
of tillage or fire or clothes or houses. He had no laws or government or
marriage and, though he did not fear the dark, he feared the real danger
of fiercer beasts. Men often died a miserable death, but not in
multitudes on a single day as they do now by battle or shipwreck.
The next stage sees huts and skins and fire which softened their bodies,
and marriage and the ties of family which softened their tempers. And
tribes began to make treaties of alliance with other tribes. Speech
arose from the need which all creatures feel to exercise their natural
powers, just as the calf will butt before his horns protrude. Men began
to apply different sounds to denote different things, just as brute
beasts will do to express different passions, as anyone must have
noticed in the cases of dogs and horses and birds. No one man set out to
invent speech.
Fire was first learned from lightning and the friction of trees, and
cooking from the softening and ripening of things by the sun. Then men
of genius invented improved methods of life, the building of cities and
private property in lands and cattle. But gold gave power to the wealthy
and destroyed the sense of contentment in simple happiness. It must
always be so whenever men allow themselves to become the slaves of
things which should be their dependents and instruments.
They began to believe in and worship gods, because they saw in dreams
shapes of preterhuman strength and beauty and deemed them immortal; and
as they noted the changes of the seasons and all the wonders of the
heavens they placed their gods there and feared them when they spoke in
the thunder.
Metals were discovered through the burning of the woods, which caused
the ores to run. Copper and brass came first and were rated above gold
and silver. And then the metals took the place of hands, nails, teeth,
and clubs, which had been men's earliest arms and tools. Weaving
followed the discovery of the use of iron. Sowing, planting, and
grafting were learned from nature herself, and gradually the cultivation
of the soil was carried farther and farther up the hills.
Men learned to sing from the birds, and to blow on pipes from the
whistling of the zephyr through the reeds; and those simple tunes gave
as much rustic jollity as our more elaborate tunes do now.
Then, in a summary passage at the end, Lucretius enumerates all the
chief discoveries which men have made in the age-long process--ships,
agriculture, walled cities, laws, roads, clothes, songs, pictures,
statues, and all the pleasures of life--and adds, "These things practice
and the experience of the unresting mind have taught mankind gradually
as they have progressed from point to point."
It is the first definition and use of the word in literature.
2. Progress and Organization[334]
The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes
it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation in the
number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads.
Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products--as when the
advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the
superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the
new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we
speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the
individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of science
or art is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of
human thought and action.
Not only, however, is the current conception of progress more or less
vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the
reality of progress as its accompaniments--not so much the substance as
the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the
child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly
regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws
understood; whereas the actual progress consists in those internal
modifications of which this larger knowledge is the expression. Social
progress is supposed to consist in the making of a greater quantity and
variety of the articles required for satisfying men's wants; in the
increasing security of person and property; in widening freedom of
action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those
changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these
consequences. The current conception is a ideological one. The phenomena
are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those
changes are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly
tend to heighten human happiness; and they are thought to constitute
progress simply because they tend to heighten human happiness. But
rightly to understand progress, we must learn the nature of these
changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing, for example, to
regard the successive geological modifications that have taken place in
the earth as modifications that have gradually fitted it for the
habitation of man, and as therefore constituting geological progress, we
must ascertain the character common to these modifications--the law to
which they all conform. And similarly in every other case. Leaving out
of sight concomitants and beneficial consequences, let us ask what
progress is in itself.
In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the
course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the
Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and von Baer have
established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the
development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute
an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure.
In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is
uniform throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first
step is the appearance of a difference between two parts of this
substance; or, as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a
differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins
itself to exhibit some contrast of parts; and by and by these secondary
differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is
continuously repeated--is simultaneously going on in all parts of the
growing embryo; and by endless differentiations of this sort there is
finally produced that complex combination of tissues and organs
constituting the adult animal or plant. This is the history of all
organisms whatever. It is settled beyond dispute that organic progress
consists in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
Now, we propose to show that this law of organic progress is the law of
all progress. Whether it be in the development of the earth, in the
development of life upon its surface, in the development of society, of
government, of manufactures, of commerce, of language, literature,
science, art--this same evolution of the simple into the complex,
through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest
traceable cosmic changes down to the latest results of civilization, we
shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the
heterogeneous is that in which progress essentially consists.
3. The Stages of Progress[335]
If we regard the course of human development from the highest scientific
point of view, we shall perceive that it consists in educing more and
more the characteristic faculties of humanity, in comparison with those
of animality; and especially with those which man has in common with the
whole organic kingdom. It is in this philosophical sense that the most
eminent civilization must be pronounced to be fully accordant with
nature, since it is, in fact, only a more marked manifestation of the
chief properties of our species, properties which, latent at first, can
come into play only in that advanced state of social life for which they
are exclusively destined. The whole system of biological philosophy
indicates the natural progression. We have seen how, in the brute
kingdom, the superiority of each race is determined by the degree of
preponderance of the animal life over the organic. In like manner we see
that our social evolution is only the final term of a progression which
has continued from the simplest vegetables and most insignificant
animals, up through the higher reptiles to the birds and the mammifers,
and still on to the carnivorous animals and monkeys, the organic
characteristics retiring and the animal prevailing more and more, till
the intellectual and moral tend toward the ascendancy which can never be
fully obtained, even in the highest state of human perfection that we
can conceive of. This comparative estimate affords us the scientific
view of human progression, connected, as we see it is, with the whole
course of animal advancement, of which it is itself the highest degree.
The analysis of our social progress proves indeed that, while the
radical dispositions of our nature are necessarily invariable, the
highest of them are in a continuous state of relative development, by
which they rise to be preponderant powers of human existence, though the
inversion of the primitive economy can never be absolutely complete. We
have seen that this is the essential character of the social organism in
a statical view; but it becomes much more marked when we study its
variations in their gradual succession.
4. Progress and the Historical Process[336]
The conclusion which these reflections suggest is that the uncritical
application of biological principles to social progress results in an
insuperable contradiction. The factors which determine the survival of
physical organism, if applied as rules for the furtherance of social
progress, appear to conflict with all that social progress means. A
sense of this conflict is no doubt responsible for the further
reconstruction which the biological view has in recent years undergone.
Biologists now begin to inquire seriously whether "natural" selection
may not be replaced by a rational selection in which "fitness for
survival" would at length achieve its legitimate meaning, and the
development of the race might be guided by reasoned conceptions of
social value. This is a fundamental change of attitude, and the new
doctrine of eugenics to which it has given rise requires careful
examination. Before proceeding to this examination, however, it will be
well to inquire into the causes of the contrast on which we have
insisted between biological evolution and social progress. Faced by this
contradiction, we ask ourselves whether social development may not be
something quite distinct from the organic changes known to biology, and
whether the life of society may not depend upon forces which never
appear in the individual when he is examined merely as an individual or
merely as a member of a race.
Take the latter point first. It is easily seen in the arguments of
biologists that they conceive social progress as consisting essentially
in an improvement of the stock to which individuals belong. This is a
way of looking at the matter intelligible enough in itself. Society
consists of so many thousand or so many million individuals, and if,
comparing any given generation with its ancestors, we could establish an
average improvement in physical, mental, or moral faculty, we should
certainly have cause to rejoice. There is progress so far. But there is
another point of view which we may take up. Society consists of
individual persons and nothing but individual persons, just as the body
consists of cells and the product of cells. But though the body may
consist exclusively of cells, we should never understand its life by
examining the lives of each of its cells as a separate unit. We must
equally take into account that organic interconnection whereby the
living processes of each separate cell co-operate together to maintain
the health of the organism which contains them all. So, again, to
understand the social order we have to take into account not only the
individuals with their capabilities and achievements but the social
organization in virtue of which these individuals act upon one another
and jointly produce what we call social results; and whatever may be
true of the physical organism, we can see that in society it is possible
that individuals of the very same potentialities may, with good
organization, produce good results, and, with bad organization, results
which are greatly inferior.
The social phenomenon, in short, is not something which occurs in one
individual, or even in several individuals taken severally. It is
essentially an interaction of individuals, and as the capabilities of
any given individual are extraordinarily various and are only called
out, each by appropriate circumstances, it will be readily seen that the
nature of the interaction may itself bring forth new and perhaps
unexpected capacities, and elicit from the individuals contributing to
it forces which, but for this particular opportunity, might possibly
remain forever dormant. If this is so, sociology as a science is not the
same thing as either biology or psychology. It deals neither with the
physical capacities of individuals as such nor with their psychological
capacities as such. It deals rather with results produced by the play of
these forces upon one another, by the interaction of individuals under
the conditions imposed by their physical environment. The nature of the
forces and the point of these distinctions may be made clear by a very
simple instance.
The interplay of human motives and the interaction of human beings is
the fundamental fact of social life, and the permanent results which
this interaction achieves and the influence which it exercises upon the
individuals who take part in it constitute the fundamental fact of
social evolution. These results are embodied in what may be called,
generically, tradition. So understood, tradition--its growth and
establishment, its reaction upon the very individuals who
contribute to building it up, and its modifications by subsequent
interactions--constitutes the main subject of sociological inquiry.
Tradition is, in the development of society, what heredity is in the
physical growth of the stock. It is the link between past and future, it
is that in which the effects of the past are consolidated and on the
basis of which subsequent modifications are built up. We might push the
analogy a little further, for the ideas and customs which it maintains
and furnishes to each new generation as guides for their behavior in
life are analogous to the determinate methods of reaction, the inherited
impulses, reflexes, and instincts with which heredity furnishes the
individual. The tradition of the elders is, as it were, the instinct of
society. It furnishes the prescribed rule for dealing with the ordinary
occasions of life, which is for the most part accepted without inquiry
and applied without reflection. It furnishes the appropriate institution
for providing for each class of social needs, for meeting common
dangers, for satisfying social wants, for regulating social relations.
It constitutes, in short, the framework of society's life which to each
new generation is a part of its hereditary outfit.
But of course in speaking of tradition as a kind of inheritance we
conceive of it as propagated by quite other than biological methods. In
a sense its propagation is psychological, it is handed on from mind to
mind, and even though social institutions may in a sense be actually
incorporated in material things, in buildings, in books, in coronation
robes, or in flags, still it need not be said that these things are
nothing but for the continuity of thought which maintains and develops
their significance. Yet the forces at work in tradition are not purely
psychological; at least they are not to be understood in terms of
individual psychology alone. What is handed on is not merely a set of
ideas but the whole social environment; not merely certain ways of
thinking or of acting but the conditions which prescribe to individuals
the necessity for thinking or acting in certain specific ways if they
are to achieve their own desires. The point is worth dwelling on,
because some writers have thought to simplify the working of tradition
by reducing it to some apparently simple psychological phenomenon like
that of imitation. In this there is more than one element of fallacy.
Now the growth of tradition will in a sense gravely modify the
individual members of the society which maintains it. To any given set
of institutions a certain assemblage of qualities, mental and physical,
will be most appropriate, and these may differ as much as the qualities
necessary for war differ from those of peaceful industry. Any tradition
will obviously call forth from human beings the qualities appropriate to
it, and it will in a sense select the individuals in which those
qualities are the best developed and will tend to bring them to the top
of the social fabric, but this is not to say that it will assert the
same modification upon the stock that would be accomplished by the
working of heredity. The hereditary qualities of the race may remain the
same, though the traditions have changed and though by them one set of
qualities are kept permanently in abeyance, while the other are
continually brought by exercise to the highest point of efficiency.
We are not to conclude that physical heredity is of no importance to the
social order; it must be obvious that the better the qualities of the
individuals constituting a race, the more easily they will fit
themselves into good social traditions, the more readily they will
advance those traditions to a still higher point of excellence, and the
more stoutly they would resist deterioration. The qualities upon which
the social fabric calls must be there, and the more readily they are
forthcoming, the more easily the social machine will work. Hence social
progress necessarily implies a certain level of racial development, and
its advance may always be checked by the limitations of the racial type.
Nevertheless, if we look at human history as a whole, we are impressed
with the stability of the great fundamental characteristics of human
nature and the relatively sweeping character and often rapid development
of social change.
In view of this contrast we must hesitate to attribute any substantial
share in human development to biological factors, and our hesitation is
increased when we consider the factors on which social change depends.
It is in the department of knowledge and industry that advance is most
rapid and certain, and the reason is perfectly clear. It is that on this
side each generation can build on the work of its predecessors. A man of
very moderate mathematical capacity today can solve problems which
puzzled Newton, because he has available the work of Newton and of many
another since Newton's time. In the department of ethics the case is
different. Each man's character has to be formed anew, and though
teaching goes for much, it is not everything. The individual in the end
works out his own salvation. Where there is true ethical progress is in
the advance of ethical conceptions and principles which can be handed
on; of laws and institutions which can be built up, maintained, and
improved. That is to say, there is progress just where the factor of
social tradition comes into play and just so far as its influence
extends. If the tradition is broken, the race begins again where it
stood before the tradition was formed. We may infer that, while the race
has been relatively stagnant, society has rapidly developed, and we must
conclude that, whether for good or for evil, social changes are mainly
determined, not by alterations of racial type, but by modifications of
tradition due to the interactions of social causes. Progress is not
racial but social.
B. PROGRESS AND SCIENCE
1. Progress and Happiness[337]
Human progress may be properly defined as that which secures the
_increase of human happiness_. Unless it do this, no matter how great a
civilization may be, it is not progressive. If a nation rise, and
extend its sway over a vast territory, astonishing the world with its
power, its culture, and its wealth, this alone does not constitute
progress. It must first be shown that its people are happier than they
would otherwise have been. If a people be seized with a rage for art,
and, in obedience to their impulses or to national decrees, the wealth
of that people be laid out in the cultivation of the fine arts, the
employment of master artists, the decoration of temples, public and
private buildings, and the embellishment of streets and grounds, no
matter to what degree of perfection this purpose be carried out, it is
not to progress unless greater satisfaction be derived therefrom than
was sacrificed in the deprivations which such a course must occasion. To
be progressive in the true sense, it must work an increase in the sum
total of human enjoyment. When we survey the history of civilization, we
should keep this truth in view, and not allow ourselves to be dazzled by
the splendor of pageantry, the glory of heraldry, or the beauty of art,
literature, philosophy, or religion, but should assign to each its true
place as measured by this standard.
It cannot be denied that civilization, by the many false practices which
it has introduced, by the facilities which its very complexity affords
to the concealment of crime, and by the monstrous systems of corruption
which fashion, caste, and conventionality are enabled to shelter, is the
direct means of rendering many individuals miserable in the extreme; but
these are the necessary incidents to its struggles to advance under the
dominion of natural forces alone.
It would involve a great fallacy to deduce from this the conclusion that
civilization begets misery or reduces the happiness of mankind. Against
this gross but popular mistake may be cited the principle before
introduced, which is unanimously accepted by biologists, that an
organism is perfect in proportion as its organs are numerous and varied.
This is because, the more organs there are, the greater is the capacity
for enjoyment. For this enjoyment is quantitative as well as
qualitative, and the greater the number of faculties, the greater is the
possible enjoyment derivable from their normal exercise. To say that
primitive man is happier than enlightened man, is equivalent to saying
that an oyster or a polyp enjoys more than an eagle or an antelope. This
could be true only on the ground that the latter, in consequence of
their sensitive organisms, suffer more than they enjoy; but if to be
happy is to escape from all feeling, then it were better to be stones or
clods, and destitute of conscious sensibility. If this be the happiness
which men should seek, then is the Buddhist in the highest degree
consistent when he prays for the promised _Nirvâna_, or annihilation.
But this is not happiness--it is only the absence of it. For happiness
can only be increased by increasing the capacity for feeling, or
emotion, and, when this is increased, the capacity for suffering is
likewise necessarily increased, and suffering must be endured unless
sufficient sagacity accompanies it to prevent this consequence. And that
is the truest progress which, while it indefinitely multiplies and
increases the facilities for enjoyment, furnishes at the same time the
most effective means of preventing discomfort, and, as nearly all
suffering is occasioned by the violation of natural laws through
ignorance of or error respecting those laws, therefore that is the
truest progress which succeeds in overcoming ignorance and error.
Therefore, we may enunciate the principle that progress is in proportion
to the opportunities or facilities for exercising the faculties and
satisfying desire.
2. Progress and Prevision[338]
We have confused rapidity of change with progress. We have confused the
breaking down of barriers by which advance is made possible with advance
itself.
We had been told that the development of industry and commerce had
brought about such an interdependence of peoples that war was henceforth
out of the question--at least upon a vast scale. But it is now clear
that commerce also creates jealousies and rivalries and suspicions which
are potent for war. We were told that nations could not long finance a
war under modern conditions; economists had demonstrated that to the
satisfaction of themselves and others. We see now that they had
underrated both the production of wealth and the extent to which it
could be mobilized for destructive purposes. We were told that the
advance of science had made war practically impossible. We now know that
science has not only rendered the machinery of war more deadly but has
also increased the powers of resistance and endurance when war comes.
If all this does not demonstrate that the forces which have brought
about complicated and extensive changes in the fabric of society do not
of themselves generate progress, I do not know what a demonstration
would be. Has man subjugated physical nature only to release forces
beyond his control?
The doctrine of evolution has been popularly used to give a kind of
cosmic sanction to the notion of an automatic and wholesale progress in
human affairs. Our part, the human part, was simply to enjoy the
usufruct. Evolution inherited all the goods of divine Providence and had
the advantage of being in fashion. Even a great and devastating war is
not too great a price to pay for an awakening from such an infantile and
selfish dream. Progress is not automatic; it depends upon human intent
and aim and upon acceptance of responsibility for its production. It is
not a wholesale matter, but a retail job, to be contracted for and
executed in sections.
Spite of the dogma which measures progress by increase in altruism,
kindliness, peaceful feelings, there is no reason that I know of to
suppose that the basic fund of these emotions has increased appreciably
in thousands and thousands of years. Man is equipped with these feelings
at birth, as well as with emotions of fear, anger, emulation, and
resentment. What appears to be an increase in one set and a decrease in
the other set is, in reality, a change in their social occasions and
social channels. Civilized man has not a better endowment of ear and eye
than savage man; but his social surroundings give him more important
things to see and hear than the savage has, and he has the wit to devise
instruments to reinforce his eye and ear--the telegraph and telephone,
the microscope and telescope. But there is no reason for thinking that
he has less natural aggressiveness or more natural altruism--or will
ever have--than the barbarian. But he may live in social conditions that
create a relatively greater demand for the display of kindliness and
which turn his aggressive instincts into less destructive channels.
There is at any time a sufficient amount of kindly impulses possessed by
man to enable him to live in amicable peace with all his fellows; and
there is at any time a sufficient equipment of bellicose impulses to
keep him in trouble with his fellows. An intensification of the
exhibition of one may accompany an intensification of the display of the
other, the only difference being that social arrangements cause the
kindly feelings to be displayed toward one set of fellows and the
hostile impulses toward another set. Thus, as everybody knows, the
hatred toward the foreigner characterizing peoples now at war is
attended by an unusual manifestation of mutual affection and love within
each warring group. So characteristic is this fact that that man was a
good psychologist who said that he wished that this planet might get
into war with another planet, as that was the only effective way he saw
of developing a world-wide community of interest in this globe's
population.
The indispensable preliminary condition of progress has been supplied by
the conversion of scientific discoveries into inventions which turn
physical energy, the energy of sun, coal, and iron, to account. Neither
the discoveries nor the inventions were the product of unconscious
physical nature. They were the product of human devotion and
application, of human desire, patience, ingenuity, and mother-wit. The
problem which now confronts us, the problem of progress, is the same in
kind, differing in subject-matter. It is a problem of discovering the
needs and capacities of collective human nature as we find it aggregated
in racial or national groups on the surface of the globe, and of
inventing the social machinery which will set available powers operating
for the satisfaction of those needs.
We are living still under the dominion of a laissez faire philosophy. I
do not mean by this an individualistic, as against a socialistic,
philosophy. I mean by it a philosophy which trusts the direction of
human affairs to nature, or Providence, or evolution, or manifest
destiny--that is to say, to accident--rather than to a contriving and
constructive intelligence. To put our faith in the collective state
instead of in individual activity is quite as laissez faire a proceeding
as to put it in the results of voluntary private enterprise. The only
genuine opposite to a go-as-you-please, let-alone philosophy is a
philosophy which studies specific social needs and evils with a view to
constructing the special social machinery for which they call.
3. Progress and the Limits of Scientific Prevision[339]
Movement, whether of progress or of retrogression, can commonly be
brought about only when the sentiments opposing it have been designedly
weakened or have suffered a natural decay. In this destructive process,
and in any constructive process by which it may be followed, reasoning,
often very bad reasoning, bears, at least in western communities, a
large share as cause, a still larger share as symptom; so that the
clatter of contending argumentation is often the most striking
accompaniment of interesting social changes. Its position, therefore,
and its functions in the social organism are frequently misunderstood.
People fall instinctively into the habit of supposing that, as it plays
a conspicuous part in the improvement or deterioration of human
institutions, it therefore supplies the very basis on which they may be
made to rest, the very mold to which they ought to conform; and they
naturally conclude that we have only got to reason more and to reason
better in order speedily to perfect the whole machinery by which human
felicity is to be secured.
Surely this is a great delusion. A community founded upon argument would
soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent
elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly woven out of common
sentiments, common tastes, common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by
which from our very earliest childhood we are all bound unconsciously
but indissolubly together into a compacted whole. Imagine these to be
suddenly loosed and their places taken by some judicious piece of
reasoning on the balance of advantage, which, after taking all proper
deductions, still remains to the credit of social life. These things we
may indeed imagine if we please. Fortunately, we shall never see them.
Society is founded--and from the nature of the human beings which
constitute it, must, in the main, be always founded--not upon criticism
but upon feelings and beliefs, and upon the customs and codes by which
feelings and beliefs are, as it were, fixed and rendered stable. And
even where these harmonize, so far as we can judge, with sound reason,
they are in many cases not consciously based on reasoning; nor is their
fate necessarily bound up with that of the extremely indifferent
arguments by which, from time to time, philosophers, politicians, and, I
will add, divines have thought fit to support them.
We habitually talk as if a self-governing or free community was one
which managed its own affairs. In strictness, no community manages its
own affairs, or by any possibility could manage them. It manages but a
narrow fringe of its affairs, and that in the main by deputy. It is only
the thinnest surface layer of law and custom, belief and sentiment,
which can either be successfully subjected to destructive treatment, or
become the nucleus of any new growth--a fact which explains the apparent
paradox that so many of our most famous advances in political wisdom are
nothing more than the formal recognition of our political impotence.
As our expectations of limitless progress for the race cannot depend
upon the blind operation of the laws of heredity, so neither can they
depend upon the deliberate action of national governments. Such
examination as we can make of the changes which have taken place during
the relatively minute fraction of history with respect to which we have
fairly full information shows that they have been caused by a multitude
of variations, often extremely small, made in their surroundings by
individuals whose objects, though not necessarily selfish, have often
had no intentional reference to the advancement of the community at
large. But we have no scientific ground for suspecting that the stimulus
to these individual efforts must necessarily continue; we know of no law
by which, if they do continue, they must needs be co-ordinated for a
common purpose or pressed into the service of a common good. We cannot
estimate their remoter consequences; neither can we tell how they will
act and react upon one another, nor how they will in the long run affect
morality, religion, and other fundamental elements of human society. The
future of the race is thus encompassed with darkness; no faculty of
calculation that we possess, no instrument that we are likely to invent,
will enable us to map out its course, or penetrate the secret of its
destiny. It is easy, no doubt, to find in the clouds which obscure our
paths what shapes we please: to see in them the promise of some
millennial paradise, or the threat of endless and unmeaning travel
through waste and perilous places. But in such visions the wise man will
put but little confidence, content, in a sober and cautious spirit, with
a full consciousness of his feeble powers of foresight and the narrow
limits of his activity, to deal as they arise with the problems of his
own generation.
4. Eugenics as a Science of Progress[340]
Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the
inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the
utmost advantage.
What is meant by improvement? There is considerable difference between
goodness in the several qualities and in that of the character as a
whole. The character depends largely on the _proportion_ between
qualities whose balance may be much influenced by education. We must
therefore leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion, not
entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as
to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. Moreover, the goodness
or badness of character is not absolute, but relative to the current
form of civilisation. A fable will best explain what is meant. Let the
scene be the Zoölogical Gardens in the quiet hours of the night, and
suppose that, as in old fables, the animals are able to converse, and
that some very wise creature who had easy access to all the cages, say a
philosophic sparrow or rat, was engaged in collecting the opinions of
all sorts of animals with a view of elaborating a system of absolute
morality. It is needless to enlarge on the contrariety of ideals between
the beasts that prey and those they prey upon, between those of the
animals that have to work hard for their food and the sedentary
parasites that cling to their bodies and suck their blood and so forth.
A large number of suffrages in favour of maternal affection would be
obtained, but most species of fish would repudiate it, while among the
voices of birds would be heard the musical protest of the cuckoo. Though
no agreement could be reached as to absolute morality, the essentials of
Eugenics may be easily defined. All creatures would agree that it was
better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill
fitted for their part in life. In short, that it was better to be good
rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be. So
with men. There are a vast number of conflicting ideals of alternative
characters, of incompatible civilisations; but all are wanted to give
fulness and interest to life. Society would be very dull if every man
resembled the highly estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede. The aim of
Eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that
done, to leave them to work out their common civilisation in their own
way.
The aim of Eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably
employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute
_more_ than their proportion to the next generation.
The course of procedure that lies within the functions of a learned and
active Society such as the Sociological may become, would be somewhat as
follows:
1. Dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of heredity so far as they
are surely known, and promotion of their further study. Few seem to be
aware how greatly the knowledge of what may be termed the _actuarial_
side of heredity has advanced in recent years. The average closeness of
kinship in each degree now admits of exact definition and of being
treated mathematically, like birth- and death-rates, and the other
topics with which actuaries are concerned.
2. Historical inquiry into the rates with which the various classes of
society (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed to
the population at various times, in ancient and modern nations. There is
strong reason for believing that national rise and decline is closely
connected with this influence. It seems to be the tendency of high
civilisation to check fertility in the upper classes, through numerous
causes, some of which are well known, others are inferred, and others
again are wholly obscure. The latter class are apparently analogous to
those which bar the fertility of most species of wild animals in
zoölogical gardens. Out of the hundreds and thousands of species that
have been tamed, very few indeed are fertile when their liberty is
restricted and their struggles for livelihood are abolished; those which
are so and are otherwise useful to man becoming domesticated. There is
perhaps some connection between this obscure action and the
disappearance of most savage races when brought into contact with high
civilisation, though there are other and well-known concomitant causes.
But while most barbarous races disappear, some, like the Negro, do not.
It may therefore be expected that types of our race will be found to
exist which can be highly civilised without losing fertility; nay, they
may become more fertile under artificial conditions, as is the case with
many domestic animals.
3. Systematic collection of facts showing the circumstances under which
large and thriving families have most frequently originated; in other
words, the _conditions_ of Eugenics. The names of the thriving families
in England have yet to be learnt, and the conditions under which they
have arisen. We cannot hope to make much advance in the science of
Eugenics without a careful study of facts that are now accessible with
difficulty, if at all. The definition of a thriving family, such as will
pass muster for the moment at least, is one in which the children have
gained distinctly superior positions to those who were their classmates
in early life. Families may be considered "large" that contain not less
than three adult male children. The point to be ascertained is the
_status_ of the two parents at the time of their marriage, whence its
more or less eugenic character might have been predicted, if the larger
knowledge that we now hope to obtain had then existed. Some account
would, of course, be wanted of their race, profession, and residence;
also of their own respective parentages, and of their brothers and
sisters. Finally, the reasons would be required why the children
deserved to be entitled a "thriving" family, to distinguish worthy from
unworthy success. This manuscript collection might hereafter develop
into a "golden book" of thriving families. The Chinese, whose customs
have often much sound sense, make their honours retrospective. We might
learn from them to show that respect to the parents of noteworthy
children, which the contributors of such valuable assets to the national
wealth richly deserve.
4. Influences affecting Marriage. The passion of love seems so
overpowering that it may be thought folly to try to direct its course.
But plain facts do not confirm this view. Social influences of all kinds
have immense power in the end, and they are very various. If unsuitable
marriages from the eugenic point of view were banned socially, or even
regarded with the unreasonable disfavour which some attach to cousin
marriages, very few would be made. The multitude of marriage
restrictions that have proved prohibitive among uncivilised people would
require a volume to describe.
5. Persistence in setting forth the national importance of Eugenics.
There are three stages to be passed through. _Firstly_, it must be made
familiar as an academic question, until its exact importance has been
understood and accepted as a fact; _secondly_, it must be recognised as
a subject whose practical development deserves serious consideration;
and _thirdly_, it must be introduced into the national conscience, like,
a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox
religious tenet of the future, for Eugenics cooperates with the workings
of Nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest
races. What Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do
providently, quickly, and kindly. I see no impossibility in Eugenics
becoming a religious dogma among mankind, but its details must first be
worked out sedulously in the study. The first and main point is to
secure the general intellectual acceptance of Eugenics as a hopeful and
most important study. Then let its principles work into the heart of
the nation, who will gradually give practical effect to them in ways
that we may not wholly foresee.
C. PROGRESS AND HUMAN NATURE
1. The Nature of Man[341]
Man is certainly an animal that, when he lives at all, lives for ideals.
Something must be found to occupy his imagination, to raise pleasure and
pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic alternative between
comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow.
Now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull, when religion for the
most part is so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast
impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of
honor. It has become the one eloquent, public, intrepid
illusion--illusion, I mean, when it is taken for an ultimate good or a
mystical essence, for of course nationality is a fact. It is natural for
a man to like to live at home, and to live long elsewhere without a
sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity. It is right to feel
a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to one's self. But
this necessary fact and even duty of nationality is accidental; like age
or sex it is a physical fatality which can be made the basis of specific
and comely virtues; but it is not an end to pursue or a flag to flaunt
or a privilege not balanced by a thousand incapacities. Yet of this
distinction our contemporaries tend to make an idol, perhaps because it
is the only distinction they feel they have left.
Everywhere in the nineteenth century we find a double preoccupation with
the past and with the future, a longing to know what all experience
might have been hitherto, and on the other hand to hasten to some wholly
different experience, to be contrived immediately with a beating heart
and with flying banners. The imagination of the age was intent on
history; its conscience was intent on reform.
2. Progress and the Mores[342]
What now are some of the leading features in the mores of civilized
society at the present time? Undoubtedly they are monogamy,
anti-slavery, and democracy. All people now are more nervous than
anybody used to be. Social ambition is great and is prevalent in all
classes. The idea of class is unpopular and is not understood. There is
a superstitious yearning for equality. There is a decided preference for
city life, and a stream of population from the country into big cities.
These are facts of the mores of the time. Our societies are almost
unanimous in their response if there is any question raised on these
matters.
Medieval people conceived of society under forms of status as generally
as we think of it under forms of individual liberty. The mores of the
Orient and Occident differ from each other now, as they apparently
always have differed. The Orient is a region where time, faith,
tradition, and patience rule. The Occident forms ideals and plans, and
spends energy and enterprise to make new things with thoughts of
progress. All details of life follow the leading ways of thought of each
group. We can compare and judge ours and theirs, but independent
judgment of our own, without comparison with other times or other
places, is possible only within narrow limits.
Let us first take up the nervous desire and exertion which mark the men
of our time in the western civilized societies. There is a wide popular
belief in what is called progress. The masses in all civilized states
strain toward success in some adopted line. Struggling and striving are
passionate tendencies which take possession of groups from time to time.
The newspapers, the popular literature, and the popular speakers show
this current and popular tendency. This is what makes the mores.
3. War and Progress[343]
Let us see what progress means. It is a term which covers several quite
different things.
There is material progress, by which I understand an increase in wealth,
that is, in the commodities useful to man, which give him health,
strength, and longer life, and make his life easier, providing more
comfort and more leisure, and thus enabling him to be more physically
efficient, and to escape from that pressure of want which hampers the
development of his whole nature.
There is intellectual progress--an increase in knowledge, a greater
abundance of ideas, the training to think, and to think correctly, the
growth in capacity for dealing with practical problems, the cultivation
of the power to enjoy the exercise of thought and the pleasures of
letters and art.
There is moral progress--a thing harder to define, but which includes
the development of those emotions and habits which make for
happiness--contentment and tranquility of mind; the absence of the more
purely animal and therefore degrading vices (such as intemperance and
sensuality in all its other forms); the control of the violent passions;
good will and kindliness toward others--all the things which fall within
the philosophical conception of a life guided by right reason. People
have different ideas of what constitutes happiness and virtue, but these
things are at any rate included in every such conception.
A further preliminary question arises. Is human progress to be estimated
in respect to the point to which it raises the few who have high mental
gifts and the opportunity of obtaining an education fitting them for
intellectual enjoyment and intellectual vocations, or is it to be
measured by the amount of its extension to and diffusion through each
nation, meaning the nation as a whole--the average man as well as the
superior spirits? You may sacrifice either the many to the few--as was
done by slavery--or the few to the many, or the advance may be general
and proportionate in all classes.
Again, when we think of progress, are we to think of the world as a
whole, or only of the stronger and more capable races and states? If the
stronger rise upon the prostrate bodies of the weaker, is this clear
gain to the world, because the stronger will ultimately do more for the
world, or is the loss and suffering of the weaker to be brought into the
account? I do not attempt to discuss these questions; it is enough to
note them as fit to be remembered; for perhaps all three kinds of
progress ought to be differently judged if a few leading nations only
are to be regarded, or if we are to think of all mankind.
It is undeniable that war has often been accompanied by an advance in
civilization. If we were to look for progress only in time of peace
there would have been little progress to discover, for mankind has lived
in a state of practically permanent warfare. The Egyptian and Assyrian
monarchs were always fighting. The author of the Book of Kings speaks of
spring as the time when kings go forth to war, much as we should speak
of autumn as the time when men go forth to shoot deer. "War is the
natural relation of states to one another," said Plato. The fact has
been hardly less true since his day, though latterly men have become
accustomed to think of peace as the normal, war as the abnormal or
exceptional, relation of states to one another. In the ancient world, as
late as the days of Roman conquest, a state of peace was the rare
exception among civilized states as well as barbarous tribes. But
Carthage, like her Phoenician mother-city, went on building up a mighty
commerce till Rome smote her down, and the Hellenic people, in its many
warring cities, went on producing noble poems and profound philosophical
speculations, and rearing majestic temples and adorning them with
incomparable works of sculpture, in the intervals of their fighting with
their neighbors of the same or other races. The case of the Greeks
proves that war and progress are compatible.
The capital instance of the association of war with the growth and
greatness of a state is found in Prussia. One may say that her history
is the source of the whole thesis and the basis of the whole argument.
It is a case of what, in the days when I learned logic at the University
of Oxford, we used to call the induction from a single instance.
Prussia, then a small state, began her upward march under the warlike
and successful prince whom her people call the Great Elector. Her next
long step to greatness was taken by Frederick II, again by favor of
successful warfare, though doubtless also by means of a highly
organized, and for those days very efficient, administration. Voltaire
said of Frederick's Prussia that its trade was war. Another war added to
her territory in 1814-15. Three successful wars--those of 1864, 1866,
and 1870-71--made her the nucleus of a united German nation and the
leading military power of the Old World.
Ever since those victories her industrial production, her commerce, and
her wealth have rapidly increased, while at the same time scientific
research has been prosecuted with the greatest vigor and on a scale
unprecedentedly large. These things were no doubt achieved during a
peace of forty-three years. But it was what one may call a belligerent
peace, full of thoughts of war and preparations for war. There is no
denying that the national spirit has been carried to a high point of
pride, energy, and self-confidence, which have stimulated effort in all
directions and secured extraordinary efficiency in civil as well as in
military administration. Here, then, is an instance in which a state has
grown by war and a people has been energized by war.
Next, let us take the cases which show that there have been in many
countries long periods of incessant war with no corresponding progress
in the things that make civilization. I will not speak of semi-barbarous
tribes, among the more advanced of which may be placed the Albanians and
the Pathans and the Turkomans, while among the more backward were the
North American Indians and the Zulus. But one may cite the case of the
civilized regions of Asia under the successors of Alexander, when
civilized peoples, distracted by incessant strife, did little for the
progress of arts or letters or government, from the death of the great
conqueror till they were united under the dominion of Rome and received
from her a time of comparative tranquillity.
The Thirty Years' War is an example of long-continued fighting which,
far from bringing progress in its train, inflicted injuries on Germany
from which she did not recover for nearly two centuries. In recent times
there has been more fighting in South and Central America, since the
wars of independence, than in any other civilized countries. Yet can
anyone say that anything has been gained by the unending civil wars and
revolutions, or those scarcely less frequent wars between the several
republics, like that terrible one thirty years ago in which Peru was
overcome by Chile? Or look at Mexico. Except during the years when the
stern dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz kept order and equipped the country
with roads and railways, her people have made no perceptible advance and
stand hardly higher today than when they were left to work out their own
salvation a hundred years ago. Social and economic conditions have
doubtless been against her. All that need be remembered is that warfare
has not bettered those conditions or improved the national character.
If this hasty historical survey has, as I frankly admit, given us few
positive and definite results, the reason is plain. Human progress is
affected by so many conditions besides the presence or absence of
fighting that it is impossible in any given case to pronounce that it
has been chiefly due either to war or to peace. Two conclusions,
however, we may claim to have reached, though they are rather negative
than positive. One is that war does not necessarily arrest progress.
Peoples may advance in thought, literature, and art while they are
fighting. The other is that war cannot be shown to have been a cause of
progress in anything except the wealth or power of a state which extends
its dominions by conquest or draws tribute from the vanquished.
What, then, are the causes to which the progress of mankind is due? It
is due partly, no doubt, if not to strife, to competition. But chiefly
to thought, which is more often hindered than helped by war. It is the
races that know how to think, rather than the far more numerous races
that excel in fighting rather than in thinking, that have led the world.
Thought, in the form of invention and inquiry, has given us those
improvements in the arts of life and in the knowledge of nature by which
material progress and comfort have been obtained. Thought has produced
literature, philosophy, art, and (when intensified by emotion)
religion--all the things that make life worth living. Now the thought of
any people is most active when it is brought into contact with the
thought of another, because each is apt to lose its variety and freedom
of play when it has worked too long upon familiar lines and flowed too
long in the channels it has deepened. Hence isolation retards progress,
while intercourse quickens it.
The great creative epochs have been those in which one people of natural
vigor received an intellectual impulse from the ideas of another, as
happened when Greek culture began to penetrate Italy, and thirteen
centuries later, when the literature of the ancients began to work on
the nations of the medieval world.
Such contact, with the process of learning which follows from it, may
happen in or through war, but it happens far oftener in peace; and it is
in peace that men have the time and the taste to profit fully by it. A
study of history will show that we may, with an easy conscience, dismiss
the theory of Treitschke--that war is a health-giving tonic which
Providence must be expected constantly to offer to the human race for
its own good.
The future progress of mankind is to be sought, not through the strifes
and hatreds of the nations, but rather by their friendly co-operation in
the healing and enlightening works of peace and in the growth of a
spirit of friendship and mutual confidence which may remove the causes
of war.
4. Progress and the Cosmic Urge
_a. The "Élan Vitale"_[344]
All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to
accumulate energy and then to let it flow into flexible channels,
changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely
varied kinds of work. That is what the _vital impetus_, passing through
matter, would fain do all at once. It would succeed, no doubt, if its
power were unlimited, or if some reinforcement could come to it from
without. But the impetus is finite, and it has been given once for all.
It cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes
turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed; and the evolution of
the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict. The first great
scission that had to be effected was that of the two kingdoms, vegetable
and animal, which thus happen to be mutually complementary, without,
however, any agreement having been made between them. To this scission
there succeeded many others. Hence the diverging lines of evolution, at
least what is essential in them. But we must take into account
retrogressions, arrests, accidents of every kind. And we must remember,
above all, that each species behaves as if the general movement of life
stopped at it instead of passing through it. It thinks only of itself,
it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles that we behold
in nature. Hence a discord, striking and terrible, but for which the
original principle of life must not be held responsible.
It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally
different outward appearance and designed forms very different from
those we know. With another chemical substratum, in other physical
conditions, the impulsion would have remained the same, but it would
have split up very differently in course of progress; and the whole
would have traveled another road--whether shorter or longer who can
tell? In any case, in the entire series of living beings no term would
have been what it now is.
There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the
two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an
individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make the balance
weigh on one side or the other. If we take an infusorian sufficiently
large, such as the Stentor, and cut it into two halves each containing a
part of the nucleus, each of the two halves will generate an independent
Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a protoplasmic
communication is left between the two halves, we shall see them execute,
each from its side, corresponding movements; so that in this case it is
enough that a thread should be maintained or cut in order that life
should affect the social or the individual form. Thus, in rudimentary
organisms consisting of a single cell, we already find that the apparent
individuality of the whole is the composition of an _undefined_ number
of potential individualities potentially associated. But, from top to
bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is manifested. And
it is this that we express when we say that unity and multiplicity are
categories of inert matter, that the vital impetus is neither pure unity
nor pure multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communicates
itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice will never be
definitive: it will leap from one to the other indefinitely. The
evolution of life in the double direction of individuality and
association has therefore nothing accidental about it: it is due to the
very nature of life.
Essential also is the progress to reflexion. If our analysis is correct,
it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the
origin of life. Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for
the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as matter;
consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket
itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into
organisms. But this consciousness, which is a _need of creation_, is
made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant
when life is condemned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the
possibility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms
unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of
locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in
animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of
the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called
motor intersect--that is, of the brain.
Consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice;
it is coextensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the
real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with
freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never anything but a variation
on the theme of routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it
succeeds, no doubt, in enlarging them by its individual initiative; but
it escapes automatism only for an instant, for just the time to create a
new automatism. The gates of its prison close as soon as they are
opened; by pulling at its chain it succeeds only in stretching it. With
man, consciousness breaks the chain. In man, and in man alone, it sets
itself free. The whole history of life until man has been that of the
effort of consciousness to raise matter, and of the more or less
complete overwhelming of consciousness by the matter which has fallen
back on it. The enterprise was paradoxical, if, indeed, we may speak
here otherwise than by metaphor of enterprise and of effort. It was to
create with matter, which is necessity itself, an instrument of freedom,
to make a machine which should triumph over mechanism, and to use
determinism of nature to pass through the meshes of the net which this
very determinism had spread. But, everywhere except in man,
consciousness has let itself be caught in the net whose meshes it tried
to pass through: it has remained the captive of the mechanisms it has
set up. Automatism, which it tries to draw in the direction of freedom,
winds about it and drags it down. It has not the power to escape,
because the energy it has provided for acts is almost all employed in
maintaining the infinitely subtle and essentially unstable equilibrium
into which it has brought matter. But man not only maintains his
machine, he succeeds in using it as he pleases. Doubtless he owes this
to the superiority of his brain, which enables him to build an unlimited
number of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old ones
unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against itself, to rule it. He
owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an
immaterial body in which to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from
dwelling exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon drag it
along and finally swallow it up. He owes it to social life, which stores
and preserves efforts as language stores thought, fixes thereby a mean
level to which individuals must raise themselves at the outset, and by
this initial stimulation prevents the average man from slumbering and
drives the superior man to mount still higher. But our brain, our
society, and our language are only the external and various signs of one
and the same internal superiority. They tell, each after its manner, the
unique, exceptional success which life has won at a given moment of its
evolution. They express the difference of kind, and not only of degree,
which separates man from the rest of the animal world. They let us guess
that, while at the end of the vast springboard from which life has taken
its leap, all the others have stepped down, finding the cord stretched
too high, man alone has cleared the obstacle.
It is in this quite special sense that man is the "term" and the "end"
of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends finality as it transcends
the other categories. It is essentially a current sent through matter,
drawing from it what it can. There has not, therefore, properly
speaking, been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abundantly
evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of man: we struggle
like the other species, we have struggled against other species.
Moreover, if the evolution of life had encountered other accidents in
its course, if, thereby, the current of life had been otherwise divided,
we should have been, physically and morally, far different from what we
are. For these various reasons it would be wrong to regard humanity,
such as we have it before our eyes, as prefigured in the evolutionary
movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of
evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on several divergent
lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other
lines have been followed with other species at their end. It is in a
quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the ground of
evolution.
From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave
which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the
whole of its circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at
one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed
freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but
in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has
kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely,
although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in
itself. On other lines of evolution there have traveled other tendencies
which life implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man
has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has kept only very
little. _It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we
will_, man _or_ superman, _had sought to realize himself, and had
succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way_. The losses
are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the
vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above
the accidents of evolution.
From this point of view, the discordances of which nature offers us the
spectacle are singularly weakened. The organized world as a whole
becomes as the soil on which was to grow either man himself or a being
who morally must resemble him. The animals, however distant they may be
from our species, however hostile to it, have none the less been useful
traveling companions, on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever
encumbrances it was dragging along, and who have enabled it to rise, in
man, to heights from which it sees an unlimited horizon open again
before it.
Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it
must undergo its vicissitudes. As the possible actions which a state of
consciousness indicates are at every instant beginning to be carried out
in the nervous centres, the brain underlies at every instant the motor
indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependency of
consciousness and brain is limited to this; the destiny of consciousness
is not bound up on that account with the destiny of cerebral matter.
Finally, consciousness is essentially free; it is freedom itself; but it
cannot pass through matter without settling on it, without adapting
itself to it: this adaptation is what we call intellectuality; and the
intellect, turning itself back towards active, that is to say, free,
consciousness, naturally makes it enter into the conceptual forms into
which it is accustomed to see matter fit. It will therefore always
perceive freedom in the form of necessity; it will always neglect the
part of novelty or of creation inherent in the free act; it will always
substitute for action itself an imitation artificial, approximative,
obtained by compounding the old with the old and the same with the same.
Thus, to the eyes of a philosophy that attempts to reabsorb intellect in
intuition, many difficulties vanish or become light. But such a doctrine
does not only facilitate speculation; it gives us also more power to act
and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves no longer isolated in
humanity, humanity no longer seems isolated in the nature that it
dominates. As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire
solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent
which is materiality itself, so all organized beings, from the humblest
to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we
are, and in all places, as in all times, do but evidence a single
impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself
indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield to the same
tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides
animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one
immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an
overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the
most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.
_b. The "Dunkler Drang"_[345]
Every glance at the world, to explain which is the task of the
philosopher, confirms and proves that _will to live_, far from being an
arbitrary hypostasis or an empty word, is the only true expression of
its inmost nature. Everything presses and strives towards _existence_,
if possible _organized existence_, i.e., _life_, and after that to the
highest possible grade of it. In animal nature it then becomes apparent
that _will to live_ is the keynote of its being, its one unchangeable
and unconditioned quality. Let anyone consider this universal desire for
life, let him see the infinite willingness, facility, and exuberance
with which the will to live pressed impetuously into existence under a
million forms everywhere and at every moment, by means of fructification
and of germs, nay, when these are wanting, by means of _generatio
aequivoca_, seizing every opportunity, eagerly grasping for itself every
material capable of life: and then again let him cast a glance at its
fearful alarm and wild rebellion when in any particular phenomenon it
must pass out of existence; especially when this takes place with
distinct consciousness. Then it is precisely the same as if in this
single phenomenon the whole world would be annihilated forever, and the
whole being of this threatened living thing is at once transformed into
the most desperate struggle against death and resistance to it. Look,
for example, at the incredible anxiety of a man in danger of his life,
the rapid and serious participation in this of every witness of it, and
the boundless rejoicing at his deliverance. Look at the rigid terror
with which a sentence of death is heard, the profound awe with which we
regard the preparations for carrying it out, and the heartrending
compassion which seizes us at the execution itself. We would then
suppose there was something quite different in question than a few less
years of an empty, sad existence, embittered by troubles of every kind,
and always uncertain: we would rather be amazed that it was a matter of
any consequence whether one attained a few years earlier to the place
where after an ephemeral existence he has billions of years to be. In
such phenomena, then, it becomes visible that I am right in declaring
that _the will to live_ is that which cannot be further explained, but
lies at the foundation of all explanations, and that this, far from
being an empty word, like the absolute, the infinite, the idea, and
similar expressions, is the most real thing we know, nay, the kernel of
reality itself.
But if now, abstracting for a while from this interpretation drawn from
our inner being, we place ourselves as strangers over against nature, in
order to comprehend it objectively, we find that from the grade of
organized life upwards it has only one intention--that of the
_maintenance of the species_. To this end it works, through the immense
superfluity of germs, through the urgent vehemence of the sexual
instinct, through its willingness to adapt itself to all circumstances
and opportunities, even to the production of bastards, and through the
instinctive maternal affection, the strength of which is so great that
in many kinds of animals it even outweighs self-love, so that the mother
sacrifices her life in order to preserve that of the young. The
individual, on the contrary, has for nature only an indirect value, only
so far as it is the means of maintaining the species. Apart from this,
its existence is to nature a matter of indifference; indeed nature even
leads it to destruction as soon as it has ceased to be useful for this
end. Why the individual exists would thus be clear; but why does the
species itself exist? That is a question which nature when considered
merely objectively cannot answer. For in vain do we seek by
contemplating her for an end of this restless striving, this ceaseless
pressing into existence, this anxious care for the maintenance of the
species. The strength and the time of the individuals are consumed in
the effort to procure sustenance for themselves and their young, and are
only just sufficient, sometimes even not sufficient, for this. The whole
thing, when regarded thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous
to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic)
_Ideas_, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. For the individuals
are fleeting as the water in the brook; and Ideas, on the contrary, are
permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also
do away with the eddies. We would have to stop at this unintelligible
view if nature were known to us only from without, thus were given us
merely _objectively_, and we accepted it as it is comprehended by
knowledge, and also as sprung from knowledge, i.e., in the sphere of the
idea, and were therefore obliged to confine ourselves to this province
in solving it. But the case is otherwise, and a glance at any rate is
afforded us into the _interior of nature_; inasmuch as this is nothing
else than _our own inner being_, which is precisely where nature,
arrived at the highest grade to which its striving could work itself up,
is now by the light of knowledge found directly in self-consciousness.
Thus the subjective here gives the key for the exposition of the
objective. In order to recognize, as something original and
unconditioned, that exceedingly strong tendency of all animals and men
to retain life and carry it on as long as possible--a tendency which was
set forth above as characteristic of the subjective, or of the will--it
is necessary to make clear to ourselves that this is by no means the
result of any objective _knowledge_ of the worth of life, but is
independent of all knowledge; or, in other words, that those beings
exhibit themselves, not as drawn from in front, but as impelled from
behind.
If with this intention we first of all review the interminable series of
animals, consider the infinite variety of their forms, as they exhibit
themselves always differently modified according to their element and
manner of life, and also ponder the inimitable ingenuity of their
structure and mechanism, which is carried out with equal perfection in
every individual; and finally, if we take into consideration the
incredible expenditure of strength, dexterity, prudence, and activity
which every animal has ceaselessly to make through its whole life; if,
approaching the matter more closely, we contemplate the untiring
diligence of wretched little ants, the marvellous and ingenious
industry of the bees, or observe how a single burying-beetle
(_Necrophorus vespillo_) buries a mole of forty times its own size in
two days in order to deposit its eggs in it and insure nourishment for
the future brood (Gleditsch, _Physik. Bot. Oekon. Abhandl._, III, 220),
at the same time calling to mind how the life of most insects is nothing
but ceaseless labour to prepare food and an abode for the future brood
which will arise from their eggs, and which then, after they have
consumed the food and passed through the chrysalis state, enter upon
life merely to begin again from the beginning the same labour; then also
how, like this, the life of the birds is for the most part taken up with
their distant and laborious migrations, then with the building of their
nests and the collection of food for their brood, which itself has to
play the same rôle the following year; and so all work constantly for
the future, which afterwards makes bankrupt--then we cannot avoid
looking round for the reward of all this skill and trouble, for the end
which these animals have before their eyes, which strive so
ceaselessly--in short, we are driven to ask: What is the result? What is
attained by the animal existence which demands such infinite
preparation? And there is nothing to point to but the satisfaction of
hunger and the sexual instinct, or in any case a little momentary
comfort, as it falls to the lot of each animal individual, now and then
in the intervals of its endless need and struggle. Take, for example,
the mole, that unwearied worker. To dig with all its might with its
enormous shovel claws is the occupation of its whole life; constant
night surrounds it; its embryo eyes only make it avoid the light. It
alone is truly an _animal nocturnum_; not cats, owls, and bats, who see
by night. But what, now, does it attain by this life, full of trouble
and devoid of pleasure? Food and the begetting of its kind; thus only
the means of carrying on and beginning anew the same doleful course in
new individuals. In such examples it becomes clear that there is no
proportion between the cares and troubles of life and the results or
gain of it. The consciousness of the world of perception gives a certain
appearance of objective worth of existence to the life of those animals
which can see, although in their case this consciousness is entirely
subjective and limited to the influence of motives upon them. But the
_blind_ mole, with its perfect organization and ceaseless activity,
limited to the alternation of insect larvae and hunger, makes the
disproportion of the means to the end apparent.
Let us now add the consideration of the human race. The matter indeed
becomes more complicated, and assumes a certain seriousness of aspect;
but the fundamental character remains unaltered. Here also life presents
itself by no means as a gift for enjoyment, but as a task, a drudgery to
be performed; and in accordance with this we see, in great and small,
universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife,
compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and
mind. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good,
each individual on account of his own; but many thousands fall as a
sacrifice for it. Now senseless delusions, now intriguing politics,
incite them to wars with each other; then the sweat and the blood of the
great multitude must flow, to carry out the ideas of individuals, or to
expiate their faults. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions
work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all
ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All strive, some
planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate
aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented
individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate ease with
endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at
once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its
striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the
reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken
objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which
everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for
something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we
shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency
entirely without ground or motive.
The law of motivation only extends to the particular actions, not to
willing _as a whole and in general_. It depends upon this, that if we
conceive of the human race and its action _as a whole and universally_,
it does not present itself to us, as when we contemplate the particular
actions, as a play of puppets who are pulled after the ordinary manner
by threads outside them; but from this point of view, as puppets that
are set in motion by internal clockwork. For if, as we have done above,
one compares the ceaseless, serious, and laborious striving of men with
what they gain by it, nay, even with what they ever can gain, the
disproportion we have pointed out becomes apparent, for one recognizes
that that which is to be gained, taken as the motive power, is entirely
insufficient for the explanation of that movement and that ceaseless
striving. What, then, is a short postponement of death, a slight easing
of misery or deferment of pain, a momentary stilling of desire, compared
with such an abundant and certain victory over them all as death? What
could such advantages accomplish taken as actual moving causes of a
human race, innumerable because constantly renewed, which unceasingly
moves, strives, struggles, grieves, writhes, and performs the whole
tragi-comedy of the history of the world, nay, what says more than all,
_perseveres_ in such a mock-existence as long as each one possibly can?
Clearly this is all inexplicable if we seek the moving causes outside
the figures and conceive the human race as striving, in consequence of
rational reflection, or something analogous to this (as moving threads),
after those good things held out to it, the attainment of which would be
a sufficient reward for its ceaseless cares and troubles. The matter
being taken thus, everyone would rather have long ago said, "Le jeu ne
vaut pas la chandelle," and have gone out. But, on the contrary,
everyone guards and defends his life, like a precious pledge entrusted
to him under heavy responsibility, under infinite cares and abundant
misery, even under which life is tolerable. The wherefore and the why,
the reward for this, certainly he does not see; but he has accepted the
worth of that pledge without seeing it, upon trust and faith, and does
not know what it consists in. Hence I have said that these puppets are
not pulled from without, but each bears in itself the clockwork from
which its movements result. This is _the will to live_, manifesting
itself as an untiring machine, an irrational tendency, which has not its
sufficient reason in the external world. It holds the individuals firmly
upon the scene, and is the _primum mobile_ of their movements; while the
external objects, the motives, only determine their direction in the
particular case; otherwise the cause would not be at all suitable to the
effect. For, as every manifestation of a force of nature has a cause,
but the force of nature itself none, so every particular act of will has
a motive, but the will in general has none: indeed at bottom these two
are one and the same. The will, as that which is metaphysical, is
everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which it
cannot go. We often see a miserable figure, deformed and shrunk with
age, want, and disease, implore our help from the bottom of his heart
for the prolongation of an existence, the end of which would necessarily
appear altogether desirable if it were an objective judgment that
determined here. Thus instead of this it is the blind will, appearing as
the tendency to life, the love of life, and the sense of life; it is the
same which makes the plants grow. This sense of life may be compared to
a rope which is stretched above the puppet show of the world of men, and
on which the puppets hang by invisible threads, while apparently they
are supported only by the ground beneath them (the objective value of
life). But if the rope becomes weak the puppet sinks; if it breaks the
puppet must fall, for the ground beneath it only seemed to support it:
i.e., the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria,
spleen, melancholy: its entire exhaustion as the inclination to suicide.
And as with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and
movement. This is not something freely chosen; but while everyone would
really gladly rest, want and ennui are the whips that keep the top
spinning. Therefore everything is in continual strain and forced
movement, and the course of the world goes on, to use an expression of
Aristotle's (_De coelo_ ii. 13), [Greek: "ou physei, alla bia"] (_motu,
non naturali sed molento_). Men are only apparently drawn from in front;
really they are pushed from behind; it is not life that tempts them on,
but necessity that drives them forward. The law of motivation is, like
all causality, merely the form of the phenomenon.
In all these considerations, then, it becomes clear to us that the will
to live is not a consequence of the knowledge of life, is in no way a
_conclusio ex praemissis_, and in general is nothing secondary. Rather,
it is that which is first and unconditioned, the premiss of all
premisses, and just on that account that from which philosophy must
_start_, for the will to live does not appear in consequence of the
world, but the world in consequence of the will to live.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Progress and Social Research
The problem of progress comes back finally to the problem of the
ultimate good. If the world is getting better, measured by this ultimate
standard, then there is progress. If it is growing worse, then there is
retrogression. But in regard to the ultimate good there is no agreement.
What is temporary gain may be ultimate loss. What is one man's evil may
be, and often seems to be, another man's good. In the final analysis
what seems evil may turn out to be good and what seems good may be an
eventual evil. But this is a problem in philosophy which sociology is
not bound to solve before it undertakes to describe society. It does not
even need to discuss it. Sociology, just as any other natural science,
accepts the current values of the community. The physician, like the
social worker, assumes that health is a social value. With this as a
datum his studies are directed to the discovery of the nature and causes
of diseases, and to the invention of devices for curing them. There is
just as much, and no more, reason for a sociologist to formulate a
doctrine of social progress as there is for the physician to do so. Both
are concerned with specific problems for which they are seeking specific
remedies.
If there are social processes and predictable forms of change in
society, then there are methods of human intervention in the processes
of society, methods of controlling these processes in the interest of
the ends of human life, methods of progress in other words. If there are
no intelligible or describable social processes, then there may be
progress, but there will be no sociology and no _methods of progress_.
We can only hope and pray.
It is not impossible to formulate a definition of progress which does
not assume the perfectibility of mankind, which does not regard progress
as a necessity, and which does not assume to say with finality what has
happened or is likely to happen to humanity as a whole.[346]
Progress may be considered as the addition to the sum of accumulated
experience, tradition, and technical devices organized for social
efficiency. This is at once a definition of progress and of
civilization, in which civilization is the sum of social efficiencies
and progress consists of the units (additions) of which it is composed.
Defined in these terms, progress turns out to be a relative, local,
temporal, and secular phenomenon. It is possible, theoretically at
least, to compare one community with another with respect to their
relative efficiency and their relative progress in efficiency, just as
we can compare one institution with another in respect to its efficiency
and progress. It is even possible to measure the progress of humanity in
so far as humanity can be said to be organized for social action.
This is in fact the point of view which sociologists have adopted as
soon as progress ceased to be, for sociology, a matter of definition and
became a matter of observation and research. Score cards for
neighborhoods and for rural communities have already been devised.[347]
2. Indices of Progress
A few years ago, Walter F. Willcox, in an article "A Statistician's Idea
of Progress," sought to define certain indices of social progress which
would make it possible to measure progress statistically. "If progress
be merely a subjective term," he admitted, "statistics can throw no
light upon it because all such ends as happiness, or self-realization,
or social service are incapable of statistical measurement." Statistics
works with indices, characteristics which are accessible to measurement
but are "correlated with some deeper immeasurable characteristic." Mr.
Willcox took as his indices of progress:
1. Increase in population.
2. Length of life.
3. Uniformity in population.
4. Racial homogeneity.
5. Literacy.
6. Decrease of the divorce rate.
Certainly these indices, like uniformity, are mere temporary measures of
progress, since diversity in the population is not per se an evil. It
becomes so only when the diversities in the community are so great as
to endanger its solidarity. Applying his indices to the United States,
Mr. Willcox sums up the result as follows:
The net result is to indicate for the United States a rapid
increase of population and probable increase in length of life,
and increase in racial uniformity and perhaps in uniformity of
other sorts connected with immigration, and at the same time a
decrease in uniformity in the stability and social
serviceability of family life. Some of these indications look
towards progress, others look towards retrogression. As they
cannot be reduced to any common denominator, the statistical
method is unable to answer the question with which we
started.[348]
The securing of indices which will measure satisfactorily even such
social values as are generally accepted is difficult. The problem of
giving each index in the series a value or weight in proportion to the
value of all the others is still more difficult. This statement, at any
rate, illustrates the procedure and the method.
The whole subject of numerical indices for the measurement of
civilization and progress has recently been discussed in a little volume
by Alfredo Niceforo,[349] professor in the School of Criminal Law at
Rome. He proposes as indices of progress:
1. The increase in wealth and in the consumption of goods, and the
diminution of the mortality rate. These are evidences of material
progress.
2. The diffusion of culture, and "when it becomes possible to measure
it," the productivity of men of genius. This is the measure of
intellectual superiority.
3. Moral progress he would measure in terms of crime.
4. There remains the social and political organization, which he would
measure in terms of the increase and decrease of individual liberty.
In all these attempts to measure the progress of the community the
indices have invariably shown progression in some direction,
retrogression in others.
From the point of view of social research the problem of progress is
mainly one of getting devices that will measure all the different
factors of progress and of estimating the relative value of different
factors in the progress of the community.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. THE DEFINITION OF PROGRESS
(1) Dewey, John. "Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, XXVI
(1916), 311-22.
(2) Bury, J. B. _The Idea of Progress_. An inquiry into its origin and
growth. London, 1921.
(3) Bryce, James. "What is Progress?" _Atlantic Monthly_, C (1907),
145-56.
(4) Todd, A. J. _Theories of Social Progress_. A critical attempt to
formulate the conditions of human advance. New York, 1918.
(5) Woods, E. B. "Progress as a Sociological Concept," _American Journal
of Sociology_, XII (1906-7), 779-821.
(6) Cooley, Charles H. _The Social Process_. Chap, xxvii, "The Sphere of
Pecuniary Valuation," pp. 309-28. New York, 1918.
(7) Mackenzie, J. S. "The Idea of Progress," _International Journal of
Ethics_, IX (1899), 195-213.
(8) Bergson, H. _Creative Evolution_. New York, 1911.
(9) Frobenius, L. _Die Weltanschauung der Naturvölker_. Weimar, 1899.
(10) Inge, W. R. _The Idea of Progress_. The Romanes Lecture, 1920.
Oxford, 1920.
(11) Balfour, Arthur J. _Arthur James Balfour, as Philosopher and
Thinker_. A collection of the more important and interesting passages in
his non-political writings, speeches, and addresses, 1879-1912. Selected
and arranged by Wilfrid M. Short. "Progress," pp. 413-35. London and New
York, 1912.
(12) Carpenter, Edward. _Civilization, Its Cause and Cure_. And other
essays. New and enlarged ed. London and New York, 1917.
(13) Nordau, Max S. _The Interpretation of History_. Translated from the
German by M. A. Hamilton. Chap viii, "The Question of Progress." New
York, 1911.
(14) Sorel, Georges. _Les Illusions du progrès_. 2d ed. Paris, 1911.
(15) Allier, R. "Pessimisme et civilisation," _Revue Encyclopédique_, V
(1895), 70-73.
(16) Simmel, Georg. "Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual
Functions," _International Journal of Ethics_, III (1893), 490-507.
(17) Delvaille, Jules. _Essai sur histoire de l'idée de progrès jusq'à
la fin du 18ième siècle_. Paris, 1910.
(18) Sergi, G. "Qualche idea sul progresso umano," _Rivista italiana di
sociologia_, XVII (1893), 1-8.
(19) Barth, Paul. "Die Frage des sittlichen Fortschritts der
Menschheit," _Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_,
XXIII (1899), 75-116.
(20) Lankester, E. Ray. _Degeneration_. A chapter in Darwinism, and
parthenogenesis. Humboldt Library of Science. New York. 18--.
(21) Lloyd, A.H. "The Case of Purpose against Fate in History,"
_American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1911-12), 491-511.
(22) Case, Clarence M. "Religion and the Concept of Progress," _Journal
of Religion_, I (1921), 160-73.
(23) Reclus, E. "The Progress of Mankind," _Contemporary Review_, LXX
(1896), 761-83.
(24) Bushee, F. A. "Science and Social Progress," _Popular Science
Monthly_, LXXIX (1911), 236-51.
(25) Jankelevitch, S. "Du Rôle des idées dans l'évolution des sociétés,"
_Revue philosophique_, LXVI (1908), 256-80.
II. HISTORY, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND PROGRESS
(1) Condorcet, Marquis de. _History of the Progress of the Human Mind_.
London, 1795.
(2) Comte, Auguste. _The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte_.
(Translated from the French by Harriet Martineau) Book VI, chap, ii, vi.
2d ed. 2 vols. London, 1875-90.
(3) Caird, Edward. _The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte_. 2d ed.
Glasgow and New York, 1893.
(4) Buckle, Henry Thomas. _History of Civilization in England_. 2 vols.
From 2d London ed. New York, 1903.
(5) Condorcet, Marie J.A.C. _Esquisse d'un tableau historique des
progrès de l'esprit humain_. 2 vols in one. Paris, 1902.
(6) Harris, George. _Civilization Considered as a Science_. In relation
to its essence, its elements, and its end. London, 1861.
(7) Lamprecht, Karl. _Alte und neue Richtungen in der
Geschichtswissenschaft_. Berlin, 1896.
(8) ----. "Individualität, Idee und sozialpsychische Kraft in der
Geschichte," _Jahrbücher für National-Ökonomie und Statistik_, XIII
(1897), 880-900.
(9) Barth, Paul. _Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie_. Erster
Teil, "Einleitung und kritische Übersicht." Leipzig, 1897.
(10) Rickert, Heinrich. _Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen
Begriffsbildung_. Leipzig, 1902.
(11) Simmel, Georg. _Die Problems der Geschichtsphilosophie_. Eine
erkenntnistheoretische Studie. 2d ed. Leipzig, 1905.
(12) Mill, John Stuart. _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and
Inductive_. Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the
methods of scientific investigation. 8th ed. New York and London, 1900.
(13) Letelier, Valentin. _La Evoluçion de la historia_. 2d ed. 2 vols.
Santiago de Chile, 1900.
(14) Teggart, Frederick J. _The Processes of History._ New Haven, 1918.
(15) Znaniecki, Florian. _Cultural Reality._ Chicago, 1919.
(16) Hibben, J. G. "The Philosophical Aspects of Evolution,"
_Philosophical Review_, XIX (1910), 113-36.
(17) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics._ Or thoughts on the
application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance"
to political society. Chap. vi, "Verifiable Progress Politically
Considered," pp. 205-24. New York, 1906.
(18) Crawley, A. E. "The Unconscious Reason in Social Evolution,"
_Sociological Review_, VI (1913), 236-41.
(19) Froude, James A. "Essay on Progress," _Short Studies on Great
Subjects._ 2d Ser. II, 245-79, 4 vols. New York, 1888-91.
(20) Morley, John. "Some Thoughts on Progress," _Educational Review_,
XXIX (1905), 1-17.
III. EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS
(1) Spencer, Herbert. "Progress, Its Law and Cause," _Westminster
Review_, LXVII (1857), 445-85. [Reprinted in Everyman's edition of his
_Essays_, pp. 153-97. New York, 1866.]
(2) Federici, Romolo. _Les Lois du Progrès._ II, 32-35, 44, 127, 136,
146-47, 158 ff., 223, etc. 2 vols. Paris, 1888-91.
(3) Baldwin, James Mark. _Development and Evolution._ Including
psychophysical evolution, evolution by orthoplasy, and the theory of
genetic modes. New York, 1902.
(4) Adams, Brooks. _The Law of Civilization and Decay._ An essay on
history. New York and London, 1903.
(5) Kidd, Benjamin. _Principles of Western Civilization._ London, 1902.
(6) ----. _Social Evolution._ New ed. New York and London, 1896.
(7) Müller-Lyer, F. _Phasen der Kultur und Richtungslinien des
Fortschritts._ Soziologische Überblicke. München, 1908.
(8) McGee, W. J. "The Trend of Human Progress," _American
Anthropologist_, N. S., I (1899), 401-47.
(9) Carver, Thomas N. _Sociology and Social Progress._ A handbook for
students of sociology. Boston, 1905.
(10) Weber, L. _Le Rythme du progrès._ Étude sociologique. Paris, 1913.
(11) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental
Development._ Chap. xiv. "Social Progress," pp. 537-50. New York, 1906.
(12) Kropotkin, P. _Mutual Aid._ A factor of evolution. London, 1902.
(13) Wallace, Alfred R. _Social Environment and Moral Progress._ London
and New York, 1913.
(14) Freeman, R. Austin. _Social Decay and Regeneration._ With an
introduction by Havelock Ellis. Boston, 1921.
IV. EUGENICS AND PROGRESS
(1) Galton, Francis, and others. "Eugenics, Its Scope and Aims,"
_American Journal of Sociology_, X (1904-5), 1-25.
(2) Saleeby, Caleb W. _The Progress of Eugenics._ London, 1914.
(3) Ellis, Havelock. _The Problem of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911.
(4) Pearson, Karl. _National Life from the Standpoint of Science._ 2d
ed. London, 1905.
(5) Saleeby, Caleb W. _Methods of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911.
(6) Davenport, C. B. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics._ New York, 1911.
(7) Demoor, Massart, et Vandervelde. _L'Évolution régressive en biologie
et en sociologie._ Paris, 1897.
(8) Thomson, J. Arthur. "Eugenics and War," _Eugenics Review_, VII
(1915-16), 1-14.
(9) Southard, E. E. "Eugenics _vs._ Cacogenics," _Journal of Heredity_,
V (1914), 408-14.
(10) Conn, Herbert W. _Social Heredity and Social Evolution._ The other
side of eugenics. Cincinnati, 1914.
(11) Popenoe, Paul, and Johnson, R. H. _Applied Eugenics._ New York,
1918.
(12) Kelsey, Carl. "Influence of Heredity and Environment upon Race
Improvement," _Annals of the American Academy_, XXXIV (1909) 3-8.
(13) Ward, L. F. "Eugenics, Euthenics and Eudemics," _American Journal
of Sociology_, XVIII (1912-13), 737-54.
V. PROGRESS AND THE MORAL ORDER
(1) Harrison, Frederic. _Order and Progress._ London, 1875.
(2) Hobhouse, Leonard T. _Social Evolution and Political Theory._ Chaps,
i, ii, vii, pp. 1-39; 149-65. New York, 1911.
(3) ----. _Morals in Evolution._ A study in comparative ethics. 2 vols.
New York, 1906.
(4) Alexander, Samuel. _Moral Order and Progress._ An analysis of
ethical conceptions. 2d ed. London, 1891.
(5) Chapin, F. S. "Moral Progress," _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXXVI
(1915), 467-71.
(6) Keller, Albert G. _Societal Evolution._ New York, 1915.
(7) Dellepiane, A. "Le Progrès et sa formule. La lutte pour le progrès,"
_Revue Internationale de sociologie_, XX (1912), 1-30.
(8) Burgess, Ernest W. _The Function of Socialization in Social
Evolution._ Chicago, 1916.
(9) Ellwood, C. A. "The Educational Theory of Social Progress,"
_Scientific Monthly_, V (1917), 439-50.
(10) Bosanquet, Helen. "The Psychology of Social Progress,"
_International Journal of Ethics_, VII (1896-97), 265-81.
(11) Perry, Ralph Barton. _The Moral Economy_. Chap, iv, "The Moral Test
of Progress," pp. 123-70. New York, 1909.
(12) Patten, S. N. "Theories of Progress," _American Economic Review_,
II (1912), 61-68.
(13) Alexander, H. B. "The Belief in God and Immortality as Factors in
Race Progress." _Hibbert Journal_, IX (1910-11), 169-87.
VI. UTOPIAS
(1) Plato. _The Republic of Plato_. Translated into English by Benjamin
Jowett. 2 vols. Oxford, 1908.
(2) More, Thomas. _The "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More_. Ralph Robinson's
translation, with Roper's "Life of More" and some of his letters.
London, 1910.
(3) _Ideal Commonwealths_. Comprising More's "Utopia," Bacon's "New
Atlantis," Campanella's "City of the Sun," and Harrington's "Oceana,"
with introductions by Henry Morley. Rev. ed. New York, 1901.
(4) Kaufmann, Moritz. _Utopias, or Schemes of Social Improvement_. From
Sir Thomas More to Karl Marx. London, 1879.
(5) Bacon, Francis. _New Atlantis_. Oxford, 1915.
(6) Campanella, Tommaso. _La città di sole e aforasmi politici_.
Lanciana, Carabba, 19--.
(7) Andreä, Johann V. _Christianopolis_. An ideal state of the
seventeenth century. Translated from the Latin by T. E. Held. New York,
1916.
(8) Harrington, James. _The Oceana of James Harrington_. London, 1700.
(9) Mandeville, Bernard de. _Fable of the Bees_. Or private vices,
public benefits. Edinburgh, 1772. [First published in 1714.]
(10) Cabet, Étienne. _Voyage en Icarie_. 5th ed. Paris, 1848.
(11) Butler, Samuel. _Erewhon: or over the Range_. New York, 1917.
[First published in 1872.]
(12) ----. _Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later_. New York, 1901.
(13) Lytton, Edward Bulwer. _The Coming Race_. London, 1871.
(14) Bellamy, Edward. _Looking Backward, 2000-1887_. Boston, 1898.
(15) Morris, William. _News from Nowhere_. Or an epoch of rest, being
some chapters from a utopian romance. New York, 1910. [First published
in 1891.]
(16) Hertzka, Theodor. _Freeland_. A social anticipation. New York,
1891.
(17) Wells, H. G. _A Modern Utopia_. New York, 1905.
(18) ----. _New Worlds for Old_. New York, 1908.
VII. PROGRESS AND SOCIAL WELFARE
(1) Crozier, John B. _Civilization and Progress_. 3d ed., pp. 366-440.
London and New York, 1892.
(2) Obolensky, L. E. ["Self-Consciousness of Classes in Social
Progress"] _Voprosy filosofii i psichologuïi_, VII (1896), 521-51.
[Short review in _Revue philosophique_, XLIV (1897), 106.]
(3) Mallock, William H. _Aristocracy and Evolution_. A study of the
rights, the origin, and the social functions of the wealthier classes.
London, 1898.
(4) Tenney, E. P. _Contrasts in Social Progress_. New York, 1907.
(5) Hall, Arthur C. _Crime in Its Relations to Social Progress_. New
York, 1902.
(6) Hughes, Charles E. _Conditions of Progress in a Democratic
Government_. New Haven, 1910.
(7) Parmelee, Maurice. _Poverty and Social Progress_. Chaps. vi-vii. New
York, 1916.
(8) George, Henry. _Progress and Poverty_. Book X, chap. iii. New York,
1899.
(9) Nasmyth, George. _Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory_. New
York, 1916.
(10) Harris, George. _Inequality and Progress_. New York, 1897.
(11) Irving, L. "The Drama as a Factor in Social Progress," _Fortnightly
Review_, CII (1914), 268-74.
(12) Salt, Henry S. _Animal Rights Considered in Relation to Social
Progress_. New York, 1894.
(13) Delabarre, Frank A. "Civilisation and Its Effects on Morbidity and
Mortality," _Journal of Sociologic Medicine_, XIX (1918), 220-23.
(14) Knopf, S. A. "The Effects of Civilisation on the Morbidity and
Mortality of Tuberculosis," _Journal of Sociologic Medicine_, XX (1919),
5-15.
(15) Giddings, Franklin H. "The Ethics of Social Progress," in the
collection _Philanthropy and Social Progress_. Seven essays ...
delivered before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Mass., during
the session of 1892. With introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams. New
York and Boston, 1893.
(16) Morgan, Alexander. _Education and Social Progress_. Chaps. vi,
ix-xxi. London and New York, 1916.
(17) Butterfield, K. L. _Chapters in Rural Progress._ Chicago, 1908.
(18) Robertson, John M. _The Economics of Progress._ New York, 1918.
(19) Willcox, Walter F. "A Statistician's Idea of Progress,"
_International Journal of Ethics_, XXIII (1913), 275-98.
(20) Zueblin, Charles. _American Municipal Progress._ Rev. ed. New York,
1916.
(21) Niceforo, Alfredo. _Les Indices numérique de la civilisation et du
progrès_. Paris, 1921.
(22) Todd, A. J. _Theories of Social Progress._ Chap, vii, "The Criteria
of Progress," pp. 113-53. New York, 1918.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The History of the Concept of Progress
2. Popular Notions of Progress
3. The Natural History of Progress: Evolution of Physical and Mental
Traits, Economic Progress, Moral Development, Intellectual Development,
Social Evolution
4. Stages of Progress: Determined by Type of Control over Nature, Type
of Social Organization, Type of Communication, etc.
5. Score Cards and Scales for Grading Communities and Neighborhoods
6. Progress as Wish-Fulfilment: an Analysis of Utopias
7. Criteria or Indices of Progress: Physical, Mental, Intellectual,
Economic, Moral, Social, etc.
8. Progress as an Incident of the Cosmic Process
9. Providence versus Progress
10. Happiness as the Goal of Progress
11. Progress as Social Change
12. Progress as Social Evolution
13. Progress as Social Control
14. Progress and the Science of Eugenics
15. Progress and Socialization
16. Control through Eugenics, Education, and Legislation
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand by progress?
2. How do you explain the fact that the notion of progress originated?
3. What is the relation of change to progress?
4. What is Spencer's law of evolution? Is it an adequate generalization?
What is its value?
5. Why do we speak of "stages of progress"?
6. To what extent has progress been a result (a) of eugenics, (b) of
tradition?
7. What do you understand by progress as (a) a historical process, and
(b) increase in the content of civilization?
8. What is the relation of progress to happiness?
9. "We have confused rapidity of change with progress." Explain.
10. "Progress is not automatic." Elaborate your position with reference
to this statement.
11. What is the relation of prevision to progress?
12. Do you believe that mankind can control and determine progress?
13. "Our expectations of limitless progress cannot depend upon the
deliberate action of national governments." Contrast this statement of
Balfour with the statement of Dewey.
14. "A community founded on argument would dissolve into its constituent
elements." Discuss this statement.
15. What is Galton's conception of progress?
16. What would you say to the possibility or the impossibility of the
suggestion of eugenics becoming a religious dogma as suggested by
Galton?
17. What is the relation, as conceived by the eugenists, as between germ
plasm and culture?
18. Is progress dependent upon change in human nature?
19. How are certain persistent traits of human nature related to
progress?
20. What is meant by the statement that progress is in the mores?
21. What are the different types of progress analyzed by Bryce? Has
advance in each of them been uniform in the last one thousand years?
22. Does war make for or against progress?
23. What is the relation of freedom to progress?
24. What place has the myth in progress?
25. To what extent is progress as a process of realizing values a matter
of temperament, of optimism, and of pessimism?
FOOTNOTES:
[322] Robert Flint, _The Philosophy of History in Europe_, I, 29-30.
(London, 1874.)
[323] W. R. Inge, _Outspoken Essays_, i, "Our Present Discontents," p.
2. (London, 1919.)
[324] Charles Booth, _Labour and Life of the People_, I, 154-55, 598. 2d
ed. (London, 1889.)
[325] Charles Cooley, _The Social Process_, p. 284. (New York, 1918.)
[326] Charles Zueblin, _American Municipal Progress_, pp. xi-xii. New
and rev. ed. (New York, 1916.)
[327] R. Austin Freeman, _Social Decay and Regeneration_. With an
introduction by Havelock Ellis. Pp. 16-17. (Boston, 1921.)
[328] J. B. Bury, _The Idea of Progress._ An inquiry into its origin and
growth, p. 1. (London, 1921.)
[329] W. R. Inge, _The Idea of Progress_, p. 9. The Romanes Lecture,
1920. (Oxford, 1920.)
[330] Author of _The Passing of a Great Race, or the Racial Basis of
European History_. (New York, 1916.)
[331] See Stoddard Lothrop, _The Rising Tide of Color against White
World-Supremacy_ (New York, 1920); and William McDougall, _Is America
Safe for Democracy?_ (New York, 1921.)
[332] Thomas H. Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics and Other Lectures_,
Lecture ii, pp. 46-116. (New York, 1894.)
[333] Adapted from F. S. Marvin, _Progress and History_, pp. 8-10.
(Oxford University Press, 1916.
[334] Adapted from Herbert Spencer, _Essays_, I, 8-10. (D. Appleton &
Co., 1899.)
[335] Adapted from Auguste Comte, _Positive Philosophy_, II, 124.
(Trübner & Co., 1875.)
[336] Adapted from Leonard T. Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political
Theory_, pp. 29-39. (The Columbia University Press, 1911.)
[337] From Lester F. Ward, _Dynamic Sociology_, II, 174-77. (D. Appleton
& Co., 1893.)
[338] Adapted from John Dewey, "Progress," in the _International Journal
of Ethics_, XXVI (1916), 312-18.
[339] From _The Mind of Arthur James Balfour_, by Wilfrid M. Short, pp.
293-97. (Copyright 1918, George H. Doran Company, publishers.)
[340] From Francis Galton, "Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims,"
in the _American Journal of Sociology_, X (1904-5), 1-6.
[341] Adapted from G. Santayana, _Winds of Doctrine_, pp. 6-8. (Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1913.)
[342] Adapted from W. G. Sumner, "The Mores of the Present and the
Future," in the _Yale Review_, XVIII (1909-10), 235-36. (Quoted by
special permission of the _Yale Review_.)
[343] Adapted from James Bryce, "War and Human Progress," in
_International Conciliation_, CVIII (November, 1916), 13-27.
[344] From Henri Bergson, _Creative Evolution_, translated by Arthur
Mitchell, pp. 253-71. (Henry Holt & Co., 1913.)
[345] From Arthur Schopenhauer, _The World as Will and Idea_, III,
107-18. (Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1909.)
[346] Scientific optimism was no doubt rampant before Darwin. For
example, Herschel says: "Man's progress towards a higher state need
never fear a check, but must continue till the very last existence of
history." But Herbert Spencer asserts the perfectibility of man with an
assurance which makes us gasp. "Progress is not an accident, but a
necessity. What we call evil and immorality must disappear. It is
certain that man must become perfect." "The ultimate development of the
ideal man is certain--as certain as any conclusion in which we place the
most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die." "Always
towards perfection is the mighty movement--towards a complete
development and a more unmixed good."--W. R. Inge, _The Idea of
Progress_, p. 9. (Oxford, 1920.)
[347] "Scale for Grading Neighborhood Conditions," _Publications of the
Whittier State School, Research Bulletin, No. 5_, Whittier, Cal., May,
1917. "Guide to the Grading of Neighborhoods," _Publications of the
Whittier State School, Research Bulletin, No. 8_, Whittier, Cal., April,
1918. Dwight Sanderson, "Scale for Grading Social Conditions in Rural
Communities," _New York State Agricultural College Bulletin_ [in press],
Ithaca, N.Y., 1921.
[348] "A Statistician's Idea of Progress," _International Journal of
Ethics_, XVIII (1913), 296.
[349] _Les indices numériques de la civilisation et du progrès_. (Paris,
1921.)
INDEX OF NAMES
[Page numbers in italics refer to selections or short extracts.]
Abbott, Edith, 223, 569.
Abbott, Grace, 780.
Abraham, Karl, 857.
Abrahams, I., 943.
Abrikossof, N. A., 649.
Achelis, T., 937.
Adams, Brewster, 643, 656.
Adams, Brooks, 950, 1006.
Adams, Charles C., 218, 554.
Adams, Charles F., _760_.
Adams, Franklin P., _834_.
Adams, Henry, _5_, 14, _15_, 563.
Addams, Jane, 329, 331, 335.
Addison, Joseph, 66.
Adler, Alfred, 144, 150, 497, 501, 638, 645, 646.
Adler, H. M., 936.
Alexander, H. B., 1008.
Alexander, Samuel, 1007.
Alexander the Great, 987.
Alfred [_pseud._], _see_ Kydd, Samuel.
Alher, R., 1004.
Ambrosio, M. A. d', 566.
Ames, Edward S., 426.
Amiel, H., 151.
Ammon, Dr. O., 535.
Amsden, G. S., 152.
Anderson, Wilbert L., 334.
Andreä, Johann V., 1008.
Andrews, Alexander, 860.
Andrews, John B., 942.
Anthony, Katharine S., 151, 942.
Anthony, Susan B., 949.
Antin, Mary, 774, 782, 783.
Antony, Marc, 386.
Archer, T. A., 941.
Arcoleo, G., 649.
Aria, E., 948.
Aristotle, 11, 29, 30, 32, 61, 140, 144, 156, 223, 231, 261, 373, 640, 1000.
Aronovici, Carol, 218, 782.
Atkinson, Charles M., 949.
Aubry, P., 937, 938.
Audoux, Marguerite, 151.
Auerbach, Bertrand, 275, 660, 778.
Augustinus, Aurelius (Saint Augustine), 122, 144, 150.
Austin, George L., 949.
Austin, John, 106.
Austin, Mary, _881-83_.
Avebury, _Lord_, 649.
Bab, Julius, 731.
Babbitt, Eugene H., 275, _754-56_.
Babinski, J. F., 648.
Bachofen, J. J., 214, 220.
Bacon, Lord Francis, 66, _233-34_, 1008.
Baden-Powell, H., 219.
Baer, Karl Ernst von, 967.
Bagehot, Walter, 423, 429, _495-96_, 563, 564, 646.
Bailey, Thomas P., 652, 728.
Bailey, W. F., 778.
Bailie, William, 565.
Bakeless, John, 648.
Baker, Ray Stannard, 643, 651, 658, 936.
Balch, Emily G., 781.
Baldwin, J. Mark, 41, 85, 149, 150, 390, 423, 425, 429, 646, 663, 719, 725,
775, 1006.
Balfour, Arthur James, 964, _977-79_, 1004.
Ballagh, James C., 728.
Bancroft, H. H., 942.
Bang, J. P., 650.
Barbellion, W. N. P. [_pseud._], _see_ Cummings, B. F.
Barclay, Robert, 944.
Baring Gould, S., 274.
Barnes, Harry E., 659.
Barr, Martin W., 935.
Barrère, Albert, 428.
Barrow, _Sir_ John, 275.
Barrows, Samuel J., 781.
Barth, Paul, _4_, 211, 1004, 1005.
Bartlett, David W., 949.
Bastian, A., 673, 787.
Bastiat, Frederic, _505-6_, _552-53_, 563, 573.
Bates, Jean V., 778.
Bauer, Arthur, 729.
Bauer, Otto, 777.
Bax, Ernest B., 944.
Beard, Charles A., 498, 658.
Beaulieu, P. Leroy, _see_ Leroy-Beaulieu, P.
Bechterew, W. v, _123-25_, 150, 157, 345, _408-12_, _415-20_,
424, 430, 433, 434, 494, 501.
Beck, von, 179.
Beddoe, _Dr._ John, 536.
Beecher, Franklin A., 940.
Beer, M., 566.
Beers, C. W., 152.
Beethoven, Ludwig von, 228.
Begbie, Harold, 727, 942.
Behn, 366.
Belisle, A., 946.
Bell, Alexander G., 276.
Bell, Sir Charles, 421.
Bellamy, Edward, 1008.
Bellet, Daniel, 947.
Bennett, Arnold, 216.
Bentham, Jeremy, 106, 500, 940, 949.
Bentley, A. F., _458-61_, 501, 503.
Bergson, Henri, 373, 374, 422, 426, 964, _989-94_, 1004.
Bernard, Luther L., 854.
Bernhard, L., 275, 770, 946.
Bernheim, A., 430.
Bertillon, Jacques, 265.
Besant, Annie, 120, 121, 559, 949.
Besant, Walter, 335.
Best, Harry, 276, 567.
Bevan, Edwyn R., 659.
Beveridge, W. H., 567.
Bhattacharya, Jogendra N., 728.
Bigg, Ada H., 948.
Binet, Alfred, _113-17_, 145, 150, 154, 424, 430, 496.
Bing, Alexander M., 652.
Bismarck, 238, 239, 789.
Blackmar, F. W., 499, 779.
Blair, R. H., 362, 366.
Blanchard, Phyllis, 646.
Bloch, Iwan, 221, 333.
Blondel, H., 729.
Blowitz, Henri de, 859.
Blumenbach, J. F., 243.
Bluntschli, Johann K., 658, 858.
Blyden, Edward W., 651.
Boas, Franz, 19, 154, 332, 660, 725, 730, 770, 777, 938.
Bodenhafer, Walter B., 48.
Böhme Margarete, 650.
Bohannon, E. W., 273.
Bois, Henri, 943.
Bonger, W. A., 562, 569.
Bonnaterre, J. P., 277.
Boodin, J. E., 425.
Booth, Charles, 44, _45_, 59, 212, 219, 335, 955.
Booth, William, 942.
Borght, R. van der, 427.
Bosanquet, Helen, 215, 222, 1008.
Bossuet, J. B., 906.
Botsford, George W., 940.
Bouglé, C., 728, 729.
Bourde, Paul, 654.
Bourgoing, P. de, 275, 945.
Bourne, _Rev._ Ansel, 472, 473.
Bourne, H. R. Fox, 564, 859.
Boutmy, Émile, 940.
Boutroux, Pierre 650.
Bradford, Gamaliel, Jr., 731.
Bradlaugh, Charles, 559.
Bradley, F. H., 106.
Bradley, Henry, 941.
Braid, James, 424.
Brailsford, H. N., 651.
Braithwaite, W. C., 944.
Brancoff, D. M., 946.
Brandenburg, Broughton, 780.
Brandes, Georg, 141, 498, 778.
Braubach, Prof., 810.
Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., 222, 223, 569, 782.
Brehm, A. E., 810.
Brent, Charles H., 855.
Brentano, Lujo, 500, 658.
Breuer, J., 838.
Bridges, 368.
Bridges, Horace, 782.
Bridgman, Laura, 244, 366.
Bright, John, 447.
Brill, A. A., 273.
Brinton, Daniel G., _666_, _671-74_, 725, 857.
Brissenden, Paul Frederick, 566, 658.
Bristol, Lucius M., 718, 725.
Bronner, Augusta F., 152.
Brönner, W., 941.
Brooks, John Graham, 566, 658, 925, 935.
Browne, Crichton, 366.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 65, _128_.
Bruhl, S. Levy, _see_ Levy Bruhl, S.
Brunhes, Jean, 270, 274.
Bryan, William J., 734.
Bryce, James, 650, 652, 658, 726, 759, 779, 851, 852 n., 858, 861, 941,
_984-89_, 1004.
Brynmor-Jones, David, 149, 945.
Buchanan, J. R., 731.
Buck, Carl D., 660.
Buck, S. J., 942.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 270, 493, 498, 912, 1005.
Bücher, Karl, _385-89_, 427, _529-33_, 728.
Bunyan, John, 122.
Burckhard, M., 941.
Burgess, Dr., 366, 367, 368.
Burgess, Ernest W., 426, 1007.
Burgess, John, 741.
Burgess, Thomas, 781.
Burke, Edmund, 449, 850.
Burnell, A. C., 276.
Burns, Allen T., 59, 335, 498, _773_, 782.
Burns, J., 943.
Burr, Anna R., 727.
Bury, J. B., 333, _958-59_, 1004.
Busch, 414.
Bushee, F. A., 1005.
Bussell, F. W., 904.
Buswell, Leslie, 649.
Butler, Joseph, 429.
Butler, Ralph, 660.
Butler, Samuel, 1008.
Butterfield, K. L., 1010.
Cabet, Étienne, 1008.
Cabrol, F., 939.
Cadière, L., 937.
Caelius, 386.
Caesar, 144, 238, 386, 387.
Cahan, Abraham, 335, 782.
Caird, Edward, 1005.
Cairnes, J. E., _546_, _547_, _548_.
Calhoun, Arthur W., 215, 222, 726.
Cambarieu, J., 938.
Campanella, Tommaso, 1008.
Campbell, John C., 275, 654.
Campeano, M., 941.
Canat, René, 273.
Cannon, Walter B., 422, 426.
Cardan, Jerome, 144.
Carlton, Frank T., 657.
Carlyle, Thomas, 494.
Carnegie, Andrew, 670.
Carpenter, Edward, 1004.
Carter, George R., 564.
Cartwright, Peter, 944.
Carver, Thomas N., 1006.
Case, Clarence M., 1005.
Case, S. J., 857.
Castle, W. E., _128-33_, 147.
Caxton, William, 237.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 151.
Chabaneix, Paul, 855.
Chapin, F. Stuart, 59, 1007.
Chapin, Robert C., 215, 222.
Chapman, 298.
Charcot, J. M., 144, 415, 424.
Charlemagne, 238.
Cherrington, Ernest H., 942.
Chevillon, Andre, 650.
Chevreul, M. E., 462.
Cheysson, E., 729.
Chirol, Valentine, 936.
Chrestus, 386.
Christensen, A., 940.
Churchill, William, 275, 428.
Cicero, 386, 387.
Ciszewski, S., 775.
Claghorn, Kate H., 782.
Clarendon, Earl of, 65.
Clark, H., 940.
Clark, John B., _544-50_.
Clark, Thomas A., 731.
Claudius, Emperor, 752.
Clayton, H. H., 947.
Clayton, Joseph, 855.
Clemens, Samuel L., (Mark Twain, _pseud._), 152.
Clements, Frederic E., 217, _526-28_, 554, 571.
Clerget, Pierre, 948.
Cleveland, Catharine C., 944.
Clibborne, 543.
Clodd, Edward, 857.
Clough, H. W., 947.
Cobb, Irvin, _735_.
Cobden, Richard, 447, 949.
Coblenz, Felix, 150.
Codrington, R. H., 857.
Coe, George Albert, _235-37_, 726.
Coffin, Ernest W., 779.
Cohen, Rose, 336, 774, 782.
Coicou, M., 729.
Colcord, Joanna, 223.
Coleman, Charles T., 940.
Coleridge, Samuel T., 368.
Collier, John, 732.
Commons, John R., 644, 657, 658, 776, 780, 942.
Comte, Auguste, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 24, 25, 39, 43, 44, 57, 60, 61, 68, 140,
210, 496, _716_, 959, _968-69_, 1005.
Condorcet, Marie J. A. C., 3, 553, 1005.
Conn, Herbert W., 1007.
Connor, Dr. Bernard, 241.
Constantin, A., 648.
Conway, M., 940.
Cook, Edward, 859.
Cooley, Charles H., 56, 58, 67, _67-68_, 70, _71_, 147, 154, 156,
157, 216, 285, 330, 421, 425, 430, 500, 646, _665_, _708-12_,
_723_, 729, 855, 934, 955, 1004.
Coolidge, Mary R., 781.
Corelli, Marie, 936.
Cornyn, John H., _751-54_.
Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille, 126.
Cory, H. E., 731.
Coulter, J. M., 128-33, 147.
Crafts, L. W., _254-57_.
Crawley, A. Ernest, 221, _291-93_, 282, 330, 332, 651, 850, 856, 857,
1006.
Creighton, Louise, _779_.
Crile, George W., _522-26_, 562, 571, 641, 563, 564, 783.
Croly, Jane (Mrs.), 942.
Crooke, William, 276, 728, 777, 943.
Crosby, Arthur T., 648.
Crothers, T. D., 940.
Crowell, John F., 564.
Crozier, John B., 1009.
Culin, Stewart, 655, 656.
Cummings, B. F., 151.
Cunningham, William, 563.
Cutler, James E., 654.
Cutrera, A., 655.
Cuvier, Georges, i.e., J. L. N. F., 809.
D'Aeth, F. G., 729.
Damiron, J. Ph., 647.
Dana, Charles A., 859.
Dana, Richard H., Jr., 276.
Daniels, John, 781.
Danielson, F. H., 147, 254.
Dargun, L. von, 220.
Darwin, Charles, 7, 143, 165, 214, 329, 342, _361-65_, _365-70_, 421,
422, 426, 432, 512, 513, 514, _515-19_, _519-22_, 554, 557, 562, 563,
570, 571, 641, 647, 663, 768, 810, 959, 1001.
Daudet, Alphonse, 120.
Daudet, Ernest, 649.
Dauzat, Albert, 429.
Davenport, C. B., 71, _128-33_, 147, 254, 568, 1007.
Davenport, Frederick M., 943.
Davids, T. W. Rhys, 943.
Davis, H., 654.
Davis, Katharine B., 570.
Davis, Michael M., 781.
Dawley, Almena, 569.
Dealey, J. Q., 222.
Deane, 238.
DeGreef, Guillaume, 58.
Delabarre, Frank A., 1009.
Delbet, E., 729.
Delbrück, A., 273, 777.
Delesalle, Georges, 428.
Dellepaine, A., 1007.
Delvaille, Jules, 1004.
De-Marchi, A, 856.
Demolins, Edmond, 333.
Demoor, Jean, 1007.
Demosthenes, 638.
Densmore, Frances, 938.
Desagher, Maurice, 276.
Descartes, René, 372, 463, 465.
Despine, Prosper, 938, 940.
Devine, Edward T., 333, _491_, 498, 567, 732.
Devon, J., 569.
Dewey, John, _36_, _37_, 38, 149, 164, _182-85_, 200, 225, 424,
_426_, 430, 509, 964, _975-77_, 1004, 1010.
Dibblee, G. Binney, 427.
Dicey, A. V., _445-51_, 557, 793, 831, 851, 858.
Dilich, Wilhelm, 241.
Dinneen, P. S., 945.
Disraeli, Benjamin, 721.
Ditchfield, P. H., 334.
Dixon, Roland B., 777, 854.
Dixon, W. H., 945.
Dobschütz, E. von, 333.
Dodge, Raymond, _837-41_.
Doll, E. A., _254-57_.
Dominian, Leon, 275, 645, 945.
Donovan, Frances, 569.
Dorsey, J. Owen, 655, 711.
Dostoévsky, F., 142, 273.
Down, T. C., _895-98_, 942.
Downey, June E., 146, 153.
Drachsler, Julius, 774, 781.
Draghicesco, D., 729.
Draper, J. W., 641, 647.
Dubois, L. Paul, 945.
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, 152, 222, 781, 783.
Dugas, L., _370-75_, 422, 426.
Dugdale, Richard L., 143, 147, 254.
Dugmore, H. H., 861.
Duguit, Léon, 850.
Dumas, Georges, 938.
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 627.
Duncan, Sara Jeannette, 652.
Durand, E. Dana, 652.
Durkheim, Émile, 18, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, _39_, 40, 58, 164,
_193-96_, 217, 221, 222, _267_, _268_, 343, 671, _714-18_,
723, 729, 854, 857, 894.
Dushkin, Alexander M., 774, 781.
Dutaillis, C. E. Petit-, _see_ Petit-Dutaillis, C. E.
East, E. M., _128-33_, 147.
Eastman, R. S., 732.
Eaton, Isabel, 781.
Eddy, Arthur J., 565.
Edie, Lionel D., 498.
Edman, Irwin, 148.
Edwards, Bryan, _727_.
Edwards, E., 943.
Edwards, Milne, _519_.
Effertz, Otto, 563.
Egerton, Charles E., 652.
Egli, Emil, 944.
Ehrenfels, Chrn. v., 500.
Elderton, Ethel M., 566, 568.
Eliot, George, 142, 231.
Elliott, A. M., 276.
Ellis, Havelock, 148, 153, 215, 221, 223, 659, 726, 938, 957, 1007.
Ellwood, Charles A., 41, 58, 566, _846-48_, 950.
Elsing, W. T., 566.
Elworthy, F. T., 332.
Ely, Richard T., _444-45_, 502, _646_, 855.
Empey, Arthur Guy, 429.
Engel, Ernst, 215, 222.
Engelgardt, A. N., 870.
Engels, Frederick, 565.
Espinas, Alfred, 163, _165-66_, 217, 224, 225, 407.
Estabrook, A. H., 147, 254.
Eubank, Earle E., 223.
Evans, F. W., 944.
Evans, Maurice S., 643, 651, _811-12_.
Faber, Geoffrey, 660.
Fadl, Said Memum Abul, 649.
Fahlbeck, Pontus, 218.
Fairfield, Henry P., 780, 781.
Faria, Abbé, 424.
Faris, Ellsworth, 147, _960-62_.
Farmer, John S., 427, 428.
Farnell, L. R., 856.
Farnam, Henry W., 569.
Farquhar, J. N., 944.
Fauriel, M. C., 937.
Faust, Albert B., 780.
Fawkes, J. W., 939.
Fay, Edward A., 276.
Fedortchouk Y., 946.
Féré, Ch., 405, 430.
Ferguson, G. O., Jr., 154.
Fernald, Mabel R., 569.
Ferrari, G. O., 115.
Ferrero, Guglielmo, 935, 936.
Feuerbach, Paul J. A., von, 277.
Field, J., 949.
Field, James, A., 566.
Fielding Hall, H., 649.
Finck, Henry T., 221.
Finlayson, Anna W., 148.
Finney, C. J., 943.
Finot, Jean, 651.
Finsler, G., 937.
Fischer, Eugen, 776.
Fishberg, Maurice, 149, _271_, 274, 431, 778.
Fisher, H. A., 639.
Flaten, Nils, 276.
Fleming, Daniel J., 780.
Fleming, Walter L., 730, 731, 942.
Fletcher, Alice C., 938.
Flint, Robert, 565, 953.
Florian, Eugenio, 333.
Foerster, Robert F., 781.
Foley, Caroline A., 948.
Forel, A., 169, 170.
Fornarsi di Verce, E., 569.
Fosbroke, Thomas D., 274.
Fosdick, H. E., 237.
Foster, William Z., 653.
Fouillée, Alfred, 149, 152, _461-64_, 499.
Francke, Kuno, 493, 498, 660.
Frazer, J. G., 149, 221, 330, 850, 855, 856.
Frederici, Romolo, 1006.
Frederick the Great, 628, 986.
Freeman, Edward A., 3, 10, _23_.
Freeman, R. Austin, 957, 1007.
Freud, Sigmund, 41, 144, 236, 329, 475, 478, 479, 482, 486, 487, 497,
501, 504, 638, 855, 858.
Friedländer, L., 935.
Friedmann, Max, 927, 937.
Friesen, P. M., 657.
Frobenius, Leo, 640, 648, 730, 776, 1004.
Froebel, F. W. A., 82.
Froment, J., 648.
Froude, James A., 1006.
Fuller, Bampfylde, 935.
Fustel de Coulanges, 855, 860.
Gall, F. J., 145.
Galpin, Charles J., 212, 218, _247-49_, 275, 724, 731.
Galton, Francis, 726, 963, _979-83_, 1007, 1011.
Gardner, Charles S., 940.
Garofalo, R., 649.
Gavit, John P., 782.
Geddes, P., 153.
Gehring, Johannes, 657.
Gennep, A. van, 857.
George, Henry, 1009.
Gerland, Georg, 270, 274, 856.
Gesell, A. L., 148.
Gibbon, Edward, 711.
Gibson, Thomas, 947.
Gibson, William, 943.
Giddings, Franklin H., _32_, 33, 36, 40, 58, 544, _610-16_, 661, 735,
740, 1009.
Gilbert, William S., _65_.
Gillen, F. J., 149, 220, 861.
Gillin, J. L. 499, 567, 657.
Ginsberg, M., 214, 220.
Gladden, Washington, 491, 498.
Glynn, A. W. Wiston-, _see_ Wiston-Glynn.
Gobineau, Arthur de, 769.
Goddard, Henry H., 131, 143, 147, 152, 254, 568.
Godkin, Edwin L., 858.
Godwin, William, 553.
Godwin, William, 565.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 126, 909, 967.
Goldenweiser, A. A., 777.
Goltz, E. von der, 273.
Goncourt, Edward de, and Jules de, 405.
Goodhart, S. P., 468.
Goodsell, Willystine, 222.
Gordon, Anna A., 950.
Gordon, Ernest, 942.
Goring, Charles, 145, 153.
Gould S. Baring-, _see_ Baring-Gould, S.
Gowen, B. S., 937.
Gowin, Enoch B., 855.
Graebner, F., 777.
Graetz, H., 944.
Grant, 809.
Grant, Madison, 963.
Grass, K., 943.
Grass, K. K., 657.
Grasserie, R., de la, _see_ La Grasserie, R. de.
Gratiolet, Pierre, 421.
Gray, Thomas, 314.
Gray, W., 856.
Greco, Carlo Nardi-, _see_ Nardi-Greco, Carlo.
Greeley, Horace, 949.
Green, Alice S. A., 334.
Green, Samuel S., 780.
Gregoire, Abbé, 451.
Gregory XV, 837.
Grierson, Sir G., 687.
Grierson, P. J. H., 564.
Griffiths, Arthur, 274.
Grinnell, G. B., 938.
Groat, George G., 657.
Groos, Karl, 426, 639, 640, 646.
Grosse, Ernst, 221, _790_, 939.
Grote, George, 233, _260-64_.
Grotjahn, Alfred, 566.
Groves. E. R., 941.
Grundtvig, N. F. S., _Bishop_, 931.
Gulick, Sidney L., 431, 782.
Gummere, Amelia M., 274.
Gummere, F. B., 939.
Gumplowicz, Ludwig, 212, 341, _346-48_, 420, 425, 431, 642, 645, 649, 776.
Guyot, Édouard, 565.
Hadley, Arthur T., 658.
Haeckel, Ernst, 912.
Hagens, von, 169.
Haines, Lynn, 659.
Haldane, _Viscount_, _102-8_.
Hall, Arthur C., 1009.
Hall, Frederick S., 652.
Hall, G. Stanley, 77, 150, 647, 648.
Hall, H., Fielding-, _see_ Fielding-Hall, H.
Hall, W. P., 563.
Halpércine, Simon, 649.
Hammer, von, 380.
Hammond, Barbara, 334.
Hammond, John L., 334.
Haney, Levi H., 564.
Hanford, Benjamin, 653.
Hanna, Charles A., 780.
Hanna, Rev. Thomas C., 468, 469.
Hansen, F. C. C., 430, 535.
Hansen, J., 937, 938.
Hanson, William C., 568.
Hapgood, Hutchins, 152, 731, 783.
Harlan, Rolvix, 945.
Harnack, Adolf, 942.
Harper, Ida H., 949.
Harrington, James, 1008.
Harris, Benjamin, 834.
Harris, George, 1005, 1009.
Harrison, Frederic, 649, 1007.
Harrison, James A., 276.
Harrison, Jane E., 17, _18_, 856, 857.
Harrison, Shelby M., 59, 219, 859.
Hart, A. B., 499.
Hart, Joseph K., 731.
Hartenberg, P., 941.
Hartmann, Berthold, 86.
Harttung, Pflug-, _see_ Pflug-Harttung.
Hasanovitz, Elizabeth, 335, 782.
Hasbach, Wilhelm, 495.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 237.
Hayes. A. W., 731.
Hayes, Edward C., 499.
Hayes, Mary H., 569.
Hayes, Samuel P., 943.
Haynes, E. S. P., 647.
Haynes, Frederick E., 658.
Headlam, Cecil, 946.
Healy, William, 59, 152, 273, 562, 645, 935.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 938.
Heaton, John L., 859.
Hecker, J. F. C., 875, _879-81_, 936.
Heckethorn, C. W., 274, 730.
Hegel, G. W. F., 69, 156, 959.
Heidenhain, 415.
Heijningen, Hendrik M. K. van, 654.
Helps, Sir Arthur, _66_, 727.
Hempl, Georg, 276.
Henderson, Charles R., 566.
Henderson, Ernest L., 424, 429.
Henry, R., 946.
Hericourt, 115.
Hermann, F. B. W. v., 499.
Heron, David, 560, 566.
Herschel, Sir J. F. W., 1001.
Hertzka, Theodor, 1009.
Hess, Grete Meisel, _see_ Meisel Hess.
Hibben, J. G., 1006.
Hichborn, Franklin, 659.
Hicks, Mary L., 732.
Higgs, Henry, _556_.
Hill, Georgiana, 949.
Hinde, Sidney L., _869_.
Hinds, William A., 334.
Hirn, Yrjö, 344, _401-7_, 426, 430, 433, 808, 869, 870, 938.
Hirt, Eduard, 152.
Hobbes, Thomas, _25_, 29, 30, 61, 106, 140, 156, 223, 512, 642.
Hobhouse, Leonard T., 56, _190-93_, 214, 220, 225, 728, 795, _796_,
_798_ n., 849, 854, 963, 964, _969-73_.
Hobson, John A., 567.
Hocart, A. M., 749.
Hoch, A., 152, 273.
Hocking, W. E., _95-97_, 148, _205-9_.
Hodder, Edwin, 949.
Hogarth, William, 402.
Holdsworth, W. S., 861.
Hollingworth, H. L., 149.
Hollingworth, Leta S., 152, 153.
Hollman, Anton H., 931.
Holmes (Judge), 736, 853.
Holmes, William H., 948.
Holt, Edward B., _478-82_, 501, 503.
Home, H., _Lord Kames_, 402.
Homer, 264.
Hooper, Charles E., 332.
Horak, Jakub, 781.
Horn, Paul, 429.
Hotten, John C., 428.
Howard, G. E., 214, 222.
Howard, John, 949.
Howells, William Dean, 627.
Hoxie, Robert F., 644, 657.
Hoyt, F. C., 656.
Hubert, H., 856, 857.
Hudson, Frederic, 859.
Hudson, W. H., _245-47_, _604-5_, _883-86_.
Hughes, Charles C., 1009.
Hughes, Henry, 429.
Humboldt, Alexander von, 673, 909.
Hume, David, 3, 429, 553, 786, _829-30_.
Hunter, Robert, 653.
Huntington, Ellsworth, 328, 666, 726.
Huot, Louis, 648.
Hupka, S. von, 333.
Hurry, Jamieson B., 947.
Huxley, Thomas H., 963.
Hyde, 749.
Hyndman, Henry M., 950.
Inge, William R., _954_, 959, _1001_, 1004.
Ingersoll, Robert, 912.
Ingram, John K., 563, 675.
Ireland, W. W., 941.
Irving, L., 1009.
Irwin, Will, 859.
Itard, Dr. Jean E. M. G., 242, 271, 277.
Iyer, L. K. A. K., 728.
Jacobowski, L., 221.
Jakstas, A., 946.
James, B. B., 945.
James, E. O., 856.
James, William, 77, _119-23_, 148, 150, 421, 426, 472, 473, 486, 598, 661,
669, 726, 736, 932.
Janes, George M., 652.
Janet, Pierre, 144, 430, 935.
Jankelevitch, S., 1005.
Jannasch, R., 726.
Jarau, G. Louis-, _see_ Louis-Jarau.
Jarrett, Mary C., 568.
Jastrow, J., 335.
Jellinek, Georg, 725.
Jenks, Albert, 211, 219, 775.
Jenks, Edward, 861.
Jenks, Jeremiah, 780.
Jennings, Hargrave, 730.
Jennings, H. S., 147, 285, 488.
Jephson, Henry, 858.
Jevons, William S., 500, 948.
Jhering, Rudolph von, 861.
Johnson, George E., 647.
Johnson, James W., 152.
Johnson, John H., 656.
Johnson, R. H., 568, 1007.
Johnson, Samuel, 451.
Johnson, W., 777.
Johnston, C., 654.
Johnston, Harry H., 779.
Johnston, R. M., 730.
Jones, David Brynmor-, _see_ Brynmor Jones.
Jones, Edward D., 947.
Jones, Rufus M., 944.
Jonson, Ben, 239.
Jordanes, 941.
Joseph II, of Austria, 934.
Jost, M., 944.
Jouffroy, T. S., 402.
Judd, Charles H., _381-84_, _390-91_.
Jung, Carl G., 144, 236, 497, 501, 857.
Junius [_pseud._], 858.
Juquelier, P., 411, 412, 937
Kaindl, Raimund F., 770, 778.
Kalb, Ernst, 657.
Kallen, Horace M., 778, 782.
Kammerer, Percy G., 223.
Kan, J. van, 569.
Kant, Immanuel, 82, 108, 420, 909.
Kapp, Friedrich, 780.
Kaufmann, Moritz, 1008.
Kaupas, H., 946.
Kautsky, Karl, 333.
Kawabé, Kisaburo, 427.
Keith, Arthur 659.
Keller, Albert G., 72, _134-35_, 157, 648, 719, 726, 1007.
Keller, Helen, 151, 231, _243-45_.
Kellogg, Paul U., 59, 219.
Kellogg, Walter G., 731.
Kelly, J. Liddell, 778.
Kelsey, Carl, 1007.
Kelynack, T. N., 568.
Kemble, Frances A., 728.
Kenngott, G. F., 219.
Kerlin, Robert T., 660.
Kerner, R. J., 777.
Kerr, Norman S., 568.
Kerschensteiner, Georg, 87.
Key, Ellen, 214, 221, 254.
Khoras, P., 950.
Kidd, Benjamin, 1006.
Kidd, D., 149.
Kilpatrick, James A., 649.
King, Irving, 150, 950.
Kingsbury, J. E., 427.
Kingsford, C. L., 941.
Kingsley, Charles, 274.
Kingsley, Mary H., 779.
Kipling, Rudyard, 67.
Kirchhoff. G. R., 13.
Kirkpatrick, E. A., 150.
Kistiakowski, _Dr._ Th., 217.
Kite, Elizabeth S., 147, 254.
Klein, Henri F., 730.
Kline, L. W., 221.
Kluge, F., 428.
Knapp, G. F., 217, 563, 729.
Knopf, S. A., 1009.
Knortz, Karl, 276.
Knowles, L. C. A., 950.
Knowlson, T. Sharper, _237-39_.
Kober, George M., 568.
Kobrin, Leon, 219.
Kochanowski, J. K., 649.
Kocourek, Albert, 854, 860.
Kohler, Josef, 564, 854, 856.
Kolthamer, F. W., 558.
Koren, John, 569.
Kostir, Mary S., 148, 254.
Kostyleff, N., 501, 855.
Kotik, _Dr._ Naum, 937.
Kovalewsky, M., 220, 729.
Kowalewski, A., 153.
Kraepehn, E., 146, 153.
Krauss, F. S., 149.
Kreibig, Josef K., 500.
Kroeber, A. L., 948.
Kropotkin, P., 1006.
Kudirka, _Dr._, 932.
Kydd, Samuel (Alfred, _pseud._), 567.
LaBruyère, Jean de, 144, 151.
Lacombe, Paul, 498.
Lafargue, G., 729.
Lagorgette, Jean, 648.
La Grasserie, R. de, 647, 649, 729.
La Hodde, Lucien de, 731.
Laidler, Harry W., 653.
Lamarck, J. B., 143
Lamprecht, Karl, 493, _494_, 498, 1005.
Landauer, G., 950.
Landry, A., 649.
Lane, W. D., 656.
Lane-Poole, S., 935.
Lang, Andrew, 277.
Lange, C. G., 421.
Langenhove, Fernand van, _819-22_, 857.
Lankester, E. Ray, 1005.
Lapouge, V., 266.
La Rochefoucauld, François, 371.
La Rue, William, 945.
Lasch, R., 221.
Laski, Harold, 860.
Laubach, Frank C., 333.
Lauck, William J., 780.
Law, John, 947.
Lay, Wilfrid, 646.
Lazarus, Moritz, 217, 427.
Lea, Henry C., 655, 657.
Le Bon, Gustave, 33, 34, 41, 58, 154, 164, 200, 201, 213, 218, 225, 659,
858, 867, _868_, 869, _871_, 876, _887-93_, 894, _905-9_, 927, 939, 950,
952.
Lecky, W. E. H., 641, 647, 858, 875, _915-24_.
Lee, James Melvin, 860.
Lee, Vernon (_pseud._), 402, 878.
Le Gouix, M., 729.
Lehmann, A., 430.
Leiserson, William M., 782.
Leland, C. G., 428, 429.
Leonard, O., 654.
Leopold III, 797.
Leopold, Lewis, _807-11_, 855.
LePlay, P. G. Frédéric, 215, 221, 222.
Leroy Beaulieu, P., 726.
Lester, J. C., 730.
Letcher, Valentin, 1005.
Letourneau, Ch., 220, 640, 648, 727, 854.
Letzner, Karl, 276.
Levasseur, E. de, 649.
Levine, Louis, 566, 658.
Lévy-Bruhl, L., _24_, _332_.
Levy, Hermann, 564.
Lewis, George G., 858.
Lewis, Matthew G., _677-81_.
Lewis, Sinclair, 213, 219.
Lhérisson, E., 939.
Lhermitte, J., 648.
L'Houet, A., 334.
Lichtenberger, J. P., 223.
Lilienfeld, Paul von, 28, 58, 566.
Lillehei, Ingebrigt, 659.
Limousin, Ch., 649, 729.
Linnaeus, 516.
Linton, E. L., 948.
Lippert, Julius, 148.
Lippmann, Walter, 148, _834-37_, 851, 859, 936, 949.
Lloyd, A. H., 1005.
Lock, C. L., 649.
Lockwood, George B., 945.
Loeb, Jacques, 79, _80_, 81, 147, 467, 494.
Lowenfeld, L., 153, 410.
Loisy, Alfred, 939.
Lombroso, Cesare. 145, 153, 562, 951.
Lord, Eliot, 781.
Lord, Herbert Gardiner, 648.
Loria, A., 498.
Lotze, Hermann, 420, 425.
Loughborough, J. N., 945.
Louis-Jarau, G., 946.
Loutschisky, I., 729.
Love, Albert G., 568.
Lowell, A. Lawrence, 658, 792, _826-29_, 851, 858, 864.
Lowie, Robert H., 18, _19_, 220, 723, 730, 777.
Lubbock, J., 180, 396.
Lucretius, 953, 965, 966.
Lummis, Charles F., 939.
Lyall, Sir Alfred, 105.
Lyell, Charles, 768.
Lyer, F. Müller-, _see_ Müller-Lyer.
Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 1008.
Macauley, T. B. 139.
McCormac, E. I., 728.
M'Culloch, O. C., 143, 147.
MacCurdy, J. T., 936.
Macdonagh, Michael, 851, 859.
McDougall, William, 58, 425, 441, _464-67_, 496, 501, 652, 721, 726, 963.
McGee, W. J., 211, 219, 777, 860, 1006.
Mach, Ernst, 13.
Machiavelli, 97, 140.
Maciver, R. M., 426.
McIver, J., 569.
Mackay, Charles, 947.
Mackay, R. W., 647.
MacKay, Thomas, 557, 565.
McKenzie, F. A., 775.
Mackenzie, J. S., 1004.
McKenzie, R. D., 218.
McLaren, A. D., 660.
MacLean, J. P., 944.
McLennan, J. F., 220.
McMurtrie, Douglas C., 568.
Macrosty, Henry W., 564.
Maine, Sir Henry S., 219, 220, _555_, 564, 826, 852, _853_, 854, 860,
862.
Maitland, Frederic W., 861.
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 220.
Mallery, Garrick, 422, 427.
Mallock, W. H., 729, 949, 1009.
Maloney, E. F., 935.
Malthus, T. R., 7, 516, 553, 554, 559, 561, 563.
Mandeville, Bernard de, 1008.
Marchi, A. De, _see_ De Marchi, A.
Marot, Helen, 149, 657.
Marpillero, G., 335.
Marshall, Alfred, 500, 563.
Marshall, Henry R., 425, _600-3_.
Martin, E. D., 940.
Martineau, Harriet, 1, 2, 57, 561.
Marvin, Francis S., 778, _965-66_.
Marx, Karl, 561, 565, 567, 912.
Mason, Otis T., 302, 427, 941.
Mason, William A., 427.
Massart, J., 218, 1007.
Mathiez, Albert, 657.
Matthews, Brander, 949.
Matthews, W., 938.
Maublanc, René, 649.
Mauss, M., 856, 857.
Maxon, C. H., 943.
Mayer, Émile, 650.
Mayer, J. R., 768.
Mayo Smith, Richmond, 741, 776, 778.
Mead, G. H., 424, 425.
Meader, John R., 943.
Means, Philip A., 651.
Mecklin, John M., 651, 652.
Medlicott, H. B., _377_.
Meillet, A., 275, 945.
Meinong, Alexius, 500.
Meisel Hess, Grete, 214, 221.
Mendel, G., 71, 143, 157.
Menger, Karl, 500.
Mensch, Ella, 936.
Mercier, C. A., 501.
Meredith, George, 142.
Merker, 240.
Merriam, Charles E., 658, 792.
Mesmer, F. A., 424.
Metcalf, H. C., 149.
Meumann, Ernst, 86.
Meyer, Adolph, 285, 488.
Meyer, J. L., 937.
Miceli, V., 939.
Michels, Robert 644, 659.
Michiels, A., 373, 374.
Miklosich, Franz, 654.
Mill, James, 451.
Mill, John Stuart, 546, 560, 850, 1005.
Miller, Arthur H., 855.
Miller, Edward, 944.
Miller, Herbert A., 335, 655, 660, 781, 782, _786-87_, 870.
Miller, J. D., 949.
Miller, Kelly 137, _251_, 651.
Millingen, J. G., 655.
Milhoud, Maurice, 859.
Millis, Harry A., 781.
Milmine, Georgine, 657.
Miner, Maude, 670.
Minin, 415.
Mirabeau, Octave, 151.
Mitchell, P. Chalmers, _170-73_.
Mitchell, Wesley C., 947.
Moll, Albert, _85-89_, 332, _412-15_, 430.
Moltke, Count von, 670, 793 n.
Monin, H., 729.
Montagu, 7.
Montague, Helen, 153.
Montesquieu, _3_, 270.
Montgomery, K. L., 945.
Moody, Dwight L., 943.
Moody, W. R., 943.
Mooney, James, 943.
Moore, Edward C., 778.
Moore, Henry L., 947.
Moore, William H., 778.
More, Hannah, 949.
More, Thomas, 1008.
Moreau de Tours, 938.
Morel, E. D., 779, 797.
Morgan, Alexander, 1009.
Morgan, C. Lloyd, 147, 186, 187, 342, _375-79_, 494, 725.
Morgan, E. L., 731.
Morgan, Lewis H., 214, 749.
Morgan, W. T., 658.
Morley, John, 725, 949, 1006.
Morris, Lloyd R., 659.
Morris, William, 1008.
Morrow, Prince A., 223.
Morse, Josiah, 652.
Morselli, Henry, 266, 272, 273.
Mosiman, Eddison, 937.
Mouromtzeff, Mme de, 729.
Müller, F. Max, _379-81_, 395, 432.
Müller, Fritz, 521.
Müller-Lyer, F., 1006.
Mumford, Eben, 855.
Münsterberg, Hugo, 424, 427, 430, _668-92_, 726, 936.
Murray, W. A., 939.
Myers, C. S., _89-92_, 936.
Myers, Gustavus, 659.
Myerson, Abraham, 223, 936.
Napoleon I, 238, 241, 419, 628, 789.
Napoleon III, 793.
Nardi-Greco, Carlo, 861.
Nasmyth, George, 1009.
Nassau, R. H., 856.
Naumann, Friedrich, 650, 809.
Neatby, W. Blair, 945.
Neill, Charles P., 653.
Neilson, George, 655.
Nesbitt, Florence, 222.
Nesfield, John C., 218, _681-84_.
Neter, Eugen, 273.
Nevinson, Margaret W., 567.
Newell, W. W., 941.
Newton, Sir Isaac, _13_.
Niceforo, Alfredo, 567, 649, _1003_, 1010.
Nicolai, G. F., 641.
Nieboer, Dr H. J., _674-77_, 727, 733.
Nims, Harry D., 564.
Nitsch, C., 946.
Noiré, L., 395.
Nordau, Max, 1004.
Nordhoff, Charles, 334, 656.
Norhe, O. M., 775.
Novicow, J., 212, 425, 642, 645, 649, 740, 741, 775, 854.
Oakesmith, John, 645, 659.
Oberholtzer, E. P., 859.
Obolensky, L. E., 1008.
O'Brien, Frank M., 859.
O'Brien, Frederick, 656.
Odin, Alfred, 855.
Oertel, Hans, 22.
Ogburn, W. F., 215.
Oldenberg, H., 856.
Older, Fremont, 659.
Olgin, Moissaye J., 950.
Oliver, Frederick S., 649.
Oliver, Thomas, 568.
Olmsted, F. L., 727.
Oncken, August, 563.
Oppenheimer, Franz, _50_, 644.
Ordahl, George, 639, 646.
Ormond, Alexander T., _340_, 420, 425.
Orth, Samuel P., 659.
Osborne, T. M., 562.
Osten, 413, 414, 430.
Osterhausen, Dr., 240.
Ostrogorsku, Johann K., 658.
Owen, Richard, 768.
Owen, Robert Dale, 559.
Paget, _Sir_ James, 366.
Pagnier, Armand, 153, 333.
Paine, Thomas, 912.
Palanti, G., 940.
Pandian, T. B., 333.
Park, Robert E., _76-81_, _135-39_, 155, _185-89_, _198-200_, 218, 225,
252, _311-15_, _315-17_, 335, 429, _467-78_, _616-23_, 623-31, 655,
_712-14_, _756-62_, 775, 781, 782, 784, _786-87_, _829-33_, 859, 870,
_893-95_, _930_, 934.
Parker, Carleton H., 149, 494, 936.
Parkman, Francis, 778, 779.
Parmelee, Maurice, 217, 267, 569, 1009.
Parsons, Elsie Clews, 220.
Parton, James, 652.
Partridge, G. E., 568, 727.
Pascal, 463.
Pascoe, C. F., 779.
Pasteur, Louis, 44.
Pater, Walter, 939.
Patetta, F., 655.
Paton, Stewart, 147.
Patrick, G. T. W., _598-600_, 640, 641, 647, 935, 948.
Patten, Simon N., 498, 1008.
Patterson, R. J., 727.
Paulhan, Fr., 332, 731.
Pavlo, I. P., 494, 839.
Payne, George Henry, 427.
Pearson, Karl, 13, _14_, 949, 963, 1007.
Pélissier, Jean, 932, 946.
Pennington, Patience, 334.
Percin, Alexandre, 648.
Periander, 67.
Perry, Bliss, _40_.
Perry, Ralph B., 1008.
Perty, M., 809.
Peter the Great, 934.
Peterson, J., 941.
Petit-Dutaillis, C. E., 649.
Petman, Charles, 276.
Petrie, W. M. F., 950.
Pfister, Ch., 275.
Pfister, Oskar, 501, 857.
Pfleiderer, Otto, 730.
Pflug-Harttung, Julius von, 941.
Pfungst, Oskar, 430.
Philippe, L., 649, 729.
Phillips, Ulrich B., 727.
Phillips, W. Alison, _793-94_ n.
Phillips, Wendell, 949.
Picard, Edmond, 860.
Piderit. T., 421, 426.
Pillsbury, W. B., 645, 647, 651.
Pinet, G., 729.
Pintner, Rudolf, 568.
Pitre, Giuseppe, 939.
Place, Francis, 559.
Plato, 96, 105, 238, 261, 607, 1008.
Platt, Thomas G., 659.
Ploss, H., 221.
Plunkitt, G. W., 659.
Pollock Frederick, 861.
Pope, Alexander, 83 n.
Popenoe, Paul, 568, 1007.
Porter, W. T., 648.
Post, Albert H., _851-52_.
Powell, H. Baden-, _see_ Baden-Powell, H.
Poynting, J. H., 13.
Preuss, Hugo, 334.
Preyer, W., 84.
Price, Dr., 553.
Price, G. F., 569.
Prince, Morton, 70, _110-13_, 150, 474, 477, 645, 727, 777.
Prince, Samuel H., 951.
Probst, Ferdinand, 144, 151.
Proudhon, P. J., 565.
Puchta, G. F., 677.
Puffer, J. Adams, 643, 656.
Rainwater, Clarence E., 732.
Ralph, Julian, 276.
Rambosson, J., 938.
Randall, E. O., 945.
Rank, Otto, 858.
Rastall, B. M., 653.
Ratzel, Friedrich, 148, 270, 274, _298-301_, 728, 776.
Ratzenhofer, Gustav, 36, 58, 212, 421, 496, 642, 645, 775.
Rauber, August, 241, 242, 243, 277.
Ravage, M. E., 336, 782, 783.
Ray, P. O., 658.
Reclus, E., 1005.
Reed, V. Z., 939.
Regnard, P., 937.
Reich, Emil, 778.
Reinheimer, H., 218.
Reuter, E. B., 154, 770, 776.
Rhodes, J. F., 656.
Rhys, John, 149, 945.
Ribot, Th. A., _108-10_, 124, 144, 150, 344, _394-97_, 426, 430, 433,
496.
Ribton-Turner, Charles J., 333.
Ricardo, David, 544, 546, 558.
Richard. T., 943.
Richards, Caroline C., 305-11.
Richet, Ch., 113, 115, 430.
Richmond, Mary E., 59, 215, 491, 498.
Rickert, Heinrich, 10, 1005.
Rihbany, Abraham M., 336, 774, 782, 783.
Riis, Jacob A. 336, 567, 782.
Riley, I. W., 151.
Riordan, William L., 659.
Ripley, William Z., _264-68_, 275, _534-38_, 572, 725, 776.
Risley, Herbert H., 681, _684-88_, 728.
Ritchie, David G., 725.
Rivarol, Antoine, 908.
Rivers, W. H. R., 211, 219, 220, 723, 729, 738, _746-50_, 776, 857.
Roberts, Peter, 219.
Robertson, John M., 641, 646, 861, 1010.
Roberty, E. de, 729.
Robinson, Charles H., 779.
Robinson, James Harvey, _5_, _6_, 498.
Robinson, Louis, 82.
Roepke, Dr. Fritz, 650.
Rogers, Edward S., 565.
Rogers, James B., 944.
Rohde, Erwin, 657.
Romanes, G. J., 379.
Roosevelt, Theodore, 659, 776.
Rosanoff, A. J., 132.
Roscher, W., 726.
Ross, Edward A., 58, 213, 499, 725, 780, 849, 854.
Rossi, Pasquale, 557, 927, 938.
Rothschild, Alonzo, 855.
Rousiers, Paul de, 731.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 107, 139, 223, 231, _234-35_, 241, 850.
Roussy, G., 648.
Routledge, Mrs. Scoresby, 275.
Rowntree, B. Seebohm, 567, 569.
Royce, Josiah, 150, 390, 425, 426, 429, 652.
Rubinow, I. M., 568.
Rudolph, Heinrich, 426.
Rudolphi, K. A., 243.
Russell, B. A. W., 565.
Russell, J. H., 727.
Ryckère, Raymond de, 569.
Sabine, Lorenzo, 655.
Sageret, J., 858.
Sagher, Maurice de, 276.
Saineanu, Lazar, 428, 429.
Saint-Simon, C. H. comte de, 3, 4.
Saleeby, Caleb W., 1007.
Salt, Henry S., 1009.
Salz, Arthur, 729.
Samassa, P., 946.
Sandburg, Carl, 654.
Sanderson, Dwight, 1002.
Sands, B., 946.
Santayana, G., _983_.
Sapper, Karl, 780.
Sarbah, John M., 860.
Sartorius von Walterhausen, August, 728.
Scalinger, G. M., 941.
Schaeffle, Albert, 28, 58.
Schatz, Albert, 563.
Schechter, S., 944.
Schmidt, Caspar, 565, 830.
Schmidt, N., 943.
Schmoller, Gustav, 427, 729.
Schmucker, Samuel M. (ed.), 334.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 964, _994-1000_.
Schurtz, Heinrich, 723, 729, 948.
Schwartz, 82.
Schwittau, G., 652.
Scott, Walter D., 859.
Secrist, Frank K., 428.
Seebohm, Frederic, 219, 861.
Seguin, Edward, 277.
Selbie, W. B., 944.
Seligman, E. R. A., 563.
Seligmann, H. J., 654.
Séménoff, E., 729.
Semple, Ellen C., _268-69_, 274, _289-91_, _301-5_.
Sergi, G., 1004.
Seton, Ernest Thompson, _886-87_.
Seton-Watson, R. W., 946.
Shaftesbury, _Seventh Earl of_, 949.
Shakespeare, William, 238, 239.
Shaler, N. S., 148, 233, _257-59_, 283, _294-98_, 330, 337, 651, 948.
Shand, A. F., 150, 465, 477, 496, 497, 501.
Sheldon, H. D., 656.
Shepard, W. J., 858.
Sherrington, C. S., 838.
Shinn, Milicent W., _82-85_, 150.
Short, Wilfrid M., _977-79_.
Shuster, G., 730.
Sicard, Abbé, 242.
Sidis, Boris, _415-16_, 424, 430, 468.
Sighele, Scipio, 41, 58, _200-205_, 213, 218, 644, 722, 867, _872_,
894, 927, 939.
Simkhovitch, (Mrs.) Mary K., 331.
Simmel, Georg, 10, 36, 58, 151, 217, 218, 221, 286, _322-27_, 331, 332,
341, 342, _348-56_, _356-61_, 421, 425, 432, 433, 500, 559, 563,
_582-86_, _586-94_, 639, 645, 670, _695-97_, _697-703_,
_703-6_, _706-8_, 720, 725, 726, 730, 733, 938, 947, 1004, 1005.
Simon, Th., 145, 154.
Simons, A. M., _443-44_, 502.
Simons, Sarah E., _740-41_, 775.
Simpson, Bertram L., 650.
Sims, George R., 567.
Sims, Newell L., 218, 334.
Skeat, Walter W., 276.
Small, Albion W., 36, 58, _196-98_, _288-89_, 332, 348, 425, 427,
_451-54_, _454-58_, 496, 499, 503, 582, 586, 645, 660, 695, 697, 703,
706, 726.
Small, Maurice H., _239-43_.
Smedes, Susan D., 334, 728.
Smith, Adam, 344, _397-401_, 401, 429, 431, 433, 447, 449, 495, 505,
_550-51_, 553, 554, 556, 558, 572.
Smith, Henry C., 945.
Smith, J. M. P., 854.
Smith, _Lieut._ Joseph S., _800-805_.
Smith, Lorenzo N., 429.
Smith, Richmond Mayo-, _see_ Mayo-Smith, Richmond.
Smith, W. Robertson, _16_, _813-16_, _822-26_, 857.
Smyth, C., 654.
Socrates, 105, 140, 646.
Solenberger, Alice W., 274.
Solon, 261.
Sombart, Werner, _317-22_, 335, 567, 648, 948.
Somló, F., 728.
Sorel, Georges, 645, _816-19_, 857, 959, 1004.
Southard, E. E., 1007.
Spadoni, D., 731.
Spargo, John, _909-15_, 950, 952.
Speek, Peter A., 781.
Speer, Robert E., 779.
Spencer, Baldwin, 149, 220, 861.
Spencer, Herbert, 24, _25_, _26_, _27_, 28, 43, 44, 58, 60, 61,
141, 210, 217, 396, 402, 495, 557, 565, 787, _805-7_, 831, 849, 855, 889,
947, 959, 963, _966-68_, 1001, 1006, 1010.
Spiller, G. (ed.), _89-92_, 651.
Spurzheim, J. F. K., 145.
Squillace, Fausto, 948.
Stalker, James, 943.
Stanhope, Philip Henry (Fourth Earl), 240, 277.
Stanley, L. L., 569.
Stanton, Henry B., 949.
Starbuck, Edwin D., 332, 726.
Starcke, C. N., 220.
Stchoukine, Ivan, 944.
Stead, W. T., 782, 859.
Steffens, Lincoln, 331.
Stein, L., 565, 649.
Steiner, Edward A., 780, 782.
Steiner, Jesse F., 335, 616, 621, 622, 643, 651.
Steinmetz, Andrew, 655.
Steinmetz, S. R., 648, 654, 860.
Steinthal, H., 217.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 647.
Stephenson, Gilbert T., 651.
Stern, B., 86, 87, 149, 150.
Stern, Mrs. Elizabeth G., 774, 783.
Stern, W., 152.
Stevens, W. H. S., 565.
Stewart, Dugald, 402, 429.
Stillson, Henry L., 730.
Stimson, Frederic J., _843-46_.
Stirner, Max [_pseud._], _see_ Schmidt, Caspar.
Stoddard, Lothrop, 963.
Stoker, Bran, 731.
Stoll, Otto, 221, 332, 430, 926 f, 937.
Stone, Alfred H., _631-37_, 651.
Stoughton, John, 949.
Stout, G. F., 344, _391-94_, 424.
Stow, John, 219.
Strachey, Lytton, 721, 962.
Straticò, A., 940.
Stratz, Carl H., 948.
Strausz, A., 149.
Stromberg, A. von, 943.
Strong, Anna L., 273.
Stubbs, William, 353, 354.
Stumpf, C., 413, 414.
Sugenheim, S., 727.
Sullivan, Anne, 243, 244.
Sully, J., 150, 332, 422, 426.
Sumner, Helen L., 942.
Sumner, William G., 36, 37, 46, _97-100_, 143, 147, 283, _293-94_,
333, 640, 648, 759, 779, 796, 797, 831, 841-43, 849, 854, _866_, 933, 948,
_983-84_.
Swift, Jonathan, 67.
Tabbé, P., 946.
Taft, Jessie, 942.
Taine, H. A., 141, _493_, 498, 907, 935, 950.
Talbot, Marion, 222.
Talbot, Winthrop, 782.
Tannenbaum, Frank, _49_, 936.
Tarde, Gabriel, _21_, 22, 32, _33_, 36, 37, 41, 58, 201, 202, 213, 218,
332, 390, 418, 423, 429, 562, 569, 729, 777, 794 n., 828, 858, 868, 875,
927, _933_, 939, 947.
Tardieu, É., 725.
Taussig, F. W., 731.
Tawney, G. A., 727, 940.
Taylor, F. W., 149.
Taylor, Graham R., 219.
Taylor, Thomas, 939.
Tead, Ordway, 149, 494.
Teggart, Frederick J., 1006.
Tenney, E. P., 1009.
Terman, L. M., 855.
Theophrastus, 144, 151.
Thiers, Adolphe, 947.
This, G., 275.
Thomas, Edward, 935.
Thomas, N. W., 220, 856.
Thomas, William I., _47_, _52_, _57_, _59_, 144, 146, 148,
151, 153, 215, 222, _249-52_, 285, 332, 335, 438, 442, _488-90_, 497,
501, _579-82_, 640, 651, 652, 655, 718, 729, 730, 731, 774, 778, 935, 948,
950.
Thompson, Anstruther, 402.
Thompson, Frank V., 781.
Thompson, Helen B., 153.
Thompson, M. S., 946.
Thompson, Warren S., 566.
Thompson, W. Gilman, 568.
Thomson, J. Arthur, 13, 71, _126-28_, 147, 153, 218, _513-15_, 563,
1007.
Thorndike, Edward L., 68, 71, _73-76_, _78_, _92-94_, 147, 150,
152, 155, 187, 424, 429, 494, 647, 721, 726.
Thoreau, H. D., 229.
Thurston, Henry W., 656.
Thwing, Charles F., and Carrie F. B., 222.
Tippenhauer, L. G., 939.
Tocqueville Alexius de, 851, 858, _909_.
Todd, Arthur J., 1004, 1010.
Tolstoy, _Count_ Leon, 151, 789.
Tönnies, Ferdinand, _100-102_, 649, 740.
Toops, Herbert A., 568.
Topinard, Paul, 537.
Tosti, Gustavo, 425.
Tower, W. L., _128-33_, 147.
Towns, Charles B., 569.
Toynbee, Arnold, 334, 950.
Tracy, J., 943.
Train, Arthur, 656.
Train, J., 944.
Tredgold, A. F., 152, 277.
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 988.
Trenor, John J. D., 781.
Trent, William P., 859.
Tridon, André, 501.
Triplett, Norman, 646.
Trotter, W., _31_, 647, _742-45_, 783, 784.
Tuchmann, J., 856.
Tufts, James H., 149.
Tulp, Dr., 241.
Turner, Charles J. Ribton-, _see_ Ribton-Turner, Charles J.
Turner, Frederick J., 499.
Twain, Mark [_pseud._] _see_ Clemens, Samuel L.
Tylor, Edward B., 19, 148, 220, 674, 855.
Urban, Wilbur M., 500.
Vaccaro, M. A., 860.
Vallaux, Camille, 274, 333.
Vandervelde, É., 218, 333, 1007.
Van Hise, Charles R., 564.
Vavin, P., 729.
Veblen, Thorstein, 71, 287, 501, 644, 721, 729, 936.
Vellay, Charles, 946.
Vierkandt, Alfred, 148, 333, 723, 729, 777, 854.
Vigouroux, A., 411, 412, 937.
Villatte, Césaire, 428.
Villon, François, 428.
Vincent, George E., 58, _605-10_, 646.
Virchow, Rudolph, 537, 725.
Vischer, F. T., 402.
Voivenel, Paul, 648.
Voltaire, 986.
Von Kolb, 240.
Vries, Hugo de, 143.
Wace, A. J. B., 946.
Wagner, 243.
Wagner, Adolf, 563.
Waitz, Theodor, 856.
Wald, Lilian, 331.
Walford, Cornelius, 564.
Walker, Francis A., 499, _508_, _539-44_, 564, 572.
Wallace, 553.
Wallace, Alfred R., 562, 554, 725, 1006.
Wallace, Donald M., 333.
Wallas, Graham, 148, 162, 335, 422, 431, 494, 925, 929, 935.
Wallaschek, Richard, 938.
Walling, W. E., 653.
Wallon, H., 727.
Walter, F., 854.
Ward, E. J., 331, 732.
Ward, James, 775.
Ward, Lester F., 58, 497, 499, 513, 649, 718, _973-75_, 1007.
Ward, Robert de C., 726.
Ware, J. Redding, 428.
Warming, Eugenius, _173-80_, 218, 554.
Warne, Frank J., 653.
Warneck, Gustav, 779.
Warren, H. C., 777.
Warren, Josiah, 565.
Washburn, Margaret F., 147.
Washington, Booker T., 152, 607, 629, 782.
Wasmann, Eric, 169.
Watson, Elkanah, 540, 543.
Watson, John B., 81, 147, 285, _482-88_, 488, 494.
Watson, R. W. Seton-, _see_ Seton-Watson, R. W.
Waxweiler, E., 218.
Weatherly, U. G., 776.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 564, 644, 657.
Weber, Adna P., 334.
Weber, John L., 727.
Weber, L., 1006.
Webster, Hutton, 274, 730.
Wechsler, Alfred, 948.
Weeks, Arland D., 646.
Wehrhan, K., 650.
Weidensall, C. J., 153.
Weigall, A., 332.
Weismann, August, 143, 515, 563.
Weller, Charles F., 732.
Wells, H. G., 151, 496, 498, 932, 935, 1009.
Wendland, Walter, 650.
Wermert, George, 654.
Wesley, Charles, 916.
Wesley, John, 151, 916 ff.
Wesnitsch, Milenko R., 654.
West, Arthur Graeme, 650.
Westermarck, Edward, 16, _17_, 60, 147, 214, 215, 220, 640, 778, 849, 854.
Weygandt, W., 937.
Whately, Archbishop, 735.
Wheeler, G. C., 220.
Wheeler, William M., _167-70_, _180-82_, 214, 217, 554.
White, Andrew D., 647.
White, F. M., 655.
White, W. A., 500, 594-98.
Whitefield, George, 916 ff.
Whiting, Lilian, 949.
Whitley, W. T., 943.
Wigmore, John H., 854, 860, 861.
Wilberforce, William, 949.
Wilbert, Martin I., 569.
Wilde, Oscar, 151.
Willard, Frances E., 942, 950.
Willard, Josiah Flynt, 151.
Willcox, Walter F., 223, _1002-3_, 1010.
Williams, Daniel J., 781.
Williams, J. M., 212, 219, 223.
Williams, Whiting, 149.
Willoughby, W.W., 565.
Wilmanns, Karl, 153.
Wilson, D. L., 730.
Wilson, _Captain_ H. A., 637.
Wilson, Warren H., 219.
Windelband, Wilhelm, _8-10_, 286-646.
Windisch, H., 775.
Winship, A. E., 147.
Winston, L. G., _117-19_.
Wirth, M., 947.
Wishart, Alfred W., 274.
Wiston-Glynn, A. W., 947.
Witte, H., 946.
Wittenmyer, _Mrs._ Annie, _898-905_, 942.
Wolff, C. F., 967.
Wolman, Leo, 653.
Wood, Walter, 649, (ed).
Woodbury, Margaret, 859.
Woodhead, 179.
Woods, A., 655.
Woods, E. B., 1004.
Woods, Frederick A., 499, 854.
Woods, Robert A., 219, 331, 335, 566, 656 (ed.), 943.
Woodson, Carter G., 941.
Woodworth, R. S., 154.
Woolbert, C. H., 941.
Woolman, John, 151.
Wordsworth, William, _66_.
Worms, Émile, 649.
Worms, René, 28, _29_, 58, 61, 425, 649 (ed.), 729.
Wright, Arnold, 653.
Wright, Gordon, 886.
Wuensch, R., 939.
Wundt, Wilhelm, 21, 421, 422, 426, 427, 775, 777.
Wuttke, Heinrich, 427.
Xénopol, A. P., 649.
Yule, Henry, 276.
Zangwill, Israel, 734.
Zeeb, Frieda B., 942.
Zenker, E. V., 565.
Ziegler, T., 942.
Zimand, Savel, 943.
Zimmermann, Johann G., 271, 273.
Zimmern, Alfred E., 660, 729, 730.
Znaniecki, Florian, _47_, _52_, _57_, _59_, 144, 151, 222,
335, 501, 774, 935, 1006.
Zola, Émile, 141, _142_, 266, 334.
Zueblin, Charles, _955-56_, 1010.
GENERAL INDEX
ACCLIMATIZATION:
_bibliography_, 725-26;
as a form of accommodation, 666, 671-74, 719.
ACCOMMODATION:
_chap. x_, 663-733;
_bibliography_, 725-32;
and adaptation, 663-65;
and assimilation, 735-36;
and competition, 664-65;
and compromise, 706-8;
and conflict, 631-37, 669-70, 703-8;
creates social organization, 511;
defined, 663-64;
distinguished from assimilation, 511;
facilitated by secondary contacts, 736-37;
in the form of domination and submission, 440-41;
in the form of slavery, 674-77, 677-81;
forms of, 666-67, 671-88, 718-20;
and historic forms of the organization of society, 667;
investigations and problems, 718-25;
natural issue of conflict, 665;
and the origin of caste in India, 681-84, 684-88;
and peace, 703-63;
in relation to competition, 510-11;
in relation to conflict, 511;
as subordination and superordination, 667-69.
_See_ Subordination and superordination.
ACCOMMODATION GROUPS, classified, 50, 721-23.
ACCULTURATION:
_bibliography_, 776-77;
defined, 135;
problems of, 771-72;
and tradition, 172;
transmission of cultural elements, 737.
ADAPTATION, and accommodation, 663-65.
ADVERTISING. _See_ Publicity.
AGGREGATES, SOCIAL:
composed of spacially separated units, 26;
and organic aggregates, 25.
AMALGAMATION:
_bibliography_, 776;
and assimilation, 740-41, 769-71;
fusion of races by intermarriage, 737-38;
result of contacts of races, 770.
_See_ Miscegenation.
AMERICANIZATION:
_bibliography_, 781-83;
as assimilation, 762-63;
and immigration, 772-75;
as participation, 762-63;
as a problem of assimilation, 739-40, 762-69;
Study of Methods of, 736, 773-74;
surveys and studies of, 772-75.
_See_ Immigration.
ANARCHISM:
_bibliography_, 565-66;
economic doctrine of, 558.
ANARCHY, of political opinion and parties, 2.
ANIMAL CROWD. _See_ Crowd, animal.
ANIMAL SOCIETY:
bee and ant community, 742;
prestige in, 809-10.
ANTHROPOLOGY, 10.
APPRECIATION:
in relation to imitation, 344, 401-7;
and sense impressions, 356-57.
ARCHAEOLOGY, as a new social science, 5.
ARGOT, _bibliography_, 427-29.
ART:
as expressive behavior, 787-88;
origin in the choral dance, 871.
ASSIMILATION:
_chap. xi_, 734-84;
_bibliography_, 775-83;
and accommodation, 735-36;
and amalgamation, 740-41, 769-71;
Americanization as, 762-63;
based on differences, 724;
biological aspects of, 737-38, 740-45;
conceived as a "Melting Pot," 734;
defined, 756, 761;
and democracy, 734;
distinguished from accommodation, 511;
facilitated by primary contacts, 736-37, 739, 761-62;
final product of social contact, 736-37;
in the formation of nationalities, 756-58;
fusion of cultures, 737;
of the Germans in the Carpathian lands, 770;
instinctive basis of, 742-45;
investigations and problems, 769-75;
as like-mindedness, 735, 741;
and mediation of individual differences, 766-69;
natural history of, 774;
in personal development, 511;
popular conceptions of, 724-35;
a problem of secondary groups, 761;
a process of prolonged contact, 741;
of races, 756-62;
and racial differences, 769-70;
sociology of, 735-37.
_See_ Amalgamation, Americanization, Cultures, conflict and fusion of,
Denationalization.
ATTENTION, in relation to imitation, 344, 391-94.
ATTITUDES:
_bibliography_, 501;
as behavior patterns, 439-42;
complexes of, 57;
polar conception of, 441-42;
as the social element, 438-39;
as social forces, 467-78;
in subordination and superordination, 692-95;
and wishes, 442-43;
wishes as components of, 439.
BALKED DISPOSITION, a result of secondary contacts, 287.
BEHAVIOR:
defined, 185-86;
expressive and positive, 787-88.
BEHAVIOR, COLLECTIVE. _See_ Collective behavior.
BEHAVIOR PATTERNS, and culture, 72.
BLUSHING, communication by, 365-70.
BOLSHEVISM, 909-15.
BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH, of New York City, 46, 315.
CARNEGIE REPORT UPON MEDICAL EDUCATION, 315.
CASTE:
_bibliography_, 728;
as an accommodation of conflict, 584;
defined, 203-4;
a form of accommodation group, 50;
interpreted by superordination and subordination, 684-88;
its origin in India, 681-84;
and the limitation of free competition, 620-22;
study of, 722-23.
CATEGORIC CONTACTS. _See_ Sympathetic contacts.
CEREMONY:
_bibliography_, 855-56;
as expressive behavior, 787-88;
fundamental form of social control, 787.
CHARACTER:
defined, 81;
inherited or acquired, 127-28;
and instinct, 190-93;
as the organization of the wishes of the person, 490;
related to custom, 192-93.
CIRCLE, VICIOUS. _See_ Vicious circle.
CIRCULAR REACTION. _See_ Reaction, circular.
CITY:
an area of secondary contacts, 285-87;
aversion, a protection of the person in the, 584-85;
and the evolution of individual types, 712-14;
growth of, 534-35;
physical human type of, 535-38;
planning, studies of, 328-29;
studies of, 331.
CIVILIZATION:
and historical continuity, 298-301;
life of, 956-57;
and mobility, 303-5;
a part of nature, 3;
an organization to realize wishes, 958;
and permanent settlement, 529-30.
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, 40.
CLASSES, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 728-29;
defined, 204-5;
as a form of accommodation groups, 50;
patterns of life of, 46;
separated by isolation, 230;
study of, 722.
CLEVER HANS, case of, 412-15.
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR:
_chap. xiii_, 865-952;
_bibliography_, 934-51;
defined, 865;
investigations and problems, 924-34;
and the origin of concerted activity, 32;
and social control, 785-86;
and social unrest, 866-67.
_See_ Crowd, Herd, Mass movements, Public.
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS:
defined, 195;
of society, 28.
COLLECTIVE FEELING, and collective thinking, 17.
COLLECTIVE MIND, and social control, 36-43.
COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATION:
application of Durkheim's conception of, 18;
contrasted with sensation, 193;
in the crowd, 894-95;
defined, 164-65, 195-96;
and intellectual life, 193-96;
and public opinion, 38.
COLLECTIVISM:
and the division of labor, 718.
COLONIZATION:
_bibliography_, 725-26;
a form of accommodation, 719;
and mobility, 302.
COMMON PURPOSE, as ideal, wish, and obligation, 33.
COMMUNISM, economic doctrine of, 558.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION:
_bibliography_, 731-32;
study of, 724-25.
COMMUNICATION:
_bibliography_, 275-76; 426-29;
and art, 37;
basis of participation in community life, 763-66;
basis of society, 183-85;
basis of world-society, 343;
by blushing, 365-70;
concept, the medium of, 379-81;
extension of, by human invention, 343, 385-89;
a form of social interaction, 36;
and inter-stimulation, 37;
by laughing, 370-75;
in the lower animals, 375-79;
as the medium of social interaction, 341-43;
natural forms of, 356-75;
newspaper as medium of, 316-17;
rôle of the book in, 343;
study of, 421-23;
through the expression of the emotions, 342, 361-75;
through language and ideas, 375-89;
through the senses, 342, 356-61;
writing as a form of, 381-84.
_See_ Language, Newspaper, Publicity.
COMMUNITIES:
_bibliography_, 59, 219;
animal, 26;
defined, 161;
local and territorial, 50;
plant, _bibliography_, 217-18;
plant, organization of, 26, 173-80; 526-28;
plant, unity of, 198-99;
rural and urban, 56;
scale for grading, 1002 n.;
studies of, 211-12, 327-29.
COMMUNITY, as a constellation of social forces, 436, 493.
COMPETITION:
_chap, viii_, 505-65;
_bibliography_, 552-70;
and accommodation, 510-11, 664-65;
biological, 553-54;
changing forms of, 545-50;
conscious, as conflict, 574, 576, 579-94;
and control, 509-10;
of cultural languages, 754-56, 771;
and the defectives, the dependents, and the delinquents, 559-62;
destroys isolation, 232;
economic, 544-54, 554-558;
and the economic equilibrium, 505-6, 511;
the elementary process of interaction, 507-11;
elimination of, and caste, 620-22;
and freedom, 506-7, 509, 513, 551-52;
history of theories of, 556-58;
and human ecology, 558;
and the "inner enemies," 559-62;
investigations and problems 553-62;
and laissez faire, 554-58;
the "life of trade," 505;
makes for progress, 988;
makes for specialization and organization, 519-22;
and man as an adaptive mechanism, 522-26;
and mobility, 513;
most severe between members of the same species, 517;
and the natural harmony of individual interests, 550-51;
natural history of, 555-56;
and natural selection, 515-19;
opposed to sentiment, 509;
personal, as conflict, 574, 575-76;
personal, and the evolution of individual types, 712-14;
personal, and social selection, 708-12;
and plant migration, 526-28;
popular conception of, 504-7;
and race suicide, 539-44;
restricted by custom, tradition, and law, 513;
and segregation, 526-44;
and social contact, 280-81;
and social control, 561-62;
and social solidarity, 670-71, 708-18;
and the standard of living, 543-44;
and status, 541-43, 670-71, 708-18;
and the struggle for existence, 505, 512, 513-15, 515-19, 522-26, 545-50;
unfair, 506.
_See_ Competitive co-operation.
COMPETITIVE CO-OPERATION:
Adam Smith's conception of an "invisible hand," 504, 551;
in the ant community, 512-13;
and competition, 508;
complementary association, 179-80;
and human ecology, 558;
and participation, 767-78;
in the plant community, 163.
COMPREHENSION, and sense impressions, 357-61.
COMPROMISE, a form of accommodation, 706-8.
CONCEPTS:
as collective representations, 193-96;
as medium of communication, 379-81.
CONDUCT:
as self-conscious behavior, 188-89.
CONFLICT:
_chap. ix_, 574-662;
_bibliography_, 645-60;
accommodation, 511, 631-37, 665, 669-70, 703-8;
of beliefs, and the origin of sects, 611-12;
concept of, 574-76;
as conscious competition, 281, 574, 576, 579-94;
cultural, and the organization of sects, 610-16;
cultural, and sex differences, 615-16;
cultural, and social organization, 577-78;
determines the status of the person in society, 574-75, 576;
emotional, 475-76;
and fusion of cultures, 738-39, 746-62, 740-45;
and fusion of cultures and social unity, 200;
of impersonal ideals, 592-94;
instinctive interest in, 579-82;
investigations and problems, 639-45;
natural history of, 579-82;
and origin of law, 850-52;
as personal competition, 575-76;
and the political order, 551;
psychology and sociology of, 638-39;
race, and social contact, 615-23;
and race consciousness, 623-31;
racial, 616-37;
and the rise of nationalities, 628-31;
and repression, 601-2;
and social control, 607-8;
as a struggle for status, 574, 578-79;
as a type of social interaction, 582-86;
types of, 239-41, 586-94;
and the unification of personality, 583-84.
_See_ Feud, Litigation, Mental conflict, Race conflicts, Rivalry, War.
CONFLICT GROUPS, classified, 50.
CONSCIENCE:
as an inward feeling, 103;
a manifestation of the collective mind, 33;
a peculiar possession of the gregarious animals, 31.
CONSCIOUS, 41.
CONSCIOUSNESS:
national and racial, 40-41;
and progress, 990-94.
CONSCIOUSNESS, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 425-26;
of the community, 48;
existence of, 28;
as mind of the group, 41;
in the person, 29;
and the social organism, 39.
CONSENSUS:
defined, 164;
social, and solidarity, 24;
social, closer than the vital, 25;
as society, 161;
versus co-operation, 184.
CONTACT, maritime, and geographical, 260-64.
CONTACTS, PRIMARY:
_bibliography_, 333-34;
and absolute standards, 285-86;
defined, 284, 311;
distinguished from secondary contacts, 284-87, 305-27;
facilitate assimilation, 736-37, 739;
of intimacy and acquaintanceship, 284-85;
related to concrete experience, 286;
and sentimental attitudes, 319-20;
studies of, 329-31;
in village life in America, 305-11.
CONTACTS, SECONDARY:
_bibliography_, 334-36;
and abstract relations, 325;
accommodation, facilitated by, 736-37;
and capitalism, 317-22;
a cause of the balked disposition, 287;
characteristic of city life, 285-87, 311-15;
conventional, formal, and impersonal, 56;
defined, 284;
distinguished from primary contacts, 284-87, 305-27;
laissez faire in, 758;
modern society based on, 286-87;
publicity as a form of, 315-17;
and the problems of social work, 287;
and rational attitudes, 317-22;
sociological significance of the stranger, 286, 322-27;
studies of, 331.
CONTACTS, SOCIAL:
_chap. v_, 280-338;
_bibliography_, 332-36;
in assimilation, 736-37;
avoidance of, 292-93, 330;
defined, 329;
desire for, 291-92;
distinguished from physical contacts, 282;
economic conception of, 280-81;
extension through the devices of communication, 280-81;
as the first stage of social interaction, 280, 282;
frontiers of, 288-89;
intensity of, 282-83;
investigations and problems of, 327-31;
land as a basis for, 282, 289-91;
preliminary notions of, 280-81;
and progress, 988-89;
and race conflict, 615-23;
and racial intermixture, 770;
and social forces, 36;
sociological concept of, 281-82;
spatial conception of, 282;
sympathetic versus categoric, 294-98;
in the transmission of cultural objects, 746.
_See_ Communication; Contacts, primary; Contacts, secondary; Continuity;
Interaction, social; Mobility; Touch; We-group and others-group.
CONTAGION, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 936-38;
and collective behavior, 874-86, 878-81;
in fashion, 874-75;
and psychic epidemics, 926-27.
CONTINUITY:
through blood-relationship, 351-52;
by continuance of locality, 350;
through group honor, 355-56;
through the hereditary principle, 353-54;
historical, 283-84, 298-301;
through leadership, 353-54;
through material symbols, 354-55;
through membership in the group, 352-53;
through specialized organs, 356.
CONTROL:
aim of sociology, 339;
defined, 182;
the fundamental social fact, 34;
loss of, and unrest, 766-67.
_See_ Control, social.
CONTROL, SOCIAL:
_chap. xii_, 785-864;
_bibliography_, 854-61;
absolute in primary groups, 285-86, 305-11;
through advertising, 830;
in the animal "crowd," 788-90;
as an artefact, 29;
central problem of society, 42;
and collective behavior, 785-86;
and the collective mind, 36-43;
and competition, 509-10, 561-62;
and conflict, 607-8;
and corporate action, 27;
in the crowd, 790-91;
in the crowd and the public, 800-805;
defined, 785-87;
and definitions of the situation, 764-65;
elementary forms of, 788-91, 800-816, 849-50;
and human nature, 785-87, 848-49;
and the individual, 52;
investigations and problems, 848-53;
through laughter, 373-75;
mechanisms of, 29;
through news, 834-37;
through opinion, 191-92;
organization of, 29;
through prestige, 807-11, 811-12;
through propaganda, 837-41;
in the public, 791-96, 800-805;
through public opinion in cities, 316-17;
resting on consent, 29;
with the savage, 90;
and schools of thought, 27-35;
and social problems, 785;
as taming, 163.
_See_ Ceremonial, Law, Leadership, Institutions, Mores, Myth, Taboo.
CONVERSION:
_bibliography_, 726-27;
as the mutation of attitudes and wishes, 669;
religious, and the social group, 48.
CO-OPERATION:
of the machine type, 184.
_See_ Collective behavior, Corporate action.
CORPORATE ACTION:
problem of, 30;
and social consciousness, 41-42;
and social control, 27;
as society, 163.
_See_ Collective behavior.
CRIME, from the point of view of the primary group, 48, 49.
_See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents.
CRISES, ECONOMIC:
_bibliography_, 947.
CRISIS, and public opinion, 793, 794.
CROWD:
_bibliography_, 939-40;
animal, 788-89, 876, 881-87;
characteristics of, 890-93;
classified, 200-201;
control in the, 790-91, 800-805;
defined, 868, 893-95;
excitement of, in mass movements, 895-98;
homogeneous and heterogeneous, 200-201;
"in being," 33;
milling in, 869;
organized, 33, 34;
"psychological," 34, 876-77, 887-93;
psychology of, 5;
and the public, 867-70;
and unreflective action, 798-99.
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES, as caused by isolation, 229.
CULTURAL PROCESS:
the function of, 52-54;
and isolation, 233.
CULTURAL RESEMBLANCES, interpretation of, 19.
CULTURAL TRAITS:
independently created, 20;
transmission of, 21.
CULTURE: and behavior patterns, 72;
materials, why diffused, 20;
Roman, extension of in Gaul, 751-54.
CULTURES, CONFLICT AND FUSION OF:
_bibliography_, 776-80;
analysis of blended, 746-50;
comparative study of, 18;
conflict and fusion of, 738-39, 746-62, 771-72;
fusions of, nature of the process, 20.
CUSTOM: as the general will, 102;
and law, 799.
_See_ Mores.
DANCE: _bibliography_, 938-39;
and corporate action, 870-71.
DANCING MANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 875, 879-81.
DEFECTIVES, DEPENDENTS, AND DELINQUENTS:
_bibliography_, 147-48, 566-70;
and competition, 559-62;
isolated groups, 232-33, 254-57, 271;
and progress, 954-55;
solution of problems of, 562.
DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION, 764-65.
DENATIONALIZATION:
_bibliography_, 777-78;
implies coercion, 740-41;
as negative assimilation, 724;
in the Roman conquest of Gaul, 751-54.
DENOMINATIONS:
as accommodation groups, 50;
distinguished from sects, 873.
DESIRES:
in relation to interests, 456;
as social forces, 437-38, 453-54, 455, 497.
DIALECTS:
_bibliography_, 275, 427-29;
caused by isolation, 271;
of isolated groups, 423;
_lingua franca_, 752-54.
DISCOURSE, UNIVERSES OF. _See_ Universes of discourse.
DISCUSSION, _bibliography_, 646-47.
DISORGANIZATION, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 934-35;
and change, 55;
disintegrating influences of city life, 312-13;
and emancipation of the individual, 867.
DIVISION OF LABOR:
and collectivism, 718;
and co-operation, 42;
and individualism, 718;
and the moral code, 717-18;
physiological, 26;
in slavery, 677;
and social solidarity, 714-18;
and social types, 713-14.
DOGMA, as based upon ritual and myth, 822-26.
DOMESDAY SURVEY, 436.
DOMESTICATION:
defined, 163;
of animals, 171-73.
DOMINATION. _See_ Subordination and superordination.
DUEL:
_bibliography_, 655.
ECESIS, defined, 526.
ECONOMIC COMPETITION. _See_ Competition.
ECONOMIC CONFLICT GROUPS:
_bibliography_, 657-58.
ECONOMIC CRISES. _See_ Crises, economic.
ECONOMIC MAN, as an abstraction to explain behavior, 495-96.
ECONOMIC PROCESS, and personal values, 53-54.
ECONOMICS:
conception of society of, 280-81;
and the economic process, 53-54;
use of social forces in, 494-96.
_See_ Competition.
EDUCATION:
device of social control, 339;
purpose of, 833.
EMOTIONS, expressions of:
_bibliography_, 426-27;
study of, 421-22.
EPIDEMICS, PSYCHIC OR SOCIAL. _See_ Contagion, social.
EQUILIBRIUM, a form of accommodation, 667-719.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: as affective morale, 209;
defined, 164;
in relation to isolation, 229-30.
ETHNOLOGY:
and history, 18;
as a social science, 5.
EUGENICS:
_bibliography_, 1007;
and biological inheritance, 133;
as human domestication, 163;
and progress, 969-73, 979-83;
research in, 143.
EVOLUTION, SOCIAL: and progress, _bibliography_, 1006-7.
FAMILY:
_bibliography_, 220-23, 947-48;
government of, 46;
outline for sociological study, 216;
a primary group, 56;
as a social group, 50;
study of, 213-16.
FASHION:
a form of imitation, 390;
as social contagion, 874-75;
and social control, 831-32;
study of, 933-34.
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS. _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents.
FERAL MEN:
_bibliography_, 277;
result of isolation, 71-72, 239-43.
FERMENTATION, SOCIAL, 34.
FEUD:
_bibliography_, 654-55;
as a form of conflict, 588-90;
as the personal settlement of disputes, 581.
FLOCK, 881-83.
FOLK PSYCHOLOGY:
aim of, 21;
its origin, 20;
and sociology, 5.
FOLKLORE, as a social science, 5.
FOLKWAYS:
not creations of human purpose, 98.
_See_ Customs, Mores.
FORCES, SOCIAL:
_chap. vii_, 435-504;
_bibliography_, 498-501;
in American history, 443-44;
attitudes as, 437-42, 457-78;
desires as, 437-38, 453-54, 497;
gossip as, 452;
in history, 436-37, 493-94;
history of the concept of, 436-37;
idea-forces as, 461-64;
and interaction, 451-54;
interests, as, 454-58, 458-62, 494-96;
investigations and problems of, 491-97;
organized in public opinion, 35;
popular notions of, 491-93;
in public opinion in England, 445-51;
social pressures as, 458-61;
and the social survey, 436;
in social work, 435-37, 491-93;
sources of the notion of, 435-36;
tendencies as, 444-45;
trends as, 436-37.
_See_ Attitudes, Desires, Interests, Sentiments, and Wishes.
FREEDOM:
_bibliography_, 563;
and competition, 506-7, 509, 551-52;
and laissez faire, 560-61;
as the liberty to move, 323;
of thought and speech, 640-41.
FRENCH REVOLUTION, 905-9.
GALTON LABORATORY FOR NATIONAL EUGENICS, 143, 560.
GAMES AND GAMBLING:
_bibliography_, 655;
study of, 640.
GANGS:
_bibliography_, 656;
as a form of conflict groups, 50, 870;
permanent form of crowd that acts, 872.
GENERAL EDUCATION BOARD, 315.
GENIUS, among civilized peoples, 92.
GEOGRAPHY:
and history, 8;
as a science, 7.
GOVERNMENT:
a technical science, 1.
_See_ Politics.
GREGARIOUSNESS, regarded as an instinct, 30, 742-45.
GROUP, PRIMARY, defined, 50, 56.
GROUP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 51.
GROUPS, SECONDARY:
in relation to conflict and accommodation, 50.
_See_ Contacts, secondary.
GROUPS, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 218-23, 274, 333-36;
accommodation type of, 721-23;
centers of new ideas, 21;
and character, 57;
classification of, 50, 200-205;
concept of, 47;
co-operation in, 22;
defined, 45, 196-98;
determines types of personality, 606-7;
investigations of, 210-16, 270-71;
natural, 30;
organization and structure of, 51;
persistence of, 349-56;
a real corporate existence, 33;
rivalry of, 605-10;
and social problems, 50;
study of, 643-45;
subordination to, 609-702;
types of, 47-51;
unit of classification, 161-62;
unit of investigation, 212-13;
unity of, 198-200.
_See_ Groups, primary, Groups, secondary, Contacts, primary, Contacts,
secondary, also the names of specific groups.
GROWTH, SOCIAL, 26.
HABIT, as the individual will, 100-102.
HERD:
behavior of, 30;
contagion in, 885-86;
homogeneity of, 31;
instinct of the, 32, 724-45, 884-86;
milling in the, 788-90;
simplest type of social group, 30.
HEREDITY AND EUGENICS:
_bibliography_, 147-48.
HERITAGES, SOCIAL:
complex of stimuli, 72;
of the immigrant, 765;
investigation of, 51;
transmission of, 72.
HISTORICAL FACT, 7.
HISTORICAL PROCESS, and progress, 969-73.
HISTORICAL RACES:
as products of isolation, 257-60.
HISTORY:
a catalogue of facts, 14;
defined by Karl Pearson, 14;
and geography, 15;
as group memory, 51-52;
mother science of all the social sciences, 42, 43;
as a natural science, 23;
and the natural sciences, 6;
scientific, 4, 14;
and sociology, 5, 1-12, 16-24.
HOMOGENEITY:
and common purpose, 32;
and like-mindedness, 32.
HOUSING, and zoning studies, 328-29.
HUMAN BEINGS, as artificial products, 95.
HUMAN ECOLOGY, and competition, 558.
HUMAN NATURE:
_chap. ii_, 64-158;
_bibliography_, 147-54;
adaptability of, 95-97;
Aristotle's conception of, 140;
defined, 65-67;
described in literature, 141-43;
description and explanation of, 79;
founded on instincts, 77-78;
and the four wishes, 442-43;
Hobbes' conception, 140;
human interest in, 64-65;
investigations and problems, 139-46;
and law, 12-16;
Machiavelli's conception, 140;
and the mores, 97-100;
political conceptions, 140-41;
problems of, 47;
product of group life, 67;
product of social intercourse, 47;
product of society, 159;
and progress, 954, 957-58, 964-65, 983-1000;
religious conceptions of, 139;
and social control, 785-87; 848-49;
and social life, 69;
Spencer's conception, 141;
and war, 594-98.
HUMAN NATURE AND INDUSTRY:
_bibliography_, 149.
HUMAN SOCIETY:
contrasted with animal societies, 199-200;
and social life, 182-85.
HYPNOTISM:
a form of dissociation of memory, 472;
post-hypnotic suggestion, 477.
_See_ Suggestion.
IDEA-FORCES, 461-64.
_See_ Sentiment, Wishes.
IMITATION:
_bibliography_, 429-30;
active side of sympathy, 394-95;
and appropriation of knowledge, 403-4;
and art, 401-8;
circular reaction, 390-91;
communication by, 72;
defined, 344, 390-91, 391-94;
in emotional communication, 404-7;
and fashion, 390;
and the imitative process, 292-93;
internal, 404-5;
and like-mindedness, 33;
as a process of learning, 344, 393-94;
and rapport, 344;
in relation to attention and interest, 344, 391-94;
in relation to trial and error, 344-45;
and the social inheritance, 390-91;
as the social process, 21;
study of, 423-24;
and suggestion, differentiated, 346;
and suggestion, inner relation between, 688-889;
and the transmission of tradition, 391-92.
IMMIGRATION:
_bibliography_, 780-81;
and Americanization, 772-75;
involves accommodation, 719.
_See_ Migration.
IMMIGRATION COMMISSION, REPORT OF, 772-73.
INBORN CAPACITIES, defined, 73-74.
INDIVIDUAL:
_bibliography_, 149-50, 152-53;
an abstraction, 24;
isolated, 55;
and person 55;
subordination to, 698-99.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES:
_bibliography_, 152-54, 276;
assimilation and the mediation of, 766-69;
cause of isolation, 228-29;
described, 92-94;
developed by city life, 313-15;
measurement of, 145-46;
in primitive and civilized man, 90;
and sex differences, 87.
INDIVIDUAL REPRESENTATION, 37, 193.
INDIVIDUALISM, and the division of labor, 718.
INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION:
_bibliography_, 564-65;
impersonality of, 287.
INHERITANCE, BIOLOGICAL:
_bibliography_, 147.
INHERITANCE, SOCIAL:
through imitation, 390-91.
_See_ Heritages, social.
"INNER ENEMIES." _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents.
INSPIRATION, and public sentiment, 34, 35.
INSTINCTS:
_bibliography_, 147-48, 152-54;
and character, 190-93;
in conflict, 576-77; 579-82;
defined, 73-74;
gregarious, 742-45;
in the human baby, 82-84;
instinctive movements as race movements, 82;
physiological bases of assimilation, 742-45.
_See_ Human nature, Original nature.
INSTITUTIONS: defined, 796-97, 841;
investigations of, 51;
and law, 797-99;
and mass movements, 915-24;
and mores, 841-43;
natural history of, 16;
and sects, 872-74;
and social control, 796-99, 841-48, 851-53.
INTERACTION, SOCIAL:
_chap. vi_, 339-434;
_bibliography_, 425-31;
in communication, 341-43, 344-46, 356-89, 408-42;
concept of, 339-41;
in conflict, 582-86;
defines the group in time and space, 341, 348-56;
history of the concept, 420-21;
imitation as a mechanistic form of, 344, 390-407;
investigations and problems, 420-24;
language, science, religion, public opinion, and law products of, 37;
and mobility, 341;
Ormond's analysis, 340;
as a principal fundamental to all the natural sciences, 341-42, 346-48;
in secondary contacts in the large city, 360-61;
and social forces, 451-54;
and social process, 36, 421;
visual, 356-61.
_See_ Communication, Imitation, Process, social, Suggestion, and
Sympathy.
INTEREST:
in relation to imitation, 344, 391-94.
INTERESTS:
_bibliography_, 499-500;
classification of, 456-57;
defined, 456;
and desires, 456;
instincts and sentiments, 30;
natural harmony of, 550-51;
as social forces, 454-58, 458-62.
INTIMACY:
_bibliography_, 332;
and the desire for response, 329-30;
form of primary contact, 294-85.
INVERSION, of impulses and sentiments, 283, 292, 329.
INVESTIGATION, and research, 45.
ISOLATION:
_chap. iv_, 226-79;
_bibliography_, 273-77;
in anthropogeography, 226, 269-70;
barrier to invasion in plant communities, 527-28;
in biology, 227-28, 270;
cause of cultural differences, 229;
cause of dialects, 271;
cause of mental retardation, 231, 239-52;
cause of national individuality, 233, 257-69;
cause of originality, 237-39;
cause of personal individuality, 233-39, 271-73;
cause of race prejudice, 250-52;
cause of the rural mind, 247-49;
circle of, 232;
destroyed by competition, 232;
disappearance of, 866-67;
effect upon social groups, 270-71;
feral men, 239-43;
geographical, and maritime contact, 260-64;
investigations and problems of, 269-73;
isolated groups, 270-71;
mental effects of, 245-47;
and prayer, 235-37;
and the processes of competition, selection and segregation, 232-33;
product of physical and mental differences, 228-29;
result of segregation, 254-57;
and secrecy, 230;
and segregation, 228-30;
and solidarity, 625-26;
solitude and society, 243-45;
subtler effects of, 249-52.
JEW:
product of isolation, 271;
racial temperament, 136-37;
as the sociological stranger, 318-19, 323.
KLONDIKE RUSH, 895-98.
LABOR ORGANIZATIONS:
as conflict groups, 50.
LABORING CLASS, psychology of, 40.
LAISSEZ FAIRE:
_bibliography_, 563;
and competition, 554-58;
and individual freedom, 560-61;
in secondary contacts, 758.
LANGUAGE:
_bibliography_, 427-29;
as condition of Americanization, 765-66;
gesture, 362-64;
and participation, 763-66.
_See_ Communication, Speech community.
LANGUAGE GROUPS AND NATIONALITIES, 50-51.
LANGUAGE REVIVALS AND NATIONALISM:
_bibliography_, 945-46;
study of 930-32.
LANGUAGES:
comparative study of, and sociology, 5, 22;
cultural, competition of, 754-56, 771.
LAUGHTER:
communication by, 370-75;
essays upon, 422;
in social control, 373-75;
and sympathy, 370-73, 401.
LAW:
_bibliography_, 860-62;
based on custom and mores, 799, 843-46;
common and statute, 842-46;
comparative study of, 5;
and conscience, 102-8;
and creation of law-making opinion, 451;
formation of, 16;
and the general will, 102-8;
and human nature, 12-16;
as influenced by public opinion, 446-51;
and institutions, 797-99;
and legal institutions, 851-53;
moral, 13;
municipal, 13;
natural, defined, 11;
natural, distinguished from other forms, 12;
and public opinion, 446-51;
and religion, 853;
result of like-mindedness, 717;
social, as an hypothesis, 12;
"unwritten," 640.
LAWS OF NATURE, 13.
LAWS OF PROGRESS, 15.
LAWS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION, 18.
LEADERSHIP:
_bibliography_, 854-55;
in the flock, 881-83;
and group continuity, 353-54;
interpreted by subordination and superordination, 695-97, 697-98;
in Methodism, 916-17;
study of, 721, 849-50.
_See_ Collective behavior, Social control, Suggestion, Subordination
and superordination.
LEGEND:
as a form of social control, 819-22;
growth of, 819-22;
in the growth of Methodism, 922-23.
_See_ Myth.
LEGISLATION. _See_ Law.
LIKE-MINDEDNESS: and corporate action, 42;
as an explanation of social behavior, 32-33;
formal, in assimilation, 757-60;
in a panic, 33-34.
LINGUA FRANCA, 752-54.
LITERATURE, and the science of human nature, 141-43.
LITIGATION, as a form of conflict, 590-92.
LYNCHING:
_bibliography_, 653-54.
MAN:
an adaptive mechanism, 522-26; economic, 495-96;
the fighting animal, 600-603;
the natural, 82-85;
as a person, 10;
a political animal, 10, 32;
primitive and civilized, sensory discrimination in, 90.
_See_ Human nature, Individual, Person, Personality.
MARKETS:
_bibliography_, 564;
and the origin of competition, 555-56.
MASS MOVEMENTS:
_bibliography_, 941-43;
crowd excitements and, 895-98;
and institutions, 915-24;
and mores, 898-905;
and progress, 54;
and revolution, 905-15;
study of, 927-32;
types of, 895-924.
MEMORY:
associative, Loeb's definition, 467;
rôle of, in the control of original nature, 468-71.
MENTAL CONFLICT:
_bibliography_, 645-46;
and the disorganization of personality, 638;
its function in individual and group action, 578;
and sublimation, 669.
MENTAL DIFFERENCES. _See_ Individual differences.
METHODISM, 915-24.
MIGRATION:
classified into internal and foreign, 531-33;
and mobility, 301-5;
in the plant community, 526-28;
and segregation, 529-33.
_See_ Immigration, mobility.
MILLING, in the herd, 788-90.
MIND, COLLECTIVE, 887, 889-90.
MISCEGENATION:
and the mores, 53.
_See_ Amalgamation.
MISSIONS:
_bibliography_, 778-80;
and the conflict and fusion of cultures, 771;
and social transmission, 200.
MOBILITY:
_bibliography_, 333;
and communication, 284;
and competition, 513;
contrasted with continuity, 286;
defined, 283-84;
facilitated by city life, 313-14;
and instability of natural races, 300-301;
of the migratory worker, 912-13;
and the movement of the peoples, 301-5;
and news, 284;
and social interaction, 341;
and the stranger, 323-24.
_See_ Communication, Contacts, social, Migration.
MOBILIZATION, of the individual man, 313.
MORALE:
defined, 164;
and isolation, 229-30;
of social groups, 205-9.
_See Esprit de corps_, Collective representation, Consciousness, social.
MORES:
_bibliography_, 148-49;
as the basis of social control, 786-87;
and conduct, 189;
and human nature, 97-100;
influence of, 30;
and institutions, 841-43;
and mass movements, 898-905;
and miscegenation, 53;
not subject of discussion, 52-53;
and progress, 983-84;
and public opinion, differentiated, 832.
MOVEMENTS. _See_ Mass movements.
MUSIC:
_bibliography_, 938-39.
MYTHOLOGY, comparative study of, 5.
MYTHS:
_bibliography_, 857-58;
as a form of social control, 816-19;
progress as a, 958-62;
relation to ritual and dogma, 822-26;
revolutionary, 817-19, 909, 911;
and socialism, 818-19.
_See_ Legend.
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, as affected by natural or vicinal location,
268-69.
NATIONAL DIFFERENCES, explained by isolation, 264-68.
NATIONALITIES:
_bibliography_, 275, 659-60;
assimilation in the formation of, 756-58;
conflict groups, 50, 628-31;
defined, 645;
and nations, 723;
and patterns of life, 46;
and racial temperament, 135-39.
_See_ Denationalization, Nationalization, Language revivals.
NATIONALIZATION:
_bibliography_, 777-78.
NATURAL HISTORY:
and natural science, 16;
of a social institution, 16.
NATURAL SCIENCE:
defined 12;
and history, 8.
NATURALIZATION, SOCIAL:
as a form of accommodation, 666-67, 719.
NATURE:
defined, 11;
laws of, 13;
and nurture, 126-28.
NATURE, HUMAN. _See_ Human nature.
NEGRO:
accommodation of, in slavery and freedom, 631-37;
assimilation of, 960-62;
race consciousness of, 623-31;
racial temperament of, 136-37, 762.
NEIGHBORHOOD:
deterioration of, 252-54;
as a local community, 50;
as a natural area of primary contacts, 285;
as a primary group, 56;
scale for grading, 1002 n.
NEO-MALTHUSIAN MOVEMENT, 559-60.
NEWS:
and social control, 834-37.
_See_ Newspaper, Publicity.
NEWSPAPER:
_bibliography_, 427, 859-60;
historical development of, 385-89;
as medium of communication, 316-17.
_See_ Public opinion, Publicity.
NOMINALISM, and social psychology, 41.
NOMINALISTS, and realists in sociology, 36.
OPINION. _See_ Public opinion.
ORDEAL OF BATTLE:
_bibliography_, 655.
ORGANISM, SOCIAL:
and biological, 28;
Comte's conception of, 24-25, 39;
humanity or Leviathan? 24-27;
and the separate organs, 27;
Spencer's definition of, 25;
Spencer's essay on, 28.
ORGANIZATION, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 729-30;
of groups, 51;
and progress, 966-68;
and rivalry, 604-16;
study of, 723-25.
ORGANIZATIONS, sociological and biological, 26.
ORIGINAL NATURE:
an abstraction, 68;
control over, 81;
controlled through memory, 468-71;
defined, 56, 73-74;
and environment, 73;
inheritance of, 128-33;
of man, 68-69;
research in, 143.
_See_ Individual, Individual differences, Instincts.
ORIGINAL TENDENCIES:
inventory of, 75-76;
range of, 74.
ORIGINALITY:
accumulated commonplaces, 21;
in relation to isolation, 237-39.
PACK, 886-87.
PARTICIPATION:
Americanization as, 762-63;
and competitive co-operation, 767-68;
language as a means and a product of, 763-66.
_See_ Americanization, Assimilation, Collective behavior, Social
control.
PARTIES:
_bibliography_, 658-59;
as conflict groups, 50.
PATTERNS OF LIFE, in nationalities, 46;
in social classes, 46.
PEACE, as a type of accommodation, 703-6.
PERIODICALS, SOCIOLOGICAL: _bibliography_, 59-60.
PERSON:
_bibliography_, 150-52, 273-74;
effect of city upon, 329;
and his wishes, 388-90;
as an individual with status, 55.
_See_ Personality, Status.
PERSONALITY:
_bibliography_, 149-52;
alterations of, 113-17;
classified, 146;
as a complex, 69, 110-13;
conscious, 490;
defined, 70, 112-13;
defined in terms of attitudes, 490;
disorganization of, and mental conflict, 628;
dissociation of, 472-75;
effect of isolation upon, 233-39, 271-73;
and the four wishes, 442-43;
and group membership, 609;
harmonization of conflict, 583-84;
of individuals and peoples, 123-25;
investigation of, 143-45;
as the organism, 108-10;
shut-in type of, 272;
and the social group, 48;
study of, 271-73;
and suggestion, 419-20;
types of, determined by the group, 606-7.
_See_ Individual, Person, Self, Status.
PERSONS, defined, 55;
as "parts" of society, 36;
product of society, 159.
PHILOSOPHY, and natural science, 4.
PITTSBURGH SURVEY, 315, 724.
PLANT COMMUNITIES. _See_ Communities.
PLAY: as expressive behavior, 787-88.
POLITICS:
_bibliography_, 940;
comparative, Freeman's lectures on, 23;
as expressive behavior, 787-88;
among the natural sciences, 3;
as a positive science, 3;
shams in, 826-82.
POVERTY. _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents.
PRESTIGE:
with animals, 809-10;
defined, 807;
and prejudice, 808-9;
in primitive society, 810-11, 811-12;
in social control, 807-11, 811-12;
and status in South East Africa, 811-12.
_See_ Leadership, Status.
PRIMARY CONTACTS. _See_ Contacts, primary.
PRINTING-PRESS, _bibliography_, 427.
PRIVACY:
defined, 231;
values of, 231.
PROBLEMS, ADMINISTRATIVE:
practical and technical, 46.
PROBLEMS, HISTORICAL:
become psychological and sociological, 19.
PROBLEMS OF POLICY:
political and legislative, 46.
PROBLEMS, SOCIAL:
classification of, 45, 46;
of the group, 47.
PROCESS, historical, 51;
political, as distinguished from the cultural, 52-54.
PROCESS, SOCIAL:
defined, 51;
and interaction, 36, 346;
natural, 346-48, 420-21;
and social progress, 51-55.
PROGRESS:
_chap. xiv_, 952-1011;
_bibliography_, 57-58, 1004-10;
as the addition to the sum of accumulated experience, 1001-2;
concept of, 962-63, 965-73;
and consciousness, 990-94;
and the cosmic urge, 989-1000;
criteria of, 985-86;
and the defectives, the dependents, and the delinquents, 954-55;
and the _dunkler drang_, 954-1000;
earliest conception of, 965-66;
and the _élan vitale_, 989-94;
and eugenics, 969-73;
and happiness, 967, 973-75;
and the historical process, 969-73;
history of the concept of, 958-62;
as a hope or myth, 958-62;
and human nature, 954, 957-58, 964-65, 983-1000;
indices of, 1002-3;
investigations and problems, 1000-3;
laws of, 15;
and the limits of scientific prevision, 978-79;
and mass movements, 54;
a modern conception, 960-62;
and the mores, 983-84;
and the nature of man, 983;
and organization, 966-68;
popular conceptions of, 953-56;
and prevision, 975-77;
problem of, 956-58;
and providence, in contrast, 960-62;
and religion, 846-48;
a result of competition, 988;
a result of contact, 988-89;
and science, 973-83;
and social control, 786;
and social process, 51-58;
and social research, 1000-12;
and social values, 955;
stages of, 968-69;
types of, 985-96;
and war, 984-89.
PROPAGANDA:
in modern nations, 772;
psychology of, 837-41.
PROVIDENCE:
in contrast with progress, 960-62.
PSYCHOLOGY, COLLECTIVE, _bibliography_, 940-41.
PUBLIC:
and the crowd, 867-70;
control in, 800-805;
a discussion group, 798-99, 870.
PUBLIC OPINION:
_bibliography_, 858-60;
changes in intensity and direction of, 792-93;
and collective representations, 38;
combined and sublimated
judgments of individuals, 795-96;
continuity in its development, 450-51;
and crises, 793-94;
cross currents in, 450-51, 791-93;
defined, 38;
and legislation in England, 445-51;
and mores, 829-33;
nature of, 826-29;
opinion of individuals plus their differences, 832-33;
organization of, 51;
organization of social forces, 35;
and schools of thought, 446-49;
and social control, 786, 816-41, 850-51;
as social weather, 791-93;
as a source of social control in cities, 316-17;
supported by sentiment, 478.
PUBLICITY:
as a form of social contact, 315-17;
as a form of social control, 830;
historical evolution of the newspaper, 385-89;
and publication, 38.
RACE CONFLICT:
_bibliography_, 650-52;
and race prejudice, 578-79;
study of, 642-43.
RACE CONSCIOUSNESS:
and conflict, 623-31;
in relation to literature and art, 626-29.
RACE PREJUDICE:
and competition of peoples with different standards of living, 620-23;
as a defense-reaction, 620;
a form of isolation, 250-52;
and inter-racial competition, 539-44;
a phenomenon of social distance, 440;
and prestige, 808-9;
and primary contacts, 330;
and race conflicts, 578-79.
RACES:
assimilation of, 756-62;
defined, 631-33.
RACIAL DIFFERENCES:
_bibliography_, 154;
and assimilation, 769-70;
basis of race prejudice and conflict, 631-33;
in primitive and civilized man, 89-92.
RAPPORT:
in the crowd, 893-94;
in hypnotism, 345;
in imitation, 344;
in suggestion, 345.
REACTION, CIRCULAR:
in collective behavior and social control, 788-92;
in imitation, 390-91;
in social unrest, 866.
REALISTS, and nominalists in sociology, 43.
REALISM, and collective psychology, 41.
REFLEX:
defined, 73;
as response toward an object, 479-82;
Watson's definition of, 81.
REFORM:
_bibliography_, 948-50;
method of effecting, 47;
study of, 934.
RESEARCH, SOCIAL:
and progress, 1000-1002;
and sociology, 43-57.
RESEARCH, sociological, defined, 44.
RELIGION:
as an agency of social control, 846-48;
comparative study of, 5;
as expressive behavior, 787-88;
as the guardian of mores, 847;
and law, 853;
Methodism, 915-24;
origin in the choral dance, 871;
and revolutionary and reform movements, 873-74, 908-9.
RELIGIOUS REVIVALS, AND THE ORIGIN OF SECTS:
_bibliography_, 933-45;
study of, 932-33.
RESPONSE, MULTIPLE, and multiple causation, 75.
REVIVALS. _See_ Language revivals, Religious revivals.
REVOLUTION:
_bibliography_, 950-51;
bolshevism, 909-15;
French, 905-9;
and mass movements, 905-15;
moral, and Methodism, 923-24;
and religion, 873-74; 908-9;
study of, 934.
RITES. _See_ Ritual.
RITUAL:
_bibliography_, 855-56, 938-39;
as a basis of myth and dogma, 822-26.
RIVALRY:
_bibliography_, 646;
animal, 604-5;
and national welfare, 609-10;
of social groups, 605-10;
and social organization, 577-78, 604-16;
sublimated form of conflict, 577-78.
ROCKEFELLER MEDICAL FOUNDATION, 670.
RURAL COMMUNITIES: as local groups, 50.
_See_ Communities.
RURAL MIND, as a product of isolation, 247-49.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, social surveys, 46, 315, 724.
SALVATION ARMY, 873.
SCIENCE: and concrete experience, 15;
and description, 13;
and progress, 973-83.
SCIENCES, ABSTRACT, instrumental character of, 15.
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION, and common sense, 80.
SECONDARY CONTACTs. _See_ Contacts, secondary.
SECRET SOCIETIES, _bibliography_, 730-32.
SECTS:
_bibliography_, 656-57;
as conflict groups, 50;
defined, 202-3;
distinguished from denomination, 873;
and institutions, 872-74;
origin in conflict of beliefs, 611-12;
origin in the crowd, 870-72;
permanent form of expressive crowd, 872.
_See_ Religious revivals.
SEGREGATION:
and competition, 526-44;
and isolation, 228-30, 254-57;
and migration, 529-33;
in the plant community, 526-28;
as a process, 252-54;
and social selection, 534-38.
SELECTION, SOCIAL:
and demographic segregation, 534-38;
personal competition and status, 708-12.
SELF:
conventional, versus natural person, 117-19;
divided, and moral consciousness, 119-23;
as the individual's conception of his rôle, 113-17;
"looking-glass," 70-71.
_See_ Individual, Person, Personality.
SENSES, SOCIOLOGY OF, _bibliography_, 332.
SENSORIUM, SOCIAL, 27, 28.
SENTIMENTS:
_bibliography_, 501;
of caste, 684-88;
and competition, 508;
classification of, 466-67;
and idea-forces, 463-64;
of loyalty, as basis of social solidarity, 759;
McDougall's definition, 441, 465;
mutation of, 441-42;
related to opinion, 478;
as social forces, 464-67.
SEX DIFFERENCES:
_bibliography_, 153-54;
and cultural conflicts, 615-16;
described, 85-89.
SITTLICHKEIT:
defined, 102-4.
SITUATION:
definition of, 764-65;
and response, 73.
SLANG, _bibliography_, 427-29.
SLAVERY:
_bibliography_, 727-28;
defined, 674-77;
and the division of labor, 677;
interpreted by subordination and superordination, 676, 677-81.
SOCIAL ADVERTISING. _See_ Publicity.
SOCIAL AGGREGATES. _See_ Aggregates, social.
SOCIAL CHANGES, and disorganization, 55.
SOCIAL CLASSES. _See_ Classes, social.
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS. _See_ Consciousness, social.
SOCIAL CONTACT. _See_ Contact, social.
SOCIAL CONTROL. _See_ Control, social.
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION. _See_ Disorganization, social.
SOCIAL DISTANCE:
graphic representation of, 282;
maintained by isolation, 230;
as psychic separation, 162;
and race prejudice, 440.
SOCIAL FACT:
classification of, 51;
imitative, 21.
SOCIAL FORCES. _See_ Forces, social.
SOCIAL GROUPS. _See_ Groups, social.
SOCIAL HERITAGES. _See_ Heritages, social.
SOCIAL INTERACTION. _See_ Interaction, social.
SOCIAL LIFE:
defined, 183-85;
and human nature, 182-85.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. _See_ Mass movements.
SOCIAL ORGANISM. _See_ Organism, social.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. _See_ Organization, social.
SOCIAL PHENOMENA:
causes of, 17;
as susceptible of prevision, 1.
SOCIAL PRESSURES, as social forces, 458-61.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS. _See_ Problems, social.
SOCIAL PROCESS. _See_ Process, social.
SOCIAL REFORM. _See_ Problem, social, Reform.
SOCIAL SENSORIUM. _See_ Sensorium, social.
SOCIAL SOLIDARITY. _See_ Solidarity, social.
SOCIAL SURVEYS. _See_ Surveys, social.
SOCIAL TYPES. _See_ Types, social.
SOCIAL UNIT PLAN, 724.
SOCIAL UNITY, as a product of isolation, 229-30.
SOCIAL UNREST. _See_ Unrest, social.
SOCIALISM:
_bibliography_, 565-66;
economic doctrines of, 558;
function of myth in, 818-19.
SOCIALIZATION:
the goal of social effort, 496;
as the unity of society, 348-49.
SOCIETY:
_bibliography_, 217-23;
animal, _bibliography_, 217-18;
in the animal colony, 24;
ant, 180-82;
an artefact, 30;
based on communication, 183-84;
collection of persons, 158;
collective consciousness of, 28;
"collective organism," 24;
as consensus, 161;
defined, 159-62, 165-66, 348-49;
differentiated from community and social group, 161-62;
as distinct from individuals, 27;
exists in communication, 36;
an extension of the individual organism, 159-60;
and the group, _chap. iii_, 159-225;
_bibliography_, 217-23;
from an individualistic and collectivistic point of view, 41, 42;
investigations and problems of, 210-16;
mechanistic interpretation of, 346-48;
metaphysical science of, 2;
as part of nature, 29;
product of nature and of design, 30;
scientific study of, 210-11;
and social distance, 162;
as social interaction, 341, 348;
and the social process, 211;
and solitude, 233-34, 234-45;
as the sum total of institutions, 159;
and symbiosis, 165-73.
SOCIOLOGY: aims at prediction and control, 339-40;
in the classification of the sciences, 6;
as collective psychology, 342;
Comte's program, 1;
a description and explanation of the cultural process, 35;
an experimental science, 6;
a fundamental science, 6;
and history, 1-12, 16-24;
as an independent science, 1;
origin in history, 23;
origin of, 5, 6;
and the philosophy of history, 44;
positive science of society, 3;
representative works in, _bibliography_, 57-59;
rural and urban, 40;
schools of, 28;
a science of collective behavior, 24;
a science of humanity, 5;
and social research, 43-57;
and the social sciences, _chap. i._, 1-63.
SOCIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION: methods of, _bibliography_, 58-59.
SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD, 23.
SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW, 16.
SOLIDARITY, SOCIAL:
and the division of labor, 714-18;
and loyalty, 759;
and status and competition, 670-71, 708-18.
SOLITUDE. _See_ Isolation.
SPEECH COMMUNITY, changes in, 22.
_See_ Language.
STATE, sociological definition of, 50.
STATISTICS, as a method of investigation, 51.
STATUS:
and competition, 541-43, 670-71, 708-18;
determined by conflict, 574-75, 576;
determined by members of a group, 36;
of the person in the city, 313;
and personal competition and social selection, 708-12;
and prestige in South East Africa, 811-12;
and social solidarity, 670-71, 708-18.
_See_ Prestige.
STRANGER, sociology of, 317-22, 322-27.
STRIKES, _bibliography_, 652-53.
STRUCTURE, SOCIAL, permanence of, 746-50.
STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE:
and competition, 505, 512, 513-15, 522-26;
and natural selection, 515-19.
_See_ Competition.
STRUGGLE: for struggle's sake, 585-86.
SUBLIMATION: the accommodation of mental conflict, 669.
SUBMISSION. _See_ Subordination and superordination.
SUBORDINATION AND SUPERORDINATION, _bibliography_, 726;
in accommodation, 667-68;
in animal rivalry, 604-5;
in caste, 684-88;
in leadership, 695-97;
literature of, 721;
psychology of, 688-92;
reciprocal character of, 695-97;
in slavery, 676, 677-81;
social attitudes in, 692-95;
three types of, 697-703.
SUGGESTION:
_bibliography_, 430-31;
basis of social change, 22;
case of Clever Hans, 412-15;
and contra-suggestion, 419;
in the crowd, 415-16;
defined, 408;
distinguished from imitation, 345-46;
in hypnotism, 345, 412, 424, 471-72;
and idea-forces, 461-64;
and imitation, inner relation between, 688-89;
and leadership, 419-20;
and mass or corporate action, 415-20;
as a mechanistic form of interaction, 344-46, 408-20;
and perception, active and passive, 345, 408-12;
personal and general consciousness, 409-12;
and personality, 419-20;
as psychic infection, 410-12;
in social life, 345-46, 408-20, 424;
study of, 424;
subtler forms of, 413-15.
_See_ Hypnotism.
SUPERORDINATION. _See_ Subordination and superordination.
SURVEY, SOCIAL:
as a type of community study, 436;
types of, 46.
SYMBIOSIS:
in the ant community, 167-70;
in the plant community, 175-80
SYMPATHETIC CONTACTS, versus categoric contacts, 294-98.
SYMPATHY:
and imagination, 397-98;
imitation its most rudimentary form, 394-95;
intellectual or rational, 396-97, 397-401;
the "law of laughter," 370-73, 401;
psychological unison, 395;
Ribot's three levels of, 394-97.
TABOO:
_bibliography_, 856-58;
and religion, 847;
and rules of holiness and uncleanness, 813-16;
as social control, 813-16;
and touch, 291-93.
_See_ Touch.
TAMING, of animals, 170-73.
TEMPERAMENT:
_bibliography_, 152-53;
divergencies in, 91;
of Negro, 762;
racial and national, 135-39.
TOUCH:
as most intimate kind of contact, 280;
and social contact, 282-83, 291-93;
study of, 329-30;
and taboo, 291-93.
TRADITION:
and inheritance of acquired nature, 134-35;
and temperament, 135-39;
versus acculturation, 72.
_See_ Heritages, social.
TRANSMISSION:
by imitation and inculcation, 72, 135;
and society, 183;
Tarde's theory of, 21.
TYPES, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 731;
in the city, 313-15;
and the division of labor, 713-14;
result of personal competition, 712-14.
UNIVERSES OF DISCOURSE:
_bibliography_, 427-29;
and assimilation, 735, 764;
"every group has its own language," 423.
_See_ Communication, Language, Publicity.
UNREST, MORAL, 57.
UNREST, SOCIAL:
_bibliography_, 935-36;
and circular reaction, 866;
and collective behavior, 866-67;
increase of Bohemianism, 57;
in the I.W.W., 911-15;
like milling in the herd, 788;
manifest in discontent and mental anarchy, 907-8;
product of the artificial conditions of city life, 287, 329;
result of mobility, 320-21;
sign of lack of participation, 766-67;
and social contagion, 875-76;
studies of, 924-26;
and unrealized wishes, 442-43.
URBAN COMMUNITIES:
as local groups, 50.
_See_ Communities.
UTOPIAS, _bibliography_, 1008-9.
VALUES:
_bibliography_, 500;
object of the wish, 442;
personal and impersonal, 54;
positive and negative, 488;
and progress, 955.
VICIOUS CIRCLE, 788-89.
VOCATIONAL GROUPS, as a type of accommodation groups, 50.
WANTS AND VALUES, _bibliography_, 499-500.
WAR:
_bibliography_, 648-50;
as an exciting game, 580;
as a form of conflict, 575-76, 576-77, 586-88, 703-6;
and the "Great Society," 600-601;
and human nature, 594-98;
literature of, 641-42;
and man as the fighting animal, 600-603;
and possibility of its sublimation, 598;
the preliminary process of rejuvenescence, 596-97;
and progress, 984-89;
in relation to instincts and ideals, 576-77, 594-603;
as relaxation, 598-603;
and social utopia, 599.
WE-GROUP:
and collective egotism, 606;
and others-group defined, 283, 293-94;
ethnocentrism, 294.
WILL:
common, 106;
general, 107-8;
general, in relation to law and conscience, 102-8;
individual, 101;
social, 102.
WISH, the Freudian, 438, 442, 478-80, 482-88, 497.
WISHES:
_bibliography_, 501;
and attitudes, 442-43;
civilization organized to realize, 958;
as components of attitudes, 439;
and growth of human nature and personality, 442-43;
as libido, 442;
organized into character, 90;
of the person, 388-90;
as psychological unit, 479;
and the psychic censor, 484-88;
and the reflex, 479-82;
repressed, 482-83;
as the social atoms, 478-82;
Thomas' classification of, 438, 442, 488-90, 497;
and values, 442, 488.
WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE CRUSADE, 898-905.
WRITING:
as form of communication, 381-84;
pictographic forms, 381;
by symbols, 382-83.
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